CRANFORD
PART 3
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 lines 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.
To be continued
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