CRANFORD
PART 14
CHAPTER XIV—FRIENDS IN NEED
It was an example to me,
and I fancy it might be to many others, to see how immediately Miss Matty set
about the retrenchment which she knew to be right under her altered
circumstances. While she went down to speak to Martha, and break the
intelligence to her, I stole out with my letter to the Aga Jenkyns, and went to
the signor’s lodgings to obtain the exact address. I bound the signora to
secrecy; and indeed her military manners had a degree of shortness and reserve
in them which made her always say as little as possible, except when under the
pressure of strong excitement. Moreover (which made my secret doubly
sure), the signor was now so far recovered as to be looking forward to
travelling and conjuring again in the space of a few days, when he, his wife,
and little Phoebe would leave Cranford. Indeed, I found him looking over
a great black and red placard, in which the Signor Brunoni’s accomplishments
were set forth, and to which only the name of the town where he would next
display them was wanting. He and his wife were so much absorbed in deciding
where the red letters would come in with most effect (it
might have been the Rubric for that matter), that it was some time before I
could get my question asked privately, and not before I had given several
decisions, the which I questioned afterwards with equal wisdom of sincerity as
soon as the signor threw in his doubts and reasons on the important
subject. At last I got the address, spelt by sound, and very queer it
looked. I dropped it in the post on my way home, and then for a minute I
stood looking at the wooden pane with a gaping slit which divided me from the
letter but a moment ago in my hand. It was gone from me like life, never
to be recalled. It would get tossed about on the sea, and stained with
sea-waves perhaps, and be carried among palm-trees, and scented with all
tropical fragrance; the little piece of paper, but an hour ago so familiar and
commonplace, had set out on its race to the strange wild countries beyond the
Ganges! But I could not afford to lose much time on this speculation.
I hastened home, that Miss Matty might not miss me. Martha opened the
door to me, her face swollen with crying. As soon as she saw me she burst
out afresh, and taking hold of my arm she pulled me in, and banged the door to,
in order to ask me if indeed it was all true that Miss Matty had been saying.
“I’ll
never leave her! No; I won’t. I telled her so, and said I could not
think how she could find in her heart to give me warning. I could not
have had the face to do it, if I’d been her. I might ha’ been just as
good for nothing as Mrs Fitz-Adam’s Rosy, who struck for wages after living
seven years and a half in one place. I said I was not one to go and serve Mammon at that rate; that I knew when I’d got a
good missus, if she didn’t know when she’d got a good servant”—
“But,
Martha,” said I, cutting in while she wiped her eyes.
“Don’t,
‘but Martha’ me,” she replied to my deprecatory tone.
“Listen to
reason”—
“I’ll not
listen to reason,” she said, now in full possession of her voice, which had
been rather choked with sobbing. “Reason always means what someone else
has got to say. Now I think what I’ve got to say is good enough reason;
but reason or not, I’ll say it, and I’ll stick to it. I’ve money in the
Savings Bank, and I’ve a good stock of clothes, and I’m not going to leave Miss
Matty. No, not if she gives me warning every hour in the day!”
She put
her arms akimbo, as much as to say she defied me; and, indeed, I could hardly
tell how to begin to remonstrate with her, so much did I feel that Miss Matty,
in her increasing infirmity, needed the attendance of this kind and faithful
woman.
“Well”—said
I at last.
“I’m
thankful you begin with ‘well!’ If you’d have begun with ‘but,’ as you
did afore, I’d not ha’ listened to you. Now you may go on.”
“I know
you would be a great loss to Miss Matty, Martha”—
“I telled
her so. A loss she’d never cease to be sorry for,” broke in Martha
triumphantly.
“Still,
she will have so little—so very little—to live upon, that I don’t see just now
how she could find you food—she will even be pressed for her own. I tell you this, Martha, because I feel you are like a friend
to dear Miss Matty, but you know she might not like to have it spoken about.”
Apparently
this was even a blacker view of the subject than Miss Matty had presented to
her, for Martha just sat down on the first chair that came to hand, and cried
out loud (we had been standing in the kitchen).
At last
she put her apron down, and looking me earnestly in the face, asked, “Was that
the reason Miss Matty wouldn’t order a pudding to-day? She said she had
no great fancy for sweet things, and you and she would just have a mutton
chop. But I’ll be up to her. Never you tell, but I’ll make her a
pudding, and a pudding she’ll like, too, and I’ll pay for it myself; so mind
you see she eats it. Many a one has been comforted in their sorrow by
seeing a good dish come upon the table.”
I was
rather glad that Martha’s energy had taken the immediate and practical
direction of pudding-making, for it staved off the quarrelsome discussion as to
whether she should or should not leave Miss Matty’s service. She began to
tie on a clean apron, and otherwise prepare herself for going to the shop for
the butter, eggs, and what else she might require. She would not use a
scrap of the articles already in the house for her cookery, but went to an old
tea-pot in which her private store of money was deposited, and took out what
she wanted.
I found
Miss Matty very quiet, and not a little sad; but by-and-by she tried to smile
for my sake. It was settled that I was to write to my father, and ask him
to come over and hold a consultation, and as soon as this
letter was despatched we began to talk over future plans. Miss Matty’s
idea was to take a single room, and retain as much of her furniture as would be
necessary to fit up this, and sell the rest, and there to quietly exist upon
what would remain after paying the rent. For my part, I was more
ambitious and less contented. I thought of all the things by which a woman,
past middle age, and with the education common to ladies fifty years ago, could
earn or add to a living without materially losing caste; but at length I put
even this last clause on one side, and wondered what in the world Miss Matty
could do.
Teaching
was, of course, the first thing that suggested itself. If Miss Matty
could teach children anything, it would throw her among the little elves in
whom her soul delighted. I ran over her accomplishments. Once upon
a time I had heard her say she could play “Ah! vous dirai-je, maman?” on the
piano, but that was long, long ago; that faint shadow of musical acquirement
had died out years before. She had also once been able to trace out
patterns very nicely for muslin embroidery, by dint of placing a piece of
silver paper over the design to be copied, and holding both against the
window-pane while she marked the scollop and eyelet-holes. But that was
her nearest approach to the accomplishment of drawing, and I did not think it
would go very far. Then again, as to the branches of a solid English
education—fancy work and the use of the globes—such as the mistress of the
Ladies’ Seminary, to which all the tradespeople in Cranford sent their
daughters, professed to teach. Miss Matty’s eyes were
failing her, and I doubted if she could discover the number of threads in a
worsted-work pattern, or rightly appreciate the different shades required for
Queen Adelaide’s face in the loyal wool-work now fashionable in Cranford.
As for the use of the globes, I had never been able to find it out myself, so
perhaps I was not a good judge of Miss Matty’s capability of instructing in
this branch of education; but it struck me that equators and tropics, and such
mystical circles, were very imaginary lines indeed to her, and that she looked
upon the signs of the Zodiac as so many remnants of the Black Art.
What she
piqued herself upon, as arts in which she excelled, was making candle-lighters,
or “spills” (as she preferred calling them), of coloured paper, cut so as to
resemble feathers, and knitting garters in a variety of dainty stitches.
I had once said, on receiving a present of an elaborate pair, that I should
feel quite tempted to drop one of them in the street, in order to have it
admired; but I found this little joke (and it was a very little one) was such a
distress to her sense of propriety, and was taken with such anxious, earnest
alarm, lest the temptation might some day prove too strong for me, that I quite
regretted having ventured upon it. A present of these delicately-wrought
garters, a bunch of gay “spills,” or a set of cards on which sewing-silk was
wound in a mystical manner, were the well-known tokens of Miss Matty’s
favour. But would any one pay to have their children taught these arts?
or, indeed, would Miss Matty sell, for filthy lucre, the knack and the skill
with which she made trifles of value to those who loved her?
I had to come down to reading, writing, and
arithmetic; and, in reading the chapter every morning, she always coughed
before coming to long words. I doubted her power of getting through a
genealogical chapter, with any number of coughs. Writing she did well and
delicately—but spelling! She seemed to think that the more out-of-the-way
this was, and the more trouble it cost her, the greater the compliment she paid
to her correspondent; and words that she would spell quite correctly in her
letters to me became perfect enigmas when she wrote to my father.
No! there
was nothing she could teach to the rising generation of Cranford, unless they
had been quick learners and ready imitators of her patience, her humility, her
sweetness, her quiet contentment with all that she could not do. I
pondered and pondered until dinner was announced by Martha, with a face all
blubbered and swollen with crying.
Miss Matty
had a few little peculiarities which Martha was apt to regard as whims below
her attention, and appeared to consider as childish fancies of which an old
lady of fifty-eight should try and cure herself. But to-day everything
was attended to with the most careful regard. The bread was cut to the
imaginary pattern of excellence that existed in Miss Matty’s mind, as being the
way which her mother had preferred, the curtain was drawn so as to exclude the
dead brick wall of a neighbour’s stable, and yet left so as to show every
tender leaf of the poplar which was bursting into spring beauty. Martha’s
tone to Miss Matty was just such as that good, rough-spoken servant usually
kept sacred for little children, and which I had never heard
her use to any grown-up person.
I had
forgotten to tell Miss Matty about the pudding, and I was afraid she might not
do justice to it, for she had evidently very little appetite this day; so I
seized the opportunity of letting her into the secret while Martha took away
the meat. Miss Matty’s eyes filled with tears, and she could not speak,
either to express surprise or delight, when Martha returned bearing it aloft,
made in the most wonderful representation of a lion couchant that ever
was moulded. Martha’s face gleamed with triumph as she set it down before
Miss Matty with an exultant “There!” Miss Matty wanted to speak her
thanks, but could not; so she took Martha’s hand and shook it warmly, which set
Martha off crying, and I myself could hardly keep up the necessary
composure. Martha burst out of the room, and Miss Matty had to clear her
voice once or twice before she could speak. At last she said, “I should
like to keep this pudding under a glass shade, my dear!” and the notion of the
lion couchant, with his currant eyes, being hoisted up to the place of
honour on a mantelpiece, tickled my hysterical fancy, and I began to laugh,
which rather surprised Miss Matty.
“I am
sure, dear, I have seen uglier things under a glass shade before now,” said
she.
So had I,
many a time and oft, and I accordingly composed my countenance (and now I could
hardly keep from crying), and we both fell to upon the pudding, which was
indeed excellent—only every morsel seemed to choke us, our hearts were so full.
We had too
much to think about to talk much that afternoon. It
passed over very tranquilly. But when the tea-urn was brought in a new
thought came into my head. Why should not Miss Matty sell tea—be an agent
to the East India Tea Company which then existed? I could see no
objections to this plan, while the advantages were many—always supposing that
Miss Matty could get over the degradation of condescending to anything like
trade. Tea was neither greasy nor sticky—grease and stickiness being two
of the qualities which Miss Matty could not endure. No shop-window would
be required. A small, genteel notification of her being licensed to sell
tea would, it is true, be necessary, but I hoped that it could be placed where
no one would see it. Neither was tea a heavy article, so as to tax Miss
Matty’s fragile strength. The only thing against my plan was the buying
and selling involved.
While I
was giving but absent answers to the questions Miss Matty was putting—almost as
absently—we heard a clumping sound on the stairs, and a whispering outside the
door, which indeed once opened and shut as if by some invisible agency.
After a little while Martha came in, dragging after her a great tall young man,
all crimson with shyness, and finding his only relief in perpetually sleeking
down his hair.
“Please,
ma’am, he’s only Jem Hearn,” said Martha, by way of an introduction; and so out
of breath was she that I imagine she had had some bodily struggle before she
could overcome his reluctance to be presented on the courtly scene of Miss
Matilda Jenkyns’s drawing-room.
“And
please, ma’am, he wants to marry me off-hand. And
please, ma’am, we want to take a lodger—just one quiet lodger, to make our two
ends meet; and we’d take any house conformable; and, oh dear Miss Matty, if I
may be so bold, would you have any objections to lodging with us? Jem wants
it as much as I do.” [To Jem ]—“You great oaf! why can’t you back me!—But
he does want it all the same, very bad—don’t you, Jem?—only, you see, he’s
dazed at being called on to speak before quality.”
“It’s not
that,” broke in Jem. “It’s that you’ve taken me all on a sudden, and I
didn’t think for to get married so soon—and such quick words does flabbergast a
man. It’s not that I’m against it, ma’am” (addressing Miss Matty), “only
Martha has such quick ways with her when once she takes a thing into her head;
and marriage, ma’am—marriage nails a man, as one may say. I dare say I
shan’t mind it after it’s once over.”
“Please,
ma’am,” said Martha—who had plucked at his sleeve, and nudged him with her
elbow, and otherwise tried to interrupt him all the time he had been
speaking—“don’t mind him, he’ll come to; ’twas only last night he was an-axing
me, and an-axing me, and all the more because I said I could not think of it
for years to come, and now he’s only taken aback with the suddenness of the
joy; but you know, Jem, you are just as full as me about wanting a
lodger.” (Another great nudge.)
“Ay! if
Miss Matty would lodge with us—otherwise I’ve no mind to be cumbered with
strange folk in the house,” said Jem, with a want of tact which I could see
enraged Martha, who was trying to represent a lodger as the great object they
wished to obtain, and that, in fact, Miss Matty would be
smoothing their path and conferring a favour, if she would only come and live
with them.
Miss Matty
herself was bewildered by the pair; their, or rather Martha’s sudden resolution
in favour of matrimony staggered her, and stood between her and the
contemplation of the plan which Martha had at heart. Miss Matty began—
“Marriage
is a very solemn thing, Martha.”
“It is
indeed, ma’am,” quoth Jem. “Not that I’ve no objections to Martha.”
“You’ve
never let me a-be for asking me for to fix when I would be married,” said
Martha—her face all a-fire, and ready to cry with vexation—“and now you’re
shaming me before my missus and all.”
“Nay, now!
Martha don’t ee! don’t ee! only a man likes to have breathing-time,” said Jem,
trying to possess himself of her hand, but in vain. Then seeing that she
was more seriously hurt than he had imagined, he seemed to try to rally his
scattered faculties, and with more straightforward dignity than, ten minutes
before, I should have thought it possible for him to assume, he turned to Miss
Matty, and said, “I hope, ma’am, you know that I am bound to respect every one
who has been kind to Martha. I always looked on her as to be my wife—some
time; and she has often and often spoken of you as the kindest lady that ever
was; and though the plain truth is, I would not like to be troubled with
lodgers of the common run, yet if, ma’am, you’d honour us by living with us,
I’m sure Martha would do her best to make you comfortable; and I’d keep out of
your way as much as I could, which I reckon would be the
best kindness such an awkward chap as me could do.”
Miss Matty
had been very busy with taking off her spectacles, wiping them, and replacing
them; but all she could say was, “Don’t let any thought of me hurry you into
marriage: pray don’t. Marriage is such a very solemn thing!”
“But Miss
Matilda will think of your plan, Martha,” said I, struck with the advantages that
it offered, and unwilling to lose the opportunity of considering about
it. “And I’m sure neither she nor I can ever forget your kindness; nor
your’s either, Jem.”
“Why, yes,
ma’am! I’m sure I mean kindly, though I’m a bit fluttered by being pushed
straight ahead into matrimony, as it were, and mayn’t express myself
conformable. But I’m sure I’m willing enough, and give me time to get
accustomed; so, Martha, wench, what’s the use of crying so, and slapping me if
I come near?”
This last
was sotto voce, and had the effect of making Martha bounce out of the
room, to be followed and soothed by her lover. Whereupon Miss Matty sat
down and cried very heartily, and accounted for it by saying that the thought
of Martha being married so soon gave her quite a shock, and that she should
never forgive herself if she thought she was hurrying the poor creature.
I think my pity was more for Jem, of the two; but both Miss Matty and I
appreciated to the full the kindness of the honest couple, although we said little
about this, and a good deal about the chances and dangers of matrimony.
The next morning, very early, I received a note from
Miss Pole, so mysteriously wrapped up, and with so many seals on it to secure
secrecy, that I had to tear the paper before I could unfold it. And when
I came to the writing I could hardly understand the meaning, it was so involved
and oracular. I made out, however, that I was to go to Miss Pole’s at
eleven o’clock; the number eleven being written in full length as well
as in numerals, and A.M. twice dashed under, as if I were very likely to
come at eleven at night, when all Cranford was usually a-bed and asleep by
ten. There was no signature except Miss Pole’s initials reversed, P.E.;
but as Martha had given me the note, “with Miss Pole’s kind regards,” it needed
no wizard to find out who sent it; and if the writer’s name was to be kept
secret, it was very well that I was alone when Martha delivered it.
I went as
requested to Miss Pole’s. The door was opened to me by her little maid
Lizzy in Sunday trim, as if some grand event was impending over this
work-day. And the drawing-room upstairs was arranged in accordance with
this idea. The table was set out with the best green card-cloth, and
writing materials upon it. On the little chiffonier was a tray with a
newly-decanted bottle of cowslip wine, and some ladies’-finger biscuits.
Miss Pole herself was in solemn array, as if to receive visitors, although it
was only eleven o’clock. Mrs Forrester was there, crying quietly and sadly,
and my arrival seemed only to call forth fresh tears. Before we had
finished our greetings, performed with lugubrious mystery of demeanour, there
was another rat-tat-tat, and Mrs Fitz-Adam appeared,
crimson with walking and excitement. It seemed as if this was all the
company expected; for now Miss Pole made several demonstrations of being about
to open the business of the meeting, by stirring the fire, opening and shutting
the door, and coughing and blowing her nose. Then she arranged us all
round the table, taking care to place me opposite to her; and last of all, she
inquired of me if the sad report was true, as she feared it was, that Miss
Matty had lost all her fortune?
Of course,
I had but one answer to make; and I never saw more unaffected sorrow depicted
on any countenances than I did there on the three before me.
“I wish
Mrs Jamieson was here!” said Mrs Forrester at last; but to judge from Mrs
Fitz-Adam’s face, she could not second the wish.
“But
without Mrs Jamieson,” said Miss Pole, with just a sound of offended merit in
her voice, “we, the ladies of Cranford, in my drawing-room assembled, can
resolve upon something. I imagine we are none of us what may be called
rich, though we all possess a genteel competency, sufficient for tastes that
are elegant and refined, and would not, if they could, be vulgarly
ostentatious.” (Here I observed Miss Pole refer to a small card concealed
in her hand, on which I imagine she had put down a few notes.)
“Miss
Smith,” she continued, addressing me (familiarly known as “Mary” to all the
company assembled, but this was a state occasion), “I have conversed in
private—I made it my business to do so yesterday
afternoon—with these ladies on the misfortune which has happened to our friend,
and one and all of us have agreed that while we have a superfluity, it is not
only a duty, but a pleasure—a true pleasure, Mary!”—her voice was rather choked
just here, and she had to wipe her spectacles before she could go on—“to give
what we can to assist her—Miss Matilda Jenkyns. Only in consideration of
the feelings of delicate independence existing in the mind of every refined
female”—I was sure she had got back to the card now—“we wish to contribute our
mites in a secret and concealed manner, so as not to hurt the feelings I have
referred to. And our object in requesting you to meet us this morning is
that, believing you are the daughter—that your father is, in fact, her
confidential adviser, in all pecuniary matters, we imagined that, by consulting
with him, you might devise some mode in which our contribution could be made to
appear the legal due which Miss Matilda Jenkyns ought to receive from—
Probably your father, knowing her investments, can fill up the blank.”
Miss Pole
concluded her address, and looked round for approval and agreement.
“I have
expressed your meaning, ladies, have I not? And while Miss Smith
considers what reply to make, allow me to offer you some little refreshment.”
I had no
great reply to make: I had more thankfulness at my heart for their kind
thoughts than I cared to put into words; and so I only mumbled out something to
the effect “that I would name what Miss Pole had said to my father, and that if
anything could be arranged for dear Miss Matty,”—and here I
broke down utterly, and had to be refreshed with a glass of cowslip wine before
I could check the crying which had been repressed for the last two or three
days. The worst was, all the ladies cried in concert. Even Miss
Pole cried, who had said a hundred times that to betray emotion before any one
was a sign of weakness and want of self-control. She recovered herself
into a slight degree of impatient anger, directed against me, as having set
them all off; and, moreover, I think she was vexed that I could not make a speech
back in return for hers; and if I had known beforehand what was to be said, and
had a card on which to express the probable feelings that would rise in my
heart, I would have tried to gratify her. As it was, Mrs Forrester was
the person to speak when we had recovered our composure.
“I don’t
mind, among friends, stating that I—no! I’m not poor exactly, but I don’t
think I’m what you may call rich; I wish I were, for dear Miss Matty’s
sake—but, if you please, I’ll write down in a sealed paper what I can give.
I only wish it was more; my dear Mary, I do indeed.”
Now I saw
why paper, pens, and ink were provided. Every lady wrote down the sum she
could give annually, signed the paper, and sealed it mysteriously. If
their proposal was acceded to, my father was to be allowed to open the papers,
under pledge of secrecy. If not, they were to be returned to their
writers.
When the
ceremony had been gone through, I rose to depart; but each lady seemed to wish
to have a private conference with me. Miss Pole kept
me in the drawing-room to explain why, in Mrs Jamieson’s absence, she had taken
the lead in this “movement,” as she was pleased to call it, and also to inform
me that she had heard from good sources that Mrs Jamieson was coming home
directly in a state of high displeasure against her sister-in-law, who was
forthwith to leave her house, and was, she believed, to return to Edinburgh
that very afternoon. Of course this piece of intelligence could not be
communicated before Mrs Fitz-Adam, more especially as Miss Pole was inclined to
think that Lady Glenmire’s engagement to Mr Hoggins could not possibly hold
against the blaze of Mrs Jamieson’s displeasure. A few hearty inquiries
after Miss Matty’s health concluded my interview with Miss Pole.
On coming
downstairs I found Mrs Forrester waiting for me at the entrance to the
dining-parlour; she drew me in, and when the door was shut, she tried two or
three times to begin on some subject, which was so unapproachable apparently,
that I began to despair of our ever getting to a clear understanding. At
last out it came; the poor old lady trembling all the time as if it were a
great crime which she was exposing to daylight, in telling me how very, very
little she had to live upon; a confession which she was brought to make from a
dread lest we should think that the small contribution named in her paper bore
any proportion to her love and regard for Miss Matty. And yet that sum
which she so eagerly relinquished was, in truth, more than a twentieth part of
what she had to live upon, and keep house, and a little serving-maid, all as
became one born a Tyrrell. And when the whole income
does not nearly amount to a hundred pounds, to give up a twentieth of it will
necessitate many careful economies, and many pieces of self-denial, small and
insignificant in the world’s account, but bearing a different value in another
account-book that I have heard of. She did so wish she was rich, she
said, and this wish she kept repeating, with no thought of herself in it, only
with a longing, yearning desire to be able to heap up Miss Matty’s measure of
comforts.
It was
some time before I could console her enough to leave her; and then, on quitting
the house, I was waylaid by Mrs Fitz-Adam, who had also her confidence to make
of pretty nearly the opposite description. She had not liked to put down
all that she could afford and was ready to give. She told me she thought
she never could look Miss Matty in the face again if she presumed to be giving
her so much as she should like to do. “Miss Matty!” continued she, “that
I thought was such a fine young lady when I was nothing but a country girl,
coming to market with eggs and butter and such like things. For my
father, though well-to-do, would always make me go on as my mother had done
before me, and I had to come into Cranford every Saturday, and see after sales,
and prices, and what not. And one day, I remember, I met Miss Matty in
the lane that leads to Combehurst; she was walking on the footpath, which, you
know, is raised a good way above the road, and a gentleman rode beside her, and
was talking to her, and she was looking down at some primroses she had
gathered, and pulling them all to pieces, and I do believe
she was crying. But after she had passed, she turned round and ran after
me to ask—oh, so kindly—about my poor mother, who lay on her death-bed; and
when I cried she took hold of my hand to comfort me—and the gentleman waiting
for her all the time—and her poor heart very full of something, I am sure; and
I thought it such an honour to be spoken to in that pretty way by the rector’s
daughter, who visited at Arley Hall. I have loved her ever since, though
perhaps I’d no right to do it; but if you can think of any way in which I might
be allowed to give a little more without any one knowing it, I should be so
much obliged to you, my dear. And my brother would be delighted to doctor
her for nothing—medicines, leeches, and all. I know that he and her
ladyship (my dear, I little thought in the days I was telling you of that I
should ever come to be sister-in-law to a ladyship!) would do anything for
her. We all would.”
I told her
I was quite sure of it, and promised all sorts of things in my anxiety to get
home to Miss Matty, who might well be wondering what had become of me—absent
from her two hours without being able to account for it. She had taken
very little note of time, however, as she had been occupied in numberless
little arrangements preparatory to the great step of giving up her house.
It was evidently a relief to her to be doing something in the way of
retrenchment, for, as she said, whenever she paused to think, the recollection
of the poor fellow with his bad five-pound note came over her, and she felt
quite dishonest; only if it made her so uncomfortable, what
must it not be doing to the directors of the bank, who must know so much more
of the misery consequent upon this failure? She almost made me angry by
dividing her sympathy between these directors (whom she imagined overwhelmed by
self-reproach for the mismanagement of other people’s affairs) and those who
were suffering like her. Indeed, of the two, she seemed to think poverty
a lighter burden than self-reproach; but I privately doubted if the directors
would agree with her.
Old hoards
were taken out and examined as to their money value which luckily was small, or
else I don’t know how Miss Matty would have prevailed upon herself to part with
such things as her mother’s wedding-ring, the strange, uncouth brooch with
which her father had disfigured his shirt-frill, &c. However, we
arranged things a little in order as to their pecuniary estimation, and were
all ready for my father when he came the next morning.
I am not
going to weary you with the details of all the business we went through; and
one reason for not telling about them is, that I did not understand what we
were doing at the time, and cannot recollect it now. Miss Matty and I sat
assenting to accounts, and schemes, and reports, and documents, of which I do
not believe we either of us understood a word; for my father was clear-headed
and decisive, and a capital man of business, and if we made the slightest
inquiry, or expressed the slightest want of comprehension, he had a sharp way
of saying, “Eh? eh? it’s as clear as daylight. What’s your
objection?” And as we had not comprehended anything of what he had
proposed, we found it rather difficult to shape our
objections; in fact, we never were sure if we had any. So presently Miss
Matty got into a nervously acquiescent state, and said “Yes,” and “Certainly,”
at every pause, whether required or not; but when I once joined in as chorus to
a “Decidedly,” pronounced by Miss Matty in a tremblingly dubious tone, my
father fired round at me and asked me “What there was to decide?” And I
am sure to this day I have never known. But, in justice to him, I must
say he had come over from Drumble to help Miss Matty when he could ill spare
the time, and when his own affairs were in a very anxious state.
While Miss
Matty was out of the room giving orders for luncheon—and sadly perplexed
between her desire of honouring my father by a delicate, dainty meal, and her
conviction that she had no right, now that all her money was gone, to indulge
this desire—I told him of the meeting of the Cranford ladies at Miss Pole’s the
day before. He kept brushing his hand before his eyes as I spoke—and when
I went back to Martha’s offer the evening before, of receiving Miss Matty as a
lodger, he fairly walked away from me to the window, and began drumming with
his fingers upon it. Then he turned abruptly round, and said, “See, Mary,
how a good, innocent life makes friends all around. Confound it! I
could make a good lesson out of it if I were a parson; but, as it is, I can’t
get a tail to my sentences—only I’m sure you feel what I want to say. You
and I will have a walk after lunch and talk a bit more about these plans.”
The
lunch—a hot savoury mutton-chop, and a little of the cold
loin sliced and fried—was now brought in. Every morsel of this last dish
was finished, to Martha’s great gratification. Then my father bluntly
told Miss Matty he wanted to talk to me alone, and that he would stroll out and
see some of the old places, and then I could tell her what plan we thought
desirable. Just before we went out, she called me back and said,
“Remember, dear, I’m the only one left—I mean, there’s no one to be hurt by
what I do. I’m willing to do anything that’s right and honest; and I
don’t think, if Deborah knows where she is, she’ll care so very much if I’m not
genteel; because, you see, she’ll know all, dear. Only let me see what I
can do, and pay the poor people as far as I’m able.”
I gave her
a hearty kiss, and ran after my father. The result of our conversation
was this. If all parties were agreeable, Martha and Jem were to be
married with as little delay as possible, and they were to live on in Miss
Matty’s present abode; the sum which the Cranford ladies had agreed to
contribute annually being sufficient to meet the greater part of the rent, and
leaving Martha free to appropriate what Miss Matty should pay for her lodgings
to any little extra comforts required. About the sale, my father was
dubious at first. He said the old rectory furniture, however carefully
used and reverently treated, would fetch very little; and that little would be
but as a drop in the sea of the debts of the Town and County Bank. But
when I represented how Miss Matty’s tender conscience would be soothed by
feeling that she had done what she could, he gave way; especially after I had
told him the five-pound note adventure, and he had scolded
me well for allowing it. I then alluded to my idea that she might add to
her small income by selling tea; and, to my surprise (for I had nearly given up
the plan), my father grasped at it with all the energy of a tradesman. I
think he reckoned his chickens before they were hatched, for he immediately ran
up the profits of the sales that she could effect in Cranford to more than
twenty pounds a year. The small dining-parlour was to be converted into a
shop, without any of its degrading characteristics; a table was to be the counter;
one window was to be retained unaltered, and the other changed into a glass
door. I evidently rose in his estimation for having made this bright
suggestion. I only hoped we should not both fall in Miss Matty’s.
No comments:
Post a Comment