Mariette Larkin—Cedric Charlton

Mariette Larkin—Cedric Charlton is a courtship that takes shape through bodily recognition and repeated acts of welcome. Mariette notices Cedric Charlton before he can make sense of his surroundings; soon, the tax official who arrived with a form is being fed, urged to remain overnight, drawn into farm work, and kissed in the dark. Their growing intimacy unfolds amid the Larkin household’s abundance, while Charlton’s efforts to return to his office repeatedly meet the family’s invitation to stay.

First Recognition and the Larkin Welcome

When Pop Larkin introduces Cedric Charlton as a visitor, he presents Mariette as his eldest daughter, known for being mad about horses and riding everywhere. Mariette answers with immediate confidence: “I spotted you first.” Her remark makes the first encounter reciprocal. She has already been watching the young man, and asks whether he likes riding too; the connection begins not with an official matter but with her attention and an invitation into her world.

The visit is supposed to concern a form, but Mariette’s question about it gives Pop an opening to divert the conversation. He waves the paperwork aside and invites Charlton to dinner, insisting that there is plenty of food. Charlton says he has eaten, but the offer expands from dinner to tea, coffee, beer, Guinness, and cider. At the crowded table he nurses tea among pineapples, fish and chips, ice cream, jam, ketchup, sauces, biscuits, and iced buns. Pop even proposes sardines, which Charlton declines. This meal makes the household’s welcome tangible: before Charlton can act as an inspector, he is treated as a guest who should be fed and made comfortable.

Intimacy in Gestures and Repeated Invitations

Mariette’s attention becomes physical before Charlton has fully found words for it. She tells him she guessed what he was thinking by watching his eyes, then places both hands against his cheeks. The lightness of her touch unsettles him bodily; when he sees her lips raised toward him, the scene moves from observation to intimacy. The narrative emphasizes sensation rather than an orderly exchange of explanations, presenting attraction as something Charlton feels in his body before he can resolve it in thought.

The household’s welcome soon acquires a more personal consequence. Pop asks Charlton to stay the night, with Ma’s agreement, and says she will make up a bed on the billiard table. The invitation places him inside the family’s domestic routine, but it also gives his association with Mariette time to deepen. On another Sunday, when Charlton says he will go to the pub for a cold meal, Ma is shocked at the prospect of cold Sunday dinner and invites him to eat with them instead. Pop reinforces her invitation with his familiar declaration that the more the merrier. What might have been a short professional visit becomes repeated shared meals and extended proximity.

Office Duty, Sick Leave, and Growing Attachment

Charlton’s growing involvement develops alongside the Larkins’ practical challenge to his commitment to work. Pop and Ma judge that he does not look well; Ma points out white spots on his cheekbones, and Pop urges him to take advantage of what he calls the “National Elf lark.” Since Charlton has paid into the service, Pop argues, he should go sick and enjoy himself rather than continue working. The advice turns the language of official obligation back on the official visitor, recasting sick leave as a benefit he is entitled to use.

Charlton might have resisted Pop’s persuasion, but Mariette kisses him against the newel post shortly before midnight. She says his hands are hot, and his attempted explanation that they are always hot does not quiet the attraction. Her repeated kiss leaves him in turmoil, divided between the buttercup field, the nightingales, and the memory of a goose’s neck entwining his leg. The mixture of romantic desire and the farm’s comic, physical surroundings keeps their courtship rooted in the life around them rather than separating it into a private idyll.

Mariette asks him to stay for a week and then through the following weekend. Charlton counters with the papers waiting on his desk and the trouble that would follow if he failed to return. His hesitation makes the relationship’s central tension plain: he is drawn toward Mariette and the farm, but still measures his choices against his office responsibilities. The attraction is strong enough to unsettle his intentions, though the evidence here does not make his decision to stay a simple or immediate one.

From Visitor to Participant

A practical turn comes in the strawberry-picking tent. After Charlton admits he is not feeling at his best, Mariette says it is what they had been telling him: he needs sick leave. She leads him toward the tent, where baskets must be weighed and checked. There Pop introduces him to the foreman as Charley boy, a friend of theirs and an office fellow from the tax-lark. The foreman, struck by the unusual sight of an office worker in the strawberry field, offers him a job weighing and booking baskets.

This episode brings together the two strands of Charlton’s change in position. The tax official who first came with a form is now identified by Pop as a friend and offered work within the farm’s seasonal routine. The hospitality that began with food and a bed has developed into inclusion in shared labor. It does not erase the difference between Charlton’s office life and the Larkins’ farm, but it gives him a way to inhabit their world rather than merely visit it.

A Courtship Made Visible in the Farm Landscape

The relationship is repeatedly framed through settings where ordinary farm life continues around the couple. In the buttercup field, Mariette draws Charlton gently toward her among tall, bright flowers and high grasses. The contrast between her dark appearance and green shantung and the vivid field gives the scene a concentrated intimacy, while the narration presents Charlton as responding with a more assured, searching look. The relationship has advanced from Mariette’s first watchful recognition to an attraction that is visible in his changed manner.

The stable offers another measure of that change. After they rise from breakfast at half-past five, Mariette and Charlton go across the yard to feed the donkeys. The stable holds four little donkeys: Pop has hired two, their owners brought two more the previous night, and three additional animals are hoped for. Once alone together among them in the half-dark, Charlton quickly takes Mariette in his arms and kisses her. She laughs and trembles, saying she had hardly been able to wait for the first kiss of the day; he answers that he could hardly wait either, especially for the afternoon. As a second kiss continues, the donkeys stir and swish their tails, briefly interrupting the lovers’ private moment. Their intimacy does not remove them from the farm’s rhythms: it develops within them, between breakfast, animal care, and the day still to come.