CRANFORD
PART 10
CHAPTER X: THE PANIC
I think a series of circumstances dated from Signor Brunoni’s
visit to Cranford, which seemed at the time connected in our minds with him,
though I don’t know that he had anything really to do with them. All at
once all sorts of uncomfortable rumours got afloat in the town. There
were one or two robberies—real bonâ fide robberies; men had up before
the magistrates and committed for trial—and that seemed to make us all afraid
of being robbed; and for a long time, at Miss Matty’s, I know, we used to make
a regular expedition all round the kitchens and cellars every night, Miss Matty
leading the way, armed with the poker, I following with the hearth-brush, and
Martha carrying the shovel and fire-irons with which to sound the alarm; and by
the accidental hitting together of them she often frightened us so much that we
bolted ourselves up, all three together, in the back-kitchen, or store-room, or
wherever we happened to be, till, when our affright was over, we recollected
ourselves and set out afresh with double valiance. By day we heard
strange stories from the shopkeepers and cottagers, of
carts that went about in the dead of night, drawn by horses shod with felt, and
guarded by men in dark clothes, going round the town, no doubt in search of
some unwatched house or some unfastened door.
Miss Pole,
who affected great bravery herself, was the principal person to collect and
arrange these reports so as to make them assume their most fearful
aspect. But we discovered that she had begged one of Mr Hoggins’s
worn-out hats to hang up in her lobby, and we (at least I) had doubts as to
whether she really would enjoy the little adventure of having her house broken
into, as she protested she should. Miss Matty made no secret of being an
arrant coward, but she went regularly through her housekeeper’s duty of
inspection—only the hour for this became earlier and earlier, till at last we
went the rounds at half-past six, and Miss Matty adjourned to bed soon after
seven, “in order to get the night over the sooner.”
Cranford
had so long piqued itself on being an honest and moral town that it had grown
to fancy itself too genteel and well-bred to be otherwise, and felt the stain
upon its character at this time doubly. But we comforted ourselves with
the assurance which we gave to each other that the robberies could never have
been committed by any Cranford person; it must have been a stranger or
strangers who brought this disgrace upon the town, and occasioned as many
precautions as if we were living among the Red Indians or the French.
This last
comparison of our nightly state of defence and fortification was made by Mrs
Forrester, whose father had served under General Burgoyne
in the American war, and whose husband had fought the French in Spain.
She indeed inclined to the idea that, in some way, the French were connected
with the small thefts, which were ascertained facts, and the burglaries and
highway robberies, which were rumours. She had been deeply impressed with
the idea of French spies at some time in her life; and the notion could never
be fairly eradicated, but sprang up again from time to time. And now her
theory was this:—The Cranford people respected themselves too much, and were
too grateful to the aristocracy who were so kind as to live near the town, ever
to disgrace their bringing up by being dishonest or immoral; therefore, we must
believe that the robbers were strangers—if strangers, why not foreigners?—if
foreigners, who so likely as the French? Signor Brunoni spoke broken
English like a Frenchman; and, though he wore a turban like a Turk, Mrs
Forrester had seen a print of Madame de Staël with a turban on, and another of
Mr Denon in just such a dress as that in which the conjuror had made his
appearance, showing clearly that the French, as well as the Turks, wore
turbans. There could be no doubt Signor Brunoni was a Frenchman—a French
spy come to discover the weak and undefended places of England, and doubtless
he had his accomplices. For her part, she, Mrs Forrester, had always had
her own opinion of Miss Pole’s adventure at the “George Inn”—seeing two men where
only one was believed to be. French people had ways and means which, she
was thankful to say, the English knew nothing about; and she had never felt
quite easy in her mind about going to see that conjuror—it
was rather too much like a forbidden thing, though the rector was there.
In short, Mrs Forrester grew more excited than we had ever known her before,
and, being an officer’s daughter and widow, we looked up to her opinion, of
course.
Really I
do not know how much was true or false in the reports which flew about like
wildfire just at this time; but it seemed to me then that there was every
reason to believe that at Mardon (a small town about eight miles from Cranford)
houses and shops were entered by holes made in the walls, the bricks being
silently carried away in the dead of the night, and all done so quietly that no
sound was heard either in or out of the house. Miss Matty gave it up in
despair when she heard of this. “What was the use,” said she, “of locks
and bolts, and bells to the windows, and going round the house every
night? That last trick was fit for a conjuror. Now she did believe
that Signor Brunoni was at the bottom of it.”
One
afternoon, about five o’clock, we were startled by a hasty knock at the
door. Miss Matty bade me run and tell Martha on no account to open the
door till she (Miss Matty) had reconnoitred through the window; and she armed
herself with a footstool to drop down on the head of the visitor, in case he
should show a face covered with black crape, as he looked up in answer to her
inquiry of who was there. But it was nobody but Miss Pole and
Betty. The former came upstairs, carrying a little hand-basket, and she
was evidently in a state of great agitation.
“Take care of that!” said she to me, as I offered to
relieve her of her basket. “It’s my plate. I am sure there is a
plan to rob my house to-night. I am come to throw myself on your
hospitality, Miss Matty. Betty is going to sleep with her cousin at the
‘George.’ I can sit up here all night if you will allow me; but my house
is so far from any neighbours, and I don’t believe we could be heard if we
screamed ever so!”
“But,”
said Miss Matty, “what has alarmed you so much? Have you seen any men
lurking about the house?”
“Oh, yes!”
answered Miss Pole. “Two very bad-looking men have gone three times past
the house, very slowly; and an Irish beggar-woman came not half-an-hour ago,
and all but forced herself in past Betty, saying her children were starving,
and she must speak to the mistress. You see, she said ‘mistress,’ though
there was a hat hanging up in the hall, and it would have been more natural to
have said ‘master.’ But Betty shut the door in her face, and came up to
me, and we got the spoons together, and sat in the parlour-window watching till
we saw Thomas Jones going from his work, when we called to him and asked him to
take care of us into the town.”
We might
have triumphed over Miss Pole, who had professed such bravery until she was
frightened; but we were too glad to perceive that she shared in the weaknesses
of humanity to exult over her; and I gave up my room to her very willingly, and
shared Miss Matty’s bed for the night. But before we retired, the two
ladies rummaged up, out of the recesses of their memory, such horrid stories of
robbery and murder that I quite quaked in my shoes.
Miss Pole was evidently anxious to prove that such terrible events had occurred
within her experience that she was justified in her sudden panic; and Miss
Matty did not like to be outdone, and capped every story with one yet more
horrible, till it reminded me oddly enough, of an old story I had read
somewhere, of a nightingale and a musician, who strove one against the other
which could produce the most admirable music, till poor Philomel dropped down
dead.
One of the
stories that haunted me for a long time afterwards was of a girl who was left
in charge of a great house in Cumberland on some particular fair-day, when the
other servants all went off to the gaieties. The family were away in
London, and a pedlar came by, and asked to leave his large and heavy pack in
the kitchen, saying he would call for it again at night; and the girl (a
gamekeeper’s daughter), roaming about in search of amusement, chanced to hit
upon a gun hanging up in the hall, and took it down to look at the chasing; and
it went off through the open kitchen door, hit the pack, and a slow dark thread
of blood came oozing out. (How Miss Pole enjoyed this part of the story,
dwelling on each word as if she loved it!) She rather hurried over the
further account of the girl’s bravery, and I have but a confused idea that,
somehow, she baffled the robbers with Italian irons, heated red-hot, and then
restored to blackness by being dipped in grease.
We parted
for the night with an awe-stricken wonder as to what we should hear of in the
morning—and, on my part, with a vehement desire for the night to be over and
gone: I was so afraid lest the robbers should have seen,
from some dark lurking-place, that Miss Pole had carried off her plate, and
thus have a double motive for attacking our house.
But until
Lady Glenmire came to call next day we heard of nothing unusual. The
kitchen fire-irons were in exactly the same position against the back door as
when Martha and I had skilfully piled them up, like spillikins, ready to fall
with an awful clatter if only a cat had touched the outside panels. I had
wondered what we should all do if thus awakened and alarmed, and had proposed
to Miss Matty that we should cover up our faces under the bedclothes so that
there should be no danger of the robbers thinking that we could identify them;
but Miss Matty, who was trembling very much, scouted this idea, and said we
owed it to society to apprehend them, and that she should certainly do her best
to lay hold of them and lock them up in the garret till morning.
When Lady
Glenmire came, we almost felt jealous of her. Mrs Jamieson’s house had
really been attacked; at least there were men’s footsteps to be seen on the
flower borders, underneath the kitchen windows, “where nae men should be;” and
Carlo had barked all through the night as if strangers were abroad. Mrs
Jamieson had been awakened by Lady Glenmire, and they had rung the bell which
communicated with Mr Mulliner’s room in the third storey, and when his
night-capped head had appeared over the bannisters, in answer to the summons,
they had told him of their alarm, and the reasons for it; whereupon he
retreated into his bedroom, and locked the door (for fear of draughts, as he
informed them in the morning), and opened the window, and called
out valiantly to say, if the supposed robbers would come to him he would fight
them; but, as Lady Glenmire observed, that was but poor comfort, since they
would have to pass by Mrs Jamieson’s room and her own before they could reach
him, and must be of a very pugnacious disposition indeed if they neglected the
opportunities of robbery presented by the unguarded lower storeys, to go up to
a garret, and there force a door in order to get at the champion of the
house. Lady Glenmire, after waiting and listening for some time in the
drawing-room, had proposed to Mrs Jamieson that they should go to bed; but that
lady said she should not feel comfortable unless she sat up and watched; and,
accordingly, she packed herself warmly up on the sofa, where she was found by
the housemaid, when she came into the room at six o’clock, fast asleep; but
Lady Glenmire went to bed, and kept awake all night.
When Miss
Pole heard of this, she nodded her head in great satisfaction. She had
been sure we should hear of something happening in Cranford that night; and we
had heard. It was clear enough they had first proposed to attack her
house; but when they saw that she and Betty were on their guard, and had
carried off the plate, they had changed their tactics and gone to Mrs
Jamieson’s, and no one knew what might have happened if Carlo had not barked,
like a good dog as he was!
Poor
Carlo! his barking days were nearly over. Whether the gang who infested
the neighbourhood were afraid of him, or whether they were revengeful enough,
for the way in which he had baffled them on the night in
question, to poison him; or whether, as some among the more uneducated people
thought, he died of apoplexy, brought on by too much feeding and too little
exercise; at any rate, it is certain that, two days after this eventful night,
Carlo was found dead, with his poor legs stretched out stiff in the attitude of
running, as if by such unusual exertion he could escape the sure pursuer,
Death.
We were
all sorry for Carlo, the old familiar friend who had snapped at us for so many
years; and the mysterious mode of his death made us very uncomfortable.
Could Signor Brunoni be at the bottom of this? He had apparently killed a
canary with only a word of command; his will seemed of deadly force; who knew
but what he might yet be lingering in the neighbourhood willing all sorts of
awful things!
We
whispered these fancies among ourselves in the evenings; but in the mornings
our courage came back with the daylight, and in a week’s time we had got over
the shock of Carlo’s death; all but Mrs Jamieson. She, poor thing, felt
it as she had felt no event since her husband’s death; indeed, Miss Pole said,
that as the Honourable Mr Jamieson drank a good deal, and occasioned her much
uneasiness, it was possible that Carlo’s death might be the greater
affliction. But there was always a tinge of cynicism in Miss Pole’s
remarks. However, one thing was clear and certain—it was necessary for
Mrs Jamieson to have some change of scene; and Mr Mulliner was very impressive
on this point, shaking his head whenever we inquired after his mistress, and
speaking of her loss of appetite and bad nights very ominously; and with justice too, for if she had two characteristics in
her natural state of health they were a facility of eating and sleeping.
If she could neither eat nor sleep, she must be indeed out of spirits and out
of health.
Lady
Glenmire (who had evidently taken very kindly to Cranford) did not like the
idea of Mrs Jamieson’s going to Cheltenham, and more than once insinuated
pretty plainly that it was Mr Mulliner’s doing, who had been much alarmed on
the occasion of the house being attacked, and since had said, more than once,
that he felt it a very responsible charge to have to defend so many
women. Be that as it might, Mrs Jamieson went to Cheltenham, escorted by
Mr Mulliner; and Lady Glenmire remained in possession of the house, her
ostensible office being to take care that the maid-servants did not pick up
followers. She made a very pleasant-looking dragon; and, as soon as it
was arranged for her stay in Cranford, she found out that Mrs Jamieson’s visit
to Cheltenham was just the best thing in the world. She had let her house
in Edinburgh, and was for the time house-less, so the charge of her
sister-in-law’s comfortable abode was very convenient and acceptable.
Miss Pole
was very much inclined to instal herself as a heroine, because of the decided
steps she had taken in flying from the two men and one woman, whom she entitled
“that murderous gang.” She described their appearance in glowing colours,
and I noticed that every time she went over the story some fresh trait of
villainy was added to their appearance. One was tall—he grew to be
gigantic in height before we had done with him; he of course had
black hair—and by-and-by it hung in elf-locks over his forehead and down his
back. The other was short and broad—and a hump sprouted out on his
shoulder before we heard the last of him; he had red hair—which deepened into
carroty; and she was almost sure he had a cast in the eye—a decided
squint. As for the woman, her eyes glared, and she was
masculine-looking—a perfect virago; most probably a man dressed in woman’s
clothes; afterwards, we heard of a beard on her chin, and a manly voice and a
stride.
If Miss
Pole was delighted to recount the events of that afternoon to all inquirers,
others were not so proud of their adventures in the robbery line. Mr
Hoggins, the surgeon, had been attacked at his own door by two ruffians, who
were concealed in the shadow of the porch, and so effectually silenced him that
he was robbed in the interval between ringing his bell and the servant’s
answering it. Miss Pole was sure it would turn out that this robbery had
been committed by “her men,” and went the very day she heard the report to have
her teeth examined, and to question Mr Hoggins. She came to us
afterwards; so we heard what she had heard, straight and direct from the
source, while we were yet in the excitement and flutter of the agitation caused
by the first intelligence; for the event had only occurred the night before.
“Well!”
said Miss Pole, sitting down with the decision of a person who has made up her
mind as to the nature of life and the world (and such people never tread
lightly, or seat themselves without a bump), “well, Miss Matty! men will be
men. Every mother’s son of them wishes to be
considered Samson and Solomon rolled into one—too strong ever to be beaten or
discomfited—too wise ever to be outwitted. If you will notice, they have
always foreseen events, though they never tell one for one’s warning before the
events happen. My father was a man, and I know the sex pretty well.”
She had
talked herself out of breath, and we should have been very glad to fill up the
necessary pause as chorus, but we did not exactly know what to say, or which
man had suggested this diatribe against the sex; so we only joined in
generally, with a grave shake of the head, and a soft murmur of “They are very
incomprehensible, certainly!”
“Now, only
think,” said she. “There, I have undergone the risk of having one of my
remaining teeth drawn (for one is terribly at the mercy of any surgeon-dentist;
and I, for one, always speak them fair till I have got my mouth out of their
clutches), and, after all, Mr Hoggins is too much of a man to own that he was
robbed last night.”
“Not
robbed!” exclaimed the chorus.
“Don’t
tell me!” Miss Pole exclaimed, angry that we could be for a moment imposed
upon. “I believe he was robbed, just as Betty told me, and he is ashamed
to own it; and, to be sure, it was very silly of him to be robbed just at his
own door; I daresay he feels that such a thing won’t raise him in the eyes of
Cranford society, and is anxious to conceal it—but he need not have tried to
impose upon me, by saying I must have heard an exaggerated account of some
petty theft of a neck of mutton, which, it seems, was stolen out of the safe in
his yard last week; he had the impertinence to add, he
believed that that was taken by the cat. I have no doubt, if I could get
at the bottom of it, it was that Irishman dressed up in woman’s clothes, who
came spying about my house, with the story about the starving children.”
After we
had duly condemned the want of candour which Mr Hoggins had evinced, and abused
men in general, taking him for the representative and type, we got round to the
subject about which we had been talking when Miss Pole came in; namely, how
far, in the present disturbed state of the country, we could venture to accept
an invitation which Miss Matty had just received from Mrs Forrester, to come as
usual and keep the anniversary of her wedding-day by drinking tea with her at
five o’clock, and playing a quiet pool afterwards. Mrs Forrester had said
that she asked us with some diffidence, because the roads were, she feared,
very unsafe. But she suggested that perhaps one of us would not object to
take the sedan, and that the others, by walking briskly, might keep up with the
long trot of the chairmen, and so we might all arrive safely at Over Place, a
suburb of the town. (No; that is too large an expression: a small cluster
of houses separated from Cranford by about two hundred yards of a dark and
lonely lane.) There was no doubt but that a similar note was awaiting Miss
Pole at home; so her call was a very fortunate affair, as it enabled us to
consult together. We would all much rather have declined this invitation;
but we felt that it would not be quite kind to Mrs Forrester, who would
otherwise be left to a solitary retrospect of her not very
happy or fortunate life. Miss Matty and Miss Pole had been visitors on
this occasion for many years, and now they gallantly determined to nail their
colours to the mast, and to go through Darkness Lane rather than fail in loyalty
to their friend.
But when
the evening came, Miss Matty (for it was she who was voted into the chair, as
she had a cold), before being shut down in the sedan, like jack-in-a-box,
implored the chairmen, whatever might befall, not to run away and leave her
fastened up there, to be murdered; and even after they had promised, I saw her
tighten her features into the stern determination of a martyr, and she gave me
a melancholy and ominous shake of the head through the glass. However, we
got there safely, only rather out of breath, for it was who could trot hardest
through Darkness Lane, and I am afraid poor Miss Matty was sadly jolted.
Mrs
Forrester had made extra preparations, in acknowledgment of our exertion in
coming to see her through such dangers. The usual forms of genteel
ignorance as to what her servants might send up were all gone through; and
harmony and Preference seemed likely to be the order of the evening, but for an
interesting conversation that began I don’t know how, but which had relation, of
course, to the robbers who infested the neighbourhood of Cranford.
Having
braved the dangers of Darkness Lane, and thus having a little stock of
reputation for courage to fall back upon; and also, I daresay, desirous of
proving ourselves superior to men (videlicet Mr Hoggins) in the article
of candour, we began to relate our individual fears, and
the private precautions we each of us took. I owned that my pet
apprehension was eyes—eyes looking at me, and watching me, glittering out from
some dull, flat, wooden surface; and that if I dared to go up to my
looking-glass when I was panic-stricken, I should certainly turn it round, with
its back towards me, for fear of seeing eyes behind me looking out of the
darkness. I saw Miss Matty nerving herself up for a confession; and at
last out it came. She owned that, ever since she had been a girl, she had
dreaded being caught by her last leg, just as she was getting into bed, by some
one concealed under it. She said, when she was younger and more active,
she used to take a flying leap from a distance, and so bring both her legs up
safely into bed at once; but that this had always annoyed Deborah, who piqued
herself upon getting into bed gracefully, and she had given it up in
consequence. But now the old terror would often come over her, especially
since Miss Pole’s house had been attacked (we had got quite to believe in the
fact of the attack having taken place), and yet it was very unpleasant to think
of looking under a bed, and seeing a man concealed, with a great, fierce face
staring out at you; so she had bethought herself of something—perhaps I had
noticed that she had told Martha to buy her a penny ball, such as children play
with—and now she rolled this ball under the bed every night: if it came out on
the other side, well and good; if not she always took care to have her hand on
the bell-rope, and meant to call out John and Harry, just as if she expected
men-servants to answer her ring.
We all applauded this ingenious contrivance, and Miss
Matty sank back into satisfied silence, with a look at Mrs Forrester as if to
ask for her private weakness.
Mrs
Forrester looked askance at Miss Pole, and tried to change the subject a little
by telling us that she had borrowed a boy from one of the neighbouring cottages
and promised his parents a hundredweight of coals at Christmas, and his supper
every evening, for the loan of him at nights. She had instructed him in
his possible duties when he first came; and, finding him sensible, she had
given him the Major’s sword (the Major was her late husband), and desired him
to put it very carefully behind his pillow at night, turning the edge towards
the head of the pillow. He was a sharp lad, she was sure; for, spying out
the Major’s cocked hat, he had said, if he might have that to wear, he was sure
he could frighten two Englishmen, or four Frenchmen any day. But she had
impressed upon him anew that he was to lose no time in putting on hats or
anything else; but, if he heard any noise, he was to run at it with his drawn
sword. On my suggesting that some accident might occur from such
slaughterous and indiscriminate directions, and that he might rush on Jenny
getting up to wash, and have spitted her before he had discovered that she was
not a Frenchman, Mrs Forrester said she did not think that that was likely, for
he was a very sound sleeper, and generally had to be well shaken or cold-pigged
in a morning before they could rouse him. She sometimes thought such dead
sleep must be owing to the hearty suppers the poor lad ate, for he was half-starved at home, and she told Jenny to see that he got a
good meal at night.
Still this
was no confession of Mrs Forrester’s peculiar timidity, and we urged her to
tell us what she thought would frighten her more than anything. She
paused, and stirred the fire, and snuffed the candles, and then she said, in a
sounding whisper—
“Ghosts!”
She looked
at Miss Pole, as much as to say, she had declared it, and would stand by
it. Such a look was a challenge in itself. Miss Pole came down upon
her with indigestion, spectral illusions, optical delusions, and a great deal
out of Dr Ferrier and Dr Hibbert besides. Miss Matty had rather a leaning
to ghosts, as I have mentioned before, and what little she did say was all on
Mrs Forrester’s side, who, emboldened by sympathy, protested that ghosts were a
part of her religion; that surely she, the widow of a major in the army, knew
what to be frightened at, and what not; in short, I never saw Mrs Forrester so
warm either before or since, for she was a gentle, meek, enduring old lady in
most things. Not all the elder-wine that ever was mulled could this night
wash out the remembrance of this difference between Miss Pole and her
hostess. Indeed, when the elder-wine was brought in, it gave rise to a
new burst of discussion; for Jenny, the little maiden who staggered under the
tray, had to give evidence of having seen a ghost with her own eyes, not so
many nights ago, in Darkness Lane, the very lane we were to go through on our
way home.
In spite
of the uncomfortable feeling which this last consideration gave me, I could not
help being amused at Jenny’s position, which was
exceedingly like that of a witness being examined and cross-examined by two
counsel who are not at all scrupulous about asking leading questions. The
conclusion I arrived at was, that Jenny had certainly seen something beyond
what a fit of indigestion would have caused. A lady all in white, and
without her head, was what she deposed and adhered to, supported by a
consciousness of the secret sympathy of her mistress under the withering scorn
with which Miss Pole regarded her. And not only she, but many others, had
seen this headless lady, who sat by the roadside wringing her hands as in deep
grief. Mrs Forrester looked at us from time to time with an air of
conscious triumph; but then she had not to pass through Darkness Lane before
she could bury herself beneath her own familiar bed-clothes.
We
preserved a discreet silence as to the headless lady while we were putting on
our things to go home, for there was no knowing how near the ghostly head and
ears might be, or what spiritual connection they might be keeping up with the
unhappy body in Darkness Lane; and, therefore, even Miss Pole felt that it was
as well not to speak lightly on such subjects, for fear of vexing or insulting
that woebegone trunk. At least, so I conjecture; for, instead of the busy
clatter usual in the operation, we tied on our cloaks as sadly as mutes at a
funeral. Miss Matty drew the curtains round the windows of the chair to
shut out disagreeable sights, and the men (either because they were in spirits
that their labours were so nearly ended, or because they
were going down hill), set off at such a round and merry pace, that it was all
Miss Pole and I could do to keep up with them. She had breath for nothing
beyond an imploring “Don’t leave me!” uttered as she clutched my arm so tightly
that I could not have quitted her, ghost or no ghost. What a relief it
was when the men, weary of their burden and their quick trot, stopped just
where Headingley Causeway branches off from Darkness Lane! Miss Pole
unloosed me and caught at one of the men—
“Could not
you—could not you take Miss Matty round by Headingley Causeway?—the pavement in
Darkness Lane jolts so, and she is not very strong.”
A
smothered voice was heard from the inside of the chair—
“Oh! pray
go on! What is the matter? What is the matter? I will give
you sixpence more to go on very fast; pray don’t stop here.”
“And I’ll
give you a shilling,” said Miss Pole, with tremulous dignity, “if you’ll go by
Headingley Causeway.”
The two
men grunted acquiescence and took up the chair, and went along the causeway,
which certainly answered Miss Pole’s kind purpose of saving Miss Matty’s bones;
for it was covered with soft, thick mud, and even a fall there would have been
easy till the getting-up came, when there might have been some difficulty in
extrication.
To be
continued
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