Lark Rise to Candleford (78 page)

She went in and out of the copses, gathering bluebells or
wild cherry blossom, or hunting for birds' nests, and never saw any one, until
one May morning of her second year on the round. She had gone into one of the
copses where a few lilies-of-the-valley grew wild, found half a dozen or so,
and was just climbing down the high bank which surrounded the copse when she
came face to face with a stranger. He was a young man in rough country tweeds
and carried a gun over his shoulder. She thought for a moment that he might be
one of Sir Timothy's nephews, or some other visitor at the great house, though,
of course, she should have remembered that no guest of Sir Timothy's would have
carried a gun at that season. But, when he pointed to a notice board which said
Trespassers will be prosecuted
and asked, rather roughly, what the devil
she thought she was doing there, she knew he must be a gamekeeper, and he
turned out to be a new underkeeper engaged to do most of the actual work of the
old man, who was failing in health, but refused to retire.

He was a tall, well-built young man, apparently in the middle
twenties, with a small fair moustache and very pale blue eyes which, against
his dark tanned complexion, looked paler. His features might have been called
handsome but for their set rigidity. These softened slightly when Laura held
out her half-dozen lilies-ofthe-valley as an excuse for her trespass. He was
sure she had meant to do no harm, he said, but the pheasants were still sitting
and he could not have them disturbed. There had been too much of this
trespassing lately—Laura wondered by whom—too much laxity, too much laxity, he
repeated, as if he had just thought of the word and was pleased with it, but it
had got to stop. Then, still walking close on her heels on the narrow path, as
if to keep her in custody, he asked her if she would tell him the way to
Foxhill Copse, as it was his first morning on the estate and he had not grasped
the lie of the land yet. When she pointed it out and he saw that her own path
led past it, he unbent sufficiently to suggest that they should walk on
together.

By the time they reached the copse he had become quite human.
His name, he told her, was Philip White. His father was head gamekeeper on an estate
near Oxford and he had so far worked under him, but had now come to Candleford
Park on the understanding that when poor old Chitty died or retired he would
take his place as head gamekeeper. Without actually saying so, he managed to
convey the impression that by consenting to serve under Chitty for a time he
was doing, not only Sir Timothy, but the whole neighbourhood a favour. His
father's estate (he spoke of it as his father's in the way the Geerings spoke
of 'our glasshouses') was larger and better preserved than this and belonged to
a very great nobleman with an historic title. He did not claim the title as a
family possession, but it was evident that he felt its reflected glory.

Laura glanced up at him. No. He was perfectly serious. There
was no smile on his face, not even a twinkle in his pale eyes; the only expression
there was one of a faint interest in herself. Before they parted she had been
shown a photograph of his sister, who worked in a draper's showroom in Oxford.
It was that of a smiling girl in evening dress for some dance, with her fair
hair dressed in curls high on her head. Laura was much impressed. 'All in our
family are good-looking,' he said as he slipped the photograph back into his
breast pocket. She had also been given a description of his parents' model
cottage on the famous estate and been told of the owner's great shoots, to
which dukes and lords and millionaires appeared to flock, and would probably
have heard much more had not her conscience pricked her into saying: 'I really
must go now, or I shall have to run all the way.' She had not told him anything
about herself, nor had he asked any questions beyond inquiring where she lived
and how often she passed that way. Happening to look back as she climbed over
the stile, she saw him still standing where she had left him. He raised his
hand in a wooden salute, and that, she thought, was the last she would see of
him.

But she had not seen the last of Philip White. After that he
always seemed to appear at some point on her walk. At first he would spring out
of some copse with his gun and seem to be surprised to see her; but soon he
would stroll openly along the path to meet her, then turn and walk by her side
through the park until just before they came in sight of the great house windows.
Beyond telling Miss Lane as an item of news on the first morning that a new
under-keeper had come and that he had asked her the way to Fox'lls, Laura mentioned
these meetings to no one, and as they met on the loneliest part of her round no
one she knew ever saw them together. But for weeks they met almost daily and
talked, or rather Philip talked and she listened. Sometimes he would take the
hand which swung by her side and hold it in his as they walked on together. It
was pleasant at sixteen to be the object of so much attention on the part of a
grown man and from one who was spoken of respectfully by the villagers as
Keeper White, while to her in secret he was Philip. 'Call me Philip,' he had
said at their second meeting. 'I wouldn't allow any one else here to call me
it, but I'd like it from you,' and she called him by that name occasionally.
Never 'Phil'; it would not have suited him. He called her 'Laura', and once or
twice when they passed through the kissing gate, he gave her a shy, cold, wooden
kind of kiss over the bars.

She supposed they were sweethearts and sometimes looked into
the future and saw herself feeding the pheasant chicks hatched out under hens
in the little coops upon the green clearing where old Chitty's cottage stood.
She felt she could be happy for life in that pretty cottage on the green,
surrounded by waving tree-tops. On one of her walks last spring she had seen
the margins of the green and the earth under the trees starred with white wild
anenomes, swaying in the wind, and it had looked to her then a perfect
paradise. But then came the dampening thought that Philip would be there, too,
at least some of the time, and she was not sure that she liked Philip well
enough to be able to endure his perpetual company.

He was so self-satisfied, so sure that he and everything and
everybody belonging to him were perfect, and he had no interests whatever
outside his own affairs. If she tried to talk about other people or of flowers she
had found, or some book she was reading, it was never long before he brought
the conversation back to himself again. 'That's like
me
,' he would say,
or, 'What
I
think about it is——' or, '
I
couldn't stand that sort
of thing,' and she, who loved to listen to most people and found nearly
everybody else interesting, wanted to run straight away across the park and
fields and leave him talking to himself.

But she was constitutionally incapable of that. And if she
tried to offend and quarrel with him, she could not. She knew that from some of
the stories against himself he repeated, without the least idea that they were
against himself. If she told him openly that she thought they ought not to walk
together, as it was against official rules, she would still have to meet and
pass him frequently, for it was one of his duties to patrol every part of the estate.
There really seemed to be nothing she could do about it, except to bound on a
few yards in front as they approached the kissing gate.

Then, when she least expected it, the whole affair came to a
head and was over. It was just upon closing time one evening, and she had taken
some forms to Miss Lane, who was already seated at the kitchen table about to
begin on her accounts, when the office doorbell tinkled and she hurried back to
find Philip there. That, to begin with, was a surprise to her, for he had never
been in the office before—an embarrassment, too, for she knew that Miss Lane,
sitting quietly at the kitchen table with the door wide open, would hear every
word that was said. But there he was, looking full of importance, and all she
could do to cope with the situation was to say 'Good evening' in what she hoped
was a businesslike voice. She almost prayed that he would say, 'Three penny stamps'
or something of that kind and go. He might squeeze her hand, if he liked; she
did not care if he kissed her, if only he kissed her quietly and Miss Lane did
not hear. But she was not to be let off so easily.

Without any formal greeting, he pulled a letter out of his
pocket and said: 'Can you get off for a few days at the end of this week? Well,
as a matter of fact, you must. I've got this letter from our Cathy'—his sister—'and
she says and our Mum says I'm to bring you. Saturday to Monday, she says, or
longer if we can manage it, but, of course, I can't. Nobody can afford to leave
my job for long together—too many bad characters about. Still, I think I have
earned a day or two and Sir Timothy's quite agreeable, so you'd better arrange
about it now and I'll wait.'

Laura looked at the open door; she could positively feel Miss
Lane listening. 'I'm s-s-sorry——' she began feebly, but the idea of any one trying
to refuse an invitation from his family was unthinkable to Philip. 'Go and
ask,' he commanded; then, more gently, but still too, too audibly: 'Go and ask.
You've got the right. Everybody takes their girl for their people to see; and
you are my girl, aren't you, Laura?'

The papers on the kitchen table rustled, then again dead
silence, but Laura was no longer thinking of the danger of being overheard so
much as wondering what she should say.

'You are my girl, aren't you, Laura?' asked Philip once more,
and for the first time since she had known him, Laura detected a faint note of uneasiness
in his voice. She herself was trembling with consternation, but when she said,
'You've never asked me,' her voice sounded flippant, perhaps coquettish, for
Philip took one of her trembling hands and smiled down upon her as he said
magnanimously: 'Well, I thought you understood. But don't be frightened. You
will be my girl. Won't you, Laura?' That was inadequate enough as a declaration
of love, but Laura's answer was even more inadequate: 'No—no thank you,
Philip,' she said, and the most unromantic love scene on record was over, for,
without another word, he turned, went out of the door and out of her life. She never
saw him again to speak to. On one occasion, months afterwards, she had a
momentary view of his distant figure, gun on shoulder, stalking across one of
the open spaces of the park, but, if he ever came her way again, he must have
chosen a time of day when she was not likely to be there.

But Miss Lane was still with her and had to be dealt with.
Laura expected at least a severe scolding. A letter might even be written to her
mother. But when Laura returned to the kitchen Miss Lane, who was carefully
ruling a line in red ink, did not even look up. 'Who was that?' she asked in a
casual tone when she had finished, and Laura, trying to sound casual too,
replied: 'Sir Timothy's new gamekeeper.' No more was said at that moment, but,
as she folded her accounts and slipped them into the large brown paper envelope
with the printed address, 'Accountant-General, G.P.O., London', Miss Lane eyed
Laura closely and said: 'You seem to know that young man very well,' 'Yes,' admitted
Laura. 'I've met him on the round sometimes.' And Miss Lane said, 'Umph! So I
gathered.'

So there were no reproaches. On the contrary, Miss Lane
appeared in a better temper than usual for the rest of the evening. As they
were lighting their candles to go up to bed, she said thoughtfully: 'I don't see
why you should ever leave here. You and I get on very well together, and
perhaps, after my time, you might take my place in the office.'

In after years Laura sometimes looked rather wistfully back
on that evening when an apparent choice was offered her between two widely differing
paths in life. It would have been pleasant to have lived all her days in
comparative ease and security among the people she knew and understood. To have
watched the seasons open and fade in the scenes she loved and belonged to by
birth. But have we any of us a free choice of our path in life, or are we
driven on by destiny or by the demon within us into a path already marked out?
Who can tell?

Choice or no choice, Laura's sojourn at Candleford Green was
to be but of a few years' duration. And, if the choice had been hers and she
had remained there, her life might not have been as happy and peaceful as she
afterwards imagined it would have been. Her mother's judgement was usually
sound, and she had often told her: 'You're not cut out for a pleasant, easy
life. You think too much!' Sometimes adding tolerantly: 'But we are as we are
made, I suppose.'

The gradual change which was turning the formerly quiet and
secluded village of Candleford Green into the suburb of a small country town
was accentuated by the death of Mr. Coulsdon and the arrival of the new Vicar.
Mr. Delafield was a young man in the early thirties, somewhat inclined to
premature bulkiness, whose large, pink, clean-shaven face had a babyish look,
which his fair hair, worn rather long and inclined to curl, did nothing to dispel.
Dignity did not enter into his composition. He would run out to post a letter
or to buy a cucumber for lunch in his shirt-sleeves, and, even when fully
dressed, the only evidence of his sacred calling was his collar. Well-worn
flannels and a Norfolk jacket were his usual everyday wear. Very dark grey, of
course; any lighter shade would have been too revolutionary, as would anything more
daring in the way of headgear than the black-and-white speckled straw boater he
wore in summer in place of the round, black, soft felt hat of the other local
clergy.

He looked like a very big boy, and an untidy boy. Miss Lane
once said that she longed to take a needle and thread and set forward the top button
of his trousers, so that he could button in the bulge at his waist. He probably
thought Miss Lane's appearance as unsatisfactory as she did his, for he had
come there with a townsman's ideas of the country, according to which a village
postmistress should have worn a white apron and spoken the dialect. But he had
come to his country living determined to be friendly with all his parishioners,
and although Laura felt sure he did not like that sardonic little glint of amusement
in her eyes when he tried to talk improvingly to her, he was always pleasantly
breezy in his manner, and she, in time, came to admit that he had a boyish
charm.