CRANFORD
PART 12
CHAPTER XII: ENGAGED TO BE MARRIED
Was the “poor Peter” of
Cranford the Aga Jenkyns of Chunderabaddad, or was he not? As somebody
says, that was the question.
In my own
home, whenever people had nothing else to do, they blamed me for want of
discretion. Indiscretion was my bug-bear fault. Everybody has a
bug-bear fault, a sort of standing characteristic—a pièce de résistance
for their friends to cut at; and in general they cut and come again. I
was tired of being called indiscreet and incautious; and I determined for once
to prove myself a model of prudence and wisdom. I would not even hint my
suspicions respecting the Aga. I would collect evidence and carry it home
to lay before my father, as the family friend of the two Miss Jenkynses.
In my
search after facts, I was often reminded of a description my father had once
given of a ladies’ committee that he had had to preside over. He said he
could not help thinking of a passage in Dickens, which spoke of a chorus in
which every man took the tune he knew best, and sang it to his own
satisfaction. So, at this charitable committee, every lady took the
subject uppermost in her mind, and talked about it to her
own great contentment, but not much to the advancement of the subject they had
met to discuss. But even that committee could have been nothing to the
Cranford ladies when I attempted to gain some clear and definite information as
to poor Peter’s height, appearance, and when and where he was seen and heard of
last. For instance, I remember asking Miss Pole (and I thought the
question was very opportune, for I put it when I met her at a call at Mrs
Forrester’s, and both the ladies had known Peter, and I imagined that they
might refresh each other’s memories)—I asked Miss Pole what was the very last
thing they had ever heard about him; and then she named the absurd report to
which I have alluded, about his having been elected Great Lama of Thibet; and
this was a signal for each lady to go off on her separate idea. Mrs
Forrester’s start was made on the veiled prophet in Lalla Rookh—whether I
thought he was meant for the Great Lama, though Peter was not so ugly, indeed
rather handsome, if he had not been freckled. I was thankful to see her
double upon Peter; but, in a moment, the delusive lady was off upon Rowland’s
Kalydor, and the merits of cosmetics and hair oils in general, and holding
forth so fluently that I turned to listen to Miss Pole, who (through the llamas,
the beasts of burden) had got to Peruvian bonds, and the share market, and her
poor opinion of joint-stock banks in general, and of that one in particular in
which Miss Matty’s money was invested. In vain I put in “When was it—in
what year was it that you heard that Mr Peter was the Great Lama?” They
only joined issue to dispute whether llamas were
carnivorous animals or not; in which dispute they were not quite on fair
grounds, as Mrs Forrester (after they had grown warm and cool again)
acknowledged that she always confused carnivorous and graminivorous together,
just as she did horizontal and perpendicular; but then she apologised for it
very prettily, by saying that in her day the only use people made of
four-syllabled words was to teach how they should be spelt.
The only
fact I gained from this conversation was that certainly Peter had last been
heard of in India, “or that neighbourhood”; and that this scanty intelligence
of his whereabouts had reached Cranford in the year when Miss Pole had brought
her Indian muslin gown, long since worn out (we washed it and mended it, and
traced its decline and fall into a window-blind before we could go on); and in
a year when Wombwell came to Cranford, because Miss Matty had wanted to see an
elephant in order that she might the better imagine Peter riding on one; and
had seen a boa-constrictor too, which was more than she wished to imagine in
her fancy-pictures of Peter’s locality; and in a year when Miss Jenkyns had
learnt some piece of poetry off by heart, and used to say, at all the Cranford
parties, how Peter was “surveying mankind from China to Peru,” which everybody
had thought very grand, and rather appropriate, because India was between China
and Peru, if you took care to turn the globe to the left instead of the right.
I suppose
all these inquiries of mine, and the consequent curiosity excited in the minds
of my friends, made us blind and deaf to what was going on
around us. It seemed to me as if the sun rose and shone, and as if the
rain rained on Cranford, just as usual, and I did not notice any sign of the
times that could be considered as a prognostic of any uncommon event; and, to
the best of my belief, not only Miss Matty and Mrs Forrester, but even Miss
Pole herself, whom we looked upon as a kind of prophetess, from the knack she
had of foreseeing things before they came to pass—although she did not like to
disturb her friends by telling them her foreknowledge—even Miss Pole herself
was breathless with astonishment when she came to tell us of the astounding
piece of news. But I must recover myself; the contemplation of it, even
at this distance of time, has taken away my breath and my grammar, and unless I
subdue my emotion, my spelling will go too.
We were
sitting—Miss Matty and I—much as usual, she in the blue chintz easy-chair, with
her back to the light, and her knitting in her hand, I reading aloud the St
James’s Chronicle. A few minutes more, and we should have gone to
make the little alterations in dress usual before calling-time (twelve o’clock)
in Cranford. I remember the scene and the date well. We had been
talking of the signor’s rapid recovery since the warmer weather had set in, and
praising Mr Hoggins’s skill, and lamenting his want of refinement and manner
(it seems a curious coincidence that this should have been our subject, but so
it was), when a knock was heard—a caller’s knock—three distinct taps—and we
were flying (that is to say, Miss Matty could not walk very fast, having had a touch of rheumatism) to our rooms, to change cap and
collars, when Miss Pole arrested us by calling out, as she came up the stairs,
“Don’t go—I can’t wait—it is not twelve, I know—but never mind your dress—I
must speak to you.” We did our best to look as if it was not we who had
made the hurried movement, the sound of which she had heard; for, of course, we
did not like to have it supposed that we had any old clothes that it was
convenient to wear out in the “sanctuary of home,” as Miss Jenkyns once
prettily called the back parlour, where she was tying up preserves. So we
threw our gentility with double force into our manners, and very genteel we
were for two minutes while Miss Pole recovered breath, and excited our
curiosity strongly by lifting up her hands in amazement, and bringing them down
in silence, as if what she had to say was too big for words, and could only be
expressed by pantomime.
“What do
you think, Miss Matty? What do you think? Lady Glenmire is
to marry—is to be married, I mean—Lady Glenmire—Mr Hoggins—Mr Hoggins is going
to marry Lady Glenmire!”
“Marry!”
said we. “Marry! Madness!”
“Marry!”
said Miss Pole, with the decision that belonged to her character. “I
said marry! as you do; and I also said, ‘What a fool my lady is going to make
of herself!’ I could have said ‘Madness!’ but I controlled myself, for it
was in a public shop that I heard of it. Where feminine delicacy is gone
to, I don’t know! You and I, Miss Matty, would have been ashamed to have
known that our marriage was spoken of in a grocer’s shop, in the hearing of shopmen!”
“But,” said Miss Matty, sighing as one recovering from
a blow, “perhaps it is not true. Perhaps we are doing her injustice.”
“No,” said
Miss Pole. “I have taken care to ascertain that. I went straight to
Mrs Fitz-Adam, to borrow a cookery-book which I knew she had; and I introduced
my congratulations à propos of the difficulty gentlemen must have in
house-keeping; and Mrs Fitz-Adam bridled up, and said that she believed it was
true, though how and where I could have heard it she did not know. She
said her brother and Lady Glenmire had come to an understanding at last.
‘Understanding!’ such a coarse word! But my lady will have to come down
to many a want of refinement. I have reason to believe Mr Hoggins sups on
bread-and-cheese and beer every night.
“Marry!”
said Miss Matty once again. “Well! I never thought of it. Two
people that we know going to be married. It’s coming very near!”
“So near
that my heart stopped beating when I heard of it, while you might have counted
twelve,” said Miss Pole.
“One does
not know whose turn may come next. Here, in Cranford, poor Lady Glenmire
might have thought herself safe,” said Miss Matty, with a gentle pity in her
tones.
“Bah!”
said Miss Pole, with a toss of her head. “Don’t you remember poor dear
Captain Brown’s song ‘Tibbie Fowler,’ and the line—
‘Set her
on the Tintock tap,
The wind will blaw a man till her.’”
The wind will blaw a man till her.’”
“Well!
there was a kind of attraction about Lady Glenmire that I, for one, should be
ashamed to have.”
I put in
my wonder. “But how can she have fancied Mr Hoggins? I am not
surprised that Mr Hoggins has liked her.”
“Oh!
I don’t know. Mr Hoggins is rich, and very pleasant-looking,” said Miss
Matty, “and very good-tempered and kind-hearted.”
“She has
married for an establishment, that’s it. I suppose she takes the surgery
with it,” said Miss Pole, with a little dry laugh at her own joke. But,
like many people who think they have made a severe and sarcastic speech, which
yet is clever of its kind, she began to relax in her grimness from the moment
when she made this allusion to the surgery; and we turned to speculate on the
way in which Mrs Jamieson would receive the news. The person whom she had
left in charge of her house to keep off followers from her maids to set up a
follower of her own! And that follower a man whom Mrs Jamieson had
tabooed as vulgar, and inadmissible to Cranford society, not merely on account
of his name, but because of his voice, his complexion, his boots, smelling of
the stable, and himself, smelling of drugs. Had he ever been to see Lady
Glenmire at Mrs Jamieson’s? Chloride of lime would not purify the house
in its owner’s estimation if he had. Or had their interviews been
confined to the occasional meetings in the chamber of the poor sick conjuror,
to whom, with all our sense of the mésalliance, we could not help allowing that they had both been exceedingly
kind? And now it turned out that a servant of Mrs Jamieson’s had been
ill, and Mr Hoggins had been attending her for some weeks. So the wolf
had got into the fold, and now he was carrying off the shepherdess. What
would Mrs Jamieson say? We looked into the darkness of futurity as a
child gazes after a rocket up in the cloudy sky, full of wondering expectation
of the rattle, the discharge, and the brilliant shower of sparks and
light. Then we brought ourselves down to earth and the present time by
questioning each other (being all equally ignorant, and all equally without the
slightest data to build any conclusions upon) as to when IT
would take place? Where? How much a year Mr Hoggins had?
Whether she would drop her title? And how Martha and the other correct
servants in Cranford would ever be brought to announce a married couple as Lady
Glenmire and Mr Hoggins? But would they be visited? Would Mrs
Jamieson let us? Or must we choose between the Honourable Mrs Jamieson
and the degraded Lady Glenmire? We all liked Lady Glenmire the
best. She was bright, and kind, and sociable, and agreeable; and Mrs Jamieson
was dull, and inert, and pompous, and tiresome. But we had acknowledged
the sway of the latter so long, that it seemed like a kind of disloyalty now
even to meditate disobedience to the prohibition we anticipated.
Mrs
Forrester surprised us in our darned caps and patched collars; and we forgot
all about them in our eagerness to see how she would bear the information,
which we honourably left to Miss Pole, to impart, although,
if we had been inclined to take unfair advantage, we might have rushed in ourselves,
for she had a most out-of-place fit of coughing for five minutes after Mrs
Forrester entered the room. I shall never forget the imploring expression
of her eyes, as she looked at us over her pocket-handkerchief. They said,
as plain as words could speak, “Don’t let Nature deprive me of the treasure
which is mine, although for a time I can make no use of it.” And we did
not.
Mrs
Forrester’s surprise was equal to ours; and her sense of injury rather greater,
because she had to feel for her Order, and saw more fully than we could do how
such conduct brought stains on the aristocracy.
When she
and Miss Pole left us we endeavoured to subside into calmness; but Miss Matty
was really upset by the intelligence she had heard. She reckoned it up,
and it was more than fifteen years since she had heard of any of her
acquaintance going to be married, with the one exception of Miss Jessie Brown;
and, as she said, it gave her quite a shock, and made her feel as if she could
not think what would happen next.
I don’t
know whether it is a fancy of mine, or a real fact, but I have noticed that,
just after the announcement of an engagement in any set, the unmarried ladies
in that set flutter out in an unusual gaiety and newness of dress, as much as
to say, in a tacit and unconscious manner, “We also are spinsters.” Miss
Matty and Miss Pole talked and thought more about bonnets, gowns, caps, and
shawls, during the fortnight that succeeded this call, than
I had known them do for years before. But it might be the spring weather,
for it was a warm and pleasant March; and merinoes and beavers, and woollen
materials of all sorts were but ungracious receptacles of the bright sun’s
glancing rays. It had not been Lady Glenmire’s dress that had won Mr
Hoggins’s heart, for she went about on her errands of kindness more shabby than
ever. Although in the hurried glimpses I caught of her at church or
elsewhere she appeared rather to shun meeting any of her friends, her face
seemed to have almost something of the flush of youth in it; her lips looked
redder and more trembling full than in their old compressed state, and her eyes
dwelt on all things with a lingering light, as if she was learning to love
Cranford and its belongings. Mr Hoggins looked broad and radiant, and creaked
up the middle aisle at church in a brand-new pair of top-boots—an audible, as
well as visible, sign of his purposed change of state; for the tradition went,
that the boots he had worn till now were the identical pair in which he first
set out on his rounds in Cranford twenty-five years ago; only they had been
new-pieced, high and low, top and bottom, heel and sole, black leather and
brown leather, more times than any one could tell.
None of
the ladies in Cranford chose to sanction the marriage by congratulating either
of the parties. We wished to ignore the whole affair until our liege
lady, Mrs Jamieson, returned. Till she came back to give us our cue, we
felt that it would be better to consider the engagement in the same light as
the Queen of Spain’s legs—facts which certainly existed, but the less said
about the better. This restraint upon our tongues—for
you see if we did not speak about it to any of the parties concerned, how could
we get answers to the questions that we longed to ask?—was beginning to be
irksome, and our idea of the dignity of silence was paling before our
curiosity, when another direction was given to our thoughts, by an announcement
on the part of the principal shopkeeper of Cranford, who ranged the trades from
grocer and cheesemonger to man-milliner, as occasion required, that the spring
fashions were arrived, and would be exhibited on the following Tuesday at his
rooms in High Street. Now Miss Matty had been only waiting for this
before buying herself a new silk gown. I had offered, it is true, to send
to Drumble for patterns, but she had rejected my proposal, gently implying that
she had not forgotten her disappointment about the sea-green turban. I
was thankful that I was on the spot now, to counteract the dazzling fascination
of any yellow or scarlet silk.
I must say
a word or two here about myself. I have spoken of my father’s old
friendship for the Jenkyns family; indeed, I am not sure if there was not some
distant relationship. He had willingly allowed me to remain all the
winter at Cranford, in consideration of a letter which Miss Matty had written
to him about the time of the panic, in which I suspect she had exaggerated my
powers and my bravery as a defender of the house. But now that the days
were longer and more cheerful, he was beginning to urge the necessity of my
return; and I only delayed in a sort of odd forlorn hope that if I could obtain
any clear information, I might make the account given by
the signora of the Aga Jenkyns tally with that of “poor Peter,” his appearance
and disappearance, which I had winnowed out of the conversation of Miss Pole
and Mrs Forrester.
To be
continued
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