Before they had been at Candleford a week a letter came from their father to say they had a new little sister, and Laura felt so relieved at this news that she wanted to stand on her head, like Benny. Although no hint had been dropped by her elders, she had known what was about to happen. Edmund had known, too, for several times when they had been alone together he had said anxiously, 'I hope our mother's all right.' Now she was all right and they could fully enjoy their holiday.
Ordinary mothers of that day would put themselves to any inconvenience and employ any subterfuge to prevent their children suspecting the advent of a new arrival. The hint of a stork's probable visit or the addition of a clause to a child's prayers asking God to send them a new little brother or sister were devices of a few advanced young parents in more educated circles; but even the most daring of these never thought of telling a child straightforwardly what to expect. Even girls of fifteen were supposed to be deaf and blind at such times and if they accidentally let drop a remark which showed they were aware of the situation they were thought disagreeably 'knowing'. Laura's schoolmistress during Bible reading one day became embarrassed over the Annunciation. She had mentioned the period of nine months; then, with blushing cheeks and downcast eyes, said hastily: 'I think nine months is the time a mother has to pray to God to give her a baby before her prayer is answered.' Nobody smiled or spoke, but hard, cold eyes looked at her from the front row where her elder pupils sat, eyes which said as plainly as words, 'You must think we're a lot of softies.'
After the baby's arrival, if the younger children of the family asked where it had come from, they were told from under a gooseberry bush, or that the midwife had brought it in her basket, or the doctor in his black bag. Laura's mother was more sensible than most parents. When asked the question by her children when very small she replied: 'Wait until you get older. You're too young to understand, and I'm sure I'm not clever enough to tell you.' Which perhaps was better than confusing their young minds with textbook talk about pollen and hazel catkins and bird's eggs, and certainly better than a conversation between a mother and child on the subject which figured in a recent novel. It ran something like this:
'Mother, where did Auntie Ruth get her baby?'
'Uncle Ralph and she made it.'
'Will they make some more?'
'I don't think so. Not for some time at any rate. You see, it is a very messy business and frightfully expensive.'
That would not have passed with a generation which knew its Catechism and could repeat firmly: 'God made me and all the world.'
What impressed Laura most about Candleford, on that first holiday there, was that, every day, there was something new to see or do or find out and new people to see and talk to and new places to visit, and this gave a colour and richness to life to which she was unaccustomed. At home, things went on day after day much in the same manner; the same people, all of whom she knew, did the same things at the same time from weekend to week-end. There you knew that, while you were having your breakfast, you would hear Mrs. Massey clattering by on her pattens to the well, and that Mrs. Watts would have her washing out first on the line and Mrs. Broadway second every Monday morning, and that the fish-hawker would come on Monday and the coalman on Friday and the baker three times a week, and that no one else was likely to come nearer than the turning into the main road.
Of course, there were the changes of the seasons. It was delightful on some sunny morning in February, one of those days which older people called 'weather-breeders', to see the hazel catkins plumping out against the blue sky and to smell the first breath of spring in the air. Delightful, too, when spring was nearer, to search the hedgerows for violets, and to see the cowslips and bluebells again and the may, and the fields turning green, then golden. But all these delights you expected; they could not fail, for had not God Himself said that seedtime and harvest, summer and winter, should endure as long as the world lasted? That was His promise when He painted the first rainbow and set it in the sky as a sign.
But at Candleford these things did not seem so important to Laura as they did at home. You had to be alone to enjoy them properly; while games and fun and pretty clothes and delicious food demanded company. For about a week of her visit Laura wished she had been born at Candleford; that she was Aunt Ann's child and had lots of nice things and was never scolded. Then, as the week or two for which they had been invited drew out to nearly a month, she began to long for her home; to wonder how her garden was looking and what the new baby was like and if her mother had missed her.
The last day of their holiday was wet and one of the cousins suggested they should go and play in the attic, so they went up the bare, steep stairs, Laura and Ann and Amy and the two little boys, while the two elder girls were having a lesson in pastry-making. The attic, Laura found, was a storehouse of old, discarded things, much like the collection Mrs. Herring had stored in the clothes closet at home. But these things did not belong to a landlady; they were family possessions with which the children might do as they liked. They spent the morning dressing up for charades, an amusement Laura had not heard of before, but now found entrancing. Dressed in apron and shawl, the point of the latter trailing on the ground behind her, she gave her best imitation of Queenie, an old neighbour at home who began most of her speeches with 'Lawks-a-mussy!' Then, draped in an old lace curtain for veil, with a feather duster for bouquet, she became a bride. Less realistically, no doubt, for she had never seen a bride in conventional attire—the girls at home wore their new Sunday frock to be married—but her cousins said she did it well and she became very pleased with herself and full of ideas for illustrating words which she kept to herself for future use at home, for she felt too much of a novice to venture suggestions.
All the morning, first one cousin then another had been running down to the kitchen to ask for suggestions for the charades. They always came back munching, or wiping crumbs from their mouths, and once or twice they brought tit-bits for the whole party. At last they all disappeared, Edmund included, and Laura was left alone in her bridal finery, which she took the opportunity of examining in a tall, cracked mirror which leaned against one wall. But her own reflection did not hold her more than a moment, for she saw in the glass a recess she had not noticed before packed with books. Books on shelves, books in piles on the floor, and still other books in heaps, higgledy-piggledy, as though they had been turned out of sacks. Which they had, no doubt, for she was told afterwards that the collection was the unsaleable remains of a library from one of the large houses in the district. Her uncle, who was known to be a great reader, had been at the sale of furniture and been told that he might have what books were left if he cared to cart them away. A few of the more presentable bindings had already been taken downstairs; but the bulk of the collection still awaited the time when he should not be too busy to look through them.
That attic was very quiet for the next quarter of an hour, for Laura, still in her bridal veil, was down on her knees on the bare boards, as happy and busy as a young foal in a field of green corn.
There were volumes of old sermons which she passed over quickly; a natural history of the world which might have detained her had there not been so many other vistas to explore; histories and grammars and lexicons and 'keepsakes' with coloured pictures of beautiful languishing ladies bending over graves beneath weeping willows, or standing before mirrors dressed for balls, with the caption 'Will he come to-night?' There were old novels, too, and poetry. The difficulty was to know what to look at first.
When they missed her downstairs and came to call her to dinner she was deep in Richardson's Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded, and it was afterwards a standing joke against her that she had jumped and looked dazed when Amy hissed into her ear, 'Do you like apple dumplings?'
'Laura's a bookworm, a bookworm, a bookworm!' she sang to her sisters with the air of having made an astonishing discovery, and Laura wondered if a bookworm might not be something unpleasant, until she added: 'A bookworm, like Fathe
r.'
She had brought the first volume of Pamela down with them to illustrate Laura's bookworminess and now asked her mother if Laura might not have it to keep. After glancing through it, her mother looked doubtful, for she gathered that it was a love story, though not, perhaps, the full extent of its unsuitability for a reader of such tender age. But Uncle Tom, coming in just then to his dinner and hearing the whole story, said: 'Let her keep it. No book's too old for anybody who is able to enjoy it, and none too young, either, for that matter. Let her read what she likes, and when she's tired of reading to herself she can come to my shop and read to me while I work.'
'Poor Laura! You're in for it!' laughed mischievous Nell. 'Once you start reading to Dad, he'll never let you go. You'll have to sit in his smelly old shop and read his dry old books for ever.'
'Now! Now! The less you say about that the better, my girl. Who was it came to read to me and made such a hash of it that I never asked her to come again?'
'Me,' and 'Me,' and 'Me', cried the girls simultaneously, and their father laughed and said: 'You see, Laura, what a lot of dunces they are. Give them one of their mother's magazines, with fashion pictures and directions for making silk purses out of sows' ears and pretty little tales that end in wedding bells, and they'll lap it up like a cat lapping cream; but offer them something to read that needs a bit of biting on and they're soon tired, or too hot, or too cold, or they can't stand the smell of cobbler's wax, or think they hear somebody knocking at the front door and have to go to open it. Molly started reading The Pilgrim's Progress to me over a year ago—her own choice, because she liked the pictures—and got the poor fellow as far as the Slough of Despond. Then she had to take an afternoon off to get a new frock fitted. Then there was something else, and something else, and poor Christian is still bogged up in the slough for all she knows or cares. But we won't have The Pilgrim's Progress when you read to me, Laura. That is a shade dull for some young people. I've read it a good many times and hope to read it a good many more before I wear my eyesight out getting a living for these ungrateful young besoms. A grand old book, The Pilgrim's Progress! But I've something here you'll like better. Cranford. Ever heard of it, Laura? No, I thought not. Well, you've got a treat in store.'
They sampled Cranford that afternoon, and how Laura loved dear Miss Matty! Her uncle was pleased with her reading, but not too pleased to correct her faults.
Seated on the end of the bench on which he worked, with both arms extended as he drew the waxed thread through the leather, his eyes beaming mildly through his spectacles, he would say: 'Not too fast now, Laura, and not too much expression. Don't overdo things. These were genteel old bodies, very prim and proper, who would not have raised their voices much if they'd heard the last trump sounding.' Or, more gently, in a matter-of-fact tone, as if, although it did not matter much how words were pronounced as long as one knew their meaning, it might still be just as well to conform to usage: 'I think that word is pronounced so-and-so, Laura,' and Laura would repeat the syllables after him until she had got it more or less correctly. Having read so much to herself and being a rapid reader, she knew the meanings of hundreds of words which she had never even attempted to pronounce until she came to read aloud to her uncle. Though he must have been sorely tempted to do so, he never once smiled, even at her most grotesque efforts. Years later in conversation he pronounced magician 'magicun' and added, 'as Laura once called one of that kidney', and they both laughed heartily at the not altogether inapt rendering.
XXVI Uncle Tom's Queer Fish
The readings were continued the next summer, when Laura again spent her summer holidays with her cousins, and afterwards, when Candleford became for several years her second home. Every afternoon when her cousins could be persuaded to go out or do what they wanted to do without her, she would tap at the door of her uncle's workshop and hear the familiar challenge, 'Who goes there?' and reply, 'Bookworms, Limited,' and, receiving the password, go in and sit by the open window looking out on the garden and river and read while her uncle worked.
Their reading was often interrupted, for customers came and went, or sat down to chat in a special chair with a cushion, 'the customer's chair'. Many sat in that chair who were not there on business, for her uncle had many friends who liked to look in when passing, especially on days when there was something of special interest in the newspaper. 'Just wanted to know what you thought of it,' they would say, and Laura noticed that whatever opinion he had given them was adopted so thoroughly that it was often advanced as their own before they left.
In the evening his workshop became a kind of a club for the young working-men of the neighbourhood, who would sit around on upturned boxes, smoking and talking or playing draughts or dominoes. Uncle Tom said he liked to see their young faces round him, and it kept them out of the 'pub'. Their arrival was the signal for Laura to take up her book and depart; but, when a day caller arrived, she would sit still in her corner, reading, or trying to solve that maddening puzzle of the day, 'Getting the teeth in the nigger's mouth'. The mouth belonged to a face enclosed in a circular glass case and the teeth were small metal balls which were easier to scatter than to get into place: One, two, or three, might with infinite patience be coaxed to rest between the thick lips, but the next gentle jerk, intended to place a fourth, would send them all rolling around beneath the glass again. Laura never got more than three in. But perhaps she did not persevere sufficiently; it was much more interesting to listen.
Uncle Tom had many friends. Some of these, as might have been expected, were fellow tradesmen of the town who looked in upon him to pass the time of day, as they said, or to discuss the news or some business complication. Others were poor people who came to ask his advice on some point, or to ask him to sign a paper, or to bring him something out of their gardens, or merely to rest and talk a few minutes. Few of these ever spoke to Laura, beyond a casual greeting, but she came to know them and could remember their faces and voices when those of others who had been more to her had become dim. But it was those Nellie described as 'Dad's queer fish' that she liked best of all. There was Miss Connie, who wore a thick tweed golf cape and spiked boots, even in August. 'Let Laura take your cape and sit down and cool off a bit,' Uncle Tom would say to her when the sun was raging and there was scarcely a breath of air in the shop, even with both windows wide open. 'No. No, thanks, Tom. Don't touch it, please, Laura. I wear it to keep the heat from the spine. The spine should always be protected.'
Miss Constance kept nineteen cats in the big house where she lived alone, for she could not trust servants; she thought they would always be spying upon her. Sometimes a kitten would thrust its head between the edges of her cape as she talked. 'Now, don't you worry, Miss Constance,' Uncle Tom would be saying. 'You'll get your money all right come quarter day. Some lawyers are rogues, we know, but not Mr. Steerforth. And nobody can harm you for keeping your cats, for your house is your own. And don't take any notice of what you heard Mrs. Harmer say; though, if you'll excuse me for saying it, Miss Constance, I do think you've got quite enough of them. I wouldn't save any more kittens, if I were you; and, if you can't bear a maid about the place, why not get some decent, respectable woman to come in once or twice a week and clean up a bit? Somebody who likes cats. No. She wouldn't poison them, nor steal your things. Bless you, there are very few thieves about compared to the number of honest people in the world. And don't you worry, Miss Constance, or you'll lose all your pussies. Worry killed the cat, you know,' and at that often-repeated joke Miss Constance would smile and the smile would transform the poor, half-mad recluse she was fast becoming to something resembling the bright, happy girl who had danced all night and ridden to hounds in the days when Uncle Tom had first fitted her for her country shoes.
But even Miss Constance was not quite so strange as the big fat man who wore the dark inverness cloak and soft black felt hat. He was a poet, Laura was told, and that was why he dressed like that and wore his hair so long. He came every market day, havin
g walked from a village called Isledon, six or seven miles away, and, after puffing and blowing and mopping his brow, he would draw out a paper from his breast pocket and say, 'I must read you this, Tom,' and Uncle Tom would say, 'So you've been at it again. Oh, you poets!' To her great disappointment, although she listened intently, Laura could never grasp exactly what his poems were about. There were eagles in most of them, but not the kind of eagles she had read of, which circled over mountains and carried off lambs and babies; these eagles of his were eagles one moment and Pride or Hate the next; and if there were flowers in his poems he had always chosen the ugliest, such as nightshade or rue. But it all sounded very learned and grand, read in his rich, sonorous voice, and she had the comfort of knowing that, if she could not make much sense of it, her uncle could not either, for she heard him say many times: 'You know I'm no judge of poetry. If it were prose now… . But it's certainly got a fine roll and swell to it. That I do know.'
After the reading, they would settle down to talk about flowers and birds and what was going on in the fields, for the poet loved all these, although he did not write about them. Or sometimes he would talk of his home and children and praise his wife for allowing him to come away into the country alone for a whole summer to write. 'Shows she believes in you as a poet,' Uncle Tom said once, and the poet drew himself up from his chair and said, 'She does and she'll be justified, though perhaps not in my lifetime. Posterity will judge.'
'Fine words! Fine words!' said Uncle Tom after he had gone. 'But I doubt it. I doubt.'
Less odd, and therefore less interesting to Laura, though dearer to her Uncle Tom's heart, was the young doctor with the keen, eager face and grey eyes set deep under heavy dark brows. From what she heard then, she thought, looking back in after years, that he was trying to work up a practice and finding it heavy going. He certainly had a good deal of spare time.
Lark Rise to Candleford Page 39
