“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 theapathetic 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.”
“Leave me, leave me to repose.”
“Leave me, leave me to repose.”
FromWives and Daughters, 1866
It has been suggested that a statue might be erected in Hollingford [Knutsford] to Mrs. Gibson if all the people who have been amused by her were to subscribe.
It has been suggested that a statue might be erected in Hollingford [Knutsford] to Mrs. Gibson if all the people who have been amused by her were to subscribe.
Then, finally, Mrs. Gibson was to go to the Towers next day to lunch; Lady Cumnor had written a little note by Lady Harriet to beg her to come; if Mrs. Gibson could manage to find her way to the Towers, one of the carriages in use should bring her back to her own home in the course of the afternoon.
“The dear countess!” said Mrs Gibson, with soft affection. It was a soliloquy, uttered after a minute’s pause, at the end of all this information.
And all the rest of that day her conversation had an aristocratic perfume hanging about it. One of the few books she had brought with her into Mr. Gibson’s house was bound in pink, and in it she studied, “Menteith, Duke of, Adolphus George,” etc. etc., till she was fully up in all the duchess’s connections, and probable interests. Mr. Gibson made his mouth up into a droll whistle when he came home at night, and foundhimself in a Towers’ atmosphere. Molly saw the shade of annoyance through the drollery; she was beginning to see it oftener than she liked, not that she reasoned upon it, or that she consciously traced the annoyance to its source; but she could not help feeling uneasy in herself when she knew that her father was in the least put out.
Of course a fly was ordered for Mrs. Gibson. In the early afternoon she came home. If she had been disappointed in her interview with the countess she never told her woe, nor revealed the fact that when she first arrived at the Towers she had to wait for an hour in Lady Cumnor’s morning-room, uncheered by any companionship save that of her old friend, Mrs. Bradley, till suddenly, Lady Harriet coming in, she exclaimed, “Why, Clare! you dear woman! are you here all alone? Does mamma know?” And, after a little more affectionate conversation, she rushed to find her ladyship, who was perfectly aware of the fact, but too deep in giving the duchess the benefit of her wisdom and experience in trousseaux to be at all mindful of the length of time Mrs. Gibson had been passing in patient solitude. At lunch Mrs. Gibson was secretly hurt by my lord’s supposing it to be her dinner, and calling out his urgent hospitality from the very bottom of the table, giving as a reason for it, that she must remember it was her dinner. In vain she piped out in her soft, high voice, “Oh, my lord! I never eat meat in the middle of the day; I can hardly eat anything at lunch.” Her voice was lost, and the duchess might go away with the idea that the Hollingford doctor’s wife dined early; that is to say, if her grace ever condescended to have any idea on the subject at all; which presupposes that she was cognisant of the fact of there being a doctor at Hollingford, and that he had a wife, and that hiswife was the pretty, faded, elegant-looking woman, sending away her plate of untasted food—food which she longed to eat, for she was really desperately hungry after her drive and her solitude.
And then after lunch there did come atête-à-têtewith Lady Cumnor, which was conducted after this wise:
“Well, Clare! I am really glad to see you. I once thought I should never get back to the Towers, but here I am! There was such a clever man at Bath—a Doctor Snape—he cured me at last—quite set me up. I really think if ever I am ill again I shall send for him: it is such a thing to find a really clever medical man. Oh, by the way, I always forget you’ve married Mr. Gibson—of course he is very clever, and all that. (The carriage to the door in ten minutes, Brown, and desire Bradley to bring my things down.) What was I asking you? Oh! how do you get on with the step-daughter? She seemed to me to be a young lady with a pretty stubborn will of her own. I put a letter for the post down somewhere, and I cannot think where; do help me look for it, there’s a good woman. Just run to my room, and see if Brown can find it, for it is of great consequence.”
Off went Mrs. Gibson, rather unwillingly; for there were several things she wanted to speak about, and she had not heard half of what she had expected to learn of the family gossip. But all chance was gone; for, when she came back from her fruitless errand, Lady Cumnor and the duchess were in full talk, the former with the missing letter in her hand, which she was using something like a baton to enforce her words.
“Every iota from Paris! Every i-o-ta!”
Lady Cumnor was too much of a lady not to apologise for useless trouble, but they were nearlythe last words she spoke to Mrs Gibson, for she had to go out and drive with the duchess; and the brougham to take “Clare” (as she persisted in calling Mrs. Gibson) back to Hollingford followed the carriage to the door. Lady Harriet came away from her entourage of young men and young ladies, all prepared for some walking expedition, to wish Mrs. Gibson good-bye.
“We shall see you at the ball,” she said. “You’ll be there with your two girls, of course, and I must have a little talk with you there; with all these visitors in the house, it has been impossible to see anything of you to-day, you know.”
Such were the facts, but rose-colour was the medium through which they were seen by Mrs. Gibson’s household listeners on her return.
“There are many visitors staying at the Towers—oh, yes! a great many: the duchess and Lady Alice, and Mr. and Mrs. Grey, and Lord Albert Monson and his sister, and my old friend Captain James of the Blues—many more, in fact. But of course I preferred going to Lady Cumnor’s own room, where I could see her and Lady Harriet quietly, and where we were not disturbed by the bustle downstairs. Of course we were obliged to go down to lunch, and then I saw my old friends, and renewed pleasant acquaintances. But I really could hardly get any connected conversation with anyone. Lord Cumnor seemed so delighted to see me there again: though there were six or seven between us, he was always interrupting with some civil or kind speech especially addressed to me. And after lunch Lady Cumnor asked me all sorts of questions about my new life with as much interest as if I had been her daughter. To be sure, when the duchess came in we had to leave off, and talk about the trousseau she is preparing for Lady Alice. LadyHarriet made such a point of our meeting at the ball; she is such a good, affectionate creature, is Lady Harriet!”
This last was said in a tone of meditative appreciation.
FromWives and Daughters.
Mrs.Gibson intended the Hamleys to find this dinner pleasant; and they did. Mr. Gibson was fond of the two young men, both for their parents’ sake and their own, for he had known them since boyhood; and to those whom he liked Mr. Gibson could be remarkably agreeable. Mrs. Gibson really gave them a welcome—and cordiality in a hostess is a very becoming mantle for any other deficiencies there may be. Cynthia and Molly looked their best, which was all the duty Mrs. Gibson absolutely required of them, as she was willing enough to take her full share in the conversation. Osborne fell to her lot, of course, and for some time he and she prattled on with all the ease of manner and commonplaceness of meaning which go so far to make the “art of polite conversation.” Roger, who ought to have made himself agreeable to one or the other of the young ladies, was exceedingly interested in what Mr. Gibson was telling him of a paper on comparative osteology in some foreign journal of science, which Lord Hollingford was in the habit of forwarding to his friend the country surgeon. Yet every now and then while he listened he caught his attention wandering to the face of Cynthia, who was placed between his brother and Mr. Gibson. She was not particularly occupied with attending to anything that was goingon; her eyelids were carelessly dropped, as she crumbled her bread on the tablecloth, and her beautiful long eyelashes were seen on the clear tint of her oval cheek. She was thinking of something else; Molly was trying to understand with all her might. Suddenly Cynthia looked up, and caught Roger’s gaze of intent admiration too fully for her to be unaware that he was staring at her. She coloured a little; but, after the first moment of rosy confusion at his evident admiration of her, she flew to the attack, diverting his confusion at thus being caught, to the defence of himself from her accusation.
“It is quite true!” she said to him. “I was not attending: you see I don’t know even the A B C of science. But, please, don’t look so severely at me, even if I am a dunce!”
“I didn’t know—I didn’t mean to look severely, I am sure,” replied he, not knowing well what to say.
“Cynthia is not a dunce either,” said Mrs. Gibson, afraid lest her daughter’s opinion of herself might be taken seriously. “But I have always observed that some people have a talent for one thing and some for another. Now Cynthia’s talents are not for science and the severer studies. Do you remember, love, what trouble I had to teach you the use of the globes?”
“Yes; and I don’t know longitude from latitude now; and I’m always puzzled as to which is perpendicular and which is horizontal.”
“Yet, I do assure you,” her mother continued, rather addressing herself to Osborne, “that her memory for poetry is prodigious. I have heard her repeat the ‘Prisoner of Chillon’ from beginning to end.”
“It would be rather a bore to have to hear her, I think,” said Mr. Gibson, smiling at Cynthia, who gavehim back one of her bright looks of mutual understanding.
“Ah, Mr. Gibson, I have found out before now that you have no soul for poetry; and Molly there is your own child. She reads such deep books—all about facts and figures: she’ll be quite a blue-stocking by and by.”
“Mamma,” said Molly, reddening, “you think it was a deep book because there were the shapes of the different cells of bees in it! but it was not at all deep. It was very interesting.”
“Never mind, Molly,” said Osborne. “I stand up for blue-stockings.”
“And I object to the distinction implied in what you say,” said Roger. “It was not deep,ergo, it was very interesting. Now, a book may be both deep and interesting.”
“Oh, if you are going to chop logic and use Latin words, I think it is time for us to leave the room,” said Mrs. Gibson.
“Don’t let us run away as if we were beaten, mamma,” said Cynthia. “Though it may be logic, I for one can understand what Mr. Roger Hamley said just now; and I read some of Molly’s books; and whether it was deep or not, I found it very interesting—more so than I should think the ‘Prisoner of Chillon’ nowadays. I’ve displaced the Prisoner to make room for Johnnie Gilpin as my favourite poem.”
“How could you talk such nonsense, Cynthia!” said Mrs. Gibson, as the girls followed her upstairs. “You know you are not a dunce. It is all very well not to be a blue-stocking, because gentle-people don’t like that kind of woman; but running yourself down, and contradicting all I said about your liking for Byron, and poets and poetry—to Osborne Hamley of all men, too!”
Mrs. Gibson spoke quite crossly for her.
“But, mamma,” Cynthia replied, “I am either a dunce, or I am not. If I am, I did right to own it; if I am not, he’s a dunce if he doesn’t find out I was joking.”
“Well,” said Mrs. Gibson, a little puzzled by this speech, and wanting some elucidatory addition.
“Only that if he’s a dunce his opinion of me is worth nothing. So, any way, it doesn’t signify.”
“You really bewilder me with your nonsense, child. Molly is worth twenty of you.”
“I quite agree with you, mamma,” said Cynthia, turning round to take Molly’s hand.
“Yes; but she ought not to be,” said Mrs. Gibson, still irritated. “Think of the advantages you’ve had.”
“I’m afraid I had rather be a dunce than a blue-stocking,” said Molly; for the term had a little annoyed her, and the annoyance was rankling still.
“Hush; here they are coming: I hear the dining-room door! I never meant you were a blue-stocking, dear, so don’t look vexed—Cynthia, my love, where did you get those lovely flowers—anemones, are they? They suit your complexion so exactly.”
“Come, Molly, don’t look so grave and thoughtful,” exclaimed Cynthia. “Don’t you perceive mamma wants us to be smiling and amiable?”
FromCranford, 1853
A fewdays 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 dispatched 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 gillyflowers; 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 earache, 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 Shakspeare 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—“AsGoëthe says, ‘Ye ever-verdant palaces,’” etc. 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, when 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 yousit 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 new-fangled ways.”
“Oh! not at all!” said Miss Matty.
“No more do I,” said he. “My housekeeperwillhave 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 theywoulddrop 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!”
FromCranford.
Butwhen she was gone, Miss Pole began a long congratulation to Miss Matty that so far they had escaped marriage, which she noticed always made people credulous to the last degree; indeed, she thought it argued great natural credulity in a woman if she could not keep herself from being married; and in what Lady Glenmire had said about Mr. Hoggins’s robbery, we had a specimen of what people came to, if they gave way to such a weakness; evidently, Lady Glenmire would swallow anything, if she could believe the poor vamped-up story about a neck of mutton and a pussy, with which he had tried to impose on Miss Pole, only she had always been on her guard against believing too much of what men said.
We were thankful, as Miss Pole desired us to be, that we had never been married; but I think, of the two, we were even more thankful that the robbers had left Cranford; at least I judge so from a speech of Miss Matty’s that evening, as we sat over the fire, in which she evidently looked upon a husband as a great protector against thieves, burglars, and ghosts; and said, that she did not think that she should dare to be always warning young people against matrimony, as Miss Pole did continually;—to be sure, marriage was a risk, as she saw now she had had some experience; but she remembered the time when she had looked forward to being married as much as anyone.
“Not to any particular person, my dear,” said she, hastily checking herself up as if she were afraid ofhaving admitted too much; “only the old story, you know, of ladies always saying, ‘WhenI marry,’ and gentlemen, ‘IfI marry.’” It was a joke spoken in rather a sad tone, and I doubt if either of us smiled; but I could not see Miss Matty’s face by the flickering firelight. In a little while she continued:
“But after all I have not told you the truth. It is so long ago, and no one ever knew how much I thought of it at the time, unless, indeed, my dear mother guessed; but I may say that there was a time when I did not think I should have been only Miss Matty Jenkyns all my life; for even if I did meet anyone who wished to marry me now (and, as Miss Pole says, one is never too safe), I could not take him—I hope he would not take it too much to heart, but I couldnottake him—or any one but the person I once thought I should be married to, and he is dead and gone, and he never knew how it all came about that I said ‘No,’ when I had thought many and many a time——Well, it’s no matter what I thought. God ordains it all, and I am very happy, my dear. No one has such kind friends as I,” continued she, taking my hand and holding it in hers.
If I had never known of Mr. Holbrook, I could have said something in this pause, but as I had, I could not think of anything that would come in naturally, and so we both kept silence for a little time.
“My father once made us,” she began, “keep a diary, in two columns; on one side we were to put down in the morning what we thought would be the course and events of the coming day, and at night we were to put down on the other side what really had happened. It would be to some people rather a sad way of telling their lives”—(a tear dropped upon my hand at these words)—“I don’t mean that mine has been sad, only so very different to what I expected. Iremember, one winter’s evening, sitting over our bedroom fire with Deborah—I remember it as if it were yesterday—and we were planning our future lives—both of us were planning, though only she talked about it. She said she should like to marry an archdeacon, and write his charges; and you know, my dear, she never was married, and, for aught I know, she never spoke to an unmarried archdeacon in her life. I never was ambitious, nor could I have written charges, but I thought I could manage a house (my mother used to call me her right hand), and I was always so fond of little children—the shyest babies would stretch out their little arms to come to me; when I was a girl, I was half my leisure time nursing in the neighbouring cottages—but I don’t know how it was, when I grew sad and grave—which I did a year or two after this time—the little things drew back from me, and I am afraid I lost the knack, though I am just as fond of children as ever, and have a strange yearning at my heart whenever I see a mother with a baby in her arms. Nay, my dear”—(and by a sudden blaze which sprang up from a fall of the unstirred coals, I saw that her eyes were full of tears—gazing intently on some vision of what might have been)—“do you know, I dream sometimes that I have a little child—always the same—a little girl of about two years old; she never grows older, though I have dreamt about her for many years. I don’t think I ever dream of any words or sound she makes; she is very noiseless and still, but she comes to me when she is very sorry or very glad, and I have wakened with the clasp of her dear little arms round my neck. Only last night—perhaps because I had gone to sleep thinking of this ball for Phoebe—my little darling came in my dream, and put up her mouth to be kissed, just as I have seen real babies do to real mothersbefore going to bed. But all this is nonsense, dear! only don’t be frightened by Miss Pole from being married. I can fancy it may be a very happy state, and a little credulity helps one on through life very smoothly—better than always doubting and doubting, and seeing difficulties and disagreeables in everything.”
FromCranford.
AndnowI 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 postmistress at Cranford that his name wasMr.Thomas Holbrook, yeoman.
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 anyone 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?”
“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 gunpowder, 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. Iwas 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-de-laine 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 enquiry 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 meetinghis 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.
FromCranford.
Mrs. Forresterrelated 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 recipe for washing it in milk, which stiffensit 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 fore-feet straight down, so that they were fastened, and could not scratch, and we gave her a teaspoonful of currant-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 aclean 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.”
FromCranford
I haveoften noticed that almost everyone 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, withthe 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 anyone 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 whomight 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 fire-light, 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.
FromCranford
I imaginethat 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 kindlyesprit de corpswhich 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, 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 manycircles 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 bementioned 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 airsorefreshing; 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.
FromRuth, 1853