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Cranford

by Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell · English · Gutenberg #394 · 408,706 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Cranford

Author: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

Illustrator: C. E. Brock


        
Release date: January 1, 1996 [eBook #394]
                Most recently updated: December 23, 2025

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/394

Credits: David Price, Margaret Price and Richard Tonsing


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CRANFORD ***




                 [Picture: “Oh, sir! can you be Peter?”]




                                 CRANFORD


                                   _by_
                       _Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell_

                  [Picture: Picture of lady pouring tea]

                _With twenty-five coloured illustrations_
                             _by C. E. Brock_

                      [Picture: Decorative graphic]

                                   1904

                      _London.    J. M. Dent & Co._
                    _New York.    E. P. Dutton & Co._




CONTENTS

  CHAPTER I. OUR SOCIETY
  CHAPTER II. THE CAPTAIN
  CHAPTER III. A LOVE AFFAIR OF LONG AGO
  CHAPTER IV. A VISIT TO AN OLD BACHELOR
  CHAPTER V. OLD LETTERS
  CHAPTER VI. POOR PETER
  CHAPTER VII. VISITING
  CHAPTER VIII. “YOUR LADYSHIP”
  CHAPTER IX. SIGNOR BRUNONI
  CHAPTER X. THE PANIC
  CHAPTER XI. SAMUEL BROWN
  CHAPTER XII. ENGAGED TO BE MARRIED
  CHAPTER XIII. STOPPED PAYMENT
  CHAPTER XIV. FRIENDS IN NEED
  CHAPTER XV. A HAPPY RETURN
  CHAPTER XVI. PEACE TO CRANFORD




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

“Oh, sir! Can you be Peter?”
A magnificent family red silk umbrella
Meekly going to her pasture
Endeavouring to beguile her into conversation
She brought the affrighted carter ... into the drawing-room
“With his arm round Miss Jessie’s waist!”
Mr Holbrook ... bade us good-bye
Now, what colour are ash-buds in March?
I made use of the time to think of many other things
“Confound the woman!”
The temptation of the comfortable arm-chair had been too much for her
Mr Mulliner
We gave her a tea-spoonful of currant jelly
Afraid of matrimonial reports
Asked him to take care of us
Slaughterous and indiscriminate directions
Would stretch out their little arms
“What do you think, Miss Matty?”
Standing over him like a bold dragoon
“You must give me your note, Mr Dobson, if you please”
“Please, ma’am, he wants to marry me off hand”
Miss Matty and I sat assenting to accounts
Smiling glory ... and becoming blushes
I went to call Miss Matty

                                * * * * *

_Most of the three-colour blocks used in this book have been made by the
Graphic Photo-Engraving Co._, _London_




CHAPTER I.
OUR SOCIETY


IN the first place, Cranford is in possession of the Amazons; all the
holders of houses above a certain rent are women.  If a married couple
come to settle in the town, somehow the gentleman disappears; he is
either fairly frightened to death by being the only man in the Cranford
evening parties, or he is accounted for by being with his regiment, his
ship, or closely engaged in business all the week in the great
neighbouring commercial town of Drumble, distant only twenty miles on a
railroad.  In short, whatever does become of the gentlemen, they are
not at Cranford.  What could they do if they were there?  The surgeon
has his round of thirty miles, and sleeps at Cranford; but every man
cannot be a surgeon.  For keeping the trim gardens full of choice
flowers without a weed to speck them; for frightening away little boys
who look wistfully at the said flowers through the railings; for rushing
out at the geese that occasionally venture in to the gardens if the
gates are left open; for deciding all questions of literature and
politics without troubling themselves with unnecessary reasons or
arguments; for obtaining clear and correct knowledge of everybody’s
affairs in the parish; for keeping their neat maid-servants in admirable
order; for kindness (somewhat dictatorial) to the poor, and real tender
good offices to each other whenever they are in distress, the ladies of
Cranford are quite sufficient.  “A man,” as one of them observed to me
once, “is _so_ in the way in the house!”  Although the ladies of
Cranford know all each other’s proceedings, they are exceedingly
indifferent to each other’s opinions. Indeed, as each has her own
individuality, not to say eccentricity, pretty strongly developed,
nothing is so easy as verbal retaliation; but, somehow, good-will
reigns among them to a considerable degree.

The Cranford ladies have only an occasional little quarrel, spirited out
in a few peppery words and angry jerks of the head; just enough to
prevent the even tenor of their lives from becoming too flat.  Their
dress is very independent of fashion; as they observe, “What does it
signify how we dress here at Cranford, where everybody knows us?”  And
if they go from home, their reason is equally cogent, “What does it
signify how we dress here, where nobody knows us?”  The materials of
their clothes are, in general, good and plain, and most of them are
nearly as scrupulous as Miss Tyler, of cleanly memory; but I will
answer for it, the last gigot, the last tight and scanty petticoat in
wear in England, was seen in Cranford—and seen without a smile.

            [Picture: A magnificent family red silk umbrella]

I can testify to a magnificent family red silk umbrella, under which a
gentle little spinster, left alone of many brothers and sisters, used to
patter to church on rainy days.  Have you any red silk umbrellas in
London?  We had a tradition of the first that had ever been seen in
Cranford; and the little boys mobbed it, and called it “a stick in
petticoats.”  It might have been the very red silk one I have described,
held by a strong father over a troop of little ones; the poor little
lady—the survivor of all—could scarcely carry it.

Then there were rules and regulations for visiting and calls; and they
were announced to any young people who might be staying in the town,
with all the solemnity with which the old Manx laws were read once a
year on the Tinwald Mount.

“Our friends have sent to inquire how you are after your journey
to-night, my dear” (fifteen miles in a gentleman’s carriage); “they will
give you some rest to-morrow, but the next day, I have no doubt, they
will call; so be at liberty after twelve—from twelve to three are our
calling hours.”

Then, after they had called—

“It is the third day; I dare say your mamma has told you, my dear, never
to let more than three days elapse between receiving a call and
returning it; and also, that you are never to stay longer than a quarter
of an hour.”

“But am I to look at my watch?  How am I to find out when a quarter of
an hour has passed?”

“You must keep thinking about the time, my dear, and not allow yourself
to forget it in conversation.”

As everybody had this rule in their minds, whether they received or paid
a call, of course no absorbing subject was ever spoken about.  We kept
ourselves to short sentences of small talk, and were punctual to our
time.

I imagine that a few of the gentlefolks of Cranford were poor, and had
some difficulty in making both ends meet; but they were like the
Spartans, and concealed their smart under a smiling face.  We none of us
spoke of money, because that subject savoured of commerce and trade, and
though some might be poor, we were all aristocratic.  The Cranfordians
had that kindly _esprit de corps_ which made them overlook all
deficiencies in success when some among them tried to conceal their
poverty.  When Mrs Forrester, for instance, gave a party in her
baby-house of a dwelling, and the little maiden disturbed the ladies on
the sofa by a request that she might get the tea-tray out from
underneath, everyone took this novel proceeding as the most natural
thing in the world, and talked on about household forms and ceremonies
as if we all believed that our hostess had a regular servants’ hall,
second table, with housekeeper and steward, instead of the one little
charity-school maiden, whose short ruddy arms could never have been
strong enough to carry the tray upstairs, if she had not been assisted
in private by her mistress, who now sat in state, pretending not to know
what cakes were sent up, though she knew, and we knew, and she knew that
we knew, and we knew that she knew that we knew, she had been busy all
the morning making tea-bread and sponge-cakes.

There were one or two consequences arising from this general but
unacknowledged poverty, and this very much acknowledged gentility, which
were not amiss, and which might be introduced into many circles of
society to their great improvement.  For instance, the inhabitants of
Cranford kept early hours, and clattered home in their pattens, under
the guidance of a lantern-bearer, about nine o’clock at night; and the
whole town was abed and asleep by half-past ten.  Moreover, it was
considered “vulgar” (a tremendous word in Cranford) to give anything
expensive, in the way of eatable or drinkable, at the evening
entertainments.  Wafer bread-and-butter and sponge-biscuits were all
that the Honourable Mrs Jamieson gave; and she was sister-in-law to the
late Earl of Glenmire, although she did practise such “elegant economy.”

“Elegant economy!”  How naturally one falls back into the phraseology of
Cranford!  There, economy was always “elegant,” and money-spending
always “vulgar and ostentatious”; a sort of sour-grapeism which made us
very peaceful and satisfied.  I never shall forget the dismay felt when
a certain Captain Brown came to live at Cranford, and openly spoke about
his being poor—not in a whisper to an intimate friend, the doors and
windows being previously closed, but in the public street! in a loud
military voice! alleging his poverty as a reason for not taking a
particular house.  The ladies of Cranford were already rather moaning
over the invasion of their territories by a man and a gentleman.  He was
a half-pay captain, and had obtained some situation on a neighbouring
railroad, which had been vehemently petitioned against by the little
town; and if, in addition to his masculine gender, and his connection
with the obnoxious railroad, he was so brazen as to talk of being
poor—why, then, indeed, he must be sent to Coventry.  Death was as true
and as common as poverty; yet people never spoke about that, loud out in
the streets.  It was a word not to be mentioned to ears polite.  We had
tacitly agreed to ignore that any with whom we associated on terms of
visiting equality could ever be prevented by poverty from doing anything
that they wished.  If we walked to or from a party, it was because the
night was _so_ fine, or the air _so_ refreshing, not because
sedan-chairs were expensive.  If we wore prints, instead of summer
silks, it was because we preferred a washing material; and so on, till
we blinded ourselves to the vulgar fact that we were, all of us, people
of very moderate means.  Of course, then, we did not know what to make
of a man who could speak of poverty as if it was not a disgrace.  Yet,
somehow, Captain Brown made himself respected in Cranford, and was
called upon, in spite of all resolutions to the contrary.  I was
surprised to hear his opinions quoted as authority at a visit which I
paid to Cranford about a year after he had settled in the town.  My own
friends had been among the bitterest opponents of any proposal to visit
the Captain and his daughters, only twelve months before; and now he was
even admitted in the tabooed hours before twelve.  True, it was to
discover the cause of a smoking chimney, before the fire was lighted;
but still Captain Brown walked upstairs, nothing daunted, spoke in a
voice too large for the room, and joked quite in the way of a tame man
about the house.  He had been blind to all the small slights, and
omissions of trivial ceremonies, with which he had been received.  He
had been friendly, though the Cranford ladies had been cool; he had
answered small sarcastic compliments in good faith; and with his manly
frankness had overpowered all the shrinking which met him as a man who
was not ashamed to be poor. And, at last, his excellent masculine common
sense, and his facility in devising expedients to overcome domestic
dilemmas, had gained him an extraordinary place as authority among the
Cranford ladies.  He himself went on in his course, as unaware of his
popularity as he had been of the reverse; and I am sure he was startled
one day when he found his advice so highly esteemed as to make some
counsel which he had given in jest to be taken in sober, serious
earnest.

It was on this subject: An old lady had an Alderney cow, which she
looked upon as a daughter.  You could not pay the short quarter of an
hour call without being told of the wonderful milk or wonderful
intelligence of this animal.  The whole town knew and kindly regarded
Miss Betsy Barker’s Alderney; therefore great was the sympathy and
regret when, in an unguarded moment, the poor cow tumbled into a
lime-pit.  She moaned so loudly that she was soon heard and rescued; but
meanwhile the poor beast had lost most of her hair, and came out looking
naked, cold, and miserable, in a bare skin.  Everybody pitied the
animal, though a few could not restrain their smiles at her droll
appearance.  Miss Betsy Barker absolutely cried with sorrow and dismay;
and it was said she thought of trying a bath of oil.  This remedy,
perhaps, was recommended by some one of the number whose advice she
asked; but the proposal, if ever it was made, was knocked on the head by
Captain Brown’s decided “Get her a flannel waistcoat and flannel
drawers, ma’am, if you wish to keep her alive.  But my advice is, kill
the poor creature at once.”

Miss Betsy Barker dried her eyes, and thanked the Captain heartily; she
set to work, and by-and-by all the town turned out to see the Alderney
meekly going to her pasture, clad in dark grey flannel.  I have watched
her myself many a time.  Do you ever see cows dressed in grey flannel in
London?

                  [Picture: Meekly going to her pasture]

Captain Brown had taken a small house on the outskirts of the town,
where he lived with his two daughters.  He must have been upwards of
sixty at the time of the first visit I paid to Cranford after I had left
it as a residence.  But he had a wiry, well-trained, elastic figure, a
stiff military throw-back of his head, and a springing step, which made
him appear much younger than he was.  His eldest daughter looked almost
as old as himself, and betrayed the fact that his real was more than his
apparent age.  Miss Brown must have been forty; she had a sickly,
pained, careworn expression on her face, and looked as if the gaiety of
youth had long faded out of sight.  Even when young she must have been
plain and hard-featured.  Miss Jessie Brown was ten years younger than
her sister, and twenty shades prettier.  Her face was round and dimpled.
 Miss Jenkyns once said, in a passion against Captain Brown (the cause
of which I will tell you presently), “that she thought it was time for
Miss Jessie to leave off her dimples, and not always to be trying to
look like a child.”  It was true there was something childlike in her
face; and there will be, I think, till she dies, though she should live
to a hundred. Her eyes were large blue wondering eyes, looking straight
at you; her nose was unformed and snub, and her lips were red and dewy;
she wore her hair, too, in little rows of curls, which heightened this
appearance.  I do not know whether she was pretty or not; but I liked
her face, and so did everybody, and I do not think she could help her
dimples.  She had something of her father’s jauntiness of gait and
manner; and any female observer might detect a slight difference in the
attire of the two sisters—that of Miss Jessie being about two pounds per
annum more expensive than Miss Brown’s.  Two pounds was a large sum in
Captain Brown’s annual disbursements.

Such was the impression made upon me by the Brown family when I first
saw them all together in Cranford Church.  The Captain I had met
before—on the occasion of the smoky chimney, which he had cured by some
simple alteration in the flue.  In church, he held his double eye-glass
to his eyes during the Morning Hymn, and then lifted up his head erect
and sang out loud and joyfully.  He made the responses louder than the
clerk—an old man with a piping feeble voice, who, I think, felt
aggrieved at the Captain’s sonorous bass, and quivered higher and higher
in consequence.

On coming out of church, the brisk Captain paid the most gallant
attention to his two daughters.  He nodded and smiled to his
acquaintances; but he shook hands with none until he had helped Miss
Brown to unfurl her umbrella, had relieved her of her prayer-book, and
had waited patiently till she, with trembling nervous hands, had taken
up her gown to walk through the wet roads.

I wonder what the Cranford ladies did with Captain Brown at their
parties.  We had often rejoiced, in former days, that there was no
gentleman to be attended to, and to find conversation for, at the
card-parties.  We had congratulated ourselves upon the snugness of the
evenings; and, in our love for gentility, and distaste of mankind, we
had almost persuaded ourselves that to be a man was to be “vulgar”; so
that when I found my friend and hostess, Miss Jenkyns, was going to have
a party in my honour, and that Captain and the Miss Browns were invited,
I wondered much what would be the course of the evening.  Card-tables,
with green baize tops, were set out by daylight, just as usual; it was
the third week in November, so the evenings closed in about four.
Candles, and clean packs of cards, were arranged on each table.  The
fire was made up; the neat maid-servant had received her last
directions; and there we stood, dressed in our best, each with a
candle-lighter in our hands, ready to dart at the candles as soon as the
first knock came.  Parties in Cranford were solemn festivities, making
the ladies feel gravely elated as they sat together in their best
dresses.  As soon as three had arrived, we sat down to “Preference,” I
being the unlucky fourth.  The next four comers were put down
immediately to another table; and presently the tea-trays, which I had
seen set out in the store-room as I passed in the morning, were placed
each on the middle of a card-table. The china was delicate egg-shell;
the old-fashioned silver glittered with polishing; but the eatables were
of the slightest description.  While the trays were yet on the tables,
Captain and the Miss Browns came in; and I could see that, somehow or
other, the Captain was a favourite with all the ladies present.  Ruffled
brows were smoothed, sharp voices lowered at his approach.  Miss Brown
looked ill, and depressed almost to gloom. Miss Jessie smiled as usual,
and seemed nearly as popular as her father. He immediately and quietly
assumed the man’s place in the room; attended to every one’s wants,
lessened the pretty maid-servant’s labour by waiting on empty cups and
bread-and-butterless ladies; and yet did it all in so easy and dignified
a manner, and so much as if it were a matter of course for the strong to
attend to the weak, that he was a true man throughout.  He played for
threepenny points with as grave an interest as if they had been pounds;
and yet, in all his attention to strangers, he had an eye on his
suffering daughter—for suffering I was sure she was, though to many eyes
she might only appear to be irritable.  Miss Jessie could not play
cards: but she talked to the sitters-out, who, before her coming, had
been rather inclined to be cross.  She sang, too, to an old cracked
piano, which I think had been a spinet in its youth.  Miss Jessie sang,
“Jock of Hazeldean” a little out of tune; but we were none of us
musical, though Miss Jenkyns beat time, out of time, by way of appearing
to be so.

It was very good of Miss Jenkyns to do this; for I had seen that, a
little before, she had been a good deal annoyed by Miss Jessie Brown’s
unguarded admission (_à propos_ of Shetland wool) that she had an uncle,
her mother’s brother, who was a shopkeeper in Edinburgh.  Miss Jenkyns
tried to drown this confession by a terrible cough—for the Honourable
Mrs Jamieson was sitting at a card-table nearest Miss Jessie, and what
would she say or think if she found out she was in the same room with a
shop-keeper’s niece!  But Miss Jessie Brown (who had no tact, as we all
agreed the next morning) _would_ repeat the information, and assure Miss
Pole she could easily get her the identical Shetland wool required,
“through my uncle, who has the best assortment of Shetland goods of any
one in Edinbro’.”  It was to take the taste of this out of our mouths,
and the sound of this out of our ears, that Miss Jenkyns proposed music;
so I say again, it was very good of her to beat time to the song.

When the trays re-appeared with biscuits and wine, punctually at a
quarter to nine, there was conversation, comparing of cards, and talking
over tricks; but by-and-by Captain Brown sported a bit of literature.

“Have you seen any numbers of ‘The Pickwick Papers’?” said he.  (They
were then publishing in parts.)  “Capital thing!”

Now Miss Jenkyns was daughter of a deceased rector of Cranford; and, on
the strength of a number of manuscript sermons, and a pretty good
library of divinity, considered herself literary, and looked upon any
conversation about books as a challenge to her.  So she answered and
said, “Yes, she had seen them; indeed, she might say she had read them.”

“And what do you think of them?” exclaimed Captain Brown.  “Aren’t they
famously good?”

So urged Miss Jenkyns could not but speak.

“I must say, I don’t think they are by any means equal to Dr Johnson.
Still, perhaps, the author is young.  Let him persevere, and who knows
what he may become if he will take the great Doctor for his model?”
This was evidently too much for Captain Brown to take placidly; and I
saw the words on the tip of his tongue before Miss Jenkyns had finished
her sentence.

“It is quite a different sort of thing, my dear madam,” he began.

“I am quite aware of that,” returned she.  “And I make allowances,
Captain Brown.”

“Just allow me to read you a scene out of this month’s number,” pleaded
he.  “I had it only this morning, and I don’t think the company can have
read it yet.”

“As you please,” said she, settling herself with an air of resignation.
He read the account of the “swarry” which Sam Weller gave at Bath.  Some
of us laughed heartily.  _I_ did not dare, because I was staying in the
house.  Miss Jenkyns sat in patient gravity.  When it was ended, she
turned to me, and said with mild dignity—

“Fetch me ‘Rasselas,’ my dear, out of the book-room.”

When I had brought it to her, she turned to Captain Brown—

“Now allow _me_ to read you a scene, and then the present company can
judge between your favourite, Mr Boz, and Dr Johnson.”

She read one of the conversations between Rasselas and Imlac, in a
high-pitched, majestic voice: and when she had ended, she said, “I
imagine I am now justified in my preference of Dr Johnson as a writer of
fiction.”  The Captain screwed his lips up, and drummed on the table,
but he did not speak.  She thought she would give him a finishing blow
or two.

         [Picture: Endeavouring to beguile her into conversation]

“I consider it vulgar, and below the dignity of literature, to publish
in numbers.”

“How was the _Rambler_ published, ma’am?” asked Captain Brown in a low
voice, which I think Miss Jenkyns could not have heard.

“Dr Johnson’s style is a model for young beginners.  My father
recommended it to me when I began to write letters—I have formed my own
style upon it; I recommend it to your favourite.”

“I should be very sorry for him to exchange his style for any such
pompous writing,” said Captain Brown.

Miss Jenkyns felt this as a personal affront, in a way of which the
Captain had not dreamed.  Epistolary writing she and her friends
considered as her _forte_.  Many a copy of many a letter have I seen
written and corrected on the slate, before she “seized the half-hour
just previous to post-time to assure” her friends of this or of that;
and Dr Johnson was, as she said, her model in these compositions.  She
drew herself up with dignity, and only replied to Captain Brown’s last
remark by saying, with marked emphasis on every syllable, “I prefer Dr
Johnson to Mr Boz.”

It is said—I won’t vouch for the fact—that Captain Brown was heard to
say, _sotto voce_, “D—n Dr Johnson!”  If he did, he was penitent
afterwards, as he showed by going to stand near Miss Jenkyns’ arm-chair,
and endeavouring to beguile her into conversation on some more pleasing
subject.  But she was inexorable.  The next day she made the remark I
have mentioned about Miss Jessie’s dimples.




CHAPTER II.
THE CAPTAIN


IT was impossible to live a month at Cranford and not know the daily
habits of each resident; and long before my visit was ended I knew much
concerning the whole Brown trio.  There was nothing new to be discovered
respecting their poverty; for they had spoken simply and openly about
that from the very first.  They made no mystery of the necessity for
their being economical.  All that remained to be discovered was the
Captain’s infinite kindness of heart, and the various modes in which,
unconsciously to himself, he manifested it.  Some little anecdotes were
talked about for some time after they occurred.  As we did not read
much, and as all the ladies were pretty well suited with servants, there
was a dearth of subjects for conversation.  We therefore discussed the
circumstance of the Captain taking a poor old woman’s dinner out of her
hands one very slippery Sunday.  He had met her returning from the
bakehouse as he came from church, and noticed her precarious footing;
and, with the grave dignity with which he did everything, he relieved
her of her burden, and steered along the street by her side, carrying
her baked mutton and potatoes safely home.  This was thought very
eccentric; and it was rather expected that he would pay a round of
calls, on the Monday morning, to explain and apologise to the Cranford
sense of propriety: but he did no such thing: and then it was decided
that he was ashamed, and was keeping out of sight.  In a kindly pity for
him, we began to say, “After all, the Sunday morning’s occurrence showed
great goodness of heart,” and it was resolved that he should be
comforted on his next appearance amongst us; but, lo! he came down upon
us, untouched by any sense of shame, speaking loud and bass as ever, his
head thrown back, his wig as jaunty and well-curled as usual, and we
were obliged to conclude he had forgotten all about Sunday.

Miss Pole and Miss Jessie Brown had set up a kind of intimacy on the
strength of the Shetland wool and the new knitting stitches; so it
happened that when I went to visit Miss Pole I saw more of the Browns
than I had done while staying with Miss Jenkyns, who had never got over
what she called Captain Brown’s disparaging remarks upon Dr Johnson as a
writer of light and agreeable fiction.  I found that Miss Brown was
seriously ill of some lingering, incurable complaint, the pain
occasioned by which gave the uneasy expression to her face that I had
taken for unmitigated crossness.  Cross, too, she was at times, when the
nervous irritability occasioned by her disease became past endurance.
Miss Jessie bore with her at these times, even more patiently than she
did with the bitter self-upbraidings by which they were invariably
succeeded. Miss Brown used to accuse herself, not merely of hasty and
irritable temper, but also of being the cause why her father and sister
were obliged to pinch, in order to allow her the small luxuries which
were necessaries in her condition.  She would so fain have made
sacrifices for them, and have lightened their cares, that the original
generosity of her disposition added acerbity to her temper.  All this
was borne by Miss Jessie and her father with more than placidity—with
absolute tenderness. I forgave Miss Jessie her singing out of tune, and
her juvenility of dress, when I saw her at home.  I came to perceive
that Captain Brown’s dark Brutus wig and padded coat (alas! too often
threadbare) were remnants of the military smartness of his youth, which
he now wore unconsciously.  He was a man of infinite resources, gained
in his barrack experience.  As he confessed, no one could black his
boots to please him except himself; but, indeed, he was not above saving
the little maid-servant’s labours in every way—knowing, most likely,
that his daughter’s illness made the place a hard one.

He endeavoured to make peace with Miss Jenkyns soon after the memorable
dispute I have named, by a present of a wooden fire-shovel (his own
making), having heard her say how much the grating of an iron one
annoyed her.  She received the present with cool gratitude, and thanked
him formally.  When he was gone, she bade me put it away in the
lumber-room; feeling, probably, that no present from a man who preferred
Mr Boz to Dr Johnson could be less jarring than an iron fire-shovel.

Such was the state of things when I left Cranford and went to Drumble.
I had, however, several correspondents, who kept me _au fait_ as to the
proceedings of the dear little town.  There was Miss Pole, who was
becoming as much absorbed in crochet as she had been once in knitting,
and the burden of whose letter was something like, “But don’t you forget
the white worsted at Flint’s” of the old song; for at the end of every
sentence of news came a fresh direction as to some crochet commission
which I was to execute for her.  Miss Matilda Jenkyns (who did not mind
being called Miss Matty, when Miss Jenkyns was not by) wrote nice, kind,
rambling letters, now and then venturing into an opinion of her own; but
suddenly pulling herself up, and either begging me not to name what she
had said, as Deborah thought differently, and _she_ knew, or else
putting in a postscript to the effect that, since writing the above, she
had been talking over the subject with Deborah, and was quite convinced
that, etc.—(here probably followed a recantation of every opinion she
had given in the letter).  Then came Miss Jenkyns—Debōrah, as she liked
Miss Matty to call her, her father having once said that the Hebrew name
ought to be so pronounced.  I secretly think she took the Hebrew
prophetess for a model in character; and, indeed, she was not unlike the
stern prophetess in some ways, making allowance, of course, for modern
customs and difference in dress.  Miss Jenkyns wore a cravat, and a
little bonnet like a jockey-cap, and altogether had the appearance of a
strong-minded woman; although she would have despised the modern idea of
women being equal to men.  Equal, indeed! she knew they were superior.
But to return to her letters.  Everything in them was stately and grand
like herself. I have been looking them over (dear Miss Jenkyns, how I
honoured her!) and I will give an extract, more especially because it
relates to our friend Captain Brown:—

“The Honourable Mrs Jamieson has only just quitted me; and, in the
course of conversation, she communicated to me the intelligence that she
had yesterday received a call from her revered husband’s quondam friend,
Lord Mauleverer.  You will not easily conjecture what brought his
lordship within the precincts of our little town.  It was to see Captain
Brown, with whom, it appears, his lordship was acquainted in the ‘plumed
wars,’ and who had the privilege of averting destruction from his
lordship’s head when some great peril was impending over it, off the
misnomered Cape of Good Hope.  You know our friend the Honourable Mrs
Jamieson’s deficiency in the spirit of innocent curiosity, and you will
therefore not be so much surprised when I tell you she was quite unable
to disclose to me the exact nature of the peril in question.  I was
anxious, I confess, to ascertain in what manner Captain Brown, with his
limited establishment, could receive so distinguished a guest; and I
discovered that his lordship retired to rest, and, let us hope, to
refreshing slumbers, at the Angel Hotel; but shared the Brunonian meals
during the two days that he honoured Cranford with his august presence.
Mrs Johnson, our civil butcher’s wife, informs me that Miss Jessie
purchased a leg of lamb; but, besides this, I can hear of no preparation
whatever to give a suitable reception to so distinguished a visitor.
Perhaps they entertained him with ‘the feast of reason and the flow of
soul’; and to us, who are acquainted with Captain Brown’s sad want of
relish for ‘the pure wells of English undefiled,’ it may be matter for
congratulation that he has had the opportunity of improving his taste by
holding converse with an elegant and refined member of the British
aristocracy. But from some mundane failings who is altogether free?”

Miss Pole and Miss Matty wrote to me by the same post.  Such a piece of
news as Lord Mauleverer’s visit was not to be lost on the Cranford
letter-writers: they made the most of it.  Miss Matty humbly apologised
for writing at the same time as her sister, who was so much more capable
than she to describe the honour done to Cranford; but in spite of a
little bad spelling, Miss Matty’s account gave me the best idea of the
commotion occasioned by his lordship’s visit, after it had occurred;
for, except the people at the Angel, the Browns, Mrs Jamieson, and a
little lad his lordship had sworn at for driving a dirty hoop against
the aristocratic legs, I could not hear of any one with whom his
lordship had held conversation.

My next visit to Cranford was in the summer.  There had been neither
births, deaths, nor marriages since I was there last.  Everybody lived
in the same house, and wore pretty nearly the same well-preserved,
old-fashioned clothes.  The greatest event was, that Miss Jenkyns had
purchased a new carpet for the drawing-room.  Oh, the busy work Miss
Matty and I had in chasing the sunbeams, as they fell in an afternoon
right down on this carpet through the blindless window!  We spread
newspapers over the places and sat down to our book or our work; and,
lo! in a quarter of an hour the sun had moved, and was blazing away on a
fresh spot; and down again we went on our knees to alter the position of
the newspapers.  We were very busy, too, one whole morning, before Miss
Jenkyns gave her party, in following her directions, and in cutting out
and stitching together pieces of newspaper so as to form little paths to
every chair set for the expected visitors, lest their shoes might dirty
or defile the purity of the carpet.  Do you make paper paths for every
guest to walk upon in London?

Captain Brown and Miss Jenkyns were not very cordial to each other.  The
literary dispute, of which I had seen the beginning, was a “raw,” the
slightest touch on which made them wince.  It was the only difference of
opinion they had ever had; but that difference was enough.  Miss Jenkyns
could not refrain from talking at Captain Brown; and, though he did not
reply, he drummed with his fingers, which action she felt and resented
as very disparaging to Dr Johnson.  He was rather ostentatious in his
preference of the writings of Mr Boz; would walk through the streets so
absorbed in them that he all but ran against Miss Jenkyns; and though
his apologies were earnest and sincere, and though he did not, in fact,
do more than startle her and himself, she owned to me she had rather he
had knocked her down, if he had only been reading a higher style of
literature.  The poor, brave Captain! he looked older, and more worn,
and his clothes were very threadbare.  But he seemed as bright and
cheerful as ever, unless he was asked about his daughter’s health.

“She suffers a great deal, and she must suffer more: we do what we can
to alleviate her pain;—God’s will be done!”  He took off his hat at
these last words.  I found, from Miss Matty, that everything had been
done, in fact.  A medical man, of high repute in that country
neighbourhood, had been sent for, and every injunction he had given was
attended to, regardless of expense.  Miss Matty was sure they denied
themselves many things in order to make the invalid comfortable; but
they never spoke about it; and as for Miss Jessie!—“I really think she’s
an angel,” said poor Miss Matty, quite overcome.  “To see her way of
bearing with Miss Brown’s crossness, and the bright face she puts on
after she’s been sitting up a whole night and scolded above half of it,
is quite beautiful.  Yet she looks as neat and as ready to welcome the
Captain at breakfast-time as if she had been asleep in the Queen’s bed
all night. My dear! you could never laugh at her prim little curls or
her pink bows again if you saw her as I have done.”  I could only feel
very penitent, and greet Miss Jessie with double respect when I met her
next.  She looked faded and pinched; and her lips began to quiver, as if
she was very weak, when she spoke of her sister.  But she brightened,
and sent back the tears that were glittering in her pretty eyes, as she
said—

“But, to be sure, what a town Cranford is for kindness!  I don’t suppose
any one has a better dinner than usual cooked but the best part of all
comes in a little covered basin for my sister.  The poor people will
leave their earliest vegetables at our door for her.  They speak short
and gruff, as if they were ashamed of it: but I am sure it often goes to
my heart to see their thoughtfulness.”  The tears now came back and
overflowed; but after a minute or two she began to scold herself, and
ended by going away the same cheerful Miss Jessie as ever.

“But why does not this Lord Mauleverer do something for the man who
saved his life?” said I.

“Why, you see, unless Captain Brown has some reason for it, he never
speaks about being poor; and he walked along by his lordship looking as
happy and cheerful as a prince; and as they never called attention to
their dinner by apologies, and as Miss Brown was better that day, and
all seemed bright, I daresay his lordship never knew how much care there
was in the background.  He did send game in the winter pretty often, but
now he is gone abroad.”

I had often occasion to notice the use that was made of fragments and
small opportunities in Cranford; the rose-leaves that were gathered ere
they fell to make into a potpourri for someone who had no garden; the
little bundles of lavender flowers sent to strew the drawers of some
town-dweller, or to burn in the chamber of some invalid.  Things that
many would despise, and actions which it seemed scarcely worth while to
perform, were all attended to in Cranford.  Miss Jenkyns stuck an apple
full of cloves, to be heated and smell pleasantly in Miss Brown’s room;
and as she put in each clove she uttered a Johnsonian sentence.  Indeed,
she never could think of the Browns without talking Johnson; and, as
they were seldom absent from her thoughts just then, I heard many a
rolling, three-piled sentence.

Captain Brown called one day to thank Miss Jenkyns for many little
kindnesses, which I did not know until then that she had rendered.  He
had suddenly become like an old man; his deep bass voice had a quavering
in it, his eyes looked dim, and the lines on his face were deep.  He did
not—could not—speak cheerfully of his daughter’s state, but he talked
with manly, pious resignation, and not much.  Twice over he said, “What
Jessie has been to us, God only knows!” and after the second time, he
got up hastily, shook hands all round without speaking, and left the
room.

That afternoon we perceived little groups in the street, all listening
with faces aghast to some tale or other.  Miss Jenkyns wondered what
could be the matter for some time before she took the undignified step
of sending Jenny out to inquire.

Jenny came back with a white face of terror.  “Oh, ma’am!  Oh, Miss
Jenkyns, ma’am!  Captain Brown is killed by them nasty cruel railroads!”
and she burst into tears.  She, along with many others, had experienced
the poor Captain’s kindness.

“How?—where—where?  Good God!  Jenny, don’t waste time in crying, but
tell us something.”  Miss Matty rushed out into the street at once, and
collared the man who was telling the tale.

 [Picture: She brought the affrighted carter ... into the
drawing-room]

“Come in—come to my sister at once, Miss Jenkyns, the rector’s daughter.
Oh, man, man! say it is not true,” she cried, as she brought the
affrighted carter, sleeking down his hair, into the drawing-room, where
he stood with his wet boots on the new carpet, and no one regarded it.

“Please, mum, it is true.  I seed it myself,” and he shuddered at the
recollection.  “The Captain was a-reading some new book as he was deep
in, a-waiting for the down train; and there was a little lass as wanted
to come to its mammy, and gave its sister the slip, and came toddling
across the line.  And he looked up sudden, at the sound of the train
coming, and seed the child, and he darted on the line and cotched it up,
and his foot slipped, and the train came over him in no time.  O Lord,
Lord!  Mum, it’s quite true, and they’ve come over to tell his
daughters. The child’s safe, though, with only a bang on its shoulder as
he threw it to its mammy.  Poor Captain would be glad of that, mum,
wouldn’t he?  God bless him!”  The great rough carter puckered up his
manly face, and turned away to hide his tears.  I turned to Miss
Jenkyns.  She looked very ill, as if she were going to faint, and signed
to me to open the window.

“Matilda, bring me my bonnet.  I must go to those girls.  God pardon me,
if ever I have spoken contemptuously to the Captain!”

Miss Jenkyns arrayed herself to go out, telling Miss Matilda to give the
man a glass of wine.  While she was away, Miss Matty and I huddled over
the fire, talking in a low and awestruck voice.  I know we cried quietly
all the time.

Miss Jenkyns came home in a silent mood, and we durst not ask her many
questions.  She told us that Miss Jessie had fainted, and that she and
Miss Pole had had some difficulty in bringing her round; but that, as
soon as she recovered, she begged one of them to go and sit with her
sister.

“Mr Hoggins says she cannot live many days, and she shall be spared this
shock,” said Miss Jessie, shivering with feelings to which she dared not
give way.

“But how can you manage, my dear?” asked Miss Jenkyns; “you cannot bear
up, she must see your tears.”

“God will help me—I will not give way—she was asleep when the news came;
she may be asleep yet.  She would be so utterly miserable, not merely at
my father’s death, but to think of what would become of me; she is so
good to me.”  She looked up earnestly in their faces with her soft true
eyes, and Miss Pole told Miss Jenkyns afterwards she could hardly bear
it, knowing, as she did, how Miss Brown treated her sister.

However, it was settled according to Miss Jessie’s wish.  Miss Brown was
to be told her father had been summoned to take a short journey on
railway business.  They had managed it in some way—Miss Jenkyns could
not exactly say how.  Miss Pole was to stop with Miss Jessie.  Mrs
Jamieson had sent to inquire.  And this was all we heard that night; and
a sorrowful night it was.  The next day a full account of the fatal
accident was in the county paper which Miss Jenkyns took in.  Her eyes
were very weak, she said, and she asked me to read it.  When I came to
the “gallant gentleman was deeply engaged in the perusal of a number of
‘Pickwick,’ which he had just received,” Miss Jenkyns shook her head
long and solemnly, and then sighed out, “Poor, dear, infatuated man!”

The corpse was to be taken from the station to the parish church, there
to be interred.  Miss Jessie had set her heart on following it to the
grave; and no dissuasives could alter her resolve.  Her restraint upon
herself made her almost obstinate; she resisted all Miss Pole’s
entreaties and Miss Jenkyns’ advice.  At last Miss Jenkyns gave up the
point; and after a silence, which I feared portended some deep
displeasure against Miss Jessie, Miss Jenkyns said she should accompany
the latter to the funeral.

“It is not fit for you to go alone.  It would be against both propriety
and humanity were I to allow it.”

Miss Jessie seemed as if she did not half like this arrangement; but her
obstinacy, if she had any, had been exhausted in her determination to go
to the interment.  She longed, poor thing, I have no doubt, to cry alone
over the grave of the dear father to whom she had been all in all, and
to give way, for one little half-hour, uninterrupted by sympathy and
unobserved by friendship.  But it was not to be.  That afternoon Miss
Jenkyns sent out for a yard of black crape, and employed herself busily
in trimming the little black silk bonnet I have spoken about.  When it
was finished she put it on, and looked at us for approbation—admiration
she despised.  I was full of sorrow, but, by one of those whimsical
thoughts which come unbidden into our heads, in times of deepest grief,
I no sooner saw the bonnet than I was reminded of a helmet; and in that
hybrid bonnet, half helmet, half jockey-cap, did Miss Jenkyns attend
Captain Brown’s funeral, and, I believe, supported Miss Jessie with a
tender, indulgent firmness which was invaluable, allowing her to weep
her passionate fill before they left.

Miss Pole, Miss Matty, and I, meanwhile attended to Miss Brown: and hard
work we found it to relieve her querulous and never-ending complaints.
But if we were so weary and dispirited, what must Miss Jessie have been!
Yet she came back almost calm as if she had gained a new strength.  She
put off her mourning dress, and came in, looking pale and gentle,
thanking us each with a soft long pressure of the hand.  She could even
smile—a faint, sweet, wintry smile—as if to reassure us of her power to
endure; but her look made our eyes fill suddenly with tears, more than
if she had cried outright.

It was settled that Miss Pole was to remain with her all the watching
livelong night; and that Miss Matty and I were to return in the morning
to relieve them, and give Miss Jessie the opportunity for a few hours of
sleep.  But when the morning came, Miss Jenkyns appeared at the
breakfast-table, equipped in her helmet-bonnet, and ordered Miss Matty
to stay at home, as she meant to go and help to nurse.  She was
evidently in a state of great friendly excitement, which she showed by
eating her breakfast standing, and scolding the household all round.

No nursing—no energetic strong-minded woman could help Miss Brown now.
There was that in the room as we entered which was stronger than us all,
and made us shrink into solemn awestruck helplessness.  Miss Brown was
dying.  We hardly knew her voice, it was so devoid of the complaining
tone we had always associated with it.  Miss Jessie told me afterwards
that it, and her face too, were just what they had been formerly, when
her mother’s death left her the young anxious head of the family, of
whom only Miss Jessie survived.

She was conscious of her sister’s presence, though not, I think, of
ours. We stood a little behind the curtain: Miss Jessie knelt with her
face near her sister’s, in order to catch the last soft awful whispers.

“Oh, Jessie!  Jessie!  How selfish I have been!  God forgive me for
letting you sacrifice yourself for me as you did!  I have so loved
you—and yet I have thought only of myself.  God forgive me!”

“Hush, love! hush!” said Miss Jessie, sobbing.

“And my father, my dear, dear father!  I will not complain now, if God
will give me strength to be patient.  But, oh, Jessie! tell my father
how I longed and yearned to see him at last, and to ask his forgiveness.
 He can never know now how I loved him—oh! if I might but tell him,
before I die!  What a life of sorrow his has been, and I have done so
little to cheer him!”

A light came into Miss Jessie’s face.  “Would it comfort you, dearest,
to think that he does know?—would it comfort you, love, to know that his
cares, his sorrows”—Her voice quivered, but she steadied it into
calmness—“Mary! he has gone before you to the place where the weary are
at rest.  He knows now how you loved him.”

A strange look, which was not distress, came over Miss Brown’s face.
She did not speak for some time, but then we saw her lips form the
words, rather than heard the sound—“Father, mother, Harry, Archy;”—then,
as if it were a new idea throwing a filmy shadow over her darkened
mind—“But you will be alone, Jessie!”

Miss Jessie had been feeling this all during the silence, I think; for
the tears rolled down her cheeks like rain, at these words, and she
could not answer at first.  Then she put her hands together tight, and
lifted them up, and said—but not to us—“Though He slay me, yet will I
trust in Him.”

In a few moments more Miss Brown lay calm and still—never to sorrow or
murmur more.

After this second funeral, Miss Jenkyns insisted that Miss Jessie should
come to stay with her rather than go back to the desolate house, which,
in fact, we learned from Miss Jessie, must now be given up, as she had
not wherewithal to maintain it.  She had something above twenty pounds a
year, besides the interest of the money for which the furniture would
sell; but she could not live upon that: and so we talked over her
qualifications for earning money.

“I can sew neatly,” said she, “and I like nursing.  I think, too, I
could manage a house, if any one would try me as housekeeper; or I would
go into a shop as saleswoman, if they would have patience with me at
first.”

Miss Jenkyns declared, in an angry voice, that she should do no such
thing; and talked to herself about “some people having no idea of their
rank as a captain’s daughter,” nearly an hour afterwards, when she
brought Miss Jessie up a basin of delicately-made arrowroot, and stood
over her like a dragoon until the last spoonful was finished: then she
disappeared.  Miss Jessie began to tell me some more of the plans which
had suggested themselves to her, and insensibly fell into talking of the
days that were past and gone, and interested me so much I neither knew
nor heeded how time passed.  We were both startled when Miss Jenkyns
reappeared, and caught us crying.  I was afraid lest she would be
displeased, as she often said that crying hindered digestion, and I knew
she wanted Miss Jessie to get strong; but, instead, she looked queer and
excited, and fidgeted round us without saying anything.  At last she
spoke.

“I have been so much startled—no, I’ve not been at all startled—don’t
mind me, my dear Miss Jessie—I’ve been very much surprised—in fact, I’ve
had a caller, whom you knew once, my dear Miss Jessie”—

Miss Jessie went very white, then flushed scarlet, and looked eagerly at
Miss Jenkyns.

“A gentleman, my dear, who wants to know if you would see him.”

“Is it?—it is not”—stammered out Miss Jessie—and got no farther.

“This is his card,” said Miss Jenkyns, giving it to Miss Jessie; and
while her head was bent over it, Miss Jenkyns went through a series of
winks and odd faces to me, and formed her lips into a long sentence, of
which, of course, I could not understand a word.

“May he come up?” asked Miss Jenkyns at last.

“Oh, yes! certainly!” said Miss Jessie, as much as to say, this is your
house, you may show any visitor where you like.  She took up some
knitting of Miss Matty’s and began to be very busy, though I could see
how she trembled all over.

Miss Jenkyns rang the bell, and told the servant who answered it to show
Major Gordon upstairs; and, presently, in walked a tall, fine,
frank-looking man of forty or upwards.  He shook hands with Miss Jessie;
but he could not see her eyes, she kept them so fixed on the ground.
Miss Jenkyns asked me if I would come and help her to tie up the
preserves in the store-room; and though Miss Jessie plucked at my gown,
and even looked up at me with begging eye, I durst not refuse to go
where Miss Jenkyns asked.  Instead of tying up preserves in the
store-room, however, we went to talk in the dining-room; and there Miss
Jenkyns told me what Major Gordon had told her; how he had served in the
same regiment with Captain Brown, and had become acquainted with Miss
Jessie, then a sweet-looking, blooming girl of eighteen; how the
acquaintance had grown into love on his part, though it had been some
years before he had spoken; how, on becoming possessed, through the will
of an uncle, of a good estate in Scotland, he had offered and been
refused, though with so much agitation and evident distress that he was
sure she was not indifferent to him; and how he had discovered that the
obstacle was the fell disease which was, even then, too surely
threatening her sister. She had mentioned that the surgeons foretold
intense suffering; and there was no one but herself to nurse her poor
Mary, or cheer and comfort her father during the time of illness.  They
had had long discussions; and on her refusal to pledge herself to him as
his wife when all should be over, he had grown angry, and broken off
entirely, and gone abroad, believing that she was a cold-hearted person
whom he would do well to forget.  He had been travelling in the East,
and was on his return home when, at Rome, he saw the account of Captain
Brown’s death in _Galignani_.

Just then Miss Matty, who had been out all the morning, and had only
lately returned to the house, burst in with a face of dismay and
outraged propriety.

“Oh, goodness me!” she said.  “Deborah, there’s a gentleman sitting in
the drawing-room with his arm round Miss Jessie’s waist!”  Miss Matty’s
eyes looked large with terror.

          [Picture: “With his arm around Miss Jessie’s waist!”]

Miss Jenkyns snubbed her down in an instant.

“The most proper place in the world for his arm to be in.  Go away,
Matilda, and mind your own business.”  This from her sister, who had
hitherto been a model of feminine decorum, was a blow for poor Miss
Matty, and with a double shock she left the room.

The last time I ever saw poor Miss Jenkyns was many years after this.
Mrs Gordon had kept up a warm and affectionate intercourse with all at
Cranford.  Miss Jenkyns, Miss Matty, and Miss Pole had all been to visit
her, and returned with wonderful accounts of her house, her husband, her
dress, and her looks.  For, with happiness, something of her early bloom
returned; she had been a year or two younger than we had taken her for.
Her eyes were always lovely, and, as Mrs Gordon, her dimples were not
out of place.  At the time to which I have referred, when I last saw
Miss Jenkyns, that lady was old and feeble, and had lost something of
her strong mind.  Little Flora Gordon was staying with the Misses
Jenkyns, and when I came in she was reading aloud to Miss Jenkyns, who
lay feeble and changed on the sofa.  Flora put down the _Rambler_ when I
came in.

“Ah!” said Miss Jenkyns, “you find me changed, my dear.  I can’t see as
I used to do.  If Flora were not here to read to me, I hardly know how I
should get through the day.  Did you ever read the _Rambler_?  It’s a
wonderful book—wonderful! and the most improving reading for Flora”
(which I daresay it would have been, if she could have read half the
words without spelling, and could have understood the meaning of a
third), “better than that strange old book, with the queer name, poor
Captain Brown was killed for reading—that book by Mr Boz, you know—‘Old
Poz’; when I was a girl—but that’s a long time ago—I acted Lucy in ‘Old
Poz.’”  She babbled on long enough for Flora to get a good long spell at
the “Christmas Carol,” which Miss Matty had left on the table.




CHAPTER III.
A LOVE AFFAIR OF LONG AGO


I THOUGHT that probably my connection with Cranford would cease after
Miss Jenkyns’s death; at least, that it would have to be kept up by
correspondence, which bears much the same relation to personal
intercourse that the books of dried plants I sometimes see (“Hortus
Siccus,” I think they call the thing) do to the living and fresh flowers
in the lanes and meadows.  I was pleasantly surprised, therefore, by
receiving a letter from Miss Pole (who had always come in for a
supplementary week after my annual visit to Miss Jenkyns) proposing that
I should go and stay with her; and then, in a couple of days after my
acceptance, came a note from Miss Matty, in which, in a rather
circuitous and very humble manner, she told me how much pleasure I
should confer if I could spend a week or two with her, either before or
after I had been at Miss Pole’s; “for,” she said, “since my dear
sister’s death I am well aware I have no attractions to offer; it is
only to the kindness of my friends that I can owe their company.”

Of course I promised to come to dear Miss Matty as soon as I had ended
my visit to Miss Pole; and the day after my arrival at Cranford I went
to see her, much wondering what the house would be like without Miss
Jenkyns, and rather dreading the changed aspect of things.  Miss Matty
began to cry as soon as she saw me.  She was evidently nervous from
having anticipated my call.  I comforted her as well as I could; and I
found the best consolation I could give was the honest praise that came
from my heart as I spoke of the deceased.  Miss Matty slowly shook her
head over each virtue as it was named and attributed to her sister; and
at last she could not restrain the tears which had long been silently
flowing, but hid her face behind her handkerchief and sobbed aloud.

“Dear Miss Matty,” said I, taking her hand—for indeed I did not know in
what way to tell her how sorry I was for her, left deserted in the
world. She put down her handkerchief and said—

“My dear, I’d rather you did not call me Matty.  She did not like it;
but I did many a thing she did not like, I’m afraid—and now she’s gone!
If you please, my love, will you call me Matilda?”

I promised faithfully, and began to practise the new name with Miss Pole
that very day; and, by degrees, Miss Matilda’s feeling on the subject
was known through Cranford, and we all tried to drop the more familiar
name, but with so little success that by-and-by we gave up the attempt.

My visit to Miss Pole was very quiet.  Miss Jenkyns had so long taken
the lead in Cranford that now she was gone, they hardly knew how to give
a party.  The Honourable Mrs Jamieson, to whom Miss Jenkyns herself had
always yielded the post of honour, was fat and inert, and very much at
the mercy of her old servants.  If they chose that she should give a
party, they reminded her of the necessity for so doing: if not, she let
it alone.  There was all the more time for me to hear old-world stories
from Miss Pole, while she sat knitting, and I making my father’s shirts.
I always took a quantity of plain sewing to Cranford; for, as we did not
read much, or walk much, I found it a capital time to get through my
work.  One of Miss Pole’s stories related to a shadow of a love affair
that was dimly perceived or suspected long years before.

Presently, the time arrived when I was to remove to Miss Matilda’s
house. I found her timid and anxious about the arrangements for my
comfort. Many a time, while I was unpacking, did she come backwards and
forwards to stir the fire which burned all the worse for being so
frequently poked.

“Have you drawers enough, dear?” asked she.  “I don’t know exactly how
my sister used to arrange them.  She had capital methods.  I am sure she
would have trained a servant in a week to make a better fire than this,
and Fanny has been with me four months.”

This subject of servants was a standing grievance, and I could not
wonder much at it; for if gentlemen were scarce, and almost unheard of
in the “genteel society” of Cranford, they or their
counterparts—handsome young men—abounded in the lower classes.  The
pretty neat servant-maids had their choice of desirable “followers”; and
their mistresses, without having the sort of mysterious dread of men and
matrimony that Miss Matilda had, might well feel a little anxious lest
the heads of their comely maids should be turned by the joiner, or the
butcher, or the gardener, who were obliged, by their callings, to come
to the house, and who, as ill-luck would have it, were generally
handsome and unmarried. Fanny’s lovers, if she had any—and Miss Matilda
suspected her of so many flirtations that, if she had not been very
pretty, I should have doubted her having one—were a constant anxiety to
her mistress.  She was forbidden, by the articles of her engagement, to
have “followers”; and though she had answered, innocently enough,
doubling up the hem of her apron as she spoke, “Please, ma’am, I never
had more than one at a time,” Miss Matty prohibited that one.  But a
vision of a man seemed to haunt the kitchen.  Fanny assured me that it
was all fancy, or else I should have said myself that I had seen a man’s
coat-tails whisk into the scullery once, when I went on an errand into
the store-room at night; and another evening, when, our watches having
stopped, I went to look at the clock, there was a very odd appearance,
singularly like a young man squeezed up between the clock and the back
of the open kitchen door: and I thought Fanny snatched up the candle
very hastily, so as to throw the shadow on the clock face, while she
very positively told me the time half-an-hour too early, as we found out
afterwards by the church clock. But I did not add to Miss Matty’s
anxieties by naming my suspicions, especially as Fanny said to me, the
next day, that it was such a queer kitchen for having odd shadows about
it, she really was almost afraid to stay; “for you know, miss,” she
added, “I don’t see a creature from six o’clock tea, till Missus rings
the bell for prayers at ten.”

However, it so fell out that Fanny had to leave and Miss Matilda begged
me to stay and “settle her” with the new maid; to which I consented,
after I had heard from my father that he did not want me at home.  The
new servant was a rough, honest-looking, country girl, who had only
lived in a farm place before; but I liked her looks when she came to be
hired; and I promised Miss Matilda to put her in the ways of the house.
The said ways were religiously such as Miss Matilda thought her sister
would approve.  Many a domestic rule and regulation had been a subject
of plaintive whispered murmur to me during Miss Jenkyns’s life; but now
that she was gone, I do not think that even I, who was a favourite,
durst have suggested an alteration.  To give an instance: we constantly
adhered to the forms which were observed, at meal-times, in “my father,
the rector’s house.”  Accordingly, we had always wine and dessert; but
the decanters were only filled when there was a party, and what remained
was seldom touched, though we had two wine-glasses apiece every day
after dinner, until the next festive occasion arrived, when the state of
the remainder wine was examined into in a family council.  The dregs
were often given to the poor: but occasionally, when a good deal had
been left at the last party (five months ago, it might be), it was added
to some of a fresh bottle, brought up from the cellar.  I fancy poor
Captain Brown did not much like wine, for I noticed he never finished
his first glass, and most military men take several.  Then, as to our
dessert, Miss Jenkyns used to gather currants and gooseberries for it
herself, which I sometimes thought would have tasted better fresh from
the trees; but then, as Miss Jenkyns observed, there would have been
nothing for dessert in summer-time.  As it was, we felt very genteel
with our two glasses apiece, and a dish of gooseberries at the top, of
currants and biscuits at the sides, and two decanters at the bottom.
When oranges came in, a curious proceeding was gone through.  Miss
Jenkyns did not like to cut the fruit; for, as she observed, the juice
all ran out nobody knew where; sucking (only I think she used some more
recondite word) was in fact the only way of enjoying oranges; but then
there was the unpleasant association with a ceremony frequently gone
through by little babies; and so, after dessert, in orange season, Miss
Jenkyns and Miss Matty used to rise up, possess themselves each of an
orange in silence, and withdraw to the privacy of their own rooms to
indulge in sucking oranges.

I had once or twice tried, on such occasions, to prevail on Miss Matty
to stay, and had succeeded in her sister’s lifetime.  I held up a
screen, and did not look, and, as she said, she tried not to make the
noise very offensive; but now that she was left alone, she seemed quite
horrified when I begged her to remain with me in the warm
dining-parlour, and enjoy her orange as she liked best.  And so it was
in everything.  Miss Jenkyns’s rules were made more stringent than ever,
because the framer of them was gone where there could be no appeal.  In
all things else Miss Matilda was meek and undecided to a fault.  I have
heard Fanny turn her round twenty times in a morning about dinner, just
as the little hussy chose; and I sometimes fancied she worked on Miss
Matilda’s weakness in order to bewilder her, and to make her feel more
in the power of her clever servant.  I determined that I would not leave
her till I had seen what sort of a person Martha was; and, if I found
her trustworthy, I would tell her not to trouble her mistress with every
little decision.

Martha was blunt and plain-spoken to a fault; otherwise she was a brisk,
well-meaning, but very ignorant girl.  She had not been with us a week
before Miss Matilda and I were astounded one morning by the receipt of a
letter from a cousin of hers, who had been twenty or thirty years in
India, and who had lately, as we had seen by the “Army List,” returned
to England, bringing with him an invalid wife who had never been
introduced to her English relations.  Major Jenkyns wrote to propose
that he and his wife should spend a night at Cranford, on his way to
Scotland—at the inn, if it did not suit Miss Matilda to receive them
into her house; in which case they should hope to be with her as much as
possible during the day. Of course it _must_ suit her, as she said; for
all Cranford knew that she had her sister’s bedroom at liberty; but I am
sure she wished the Major had stopped in India and forgotten his cousins
out and out.

“Oh! how must I manage?” asked she helplessly.  “If Deborah had been
alive she would have known what to do with a gentleman-visitor.  Must I
put razors in his dressing-room?  Dear! dear! and I’ve got none.
Deborah would have had them.  And slippers, and coat-brushes?”  I
suggested that probably he would bring all these things with him.  “And
after dinner, how am I to know when to get up and leave him to his wine?
 Deborah would have done it so well; she would have been quite in her
element.  Will he want coffee, do you think?”  I undertook the
management of the coffee, and told her I would instruct Martha in the
art of waiting—in which it must be owned she was terribly deficient—and
that I had no doubt Major and Mrs Jenkyns would understand the quiet
mode in which a lady lived by herself in a country town.  But she was
sadly fluttered.  I made her empty her decanters and bring up two fresh
bottles of wine.  I wished I could have prevented her from being present
at my instructions to Martha, for she frequently cut in with some fresh
direction, muddling the poor girl’s mind as she stood open-mouthed,
listening to us both.

“Hand the vegetables round,” said I (foolishly, I see now—for it was
aiming at more than we could accomplish with quietness and simplicity);
and then, seeing her look bewildered, I added, “take the vegetables
round to people, and let them help themselves.”

“And mind you go first to the ladies,” put in Miss Matilda.  “Always go
to the ladies before gentlemen when you are waiting.”

“I’ll do it as you tell me, ma’am,” said Martha; “but I like lads best.”

We felt very uncomfortable and shocked at this speech of Martha’s, yet I
don’t think she meant any harm; and, on the whole, she attended very
well to our directions, except that she “nudged” the Major when he did
not help himself as soon as she expected to the potatoes, while she was
handing them round.

The major and his wife were quiet unpretending people enough when they
did come; languid, as all East Indians are, I suppose.  We were rather
dismayed at their bringing two servants with them, a Hindoo body-servant
for the Major, and a steady elderly maid for his wife; but they slept at
the inn, and took off a good deal of the responsibility by attending
carefully to their master’s and mistress’s comfort.  Martha, to be sure,
had never ended her staring at the East Indian’s white turban and brown
complexion, and I saw that Miss Matilda shrunk away from him a little as
he waited at dinner.  Indeed, she asked me, when they were gone, if he
did not remind me of Blue Beard?  On the whole, the visit was most
satisfactory, and is a subject of conversation even now with Miss
Matilda; at the time it greatly excited Cranford, and even stirred up
the apathetic and Honourable Mrs Jamieson to some expression of
interest, when I went to call and thank her for the kind answers she had
vouchsafed to Miss Matilda’s inquiries as to the arrangement of a
gentleman’s dressing-room—answers which I must confess she had given in
the wearied manner of the Scandinavian prophetess—

                       “Leave me, leave me to repose.”

And _now_ I come to the love affair.

It seems that Miss Pole had a cousin, once or twice removed, who had
offered to Miss Matty long ago.  Now this cousin lived four or five
miles from Cranford on his own estate; but his property was not large
enough to entitle him to rank higher than a yeoman; or rather, with
something of the “pride which apes humility,” he had refused to push
himself on, as so many of his class had done, into the ranks of the
squires.  He would not allow himself to be called Thomas Holbrook,
_Esq._; he even sent back letters with this address, telling the
post-mistress at Cranford that his name was _Mr_ Thomas Holbrook,
yeoman.  He rejected all domestic innovations; he would have the house
door stand open in summer and shut in winter, without knocker or bell to
summon a servant.  The closed fist or the knob of a stick did this
office for him if he found the door locked.  He despised every
refinement which had not its root deep down in humanity.  If people were
not ill, he saw no necessity for moderating his voice.  He spoke the
dialect of the country in perfection, and constantly used it in
conversation; although Miss Pole (who gave me these particulars) added,
that he read aloud more beautifully and with more feeling than any one
she had ever heard, except the late rector.

“And how came Miss Matilda not to marry him?” asked I.

“Oh, I don’t know.  She was willing enough, I think; but you know Cousin
Thomas would not have been enough of a gentleman for the rector and Miss
Jenkyns.”

“Well! but they were not to marry him,” said I, impatiently.

“No; but they did not like Miss Matty to marry below her rank.  You know
she was the rector’s daughter, and somehow they are related to Sir Peter
Arley: Miss Jenkyns thought a deal of that.”

“Poor Miss Matty!” said I.

“Nay, now, I don’t know anything more than that he offered and was
refused.  Miss Matty might not like him—and Miss Jenkyns might never
have said a word—it is only a guess of mine.”

“Has she never seen him since?” I inquired.

“No, I think not.  You see Woodley, Cousin Thomas’s house, lies half-way
between Cranford and Misselton; and I know he made Misselton his
market-town very soon after he had offered to Miss Matty; and I don’t
think he has been into Cranford above once or twice since—once, when I
was walking with Miss Matty, in High Street, and suddenly she darted
from me, and went up Shire Lane.  A few minutes after I was startled by
meeting Cousin Thomas.”

“How old is he?” I asked, after a pause of castle-building.

“He must be about seventy, I think, my dear,” said Miss Pole, blowing up
my castle, as if by gun-powder, into small fragments.

Very soon after—at least during my long visit to Miss Matilda—I had the
opportunity of seeing Mr Holbrook; seeing, too, his first encounter with
his former love, after thirty or forty years’ separation.  I was helping
to decide whether any of the new assortment of coloured silks which they
had just received at the shop would do to match a grey and black
mousseline-delaine that wanted a new breadth, when a tall, thin, Don
Quixote-looking old man came into the shop for some woollen gloves.  I
had never seen the person (who was rather striking) before, and I
watched him rather attentively while Miss Matty listened to the shopman.
 The stranger wore a blue coat with brass buttons, drab breeches, and
gaiters, and drummed with his fingers on the counter until he was
attended to. When he answered the shop-boy’s question, “What can I have
the pleasure of showing you to-day, sir?” I saw Miss Matilda start, and
then suddenly sit down; and instantly I guessed who it was.  She had
made some inquiry which had to be carried round to the other shopman.

“Miss Jenkyns wants the black sarsenet two-and-twopence the yard”; and
Mr Holbrook had caught the name, and was across the shop in two strides.

“Matty—Miss Matilda—Miss Jenkyns!  God bless my soul!  I should not have
known you.  How are you? how are you?”  He kept shaking her hand in a
way which proved the warmth of his friendship; but he repeated so often,
as if to himself, “I should not have known you!” that any sentimental
romance which I might be inclined to build was quite done away with by
his manner.

However, he kept talking to us all the time we were in the shop; and
then waving the shopman with the unpurchased gloves on one side, with
“Another time, sir! another time!” he walked home with us.  I am happy
to say my client, Miss Matilda, also left the shop in an equally
bewildered state, not having purchased either green or red silk.  Mr
Holbrook was evidently full with honest loud-spoken joy at meeting his
old love again; he touched on the changes that had taken place; he even
spoke of Miss Jenkyns as “Your poor sister!  Well, well! we have all our
faults”; and bade us good-bye with many a hope that he should soon see
Miss Matty again.  She went straight to her room, and never came back
till our early tea-time, when I thought she looked as if she had been
crying.

              [Picture: Mr Holbrook ... bade us good-bye]




CHAPTER IV.
A VISIT TO AN OLD BACHELOR


A FEW days after, a note came from Mr Holbrook, asking us—impartially
asking both of us—in a formal, old-fashioned style, to spend a day at
his house—a long June day—for it was June now.  He named that he had
also invited his cousin, Miss Pole; so that we might join in a fly,
which could be put up at his house.

I expected Miss Matty to jump at this invitation; but, no!  Miss Pole
and I had the greatest difficulty in persuading her to go.  She thought
it was improper; and was even half annoyed when we utterly ignored the
idea of any impropriety in her going with two other ladies to see her
old lover.  Then came a more serious difficulty.  She did not think
Deborah would have liked her to go.  This took us half a day’s good hard
talking to get over; but, at the first sentence of relenting, I seized
the opportunity, and wrote and despatched an acceptance in her
name—fixing day and hour, that all might be decided and done with.

The next morning she asked me if I would go down to the shop with her;
and there, after much hesitation, we chose out three caps to be sent
home and tried on, that the most becoming might be selected to take with
us on Thursday.

She was in a state of silent agitation all the way to Woodley.  She had
evidently never been there before; and, although she little dreamt I
knew anything of her early story, I could perceive she was in a tremor
at the thought of seeing the place which might have been her home, and
round which it is probable that many of her innocent girlish
imaginations had clustered.  It was a long drive there, through paved
jolting lanes.  Miss Matilda sat bolt upright, and looked wistfully out
of the windows as we drew near the end of our journey.  The aspect of
the country was quiet and pastoral.  Woodley stood among fields; and
there was an old-fashioned garden where roses and currant-bushes touched
each other, and where the feathery asparagus formed a pretty background
to the pinks and gilly-flowers; there was no drive up to the door.  We
got out at a little gate, and walked up a straight box-edged path.

“My cousin might make a drive, I think,” said Miss Pole, who was afraid
of ear-ache, and had only her cap on.

“I think it is very pretty,” said Miss Matty, with a soft plaintiveness
in her voice, and almost in a whisper, for just then Mr Holbrook
appeared at the door, rubbing his hands in very effervescence of
hospitality.  He looked more like my idea of Don Quixote than ever, and
yet the likeness was only external.  His respectable housekeeper stood
modestly at the door to bid us welcome; and, while she led the elder
ladies upstairs to a bedroom, I begged to look about the garden.  My
request evidently pleased the old gentleman, who took me all round the
place and showed me his six-and-twenty cows, named after the different
letters of the alphabet. As we went along, he surprised me occasionally
by repeating apt and beautiful quotations from the poets, ranging easily
from Shakespeare and George Herbert to those of our own day.  He did
this as naturally as if he were thinking aloud, and their true and
beautiful words were the best expression he could find for what he was
thinking or feeling.  To be sure he called Byron “my Lord Byrron,” and
pronounced the name of Goethe strictly in accordance with the English
sound of the letters—“As Goethe says, ‘Ye ever-verdant palaces,’” &c.
Altogether, I never met with a man, before or since, who had spent so
long a life in a secluded and not impressive country, with
ever-increasing delight in the daily and yearly change of season and
beauty.

When he and I went in, we found that dinner was nearly ready in the
kitchen—for so I suppose the room ought to be called, as there were oak
dressers and cupboards all round, all over by the side of the fireplace,
and only a small Turkey carpet in the middle of the flag-floor.  The
room might have been easily made into a handsome dark oak dining-parlour
by removing the oven and a few other appurtenances of a kitchen, which
were evidently never used, the real cooking-place being at some
distance.  The room in which we were expected to sit was a
stiffly-furnished, ugly apartment; but that in which we did sit was what
Mr Holbrook called the counting-house, where he paid his labourers their
weekly wages at a great desk near the door.  The rest of the pretty
sitting-room—looking into the orchard, and all covered over with dancing
tree-shadows—was filled with books.  They lay on the ground, they
covered the walls, they strewed the table.  He was evidently half
ashamed and half proud of his extravagance in this respect.  They were
of all kinds—poetry and wild weird tales prevailing.  He evidently chose
his books in accordance with his own tastes, not because such and such
were classical or established favourites.

“Ah!” he said, “we farmers ought not to have much time for reading; yet
somehow one can’t help it.”

“What a pretty room!” said Miss Matty, _sotto voce_.

“What a pleasant place!” said I, aloud, almost simultaneously.

“Nay! if you like it,” replied he; “but can you sit on these great,
black leather, three-cornered chairs?  I like it better than the best
parlour; but I thought ladies would take that for the smarter place.”

It was the smarter place, but, like most smart things, not at all
pretty, or pleasant, or home-like; so, while we were at dinner, the
servant-girl dusted and scrubbed the counting-house chairs, and we sat
there all the rest of the day.

We had pudding before meat; and I thought Mr Holbrook was going to make
some apology for his old-fashioned ways, for he began—

“I don’t know whether you like newfangled ways.”

“Oh, not at all!” said Miss Matty.

“No more do I,” said he.  “My housekeeper _will_ have these in her new
fashion; or else I tell her that, when I was a young man, we used to
keep strictly to my father’s rule, ‘No broth, no ball; no ball, no
beef’; and always began dinner with broth.  Then we had suet puddings,
boiled in the broth with the beef: and then the meat itself.  If we did
not sup our broth, we had no ball, which we liked a deal better; and the
beef came last of all, and only those had it who had done justice to the
broth and the ball.  Now folks begin with sweet things, and turn their
dinners topsy-turvy.”

When the ducks and green peas came, we looked at each other in dismay;
we had only two-pronged, black-handled forks.  It is true the steel was
as bright as silver; but what were we to do?  Miss Matty picked up her
peas, one by one, on the point of the prongs, much as Aminé ate her
grains of rice after her previous feast with the Ghoul.  Miss Pole
sighed over her delicate young peas as she left them on one side of her
plate untasted, for they _would_ drop between the prongs.  I looked at
my host: the peas were going wholesale into his capacious mouth,
shovelled up by his large round-ended knife.  I saw, I imitated, I
survived!  My friends, in spite of my precedent, could not muster up
courage enough to do an ungenteel thing; and, if Mr Holbrook had not
been so heartily hungry, he would probably have seen that the good peas
went away almost untouched.

After dinner, a clay pipe was brought in, and a spittoon; and, asking us
to retire to another room, where he would soon join us, if we disliked
tobacco-smoke, he presented his pipe to Miss Matty, and requested her to
fill the bowl.  This was a compliment to a lady in his youth; but it was
rather inappropriate to propose it as an honour to Miss Matty, who had
been trained by her sister to hold smoking of every kind in utter
abhorrence.  But if it was a shock to her refinement, it was also a
gratification to her feelings to be thus selected; so she daintily
stuffed the strong tobacco into the pipe, and then we withdrew.

“It is very pleasant dining with a bachelor,” said Miss Matty softly, as
we settled ourselves in the counting-house.  “I only hope it is not
improper; so many pleasant things are!”

“What a number of books he has!” said Miss Pole, looking round the room.
“And how dusty they are!”

“I think it must be like one of the great Dr Johnson’s rooms,” said Miss
Matty.  “What a superior man your cousin must be!”

“Yes!” said Miss Pole, “he’s a great reader; but I am afraid he has got
into very uncouth habits with living alone.”

“Oh! uncouth is too hard a word.  I should call him eccentric; very
clever people always are!” replied Miss Matty.

            [Picture: Now, what colour are ash-buds in March]

When Mr Holbrook returned, he proposed a walk in the fields; but the two
elder ladies were afraid of damp, and dirt, and had only very unbecoming
calashes to put on over their caps; so they declined, and I was again
his companion in a turn which he said he was obliged to take to see
after his men.  He strode along, either wholly forgetting my existence,
or soothed into silence by his pipe—and yet it was not silence exactly.
He walked before me with a stooping gait, his hands clasped behind him;
and, as some tree or cloud, or glimpse of distant upland pastures,
struck him, he quoted poetry to himself, saying it out loud in a grand
sonorous voice, with just the emphasis that true feeling and
appreciation give.  We came upon an old cedar tree, which stood at one
end of the house—

    “The cedar spreads his dark-green layers of shade.”

“Capital term—‘layers!’  Wonderful man!”  I did not know whether he was
speaking to me or not; but I put in an assenting “wonderful,” although I
knew nothing about it, just because I was tired of being forgotten, and
of being consequently silent.

He turned sharp round.  “Ay! you may say ‘wonderful.’  Why, when I saw
the review of his poems in _Blackwood_, I set off within an hour, and
walked seven miles to Misselton (for the horses were not in the way) and
ordered them.  Now, what colour are ash-buds in March?”

Is the man going mad? thought I.  He is very like Don Quixote.

“What colour are they, I say?” repeated he vehemently.

“I am sure I don’t know, sir,” said I, with the meekness of ignorance.

“I knew you didn’t.  No more did I—an old fool that I am!—till this
young man comes and tells me.  Black as ash-buds in March.  And I’ve
lived all my life in the country; more shame for me not to know.  Black:
they are jet-black, madam.”  And he went off again, swinging along to
the music of some rhyme he had got hold of.

When we came back, nothing would serve him but he must read us the poems
he had been speaking of; and Miss Pole encouraged him in his proposal, I
thought, because she wished me to hear his beautiful reading, of which
she had boasted; but she afterwards said it was because she had got to a
difficult part of her crochet, and wanted to count her stitches without
having to talk.  Whatever he had proposed would have been right to Miss
Matty; although she did fall sound asleep within five minutes after he
had begun a long poem, called “Locksley Hall,” and had a comfortable
nap, unobserved, till he ended; when the cessation of his voice wakened
her up, and she said, feeling that something was expected, and that Miss
Pole was counting—

“What a pretty book!”

“Pretty, madam! it’s beautiful!  Pretty, indeed!”

“Oh yes!  I meant beautiful!” said she, fluttered at his disapproval of
her word.  “It is so like that beautiful poem of Dr Johnson’s my sister
used to read—I forget the name of it; what was it, my dear?” turning to
me.

“Which do you mean, ma’am?  What was it about?”

“I don’t remember what it was about, and I’ve quite forgotten what the
name of it was; but it was written by Dr Johnson, and was very
beautiful, and very like what Mr Holbrook has just been reading.”

“I don’t remember it,” said he reflectively.  “But I don’t know Dr
Johnson’s poems well.  I must read them.”

As we were getting into the fly to return, I heard Mr Holbrook say he
should call on the ladies soon, and inquire how they got home; and this
evidently pleased and fluttered Miss Matty at the time he said it; but
after we had lost sight of the old house among the trees her sentiments
towards the master of it were gradually absorbed into a distressing
wonder as to whether Martha had broken her word, and seized on the
opportunity of her mistress’s absence to have a “follower.”  Martha
looked good, and steady, and composed enough, as she came to help us
out; she was always careful of Miss Matty, and to-night she made use of
this unlucky speech—

“Eh! dear ma’am, to think of your going out in an evening in such a thin
shawl!  It’s no better than muslin.  At your age, ma’am, you should be
careful.”

“My age!” said Miss Matty, almost speaking crossly, for her, for she was
usually gentle—“My age!  Why, how old do you think I am, that you talk
about my age?”

“Well, ma’am, I should say you were not far short of sixty: but folks’
looks is often against them—and I’m sure I meant no harm.”

“Martha, I’m not yet fifty-two!” said Miss Matty, with grave emphasis;
for probably the remembrance of her youth had come very vividly before
her this day, and she was annoyed at finding that golden time so far
away in the past.

But she never spoke of any former and more intimate acquaintance with Mr
Holbrook.  She had probably met with so little sympathy in her early
love, that she had shut it up close in her heart; and it was only by a
sort of watching, which I could hardly avoid since Miss Pole’s
confidence, that I saw how faithful her poor heart had been in its
sorrow and its silence.

She gave me some good reason for wearing her best cap every day, and sat
near the window, in spite of her rheumatism, in order to see, without
being seen, down into the street.

He came.  He put his open palms upon his knees, which were far apart, as
he sat with his head bent down, whistling, after we had replied to his
inquiries about our safe return.  Suddenly he jumped up—

“Well, madam! have you any commands for Paris?  I am going there in a
week or two.”

“To Paris!” we both exclaimed.

“Yes, madam!  I’ve never been there, and always had a wish to go; and I
think if I don’t go soon, I mayn’t go at all; so as soon as the hay is
got in I shall go, before harvest time.”

We were so much astonished that we had no commissions.

Just as he was going out of the room, he turned back, with his favourite
exclamation—

“God bless my soul, madam! but I nearly forgot half my errand.  Here are
the poems for you you admired so much the other evening at my house.”
He tugged away at a parcel in his coat-pocket.  “Good-bye, miss,” said
he; “good-bye, Matty! take care of yourself.”  And he was gone.  But he
had given her a book, and he had called her Matty, just as he used to do
thirty years ago.

“I wish he would not go to Paris,” said Miss Matilda anxiously.  “I
don’t believe frogs will agree with him; he used to have to be very
careful what he ate, which was curious in so strong-looking a young
man.”

Soon after this I took my leave, giving many an injunction to Martha to
look after her mistress, and to let me know if she thought that Miss
Matilda was not so well; in which case I would volunteer a visit to my
old friend, without noticing Martha’s intelligence to her.

Accordingly I received a line or two from Martha every now and then;
and, about November I had a note to say her mistress was “very low and
sadly off her food”; and the account made me so uneasy that, although
Martha did not decidedly summon me, I packed up my things and went.

I received a warm welcome, in spite of the little flurry produced by my
impromptu visit, for I had only been able to give a day’s notice.  Miss
Matilda looked miserably ill; and I prepared to comfort and cosset her.

I went down to have a private talk with Martha.

“How long has your mistress been so poorly?” I asked, as I stood by the
kitchen fire.

“Well!  I think it’s better than a fortnight; it is, I know; it was one
Tuesday, after Miss Pole had been, that she went into this moping way.
I thought she was tired, and it would go off with a night’s rest; but
no! she has gone on and on ever since, till I thought it my duty to
write to you, ma’am.”

“You did quite right, Martha.  It is a comfort to think she has so
faithful a servant about her.  And I hope you find your place
comfortable?”

“Well, ma’am, missus is very kind, and there’s plenty to eat and drink,
and no more work but what I can do easily—but—” Martha hesitated.

“But what, Martha?”

“Why, it seems so hard of missus not to let me have any followers;
there’s such lots of young fellows in the town; and many a one has as
much as offered to keep company with me; and I may never be in such a
likely place again, and it’s like wasting an opportunity.  Many a girl
as I know would have ’em unbeknownst to missus; but I’ve given my word,
and I’ll stick to it; or else this is just the house for missus never to
be the wiser if they did come: and it’s such a capable kitchen—there’s
such dark corners in it—I’d be bound to hide any one.  I counted up last
Sunday night—for I’ll not deny I was crying because I had to shut the
door in Jem Hearn’s face, and he’s a steady young man, fit for any girl;
only I had given missus my word.”  Martha was all but crying again; and
I had little comfort to give her, for I knew, from old experience, of
the horror with which both the Miss Jenkynses looked upon “followers”;
and in Miss Matty’s present nervous state this dread was not likely to
be lessened.

I went to see Miss Pole the next day, and took her completely by
surprise, for she had not been to see Miss Matilda for two days.

“And now I must go back with you, my dear, for I promised to let her
know how Thomas Holbrook went on; and, I’m sorry to say, his housekeeper
has sent me word to-day that he hasn’t long to live.  Poor Thomas! that
journey to Paris was quite too much for him.  His housekeeper says he
has hardly ever been round his fields since, but just sits with his
hands on his knees in the counting-house, not reading or anything, but
only saying what a wonderful city Paris was!  Paris has much to answer
for if it’s killed my cousin Thomas, for a better man never lived.”

“Does Miss Matilda know of his illness?” asked I—a new light as to the
cause of her indisposition dawning upon me.

“Dear! to be sure, yes!  Has not she told you?  I let her know a
fortnight ago, or more, when first I heard of it.  How odd she shouldn’t
have told you!”

Not at all, I thought; but I did not say anything.  I felt almost guilty
of having spied too curiously into that tender heart, and I was not
going to speak of its secrets—hidden, Miss Matty believed, from all the
world. I ushered Miss Pole into Miss Matilda’s little drawing-room, and
then left them alone.  But I was not surprised when Martha came to my
bedroom door, to ask me to go down to dinner alone, for that missus had
one of her bad headaches.  She came into the drawing-room at tea-time,
but it was evidently an effort to her; and, as if to make up for some
reproachful feeling against her late sister, Miss Jenkyns, which had
been troubling her all the afternoon, and for which she now felt
penitent, she kept telling me how good and how clever Deborah was in her
youth; how she used to settle what gowns they were to wear at all the
parties (faint, ghostly ideas of grim parties, far away in the distance,
when Miss Matty and Miss Pole were young!); and how Deborah and her
mother had started the benefit society for the poor, and taught girls
cooking and plain sewing; and how Deborah had once danced with a lord;
and how she used to visit at Sir Peter Arley’s, and tried to remodel the
quiet rectory establishment on the plans of Arley Hall, where they kept
thirty servants; and how she had nursed Miss Matty through a long, long
illness, of which I had never heard before, but which I now dated in my
own mind as following the dismissal of the suit of Mr Holbrook.  So we
talked softly and quietly of old times through the long November
evening.

The next day Miss Pole brought us word that Mr Holbrook was dead.  Miss
Matty heard the news in silence; in fact, from the account of the
previous day, it was only what we had to expect.  Miss Pole kept calling
upon us for some expression of regret, by asking if it was not sad that
he was gone, and saying—

“To think of that pleasant day last June, when he seemed so well!  And
he might have lived this dozen years if he had not gone to that wicked
Paris, where they are always having revolutions.”

She paused for some demonstration on our part.  I saw Miss Matty could
not speak, she was trembling so nervously; so I said what I really felt;
and after a call of some duration—all the time of which I have no doubt
Miss Pole thought Miss Matty received the news very calmly—our visitor
took her leave.

Miss Matty made a strong effort to conceal her feelings—a concealment
she practised even with me, for she has never alluded to Mr Holbrook
again, although the book he gave her lies with her Bible on the little
table by her bedside.  She did not think I heard her when she asked the
little milliner of Cranford to make her caps something like the
Honourable Mrs Jamieson’s, or that I noticed the reply—

“But she wears widows’ caps, ma’am?”

“Oh!  I only meant something in that style; not widows’, of course, but
rather like Mrs Jamieson’s.”

This effort at concealment was the beginning of the tremulous motion of
head and hands which I have seen ever since in Miss Matty.

The evening of the day on which we heard of Mr Holbrook’s death, Miss
Matilda was very silent and thoughtful; after prayers she called Martha
back and then she stood uncertain what to say.

“Martha!” she said, at last, “you are young”—and then she made so long a
pause that Martha, to remind her of her half-finished sentence, dropped
a curtsey, and said—

“Yes, please, ma’am; two-and-twenty last third of October, please,
ma’am.”

“And, perhaps, Martha, you may some time meet with a young man you like,
and who likes you.  I did say you were not to have followers; but if
you meet with such a young man, and tell me, and I find he is
respectable, I have no objection to his coming to see you once a week.
God forbid!” said she in a low voice, “that I should grieve any young
hearts.”  She spoke as if she were providing for some distant
contingency, and was rather startled when Martha made her ready eager
answer—

“Please, ma’am, there’s Jem Hearn, and he’s a joiner making
three-and-sixpence a-day, and six foot one in his stocking-feet, please,
ma’am; and if you’ll ask about him to-morrow morning, every one will
give him a character for steadiness; and he’ll be glad enough to come
to-morrow night, I’ll be bound.”

Though Miss Matty was startled, she submitted to Fate and Love.




CHAPTER V.
OLD LETTERS


I HAVE often noticed that almost every one has his own individual small
economies—careful habits of saving fractions of pennies in some one
peculiar direction—any disturbance of which annoys him more than
spending shillings or pounds on some real extravagance.  An old
gentleman of my acquaintance, who took the intelligence of the failure
of a Joint-Stock Bank, in which some of his money was invested, with
stoical mildness, worried his family all through a long summer’s day
because one of them had torn (instead of cutting) out the written leaves
of his now useless bank-book; of course, the corresponding pages at the
other end came out as well, and this little unnecessary waste of paper
(his private economy) chafed him more than all the loss of his money.
Envelopes fretted his soul terribly when they first came in; the only
way in which he could reconcile himself to such waste of his cherished
article was by patiently turning inside out all that were sent to him,
and so making them serve again.  Even now, though tamed by age, I see
him casting wistful glances at his daughters when they send a whole
inside of a half-sheet of note paper, with the three lines of acceptance
to an invitation, written on only one of the sides.  I am not above
owning that I have this human weakness myself.  String is my foible.  My
pockets get full of little hanks of it, picked up and twisted together,
ready for uses that never come.  I am seriously annoyed if any one cuts
the string of a parcel instead of patiently and faithfully undoing it
fold by fold.  How people can bring themselves to use india-rubber
rings, which are a sort of deification of string, as lightly as they do,
I cannot imagine.  To me an india-rubber ring is a precious treasure.  I
have one which is not new—one that I picked up off the floor nearly six
years ago.  I have really tried to use it, but my heart failed me, and I
could not commit the extravagance.

Small pieces of butter grieve others.  They cannot attend to
conversation because of the annoyance occasioned by the habit which some
people have of invariably taking more butter than they want.  Have you
not seen the anxious look (almost mesmeric) which such persons fix on
the article? They would feel it a relief if they might bury it out of
their sight by popping it into their own mouths and swallowing it down;
and they are really made happy if the person on whose plate it lies
unused suddenly breaks off a piece of toast (which he does not want at
all) and eats up his butter.  They think that this is not waste.

Now Miss Matty Jenkyns was chary of candles.  We had many devices to use
as few as possible.  In the winter afternoons she would sit knitting for
two or three hours—she could do this in the dark, or by firelight—and
when I asked if I might not ring for candles to finish stitching my
wristbands, she told me to “keep blind man’s holiday.”  They were
usually brought in with tea; but we only burnt one at a time.  As we
lived in constant preparation for a friend who might come in any evening
(but who never did), it required some contrivance to keep our two
candles of the same length, ready to be lighted, and to look as if we
burnt two always. The candles took it in turns; and, whatever we might
be talking about or doing, Miss Matty’s eyes were habitually fixed upon
the candle, ready to jump up and extinguish it and to light the other
before they had become too uneven in length to be restored to equality
in the course of the evening.

One night, I remember this candle economy particularly annoyed me.  I
had been very much tired of my compulsory “blind man’s holiday,”
especially as Miss Matty had fallen asleep, and I did not like to stir
the fire and run the risk of awakening her; so I could not even sit on
the rug, and scorch myself with sewing by firelight, according to my
usual custom.  I fancied Miss Matty must be dreaming of her early life;
for she spoke one or two words in her uneasy sleep bearing reference to
persons who were dead long before.  When Martha brought in the lighted
candle and tea, Miss Matty started into wakefulness, with a strange,
bewildered look around, as if we were not the people she expected to see
about her. There was a little sad expression that shadowed her face as
she recognised me; but immediately afterwards she tried to give me her
usual smile.  All through tea-time her talk ran upon the days of her
childhood and youth.  Perhaps this reminded her of the desirableness of
looking over all the old family letters, and destroying such as ought
not to be allowed to fall into the hands of strangers; for she had often
spoken of the necessity of this task, but had always shrunk from it,
with a timid dread of something painful.  To-night, however, she rose up
after tea and went for them—in the dark; for she piqued herself on the
precise neatness of all her chamber arrangements, and used to look
uneasily at me when I lighted a bed-candle to go to another room for
anything.  When she returned there was a faint, pleasant smell of
Tonquin beans in the room. I had always noticed this scent about any of
the things which had belonged to her mother; and many of the letters
were addressed to her—yellow bundles of love-letters, sixty or seventy
years old.

Miss Matty undid the packet with a sigh; but she stifled it directly, as
if it were hardly right to regret the flight of time, or of life either.
We agreed to look them over separately, each taking a different letter
out of the same bundle and describing its contents to the other before
destroying it.  I never knew what sad work the reading of old letters
was before that evening, though I could hardly tell why.  The letters
were as happy as letters could be—at least those early letters were.
There was in them a vivid and intense sense of the present time, which
seemed so strong and full, as if it could never pass away, and as if the
warm, living hearts that so expressed themselves could never die, and be
as nothing to the sunny earth.  I should have felt less melancholy, I
believe, if the letters had been more so.  I saw the tears stealing down
the well-worn furrows of Miss Matty’s cheeks, and her spectacles often
wanted wiping.  I trusted at last that she would light the other candle,
for my own eyes were rather dim, and I wanted more light to see the
pale, faded ink; but no, even through her tears, she saw and remembered
her little economical ways.

The earliest set of letters were two bundles tied together, and ticketed
(in Miss Jenkyns’s handwriting) “Letters interchanged between my
ever-honoured father and my dearly-beloved mother, prior to their
marriage, in July 1774.”  I should guess that the rector of Cranford was
about twenty-seven years of age when he wrote those letters; and Miss
Matty told me that her mother was just eighteen at the time of her
wedding.  With my idea of the rector derived from a picture in the
dining-parlour, stiff and stately, in a huge full-bottomed wig, with
gown, cassock, and bands, and his hand upon a copy of the only sermon he
ever published—it was strange to read these letters.  They were full of
eager, passionate ardour; short homely sentences, right fresh from the
heart (very different from the grand Latinised, Johnsonian style of the
printed sermon preached before some judge at assize time).  His letters
were a curious contrast to those of his girl-bride.  She was evidently
rather annoyed at his demands upon her for expressions of love, and
could not quite understand what he meant by repeating the same thing
over in so many different ways; but what she was quite clear about was a
longing for a white “Paduasoy”—whatever that might be; and six or seven
letters were principally occupied in asking her lover to use his
influence with her parents (who evidently kept her in good order) to
obtain this or that article of dress, more especially the white
“Paduasoy.”  He cared nothing how she was dressed; she was always lovely
enough for him, as he took pains to assure her, when she begged him to
express in his answers a predilection for particular pieces of finery,
in order that she might show what he said to her parents.  But at length
he seemed to find out that she would not be married till she had a
“trousseau” to her mind; and then he sent her a letter, which had
evidently accompanied a whole box full of finery, and in which he
requested that she might be dressed in everything her heart desired.
This was the first letter, ticketed in a frail, delicate hand, “From my
dearest John.”  Shortly afterwards they were married, I suppose, from
the intermission in their correspondence.

“We must burn them, I think,” said Miss Matty, looking doubtfully at me.
“No one will care for them when I am gone.”  And one by one she dropped
them into the middle of the fire, watching each blaze up, die out, and
rise away, in faint, white, ghostly semblance, up the chimney, before
she gave another to the same fate.  The room was light enough now; but
I, like her, was fascinated into watching the destruction of those
letters, into which the honest warmth of a manly heart had been poured
forth.

The next letter, likewise docketed by Miss Jenkyns, was endorsed,
“Letter of pious congratulation and exhortation from my venerable
grandfather to my beloved mother, on occasion of my own birth.  Also
some practical remarks on the desirability of keeping warm the
extremities of infants, from my excellent grandmother.”

The first part was, indeed, a severe and forcible picture of the
responsibilities of mothers, and a warning against the evils that were
in the world, and lying in ghastly wait for the little baby of two days
old. His wife did not write, said the old gentleman, because he had
forbidden it, she being indisposed with a sprained ankle, which (he
said) quite incapacitated her from holding a pen.  However, at the foot
of the page was a small “T.O.,” and on turning it over, sure enough,
there was a letter to “my dear, dearest Molly,” begging her, when she
left her room, whatever she did, to go _up_ stairs before going _down_:
and telling her to wrap her baby’s feet up in flannel, and keep it warm
by the fire, although it was summer, for babies were so tender.

It was pretty to see from the letters, which were evidently exchanged
with some frequency between the young mother and the grandmother, how
the girlish vanity was being weeded out of her heart by love for her
baby. The white “Paduasoy” figured again in the letters, with almost as
much vigour as before.  In one, it was being made into a christening
cloak for the baby.  It decked it when it went with its parents to
spend a day or two at Arley Hall.  It added to its charms, when it was
“the prettiest little baby that ever was seen.  Dear mother, I wish you
could see her! Without any pershality, I do think she will grow up a
regular bewty!”  I thought of Miss Jenkyns, grey, withered, and
wrinkled, and I wondered if her mother had known her in the courts of
heaven: and then I knew that she had, and that they stood there in
angelic guise.

There was a great gap before any of the rector’s letters appeared.  And
then his wife had changed her mode of her endorsement.  It was no longer
from, “My dearest John;” it was from “My Honoured Husband.”  The letters
were written on occasion of the publication of the same sermon which was
represented in the picture.  The preaching before “My Lord Judge,” and
the “publishing by request,” was evidently the culminating point—the
event of his life.  It had been necessary for him to go up to London to
superintend it through the press.  Many friends had to be called upon
and consulted before he could decide on any printer fit for so onerous a
task; and at length it was arranged that J. and J. Rivingtons were to
have the honourable responsibility.  The worthy rector seemed to be
strung up by the occasion to a high literary pitch, for he could hardly
write a letter to his wife without cropping out into Latin.  I remember
the end of one of his letters ran thus: “I shall ever hold the virtuous
qualities of my Molly in remembrance, _dum memor ipse mei_, _dum
spiritus regit artus_,” which, considering that the English of his
correspondent was sometimes at fault in grammar, and often in spelling,
might be taken as a proof of how much he “idealised his Molly;” and, as
Miss Jenkyns used to say, “People talk a great deal about idealising
now-a-days, whatever that may mean.”  But this was nothing to a fit of
writing classical poetry which soon seized him, in which his Molly
figured away as “Maria.”  The letter containing the _carmen_ was
endorsed by her, “Hebrew verses sent me by my honoured husband.  I thowt
to have had a letter about killing the pig, but must wait.  Mem., to
send the poetry to Sir Peter Arley, as my husband desires.”  And in a
post-scriptum note in his handwriting it was stated that the Ode had
appeared in the _Gentleman’s Magazine_, December 1782.

Her letters back to her husband (treasured as fondly by him as if they
had been _M. T. Ciceronis Epistolæ_) were more satisfactory to an absent
husband and father than his could ever have been to her.  She told him
how Deborah sewed her seam very neatly every day, and read to her in the
books he had set her; how she was a very “forrard,” good child, but
would ask questions her mother could not answer, but how she did not let
herself down by saying she did not know, but took to stirring the fire,
or sending the “forrard” child on an errand.  Matty was now the mother’s
darling, and promised (like her sister at her age), to be a great
beauty. I was reading this aloud to Miss Matty, who smiled and sighed a
little at the hope, so fondly expressed, that “little Matty might not be
vain, even if she were a bewty.”

“I had very pretty hair, my dear,” said Miss Matilda; “and not a bad
mouth.”  And I saw her soon afterwards adjust her cap and draw herself
up.

But to return to Mrs Jenkyns’s letters.  She told her husband about the
poor in the parish; what homely domestic medicines she had administered;
what kitchen physic she had sent.  She had evidently held his
displeasure as a rod in pickle over the heads of all the ne’er-do-wells.
 She asked for his directions about the cows and pigs; and did not
always obtain them, as I have shown before.

The kind old grandmother was dead when a little boy was born, soon after
the publication of the sermon; but there was another letter of
exhortation from the grandfather, more stringent and admonitory than
ever, now that there was a boy to be guarded from the snares of the
world.  He described all the various sins into which men might fall,
until I wondered how any man ever came to a natural death.  The gallows
seemed as if it must have been the termination of the lives of most of
the grandfather’s friends and acquaintance; and I was not surprised at
the way in which he spoke of this life being “a vale of tears.”

It seemed curious that I should never have heard of this brother before;
but I concluded that he had died young, or else surely his name would
have been alluded to by his sisters.

By-and-by we came to packets of Miss Jenkyns’s letters.  These Miss
Matty did regret to burn.  She said all the others had been only
interesting to those who loved the writers, and that it seemed as if it
would have hurt her to allow them to fall into the hands of strangers,
who had not known her dear mother, and how good she was, although she
did not always spell quite in the modern fashion; but Deborah’s letters
were so very superior! Any one might profit by reading them.  It was a
long time since she had read Mrs Chapone, but she knew she used to think
that Deborah could have said the same things quite as well; and as for
Mrs Carter! people thought a deal of her letters, just because she had
written “Epictetus,” but she was quite sure Deborah would never have
made use of such a common expression as “I canna be fashed!”

     [Picture: I made use of the time to think of many other things]

Miss Matty did grudge burning these letters, it was evident.  She would
not let them be carelessly passed over with any quiet reading, and
skipping, to myself.  She took them from me, and even lighted the second
candle in order to read them aloud with a proper emphasis, and without
stumbling over the big words.  Oh dear! how I wanted facts instead of
reflections, before those letters were concluded!  They lasted us two
nights; and I won’t deny that I made use of the time to think of many
other things, and yet I was always at my post at the end of each
sentence.

The rector’s letters, and those of his wife and mother-in-law, had all
been tolerably short and pithy, written in a straight hand, with the
lines very close together.  Sometimes the whole letter was contained on
a mere scrap of paper.  The paper was very yellow, and the ink very
brown; some of the sheets were (as Miss Matty made me observe) the old
original post, with the stamp in the corner representing a post-boy
riding for life and twanging his horn.  The letters of Mrs Jenkyns and
her mother were fastened with a great round red wafer; for it was before
Miss Edgeworth’s “patronage” had banished wafers from polite society.
It was evident, from the tenor of what was said, that franks were in
great request, and were even used as a means of paying debts by needy
members of Parliament.  The rector sealed his epistles with an immense
coat of arms, and showed by the care with which he had performed this
ceremony that he expected they should be cut open, not broken by any
thoughtless or impatient hand.  Now, Miss Jenkyns’s letters were of a
later date in form and writing.  She wrote on the square sheet which we
have learned to call old-fashioned.  Her hand was admirably calculated,
together with her use of many-syllabled words, to fill up a sheet, and
then came the pride and delight of crossing.  Poor Miss Matty got sadly
puzzled with this, for the words gathered size like snowballs, and
towards the end of her letter Miss Jenkyns used to become quite
sesquipedalian.  In one to her father, slightly theological and
controversial in its tone, she had spoken of Herod, Tetrarch of Idumea.
Miss Matty read it “Herod Petrarch of Etruria,” and was just as well
pleased as if she had been right.

I can’t quite remember the date, but I think it was in 1805 that Miss
Jenkyns wrote the longest series of letters—on occasion of her absence
on a visit to some friends near Newcastle-upon-Tyne.  These friends were
intimate with the commandant of the garrison there, and heard from him
of all the preparations that were being made to repel the invasion of
Buonaparte, which some people imagined might take place at the mouth of
the Tyne.  Miss Jenkyns was evidently very much alarmed; and the first
part of her letters was often written in pretty intelligible English,
conveying particulars of the preparations which were made in the family
with whom she was residing against the dreaded event; the bundles of
clothes that were packed up ready for a flight to Alston Moor (a wild
hilly piece of ground between Northumberland and Cumberland); the signal
that was to be given for this flight, and for the simultaneous turning
out of the volunteers under arms—which said signal was to consist (if I
remember rightly) in ringing the church bells in a particular and
ominous manner.  One day, when Miss Jenkyns and her hosts were at a
dinner-party in Newcastle, this warning summons was actually given (not
a very wise proceeding, if there be any truth in the moral attached to
the fable of the Boy and the Wolf; but so it was), and Miss Jenkyns,
hardly recovered from her fright, wrote the next day to describe the
sound, the breathless shock, the hurry and alarm; and then, taking
breath, she added, “How trivial, my dear father, do all our
apprehensions of the last evening appear, at the present moment, to calm
and enquiring minds!”  And here Miss Matty broke in with—

“But, indeed, my dear, they were not at all trivial or trifling at the
time.  I know I used to wake up in the night many a time and think I
heard the tramp of the French entering Cranford.  Many people talked of
hiding themselves in the salt mines—and meat would have kept capitally
down there, only perhaps we should have been thirsty.  And my father
preached a whole set of sermons on the occasion; one set in the
mornings, all about David and Goliath, to spirit up the people to
fighting with spades or bricks, if need were; and the other set in the
afternoons, proving that Napoleon (that was another name for Bony, as we
used to call him) was all the same as an Apollyon and Abaddon.  I
remember my father rather thought he should be asked to print this last
set; but the parish had, perhaps, had enough of them with hearing.”

Peter Marmaduke Arley Jenkyns (“poor Peter!” as Miss Matty began to call
him) was at school at Shrewsbury by this time.  The rector took up his
pen, and rubbed up his Latin once more, to correspond with his boy.  It
was very clear that the lad’s were what are called show letters.  They
were of a highly mental description, giving an account of his studies,
and his intellectual hopes of various kinds, with an occasional
quotation from the classics; but, now and then, the animal nature broke
out in such a little sentence as this, evidently written in a trembling
hurry, after the letter had been inspected: “Mother dear, do send me a
cake, and put plenty of citron in.”  The “mother dear” probably answered
her boy in the form of cakes and “goody,” for there were none of her
letters among this set; but a whole collection of the rector’s, to whom
the Latin in his boy’s letters was like a trumpet to the old war-horse.
I do not know much about Latin, certainly, and it is, perhaps, an
ornamental language, but not very useful, I think—at least to judge from
the bits I remember out of the rector’s letters.  One was, “You have not
got that town in your map of Ireland; but _Bonus Bernardus non videt
omnia_, as the Proverbia say.”  Presently it became very evident that
“poor Peter” got himself into many scrapes.  There were letters of
stilted penitence to his father, for some wrong-doing; and among them
all was a badly-written, badly-sealed, badly-directed, blotted note:—“My
dear, dear, dear, dearest mother, I will be a better boy; I will,
indeed; but don’t, please, be ill for me; I am not worth it; but I will
be good, darling mother.”

Miss Matty could not speak for crying, after she had read this note.
She gave it to me in silence, and then got up and took it to her sacred
recesses in her own room, for fear, by any chance, it might get burnt.
“Poor Peter!” she said; “he was always in scrapes; he was too easy.
They led him wrong, and then left him in the lurch.  But he was too fond
of mischief.  He could never resist a joke.  Poor Peter!”




CHAPTER VI.
POOR PETER


POOR Peter’s career lay before him rather pleasantly mapped out by kind
friends, but _Bonus Bernardus non videt omnia_, in this map too.  He was
to win honours at the Shrewsbury School, and carry them thick to
Cambridge, and after that, a living awaited him, the gift of his
godfather, Sir Peter Arley.  Poor Peter! his lot in life was very
different to what his friends had hoped and planned.  Miss Matty told me
all about it, and I think it was a relief when she had done so.

He was the darling of his mother, who seemed to dote on all her
children, though she was, perhaps, a little afraid of Deborah’s superior
acquirements.  Deborah was the favourite of her father, and when Peter
disappointed him, she became his pride.  The sole honour Peter brought
away from Shrewsbury was the reputation of being the best good fellow
that ever was, and of being the captain of the school in the art of
practical joking.  His father was disappointed, but set about remedying
the matter in a manly way.  He could not afford to send Peter to read
with any tutor, but he could read with him himself; and Miss Matty told
me much of the awful preparations in the way of dictionaries and
lexicons that were made in her father’s study the morning Peter began.

“My poor mother!” said she.  “I remember how she used to stand in the
hall, just near enough the study-door, to catch the tone of my father’s
voice.  I could tell in a moment if all was going right, by her face.
And it did go right for a long time.”

“What went wrong at last?” said I.  “That tiresome Latin, I dare say.”

“No! it was not the Latin.  Peter was in high favour with my father, for
he worked up well for him.  But he seemed to think that the Cranford
people might be joked about, and made fun of, and they did not like it;
nobody does.  He was always hoaxing them; ‘hoaxing’ is not a pretty
word, my dear, and I hope you won’t tell your father I used it, for I
should not like him to think that I was not choice in my language, after
living with such a woman as Deborah.  And be sure you never use it
yourself.  I don’t know how it slipped out of my mouth, except it was
that I was thinking of poor Peter and it was always his expression.  But
he was a very gentlemanly boy in many things.  He was like dear Captain
Brown in always being ready to help any old person or a child.  Still,
he did like joking and making fun; and he seemed to think the old ladies
in Cranford would believe anything.  There were many old ladies living
here then; we are principally ladies now, I know, but we are not so old
as the ladies used to be when I was a girl.  I could laugh to think of
some of Peter’s jokes.  No, my dear, I won’t tell you of them, because
they might not shock you as they ought to do, and they were very
shocking.  He even took in my father once, by dressing himself up as a
lady that was passing through the town and wished to see the Rector of
Cranford, ‘who had published that admirable Assize Sermon.’  Peter said
he was awfully frightened himself when he saw how my father took it all
in, and even offered to copy out all his Napoleon Buonaparte sermons for
her—him, I mean—no, her, for Peter was a lady then.  He told me he was
more terrified than he ever was before, all the time my father was
speaking. He did not think my father would have believed him; and yet if
he had not, it would have been a sad thing for Peter.  As it was, he was
none so glad of it, for my father kept him hard at work copying out all
those twelve Buonaparte sermons for the lady—that was for Peter himself,
you know.  He was the lady.  And once when he wanted to go fishing,
Peter said, ‘Confound the woman!’—very bad language, my dear, but Peter
was not always so guarded as he should have been; my father was so angry
with him, it nearly frightened me out of my wits: and yet I could hardly
keep from laughing at the little curtseys Peter kept making, quite
slyly, whenever my father spoke of the lady’s excellent taste and sound
discrimination.”

                      [Picture: Confound the woman]

“Did Miss Jenkyns know of these tricks?” said I.

“Oh, no!  Deborah would have been too much shocked.  No, no one knew but
me.  I wish I had always known of Peter’s plans; but sometimes he did
not tell me.  He used to say the old ladies in the town wanted something
to talk about; but I don’t think they did.  They had the _St James’s
Chronicle_ three times a week, just as we have now, and we have plenty
to say; and I remember the clacking noise there always was when some of
the ladies got together.  But, probably, schoolboys talk more than
ladies. At last there was a terrible, sad thing happened.”  Miss Matty
got up, went to the door, and opened it; no one was there.  She rang the
bell for Martha, and when Martha came, her mistress told her to go for
eggs to a farm at the other end of the town.

“I will lock the door after you, Martha.  You are not afraid to go, are
you?”

“No, ma’am, not at all; Jem Hearn will be only too proud to go with me.”

Miss Matty drew herself up, and as soon as we were alone, she wished
that Martha had more maidenly reserve.

“We’ll put out the candle, my dear.  We can talk just as well by
firelight, you know.  There!  Well, you see, Deborah had gone from home
for a fortnight or so; it was a very still, quiet day, I remember,
overhead; and the lilacs were all in flower, so I suppose it was spring.
My father had gone out to see some sick people in the parish; I
recollect seeing him leave the house with his wig and shovel-hat and
cane.  What possessed our poor Peter I don’t know; he had the sweetest
temper, and yet he always seemed to like to plague Deborah.  She never
laughed at his jokes, and thought him ungenteel, and not careful enough
about improving his mind; and that vexed him.

“Well! he went to her room, it seems, and dressed himself in her old
gown, and shawl, and bonnet; just the things she used to wear in
Cranford, and was known by everywhere; and he made the pillow into a
little—you are sure you locked the door, my dear, for I should not like
anyone to hear—into—into a little baby, with white long clothes.  It was
only, as he told me afterwards, to make something to talk about in the
town; he never thought of it as affecting Deborah.  And he went and
walked up and down in the Filbert walk—just half-hidden by the rails,
and half-seen; and he cuddled his pillow, just like a baby, and talked
to it all the nonsense people do.  Oh dear! and my father came stepping
stately up the street, as he always did; and what should he see but a
little black crowd of people—I daresay as many as twenty—all peeping
through his garden rails.  So he thought, at first, they were only
looking at a new rhododendron that was in full bloom, and that he was
very proud of; and he walked slower, that they might have more time to
admire.  And he wondered if he could make out a sermon from the
occasion, and thought, perhaps, there was some relation between the
rhododendrons and the lilies of the field.  My poor father!  When he
came nearer, he began to wonder that they did not see him; but their
heads were all so close together, peeping and peeping!  My father was
amongst them, meaning, he said, to ask them to walk into the garden with
him, and admire the beautiful vegetable production, when—oh, my dear, I
tremble to think of it—he looked through the rails himself, and saw—I
don’t know what he thought he saw, but old Clare told me his face went
quite grey-white with anger, and his eyes blazed out under his frowning
black brows; and he spoke out—oh, so terribly!—and bade them all stop
where they were—not one of them to go, not one of them to stir a step;
and, swift as light, he was in at the garden door, and down the Filbert
walk, and seized hold of poor Peter, and tore his clothes off his
back—bonnet, shawl, gown, and all—and threw the pillow among the people
over the railings: and then he was very, very angry indeed, and before
all the people he lifted up his cane and flogged Peter!

“My dear, that boy’s trick, on that sunny day, when all seemed going
straight and well, broke my mother’s heart, and changed my father for
life.  It did, indeed.  Old Clare said, Peter looked as white as my
father; and stood as still as a statue to be flogged; and my father
struck hard!  When my father stopped to take breath, Peter said, ‘Have
you done enough, sir?’ quite hoarsely, and still standing quite quiet.
I don’t know what my father said—or if he said anything.  But old Clare
said, Peter turned to where the people outside the railing were, and
made them a low bow, as grand and as grave as any gentleman; and then
walked slowly into the house.  I was in the store-room helping my mother
to make cowslip wine.  I cannot abide the wine now, nor the scent of the
flowers; they turn me sick and faint, as they did that day, when Peter
came in, looking as haughty as any man—indeed, looking like a man, not
like a boy. ‘Mother!’ he said, ‘I am come to say, God bless you for
ever.’  I saw his lips quiver as he spoke; and I think he durst not say
anything more loving, for the purpose that was in his heart.  She
looked at him rather frightened, and wondering, and asked him what was
to do.  He did not smile or speak, but put his arms round her and kissed
her as if he did not know how to leave off; and before she could speak
again, he was gone. We talked it over, and could not understand it, and
she bade me go and seek my father, and ask what it was all about.  I
found him walking up and down, looking very highly displeased.

“‘Tell your mother I have flogged Peter, and that he richly deserved
it.’

“I durst not ask any more questions.  When I told my mother, she sat
down, quite faint, for a minute.  I remember, a few days after, I saw
the poor, withered cowslip flowers thrown out to the leaf heap, to decay
and die there.  There was no making of cowslip wine that year at the
rectory—nor, indeed, ever after.

“Presently my mother went to my father.  I know I thought of Queen
Esther and King Ahasuerus; for my mother was very pretty and
delicate-looking, and my father looked as terrible as King Ahasuerus.
Some time after they came out together; and then my mother told me what
had happened, and that she was going up to Peter’s room at my father’s
desire—though she was not to tell Peter this—to talk the matter over
with him.  But no Peter was there.  We looked over the house; no Peter
was there!  Even my father, who had not liked to join in the search at
first, helped us before long. The rectory was a very old house—steps up
into a room, steps down into a room, all through.  At first, my mother
went calling low and soft, as if to reassure the poor boy, ‘Peter!
Peter, dear! it’s only me;’ but, by-and-by, as the servants came back
from the errands my father had sent them, in different directions, to
find where Peter was—as we found he was not in the garden, nor the
hayloft, nor anywhere about—my mother’s cry grew louder and wilder,
‘Peter!  Peter, my darling! where are you?’ for then she felt and
understood that that long kiss meant some sad kind of ‘good-bye.’  The
afternoon went on—my mother never resting, but seeking again and again
in every possible place that had been looked into twenty times before,
nay, that she had looked into over and over again herself. My father sat
with his head in his hands, not speaking except when his messengers came
in, bringing no tidings; then he lifted up his face, so strong and sad,
and told them to go again in some new direction.  My mother kept passing
from room to room, in and out of the house, moving noiselessly, but
never ceasing.  Neither she nor my father durst leave the house, which
was the meeting-place for all the messengers.  At last (and it was
nearly dark), my father rose up.  He took hold of my mother’s arm as she
came with wild, sad pace through one door, and quickly towards another.
She started at the touch of his hand, for she had forgotten all in the
world but Peter.

“‘Molly!’ said he, ‘I did not think all this would happen.’  He looked
into her face for comfort—her poor face all wild and white; for neither
she nor my father had dared to acknowledge—much less act upon—the terror
that was in their hearts, lest Peter should have made away with himself.
My father saw no conscious look in his wife’s hot, dreary eyes, and he
missed the sympathy that she had always been ready to give him—strong
man as he was, and at the dumb despair in her face his tears began to
flow. But when she saw this, a gentle sorrow came over her countenance,
and she said, ‘Dearest John! don’t cry; come with me, and we’ll find
him,’ almost as cheerfully as if she knew where he was.  And she took my
father’s great hand in her little soft one, and led him along, the tears
dropping as he walked on that same unceasing, weary walk, from room to
room, through house and garden.

“Oh, how I wished for Deborah!  I had no time for crying, for now all
seemed to depend on me.  I wrote for Deborah to come home.  I sent a
message privately to that same Mr Holbrook’s house—poor Mr Holbrook;—you
know who I mean.  I don’t mean I sent a message to him, but I sent one
that I could trust to know if Peter was at his house.  For at one time
Mr Holbrook was an occasional visitor at the rectory—you know he was
Miss Pole’s cousin—and he had been very kind to Peter, and taught him
how to fish—he was very kind to everybody, and I thought Peter might
have gone off there.  But Mr Holbrook was from home, and Peter had never
been seen. It was night now; but the doors were all wide open, and my
father and mother walked on and on; it was more than an hour since he
had joined her, and I don’t believe they had ever spoken all that time.
I was getting the parlour fire lighted, and one of the servants was
preparing tea, for I wanted them to have something to eat and drink and
warm them, when old Clare asked to speak to me.

“‘I have borrowed the nets from the weir, Miss Matty.  Shall we drag the
ponds to-night, or wait for the morning?’

“I remember staring in his face to gather his meaning; and when I did, I
laughed out loud.  The horror of that new thought—our bright, darling
Peter, cold, and stark, and dead!  I remember the ring of my own laugh
now.

“The next day Deborah was at home before I was myself again.  She would
not have been so weak as to give way as I had done; but my screams (my
horrible laughter had ended in crying) had roused my sweet dear mother,
whose poor wandering wits were called back and collected as soon as a
child needed her care.  She and Deborah sat by my bedside; I knew by the
looks of each that there had been no news of Peter—no awful, ghastly
news, which was what I most had dreaded in my dull state between
sleeping and waking.

“The same result of all the searching had brought something of the same
relief to my mother, to whom, I am sure, the thought that Peter might
even then be hanging dead in some of the familiar home places had caused
that never-ending walk of yesterday.  Her soft eyes never were the same
again after that; they had always a restless, craving look, as if
seeking for what they could not find.  Oh! it was an awful time; coming
down like a thunder-bolt on the still sunny day when the lilacs were all
in bloom.”

“Where was Mr Peter?” said I.

“He had made his way to Liverpool; and there was war then; and some of
the king’s ships lay off the mouth of the Mersey; and they were only too
glad to have a fine likely boy such as him (five foot nine he was), come
to offer himself.  The captain wrote to my father, and Peter wrote to my
mother.  Stay! those letters will be somewhere here.”

We lighted the candle, and found the captain’s letter and Peter’s too.
And we also found a little simple begging letter from Mrs Jenkyns to
Peter, addressed to him at the house of an old schoolfellow whither she
fancied he might have gone.  They had returned it unopened; and unopened
it had remained ever since, having been inadvertently put by among the
other letters of that time.  This is it:—

    “MY DEAREST PETER,—You did not think we should be so sorry as we
    are, I know, or you would never have gone away.  You are too good.
    Your father sits and sighs till my heart aches to hear him.  He
    cannot hold up his head for grief; and yet he only did what he
    thought was right.  Perhaps he has been too severe, and perhaps
    I have not been kind enough; but God knows how we love you, my
    dear only boy.  Don looks so sorry you are gone.  Come back, and
    make us happy, who love you so much.  I know you will come back.”

But Peter did not come back.  That spring day was the last time he ever
saw his mother’s face.  The writer of the letter—the last—the only
person who had ever seen what was written in it, was dead long ago; and
I, a stranger, not born at the time when this occurrence took place, was
the one to open it.

The captain’s letter summoned the father and mother to Liverpool
instantly, if they wished to see their boy; and, by some of the wild
chances of life, the captain’s letter had been detained somewhere,
somehow.

Miss Matty went on, “And it was racetime, and all the post-horses at
Cranford were gone to the races; but my father and mother set off in our
own gig—and oh! my dear, they were too late—the ship was gone!  And now
read Peter’s letter to my mother!”

It was full of love, and sorrow, and pride in his new profession, and a
sore sense of his disgrace in the eyes of the people at Cranford; but
ending with a passionate entreaty that she would come and see him before
he left the Mersey: “Mother; we may go into battle.  I hope we shall,
and lick those French: but I must see you again before that time.”

“And she was too late,” said Miss Matty; “too late!”

We sat in silence, pondering on the full meaning of those sad, sad
words. At length I asked Miss Matty to tell me how her mother bore it.

“Oh!” she said, “she was patience itself.  She had never been strong,
and this weakened her terribly.  My father used to sit looking at her:
far more sad than she was.  He seemed as if he could look at nothing
else when she was by; and he was so humble—so very gentle now.  He
would, perhaps, speak in his old way—laying down the law, as it were—and
then, in a minute or two, he would come round and put his hand on our
shoulders, and ask us in a low voice, if he had said anything to hurt
us. I did not wonder at his speaking so to Deborah, for she was so
clever; but I could not bear to hear him talking so to me.

“But, you see, he saw what we did not—that it was killing my mother.
Yes! killing her (put out the candle, my dear; I can talk better in the
dark), for she was but a frail woman, and ill-fitted to stand the fright
and shock she had gone through; and she would smile at him and comfort
him, not in words, but in her looks and tones, which were always
cheerful when he was there.  And she would speak of how she thought
Peter stood a good chance of being admiral very soon—he was so brave and
clever; and how she thought of seeing him in his navy uniform, and what
sort of hats admirals wore; and how much more fit he was to be a sailor
than a clergyman; and all in that way, just to make my father think she
was quite glad of what came of that unlucky morning’s work, and the
flogging which was always in his mind, as we all knew.  But oh, my dear!
the bitter, bitter crying she had when she was alone; and at last, as
she grew weaker, she could not keep her tears in when Deborah or me was
by, and would give us message after message for Peter (his ship had gone
to the Mediterranean, or somewhere down there, and then he was ordered
off to India, and there was no overland route then); but she still said
that no one knew where their death lay in wait, and that we were not to
think hers was near.  We did not think it, but we knew it, as we saw her
fading away.

“Well, my dear, it’s very foolish of me, I know, when in all likelihood
I am so near seeing her again.

“And only think, love! the very day after her death—for she did not live
quite a twelvemonth after Peter went away—the very day after—came a
parcel for her from India—from her poor boy.  It was a large, soft,
white Indian shawl, with just a little narrow border all round; just
what my mother would have liked.

“We thought it might rouse my father, for he had sat with her hand in
his all night long; so Deborah took it in to him, and Peter’s letter to
her, and all.  At first, he took no notice; and we tried to make a kind
of light careless talk about the shawl, opening it out and admiring it.
Then, suddenly, he got up, and spoke: ‘She shall be buried in it,’ he
said; ‘Peter shall have that comfort; and she would have liked it.’

“Well, perhaps it was not reasonable, but what could we do or say?  One
gives people in grief their own way.  He took it up and felt it: ‘It is
just such a shawl as she wished for when she was married, and her mother
did not give it her.  I did not know of it till after, or she should
have had it—she should; but she shall have it now.’

“My mother looked so lovely in her death!  She was always pretty, and
now she looked fair, and waxen, and young—younger than Deborah, as she
stood trembling and shivering by her.  We decked her in the long soft
folds; she lay smiling, as if pleased; and people came—all Cranford
came—to beg to see her, for they had loved her dearly, as well they
might; and the countrywomen brought posies; old Clare’s wife brought
some white violets and begged they might lie on her breast.

“Deborah said to me, the day of my mother’s funeral, that if she had a
hundred offers she never would marry and leave my father.  It was not
very likely she would have so many—I don’t know that she had one; but it
was not less to her credit to say so.  She was such a daughter to my
father as I think there never was before or since.  His eyes failed him,
and she read book after book, and wrote, and copied, and was always at
his service in any parish business.  She could do many more things than
my poor mother could; she even once wrote a letter to the bishop for my
father.  But he missed my mother sorely; the whole parish noticed it.
Not that he was less active; I think he was more so, and more patient in
helping every one.  I did all I could to set Deborah at liberty to be
with him; for I knew I was good for little, and that my best work in the
world was to do odd jobs quietly, and set others at liberty.  But my
father was a changed man.”

“Did Mr Peter ever come home?”

“Yes, once.  He came home a lieutenant; he did not get to be admiral.
And he and my father were such friends!  My father took him into every
house in the parish, he was so proud of him.  He never walked out
without Peter’s arm to lean upon.  Deborah used to smile (I don’t think
we ever laughed again after my mother’s death), and say she was quite
put in a corner.  Not but what my father always wanted her when there
was letter-writing or reading to be done, or anything to be settled.”

“And then?” said I, after a pause.

“Then Peter went to sea again; and, by-and-by, my father died, blessing
us both, and thanking Deborah for all she had been to him; and, of
course, our circumstances were changed; and, instead of living at the
rectory, and keeping three maids and a man, we had to come to this small
house, and be content with a servant-of-all-work; but, as Deborah used
to say, we have always lived genteelly, even if circumstances have
compelled us to simplicity.  Poor Deborah!”

“And Mr Peter?” asked I.

“Oh, there was some great war in India—I forget what they call it—and we
have never heard of Peter since then.  I believe he is dead myself; and
it sometimes fidgets me that we have never put on mourning for him.  And
then again, when I sit by myself, and all the house is still, I think I
hear his step coming up the street, and my heart begins to flutter and
beat; but the sound always goes past—and Peter never comes.

“That’s Martha back?  No!  _I’ll_ go, my dear; I can always find my way
in the dark, you know.  And a blow of fresh air at the door will do my
head good, and it’s rather got a trick of aching.”

So she pattered off.  I had lighted the candle, to give the room a
cheerful appearance against her return.

“Was it Martha?” asked I.

“Yes.  And I am rather uncomfortable, for I heard such a strange noise,
just as I was opening the door.”

“Where?” I asked, for her eyes were round with affright.

“In the street—just outside—it sounded like”—

“Talking?” I put in, as she hesitated a little.

“No! kissing”—




CHAPTER VII.
VISITING


ONE morning, as Miss Matty and I sat at our work—it was before twelve
o’clock, and Miss Matty had not changed the cap with yellow ribbons that
had been Miss Jenkyns’s best, and which Miss Matty was now wearing out
in private, putting on the one made in imitation of Mrs Jamieson’s at
all times when she expected to be seen—Martha came up, and asked if Miss
Betty Barker might speak to her mistress.  Miss Matty assented, and
quickly disappeared to change the yellow ribbons, while Miss Barker came
upstairs; but, as she had forgotten her spectacles, and was rather
flurried by the unusual time of the visit, I was not surprised to see
her return with one cap on the top of the other.  She was quite
unconscious of it herself, and looked at us, with bland satisfaction.
Nor do I think Miss Barker perceived it; for, putting aside the little
circumstance that she was not so young as she had been, she was very
much absorbed in her errand, which she delivered herself of with an
oppressive modesty that found vent in endless apologies.

Miss Betty Barker was the daughter of the old clerk at Cranford who had
officiated in Mr Jenkyns’s time.  She and her sister had had pretty good
situations as ladies’ maids, and had saved money enough to set up a
milliner’s shop, which had been patronised by the ladies in the
neighbourhood.  Lady Arley, for instance, would occasionally give Miss
Barkers the pattern of an old cap of hers, which they immediately copied
and circulated among the _élite_ of Cranford.  I say the _élite_, for
Miss Barkers had caught the trick of the place, and piqued themselves
upon their “aristocratic connection.”  They would not sell their caps
and ribbons to anyone without a pedigree.  Many a farmer’s wife or
daughter turned away huffed from Miss Barkers’ select millinery, and
went rather to the universal shop, where the profits of brown soap and
moist sugar enabled the proprietor to go straight to (Paris, he said,
until he found his customers too patriotic and John Bullish to wear what
the Mounseers wore) London, where, as he often told his customers, Queen
Adelaide had appeared, only the very week before, in a cap exactly like
the one he showed them, trimmed with yellow and blue ribbons, and had
been complimented by King William on the becoming nature of her
head-dress.

Miss Barkers, who confined themselves to truth, and did not approve of
miscellaneous customers, throve notwithstanding.  They were
self-denying, good people.  Many a time have I seen the eldest of them
(she that had been maid to Mrs Jamieson) carrying out some delicate mess
to a poor person.  They only aped their betters in having “nothing to
do” with the class immediately below theirs.  And when Miss Barker died,
their profits and income were found to be such that Miss Betty was
justified in shutting up shop and retiring from business.  She also (as
I think I have before said) set up her cow; a mark of respectability in
Cranford almost as decided as setting up a gig is among some people.
She dressed finer than any lady in Cranford; and we did not wonder at
it; for it was understood that she was wearing out all the bonnets and
caps and outrageous ribbons which had once formed her stock-in-trade.
It was five or six years since she had given up shop, so in any other
place than Cranford her dress might have been considered _passée_.

And now Miss Betty Barker had called to invite Miss Matty to tea at her
house on the following Tuesday.  She gave me also an impromptu
invitation, as I happened to be a visitor—though I could see she had a
little fear lest, since my father had gone to live in Drumble, he might
have engaged in that “horrid cotton trade,” and so dragged his family
down out of “aristocratic society.”  She prefaced this invitation with
so many apologies that she quite excited my curiosity.  “Her
presumption” was to be excused.  What had she been doing?  She seemed so
overpowered by it I could only think that she had been writing to Queen
Adelaide to ask for a receipt for washing lace; but the act which she so
characterised was only an invitation she had carried to her sister’s
former mistress, Mrs Jamieson.  “Her former occupation considered, could
Miss Matty excuse the liberty?”  Ah! thought I, she has found out that
double cap, and is going to rectify Miss Matty’s head-dress.  No! it was
simply to extend her invitation to Miss Matty and to me.  Miss Matty
bowed acceptance; and I wondered that, in the graceful action, she did
not feel the unusual weight and extraordinary height of her head-dress.
But I do not think she did, for she recovered her balance, and went on
talking to Miss Betty in a kind, condescending manner, very different
from the fidgety way she would have had if she had suspected how
singular her appearance was.  “Mrs Jamieson is coming, I think you
said?” asked Miss Matty.

“Yes.  Mrs Jamieson most kindly and condescendingly said she would be
happy to come.  One little stipulation she made, that she should bring
Carlo.  I told her that if I had a weakness, it was for dogs.”

“And Miss Pole?” questioned Miss Matty, who was thinking of her pool at
Preference, in which Carlo would not be available as a partner.

“I am going to ask Miss Pole.  Of course, I could not think of asking
her until I had asked you, madam—the rector’s daughter, madam.  Believe
me, I do not forget the situation my father held under yours.”

“And Mrs Forrester, of course?”

“And Mrs Forrester.  I thought, in fact, of going to her before I went
to Miss Pole.  Although her circumstances are changed, madam, she was
born a Tyrrell, and we can never forget her alliance to the Bigges, of
Bigelow Hall.”

Miss Matty cared much more for the little circumstance of her being a
very good card-player.

“Mrs Fitz-Adam—I suppose”—

“No, madam.  I must draw a line somewhere.  Mrs Jamieson would not, I
think, like to meet Mrs Fitz-Adam.  I have the greatest respect for Mrs
Fitz-Adam—but I cannot think her fit society for such ladies as Mrs
Jamieson and Miss Matilda Jenkyns.”

Miss Betty Barker bowed low to Miss Matty, and pursed up her mouth.  She
looked at me with sidelong dignity, as much as to say, although a
retired milliner, she was no democrat, and understood the difference of
ranks.

“May I beg you to come as near half-past six to my little dwelling, as
possible, Miss Matilda?  Mrs Jamieson dines at five, but has kindly
promised not to delay her visit beyond that time—half-past six.”  And
with a swimming curtsey Miss Betty Barker took her leave.

My prophetic soul foretold a visit that afternoon from Miss Pole, who
usually came to call on Miss Matilda after any event—or indeed in sight
of any event—to talk it over with her.

“Miss Betty told me it was to be a choice and select few,” said Miss
Pole, as she and Miss Matty compared notes.

“Yes, so she said.  Not even Mrs Fitz-Adam.”

Now Mrs Fitz-Adam was the widowed sister of the Cranford surgeon, whom I
have named before.  Their parents were respectable farmers, content with
their station.  The name of these good people was Hoggins.  Mr Hoggins
was the Cranford doctor now; we disliked the name and considered it
coarse; but, as Miss Jenkyns said, if he changed it to Piggins it would
not be much better.  We had hoped to discover a relationship between him
and that Marchioness of Exeter whose name was Molly Hoggins; but the
man, careless of his own interests, utterly ignored and denied any such
relationship, although, as dear Miss Jenkyns had said, he had a sister
called Mary, and the same Christian names were very apt to run in
families.

Soon after Miss Mary Hoggins married Mr Fitz-Adam, she disappeared from
the neighbourhood for many years.  She did not move in a sphere in
Cranford society sufficiently high to make any of us care to know what
Mr Fitz-Adam was.  He died and was gathered to his fathers without our
ever having thought about him at all.  And then Mrs Fitz-Adam reappeared
in Cranford (“as bold as a lion,” Miss Pole said), a well-to-do widow,
dressed in rustling black silk, so soon after her husband’s death that
poor Miss Jenkyns was justified in the remark she made, that “bombazine
would have shown a deeper sense of her loss.”

I remember the convocation of ladies who assembled to decide whether or
not Mrs Fitz-Adam should be called upon by the old blue-blooded
inhabitants of Cranford.  She had taken a large rambling house, which
had been usually considered to confer a patent of gentility upon its
tenant, because, once upon a time, seventy or eighty years before, the
spinster daughter of an earl had resided in it.  I am not sure if the
inhabiting this house was not also believed to convey some unusual power
of intellect; for the earl’s daughter, Lady Jane, had a sister, Lady
Anne, who had married a general officer in the time of the American war,
and this general officer had written one or two comedies, which were
still acted on the London boards, and which, when we saw them
advertised, made us all draw up, and feel that Drury Lane was paying a
very pretty compliment to Cranford.  Still, it was not at all a settled
thing that Mrs Fitz-Adam was to be visited, when dear Miss Jenkyns died;
and, with her, something of the clear knowledge of the strict code of
gentility went out too.  As Miss Pole observed, “As most of the ladies
of good family in Cranford were elderly spinsters, or widows without
children, if we did not relax a little, and become less exclusive,
by-and-by we should have no society at all.”

Mrs Forrester continued on the same side.

“She had always understood that Fitz meant something aristocratic; there
was Fitz-Roy—she thought that some of the King’s children had been
called Fitz-Roy; and there was Fitz-Clarence, now—they were the children
of dear good King William the Fourth.  Fitz-Adam!—it was a pretty name,
and she thought it very probably meant ‘Child of Adam.’  No one, who had
not some good blood in their veins, would dare to be called Fitz; there
was a deal in a name—she had had a cousin who spelt his name with two
little ffs—ffoulkes—and he always looked down upon capital letters and
said they belonged to lately-invented families.  She had been afraid he
would die a bachelor, he was so very choice.  When he met with a Mrs
ffarringdon, at a watering-place, he took to her immediately; and a very
pretty genteel woman she was—a widow, with a very good fortune; and ‘my
cousin,’ Mr ffoulkes, married her; and it was all owing to her two
little ffs.”

Mrs Fitz-Adam did not stand a chance of meeting with a Mr Fitz-anything
in Cranford, so that could not have been her motive for settling there.
Miss Matty thought it might have been the hope of being admitted into
the society of the place, which would certainly be a very agreeable rise
for _ci-devant_ Miss Hoggins; and if this had been her hope it would be
cruel to disappoint her.

So everybody called upon Mrs Fitz-Adam—everybody but Mrs Jamieson, who
used to show how honourable she was by never seeing Mrs Fitz-Adam when
they met at the Cranford parties.  There would be only eight or ten
ladies in the room, and Mrs Fitz-Adam was the largest of all, and she
invariably used to stand up when Mrs Jamieson came in, and curtsey very
low to her whenever she turned in her direction—so low, in fact, that I
think Mrs Jamieson must have looked at the wall above her, for she never
moved a muscle of her face, no more than if she had not seen her.  Still
Mrs Fitz-Adam persevered.

The spring evenings were getting bright and long when three or four
ladies in calashes met at Miss Barker’s door.  Do you know what a
calash is?  It is a covering worn over caps, not unlike the heads
fastened on old-fashioned gigs; but sometimes it is not quite so large.
This kind of head-gear always made an awful impression on the children
in Cranford; and now two or three left off their play in the quiet
sunny little street, and gathered in wondering silence round Miss Pole,
Miss Matty, and myself.  We were silent too, so that we could hear
loud, suppressed whispers inside Miss Barker’s house: “Wait, Peggy! wait
till I’ve run upstairs and washed my hands.  When I cough, open the
door; I’ll not be a minute.”

And, true enough it was not a minute before we heard a noise, between a
sneeze and a crow; on which the door flew open.  Behind it stood a
round-eyed maiden, all aghast at the honourable company of calashes, who
marched in without a word.  She recovered presence of mind enough to
usher us into a small room, which had been the shop, but was now
converted into a temporary dressing-room.  There we unpinned and shook
ourselves, and arranged our features before the glass into a sweet and
gracious company-face; and then, bowing backwards with “After you,
ma’am,” we allowed Mrs Forrester to take precedence up the narrow
staircase that led to Miss Barker’s drawing-room.  There she sat, as
stately and composed as though we had never heard that odd-sounding
cough, from which her throat must have been even then sore and rough.
Kind, gentle, shabbily-dressed Mrs Forrester was immediately conducted
to the second place of honour—a seat arranged something like Prince
Albert’s near the Queen’s—good, but not so good.  The place of
pre-eminence was, of course, reserved for the Honourable Mrs Jamieson,
who presently came panting up the stairs—Carlo rushing round her on her
progress, as if he meant to trip her up.

And now Miss Betty Barker was a proud and happy woman!  She stirred the
fire, and shut the door, and sat as near to it as she could, quite on
the edge of her chair.  When Peggy came in, tottering under the weight
of the tea-tray, I noticed that Miss Barker was sadly afraid lest Peggy
should not keep her distance sufficiently.  She and her mistress were on
very familiar terms in their every-day intercourse, and Peggy wanted now
to make several little confidences to her, which Miss Barker was on
thorns to hear, but which she thought it her duty, as a lady, to
repress.  So she turned away from all Peggy’s asides and signs; but she
made one or two very malapropos answers to what was said; and at last,
seized with a bright idea, she exclaimed, “Poor, sweet Carlo!  I’m
forgetting him. Come downstairs with me, poor ittie doggie, and it shall
have its tea, it shall!”

In a few minutes she returned, bland and benignant as before; but I
thought she had forgotten to give the “poor ittie doggie” anything to
eat, judging by the avidity with which he swallowed down chance pieces
of cake.  The tea-tray was abundantly loaded—I was pleased to see it, I
was so hungry; but I was afraid the ladies present might think it
vulgarly heaped up.  I know they would have done at their own houses;
but somehow the heaps disappeared here.  I saw Mrs Jamieson eating
seed-cake, slowly and considerately, as she did everything; and I was
rather surprised, for I knew she had told us, on the occasion of her
last party, that she never had it in her house, it reminded her so much
of scented soap.  She always gave us Savoy biscuits.  However, Mrs
Jamieson was kindly indulgent to Miss Barker’s want of knowledge of the
customs of high life; and, to spare her feelings, ate three large pieces
of seed-cake, with a placid, ruminating expression of countenance, not
unlike a cow’s.

After tea there was some little demur and difficulty.  We were six in
number; four could play at Preference, and for the other two there was
Cribbage.  But all, except myself (I was rather afraid of the Cranford
ladies at cards, for it was the most earnest and serious business they
ever engaged in), were anxious to be of the “pool.”  Even Miss Barker,
while declaring she did not know Spadille from Manille, was evidently
hankering to take a hand.  The dilemma was soon put an end to by a
singular kind of noise.  If a baron’s daughter-in-law could ever be
supposed to snore, I should have said Mrs Jamieson did so then; for,
overcome by the heat of the room, and inclined to doze by nature, the
temptation of that very comfortable arm-chair had been too much for her,
and Mrs Jamieson was nodding.  Once or twice she opened her eyes with an
effort, and calmly but unconsciously smiled upon us; but by-and-by, even
her benevolence was not equal to this exertion, and she was sound
asleep.

 [Picture: The temptation of the comfortable arm-chair had been too much
                                 for her]

“It is very gratifying to me,” whispered Miss Barker at the card-table
to her three opponents, whom, notwithstanding her ignorance of the game,
she was “basting” most unmercifully—“very gratifying indeed, to see how
completely Mrs Jamieson feels at home in my poor little dwelling; she
could not have paid me a greater compliment.”

Miss Barker provided me with some literature in the shape of three or
four handsomely-bound fashion-books ten or twelve years old, observing,
as she put a little table and a candle for my especial benefit, that she
knew young people liked to look at pictures.  Carlo lay and snorted, and
started at his mistress’s feet.  He, too, was quite at home.

The card-table was an animated scene to watch; four ladies’ heads, with
niddle-noddling caps, all nearly meeting over the middle of the table in
their eagerness to whisper quick enough and loud enough: and every now
and then came Miss Barker’s “Hush, ladies! if you please, hush!  Mrs
Jamieson is asleep.”

It was very difficult to steer clear between Mrs Forrester’s deafness
and Mrs Jamieson’s sleepiness.  But Miss Barker managed her arduous task
well.  She repeated the whisper to Mrs Forrester, distorting her face
considerably, in order to show, by the motions of her lips, what was
said; and then she smiled kindly all round at us, and murmured to
herself, “Very gratifying, indeed; I wish my poor sister had been alive
to see this day.”

Presently the door was thrown wide open; Carlo started to his feet, with
a loud snapping bark, and Mrs Jamieson awoke: or, perhaps, she had not
been asleep—as she said almost directly, the room had been so light she
had been glad to keep her eyes shut, but had been listening with great
interest to all our amusing and agreeable conversation.  Peggy came in
once more, red with importance.  Another tray!  “Oh, gentility!” thought
I, “can you endure this last shock?”  For Miss Barker had ordered (nay,
I doubt not, prepared, although she did say, “Why, Peggy, what have you
brought us?” and looked pleasantly surprised at the unexpected pleasure)
all sorts of good things for supper—scalloped oysters, potted lobsters,
jelly, a dish called “little Cupids” (which was in great favour with the
Cranford ladies, although too expensive to be given, except on solemn
and state occasions—macaroons sopped in brandy, I should have called it,
if I had not known its more refined and classical name).  In short, we
were evidently to be feasted with all that was sweetest and best; and
we thought it better to submit graciously, even at the cost of our
gentility—which never ate suppers in general, but which, like most
non-supper-eaters, was particularly hungry on all special occasions.

Miss Barker, in her former sphere, had, I daresay, been made acquainted
with the beverage they call cherry-brandy.  We none of us had ever seen
such a thing, and rather shrank back when she proffered it us—“just a
little, leetle glass, ladies; after the oysters and lobsters, you know.
Shell-fish are sometimes thought not very wholesome.”  We all shook our
heads like female mandarins; but, at last, Mrs Jamieson suffered herself
to be persuaded, and we followed her lead.  It was not exactly
unpalatable, though so hot and so strong that we thought ourselves bound
to give evidence that we were not accustomed to such things by coughing
terribly—almost as strangely as Miss Barker had done, before we were
admitted by Peggy.

“It’s very strong,” said Miss Pole, as she put down her empty glass; “I
do believe there’s spirit in it.”

“Only a little drop—just necessary to make it keep,” said Miss Barker.
“You know we put brandy-pepper over our preserves to make them keep.  I
often feel tipsy myself from eating damson tart.”

I question whether damson tart would have opened Mrs Jamieson’s heart as
the cherry-brandy did; but she told us of a coming event, respecting
which she had been quite silent till that moment.

“My sister-in-law, Lady Glenmire, is coming to stay with me.”

There was a chorus of “Indeed!” and then a pause.  Each one rapidly
reviewed her wardrobe, as to its fitness to appear in the presence of a
baron’s widow; for, of course, a series of small festivals were always
held in Cranford on the arrival of a visitor at any of our friends’
houses.  We felt very pleasantly excited on the present occasion.

Not long after this the maids and the lanterns were announced.  Mrs
Jamieson had the sedan-chair, which had squeezed itself into Miss
Barker’s narrow lobby with some difficulty, and most literally “stopped
the way.”  It required some skilful manœuvring on the part of the old
chairmen (shoemakers by day, but when summoned to carry the sedan
dressed up in a strange old livery—long great-coats, with small capes,
coeval with the sedan, and similar to the dress of the class in
Hogarth’s pictures) to edge, and back, and try at it again, and finally
to succeed in carrying their burden out of Miss Barker’s front door.
Then we heard their quick pit-a-pat along the quiet little street as we
put on our calashes and pinned up our gowns; Miss Barker hovering about
us with offers of help, which, if she had not remembered her former
occupation, and wished us to forget it, would have been much more
pressing.




CHAPTER VIII.
“YOUR LADYSHIP”


EARLY the next morning—directly after twelve—Miss Pole made her
appearance at Miss Matty’s.  Some very trifling piece of business was
alleged as a reason for the call; but there was evidently something
behind.  At last out it came.

“By the way, you’ll think I’m strangely ignorant; but, do you really
know, I am puzzled how we ought to address Lady Glenmire.  Do you say,
‘Your Ladyship,’ where you would say ‘you’ to a common person?  I have
been puzzling all morning; and are we to say ‘My Lady,’ instead of
‘Ma’am?’  Now you knew Lady Arley—will you kindly tell me the most
correct way of speaking to the peerage?”

Poor Miss Matty! she took off her spectacles and she put them on
again—but how Lady Arley was addressed, she could not remember.

“It is so long ago,” she said.  “Dear! dear! how stupid I am!  I don’t
think I ever saw her more than twice.  I know we used to call Sir Peter,
‘Sir Peter’—but he came much oftener to see us than Lady Arley did.
Deborah would have known in a minute.  ‘My lady’—‘your ladyship.’  It
sounds very strange, and as if it was not natural.  I never thought of
it before; but, now you have named it, I am all in a puzzle.”

It was very certain Miss Pole would obtain no wise decision from Miss
Matty, who got more bewildered every moment, and more perplexed as to
etiquettes of address.

“Well, I really think,” said Miss Pole, “I had better just go and tell
Mrs Forrester about our little difficulty.  One sometimes grows nervous;
and yet one would not have Lady Glenmire think we were quite ignorant of
the etiquettes of high life in Cranford.”

“And will you just step in here, dear Miss Pole, as you come back,
please, and tell me what you decide upon?  Whatever you and Mrs
Forrester fix upon, will be quite right, I’m sure.  ‘Lady Arley,’ ‘Sir
Peter,’” said Miss Matty to herself, trying to recall the old forms of
words.

“Who is Lady Glenmire?” asked I.

“Oh, she’s the widow of Mr Jamieson—that’s Mrs Jamieson’s late husband,
you know—widow of his eldest brother.  Mrs Jamieson was a Miss Walker,
daughter of Governor Walker.  ‘Your ladyship.’  My dear, if they fix on
that way of speaking, you must just let me practice a little on you
first, for I shall feel so foolish and hot saying it the first time to
Lady Glenmire.”

It was really a relief to Miss Matty when Mrs Jamieson came on a very
unpolite errand.  I notice that apathetic people have more quiet
impertinence than others; and Mrs Jamieson came now to insinuate pretty
plainly that she did not particularly wish that the Cranford ladies
should call upon her sister-in-law.  I can hardly say how she made this
clear; for I grew very indignant and warm, while with slow deliberation
she was explaining her wishes to Miss Matty, who, a true lady herself,
could hardly understand the feeling which made Mrs Jamieson wish to
appear to her noble sister-in-law as if she only visited “county”
families.  Miss Matty remained puzzled and perplexed long after I had
found out the object of Mrs Jamieson’s visit.

When she did understand the drift of the honourable lady’s call, it was
pretty to see with what quiet dignity she received the intimation thus
uncourteously given.  She was not in the least hurt—she was of too
gentle a spirit for that; nor was she exactly conscious of disapproving
of Mrs Jamieson’s conduct; but there was something of this feeling in
her mind, I am sure, which made her pass from the subject to others in a
less flurried and more composed manner than usual.  Mrs Jamieson was,
indeed, the more flurried of the two, and I could see she was glad to
take her leave.

A little while afterwards Miss Pole returned, red and indignant.  “Well!
to be sure!  You’ve had Mrs Jamieson here, I find from Martha; and we
are not to call on Lady Glenmire.  Yes!  I met Mrs Jamieson, half-way
between here and Mrs Forrester’s, and she told me; she took me so by
surprise, I had nothing to say.  I wish I had thought of something very
sharp and sarcastic; I dare say I shall to-night.  And Lady Glenmire is
but the widow of a Scotch baron after all!  I went on to look at Mrs
Forrester’s Peerage, to see who this lady was, that is to be kept under
a glass case: widow of a Scotch peer—never sat in the House of Lords—and
as poor as Job, I dare say; and she—fifth daughter of some Mr Campbell
or other. You are the daughter of a rector, at any rate, and related to
the Arleys; and Sir Peter might have been Viscount Arley, every one
says.”

Miss Matty tried to soothe Miss Pole, but in vain.  That lady, usually
so kind and good-humoured, was now in a full flow of anger.

“And I went and ordered a cap this morning, to be quite ready,” said she
at last, letting out the secret which gave sting to Mrs Jamieson’s
intimation.  “Mrs Jamieson shall see if it is so easy to get me to make
fourth at a pool when she has none of her fine Scotch relations with
her!”

In coming out of church, the first Sunday on which Lady Glenmire
appeared in Cranford, we sedulously talked together, and turned our
backs on Mrs Jamieson and her guest.  If we might not call on her, we
would not even look at her, though we were dying with curiosity to know
what she was like.  We had the comfort of questioning Martha in the
afternoon.  Martha did not belong to a sphere of society whose
observation could be an implied compliment to Lady Glenmire, and Martha
had made good use of her eyes.

“Well, ma’am! is it the little lady with Mrs Jamieson, you mean?  I
thought you would like more to know how young Mrs Smith was dressed; her
being a bride.”  (Mrs Smith was the butcher’s wife).

Miss Pole said, “Good gracious me! as if we cared about a Mrs Smith;”
but was silent as Martha resumed her speech.

“The little lady in Mrs Jamieson’s pew had on, ma’am, rather an old
black silk, and a shepherd’s plaid cloak, ma’am, and very bright black
eyes she had, ma’am, and a pleasant, sharp face; not over young, ma’am,
but yet, I should guess, younger than Mrs Jamieson herself.  She looked
up and down the church, like a bird, and nipped up her petticoats, when
she came out, as quick and sharp as ever I see.  I’ll tell you what,
ma’am, she’s more like Mrs Deacon, at the ‘Coach and Horses,’ nor any
one.”

“Hush, Martha!” said Miss Matty, “that’s not respectful.”

“Isn’t it, ma’am?  I beg pardon, I’m sure; but Jem Hearn said so as
well. He said, she was just such a sharp, stirring sort of a body”—

“Lady,” said Miss Pole.

“Lady—as Mrs Deacon.”

Another Sunday passed away, and we still averted our eyes from Mrs
Jamieson and her guest, and made remarks to ourselves that we thought
were very severe—almost too much so.  Miss Matty was evidently uneasy at
our sarcastic manner of speaking.

Perhaps by this time Lady Glenmire had found out that Mrs Jamieson’s was
not the gayest, liveliest house in the world; perhaps Mrs Jamieson had
found out that most of the county families were in London, and that
those who remained in the country were not so alive as they might have
been to the circumstance of Lady Glenmire being in their neighbourhood.
Great events spring out of small causes; so I will not pretend to say
what induced Mrs Jamieson to alter her determination of excluding the
Cranford ladies, and send notes of invitation all round for a small
party on the following Tuesday.  Mr Mulliner himself brought them round.
 He _would_ always ignore the fact of there being a back door to any
house, and gave a louder rat-tat than his mistress, Mrs Jamieson.  He
had three little notes, which he carried in a large basket, in order to
impress his mistress with an idea of their great weight, though they
might easily have gone into his waistcoat pocket.

Miss Matty and I quietly decided that we would have a previous
engagement at home: it was the evening on which Miss Matty usually made
candle-lighters of all the notes and letters of the week; for on Mondays
her accounts were always made straight—not a penny owing from the week
before; so, by a natural arrangement, making candle-lighters fell upon a
Tuesday evening, and gave us a legitimate excuse for declining Mrs
Jamieson’s invitation.  But before our answer was written, in came Miss
Pole, with an open note in her hand.

“So!” she said.  “Ah!  I see you have got your note, too.  Better late
than never.  I could have told my Lady Glenmire she would be glad enough
of our society before a fortnight was over.”

“Yes,” said Miss Matty, “we’re asked for Tuesday evening.  And perhaps
you would just kindly bring your work across and drink tea with us that
night.  It is my usual regular time for looking over the last week’s
bills, and notes, and letters, and making candle-lighters of them; but
that does not seem quite reason enough for saying I have a previous
engagement at home, though I meant to make it do.  Now, if you would
come, my conscience would be quite at ease, and luckily the note is not
written yet.”

I saw Miss Pole’s countenance change while Miss Matty was speaking.

“Don’t you mean to go then?” asked she.

“Oh, no!” said, Miss Matty quietly.  “You don’t either, I suppose?”

“I don’t know,” replied Miss Pole.  “Yes, I think I do,” said she,
rather briskly; and on seeing Miss Matty look surprised, she added, “You
see, one would not like Mrs Jamieson to think that anything she could
do, or say, was of consequence enough to give offence; it would be a
kind of letting down of ourselves, that I, for one, should not like.  It
would be too flattering to Mrs Jamieson if we allowed her to suppose
that what she had said affected us a week, nay ten days afterwards.”

“Well!  I suppose it is wrong to be hurt and annoyed so long about
anything; and, perhaps, after all, she did not mean to vex us.  But I
must say, I could not have brought myself to say the things Mrs Jamieson
did about our not calling.  I really don’t think I shall go.”

“Oh, come!  Miss Matty, you must go; you know our friend Mrs Jamieson is
much more phlegmatic than most people, and does not enter into the
little delicacies of feeling which you possess in so remarkable a
degree.”

“I thought you possessed them, too, that day Mrs Jamieson called to tell
us not to go,” said Miss Matty innocently.

But Miss Pole, in addition to her delicacies of feeling, possessed a
very smart cap, which she was anxious to show to an admiring world; and
so she seemed to forget all her angry words uttered not a fortnight
before, and to be ready to act on what she called the great Christian
principle of “Forgive and forget”; and she lectured dear Miss Matty so
long on this head that she absolutely ended by assuring her it was her
duty, as a deceased rector’s daughter, to buy a new cap and go to the
party at Mrs Jamieson’s.  So “we were most happy to accept,” instead of
“regretting that we were obliged to decline.”

                          [Picture: Mr Mulliner]

The expenditure on dress in Cranford was principally in that one article
referred to.  If the heads were buried in smart new caps, the ladies
were like ostriches, and cared not what became of their bodies.  Old
gowns, white and venerable collars, any number of brooches, up and down
and everywhere (some with dogs’ eyes painted in them; some that were
like small picture-frames with mausoleums and weeping-willows neatly
executed in hair inside; some, again, with miniatures of ladies and
gentlemen sweetly smiling out of a nest of stiff muslin), old brooches
for a permanent ornament, and new caps to suit the fashion of the
day—the ladies of Cranford always dressed with chaste elegance and
propriety, as Miss Barker once prettily expressed it.

And with three new caps, and a greater array of brooches than had ever
been seen together at one time since Cranford was a town, did Mrs
Forrester, and Miss Matty, and Miss Pole appear on that memorable
Tuesday evening.  I counted seven brooches myself on Miss Pole’s dress.
Two were fixed negligently in her cap (one was a butterfly made of
Scotch pebbles, which a vivid imagination might believe to be the real
insect); one fastened her net neckerchief; one her collar; one
ornamented the front of her gown, midway between her throat and waist;
and another adorned the point of her stomacher.  Where the seventh was I
have forgotten, but it was somewhere about her, I am sure.

But I am getting on too fast, in describing the dresses of the company.
I should first relate the gathering on the way to Mrs Jamieson’s.  That
lady lived in a large house just outside the town.  A road which had
known what it was to be a street ran right before the house, which
opened out upon it without any intervening garden or court.  Whatever
the sun was about, he never shone on the front of that house.  To be
sure, the living-rooms were at the back, looking on to a pleasant
garden; the front windows only belonged to kitchens and housekeepers’
rooms, and pantries, and in one of them Mr Mulliner was reported to sit.
 Indeed, looking askance, we often saw the back of a head covered with
hair powder, which also extended itself over his coat-collar down to his
very waist; and this imposing back was always engaged in reading the _St
James’s Chronicle_, opened wide, which, in some degree, accounted for
the length of time the said newspaper was in reaching us—equal
subscribers with Mrs Jamieson, though, in right of her honourableness,
she always had the reading of it first.  This very Tuesday, the delay in
forwarding the last number had been particularly aggravating; just when
both Miss Pole and Miss Matty, the former more especially, had been
wanting to see it, in order to coach up the Court news ready for the
evening’s interview with aristocracy.  Miss Pole told us she had
absolutely taken time by the forelock, and been dressed by five o’clock,
in order to be ready if the _St James’s Chronicle_ should come in at the
last moment—the very _St James’s Chronicle_ which the powdered head was
tranquilly and composedly reading as we passed the accustomed window
this evening.

“The impudence of the man!” said Miss Pole, in a low indignant whisper.
“I should like to ask him whether his mistress pays her quarter-share
for his exclusive use.”

We looked at her in admiration of the courage of her thought; for Mr
Mulliner was an object of great awe to all of us.  He seemed never to
have forgotten his condescension in coming to live at Cranford.  Miss
Jenkyns, at times, had stood forth as the undaunted champion of her sex,
and spoken to him on terms of equality; but even Miss Jenkyns could get
no higher.  In his pleasantest and most gracious moods he looked like a
sulky cockatoo.  He did not speak except in gruff monosyllables.  He
would wait in the hall when we begged him not to wait, and then look
deeply offended because we had kept him there, while, with trembling,
hasty hands we prepared ourselves for appearing in company.

Miss Pole ventured on a small joke as we went upstairs, intended, though
addressed to us, to afford Mr Mulliner some slight amusement.  We all
smiled, in order to seem as if we felt at our ease, and timidly looked
for Mr Mulliner’s sympathy.  Not a muscle of that wooden face had
relaxed; and we were grave in an instant.

Mrs Jamieson’s drawing-room was cheerful; the evening sun came streaming
into it, and the large square window was clustered round with flowers.
The furniture was white and gold; not the later style, Louis Quatorze, I
think they call it, all shells and twirls; no, Mrs Jamieson’s chairs and
tables had not a curve or bend about them.  The chair and table legs
diminished as they neared the ground, and were straight and square in
all their corners.  The chairs were all a-row against the walls, with
the exception of four or five which stood in a circle round the fire.
They were railed with white bars across the back and knobbed with gold;
neither the railings nor the knobs invited to ease.  There was a
japanned table devoted to literature, on which lay a Bible, a Peerage,
and a Prayer-Book.  There was another square Pembroke table dedicated to
the Fine Arts, on which were a kaleidoscope, conversation-cards,
puzzle-cards (tied together to an interminable length with faded pink
satin ribbon), and a box painted in fond imitation of the drawings which
decorate tea-chests.  Carlo lay on the worsted-worked rug, and
ungraciously barked at us as we entered.  Mrs Jamieson stood up, giving
us each a torpid smile of welcome, and looking helplessly beyond us at
Mr Mulliner, as if she hoped he would place us in chairs, for, if he did
not, she never could.  I suppose he thought we could find our way to the
circle round the fire, which reminded me of Stonehenge, I don’t know
why.  Lady Glenmire came to the rescue of our hostess, and, somehow or
other, we found ourselves for the first time placed agreeably, and not
formally, in Mrs Jamieson’s house.  Lady Glenmire, now we had time to
look at her, proved to be a bright little woman of middle age, who had
been very pretty in the days of her youth, and who was even yet very
pleasant-looking.  I saw Miss Pole appraising her dress in the first
five minutes, and I take her word when she said the next day—

“My dear! ten pounds would have purchased every stitch she had on—lace
and all.”

It was pleasant to suspect that a peeress could be poor, and partly
reconciled us to the fact that her husband had never sat in the House of
Lords; which, when we first heard of it, seemed a kind of swindling us
out of our prospects on false pretences; a sort of “A Lord and No Lord”
business.

We were all very silent at first.  We were thinking what we could talk
about, that should be high enough to interest My Lady.  There had been a
rise in the price of sugar, which, as preserving-time was near, was a
piece of intelligence to all our house-keeping hearts, and would have
been the natural topic if Lady Glenmire had not been by.  But we were
not sure if the peerage ate preserves—much less knew how they were made.
 At last, Miss Pole, who had always a great deal of courage and _savoir
faire_, spoke to Lady Glenmire, who on her part had seemed just as much
puzzled to know how to break the silence as we were.

“Has your ladyship been to Court lately?” asked she; and then gave a
little glance round at us, half timid and half triumphant, as much as to
say, “See how judiciously I have chosen a subject befitting the rank of
the stranger.”

“I never was there in my life,” said Lady Glenmire, with a broad Scotch
accent, but in a very sweet voice.  And then, as if she had been too
abrupt, she added: “We very seldom went to London—only twice, in fact,
during all my married life; and before I was married my father had far
too large a family” (fifth daughter of Mr Campbell was in all our minds,
I am sure) “to take us often from our home, even to Edinburgh.  Ye’ll
have been in Edinburgh, maybe?” said she, suddenly brightening up with
the hope of a common interest.  We had none of us been there; but Miss
Pole had an uncle who once had passed a night there, which was very
pleasant.

Mrs Jamieson, meanwhile, was absorbed in wonder why Mr Mulliner did not
bring the tea; and at length the wonder oozed out of her mouth.

“I had better ring the bell, my dear, had not I?” said Lady Glenmire
briskly.

“No—I think not—Mulliner does not like to be hurried.”

We should have liked our tea, for we dined at an earlier hour than Mrs
Jamieson.  I suspect Mr Mulliner had to finish the _St James’s
Chronicle_ before he chose to trouble himself about tea.  His mistress
fidgeted and fidgeted, and kept saying, “I can’t think why Mulliner does
not bring tea.  I can’t think what he can be about.”  And Lady Glenmire
at last grew quite impatient, but it was a pretty kind of impatience
after all; and she rang the bell rather sharply, on receiving a
half-permission from her sister-in-law to do so.  Mr Mulliner appeared
in dignified surprise. “Oh!” said Mrs Jamieson, “Lady Glenmire rang the
bell; I believe it was for tea.”

In a few minutes tea was brought.  Very delicate was the china, very old
the plate, very thin the bread and butter, and very small the lumps of
sugar.  Sugar was evidently Mrs Jamieson’s favourite economy.  I
question if the little filigree sugar-tongs, made something like
scissors, could have opened themselves wide enough to take up an honest,
vulgar good-sized piece; and when I tried to seize two little minnikin
pieces at once, so as not to be detected in too many returns to the
sugar-basin, they absolutely dropped one, with a little sharp clatter,
quite in a malicious and unnatural manner.  But before this happened we
had had a slight disappointment.  In the little silver jug was cream, in
the larger one was milk.  As soon as Mr Mulliner came in, Carlo began to
beg, which was a thing our manners forbade us to do, though I am sure we
were just as hungry; and Mrs Jamieson said she was certain we would
excuse her if she gave her poor dumb Carlo his tea first.  She
accordingly mixed a saucerful for him, and put it down for him to lap;
and then she told us how intelligent and sensible the dear little fellow
was; he knew cream quite well, and constantly refused tea with only milk
in it: so the milk was left for us; but we silently thought we were
quite as intelligent and sensible as Carlo, and felt as if insult were
added to injury when we were called upon to admire the gratitude evinced
by his wagging his tail for the cream which should have been ours.

After tea we thawed down into common-life subjects.  We were thankful to
Lady Glenmire for having proposed some more bread and butter, and this
mutual want made us better acquainted with her than we should ever have
been with talking about the Court, though Miss Pole did say she had
hoped to know how the dear Queen was from some one who had seen her.

The friendship begun over bread and butter extended on to cards.  Lady
Glenmire played Preference to admiration, and was a complete authority
as to Ombre and Quadrille.  Even Miss Pole quite forgot to say “my
lady,” and “your ladyship,” and said “Basto! ma’am”; “you have Spadille,
I believe,” just as quietly as if we had never held the great Cranford
Parliament on the subject of the proper mode of addressing a peeress.

As a proof of how thoroughly we had forgotten that we were in the
presence of one who might have sat down to tea with a coronet, instead
of a cap, on her head, Mrs Forrester related a curious little fact to
Lady Glenmire—an anecdote known to the circle of her intimate friends,
but of which even Mrs Jamieson was not aware.  It related to some fine
old lace, the sole relic of better days, which Lady Glenmire was
admiring on Mrs Forrester’s collar.

“Yes,” said that lady, “such lace cannot be got now for either love or
money; made by the nuns abroad, they tell me.  They say that they can’t
make it now even there.  But perhaps they can, now they’ve passed the
Catholic Emancipation Bill.  I should not wonder.  But, in the meantime,
I treasure up my lace very much.  I daren’t even trust the washing of it
to my maid” (the little charity school-girl I have named before, but who
sounded well as “my maid”).  “I always wash it myself.  And once it had
a narrow escape.  Of course, your ladyship knows that such lace must
never be starched or ironed.  Some people wash it in sugar and water,
and some in coffee, to make it the right yellow colour; but I myself
have a very good receipt for washing it in milk, which stiffens it
enough, and gives it a very good creamy colour.  Well, ma’am, I had
tacked it together (and the beauty of this fine lace is that, when it is
wet, it goes into a very little space), and put it to soak in milk,
when, unfortunately, I left the room; on my return, I found pussy on the
table, looking very like a thief, but gulping very uncomfortably, as if
she was half-choked with something she wanted to swallow and could not.
 And, would you believe it?  At first I pitied her, and said ‘Poor
pussy! poor pussy!’ till, all at once, I looked and saw the cup of milk
empty—cleaned out!  ‘You naughty cat!’ said I, and I believe I was
provoked enough to give her a slap, which did no good, but only helped
the lace down—just as one slaps a choking child on the back.  I could
have cried, I was so vexed; but I determined I would not give the lace
up without a struggle for it.  I hoped the lace might disagree with her,
at any rate; but it would have been too much for Job, if he had seen, as
I did, that cat come in, quite placid and purring, not a quarter of an
hour after, and almost expecting to be stroked.  ‘No, pussy!’ said I,
‘if you have any conscience you ought not to expect that!’  And then a
thought struck me; and I rang the bell for my maid, and sent her to Mr
Hoggins, with my compliments, and would he be kind enough to lend me one
of his top-boots for an hour?  I did not think there was anything odd in
the message; but Jenny said the young men in the surgery laughed as if
they would be ill at my wanting a top-boot.  When it came, Jenny and I
put pussy in, with her forefeet straight down, so that they were
fastened, and could not scratch, and we gave her a teaspoonful of
current-jelly in which (your ladyship must excuse me) I had mixed some
tartar emetic.  I shall never forget how anxious I was for the next
half-hour.  I took pussy to my own room, and spread a clean towel on the
floor.  I could have kissed her when she returned the lace to sight,
very much as it had gone down.  Jenny had boiling water ready, and we
soaked it and soaked it, and spread it on a lavender-bush in the sun
before I could touch it again, even to put it in milk.  But now your
ladyship would never guess that it had been in pussy’s inside.”

          [Picture: We gave her a teaspoonful of current-jelly]

We found out, in the course of the evening, that Lady Glenmire was going
to pay Mrs Jamieson a long visit, as she had given up her apartments in
Edinburgh, and had no ties to take her back there in a hurry.  On the
whole, we were rather glad to hear this, for she had made a pleasant
impression upon us; and it was also very comfortable to find, from
things which dropped out in the course of conversation, that, in
addition to many other genteel qualities, she was far removed from the
“vulgarity of wealth.”

“Don’t you find it very unpleasant walking?” asked Mrs Jamieson, as our
respective servants were announced.  It was a pretty regular question
from Mrs Jamieson, who had her own carriage in the coach-house, and
always went out in a sedan-chair to the very shortest distances.  The
answers were nearly as much a matter of course.

“Oh dear, no! it is so pleasant and still at night!”  “Such a
refreshment after the excitement of a party!”  “The stars are so
beautiful!”  This last was from Miss Matty.

“Are you fond of astronomy?” Lady Glenmire asked.

“Not very,” replied Miss Matty, rather confused at the moment to
remember which was astronomy and which was astrology—but the answer was
true under either circumstance, for she read, and was slightly alarmed
at Francis Moore’s astrological predictions; and, as to astronomy, in a
private and confidential conversation, she had told me she never could
believe that the earth was moving constantly, and that she would not
believe it if she could, it made her feel so tired and dizzy whenever
she thought about it.

In our pattens we picked our way home with extra care that night, so
refined and delicate were our perceptions after drinking tea with “my
lady.”




CHAPTER IX.
SIGNOR BRUNONI


SOON after the events of which I gave an account in my last paper, I was
summoned home by my father’s illness; and for a time I forgot, in
anxiety about him, to wonder how my dear friends at Cranford were
getting on, or how Lady Glenmire could reconcile herself to the dulness
of the long visit which she was still paying to her sister-in-law, Mrs
Jamieson. When my father grew a little stronger I accompanied him to the
seaside, so that altogether I seemed banished from Cranford, and was
deprived of the opportunity of hearing any chance intelligence of the
dear little town for the greater part of that year.

Late in November—when we had returned home again, and my father was once
more in good health—I received a letter from Miss Matty; and a very
mysterious letter it was.  She began many sentences without ending them,
running them one into another, in much the same confused sort of way in
which written words run together on blotting-paper.  All I could make
out was that, if my father was better (which she hoped he was), and
would take warning and wear a great-coat from Michaelmas to Lady-day, if
turbans were in fashion, could I tell her?  Such a piece of gaiety was
going to happen as had not been seen or known of since Wombwell’s lions
came, when one of them ate a little child’s arm; and she was, perhaps,
too old to care about dress, but a new cap she must have; and, having
heard that turbans were worn, and some of the county families likely to
come, she would like to look tidy, if I would bring her a cap from the
milliner I employed; and oh, dear! how careless of her to forget that
she wrote to beg I would come and pay her a visit next Tuesday; when she
hoped to have something to offer me in the way of amusement, which she
would not now more particularly describe, only sea-green was her
favourite colour.  So she ended her letter; but in a P.S. she added, she
thought she might as well tell me what was the peculiar attraction to
Cranford just now; Signor Brunoni was going to exhibit his wonderful
magic in the Cranford Assembly Rooms on Wednesday and Friday evening in
the following week.

I was very glad to accept the invitation from my dear Miss Matty,
independently of the conjuror, and most particularly anxious to prevent
her from disfiguring her small, gentle, mousey face with a great
Saracen’s head turban; and accordingly, I bought her a pretty, neat,
middle-aged cap, which, however, was rather a disappointment to her
when, on my arrival, she followed me into my bedroom, ostensibly to poke
the fire, but in reality, I do believe, to see if the sea-green turban
was not inside the cap-box with which I had travelled.  It was in vain
that I twirled the cap round on my hand to exhibit back and side fronts:
her heart had been set upon a turban, and all she could do was to say,
with resignation in her look and voice—

“I am sure you did your best, my dear.  It is just like the caps all the
ladies in Cranford are wearing, and they have had theirs for a year, I
dare say.  I should have liked something newer, I confess—something more
like the turbans Miss Betty Barker tells me Queen Adelaide wears; but it
is very pretty, my dear.  And I dare say lavender will wear better than
sea-green.  Well, after all, what is dress, that we should care anything
about it?  You’ll tell me if you want anything, my dear.  Here is the
bell.  I suppose turbans have not got down to Drumble yet?”

So saying, the dear old lady gently bemoaned herself out of the room,
leaving me to dress for the evening, when, as she informed me, she
expected Miss Pole and Mrs Forrester, and she hoped I should not feel
myself too much tired to join the party.  Of course I should not; and I
made some haste to unpack and arrange my dress; but, with all my speed,
I heard the arrivals and the buzz of conversation in the next room
before I was ready.  Just as I opened the door, I caught the words, “I
was foolish to expect anything very genteel out of the Drumble shops;
poor girl! she did her best, I’ve no doubt.”  But, for all that, I had
rather that she blamed Drumble and me than disfigured herself with a
turban.

Miss Pole was always the person, in the trio of Cranford ladies now
assembled, to have had adventures.  She was in the habit of spending the
morning in rambling from shop to shop, not to purchase anything (except
an occasional reel of cotton or a piece of tape), but to see the new
articles and report upon them, and to collect all the stray pieces of
intelligence in the town.  She had a way, too, of demurely popping
hither and thither into all sorts of places to gratify her curiosity on
any point—a way which, if she had not looked so very genteel and prim,
might have been considered impertinent.  And now, by the expressive way
in which she cleared her throat, and waited for all minor subjects (such
as caps and turbans) to be cleared off the course, we knew she had
something very particular to relate, when the due pause came—and I defy
any people possessed of common modesty to keep up a conversation long,
where one among them sits up aloft in silence, looking down upon all the
things they chance to say as trivial and contemptible compared to what
they could disclose, if properly entreated.  Miss Pole began—

“As I was stepping out of Gordon’s shop to-day, I chanced to go into the
‘George’ (my Betty has a second-cousin who is chambermaid there, and I
thought Betty would like to hear how she was), and, not seeing anyone
about, I strolled up the staircase, and found myself in the passage
leading to the Assembly 

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