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 colored silks, which they had just
received at the shop, would help to match a gray and black
mousseline-de-laine 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 before, and I watched him
rather attentively, while Miss Matey listened to the shopman. The
stranger was rather striking. He 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 shop.
“Miss Jenkyns wants the black sarcenet, two-and-twopence the yard.”
Mr. Holbrook caught the name, and was across the shop in two
strides.
“Matey,--Miss Matilda,--Miss Jenkyns! 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 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 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 by with many
a hope that he should soon see Miss Matey 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.
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 Matey 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
despatched 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
gilly-flowers. 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 ear-ache, and had only her cap on.
“I think it is very pretty,” said Miss Matey, 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
the 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 up-stairs
to a bed-room, 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 Shakespeare and George Herbert,
to those of our own day. He did this as naturally as if he were
thinking aloud; as if 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. 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-parlor, 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, where he paid his laborers 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
favorites.
“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 Matey, _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
parlor; 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.”
“O, not at all!” said Miss Matey.
“No more do I,” said he. “My housekeeper _will_ have things 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
Matey picked up her peas, one by one, on the point of the prongs.
Miss Pole sighed over her delicate young peas, as she left them on
one side of her plate untasted; for they _would_ drop between her
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 Matey,
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
honor to Miss Matey, 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 daintly stuffed the strong tobacco into the
pipe; and then we withdrew.
“It is very pleasant dining with a bachelor,” said Miss Matey,
softly, as we settled ourselves in the counting-house; “I only hope
it is not improper; so many pleasant things are!”
“What a number of books he has!” said Miss Pole, looking round the
room. “And how dusty they are!”
“I think it must be like one of the great Dr. Johnson’s rooms,”
said Miss Matey. “What a superior man your cousin must be!”
“Yes!” said Miss Pole; “he’s a great reader; but I am afraid he has
got into very uncouth habits with living alone.”
“Oh! uncouth is too hard a word. I should call him eccentric: very
clever people always are!” replied Miss Matey.
When Mr. Holbrook returned, he proposed a walk in the fields;
but the two elder ladies were afraid of damp and dirt, and had
only very unbecoming calashes to put on over their caps; so they
declined, and I was again his companion in a turn which he said
he was obliged to take, to see after his niece. He strode along,
either wholly forgetting my existence, or soothed into silence by
his pipe; and yet it was not silence exactly. He walked before
me, with a stooping gait, his hands clasped behind him, and as
some tree, or cloud, or glimpse at distant upland pastures, struck
him, he quoted poetry to himself; saying it out loud, in a grand,
sonorous voice, with just the emphasis that true feeling and
appreciation give. We came upon an old cedar-tree, which stood at
one end of the house;
‘More black than ash-buds in the front of March,
A cedar spread his dark-green layers of shade.’
“Capital term, ‘layers!’ Wonderful man!”
I did not know whether he was speaking to me or not; but I put in
an assenting “Wonderful,” although I knew nothing about it; just
because I was tired of being forgotten, and of being consequently
silent.
He turned sharp round. “Ay! you may say ‘wonderful.’ Why, when I
saw the review of his poems in ‘Blackwood,’ I set off within an
hour, and walked seven miles to Misselton (for the horses were not
in the way), and ordered them. Now, what color are ash-buds in
March?”
Is the man going mad? thought I. He is very like Don Quixote.
“What color are they, I say?” repeated he, vehemently.
“I am sure I don’t know sir,” said I, with the meekness of
ignorance.
“I knew you didn’t. No more did I, an old fool that I am! till this
young man comes and tells me. Black as ash-buds in March. And I’ve
lived all my life in the country; more shame for me not to know.
Black; they are jet-black, madam.” And he went off again, swinging
along to the music of some rhyme he had got hold of.
When we came home, nothing would serve him but that he must read
us the poems he had been speaking of; and Miss Pole encouraged
him in his proposal, I thought, because she wished me to hear his
beautiful reading, of which she had boasted; but she afterwards
said it was because she had got to a difficult part of crochet, and
wanted to count her stitches without having to talk. Whatever he
had proposed would have been right to Miss Matey, although she did
fall sound asleep within five minutes after he began a long poem,
called “Locksley Hall,” and had a comfortable nap, unobserved, till
he ended, when the cessation of his voice wakened her up, and she
said, feeling that something was expected, and that Miss Pole was
counting, “What a pretty book!”
“Pretty, madam? It’s beautiful! Pretty, indeed!”
“O yes, I meant beautiful!” said she, fluttered at his disapproval
of her word. “It is so like that beautiful poem of Dr. Johnson’s
my sister used to read!--I forget the name of it; what was it, my
dear?” turning to me.
“Which do you mean, ma’am? What was it about?”
“I don’t remember what it was about, and I’ve quite forgotten what
the name of it was; but it was written by Dr. Johnson, and was very
beautiful, and very like what Mr. Holbrook has just been reading.”
“I don’t remember it,” said he, reflectively; “but I don’t know Dr.
Johnson’s poems well. I must read them.”
As we were getting into the fly to return, I heard Mr. Holbrook
say he should call on the ladies soon, and inquire how they got
home; and this evidently pleased and fluttered Miss Matey at the
time he said it; but after we had lost sight of the old house among
the trees, her sentiments towards the master of it were gradually
absorbed into a distressing wonder as to whether Martha had broken
her word, and seized on the opportunity of her mistress’s absence
to have a “follower.” Martha looked good and steady and composed
enough, as she came to help us out; she was always careful of Miss
Matey, and to-night she made use of this unlucky speech: “Eh, dear
ma’am, to think of your going out in an evening in such a thin
shawl! It is no better than muslin. At your age, ma’am, you should
be careful.”
“My age!” said Miss Matey, almost speaking crossly, for her, for
she was usually gentle; “my age! Why, how old do you think I am,
that you talk about my age?”
“Well, ma’am, I should say you were not far short of sixty; but
folks’ looks is often against them, and I’m sure I meant no harm.”
“Martha, I’m not yet fifty-two!” said Miss Matey, with grave
emphasis; for probably the remembrance of her youth had come very
vividly before her this day, and she was annoyed at finding that
golden time so far away in the past.
But she never spoke of any former and more intimate acquaintance
with Mr. Holbrook. She had probably met with so little sympathy in
her early love, that she had shut it up close in her heart; and it
was only by a sort of watching, which I could hardly avoid since
Miss Pole’s confidence, that I saw how faithful her poor heart had
been in its sorrows and its silence.
She gave me some good reason for wearing her best cap every day,
and sat near the window, in spite of her rheumatism, in order to
see, without being seen, down into the street.
He came. He put his open palms upon his knees, which were far
apart, as he sat with his head bent down, whistling, after we had
replied to his inquiries about our safe return. Suddenly he jumped
up.
“Well, madam, have you any commands for Paris? I’m going there in a
week or two.”
“To Paris!” we both exclaimed.
“Yes, ma’am. I’ve never been there, and always had a wish to go;
and I think if I don’t go soon I mayn’t go at all. So as soon as
the hay is got in I shall go, before harvest-time.”
We were so much astonished that we had no commissions.
Just as he was going out of the room, he turned back, with his
favorite exclamation, “Bless my soul, madam! but I nearly forgot
half my errand. Here are the poems for you, you admired so much the
other evening at my house.” He tugged away at a parcel in his coat
pocket. “Good by, miss!” said he; “good by, Matey! take care of
yourself.” And he was gone. But he had given her a book, and he had
called her Matey, just as he used to do thirty years ago.
“I wish he would not go to Paris,” said Miss Matilda, anxiously. “I
don’t believe frogs will agree with him. He used to have to be very
careful what he ate, which was curious in so strong-looking a young
man.”
Soon after this I took my leave, giving many an injunction to
Martha to look after her mistress, and to let me know if she
thought that Miss Matilda was not so well; in which case I would
volunteer a visit to my old friend, without noticing Martha’s
intelligence to her.
Accordingly, I received a line or two from Martha every now and
then; and about November I had a note to say her mistress was “very
low and sadly off her food”; and the account made me so uneasy,
that, although Martha did not decidedly summon me, I packed up my
things and went.
I received a warm welcome, in spite of the little flurry produced
by my impromptu visit, for I had only been able to give a day’s
notice. Miss Matilda looked miserably ill, and I prepared to
comfort and cosset her.
I went down to have a private talk with Martha.
“How long has your mistress been so poorly?” I asked, as I stood by
the kitchen fire.
“Well, I think it’s better than a fortnight; it is, I know. It was
one Tuesday, after Miss Pole had been here, that she went into
this moping way. I thought she was tired, and it would go off with
a night’s rest; but no! she has gone on and on ever since, till I
thought it my duty to write to you, ma’am.”
“You did quite right, Martha. It is a comfort to think she has
so faithful a servant about her. And I hope you find your place
comfortable?”
“Well, ma’am, missus is very kind, and there’s plenty to eat and
drink, and no more work but what I can do easily; but--” Martha
hesitated.
“But what, Martha?”
“Why, it seems so hard of missus not to let me have any followers.
There’s such lots of young fellows in the town, and many a one has
as much as offered to keep company with me, and I may never be in
such a likely place again, and it’s like wasting an opportunity.
Many a girl as I know would have ’em unbeknowst to missus; but
I’ve given my word, and I’ll stick to it; or else this is just the
house for missus never to be the wiser if they did come. It’s such
a capable kitchen,--there’s such good dark corners in it,--I’d be
bound to hide any one. I counted up last Sunday night,--for I’ll
not deny I was crying because I had to shut the door in Jem Hearn’s
face; and he’s a steady young man, fit for any girl; only I had
given missus my word.” Martha was all but crying again; and I had
little comfort to give her, for I knew, from old experience, the
horror with which both the Miss Jenkynses looked upon “followers”;
and in Miss Matey’s present nervous state this dread was not like
to be lessened.
I went to see Miss Pole the next day, and took her completely by
surprise, for she had not been to see Miss Matilda for two days.
“And now I must go back with you, my dear,” said she; “for I
promised to let her know how Thomas Holbrook went on; and I’m sorry
to say his housekeeper has sent me word to-day that he hasn’t long
to live. Poor Thomas! That journey to Paris was quite too much
for him. His housekeeper says he has hardly ever been round his
fields since, but just sits with his hands on his knees in the
counting-house, not reading, or anything, but only saying, what a
wonderful city Paris was! Paris has much to answer for, if it’s
killed my cousin Thomas, for a better man never lived.”
“Does Miss Matilda know of his illness?” asked I, a new light as to
the cause of her indisposition dawning upon me.
“Dear! to be sure, yes! Has she not told you? I let her know a
fortnight ago, or more, when first I heard of it. How odd, she
shouldn’t have told you!”
Not at all, I thought; but I did not say anything. I felt almost
guilty of having spied too curiously into that tender heart; and
I was not going to speak of its secrets,--hidden, Miss Matey
believed, from all the world. I ushered Miss Pole into Miss
Matilda’s drawing-room; and then left them alone. But I was not
surprised when Martha came to my bed-room door, to ask me to go
down to dinner alone, for that missus had one of her bad headaches.
She came into the drawing-room at tea-time; but it was evidently
an effort for her. As if to make up for some reproachful feeling
against her late sister, Miss Jenkyns, which had been troubling her
all the afternoon, and for which she now felt penitent, she kept
telling me how good and how clever Deborah was in her youth, how
she used to settle what gowns they were to wear at all the parties;
(faint, ghostly ideas of dim parties far away in the distance,
when Miss Matey and Miss Pole were young!) and how Deborah and her
mother had started the benefit society for the poor, and taught
girls cooking and plain sewing; and how Deborah had danced with a
lord; and how she used to visit at Sir Peter Arley’s, and try to
remodel the quiet rectory establishment on the plans of Arley Hall,
where they kept thirty servants; and how she had nursed Miss Matey
through a long, long illness, of which I had never heard before,
but which I now dated, in my own mind, as following the dismissal
of the suit of Mr. Holbrook. So we talked softly and quietly of old
times, through the long November evening.
The next day, Miss Pole brought us word that Mr. Holbrook was dead.
Miss Matey heard the news in silence. In fact, from the account on
the previous day, it was only what we had to expect. Miss Pole kept
calling upon us for some expressions of regret, by asking if it was
not sad that he was gone, and saying,--
“To think of that pleasant day last June, when he seemed so well!
And he might have lived this dozen years, if he had not gone to
that wicked Paris, where they are always having Revolutions.”
She paused for some demonstration on our part. I saw Miss Matey
could not speak, she was trembling so nervously, so I said what
I really felt; and after a call of some duration,--all the time
of which I have no doubt Miss Pole thought Miss Matey received
the news very calmly,--our visitor took her leave. But the effort
at self-control Miss Matey had made to conceal her feelings,--a
concealment she practised even with me; for she has never alluded
to Mr. Holbrook again, although the book he gave her lies with her
Bible on the little table by her bedside. She did not think I heard
her when she asked the little milliner of Cranford to make her caps
something like the Hon. Mrs. Jamieson’s; or that I noticed the
reply,--
“But she wears widows’ caps, ma’am?”
“O, I only meant something in that style; not widows’, of course,
but rather like Mrs. Jamieson’s.”
This effort at concealment was the beginning of the tremulous
motion of head and hands, which I have seen ever since in Miss
Matey.
The evening of the day on which we heard of Mr. Holbrook’s death,
Miss Matilda was very silent and thoughtful; after prayers, she
called Martha back, and then she stood uncertain what to say.
“Martha!” she said at last; “you are young,”--and then she made
so long a pause, that Martha, to remind her of her half-finished
sentence, dropped a courtesy, and said: “Yes, please, ma’am;
two-and-twenty last third October, please, ma’am.”
“And perhaps, Martha, you may some time meet with a young man you
like, and who likes you. I did say you were not to have followers;
but if you meet with such a young man, and tell me, and I find he
is respectable, I have no objection to his coming to see you once a
week. God forbid!” said she, in a low voice, “that I should grieve
any young hearts.”
She spoke as if she were providing for some distant contingency,
and was rather startled when Martha made her ready, eager answer:
“Please, ma’am, there’s Jem Hearn, and he’s a joiner, making
three-and-sixpence a day, and six foot one in his stocking-feet,
please, ma’am; and if you’ll ask about him to-morrow morning, every
one will give him a character for steadiness; and he’ll be glad
enough to come to-morrow night, I’ll be bound.”
Though Miss Matey was startled, she submitted to Fate and Love.
* * * * *
God is our Father. Heaven is his high throne, and this earth
is his footstool; and while we sit around and meditate, or
pray, one by one, as we fall asleep, He lifts us into his
bosom, and our awaking is inside the gates of an everlasting
world.--MOUNTFORD.
[Illustration]
TO MY WIFE.
ON THE ANNIVERSARY OF OUR WEDDING.
Now, Time and I, near fifty years,
Have managed kindly to agree;
Pleased with the friendship he appears,
And means that all the world shall see.