Lark Rise to Candleford (29 page)

Another Inspector, also a clergyman, came to examine the
school in Scripture. But that was a different matter. On those days the Rector
was present, and the mistress, in her best frock, had nothing to do beyond presiding
at the harmonium for hymn singing. The examination consisted of Scripture
questions, put to a class as a whole and answered by any one who was able to
shoot up a hand to show they had the requisite knowledge; of portions of the Church
Catechism, repeated from memory in order round the class; and of a written
paper on some set Biblical subject. There was little nervous tension on that
day, for 'Scripture Inspector' beamed upon and encouraged the children, even to
the extent of prompting those who were not word-perfect. While the writing was going
on, he and the Rector talked in undertones, laughing aloud at the doings of
'old So-and-So', and, at one point, the mistress slipped away into her cottage
and brought them cups of tea on a tray.

The children did reasonably well, for Scripture was the one
subject they were thoroughly taught; even the dullest knew most of the Church Catechism
by heart. The written paper was the stumbling-block to many; but this was Laura
and Edmund's best subject and both succeeded in different years in carrying off
the large, calf-bound, gilt-edged 'Book of Common Prayer' which was given as a
prize—the only prize given at that school.

Laura won hers by means of a minor miracle. That day, for the
first and last time in her life, the gift of words descended upon her. The
subject set was 'The Life of Moses', and although up to that moment she had
felt no special affection for the great law-giver, a sudden wave of hero-worship
surged over her. While her classmates were still wrinkling their brows and
biting their pens, she was well away with the baby in the bulrushes scene. Her
pen flew over her paper as she filled sheet after sheet, and she had got the
Children of Israel through the Red Sea, across the desert, and was well in
sight of Pisgah when the little bell on the mistress's table tinkled that time
was up.

The Inspector, who had been watching her, was much amused by
her verbosity and began reading her paper at once, although, as a rule, he carried
the essay away to read. After three or four pages he laughingly declared that
he must have more tea as 'that desert' made him feel thirsty.

Such inspiration never visited her again. She returned to her
usual pedestrian style of essay writing, in which there were so many alterations
and erasures that, although she wrote a fair amount, she got no more marks than
those who got stuck at 'My dear Grandmother'.

There was a good deal of jealousy and unkindness among the
parents over the passes and still more over the one annual prize for Scripture.
Those whose children had not done well in examinations would never believe that
the success of others was due to merit. The successful ones were spoken of as
'favourites' and disliked. 'You ain't a-goin' to tell me that that young So-and-So
did any better n'r our Jim,' some disappointed mother would say. 'Stands to
reason that what he could do our Jimmy could do,
and
better, too. Examinations
are all a lot of humbug, if you asks me.' The parents of those who had passed
were almost apologetic. ''Tis all luck,' they would say. 'Our Tize happened to
hit it this time; next year it'll be your Alice's turn.' They showed no pleasure
in any small success their own children might have. Indeed, it is doubtful if
they felt any, except in the case of a boy who, having passed the fourth
standard, could leave school and start work. Their ideal for themselves and
their children was to keep to the level of the normal. To them outstanding ability
was no better than outstanding stupidity.

Boys who had been morose or rebellious during their later
schooldays were often transformed when they got upon a horse's back or were promoted
to driving a dungcart afield. For the first time in their lives, they felt
themselves persons of importance. They bandied lively words with the men and
gave themselves manly airs at home with their younger brothers and sisters.
Sometimes, when two or three boys were working together, they were too lively,
and very little work was done. 'One boy's a boy; two boys be half a boy, and
three boys be no boy at all', ran the old country saying. 'Little gallasses',
the men called them when vexed; and, in more indulgent moods, 'young dogs'.
'Ain't he a regular young dog?' a fond parent would ask, when a boy, just
starting work, would set his cap at an angle, cut himself an ash stick, and try
to walk like a man.

They were lovable little fellows, in their stiff new
corduroys and hobnailed boots, with their broad, childish faces, powdered with freckles
and ready to break into dimples at a word. For a few years they were happy
enough, for they loved their work and did not, as yet, feel the pinch of their
poverty. The pity of it was that the calling they were entering should have
been so unappreciated and underpaid. There was nothing the matter with the
work, as work, the men agreed. It was a man's life, and they laughed scornfully
at the occupations of some who looked down upon them; but the wages were ridiculously
low and the farm labourer was so looked down upon and slighted that the day was
soon to come when a country boy leaving school would look for any other way of earning
a living than on the land.

At that time boys of a roving disposition who wanted to see a
bit of the world before settling down went into the Army. Nearly every family
in the hamlet had its soldier son or uncle or cousin, and it was a common sight
to see a scarlet coat going round the Rise. After their Army service, most of
the hamlet-bred young men returned and took up the old life on the land; but a
few settled in other parts of the country. One was a policeman in Birmingham,
another kept a public house, and a third was said to be a foreman in a brewery
in Staffordshire. A few other boys left the hamlet to become farm servants in
the North of England. To obtain such situations, they went to Banbury Fair and
stood in the Market to be hired by an agent. They were engaged for a year and
during that time were lodged and fed with the farmer's family, but received little
or no money until the year was up, when they were paid in a lump sum. They were
usually well treated, especially in the matter of food; but were glad to return
at the end of the year from what was, to them, a foreign country where, at
first, they could barely understand the speech.

At 'the hiring' the different grades of farm workers stood in
groups, according to their occupations—the shepherds with their crooks, the carters
with whips and tufts of horsehair in their hats, and the maid-servants relying
upon their sex to distinguish them. The young boys, not as yet specialists,
were easily picked out by their youth and their innocent, wondering faces. The
maids who secured situations by hiring themselves out at the Fair were
farm-house servants of the rougher kind. None of the hamlet girls attended the
Fair for that purpose.

Squire at the Manor House, known as 'our Squire', not out of
any particular affection or respect, but in contradistinction to the richer and
more important squire in a neighbouring parish, was at that time unmarried,
though verging on middle age, and his mother still reigned as Lady of the
Manor. Two or three times a year she called at the school to examine the
needlework, a tall, haughty, and still handsome old dame in a long, flowing,
pale-grey silk dustcloak and small, close-fitting, black bonnet, with two tiny
King Charles's spaniels on a leash.

It would be almost impossible for any one born in this
century to imagine the pride and importance of such small country gentlepeople
in the 'eighties. As far as was known, the Bracewells were connected with no
noble family; they had but little land, kept up but a small establishment, and
were said in the village and hamlet to be 'poor as crows'. Yet, by virtue of
having been born into a particular caste and of living in the 'big house' of
the parish, they expected to reign over their poorer neighbours and to be
treated by them with the deference due to royalty. Like royalty, too, they
could be charming to those who pleased them. Those who did not had to beware.

A good many of the cottagers still played up to them, the
women curtseying to the ground when their carriage passed and speaking in awed tones
in their presence. Others, conscious of their own independence—for none of the
hamlet people worked on their land or occupied their cottages—and having
breathed the new free air of democracy, which was then beginning to percolate
even into such remote places, were inclined to laugh at their pretensions. 'We
don't want nothin' from they,' they would say, 'and us shouldn't get it if us
did. Let the old gal stay at home and see that her own tea-caddy's kept locked
up, not come nosing round here axin' how many spoonsful we puts in ours.'

Mrs. Bracewell knew nothing of such speeches. If she had, she
would probably have thought the world—her world—was coming to an end. Which it
was. In her girlhood under the Regency, she had been taught her duty towards
the cottagers, and that included reproving them for their wasteful habits. It
also included certain charities. She was generous out of all proportion to her
small means; keeping two aged women pensioners, doling out soup in the winter
to those she called 'the deserving poor', and entertaining the school-children
to a tea and a magic-lantern entertainment every Christmas.

Meanwhile, as the old servants in and about her house died or
were pensioned off, they were not replaced. By the middle of the 'eighties only
a cook and a house-parlourmaid sat down to meals in the vast servants' hall
where a large staff had formerly feasted. Grass grew between the flagstones in
the stable yard where generations of grooms and coachmen had hissed over the
grooming of hunters and carriage horses, and the one old mare which drew her
wagonette when she paid calls took a turn at drawing the lawn-mower, or even
the plough, betweenwhiles.

As she got poorer, she got prouder, more overbearing in
manner and more acid in tone, and the girls trembled when she came into school.
especially Laura, who knew that her sewing would never pass that eagle eye
without stern criticism. She would work slowly along the form, examining each
garment, and exclaiming that the sewing was so badly done that she did not know
what the world was coming to. Stitches were much too large; the wrong side of
the work was not as well finished as the right side; buttonholes were bungled
and tapes sewn on askew; and the feather-stitching looked as though a spider
had crawled over the piece of work. But when she came to examine the work of
one of the prize sewers her face would light up. 'Very neat! Exquisitely sewn!'
she would say, and have the stitching passed round the class as an example.

The schoolmistress attended at her elbow, overawed, like the
children, but trying to appear at her ease. Miss Holmes, in her day, had called
Mrs. Bracewell 'ma'am' and sketched a slight curtsey as she held open the door
for her. The later mistresses called her 'Mrs. Bracewell', but not very
frequently or with conviction.

At that time the position of a village schoolmistress was a
trying one socially. Perhaps it is still trying in some places, for it is not
many years ago that the President of a Women's Institute wrote: 'We are very democratic
here. Our Committee consists of three ladies, three women, and the village
schoolmistress.' That mistress, though neither lady nor woman, was still
placed. In the 'eighties the schoolmistress was so nearly a new institution
that a vicar's wife, in a real dilemma, said: 'I should like to ask Miss
So-and-So to tea; but do I ask her to kitchen or dining-room tea?'

Miss Holmes had settled that question herself when she became
engaged to the squire's gardener. Miss Shepherd was more ambitious socially. Indeed,
democratic as she was in theory, the dear soul was in practice a little
snobbish. She courted the notice of the betters, though, she was wont to
declare, they were only betters when they were better men and women. An
invitation to tea at the Rectory was, to her, something to be fished for before
and talked about afterwards, and when the daughter of a poor, but aristocratic
local family set up as a music teacher, Miss Shepherd at once decided to learn
the violin.

Laura was once the delighted witness of a funny little
display of this weakness. It was the day of the school treat at the Manor
House, and the children had met at the school and were being marched, two and
two, through garden and shrubbery paths to the back door. Other guests, such as
the curate, the doctor's widow, and the daughters of the rich farmer, who were
to have tea in the drawing-room while the children feasted in the servants'
hall, were going to the front door.

Now, Miss Holmes had always marched right in with her pupils
and sipped her own tea and nibbled her cake between attending to their wants;
but Miss Shepherd was more ambitious. When the procession reached a point where
the shrubbery path crossed the main drive which led to the front door, she
paused and considered; then said, 'I think I will go to the front door, dears.
I want to see how well you can behave without me,' and off she branched up the
drive in her best brown frock, tight little velvet hip-length jacket, and long
fur boa wound like a snake round her neck, followed by at least one pair of
cynically smiling little eyes.

She had the satisfaction of ringing the front-door bell and
drinking tea in the drawing-room; but it was a short-lived triumph. In a very
few minutes she was out in the servants' hall, passing bread and butter to her
charges and whispering to one of her monitors that 'Dear Mrs. Bracewell gave me
my tea first, because, as she said, she knew I was anxious to get back to my
children.'

Squire himself called at the school once a year; but nobody
felt nervous when his red, jovial face appeared in the doorway, and smiles
broke out all around when he told his errand. He was arranging a concert, to
take place in the schoolroom, and would like some of the children to sing. He took
his responsibilities less seriously than his mother did hers; spending most of
his days roaming the fields, and spinneys with a gun under his arm and a brace
of spaniels at his heels, leaving her to manage house and gardens and what was
left of the family estate, as well as to support the family dignity. His one
indoor accomplishment was playing the banjo and singing Negro songs. He had
trained a few of the village youths to support him in his Negro Minstrel
Troupe, which always formed the backbone of the annual concert programme. A few
other items were contributed by his and his mother's friends and the gaps were filled
up by the school-children.