Lark Rise to Candleford (58 page)
A flock of starlings had whirred up from the bushes at her
approach and the
clip, clop
of a cart-horse's hoofs could be heard on
the nearest road, but these were the only sounds. Of the hamlet, only a few
hundred yards away, she could hear no sound, or see as much as a chimney-pot,
walled in as she was by the mist.
Laura looked and looked again. The small scene, so
commonplace and yet so lovely, delighted her. It was so near the homes of men
and yet so far removed from their thoughts. The fresh green moss, the
glistening ivy, and the reddish twigs with their sparkling drops seemed to have
been made for her alone and the hurrying, foam-flecked water seemed to have
some message for her. She felt suddenly uplifted. The things which had troubled
her troubled her no more. She did not reason. She had already done plenty of
reasoning. Too much, perhaps. She simply stood there and let it all sink in
until she felt that her own small affairs did not matter. Whatever happened to
her, this, and thousands of other such small, lovely sights would remain and
people would come suddenly upon them and look and be glad.
A wave of pure happiness pervaded her being, and, although it
soon receded, it carried away with it her burden of care. Her first reaction
was to laugh aloud at herself. What a fool she had been to make so much of so
little. There must be thousands like her who could see no place for themselves
in the world, and here she had been, fretting herself and worrying others as if
her case were unique. And, deeper down, beneath the surface of her being, was
the feeling, rather than the knowledge, that her life's deepest joys would be
found in such scenes as this.
Her mother was stooping to take something out of the oven
and, as she looked down upon her, Laura noticed for the first time that her
looks were changing. The blue eyes were bluer than ever, but the pink and white
of her face was weathering. Her figure was hardening, too; slim young grace was
turning to thin wiriness; and a few grey threads showed in her hair at the
temples. Her mother was growing old, soon she would die, thought Laura with
sudden compunction, and then how sorry she would be for giving her so much trouble.
But her mother, still on the right side of forty, did not
think of herself as ageing and had no thought of dying for a good many more
years to come. As it turned out, barely half of her life was over.
'Gracious, how you are shooting up!' she said cheerfully, as
she rose and stretched herself. 'I shall soon have to stand tiptoe to tie your
hair-ribbon. Have a potato cake? I found young Biddy had laid an egg this
morning, her first and not very big, so I thought I'd make us a cake for tea of
those cold potatoes in the pantry. A bit of sugar can always be spared. That's
cheap enough.'
Laura ate the cake with great relish, for it was delicious,
straight from the oven, and it was also a mark of her mother's favour; the
little ones were not allowed to eat between meals.
Her father had put up a swing for the younger children in the
wash-house. She could hear one of them now, crying, 'Higher! Higher!' Except
for the baby, asleep in the cradle, her mother and she were alone in the room,
which, on that dull day, was aglow with firelight. Her mother's pastry board
and rolling-pin still stood on a white cloth on one end of the table, and the
stew for dinner, mostly composed of vegetables, but very savoury-smelling,
simmered upon the hob. She had a sudden impulse to tell her mother how much she
loved her; but in the early 'teens such feelings cannot be put into words, and
all she could do was to praise the potato cake.
But perhaps her look conveyed something of what she felt,
for, that evening, her mother, after speaking of her own father, who had been
dead three or four years, added: 'You are the only one I can talk to about him.
Your father and he never got on together and the others were too young when he
died to remember him. Lots of things happened before they were born that you'll
always remember, so I shall always have somebody to talk to about the old
times.'
From that day a new relationship was established and grew
between them. Her mother was not kinder to Laura than she had been, for she had
always been kindness itself, but she took her more into her confidence, and
Laura was happy again.
But, as so often happens when two human beings have come to
understand each other, they were soon to be parted. In the early spring a
letter came from Candleford saying that Dorcas Lane wanted a learner for her
Post Office work and thought Laura would do, if her parents were willing.
Although she was not one for much gadding about, she said, it was irksome to be
always tied to the house during Post Office hours. 'Not that I expect her to
stay with me for ever,' she added. 'She'll want to do better for herself later
on, and, when that time comes, I'll speak to Head Office and we shall see what
we shall see.'
So, one morning in May, Polly and the spring-cart drew up at
the gate and Laura's little trunk, all new and shiny black with her initials in
brass-headed nails, was hoisted into the back seat, and Laura in a new
frock—grey cashmere with a white lace collar and the new leg-of-mutton
sleeves—climbed up beside her father, who was taking a day off to drive Polly.
'Good-bye, Laura. Good-bye. Good-bye. Don't forget to write
to me.'
'And to me, and address it to my very own self,' cried the
little sisters.
'You be a good gal an' do what you're told an' you'll get on
like a house afire,' called a kindly neighbour from her doorway.
'Wrap every penny stamp up in a smile,' advised the
innkeeper, closing his double gates after Polly's exit.
As Polly trotted on, Laura turned to look across fields green
with spring wheat to the huddle of grey cottages where she knew her mother was
thinking about her, and tears came into her eyes.
Her father looked at her in surprise, then said kindly but
grudgingly: 'Well, 'tis your home, such as it is, I suppose.'
Yes, with all its limitations, the hamlet was home to her.
There she had spent her most impressionable years and, although she was never
to live there again for more than a few weeks at a time, she would bear their
imprint through life.
CANDLEFORD GREEN
Part Three of the trilogy "Lark Rise to
Candleford"
FLORA THOMPSON
First published 1943
XXX From One
Small World to Another
World to Another
Laura sat up beside her father on the high front seat of the
spring-cart and waved to the neighbours. 'Goodbye, Laura! Good-bye!' they
called. 'Mind you be a good gal, now!' and Laura, as she turned to smile and wave
back to them, tried not to look too conscious of her new frock and hat and the
brand-new trunk (with her initials) roped on to the back seat.
As the cart moved on, more women came to their doors to see
what the sound of wheels meant at that time in the morning. It was not the coalman's
or the fish-hawker's day, the baker was not due for hours, and the appearance
of any other wheeled vehicle than theirs always caused a mild sensation in that
secluded hamlet. When they saw Laura and her new trunk, the women remained on
their doorsteps to wave their farewells, then, before the cart had turned into
the road from the rutted lane, little groups began forming.
Her going seemed to be causing quite a stir in the hamlet.
Not because the sight of a young girl going out in the world to earn her own
living was an uncommon one there—all the hamlet girls left home for that purpose,
some of them at a much earlier age than Laura—but they usually went on foot,
carrying bundles, or their fathers pushed their boxes on wheelbarrows to the
railway station in the nearest town the night before, while, for Laura's
departure, the innkeeper's pony and cart had been hired.
That, of course, was because Candleford Green, although only
eight miles distant, was on another line of railway than that which ran through
the market town, and to have gone there by train would have meant two changes
and a long wait at the Junction; but the spring-cart brought a spice of novelty
into her departure which made 'something to talk about', as the saying went
there. At the beginning of the eighteen-nineties any new subject for
conversation was precious in such places.
Laura was fourteen and a half, and the thick pigtail of hair
which had so far hung down her back had that morning been looped up once and
tied with a big black ribbon bow on her neck. When they had first known that she
was to go to work in the Post Office at Candleford Green her mother had
wondered if she ought not to wear her hair done up with hairpins, grown-up
fashion, but when she saw a girl behind the Post Office counter at Sherston
wearing hers in a loop with a bow she had felt sure that that was the proper
way for Laura to do hers. So the ribbon was bought—black, of course, for her
mother said the bright-coloured ribbons most country girls wore made them look
like horses, all plaited and beribboned for a fair. 'And mind you sponge and
press it often,' she had said, 'for it cost good money. And when you come to
buy your own clothes, always buy the best you can afford. It pays in the end.'
But Laura could not bear to think of her mother just then; the parting was too
recent.
So she thought of her new trunk. This contained—as well as
her everyday clothes and her personal treasures, including her collection of
pressed flowers, a lock of her baby brother's fair hair, and a penny exercise book,
presented by her brother Edmund and inscribed by him
Laura's Journal
, in
which she had promised to write every night—what her mother had spoken of as
'three of everything', all made of stout white calico and trimmed with crochet
edging.
'No child of mine,' her mother had often declared, 'shall go
out in the world without a good outfit. I'd rather starve!' and when the time
had come to get Laura ready for Candleford Green the calico, bought secretly from
time to time in lengths, had been brought out from its hiding-place to be made
up and trimmed with the edging she had been making for months. 'I told you it
would come in handy for something at some time,' she had said, but Laura knew
by her arch little smile she had meant it for her all along.
Her father had made and polished the trunk and studded it
with her initials in bright, brass-headed nails, and, deep down in one corner
of it, wrapped in tissue paper, was the new half-crown he had given her.
The contents of the trunk, the clothes she was wearing, youth
and health, and a meagre education, plus a curious assortment of scraps of knowledge
she had picked up in the course of her reading, were her only assets. In
fitting her out, her parents had done all they could for her. They had four
younger children now to be provided for. Her future must depend upon herself
and what opportunities might offer. But she had no idea of the slenderness of
her equipment for life and no fears for the distant future which stretched
before her, years and years in which anything might happen. She could not
imagine herself married, or old, and it did not seem possible that she would
ever die.
Any qualms she felt were for the immediate future, when she,
who had so far only known her cottage home and the homes of a few relatives,
would be living in some one else's house, where she would work and be paid for her
work and where the work she was to do had still to be learnt. She was much
afraid she would not know what she ought to do, or where to find things, or
would make mistakes and be thought stupid.
The postmistress of Candleford Green, it was true, was no
stranger, but an old girlhood's friend of her mother. Laura had been to her
house several times and had liked her, and she thought Miss Lane had liked her.
But that only seemed to make the new relationship more difficult. Should she
treat Miss Lane as an old friend of the family, or strictly as a new employer?
Her mother, when appealed to, had laughed and said: 'God bless the child!
always looking for trouble! What is there to worry about? Just be your own
natural self and Dorcas I'm sure'll be hers. Though, when it comes to that,
perhaps you'd better not go on Cousin Dorcasing her. That was all right when
you were a visitor, but now it'd better be "Miss Lane".
As they lurched out of the rutted road which led round the
hamlet, her father urged on the pony. He was not a patient man and there had
been too many farewells to suit his taste. 'What a lot!' he muttered. 'You can't
so much as hire a horse and cart for a day without creating a nine days' wonder
in this place!' But Laura thought it was kind of the neighbours to wish her
well. 'Go and get rich and fat,' kind old Mrs. Braby had advised; 'and whatever
y'do, don't 'ee forget them at home.' Rich she could never be, her starting
salary of half a crown a week would leave no margin for saving, and getting fat
seemed more improbable still to tall, lanky fourteen—'like a molern, all legs
and wings', as the neighbours had often called her—but she would never forget
those at home: that she could promise.