A few days after, a note came from Mr. Holbrook, asking us—impartially
asking both of us—in a formal, old-fashioned style, to spend a day at
his house—a long June day—for it was June now. He named that he had also
invited his cousin, Miss Pole; so that we might join in a fly, which
could be put up at his house.
I expected Miss Matty to jump at this invitation; but, no! Miss Pole and
I had the greatest difficulty in persuading her to go. She thought it was
improper; and was even half annoyed when we utterly ignored the idea of
any impropriety in her going with two other ladies to see her old lover.
Then came a more serious difficulty. She did not think Deborah would have
liked her to go. This took us half a day’s good hard talking to get over;
but, at the first sentence of relenting, I seized the opportunity, and
wrote and dispatched an acceptance in her name—fixing day and hour, that
all might be decided and done with.
The next morning she asked me if I would go down to the shop with her;
and there, after much hesitation, we chose out three caps to be sent home
and tried on, that the most becoming might be selected to take with us on
Thursday.
She was in a state of silent agitation all the way to Woodley. She had
evidently never been there before; and, although she little dreamt I knew
anything of her early story, I could perceive she was in a tremor at the
thought of seeing the place which might have been her home, and round
which it is probable that many of her innocent girlish imaginations had
clustered. It was a long drive there, through paved jolting lanes. Miss
Matilda sat bolt upright, and looked wistfully out of the windows, as we
drew near the end of our journey. The aspect of the country was quiet
and pastoral. Woodley stood among fields; and there was an old-fashioned
garden, where roses and currant-bushes touched each other, and where
the feathery asparagus formed a pretty background to the pinks and
gillyflowers; there was no drive up to the door: we got out at a little
gate, and walked up a straight box-edged path.
“My cousin might make a drive, I think,” said Miss Pole, who was afraid
of earache, and had only her cap on.
“I think it is very pretty,” said Miss Matty, with a soft plaintiveness
in her voice, and almost in a whisper; for just then Mr. Holbrook
appeared at the door, rubbing his hands in very effervescence of
hospitality. He looked more like my idea of Don Quixote than ever, and
yet the likeness was only external. His respectable housekeeper stood
modestly at the door to bid us welcome; and while she led the elder
ladies upstairs to a bedroom, I begged to look about the garden. My
request evidently pleased the old gentleman; who took me all round the
place, and showed me his six-and-twenty cows, named after the different
letters of the alphabet. As we went along, he surprised me occasionally
by repeating apt and beautiful quotations from the poets, ranging easily
from Shakspeare and George Herbert to those of our own day. He did this
as naturally as if he were thinking aloud, and their true and beautiful
words were the best expression he could find for what he was thinking or
feeling. To be sure, he called Byron “my Lord Byrron,” and pronounced
the name of Goethe strictly in accordance with the English sound of the
letters—“As Goëthe says, ‘Ye ever-verdant palaces,’” etc. Altogether, I
never met with a man, before or since, who had spent so long a life in a
secluded and not impressive country, with ever-increasing delight in the
daily and yearly change of season and beauty.
When he and I went in, we found that dinner was nearly ready in the
kitchen—for so I suppose the room ought to be called, as there were oak
dressers and cupboards all round, all over by the side of the fireplace,
and only a small Turkey carpet in the middle of the flag-floor. The room
might have been easily made into a handsome dark oak dining-parlour, by
removing the oven, and a few other appurtenances of a kitchen, which were
evidently never used; the real cooking place being at some distance.
The room in which we were expected to sit was a stiffly furnished, ugly
apartment; but that in which we did sit was what Mr. Holbrook called
the counting-house, when he paid his labourers their weekly wages, at a
great desk near the door. The rest of the pretty sitting-room—looking
into the orchard, and all covered over with dancing tree-shadows—was
filled with books. They lay on the ground, they covered the walls, they
strewed the table. He was evidently half-ashamed and half proud of his
extravagance in this respect. They were of all kinds, poetry and wild
weird tales prevailing. He evidently chose his books in accordance with
his own tastes, not because such and such were classical, or established
favourites.
“Ah!” he said, “we farmers ought not to have much time for reading; yet
somehow one can’t help it.”
“What a pretty room!” said Miss Matty, _sotto voce_.
“What a pleasant place!” said I, aloud, almost simultaneously.
“Nay! if you like it,” replied he; “but can you sit on these great black
leather three-cornered chairs? I like it better than the best parlour;
but I thought ladies would take that for the smarter place.”
It was the smarter place; but, like most smart things, not at all pretty,
or pleasant, or home-like; so, while we were at dinner, the servant girl
dusted and scrubbed the counting-house chairs, and we sat there all the
rest of the day.
We had pudding before meat; and I thought Mr. Holbrook was going to make
some apology for his old-fashioned ways, for he began:
“I don’t know whether you like new-fangled ways.”
“Oh! not at all!” said Miss Matty.
“No more do I,” said he. “My housekeeper _will_ have these in her new
fashion; or else I tell her, that when I was a young man, we used to keep
strictly to my father’s rule, ‘No broth, no ball; no ball, no beef’; and
always began dinner with broth. Then we had suet puddings, boiled in
the broth with the beef and then the meat itself. If we did not sup our
broth, we had no ball, which we liked a deal better; and the beef came
last of all, and only those had it who had done justice to the broth
and the ball. Now folks begin with sweet things, and turn their dinners
topsy-turvy.”
When the ducks and green peas came, we looked at each other in dismay; we
had only two-pronged, black-handled forks. It is true, the steel was as
bright as silver; but what were we to do? Miss Matty picked up her peas,
one by one, on the point of the prongs, much as Aminé ate her grains of
rice after her previous feast with the Ghoul. Miss Pole sighed over her
delicate young peas as she left them on one side of her plate untasted;
for they _would_ drop between the prongs. I looked at my host: the peas
were going wholesale into his capacious mouth, shovelled up by his large
round-ended knife. I saw, I imitated, I survived! My friends, in spite
of my precedent, could not muster up courage enough to do an ungenteel
thing; and, if Mr. Holbrook had not been so heartily hungry, he would
probably have seen that the good peas went away almost untouched.
After dinner, a clay pipe was brought in, and a spittoon; and, asking us
to retire to another room, where he would soon join us, if we disliked
tobacco-smoke, he presented his pipe to Miss Matty, and requested her
to fill the bowl. This was a compliment to a lady in his youth; but
it was rather inappropriate to propose it as an honour to Miss Matty,
who had been trained by her sister to hold smoking of every kind in
utter abhorrence. But if it was a shock to her refinement, it was also
a gratification to her feelings to be thus selected; so she daintily
stuffed the strong tobacco into the pipe; and then we withdrew.
“It is very pleasant dining with a bachelor,” said Miss Matty, softly,
as we settled ourselves in the counting-house. “I only hope it is not
improper; so many pleasant things are!”