Lark Rise to Candleford (57 page)

Roses are red And violets blue, Carnations sweet, And so are
you,

and when Laura asked if she knew who had sent it, she
pretended she had lost her needle and bent down to the floor, looking for it,
and, when pressed again, told Laura that her kipper would never be cooked if
she pointed it at the window, instead of at the fire.

The lessons set them by their kind but overworked mistress,
learning long columns of spelling words, or of the names of towns, or
countries, or of kings and queens, or sums to be worked out of which Laura had
never grasped the rules, were waste of time as far as she was concerned. The
few scraps of knowledge she managed to pick up were gleaned from the school
books, in which she read the history and geography portions so many times over
that certain paragraphs remained with her, word for word, for life. There were
stories of travel, too, and poems, and when these were exhausted there was the
mistress's own bookshelf.

The lessons were soon finished; the long lists repeated to
each other, parrot fashion; Emily Rose had done Laura's sums for her and Laura
had written Emily Rose's essay for her to copy, and the spare hour or two was
passed pleasantly enough over
Ministering Children
, or
Queechy
,
or
The Wide, Wide World
or Laura would knit while Emily Rose sewed, for
she liked knitting, and they would sit there, very cosily, while the fire
flared up and the kettle sang on the hob and the school sounds came faint and
subdued through the dividing wall.

During their last few months at school they had plenty to
talk about, for Emily Rose was in love and Laura was her confidante. It was no
childish fancy, she was really deeply in love, and it was one of those rare
cases where first love was to lead to marriage and last a lifetime.

Her Norman was the son of their nearest neighbours, who lived
about a mile from their cottage. On the evenings when Emily Rose stayed after
school for choir practice he would meet her and they would walk through the
wood arm in arm, like grown-up lovers. 'But you must only kiss me when we say
good night, Norman,' said sensible little Emily Rose, 'because we are too young
yet to be properly engaged.' She did not tell Laura what Norman said to that,
or whether he always observed her rule about kissing; but when asked what they
found to talk about her blue eyes opened wide and she said, 'Just about us,' as
though there were no other possible subject.

They had made up their minds to marry when they were old
enough and nothing on earth could have shaken that resolve; but, as it turned
out, they met with no opposition. When, a year or two later, their respective
parents discovered the state of things between them, they were at once asked to
each other's houses as accepted lovers, and when Emily Rose went as an
apprentice to a dressmaker in a neighbouring village she already wore a little
gold ring with clasped hands on her finger and Norman came openly to fetch her
home on dark evenings.

The last time Laura saw her she was as little changed as
anything human could be after a decade. A little fuller of figure, perhaps, and
with her flaxen hair wreathed in coils round her head instead of hanging in a
pigtail, but with speedwell eyes as innocently candid and milk-and-rose
complexion as fresh as ever. She had two lovely children in a perambulator,
'The very spit and moral of herself,' another stander-by assured her; and,
according to the same observer, the kind, steady husband who stood by her side
would not have let the wind blow upon her if he could have helped it. She was
still the same Emily Rose, kind, straightforward and a little dictatorial; convinced
that the world was a very nice place for well-behaved people.

Laura felt old and battered beside her, a sensation she
enjoyed, for that was in the 'nineties, when youth loved to pose as world-weary
and disillusioned, the sophisticated product of a dying century. Laura's
friends away from the hamlet called themselves
fin de siècle
and their
elders called them fast, although the fastness went no further than walking, hatless,
over Hindhead at night in a gale, bawling Swinburne and Omar Khayyam to each
other above the storm.

But the 'nineties were barely beginning when Laura left
school and where she would be and what she would be doing when they ended she
had no idea. For some months that was her great trouble, that, and the changed
conditions at home and a growing sense of inability to fit herself into the
scheme of things as she knew it.

Her mother, with five children to keep and care for, was
hard-pressed, especially as she still insisted upon living up to her old
standard of what she called 'seemliness'. Her idea of good housekeeping was
that every corner of the house should be clean, clean sheets should be on the
beds, clean clothes on every one of the seven bodies for which she was responsible,
a good dinner on the table and a cake in the pantry for tea by noon every
Sunday. She would sit up sewing till midnight and rise before daybreak to wash
clothes. But she had her reward. She was passionately fond of little children,
the younger and more helpless the better, and would talk by the hour in baby
language to the infant in the cradle or upon her lap, pouring out love and
lavishing endearments upon it. Often when Laura began speaking she would cut
her short with a request to go and do something, or take no notice at all of
what she said, not from deliberate unkindness, but simply because she had no
thought to spare for her older children. At least, so it appeared to Laura.

Her mother told her in after years that she had been anxious
about her at that time. She was outgrowing her strength, she thought, and was
too quiet and had queer ideas and did not make friends of her own age, which
she thought unnatural. Her future and that of Edmund were also causing her
anxiety.

Her plans had not changed: Laura was to be a nurse and Edmund
a carpenter; but the children themselves had changed. Edmund was the first to
protest. He did not want to be a carpenter; he thought it was a very good trade
for those who wanted one; but he didn't, he said firmly. 'But it is so
respectable and the pay's good. Look at Mr. Parker,' she urged, 'with his good
business and nice house and even a top hat for funerals.'

But now it seemed that Edmund had no ambition to wear a top
hat or to officiate at funerals. He did not want to be a carpenter at all, or a
mason. He would not have minded being an engine-driver; but what he really
wanted was to travel and see the world. That meant being a soldier, she said,
and what was a soldier when his time had expired, regularly ruined for ordinary
life, with his roving ideas and, more than likely, a taste for drink. Look at
Tom Finch, as yellow as a guinea and eaten up with ague, putting in a day or
two here and there on the land and but half alive, for you couldn't call it
living, between one pension day and another. Even if he had been well he had no
trade in his hands, and what was land work for a young chap, anyhow?

Then Edmund surprised and hurt her more than he had ever done
in his life before. 'What's the matter with the land?' he asked. 'Folks have
got to have food and somebody's got to grow it. The work's all right, too. I'd
rather turn a good straight furrow any day than mess about making shavings in a
carpenter's shop. If I can't be a soldier and go to India, I'll stop here and
work on the land.' She cried a little at that; but afterwards cheered up and
said he was too young to know his own mind. Boys did sometimes have these
fancies. He'd come to his senses presently.

Laura's failure troubled her more because she was two years
older than Edmund and the time was nearer when she would have to earn her own
living. Perhaps she had had doubts about her vocation for some time and that
was why she had seemed cold and reserved towards her. The situation came to a
head one day when Laura was nursing the baby with a book in her hand and,
absent-mindedly, put down the little hand which was trying to clutch her long
hair.

'Laura, I'm sorry to say it, but I'm downright disappointed
in you,' said her mother solemnly. 'I've been watching you for the last ten
minutes with that little innocent on your lap and your head stuck in that nasty
old book and not so much as one look at his pretty ways. (Didums, didums
neglect him then, the little precious! Anybody who could read a book with you
on their lap must have a heart of stone. Come to mum-mums, then.
She'll
not push, you pretty pawdy away when you try to play with
her
hair!) No,
it won't do, Laura. You'll never make a nurse, sorry as I am to say so. You're
fond enough of the baby, I know, but you just haven't got the knack of nursing.
A child'd grow up a perfect dummy if it had to depend upon you. You want to
talk to them and play with them and keep them amused. There, don't cry. You are
as you're made, I suppose. We shall have to think of something else for you to
do. Perhaps I could get Cousin Rachel to take you as apprentice to her
dressmaking. But, there, that's no good either, for your sewing's worse than
your nursing. We shall have to see what turns up; but there's no denying it's a
great disappointment to me, after having had the promise of a start for you and
all.'

So there was Laura at thirteen with her life in ruins, not
for the last time, but she grieved more over that than her later catastrophes,
for she had not then experienced the rebound or learned that no beating is
final while life lasts. It was not that she had particularly wanted to be a
nurse. She had often wondered if she were suitable for the life. She loved
children, but had she the necessary patience? She could keep the older ones
amused, she knew; but she was nervous and clumsy with babies. It was the sense
of defeat, of having been tried and found wanting, which crushed her.

There was also the question of what she could do for a
living. She thought she would like to work on the land, like Edmund. It was
long before the day of the landgirl; but a few of the older women in the hamlet
worked in the fields. Laura wondered if the farmer would employ her. She was
afraid not; and if he had been willing, her parents would not consent to it.
But when she said this to Edmund, who had found her crying in the woodshed, he
said, 'Why not?' Then, it appeared, he already had a plan. They would have a
little house together and both work on the land; Laura could do the housework,
for field-women's hours were shorter than those of the men; or perhaps Laura
need not go out to work at all, but just stay at home and keep house as other
women did for their husbands. They talked this over every time they were alone
together and even chose their cottage and discussed their meals. Treacle tarts
were to figure largely on their menu. But when at last they told their mother
of their plan she was horrified. 'Don't either of you so much as mention such a
silly idea again,' she said sternly, and 'for goodness' sake don't go telling
anybody else. You haven't, have you? Then don't, unless you want to be thought
mad; for mad it is, and I'm downright ashamed of you for such a low-down idea.
You're going to get on in the world, if I have any say in it, and leave working
on the land to them as can't do better for themselves. And not a word to your
father about this. I haven't told him yet what Edmund said about working on the
land, for I know he'd never allow it. And as to you, Laura, you're the eldest
and ought to know better than to put such silly ideas into your brother's
head.'

So that would not do; even Edmund was convinced of that,
though he still said to Laura in private that he would not be apprenticed. 'I
want to get about and see things,' he said, 'if it's only things growing.'
Evidently the craftsman spirit of his ancestors on one side of the family had
passed over his head to come out again in some future generation.

There was scarlet fever at Candleford that year and Laura did
not go there for her usual holiday. Johnny came to stay with them instead, and
did not bring the infection; he had been too carefully guarded. But he made one
more in the already overcrowded home; although it must be said that he improved
marvellously under her mother's firm rule. It was no longer 'Johnny, would you
like this or that?' but 'Now, Johnny, my man, eat up your dinner or you'll be
all behind when the next helping's given out.' The fine air and the simple food
must have been good for him, for he put on weight and started to shoot up in
height. Or perhaps his being there at the time of the turning-point of his
health was a lucky accident for which Laura's mother got the credit.

All that winter Laura went on with her brooding. Then spring
came and the bluebells were out and the chestnut candles and young bracken
fronds were unrolling; but, for the first time since she could remember, she
had no joy in such things. She sat one day on the low-hanging bough of a beech
and looked at them all. 'Here I am,' she thought, 'and here are all these
lovely things and I don't care for them a bit this year. There must be something
the matter with me.'

There was. She was growing up, and growing up, as she feared,
into a world that had no use for her. She carried this burden of care for
months, not always conscious of it; sometimes she would forget, and in the
reaction become noisy and boisterous; but it was always there, pressing down
upon her, until the neighbours noticed her melancholy expression and said:
'That child looks regular hag-rid.'

This accumulated depression of months slid from her at last
in a moment. She had run out into the fields one day in a pet and was standing
on a small stone bridge looking down on brown running water flecked with
cream-coloured foam. It was a dull November day with grey sky and mist. The
little brook was scarcely more than a trench to drain the fields; but
overhanging it were thorn bushes with a lacework of leafless twigs; ivy had
sent trails down the steep banks to dip in the stream, and from every thorn on
the leafless twigs and from every point of the ivy leaves water hung in bright
drops, like beads.