Lark Rise to Candleford (70 page)

Sometimes Sir Timothy would come in, breathing heavily and
mopping his brow if the weather were warm. 'Ha! ha!' he would say. 'Here is our
future Postmistress-General. What is the charge for a telegram of thirty-three
words to Timbuctu? Ah! I thought so. You don't know without looking it up in a
book, so I'll send it to Oxford instead and hope you'll be better informed next
time I ask you. There! Can you read my handwriting? I'm dashed if I can always
read it myself. Well, well. Your eyes are young. Let's hope they'll never be
dimmed with crying, eh, Miss Lane? And I see you are looking as young and
handsome as ever yourself. Do you remember that afternoon I caught you picking
cowslips in Godstone Spinney? Trespassing, you were, trespassing; and I very
properly fined you on the spot, although not as yet a J.P.—not by many a year.
I let you off lightly that time, though you made such a fuss about a mere——'

'Oh, Sir Timothy, how you do rake up things! And I wasn't
trespassing, as you very well knew; it was a footpath your father ought never
to have closed.'

'But the game birds, woman, the game birds——' And, if no one
else happened to come in, they would talk on of their youth.

For Lady Adelaide, Sir Timothy's wife, the footman usually
did business while she sat in her carriage outside, but occasionally she
herself would come rustling in, bringing with her a whiff of perfume, and sink languidly
down in the chair provided for customers on their side of the counter. She was
a graceful woman, and it was a delight to watch her movements. Laura, who sat
behind her in church, admired the way she knelt for the prayers, not plumping
down squarely with one boot-sole on each side of a substantial posterior, as
most other women of her age did, but slanting gracefully forward with the sole
of one dainty shoe in advance of the other. She was tall and thin and, Laura
thought, aristocratic-looking.

For some time she took no more notice of Laura than one would
now of an automatic stamp-delivering machine. Then, one day, she did her the honour
of personally inviting her to join the Primrose League, of which she was a Dame
and the chief local patroness. A huge fête, in which branches from the
surrounding villages joined, was held in Sir Timothy's park every midsummer,
and there were day excursions and winter-evening entertainments for the benefit
of Primrose League members. It was no wonder the pretty little enamelled
primrose badge, worn as a brooch or lapel ornament, was so much in evidence at
church on Sundays.

But Laura hesitated and grew red as a peony. In view of her
Ladyship's graciousness, it seemed churlish to refuse to join; but what would
her father, a declared Liberal in politics and an opponent of all that the Primrose
League stood for, say if she went over to the enemy?

And she herself did not really wish to become a member; she
never did wish to do what everybody else was doing, which showed she had a contrary
nature, she had often been told, but it was really because her thoughts and
tastes ran upon different lines than those of the majority.

The lady looked her in the face, her expression showing more
interest than formerly. Perhaps she noticed her embarrassment, and Laura, who admired
her sincerely and wanted to be liked by her, was about to cave in when 'Dare to
be a Daniel!' said an inward voice. It was a catchword of the moment derived
from the Salvation Army hymn, 'Dare to be a Daniel. Dare to stand alone', and
was more often used as a laughing excuse for refusing a glass of beer in
company or adopting a new style of hairdressing than seriously as a support to
conscience; but it served.

'But we are Liberals at home,' said Laura apologetically,
and, at that, the lady smiled and said kindly: 'Well, in that case, you had
better ask your parents' permission before joining,' and that was the end of
the matter as far as she was concerned. But it was a landmark in Laura's mental
development. Afterwards she laughed at herself for daring to be a Daniel on so
small a matter. The mighty Primrose League, with its overwhelming membership,
was certainly not in need of another small member. Her Ladyship, she realized,
had asked her to join out of kindness, in order that she might qualify for a
ticket for the approaching celebrations, and had probably already forgotten the
episode. It was better to say clearly and simply just what one meant, whoever
one was talking to, and always to remember that what one said was probably of
no importance whatever to one's listener.

That was the only decided stand Laura ever took in party
politics. For the rest of her life she was too ready to admire the good and to
detest what she thought the bad points in all parties to be able to adhere to any.
She loved the Liberals, and afterwards the Socialists, for their efforts to
improve the lot of the poor. Stories and poems of hers appeared before the 1914
War in the
Daily Citizen
, and, after the war, her poems were among the
earliest to appear in the
Daily Herald
under Mr. Gerald Gould's literary
editorship; but, as we know on good authority, 'every boy and every girl that's
born into this world alive, Is either a little Liberal, Or else a little
Conserva
tive
', and, in spite of her early training, the inborn cast of
her mind, with its love of the past and of the English countryside, often drew
her in the opposite direction.

A frequent caller at the Post Office was an old Army
pensioner named Benjamin Trollope, commonly called 'Old Ben'. He was a tall,
upright old fellow, very neat and well-brushed in appearance, with a brown
wrinkled face and the clear, straight gaze often seen in ex-Service men. He
kept house with an old companion-in-arms in a small thatched cottage outside the
village, and their bachelor establishment might have served as a model of order
and cleanliness. In their garden the very flowers looked well-drilled,
geraniums and fuchsias stood in single file from the gate to the doorway, every
plant staked and in exact alinement.

Ben's friend and stable-companion, Tom Ashley, was of a more
retiring disposition than Ben. He was one of those old men who seem to have shrunken
in stature and, by the time Laura knew them, he had become little and bent and
wizened. He stayed mostly indoors and made their beds and curry and cobbled
their garments, only coming once a quarter to the Post Office for his Army
pension, when, no matter what time of year or what kind of weather, he
complained of feeling cold. Ben did the gardening, shopping, and other outdoor
jobs, being, as it were, the man of the house while Tom acted as housewife.

Ben told Laura that they had decided to rent that particular
cottage because it had jessamine over the porch. The scent of it reminded them of
India. India! That name was the key to Ben's heart. He had seen long service
there and the glamour of the East had taken hold of his imagination. He talked
well, and his talk gave Laura a vivid impression of hot, dry plains, steaming
jungles, heathen temples, and city bazaars crowded with the colourful life of
the land he had loved and could never forget. But there was something more
which he felt, but could not express, sights and scents and sounds of which he
could only say: 'It seems to get hold of you like, somehow.'

Once, when he was telling her of a journey he had once made
to the hills with a surveying party in some humble capacity, he said: 'I wish
you could have seen the flowers. Never saw anything like it, never in my life!
Great sheets of scarlet as close-packed as they grasses on the green, and
primulas and lilies and things such as you only see here in a hothouse, and,
rising right out of 'em, great mountains all covered with snow. Ah! 'twas a
sight—a sight! My mate says to me this mornin' when we found it was rainin' and
his ague shakin' him again, "Oh Ben," he says, "I do wish we
were back in India with a bit of hot sun"; and I said to him,
"'Tain't no good wishin', Tom. We've had our day and that day's over. We
shan't see India no more."'

It was strange, thought Laura, that other pensioners she knew
who had served in India had left that land with no regrets and very few memories.
If asked about their adventures, they would say: 'The places have got funny
names and it's very hot out there. In the Bay of Biscay on the way out every
man jack of us was seasick.' Most of them were short-service men, and they had
returned cheerfully to the plough-tail. They appeared to be happier than Ben,
but Laura liked him best.

One day a man known as 'Long Bob', a lock-keeper on the
canal, came in with a small package which he wished to send by registered post.
It was roughly done up in soiled brown paper, and the string, although much knotted,
was minus the wax seals required by the regulations. When Laura offered him the
loan of the office sealing-wax, he asked her to seal and make tidy the package
for him, saying that his fingers were all thumbs and he hadn't got no 'ooman
now to do such fiddling little jobs for him. 'But maybe,' he added, 'before you
start on it, you'd like to have a look at that within.'

He then opened the package and brought forth and shook out a
panel of coloured embroidery. It was a needlework picture of Adam and Eve, standing
one on each side of the Tree of Knowledge with a grove of flowering and
fruiting trees behind them and a lamb, a rabbit, and other small creatures in
the foreground. It was exquisitely executed and the colours, though faded in
places, were beautifully blended. The hair of Adam and Eve was embroidered with
real human hair and the fur of the furry animals of some woolly substance. That
it was very old even the inexperienced Laura could sense at the first glance,
more by something strange and antique-looking about the nude human figures and
the shape of the trees than by any visible sign of wear or decay in the fabric.
'It's very old, isn't it?' she asked, expecting Long Bob to say it had belonged
to his grandmother.

'Very old and ancient indeed,' he replied, 'and I'm told
there's some clever men in London who'll like to see that pictur'. All done by
hand, they say, oh, long agone, before old Queen Bess's day.' Then, seeing Laura
all eyes and ears, he told her how it had come into his possession.

About a year before, it appeared, he had found the panel on
the towing-path of the canal, carelessly screwed up in a sheet of newspaper. Inspired
rather by strict principles of honesty than by any idea that the panel was
valuable, he had taken it to the Police Station at Candleford, where the
sergeant in charge had asked him to leave it while inquiries were made. It had
then, apparently, been examined by experts, for the next thing Long Bob heard
from the police was that the panel was old and valuable and that inquiries as
to its ownership were in progress. It was thought that it must have been part
of the proceeds of some burglary. But there had been no burglary in that part
of the county for several years, and the police could get no information of any
more distant one where such an article was missing. The owner was never found,
and, at the end of the time appointed by law, the panel was handed back to the
finder, together with the address of a London sale-room to which he was advised
to send it. A few weeks later he received the, to him, large sum of five pounds
which its sale had realized.

That was the recent history of the needlework panel. What of
its past? How had it come to lie, wrapped in a fairly recent newspaper, on the canal
tow-path that foggy November morning?

Nobody ever knew. Miss Lane and Laura thought that by some
means it had come into the possession of a cottage family, which, though
ignorant of its value, had treasured it as a curiosity. Then, perhaps, it may
have been sent by a child as a present to some relative, or as part of an inheritance
from some old grandmother who had recently died. The loss by a child of 'that
old sampler of Granny's' would be but a matter for cuffing and scolding; poor
people would not dream of making what they called a 'hue and cry' about such a
loss, or of going to the police. But this was mere supposition; the ownership
of the panel and how it came to be found in such an unlikely place remained a
mystery.

The office was closed to the public at eight, but, every
year, for several Saturday evenings in later summer, Laura was in attendance
until 9.30. Then, as she sat behind closed doors reading or knitting, she would
hear a scuffle of feet outside and open the door to one, two, or more
wild-looking men with touzled hair and beards, sun-scorched faces, and queerly
cut clothes with coloured shirts which always seemed to be sticking out of
their trousers somewhere. These were the Irish farm workers who came over to
England to help with the harvest. They were keen workers, employed on
piecework, who could not afford to lose one of the daylight hours. By the time
they had finished work all the post offices were closed, postal orders could
not be procured on Sunday, and they had to send part of their wages to their
wives and families in Ireland, so, to help them solve their difficulty, Miss
Lane had for some years sold them postal orders, secretly, after official
hours. Now she authorized Laura to sell them.

Laura had been used to seeing the Irish harvesters from a
child. Then some of the neighbours at home had tried to frighten her when
naughty by saying, 'I'll give you to them old Irishers; see if I don't, then!'
and although not alarmed at the threat beyond infancy—for who could be afraid
of men who did no one any harm, beyond irritating them by talking too much and
working harder and by so doing earning more money than they did?—they had
remained to her strangers and foreigners who came to her neighbourhood for a
season, as the swallows came, then disappeared across the sea to a country
called 'Ireland' where people wanted Home Rule and said 'Begorra' and made
things called 'bulls' and lived exclusively upon potatoes.

Now she knew the Irish harvesters by name—Mr. McCarthy, Tim
Doolan, Big James and Little James and Kevin and Patrick, and all the other harvesters
working in the district. More and more came from farther afield as the
knowledge spread that at Candleford Green there lived a sympathetic
postmistress who would let a man have his postal order for home after his
week's work was done. By the time Laura left the village, the favour had had to
be extended to Sunday morning, and Miss Lane was trying to harden her heart and
invent some reason for withdrawing the privilege which had become a serious
addition to her work.