Lark Rise to Candleford (76 page)

Miss Lane was downstairs and alone in the kitchen, with her
feet on the fender, sipping a cup of tea. Laura had expected she would be
annoyed at being disturbed before her official hours, but she did not even seem
to be surprised, and in a few moments had Mrs. Macey in a chair by the fire and
was holding a cup of hot tea to her lips. 'Come. Drink this,' she said. 'Then
tell me about it.' Then to Laura, who had already reached the door on her way
back to her sorting, 'Tell Zillah not to begin cooking breakfast until I tell
her to,' and, as an afterthought: 'Say she is to go upstairs and begin getting
my room ready for turning out,' a message which, when delivered, annoyed Zillah
exceedingly, for she knew and she knew Laura would guess that the upstairs work
was ordered to prevent listening at keyholes.

The sorting was finished, the postman had gone reluctantly
out, five minutes late, and old Mrs. Gubbins was pretending to hunt for a lost piece
of string in order to delay her own exit when Miss Lane came in and carefully
shut the door after her. 'What? Not out yet, Mrs. Gubbins?' she asked coldly,
and Mrs. Gubbins responded to the hint, banging the door behind her as the only
possible expression of her frustrated curiosity.

'Here's a pretty kettle of fish! We're in a bit of a fix,
Laura. Mrs. Macey won't be able to do her round this morning. She's got to go
off by train at once to see her husband, who's dangerously ill. She's gone home
now to get Tommy up and get ready. She's taking him with her.'

'But I thought her husband was abroad,' said the puzzled
Laura.

'So he may have been at one time, but he isn't now. He's down
in Devonshire, and it'll take her all day, to get there, and a cold, miserable
journey it'll be for the poor soul. But I'll tell you more about that later.
The thing now is what we are going to do about the letters and Sir Timothy's
private postbag. Zillali shan't go. I wouldn't demean myself to ask her, after
the disgraceful way she's been banging about upstairs, not to mention her bad
feet and her rheumatism. And Minnie's got a bad cold. She couldn't take out the
telegrams yesterday, as you know, and nobody can be spared from the forge with
this frost, and horses pouring in to be rough-shod; and every moment it's
getting later, and you know what old Farmer Stebbing is: if his letters are ten-minutes
late, he writes off to the Postmaster-General, though, to be sure, he might
make some small allowance this morning for snow and late mails. What a fool I
must have been to take on this office. It's nothing but worry, worry, worry——'

'And I suppose I couldn't be spared to go?' asked Laura
tentatively. Miss Lane was inclined to reconsider things if she appeared too
eager. But now, to her great delight, that lady said, quite gratefully, 'Oh, would
you? And you don't think your mother would mind? Well, that's a weight off my
mind! But you're not going without some breakfast inside you, time or no time,
or for all the farmers and squires in creation.' Then, opening the door:
'Zillahl Zillah! Laura's breakfast at once! And bring plenty. She's going out
on an errand for me. Bacon and two eggs, and make haste, please.' And Laura ate
her breakfast and dressed herself in her warmest clothes, with the addition of
a sealskin cap and tippet Miss Lane insisted upon lending her, and hurried out
into the snowy world, a hind let loose, if ever there was one.

As soon as she had left the village behind, she ran, kicking
up the snow and sliding along the puddles, and managed to reach Farmer
Stebbing's house only a little later than the time appointed for the delivery
of his letters in the ordinary way by the post-office authorities. Then across
the park to Sir Timothy's mansion and on to his head gardener's house and the
home farm and half a dozen cottages, and her letters were disposed of.

Laura never forgot that morning's walk. Fifty years later she
could recall it in detail. Snow had fallen a few days earlier, then had frozen,
and on the hard crust yet more snow had fallen and lay like soft, feathery
down, fleecing the surface of the level open spaces of the park and softening
the outlines of hillocks and fences. Against it the dark branches and twigs of
the trees stood out, lacelike. The sky was low and grey and soft-looking as a
feather-bed.

Her delivery finished, and a little tired from her breathless
run, she stopped where her path wound through a thicket to eat the crust and apple
she had brought in her pocket. It was an unfrequented way and the only human
footprints to be seen were her own, but she was not alone in that solitude.
Everywhere, on the track and beneath the trees, the snow was patterned with
tiny claw-marks, and gradually she became aware of the subdued, uneasy
fluttering and chirping noises of birds sheltering in the undergrowth. Poor
birds! With the earth frozen and the ponds iced over, it was indeed the winter
of their discontent, but all she could do for them was to scatter a few crumbs
on the snow. The rabbits were better off: they had their deep, warm burrows;
and the pheasants knew where to go for the corn the gamekeeper spread for them
in such weather. She could hear the honk of a pheasant somewhere away in the
woods and the cawing of rooks passing overhead and Sir Timothy's stable clock chiming
eleven. Time for her to be going!

In spite of a late start and a leisurely return, Laura
managed to reach the office only a few minutes later than the official time
fixed for that journey, which pleased Miss Lane, as it saved her the trouble of
making a report, and that, perhaps, made her more communicative than usual,
for, at the first opportunity, she told Laura what she knew of Mrs. Macey's
story.

Her husband, Laura now learned, was not a valet, although he
might at one time have been one; nor was he travelling with his gentleman. He
was by profession a bookmaker, which interested Laura greatly, as she at first
concluded that he was in some way engaged in the production of literature. But
Miss Lane, who knew more of the world, made haste to explain that his kind of
bookmaker had something to do with betting on racehorses. In the course of his
bookmaking, she said, he had been involved in a public-house quarrel which had
led to blows, and from blows to kicks, and a man had been killed. The crime had
been brought home to him and he had been given a long sentence for
manslaughter. Now he was in prison on Dartmoor, nearing the end of his
sentence. A long, long way for that poor soul to go in that wintry weather; but
the prison authorities had written to say he was dangerously ill with pneumonia
and the prison doctor thought it advisable that his wife should be sent for.

Miss Lane had known all the time where he was, though not
what crime had caused him to be there, and she had not breathed a word to a
living soul, she assured Laura, and would not be doing so now had not Mrs. Macey
said, as she went out of the door: 'Perhaps Laura will go over and feed
Snowball. I'll pay for his milk when I get back. And tell her whatever you
think fit about where we are going. She's a sensible little soul and won't tell
anybody if you ask her not to.'

Poor Mrs. Macey! No wonder she had been distressed. The
strain of the journey in such weather and the ordeal at the end of it were not
the whole of her trouble. As far as Tommy knew, his father was a gentleman's servant
travelling abroad with his employer. Now, at some point on their journey, she
would have to tell him the truth and to prepare him for whatever might follow.

Furthermore, her husband's sentence would expire in a year
and, if his conduct had been good, he would be released sooner—unless—unless— well,
unless he died now through this illness, which Miss Lane thought would be the
best thing that could happen for all parties. Still, a husband was a husband,
and often the worst husbands were most mourned for. She would not pretend to
say whether his wife would be relieved or sorry if the Lord saw fit to take
him. All she could say was that she had never seen a poor creature more upset
by bad news, and her heart ached at the thought of her, setting off on such a
journey, to the end of the earth, as one might say, and snow on the ground, and
a prison hospital and all manner of humiliations at the end of it. However, dinner
was ready, and Zillah had made a delicious damson jam roly-poly with a good
suety crust. Laura must feel hungry after her cold walk, and she felt a bit
peckish herself. 'So come along; and not a word of what you've been told to
anybody. If any one asks you, it's her mother who's ill, and she's gone to
London to nurse her.'

A week later, Mrs. Macey returned, sad and subdued, but not
in mourning, as Miss Lane had half-expected. She had spent a night in London
and left Tommy with her friends there, for she had only come back to settle up her
small affairs and to pack her furniture. Her husband was recovering and would
shortly be released, and she had decided to make a home for him, for a husband
is a husband, as Miss Lane had so sagely remarked, and although Mrs. Macey
obviously dreaded the future, she felt she must face it. But she could not let
her husband come to Candleford Green to make a nine days' wonder. She would
find a couple of rooms near her friends in London, and the Prisoners' Aid
people would find him a job, or if not, she could earn their keep with her
needle. She was sorry to leave her nice little cottage—she had had a few years'
peace there—but, as Laura would find, you can't always do what you like or be where
you would wish in this world.

So she went with her boxes and bundles and with Snowball
mewing in a basket. Someone else came to live in her cottage and very soon she
was forgotten, as Laura, in her turn, would be forgotten, and as all the other
insignificant people would be who had sojourned for a time at Candleford Green.

But her going had its effect upon Laura's life, for, after a
good deal of discussion among her elders and hopes and fears on Laura's part,
it was arranged that she should undertake what was still known as 'Mrs. Macey's
delivery'. Miss Lane was quite willing to spare her for two and a half hours
each morning. She had suggested the plan, pointing out that it would not only
give her more fresh air and exercise, but also put another four shillings a
week in her pocket.

It was really most generous of Miss Lane; and four shillings
a week was considered quite a substantial addition to larger incomes than
Laura's in those days; yet Laura, sent home for a week-end to obtain her parents'
consent to the arrangement found them less pleased with the plan than she had
expected. Except in letters from Laura, neither of them had heard of postwomen
before, and the idea of letters being delivered by any one but a man in uniform
struck them as odd. Her father thought she would demean herself and get coarse
and tom-boyish trapesing about the country with a letterbag strapped over her
shoulder. Her mother's objection was that people would think it funny. However,
as it was Miss Lane's suggestion and Laura herself was bent on the plan, they gave,
at last, a grudging consent, her father stipulating that she should keep
strictly to her official timetable and favour nobody, and her mother that she
should never forget to change her shoes in wet weather.

An order for a pair of stout waterproof shoes at her father's
expense was forthwith sent off to her shoemaker Uncle Tom, and it may be recorded
here as a testimonial to the old hand-made product that that one pair of shoes
outlasted the whole of Laura's time as a postwoman. They might have been worn
several years longer had not her taste in shoes changed. They were still well
worth the gipsy's fervent 'God bless you, my lady' when exchanged for a basket
of plaited twigs filled with moss and ferns.

Laura had been away from the hamlet less than seven months,
and nothing appeared to have changed there. The men still worked in the fields
all day and worked on their allotments or talked politics at the village inn in
the evening. The women still went to the well on pattens and gossiped over
garden hedges in their spare moments, and to them the affairs of the hamlet
still loomed larger than anything going on in the outside world. They were just
as they had been from the day of her birth, yet to her they seemed rougher and
cruder than formerly. When they chaffed her about the way she had grown, saying
it was plain to see there was plenty to eat and drink at Candleford Green, or
commented on her new clothes, or asked her if she had found a sweetheart yet,
she answered them so shortly that one good old soul was offended and told her
it was no good trying to make strange with one who had changed her napkins as a
baby. After that well-merited reproof, Laura tried to be more sociable with the
neighbours, but she was young and foolish, and for several years she held
herself aloof from all but a few loved old friends when visiting her home. It
took time and sorrow and experience of the world to teach her the true worth of
the old homely virtues.

But home was still home; nothing had changed there. Her
brother had come part of the way to meet her and her two little sisters were
waiting on the road nearer home. As they neared the house, with their arms
about her, she saw her father, ostensibly examining a branch of a damson tree the
last snowstorm had broken, but with an eye on the road. He kissed her with more
feeling than he usually displayed. 'Why, Laura!' he exclaimed. 'It's fine to
see you!' Then, hastily skirting the sentimentality he detested: 'Quite the
prodigal daughter. Well, we haven't exactly killed the fatted calf, for we
hadn't one handy, but your mother has killed her very best fowl and it's about
done to a turn by this time.'

It was delightful to sit in the familiar room with all the
old, familiar things around her, with a fire 'half-way up the chimney', as her
mother said, and she usually so frugal. Delightful to have a long secret chat with
her brother in the woodshed, to be embraced and made much of by her little
sisters and to ride her baby brother on her back round the garden with the wind
blowing through their hair.