Lark Rise to Candleford (66 page)

As the evening went on, the women and girls and young men and
boys in the ring whirled hand in hand, faster and faster, the girls' blue and pink
and green skirts standing out like bells and the young men's faces getting
redder, until some one called out, 'Time for "Auld Lang Syne"!' and
hands were crossed and the old song was sung and people went home, in families
or couples, according to age. Dancing would have been better perhaps, but 'Dropping
the Handkerchief' served much the same purpose in that unsophisticated day.

From such festivities some of the older girls were seen home
by young men. The engaged, of course, were already provided with an escort, and
for that office to certain unattached pretty and popular girls there was keen
rivalry. The young and not in any way outstanding girls, such as Laura, had to
find their way home through the darkness alone, or join up with some family or
group of friends which happened to be going their way.

One year and one year only at the Church Social, after the
singing of 'Auld Lang Syne', a young man approached Laura and said, bowing
gravely as was the custom, 'May I have the pleasure of seeing you home?' This caused
quite a sensation among those immediately surrounding the pair, for the young
man was the reporter for the local newspaper and so looked upon as an outsider
at such gatherings. His predecessor had sat about with a bored air, between his
dashes out to the 'Golden Lion', and once, when invited to join hands in the
final singing, had refused and stood aloof in a corner scribbling in his
note-book. But he was a middle-aged man and inclined to give himself airs. This
new reporter, who had appeared for the first time at Candleford Green that
evening, was only a year or two older than Laura, and he had joined in the
games and laughed and shouted as loudly as anybody. He had nice blue eyes and
an infectious laugh, and, of course, the note-book in which he scribbled shorthand
notes was also attractive to Laura. So, when he asked her if he might see her
home, she was delighted to murmur the conventional 'That would be very kind of
you'.

As they circled the green in the mild, damp air of the winter
night, he told Laura about himself. He had only left school a few months before
and was being given a month's trial by the Editor of the
Candleford News
.
The month of trial was almost over and he would be leaving Candleford in a day
or two, not because he had proved unsatisfactory—at least he hoped not—but
because a much better opening had now been found for him by his parents on a
newspaper in his home town, far up in the midlands. 'After that, Fleet Street,
I suppose?' suggested Laura, and they both laughed at that as an excellent joke
and agreed that they both felt they must have met before at some time,
somewhere. Then they had to discuss the party they had come from and to laugh
at some of the oddities there. Which was wrong of Laura, who had been carefully
trained never to make fun of the absent. The only excuse that can be found for her
is that it was the first time she met any one from the outside world near her
own age and upon anything like equal terms, and that may have gone to her head
a little.

They laughed and chattered until they came to the Post Office
door; then stood talking in hushed voices until their feet grew cold and her companion
suggested that they should take another turn round the green to restore their
circulation. They took several turns, for they began talking about books and
forgot how late it was growing, and they might, indeed, have continued walking
and talking all night had not a light appeared at the Post Office door, when
Laura, after a hasty 'Good night', hurried there to find Miss Lane looking out
for her.

Laura never saw Godfrey Parrish again, but for some years
they wrote to each other. His were amusing letters, written on the best
editorial notepaper, thick and good, with a black embossed heading. As his
letters often ran to seven or eight pages, his editor must sometimes have marvelled
at the rapidity with which his private stock of notepaper became depleted. In
return, Laura told him of any amusing little incident which occurred and what
books she was reading, until, at last, the correspondence languished, then
ceased, in the usual manner of such pen-friendships.

Beyond having a friend or relative to stay with her
occasionally, Miss Lane did little entertaining. She said she saw as much of
her neighbours as she desired at the Post Office counter. But once a year she
gave what she called her 'hay-home supper', and that to those of her household
was a great occasion.

She had two small paddocks beyond her garden in one or other
of which Peggy, the old chestnut mare, took her ease when her services were not
required to draw the smiths with their tools in the spring-cart to the hunting
stables. Every spring one of the paddocks was shut up for hay. Its yield was
one small haystack, a quantity quite out of proportion to the bustle and
excitement of the hay-home supper, but the making of hay for the pony's winter
fodder and the supper for all those who had worked for her in any capacity
during the year was part of the traditional business and domestic economy
handed down to Miss Lane by her parents and grandparents. Excepting Laura, the
younger smiths, and Miss Lane herself, who was ageless, all at the hay-home
supper were elderly or old. There were grey and white heads all around the
table and the custom itself was so hoary that that must have been one of its
last manifestations.

For the haymaking a queer old couple named Beer were engaged,
not for the day, week, or season, but permanently. On some fine summer morning,
without previous notice, Beer would come with his scythe to the back door and
say: 'Tell Mis'is that grass be in fine fettle now an' th' weather don't look
too unkid, like; and with her permission I be now about to begin on't.' When he
had the grass lying in swathes, his wife appeared, and together they raked and
turned and tossed and tedded, refreshed at short intervals by jugs of beer or
tea provided by Miss Lane and carried to them by Zillah.

Beer was a typical old countryman, ruddy and wizened, with
very bright eyes; shrivelled and thin of figure and sagging at the knees, but
still sprightly. His wife was also ruddy of face, but her figure was as round as
a barrel. Instead of the usual sunbonnet, she wore for the haymaking a white
muslin frilled cap tied under the chin, and over it a broad-brimmed black straw
hat, which made her look like an old-fashioned Welshwoman. She was a merry old
soul with a fat, chuckling laugh, and when she laughed her face wrinkled up
until her eyes disappeared. She was much in request as a midwife.

When the hay was dried and in cocks, Beer came to the door
again: 'Ma'am, ma'am!' he would call. 'We be ready.' That was the signal for the
smiths to turn out and build the hayrick, with Peggy herself and her spring-cart
to do the carrying. All that day there was much running to and fro and shouting
and merriment. Indoors, the kitchen table was laid with pies and tarts and
custards and, in the place of honour at the head of the table, the dish of the
evening, a stuffed collar chine of bacon. When the company assembled, large,
foaming jugs of beer would be drawn for the men and for those of the women who
preferred it. A jug of home-made lemonade with a sprig of borage floating at
the top circulated at the upper end of the table.

For the stuffed chine the largest dish in the house had to be
used. It was a great round joint, being the whole neck of a pig, cut and cured specially
for the hay-home supper. It was lavishly stuffed with sage and onions and was
altogether very rich and highly-flavoured. It would not have suited modern
digestion, but most of those present at the hay-home supper ate of it largely
and enjoyed it. Old Mr. Beer, in the little speech he made after supper, never
forgot to mention the chine. 'I've been a-meakin' hay in them fields f'r this
forty-six 'ears,' he would say, 'in your time, ma'am, an' y'r feather's an' y'r
gran'fer's before yet, an' th' stuffed chines I've a-eaten at the suppers've
always bin of the best; but of all the chines I've tasted in this kitchen that
of which I sees the remains before me—if remains they can be called, f'r you
wants to put on y'r spectacles to see 'em—wer' the finest an' fattest an'
teastiest of any.'

After Miss Lane had replied to the speech of thanks,
home-made wine was brought out, tobacco and snuff handed round, and songs were
sung. It was a point of strict etiquette that every guest should contribute
something to the programme, irrespective of musical ability. The songs were
sung without musical accompaniment and many of them without a recognizable tune,
but what they may have lacked in harmony was more than made up for in length.

Every year when Laura was present Mr. Beer obliged with his
famous half-song, half-recitation, relating the adventures of an Oxfordshire man
on a trip to London. It began:

Last Michaelmas I remember well, when harvest wer' all over, Our
chaps had stacked up all the be-ans an' re-aked up all th' clover,

which lull in the year's work gave one Sam the daring idea of
taking a trip to Town:

For Sal went there a year ago, along wi' Squire Brown, Housemaid
or summat, doan't know what, To live in Lunnon town, An' they behaved right
well to Sal an' give her cloathes an' that, An' Sal 'aved nation well to them
and got quite tall and fat.

So Sam thought, if 'Measter' approved, he would pay his
sister a visit. 'If 'Measter refused permission', Sam said in quite a modern
spirit:

Old Grograin then must give I work, a rum old fellow he! He
grumbles when he sets us on, but, dang it! what care we.

But he had still his mother to deal with. She 'cried aloud to
break her heart at parting thus with me'; but cheered up and began to look into
ways and means:

Well, since you 'ull so headstrong be, some rigging we must
get, I'll wash 'ee out another shirt, an' sprig 'ee up a bit,

and gave as her parting advice:

Now, Sam, 'ave well where you be gwain, Whatever others does
to sou, be sure don't turn again.

To which Sam replied:

Yes, very purty, fancy that now, blow me jacket tight! If
they begins their rigs wi' me, I'll putty soon show fight,

and cut himself a good stout ash stick before setting out in his
'holland smock, as good as new' on foot to 'Lunnon town'.

To her children's disgust in after years, Laura's memory left
him, newly arrived, on London Bridge, asking passers-by if they knew 'our Sal,
or mayhap Squire Brown', but there were stanzas and stanzas after that—that one
song, in fact, accounted for a good part of the evening. But no one then
present found it too long, for the younger smiths had slipped, one by one, out
of the door, and those left, excepting Laura and Miss Lane, were old and loved
the old, slow, country manner of rejoicing.

They sat around the table. Mrs. Beer with her arms folded on
her comfortable stomach and one ear always open to catch what she called 'a bidding',
for 'My dear, 'tis a mortal truth that babbies likes to come arter dark. For
why? So's nobody should see their blessed little spirits come winging'; Beer
himself beaming on all and inclined to hiccups towards the end of the evening;
the old washerwoman's worn fingers fingering her muslin cap, only worn on
special occasions; Zillah, important and fussy, acting the part of a second
hostess; and Matthew, with his old blue eyes shining with gratification at the
laughter which greeted his jokes. Miss Lane, very upright at the head of the
table in her claret-coloured silk, looked like a visitant from another sphere, well
weighted down to earth, though, by her gold chains and watch and brooches and
locket; and Laura, in pink print, ran in and out with plates and glasses,
because it was Zillah's evening off. That was the hay-home supper, a survival,
though perhaps not more ancient than a couple of hundred years or so—a mere
babe of a survival compared to the Village Feast.

The maypole had long been chopped up for firewood, the morris
dance was fading out as one after another the old players died, and Plough
Monday had become an ordinary working day; but at Candleford Green the Feast was
still a general holiday, as it must have been from the day upon which the
church was dedicated, far back in the centuries.

Some kind of feast may have been held on the green before
that time, some pagan rite, for even in the respectable latter part of the nineteenth
century there was more of a pagan than a Christian spirit abroad at the Feast
celebrations.

It was essentially a people's holiday. The clergy and the
local gentle-people had no hand in it. They avoided the green on that day. Even
the youngest of country house-parties had not yet discovered the delights of
hurdy-gurdy music and naphtha flares, of shouting oneself hoarse in swingboats
and waving paper streamers while riding mechanical ostriches. With one
exception to be mentioned hereafter, only a few of the under-servants from the
great houses appeared on the green on Feast Monday.

For those who liked feasts there were booths and stalls and
coconut shies and shooting-galleries and swingboats and a merry-go-round and a brass
band for dancing. All the fun of the fair, in fact. From early morning people
poured in from the neighbouring villages and from Candleford town.

Candleford Green people were proud of this display. It showed
how the place had come on, they said, for the largest and most brilliantly painted
and lit merry-go-round in the county to find it worth while to attend their
Feast. Old men could remember when there had been only one booth with a
two-headed calf or a fat-lady, and a few poor stalls selling ginger bread or
the pottery images still to be seen in some of their cottages, representing a
couple in bed in nightcaps, and the bedroom utensil showing beneath the
bed-valance.