‘Martha, I’m not yet fifty-two!’ said Miss Matty, 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

sorrow 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 am going there in a

week or two.’

‘To Paris!’ we both exclaimed.

‘Yes, madam! 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.’

[Illustration: ‘_Here are the poems for you._’]

We were so much astonished that we had no commissions.

Just as he was going out of the room, he turned back, with his favourite

exclamation—

‘God 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-bye, miss,’ said he;

‘good-bye, Matty! take care of yourself.’ And he was gone. But he had

given her a book, and he had called her Matty, 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, 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 unbeknownst 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: and 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, of the

horror with which both the Miss Jenkynses looked upon ‘followers’; and

in Miss Matty’s present nervous state this dread was not likely 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, 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 not she 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 Matty believed, from all the

world. I ushered Miss Pole into Miss Matilda’s little drawing-room, and

then left them alone. But I was not surprised when Martha came to my

bedroom 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 to her; and, 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 grim parties, far away in the distance,

when Miss Matty 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 once 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 Matty 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

Matty heard the news in silence; in fact, from the account of the

previous day, it was only what we had to expect. Miss Pole kept calling

upon us for some expression 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 Matty 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 Matty received the news very calmly—our visitor

took her leave.

Miss Matty made a strong effort 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

Honourable Mrs. Jamieson’s, or that I noticed the reply—

‘But she wears widows’ caps, ma’am?’

‘Oh? I only meant something in that style; not widows’, of course, but

rather like Mrs. Jamieson’s.’

[Illustration: ‘_God forbid that I should grieve any young hearts._’]

This effort at concealment was the beginning of the tremulous motion of

head and hands which I have seen ever since in Miss Matty.

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 curtsey, and said—

‘Yes, please, ma’am; two and twenty last third of 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 Matty was startled, she submitted to Fate and Love.

[Illustration]

------------------------------------------------------------------------

[Illustration: Chapter 5: Old Letters]

I have often noticed that almost every one has his own individual small

economies—careful habits of saving fractions of pennies in some one

peculiar direction—any disturbance of which annoys him more than

spending shillings or pounds on some real extravagance. An old gentleman

of my acquaintance, who took the intelligence of the failure of a

Joint-Stock Bank, in which some of his money was invested, with stoical

mildness, worried his family all through a long summer’s day, because

one of them had torn (instead of cutting) out the written leaves of his

now useless bank-book; of course the corresponding pages at the other

end came out as well, and this little unnecessary waste of paper (his

private economy) chafed him more than all the loss of his money.

Envelopes fretted his soul terribly when they first came in; the only

way in which he could reconcile himself to such waste of his cherished

article was by patiently turning inside out all that were sent to him,

and so making them serve again. Even now, though tamed by age, I see him

casting wistful glances at his daughters when they send a whole inside

of a half-sheet of note-paper, with the three lines of acceptance to an

invitation, written on only one of the sides. I am not above owning that

I have this human weakness myself. String is my foible. My pockets get

full of little hanks of it, picked up and twisted together, ready for

uses that never come. I am seriously annoyed if any one cuts the string

of a parcel instead of patiently and faithfully undoing it fold by fold.

How people can bring themselves to use india-rubber rings, which are a

sort of deification of string, as lightly as they do, I cannot imagine.

To me an india-rubber ring is a precious treasure. I have one which is

not new—one that I picked up off the floor nearly six years ago. I have

really tried to use it, but my heart failed me, and I could not commit

the extravagance.

Small pieces of butter grieve others. They cannot attend to conversation

because of the annoyance occasioned by the habit which some people have

of invariably taking more butter than they want. Have you not seen the

anxious look (almost mesmeric) which such persons fix on the article?

They would feel it a relief if they might bury it out of their sight by

popping it into their own mouths and swallowing it down; and they are

really made happy if the person on whose plate it lies unused suddenly

breaks off a piece of toast (which he does not want at all) and eats up

his butter. They think that this is not waste.

Now Miss Matty Jenkyns was chary of candles. We had many devices to use

as few as possible. In the winter afternoons she would sit knitting for

two or three hours—she could do this in the dark, or by fire-light—and

when I asked if I might not ring for candles to finish stitching my

wristbands, she told me to ‘keep blind man’s holiday.’ They were usually

brought in with tea; but we only burnt one at a time. As we lived in

constant preparation for a friend who might come in any evening (but who

never did), it required some contrivance to keep our two candles of the

same length, ready to be lighted, and to look as if we burnt two always.

The candles took it in turns; and, whatever we might be talking about or

doing, Miss Matty’s eyes were habitually fixed upon the candle, ready to

jump up and extinguish it and to light the other before they had become

too uneven in length to be restored to equality in the course of the

evening.

[Illustration: ‘_When Martha brought in the lighted candle and tea._’]

One night, I remember this candle economy particularly annoyed me. I had

been very much tired of my compulsory ‘blind man’s holiday,’ especially

as Miss Matty had fallen asleep, and I did not like to stir the fire and

run the risk of awakening her; so I could not even sit on the rug, and

scorch myself with sewing by fire-light, according to my usual custom. I

fancied Miss Matty must be dreaming of her early life; for she spoke one

or two words in her uneasy sleep bearing reference to persons who were

dead long before. When Martha brought in the lighted candle and tea,

Miss Matty started into wakefulness, with a strange bewildered look

around, as if we were not the people she expected to see about her.

There was a little sad expression that shadowed her face as she

recognised me; but immediately afterwards she tried to give me her usual

smile. All through tea-time her talk ran upon the days of her childhood

and youth. Perhaps this reminded her of the desirableness of looking

over all the old family letters, and destroying such as ought not to be

allowed to fall into the hands of strangers; for she had often spoken of

the necessity of this task, but had always shrunk from it, with a timid

dread of something painful. To-night, however, she rose up after tea and

went for them—in the dark; for she piqued herself on the precise

neatness of all her chamber arrangements, and used to look uneasily at

me when I lighted a bed-candle to go to another room for anything. When

she returned there was a faint pleasant smell of Tonquin beans in the

room. I had always noticed this scent about any of the things which had

belonged to her mother; and many of the letters were addressed to

her—yellow bundles of love-letters, sixty or seventy years old.

Miss Matty undid the packet with a sigh; but she stifled it directly, as

if it were hardly right to regret the flight of time, or of life either.

We agreed to look them over separately, each taking a different letter

out of the same bundle and describing its contents to the other before

destroying it. I never knew what sad work the reading of old letters was

before that evening, though I could hardly tell why. The letters were as

happy as letters could be—at least those early letters were. There was

in them a vivid and intense sense of the present time, which seemed so

strong and full, as if it could never pass away, and as if the warm

living hearts that so expressed themselves could never die, and be as

nothing to the sunny earth. I should have felt less melancholy, I

believe, if the letters had been more so. I saw the tears stealing down

the well-worn furrows of Miss Matty’s cheeks, and her spectacles often

wanted wiping. I trusted at last that she would light the other candle,

for my own eyes were rather dim, and I wanted more light to see the pale

faded ink; but no, even through her tears, she saw and remembered her

little economical ways.

The earliest set of letters were two bundles tied together, and ticketed

(in Miss Jenkyns’s handwriting), ‘Letters interchanged between my

ever-honoured father and my dearly-beloved mother, prior to their

marriage, in July 1774.’ I should guess that the rector of Cranford was

about twenty-seven years of age when he wrote those letters; and Miss

Matty told me that her mother was just eighteen at the time of her

wedding. With my idea of the rector, derived from a picture in the

dining-parlour, stiff and stately, in a huge full-bottomed wig, with

gown, cassock, and bands, and his hand upon a copy of the only sermon he

ever published—it was strange to read these letters. They were full of

eager passionate ardour; short homely sentences, right fresh from the

heart (very different from the grand Latinised, Johnsonian style of the

printed sermon, preached before some judge at assize time). His letters

were a curious contrast to those of his girl-bride. She was evidently

rather annoyed at his demands upon her for expressions of love, and

could not quite understand what he meant by repeating the same thing

over in so many different ways; but what she was quite clear about was a

longing for a white ‘Paduasoy’—whatever that might be; and six or seven

letters were principally occupied in asking her lover to use his

influence with her parents (who evidently kept her in good order) to

obtain this or that article of dress, more especially the white

‘Paduasoy.’ He cared nothing how she was dressed; she was always lovely

enough for him, as he took pains to assure her, when she begged him to

express in his answers a predilection for particular pieces of finery,

in order that she might show what he said to her parents. But at length

he seemed to find out that she would not be married till she had a

‘trousseau’ to her mind; and then he sent her a letter, which had

evidently accompanied a whole boxful of finery, and in which he

requested that she might be dressed in everything her heart desired.

This was the first letter, ticketed in a frail, delicate hand, ‘From my

dearest John.’ Shortly afterwards they were married, I suppose, from the

intermission in their correspondence.

[Illustration: ‘_Preached before some judge._’]

‘We must burn them, I think,’ said Miss Matty, looking doubtfully at me.

‘No one will care for them when I am gone.’ And one by one she dropped

them into the middle of the fire, watching each blaze up, die out, and

rise away, in faint, white, ghostly semblance, up the chimney, before

she gave another to the same fate. The room was light enough now; but I,

like her, was fascinated into watching the destruction of those letters,

into which the honest warmth of a manly heart had been poured forth.

The next letter, likewise docketed by Miss Jenkyns, was endorsed,

‘Letter of pious congratulation and exhortation from my venerable

grandfather to my beloved mother, on occasion of my own birth. Also some

practical remarks on the desirability of keeping warm the extremities of

infants, from my excellent grandmother.’

The first part was, indeed, a severe and forcible picture of the

responsibilities of mothers, and a warning against the evils that were

in the world, and lying in ghastly wait for the little baby of two days

old. His wife did not write, said the old gentleman, because he had

forbidden it, she being indisposed with a sprained ankle, which (he

said) quite incapacitated her from holding a pen. However, at the foot

of the page was a small ‘T.O.,’ and on turning it over, sure enough,

there was a letter to ‘my dear, dearest Molly,’ begging her, when she

left her room, whatever she did, to go _up_ stairs before going _down_:

and telling her to wrap her baby’s feet up in flannel, and keep it warm

by the fire, although it was summer, for babies were so tender.

It was pretty to see from the letters, which were evidently exchanged

with some frequency between the young mother and the grandmother, how

the girlish vanity was being weeded out of her heart by love for her

baby. The white ‘Paduasoy’ figured again in the letters, with almost as

much vigour as before. In one, it was being made into a christening

cloak for the baby. It decked it when it went with its parents to spend

a day or two at Arley Hall. It added to its charms when it was ‘the

prettiest little baby that ever was seen. Dear mother, I wish you could

see her! Without any parshality, I do think she will grow up a regular

bewty!’ I thought of Miss Jenkyns, gray, withered, and wrinkled, and I

wondered if her mother had known her in the courts of heaven; and then I

knew that she had, and that they stood there in angelic guise.

There was a great gap before any of the rector’s letters appeared. And

then his wife had changed her mode of endorsement. It was no longer from

‘My dearest John’; it was from ‘My honoured Husband.’ The letters were

written on occasion of the publication of the same Sermon which was

represented in the picture. The preaching before ‘My Lord Judge,’ and

the ‘publishing by request,’ was evidently the culminating point—the

event of his life. It had been necessary for him to go up to London to

superintend it through the press. Many friends had to be called upon,

and consulted, before he could decide on any printer fit for so onerous

a task; and at length it was arranged that J. and J. Rivingtons were to

have the honourable responsibility. The worthy rector seemed to be

strung up by the occasion to a high literary pitch, for he could hardly

write a letter to his wife without cropping out into Latin. I remember

the end of one of his letters ran thus: ‘I shall ever hold the virtuous

qualities of my Molly in remembrance, _dum memor ipse mei_, _dum

spiritus regit artus_,’ which, considering that the English of his

correspondent was sometimes at fault in grammar, and often in spelling,

might be taken as a proof of how much he ‘idealised his Molly’; and, as

Miss Jenkyns used to say, ‘People talk a great deal about idealising

nowadays, whatever that may mean.’ But this was nothing to a fit of

writing classical poetry which soon seized him, in which his Molly

figured away as ‘Maria.’ The letter containing the _carmen_ was endorsed

by her, ‘Hebrew verses sent me by my honoured husband. I thowt to have

had a letter about killing the pig, but must wait. Mem., to send the

poetry to Sir Peter Arley, as my husband desires.’ And in a

post-scriptum note in his handwriting it was stated that the Ode had

appeared in the _Gentleman’s Magazine_, December 1782.

Her letters back to her husband (treasured as fondly by him as if they

had been _M. T. Ciceronis Epistolæ_) were more satisfactory to an absent

husband and father than his could ever have been to her. She told him

how Deborah sewed her seam very neatly every day, and read to her in the

books he had set her; how she was a very ‘forrard,’ good child, but

_would_ ask questions her mother could not answer, but how she did not

let herself down by saying she did not know, but took to stirring the

fire, or sending the ‘forrard’ child on an errand. Matty was now the

mother’s darling, and promised (like her sister at her age) to be a

great beauty. I was reading this aloud to Miss Matty, who smiled and

sighed a little at the hope, so fondly expressed, that ‘little Matty

might not be vain, even if she were a bewty.’

‘I had very pretty hair, my dear,’ said Miss Matilda; ‘and not a bad

mouth.’ And I saw her soon afterwards adjust her cap and draw herself

up.

But to return to Mrs. Jenkyns’s letters. She told her husband about the

poor in the parish; what homely domestic medicines she had administered;

what kitchen physic she had sent. She had evidently held his displeasure

as a rod in pickle over the heads of all the ne’er-do-wells. She asked

for his directions about the cows and pigs; and did not always obtain

them, as I have shown before.

The kind old grandmother was dead when a little boy was born, soon after

the publication of the Sermon; but there was another letter of

exhortation from the grandfather, more stringent and admonitory than

ever, now that there was a boy to be guarded from the snares of the

world. He described all the various sins into which men might fall,

until I wondered how any man ever came to a natural death. The gallows

seemed as if it must have been the termination of the lives of most of

the grandfather’s friends and acquaintance; and I was not surprised at

the way in which he spoke of this life being ‘a vale of tears.’

It seemed curious that I should never have heard of this brother before;

but I concluded that he had died young, or else surely his name would

have been alluded to by his sisters.

By and by we came to packets of Miss Jenkyns’s letters. These Miss Matty

did regret to burn. She said all the others had been only interesting to

those who loved the writers, and that it seemed as if it would have hurt

her to allow them to fall into the hands of strangers, who had not known

her dear mother, and how good she was, although she did not always spell

quite in the modern fashion; but Deborah’s letters were so very

superior! Any one might profit by reading them. It was a long time since

she had read Mrs. Chapone, but she knew she used to think that Deborah

could have said the same things quite as well; and as for Mrs. Carter!

people thought a deal of her letters, just because she had written

_Epictetus_, but she was quite sure Deborah would never have made use of

such a common expression as ‘I canna be fashed!’

[Illustration: _A Post Boy._]

Miss Matty did grudge burning these letters, it was evident. She would

not let them be carelessly passed over with any quiet reading, and

skipping, to myself. She took them from me, and even lighted the second

candle in order to read them aloud with a proper emphasis, and without

stumbling over the big words. Oh dear! how I wanted facts instead of

reflections, before those letters were concluded! They lasted us two

nights; and I won’t deny that I made use of the time to think of many

other things, and yet I was always at my post at the end of each

sentence.

The rector’s letters, and those of his wife and mother-in-law, had all

been tolerably short and pithy, written in a straight hand, with the

lines very close together. Sometimes the whole letter was contained on a

mere scrap of paper. The paper was very yellow, and the ink very brown;

some of the sheets were (as Miss Matty made me observe) the old original

post, with the stamp in the corner representing a post-boy riding for

life and twanging his horn. The letters of Mrs. Jenkyns and her mother

were fastened with a great round red wafer; for it was before Miss

Edgeworth’s _Patronage_ had banished wafers from polite society. It was

evident, from the tenor of what was said, that franks were in great

request, and were even used as a means of paying debts by needy members

of Parliament. The rector sealed his espistles with an immense coat of

arms, and showed by the care with which he had performed this ceremony

that he expected they should be cut open, not broken by any thoughtless

or impatient hand. Now, Miss Jenkyns’s letters were of a later date in

form and writing. She wrote on the square sheet which we have learned to

call old-fashioned. Her hand was admirably calculated, together with her

use of many-syllabled words, to fill up a sheet, and then came the pride

and delight of crossing. Poor Miss Matty got sadly puzzled with this,

for the words gathered size like snowballs, and towards the end of her

letter Miss Jenkyns used to become quite sesquipedalian. In one to her

father, slightly theological and controversial in its tone, she had

spoken of Herod, Tetrarch of Idumea. Miss Matty read it ‘Herod, Petrarch

of Etruria,’ and was just as well pleased as if she had been right.

[Illustration: ‘_Turning out of the volunteers._’]

I can’t quite remember the date, but I think it was in 1805 that Miss

Jenkyns wrote the longest series of letters—on occasion of her absence

on a visit to some friends near Newcastle-upon-Tyne. These friends were

intimate with the commandant of the garrison there, and heard from him

of all the preparations that were being made to repel the invasion of

Buonaparte, which some people imagined might take place at the mouth of

the Tyne. Miss Jenkyns was evidently very much alarmed; and the first

part of her letters was often written in pretty intelligible English,

conveying particulars of the preparations which were made in the family

with whom she was residing against the dreaded event; the bundles of

clothes that were packed up ready for a flight to Alston Moor (a wild

hilly piece of ground between Northumberland and Cumberland); the signal

that was to be given for this flight, and for the simultaneous turning

out of the volunteers under arms—which said signal was to consist (if I

remember rightly) in ringing the church bells in a particular and

ominous manner. One day, when Miss Jenkyns and her hosts were at a

dinner party in Newcastle, this warning summons was actually given (not

a very wise proceeding, if there be any truth in the moral attached to

the fable of the Boy and the Wolf; but so it was), and Miss Jenkyns,

hardly recovered from her fright, wrote the next day to describe the

sound, the breathless shock, the hurry and alarm; and then, taking

breath, she added, ‘How trivial, my dear father, do all our

apprehensions of the last evening appear, at the present moment, to calm

and inquiring minds!’ And here Miss Matty broke in with—

‘But, indeed, my dear, they were not at all trivial or trifling at the

time. I know I used to wake up in the night many a time and think I

heard the tramp of the French entering Cranford. Many people talked of

hiding themselves in the salt mines—and meat would have kept capitally

down there, only perhaps we should have been thirsty. And my father

preached a whole set of sermons on the occasion; one set in the

mornings, all about David and Goliath, to spirit up the people to

fighting with spades or bricks, if need were; and the other set in the

afternoons, proving that Napoleon (that was another name for Bony, as we

used to call him) was all the same as an Apollyon and Abaddon. I

remember my father rather thought he should be asked to print this last

set; but the parish had, perhaps, had enough of them with hearing.’

Peter Marmaduke Arley Jenkyns (‘poor Peter!’ as Miss Matty began to call

him) was at school at Shrewsbury by this time. The rector took up his

pen, and rubbed up his Latin once more, to correspond with his boy. It

was very clear that the lad’s were what are called show letters. They

were of a highly mental description, giving an account of his studies,

and his intellectual hopes of various kinds, with an occasional

quotation from the classics; but, now and then, the animal nature broke

out in such a little sentence as this, evidently written in a trembling

hurry, after the letter had been inspected: ‘Mother dear, do send me a

cake, and put plenty of citron in.’ The ‘mother dear’ probably answered

her boy in the form of cakes and ‘goody,’ for there were none of her

letters among this set; but a whole collection of the rector’s, to whom

the Latin in his boy’s letters was like a trumpet to the old war-horse.

I do not know much about Latin, certainly, and it is, perhaps, an

ornamental language, but not very useful, I think—at least to judge from

the bits I remember out of the rector’s letters. One was, ‘You have not

got that town in your map of Ireland; but _Bonus Bernardus non videt

omnia_, as the Proverbia say.’ Presently it became very evident that

‘poor Peter’ got himself into many scrapes. There were letters of

stilted penitence to his father, for some wrong-doing; and, among them

all was a badly-written, badly-sealed, badly-directed, blotted note—‘My

dear, dear, dear, dearest mother, I will be a better boy; I will,

indeed; but don’t, please, be ill for me; I am not worth it; but I will

be good, darling mother.’

Miss Matty could not speak for crying, after she had read this note. She

gave it to me in silence, and then got up and took it to her sacred

recesses in her own room, for fear, by any chance, it might get burnt.

‘Poor Peter!’ she said; ‘he was always in scrapes; he was too easy. They

led him wrong, and then left him in the lurch. But he was too fond of

mischief. He could never resist a joke. Poor Peter!’

[Illustration: Chapter 5 tailpiece]

------------------------------------------------------------------------

[Illustration: Chapter 6: Poor Peter]

Poor Peter’s career lay before him rather pleasantly mapped out by kind

friends, but _Bonus Bernardus non videt omnia_, in this map too. He was

to win honours at Shrewsbury School, and carry them thick to Cambridge,

and after that, a living awaited him, the gift of his godfather, Sir

Peter Arley. Poor Peter! his lot in life was very different to what his

friends had hoped and planned. Miss Matty told me all about it, and I

think it was a relief to her when she had done so.

He was the darling of his mother, who seemed to dote on all her

children, though she was, perhaps, a little afraid of Deborah’s superior

acquirements. Deborah was the favourite of her father, and when Peter

disappointed him she became his pride. The sole honour Peter brought

away from Shrewsbury was the reputation of being the best good fellow

that ever was, and of being the captain of the school in the art of

practical joking. His father was disappointed, but set about remedying

the matter in a manly way. He could not afford to send Peter to read

with any tutor, but he could read with him himself; and Miss Matty told

me much of the awful preparations in the way of dictionaries and

lexicons that were made in her father’s study the morning Peter began.

‘My poor mother!’ said she. ‘I remember how she used to stand in the

hall, just near enough the study-door, to catch the tone of my father’s

voice. I could tell in a moment if all was going right, by her face. And

it did go right for a long time.’

‘What went wrong at last?’ said I. ‘That tiresome Latin, I daresay.’

‘No! it was not the Latin. Peter was in high favour with my father, for

he worked up well for him. But he seemed to think that the Cranford

people might be joked about, and made fun of, and they did not like it;

nobody does. He was always hoaxing them; “hoaxing” is not a pretty word,

my dear, and I hope you won’t tell your father I used it, for I should

not like him to think that I was not choice in my language, after living

with such a woman as Deborah. And be sure you never use it yourself. I

don’t know how it slipped out of my mouth, except it was that I was

thinking of poor Peter, and it was always his expression. But he was a

very gentlemanly boy in many things. He was like dear Captain Brown in

always being ready to help any old person or a child. Still, he did like

joking and making fun; and he seemed to think the old ladies in Cranford

would believe anything. There were many old ladies living here then; we

are principally ladies now, I know, but we are not so old as the ladies

used to be when I was a girl. I could laugh to think of some of Peter’s

jokes. No, my dear, I won’t tell you of them, because they might not

shock you as they ought to do, and they were very shocking. He even took

in my father once, by dressing himself up as a lady that was passing

through the town and wished to see the Rector of Cranford, “who had

published that admirable Assize Sermon.” Peter said he was awfully

frightened himself when he saw how my father took it all in, and even

offered to copy out all his Napoleon Buonaparte sermons for her—him, I

mean—no, her, for Peter was a lady then. He told me he was more

terrified than he ever was before, all the time my father was speaking.

He did not think my father would have believed him; and yet if he had

not, it would have been a sad thing for Peter. As it was, he was none so

glad of it, for my father kept him hard at work copying out all those

twelve Buonaparte sermons for the lady—that was for Peter himself, you

know. He was the lady. And once when he wanted to go fishing, Peter

said, “Confound the woman!”—very bad language, my dear, but Peter was

not always so guarded as he should have been; my father was so angry

with him, it nearly frightened me out of my wits: and yet I could hardly

keep from laughing at the little curtseys Peter kept making, quite

slyly, whenever my father spoke of the lady’s excellent taste and sound

discrimination.’

‘Did Miss Jenkyns know of these tricks?’ said I.

[Illustration: ‘_The little curtseys._’]

‘Oh no! Deborah would have been too much shocked. No, no one knew but

me. I wish I had always known of Peter’s plans; but sometimes he did not

tell me. He used to say the old ladies in the town wanted something to

talk about; but I don’t think they did. They had the St. James’s

Chronicle three times a week, just as we have now, and we have plenty to

say; and I remember the clacking noise there always was when some of the

ladies got together. But, probably, schoolboys talk more than ladies. At

last there was a terrible, sad thing happened.’ Miss Matty got up, went

to the door, and opened it; no one was there. She rang the bell for

Martha, and when Martha came, her mistress told her to go for eggs to a

farm at the other end of the town.

‘I will lock the door after you, Martha. You are not afraid to go, are

you?’

‘No, ma’am, not at all; Jem Hearn will be only too proud to go with me.’

Miss Matty drew herself up, and as soon as we were alone, she wished

that Martha had more maidenly reserve.

‘We’ll put out the candle, my dear. We can talk just as well by

firelight, you know. There! Well, you see, Deborah had gone from home

for a fortnight or so; it was a very still, quiet day, I remember,

overhead; and the lilacs were all in flower, so I suppose it was spring.

My father had gone out to see some sick people in the parish; I

recollect seeing him leave the house with his wig and shovel-hat and

cane. What possessed our poor Peter I don’t know; he had the sweetest

temper, and yet he always seemed to like to plague Deborah. She never

laughed at his jokes, and thought him ungenteel, and not careful enough

about improving his mind; and that vexed him.

‘Well! he went to her room, it seems, and dressed himself in her old

gown, and shawl, and bonnet; just the things she used to wear in

Cranford, and was known by everywhere; and he made the pillow into a

little—you are sure you locked the door, my dear, for I should not like

any one to hear—into—into—a little baby, with white long clothes. It was

only, as he told me afterwards, to make something to talk about in the

town; he never thought of it as affecting Deborah, and he went and

walked up and down in the Filbert walk—just half-hidden by the rails,

and half-seen; and he cuddled his pillow, just like a baby, and talked

to it all the nonsense people do. Oh dear! and my father came stepping

stately up the street, as he always did; and what should he see but a

little black crowd of people—I daresay as many as twenty—all peeping

through his garden rails. So he thought, at first, they were only

looking at a new rhododendron that was in full bloom, and that he was

very proud of; and he walked slower, that they might have more time to

admire. And he wondered if he could make out a sermon from the occasion,

and thought, perhaps, there was some relation between the rhododendrons

and the lilies of the field. My poor father! When he came nearer, he

began to wonder that they did not see him; but their heads were all so

close together, peeping and peeping! My father was amongst them,

meaning, he said, to ask them to walk into the garden with him, and

admire the beautiful vegetable production, when—oh, my dear! I tremble

to think of it—he looked through the rails himself, and saw—I don’t know

what he thought he saw, but old Clare told me his face went quite

gray-white with anger, and his eyes blazed out under his frowning black

brows; and he spoke out—oh, so terribly!—and bade them all stop where

they were—not one of them to go, not one to stir a step; and, swift as

light, he was in at the garden door, and down the Filbert walk, and

seized hold of poor Peter, and tore his clothes off his back—bonnet,

shawl, gown, and all—and threw the pillow among the people over the

railings: and then he was very, very angry indeed, and before all the

people he lifted up his cane and flogged Peter!

[Illustration: ‘_Have you done enough, sir?_’]

‘My dear, that boy’s trick, on that sunny day, when all seemed going

straight and well, broke my mother’s heart, and changed my father for

life. It did, indeed. Old Clare said, Peter looked as white as my

father; and stood as still as a statue to be flogged; and my father

struck hard! When my father stopped to take breath, Peter said, “Have

you done enough, sir?” quite hoarsely, and still standing quite quiet. I

don’t know what my father said—or if he said anything. But old Clare

said, Peter turned to where the people outside the railing were, and

made them a low bow, as grand and as grave as any gentleman; and then

walked slowly into the house. I was in the store-room helping my mother

to make cowslip wine. I cannot abide the wine now, nor the scent of the

flowers; they turn me sick and faint, as they did that day, when Peter

came in, looking as haughty as any man—indeed, looking like a man, not

like a boy. “Mother!” he said, “I am come to say, God bless you for

ever.” I saw his lips quiver as he spoke; and I think he durst not say

anything more loving, for the purpose that was in his heart. She looked

at him rather frightened, and wondering, and asked him what was to do.

He did not smile or speak, but put his arms round her and kissed her as

if he did not know how to leave off; and before she could speak again,

he was gone. We talked it over, and could not understand it, and she

bade me go and seek my father, and ask what it was all about. I found

him walking up and down, looking very highly displeased.

‘“Tell your mother I have flogged Peter, and that he richly deserved

it.”

‘I durst not ask any more questions. When I told my mother, she sat

down, quite faint, for a minute. I remember, a few days after, I saw the

poor, withered cowslip flowers thrown out to the leaf heap, to decay and

die there. There was no making of cowslip-wine that year at the

rectory—nor, indeed, ever after.

‘Presently my mother went to my father. I know I thought of Queen Esther

and King Ahasuerus; for my mother was very pretty and delicate-looking,

and my father looked as terrible as King Ahasuerus. Some time after they

came out together; and then my mother told me what had happened, and

that she was going up to Peter’s room at my father’s desire—though she

was not to tell Peter this—to talk the matter over with him. But no

Peter was there. We looked over the house; no Peter was there! Even my

father, who had not liked to join in the search at first, helped us

before long. The rectory was a very old house—steps up into a room,

steps down into a room, all through. At first, my mother went calling

low and soft, as if to reassure the poor boy, “Peter! Peter, dear! it’s

only me;” but, by and by, as the servants came back from the errands my

father had sent them, in different directions, to find where Peter

was—as we found he was not in the garden, nor the hayloft, nor anywhere

about—my mother’s cry grew louder and wilder, “Peter! Peter, my darling!

where are you?” for then she felt and understood that that long kiss

meant some sad kind of “good-bye.” The afternoon went on—my mother never

resting, but seeking again and again in every possible place that had

been looked into twenty times before, nay, that she had looked into over

and over again herself. My father sat with his head in his hands, not

speaking except when his messengers came in, bringing no tidings; then

he lifted up his face, so strong and sad, and told them to go again in

some new direction. My mother kept passing from room to room, in and out

of the house, moving noiselessly, but never ceasing. Neither she nor my

father durst leave the house, which was the meeting-place for all the

messengers. At last (and it was nearly dark) my father rose up. He took

hold of my mother’s arm as she came with wild, sad pace through one

door, and quickly towards another. She started at the touch of his hand,

for she had forgotten all in the world but Peter.

“Molly!” said he, “I did not think all this would happen.” He looked

into her face for comfort—her poor face, all wild and white; for neither

she nor my father had dared to acknowledge—much less act upon—the terror

that was in their hearts, lest Peter should have made away with himself.

My father saw no conscious look in his wife’s hot, dreary eyes, and he

missed the sympathy that she had always been ready to give him—strong

man as he was, and at the dumb despair in her face his tears began to

flow. But when she saw this, a gentle sorrow came over her countenance,

and she said, “Dearest John! don’t cry; come with me, and we’ll find

him,” almost as cheerfully as if she knew where he was. And she took my

father’s great hand in her little soft one and led him along, the tears

dropping as he walked on that same unceasing, weary walk, from room to

room, through house and garden.

‘Oh, how I wished for Deborah! I had no time for crying, for now all

seemed to depend on me. I wrote for Deborah to come home. I sent a

message privately to that same Mr. Holbrook’s house—poor Mr.

Holbrook!—you know who I mean. I don’t mean I sent a message to him, but

I sent one that I could trust to know if Peter was at his house. For at

one time Mr. Holbrook was an occasional visitor at the rectory—you know

he was Miss Pole’s cousin—and he had been very kind to Peter, and taught

him how to fish—he was very kind to everybody, and I thought Peter might

have gone off there. But Mr. Holbrook was from home, and Peter had never

been seen. It was night now; but the doors were all wide open, and my

father and mother walked on and on; it was more than an hour since he

had joined her, and I don’t believe they had ever spoken all that time.

I was getting the parlour fire lighted, and one of the servants was

preparing tea, for I wanted them to have something to eat and drink and

warm them, when Old Clare asked to speak to me.

‘“I have borrowed the nets from the weir, Miss Matty. Shall we drag the

ponds to-night, or wait for the morning?”

‘I remember staring in his face to gather his meaning; and when I did, I

laughed out loud. The horror of that new thought—our bright, darling

Peter, cold, and stark, and dead! I remember the ring of my own laugh

now.

‘The next day Deborah was at home before I was myself again. She would

not have been so weak as to give way as I had done; but my screams (my

horrible laughter had ended in crying) had roused my sweet dear mother,

whose poor wandering wits were called back and collected as soon as a

child needed her care. She and Deborah sat by my bedside; I knew by the

looks of each that there had been no news of Peter—no awful, ghastly

news, which was what I most had dreaded in my dull state between

sleeping and waking.

‘The same result of all the searching had brought something of the same

relief to my mother, to whom, I am sure, the thought that Peter might

even then be hanging dead in some of the familiar home places had caused

that never-ending walk of yesterday. Her soft eyes never were the same

again after that; they had always a restless, craving look, as if

seeking for what they could not find. Oh! it was an awful time; coming

down like a thunderbolt on the still sunny day when the lilacs were all

in bloom.’

‘Where was Mr. Peter?’ said I.

‘He had made his way to Liverpool; and there was war then; and some of

the king’s ships lay off the mouth of the Mersey; and they were only too

glad to have a fine likely boy such as him (five foot nine he was) come

to offer himself. The captain wrote to my father, and Peter wrote to my

mother. Stay! those letters will be somewhere here.’

We lighted the candle, and found the captain’s letter and Peter’s too.

And we also found a little simple begging letter from Mrs. Jenkyns to

Peter, addressed to him at the house of an old schoolfellow, whither she

fancied he might have gone. They had returned it unopened; and unopened

it had remained ever since, having been inadvertently put by among the

other letters of that time. This is it—

‘MY DEAREST PETER—You did not think we should be so sorry as we are, I

know, or you would never have gone away. You are too good. Your father

sits and sighs till my heart aches to hear him. He cannot hold up his

head for grief; and yet he only did what he thought was right. Perhaps

he has been too severe, and perhaps I have not been kind enough; but

God knows how we love you, my dear only boy. Don looks so sorry you

are gone. Come back, and make us happy, who love you so much. I _know_

you will come back.’

But Peter did not come back. That spring day was the last time he ever

saw his mother’s face. The writer of the letter—the last—the only person

who had ever seen what was written in it, was dead long ago; and I, a

stranger, not born at the time when this occurrence took place, was the

one to open it.

The captain’s letter summoned the father and mother to Liverpool

instantly, if they wished to see their boy; and, by some of the wild

chances of life, the captain’s letter had been detained somewhere,

somehow.

Miss Matty went on, ‘And it was race-time, and all the post-horses at

Cranford were gone to the races; but my father and mother set off in our

own gig—and oh! my dear, they were too late—the ship was gone! And now

read Peter’s letter to my mother!’

It was full of love, and sorrow, and pride in his new profession, and a

sore sense of his disgrace in the eyes of the people at Cranford; but

ending with a passionate entreaty that she would come and see him before

he left the Mersey: ‘Mother! we may go into battle. I hope we shall, and

lick those French; but I must see you again before that time.’

‘And she was too late,’ said Miss Matty; ‘too late!’

We sat in silence, pondering on the full meaning of those sad, sad

words. At length I asked Miss Matty to tell me how her mother bore it.

‘Oh!’ she said, ‘she was patience itself. She had never been strong, and

this weakened her terribly. My father used to sit looking at her: far

more sad than she was. He seemed as if he could look at nothing else

when she was by; and he was so humble—so very gentle now. He would,

perhaps, speak in his old way—laying down the law, as it were—and then,

in a minute or two, he would come round and put his hand on our

shoulders, and ask us in a low voice if he had said anything to hurt us.

I did not wonder at his speaking so to Deborah, for she was so clever;

but I could not bear to hear him talking so to me.

‘But, you see, he saw what we did not—that it was killing my mother.

Yes! killing her (put out the candle, my dear; I can talk better in the

dark), for she was but a frail woman, and ill fitted to stand the fright

and shock she had gone through; and she would smile at him and comfort

him, not in words, but in her looks and tones, which were always

cheerful when he was there. And she would speak of how she thought Peter

stood a good chance of being admiral very soon—he was so brave and

clever; and how she thought of seeing him in his navy uniform, and what

sort of hats admirals wore; and how much more fit he was to be a sailor

than a clergyman; and all in that way, just to make my father think she

was quite glad of what came of that unlucky morning’s work, and the

flogging which was always in his mind, as we all knew. But oh, my dear!

the bitter, bitter crying she had when she was alone; and at last, as

she grew weaker, she could not keep her tears in when Deborah or me was

by, and would give us message after message for Peter (his ship had gone

to the Mediterranean, or somewhere down there, and then he was ordered

off to India, and there was no overland route then); but she still said

that no one knew where their death lay in wait, and that we were not to

think hers was near. We did not think it, but we knew it, as we saw her

fading away.

‘Well, my dear, it’s very foolish of me, I know, when in all likelihood

I am so near seeing her again.

‘And only think, love! the very day after her death—for she did not live

quite a twelvemonth after Peter went away—the very day after—came a

parcel for her from India—from her poor boy. It was a large, soft, white

India shawl, with just a little narrow border all round; just what my

mother would have liked.

‘We thought it might rouse my father, for he had sat with her hand in

his all night long; so Deborah took it in to him, and Peter’s letter to

her, and all. At first, he took no notice; and we tried to make a kind

of light careless talk about the shawl, opening it out and admiring it.

Then, suddenly, he got up, and spoke: “She shall be buried in it,” he

said; “Peter shall have that comfort; and she would have liked it.”

‘Well, perhaps it was not reasonable, but what could we do or say? One

gives people in grief their own way. He took it up and felt it: “It is

just such a shawl as she wished for when she was married, and her mother

did not give it her. I did not know of it till after, or she should have

had it—she should; but she shall have it now.”

‘My mother looked so lovely in her death! She was always pretty, and now

she looked fair, and waxen, and young—younger than Deborah, as she stood

trembling and shivering by her. We decked her in the long soft folds;

she lay smiling, as if pleased; and people came—all Cranford came—to beg

to see her, for they had loved her dearly, as well they might; and the

countrywomen brought posies; old Clare’s wife brought some white

violets, and begged they might lie on her breast.

‘Deborah said to me, the day of my mother’s funeral, that if she had a

hundred offers she never would marry and leave my father. It was not

very likely she would have so many—I don’t know that she had one; but it

was not less to her credit to say so. She was such a daughter to my

father as I think there never was before or since. His eyes failed him,

and she read book after book, and wrote, and copied, and was always at

his service in any parish business. She could do many more things than

my poor mother could; she even once wrote a letter to the bishop for my

father. But he missed my mother sorely; the whole parish noticed it. Not

that he was less active; I think he was more so, and more patient in

helping every one. I did all I could to set Deborah at liberty to be

with him; for I knew I was good for little, and that my best work in the

world was to do odd jobs quietly, and set others at liberty. But my

father was a changed man.’

‘Did Mr. Peter ever come home?’

‘Yes, once. He came home a lieutenant; he did not get to be admiral. And

he and my father were such friends! My father took him into every house

in the parish, he was so proud of him. He never walked out without

Peter’s arm to lean upon. Deborah used to smile (I don’t think we ever

laughed again after my mother’s death), and say she was quite put in a

corner. Not but what my father always wanted her when there was

letter-writing or reading to be done, or anything to be settled.’

[Illustration: ‘_He and my father were such friends!_’]

‘And then?’ said I, after a pause.

‘Then Peter went to sea again; and, by and by, my father died, blessing

us both, and thanking Deborah for all she had been to him; and, of

course, our circumstances were changed; and, instead of living at the

rectory, and keeping three maids and a man, we had to come to this small

house, and be content with a servant-of-all-work; but, as Deborah used

to say, we have always lived genteelly, even if circumstances have

compelled us to simplicity. Poor Deborah!’

‘And Mr. Peter?’ asked I.

‘Oh, there was some great war in India—I forget what they call it—and we

have never heard of Peter since then. I believe he is dead myself; and

it sometimes fidgets me that we have never put on mourning for him. And

then again, when I sit by myself, and all the house is still, I think I

hear his step coming up the street, and my heart begins to flutter and

beat; but the sound always goes past—and Peter never comes.’

‘That’s Martha back? No! _I_’ll go, my dear; I can always find my way in

the dark, you know. And a blow of fresh air at the door will do my head

good, and it’s rather got a trick of aching.’

So she pattered off. I had lighted the candle, to give the room a

cheerful appearance against her return.

‘Was it Martha?’ asked I.

‘Yes. And I am rather uncomfortable, for I heard such a strange noise,

just as I was opening the door.’

‘Where?’ I asked, for her eyes were round with affright.

‘In the street—just outside—it sounded like——’

‘Talking?’ I put in, as she hesitated a little.

‘No! kissing——’

------------------------------------------------------------------------

[Illustration: Chapter 7: Visiting]

One morning, as Miss Matty and I sat at our work—it was before twelve

o’clock, and Miss Matty had not changed the cap with yellow ribbons that

had been Miss Jenkyns’s best, and which Miss Matty was now wearing out

in private, putting on the one made in imitation of Mrs. Jamieson’s at

all times when she expected to be seen—Martha came up, and asked if Miss

Betty Barker might speak to her mistress. Miss Matty assented, and

quickly disappeared to change the yellow ribbons, while Miss Barker came

upstairs; but, as she had forgotten her spectacles, and was rather

flurried by the unusual time of the visit, I was not surprised to see

her return with one cap on the top of the other. She was quite

unconscious of it herself, and looked at us with bland satisfaction. Nor

do I think Miss Barker perceived it; for, putting aside the little

circumstance that she was not so young as she had been, she was very

much absorbed in her errand, which she delivered herself of with an

oppressive modesty that found vent in endless apologies.

[Illustration: ‘_With bland satisfaction_’]

Miss Betty Barker was the daughter of the old clerk at Cranford who had

officiated in Mr. Jenkyns’s time. She and her sister had had pretty good

situations as ladies’ maids, and had saved money enough to set up a

milliner’s shop, which had been patronised by the ladies in the

neighbourhood. Lady Arley, for instance, would occasionally give Miss

Barkers the pattern of an old cap of hers, which they immediately copied

and circulated among the _élite_ of Cranford. I say the _élite_, for

Miss Barkers had caught the trick of the place, and piqued themselves

upon their ‘aristocratic connection.’ They would not sell their caps and

ribbons to any one without a pedigree. Many a farmer’s wife or daughter

turned away huffed from Miss Barkers’ select millinery, and went rather

to the universal shop, where the profits of brown soap and moist sugar

enabled the proprietor to go straight to (Paris, he said, until he found

his customers too patriotic and John Bullish to wear what the Mounseers

wore) London, where, as he often told his customers, Queen Adelaide had

appeared, only the very week before, in a cap exactly like the one he

showed them, trimmed with yellow and blue ribbons, and had been

complimented by King William on the becoming nature of her head-dress.

Miss Barkers, who confined themselves to truth, and did not approve of

miscellaneous customers, throve notwithstanding. They were self-denying,

good people. Many a time have I seen the eldest of them (she that had

been maid to Mrs. Jamieson) carrying out some delicate mess to a poor

person. They only aped their betters in having ‘nothing to do’ with the

class immediately below theirs. And when Miss Barker died, their profits

and income were found to be such that Miss Betty was justified in

shutting up shop and retiring from business. She also (as I think I have

before said) set up her cow; a mark of respectability in Cranford almost

as decided as setting up a gig is among some people. She dressed finer

than any lady in Cranford; and we did not wonder at it; for it was

understood that she was wearing out all the bonnets and caps and

outrageous ribbons which had once formed her stock-in-trade. It was five

or six years since she had given up shop, so in any other place than

Cranford her dress might have been considered _passée_.

And now Miss Betty Barker had called to invite Miss Matty to tea at her

house on the following Tuesday. She gave me also an impromptu

invitation, as I happened to be a visitor—though I could see she had a

little fear lest, since my father had gone to live in Drumble, he might

have engaged in that ‘horrid cotton trade,’ and so dragged his family

down out of ‘aristocratic society.’ She prefaced this invitation with so

many apologies that she quite excited my curiosity. ‘Her presumption’

was to be excused. What had she been doing? She seemed so overpowered by

it, I could only think that she had been writing to Queen Adelaide to

ask for a receipt for washing lace; but the act which she so

characterised was only an invitation she had carried to her sister’s

former mistress, Mrs. Jamieson. ‘Her former occupation considered, could

Miss Matty excuse the liberty?’ Ah! thought I, she has found out that

double cap, and is going to rectify Miss Matty’s head-dress. No! it was

simply to extend her invitation to Miss Matty and to me. Miss Matty

bowed acceptance; and I wondered that, in the graceful action, she did

not feel the unusual weight and extraordinary height of her head-dress.

But I do not think she did, for she recovered her balance, and went on

talking to Miss Betty in a kind, condescending manner, very different

from the fidgety way she would have had if she had suspected how

singular her appearance was.

‘Mrs. Jamieson is coming, I think you said?’ asked Miss Matty.

‘Yes. Mrs. Jamieson most kindly and condescendingly said she would be

happy to come. One little stipulation she made, that she should bring

Carlo. I told her that if I had a weakness, it was for dogs.’

‘And Miss Pole?’ questioned Miss Matty, who was thinking of her pool at

Preference, in which Carlo would not be available as a partner.

‘I am going to ask Miss Pole. Of course, I could not think of asking her

until I had asked you, madam—the rector’s daughter, madam. Believe me, I

do not forget the situation my father held under yours.’

‘And Mrs. Forrester, of course?’

‘And Mrs. Forrester. I thought, in fact, of going to her before I went

to Miss Pole. Although her circumstances are changed, madam, she was

born a Tyrrell, and we can never forget her alliance to the Bigges, of

Bigelow Hall.’

Miss Matty cared much more for the little circumstance of her being a

very good card-player.

‘Mrs. Fitz-Adam—I suppose——’

‘No, madam. I must draw a line somewhere. Mrs. Jamieson would not, I

think, like to meet Mrs. Fitz-Adam. I have the greatest respect for Mrs.

Fitz-Adam—but I cannot think her fit society for such ladies as Mrs.

Jamieson and Miss Matilda Jenkyns.’

Miss Betty Barker bowed low to Miss Matty, and pursed up her mouth. She

looked at me with sidelong dignity, as much as to say, although a

retired milliner, she was no democrat, and understood the difference of

ranks.

‘May I beg you to come as near half-past six, to my little dwelling, as

possible, Miss Matilda? Mrs. Jamieson dines at five, but has kindly

promised not to delay her visit beyond that time—half-past six.’ And

with a swimming curtsey Miss Betty Barker took her leave.

My prophetic soul foretold a visit that afternoon from Miss Pole, who

usually came to call on Miss Matilda after any event—or indeed in sight

of any event—to talk it over with her.

‘Miss Betty told me it was to be a choice and select few,’ said Miss

Pole, as she and Miss Matty compared notes.

‘Yes, so she said. Not even Mrs. Fitz-Adam.’

Now Mrs. Fitz-Adam was the widowed sister of the Cranford surgeon, whom

I have named before. Their parents were respectable farmers, content

with their station. The name of these good people was Hoggins. Mr.

Hoggins was the Cranford doctor now; we disliked the name and considered

it coarse; but, as Miss Jenkyns said, if he changed it to Piggins it

would not be much better. We had hoped to discover a relationship

between him and that Marchioness of Exeter whose name was Molly Hoggins;

but the man, careless of his own interests, utterly ignored and denied

any such relationship, although, as dear Miss Jenkyns had said, he had a

sister called Mary, and the same Christian names were very apt to run in

families.

Soon after Miss Mary Hoggins married Mr. Fitz-Adam she disappeared from

the neighbourhood for many years. She did not move in a sphere in

Cranford society sufficiently high to make any of us care to know what

Mr. Fitz-Adam was. He died and was gathered to his fathers without our

ever having thought about him at all. And then Mrs. Fitz-Adam reappeared

in Cranford (‘as bold as a lion,’ Miss Pole said), a well-to-do widow,

dressed in rustling black silk, so soon after her husband’s death that

poor Miss Jenkyns was justified in the remark she made, that ‘bombazine

would have shown a deeper sense of her loss.’

I remember the convocation of ladies who assembled to decide whether or

not Mrs. Fitz-Adam should be called upon by the old blue-blooded

inhabitants of Cranford. She had taken a large rambling house, which had

been usually considered to confer a patent of gentility upon its tenant,

because, once upon a time, seventy or eighty years before, the spinster

daughter of an earl had resided in it. I am not sure if the inhabiting

this house was not also believed to convey some unusual power of

intellect; for the earl’s daughter, Lady Jane, had a sister, Lady Anne,

who had married a general officer in the time of the American war, and

this general officer had written one or two comedies, which were still

acted on the London boards, and which, when we saw them advertised, made

us all draw up, and feel that Drury Lane was paying a very pretty

compliment to Cranford. Still, it was not at all a settled thing that

Mrs. Fitz-Adam was to be visited, when dear Miss Jenkyns died; and, with

her, something of the clear knowledge of the strict code of gentility

went out too. As Miss Pole observed, ‘As most of the ladies of good

family in Cranford were elderly spinsters, or widows without children,

if we did not relax a little, and become less exclusive, by and by we

should have no society at all.’

Mrs. Forrester continued on the same side.

‘She had always understood that Fitz meant something aristocratic; there

was Fitz-Roy—she thought that some of the King’s children had been

called Fitz-Roy; and there was Fitz-Clarence now—they were the children

of dear good King William the Fourth. Fitz-Adam!—it was a pretty name,

and she thought it very probably meant “Child of Adam.” No one, who had

not some good blood in their veins, would dare to be called Fitz; there

was a deal in a name—she had had a cousin who spelt his name with two

little ffs—ffoulkes—and he always looked down upon capital letters, and

said they belonged to lately-invented families. She had been afraid he

would die a bachelor, he was so very choice. When he met with a Mrs.

ffarringdon, at a watering-place, he took to her immediately; and a very

pretty genteel woman she was—a widow, with a very good fortune; and “my

cousin,” Mr. ffoulkes, married her; and it was all owing to her two

little ffs.’

Mrs. Fitz-Adam did not stand a chance of meeting with a Mr.

Fitz-anything in Cranford, so that could not have been her motive for

settling there. Miss Matty thought it might have been the hope of being

admitted into the society of the place, which would certainly be a very

agreeable rise for _ci-devant_ Miss Hoggins; and if this had been her

hope it would be cruel to disappoint her.

So everybody called upon Mrs. Fitz-Adam—everybody but Mrs. Jamieson, who

used to show how honourable she was by never seeing Mrs. Fitz-Adam when

they met at the Cranford parties. There would be only eight or ten

ladies in the room, and Mrs. Fitz-Adam was the largest of all, and she

invariably used to stand up when Mrs. Jamieson came in, and curtsey very

low to her whenever she turned in her direction—so low, in fact, that I

think Mrs. Jamieson must have looked at the wall above her, for she

never moved a muscle of her face, no more than if she had not seen her.

Still Mrs. Fitz-Adam persevered.

[Illustration: _Mrs. ffarringdon and Mr. ffoulkes._]

The spring evenings were getting bright and long when three or four

ladies in calashes met at Miss Barker’s door. Do you know what a calash

is? It is a covering worn over caps, not unlike the heads fastened on

old-fashioned gigs; but sometimes it is not quite so large. This kind of

headgear always made an awful impression on the children in Cranford;

and now two or three left off their play in the quiet, sunny, little

street, and gathered in wondering silence round Miss Pole, Miss Matty,

and myself. We were silent too, so that we could hear loud suppressed

whispers inside Miss Barker’s house: ‘Wait, Peggy! wait till I’ve run

upstairs and washed my hands. When I cough, open the door; I’ll not be a

minute.’

And, true enough, it was not a minute before we heard a noise, between a

sneeze and a crow; on which the door flew open. Behind it stood a

round-eyed maiden, all aghast at the honourable company of calashes, who

marched in without a word. She recovered presence of mind enough to

usher us into a small room, which had been the shop, but was now

converted into a temporary dressing-room. There we unpinned and shook

ourselves, and arranged our features before the glass into a sweet and

gracious company-face; and then, bowing backwards with ‘After you,

ma’am,’ we allowed Mrs. Forrester to take precedence up the narrow

staircase that led to Miss Barker’s drawing-room. There she sat, as

stately and composed as though we had never heard that odd-sounding

cough, from which her throat must have been even then sore and rough.

Kind, gentle, shabbily-dressed Mrs. Forrester was immediately conducted

to the second place of honour—a seat arranged something like Prince

Albert’s near the Queen’s—good, but not so good. The place of

pre-eminence was, of course, reserved for the Honourable Mrs. Jamieson,

who presently came panting up the stairs—Carlo rushing round her on her

progress, as if he meant to trip her up.

And now Miss Betty Barker was a proud and happy woman! She stirred the

fire, and shut the door, and sat as near to it as she could, quite on

the edge of her chair. When Peggy came in, tottering under the weight of

the tea-tray, I noticed that Miss Barker was sadly afraid lest Peggy

should not keep her distance sufficiently. She and her mistress were on

very familiar terms in their every-day intercourse, and Peggy wanted now

to make several little confidences to her, which Miss Barker was on

thorns to hear, but which she thought it her duty, as a lady, to

repress. So she turned away from all Peggy’s asides and signs; but she

made one or two very malapropos answers to what was said; and at last,

seized with a bright idea, she exclaimed, ‘Poor, sweet Carlo! I’m

forgetting him. Come downstairs with me, poor ittie doggie, and it shall

have its tea, it shall!’

In a few minutes she returned, bland and benignant as before: but I

thought she had forgotten to give the ‘poor ittie doggie’ anything to

eat, judging by the avidity with which he swallowed down chance pieces

of cake. The tea-tray was abundantly loaded—I was pleased to see it, I

was so hungry; but I was afraid the ladies present might think it

vulgarly heaped up. I know they would have done at their own houses; but

somehow the heaps disappeared here. I saw Mrs. Jamieson eating

seed-cake, slowly and considerately, as she did everything; and I was

rather surprised, for I knew she had told us, on the occasion of her

last party, that she never had it in her house, it reminded her so much

of scented soap. She always gave us Savoy biscuits. However, Mrs.

Jamieson was kindly indulgent to Miss Barker’s want of knowledge of the

customs of high life; and, to spare her feelings, ate three large pieces

of seed-cake, with a placid, ruminating expression of countenance, not

unlike a cow’s.

After tea there was some little demur and difficulty. We were six in

number; four could play at Preference, and for the other two there was

Cribbage. But all, except myself (I was rather afraid of the Cranford

ladies at cards, for it was the most earnest and serious business they

ever engaged in), were anxious to be of the ‘pool.’ Even Miss Barker,

while declaring she did not know Spadille from Manille, was evidently

hankering to take a hand. The dilemma was soon put an end to by a

singular kind of noise. If a Baron’s daughter-in-law could ever be

supposed to snore, I should have said Mrs. Jamieson did so then; for,

overcome by the heat of the room, and inclined to doze by nature, the

temptation of that very comfortable arm-chair had been too much for her,

and Mrs. Jamieson was nodding. Once or twice she opened her eyes with an

effort, and calmly but unconsciously smiled upon us; but, by and by,

even her benevolence was not equal to this exertion, and she was sound

asleep.

‘It is very gratifying to me,’ whispered Miss Barker at the card-table

to her three opponents, whom, notwithstanding her ignorance of the game,

she was ‘basting’ most unmercifully—‘very gratifying indeed, to see how

completely Mrs. Jamieson feels at home in my poor little dwelling; she

could not have paid me a greater compliment.’

Miss Barker provided me with some literature in the shape of three or

four handsomely-bound fashion-books ten or twelve years old, observing,

as she put a little table and a candle for my especial benefit, that she

knew young people liked to look at pictures. Carlo lay and snorted, and

started at his mistress’s feet. He, too, was quite at home.

[Illustration: ‘_Hush, ladies! if you please, hush!_’]

The card-table was an animated scene to watch; four ladies heads, with

niddle-noddling caps, all nearly meeting over the middle of the table in

their eagerness to whisper quick enough and loud enough: and every now

and then came Miss Barker’s ‘Hush, ladies! if you please, hush! Mrs.

Jamieson is asleep.’

It was very difficult to steer clear between Mrs. Forrester’s deafness

and Mrs. Jamieson’s sleepiness. But Miss Barker managed her arduous task

well. She repeated the whisper to Mrs. Forrester, distorting her face

considerably, in order to show, by the motions of her lips, what was

said; and then she smiled kindly all round at us, and murmured to

herself, ‘Very gratifying indeed; I wish my poor sister had been alive

to see this day.’

Presently the door was thrown wide open; Carlo started to his feet, with

a loud snapping bark, and Mrs. Jamieson awoke; or, perhaps, she had not

been asleep—as she said almost directly, the room had been so light she

had been glad to keep her eyes shut, but had been listening with great

interest to all our amusing and agreeable conversation. Peggy came in

once more, red with importance. Another tray! ‘Oh, gentility!’ thought

I, ‘can you endure this last shock?’ For Miss Barker had ordered (nay, I

doubt not, prepared, although she did say, ‘Why! Peggy, what have you

brought us?’ and looked pleasantly surprised at the unexpected pleasure)

all sorts of good things for supper—scalloped oysters, potted lobsters,

jelly, a dish called ‘little Cupids’ (which was in great favour with the

Cranford ladies, although too expensive to be given, except on solemn

and state occasions—macaroons sopped in brandy, I should have called it,

if I had not known its more refined and classical name). In short, we

were evidently to be feasted with all that was sweetest and best; and we

thought it better to submit graciously, even at the cost of our

gentility—which never ate suppers in general, but which, like most

non-supper-eaters, was particularly hungry on all special occasions.

Miss Barker, in her former sphere, had, I daresay, been made acquainted

with the beverage they call cherry-brandy. We none of us had ever seen

such a thing, and rather shrank back when she proffered it us—‘just a

little, leetle glass, ladies; after the oysters and lobsters, you know.

Shell-fish are sometimes thought not very wholesome.’ We all shook our

heads like female mandarins; but, at last, Mrs. Jamieson suffered

herself to be persuaded, and we followed her lead. It was not exactly

unpalatable, though so hot and so strong that we thought ourselves bound

to give evidence that we were not accustomed to such things by coughing

terribly—almost as strangely as Miss Barker had done, before we were

admitted by Peggy.

‘It’s very strong,’ said Miss Pole, as she put down her empty glass; ‘I

do believe there’s spirit in it.’

‘Only a little drop—just necessary to make it keep,’ said Miss Barker.

‘You know we put brandy-paper over preserves to make them keep. I often

feel tipsy myself from eating damson tart.’

I question whether damson tart would have opened Mrs. Jamieson’s heart

as the cherry-brandy did; but she told us of a coming event, respecting

which she had been quite silent till that moment.

‘My sister-in-law, Lady Glenmire, is coming to stay with me.’

There was a chorus of ‘Indeed!’ and then a pause. Each one rapidly

reviewed her wardrobe, as to its fitness to appear in the presence of a

Baron’s widow; for, of course, a series of small festivals were always

held in Cranford on the arrival of a visitor at any of our friends’

houses. We felt very pleasantly excited on the present occasion.

Not long after this the maids and the lanterns were announced. Mrs.

Jamieson had the sedan chair, which had squeezed itself into Miss

Barker’s narrow lobby with some difficulty, and most literally ‘stopped

the way.’ It required some skilful manœuvring on the part of the old

chairmen (shoemakers by day, but when summoned to carry the sedan

dressed up in a strange old livery—long greatcoats, with small capes,

coeval with the sedan, and similar to the dress of the class in

Hogarth’s pictures) to edge, and back, and try at it again, and finally

to succeed in carrying their burden out of Miss Barker’s front door.

Then we heard their quick pit-a-pat along the quiet little street as we

put on our calashes and pinned up our gowns; Miss Barker hovering about

us with offers of help, which, if she had not remembered her former

occupation, and wished us to forget it, would have been much more

pressing.

[Illustration: ‘_Pit-a-Pat._’]

------------------------------------------------------------------------

[Illustration: Chapter 8: “Your Ladyship.”]

Early the next morning—directly after twelve—Miss Pole made her

appearance at Miss Matty’s. Some very trifling piece of business was

alleged as a reason for the call; but there was evidently something

behind. At last out it came.

‘By the way, you’ll think I’m strangely ignorant; but, do you really

know, I am puzzled how we ought to address Lady Glenmire. Do you say

“Your Ladyship,” where you would say “you” to a common person? I have

been puzzling all morning; and are we to say “My Lady,” instead of

“Ma’am”? Now you knew Lady Arley—will you kindly tell me the most

correct way of speaking to the Peerage?’

Poor Miss Matty! she took off her spectacles and she put them on

again—but how Lady Arley was addressed, she could not remember.

‘It is so long ago,’ she said. ‘Dear! dear! how stupid I am! I don’t

think I ever saw her more than twice. I know we used to call Sir Peter,

“Sir Peter”—but he came much oftener to see us than Lady Arley did.

Deborah would have known in a minute. “My lady”—“your ladyship.” It

sounds very strange, and as if it was not natural. I never thought of it

before; but, now you have named it, I am all in a puzzle.’

It was very certain Miss Pole would obtain no wise decision from Miss

Matty, who got more bewildered every moment, and more perplexed as to

etiquettes of address.

‘Well, I really think,’ said Miss Pole, ‘I had better just go and tell

Mrs. Forrester about our little difficulty. One sometimes grows nervous;

and yet one would not have Lady Glenmire think we were quite ignorant of

the etiquettes of high life in Cranford.’

‘And will you just step in here, dear Miss Pole, as you come back,

please, and tell me what you decide upon? Whatever you and Mrs.

Forrester fix upon, will be quite right, I’m sure. “Lady Arley,” “Sir

Peter,”’ said Miss Matty to herself, trying to recall the old forms of

words.

‘Who is Lady Glenmire?’ asked I.

‘Oh, she’s the widow of Mr. Jamieson—that’s Mrs. Jamieson’s late

husband, you know—widow of his eldest brother. Mrs. Jamieson was a Miss

Walker, daughter of Governor Walker. “Your ladyship.” My dear, if they

fix on that way of speaking, you must just let me practise a little on

you first, for I shall feel so foolish and hot saying it the first time

to Lady Glenmire.’

It was really a relief to Miss Matty when Mrs. Jamieson came on a very

unpolite errand. I notice that apathetic people have more quiet

impertinence than others; and Mrs. Jamieson came now to insinuate pretty

plainly that she did not particularly wish that the Cranford ladies

should call upon her sister-in-law. I can hardly say how she made this

clear; for I grew very indignant and warm, while with slow deliberation

she was explaining her wishes to Miss Matty, who, a true lady herself,

could hardly understand the feeling which made Mrs. Jamieson wish to

appear to her noble sister-in-law as if she only visited ‘county’

families. Miss Matty remained puzzled and perplexed long after I had

found out the object of Mrs. Jamieson’s visit.

When she did understand the drift of the honourable lady’s call, it was

pretty to see with what quiet dignity she received the intimation thus

uncourteously given. She was not in the least hurt—she was of too gentle

a spirit for that; nor was she exactly conscious of disapproving of Mrs.

Jamieson’s conduct; but there was something of this feeling in her mind,

I am sure, which made her pass from the subject to others in a less

flurried and more composed manner than usual. Mrs. Jamieson was, indeed,

the more flurried of the two, and I could see she was glad to take her

leave.

A little while afterwards Miss Pole returned, red and indignant. ‘Well!

to be sure! You’ve had Mrs. Jamieson here, I find from Martha; and we

are not to call on Lady Glenmire. Yes! I met Mrs. Jamieson, half-way

between here and Mrs. Forrester’s, and she told me; she took me so by

surprise, I had nothing to say. I wish I had thought of something very

sharp and sarcastic; I daresay I shall to-night. And Lady Glenmire is

but the widow of a Scotch baron after all! I went on to look at Mrs.

Forrester’s Peerage, to see who this lady was, that is to be kept under

a glass case: widow of a Scotch peer—never sat in the House of Lords—and

as poor as Job, I daresay; and she—fifth daughter of some Mr. Campbell

or other. You are the daughter of a rector, at any rate, and related to

the Arleys; and Sir Peter might have been Viscount Arley, every one

says.’

Miss Matty tried to soothe Miss Pole, but in vain. That lady, usually so

kind and good-humoured, was now in a full flow of anger.

‘And I went and ordered a cap this morning, to be quite ready,’ said

she, at last letting out the secret which gave sting to Mrs. Jamieson’s

intimation. ‘Mrs. Jamieson shall see if it is so easy to get me to make

fourth at a pool when she has none of her fine Scotch relations with

her!’

In coming out of church, the first Sunday on which Lady Glenmire

appeared in Cranford, we sedulously talked together, and turned our

backs on Mrs. Jamieson and her guest. If we might not call on her, we

would not even look at her, though we were dying with curiosity to know

what she was like. We had the comfort of questioning Martha in the

afternoon. Martha did not belong to a sphere of society whose

observation could be an implied compliment to Lady Glenmire, and Martha

had made good use of her eyes.

‘Well, ma’am! is it the little lady with Mrs. Jamieson, you mean? I

thought you would like more to know how young Mrs. Smith was dressed,

her being a bride.’ (Mrs. Smith was the butcher’s wife.)

Miss Pole said, ‘Good gracious me! as if we cared about a Mrs. Smith;’

but was silent as Martha resumed her speech.

[Illustration: ‘_We sedulously talked together._’]

‘The little lady in Mrs. Jamieson’s pew had on, ma’am, rather an old

black silk, and a shepherd’s plaid cloak, ma’am, and very bright black

eyes she had, ma’am, and a pleasant, sharp face; not over young, ma’am,

but yet, I should guess, younger than Mrs. Jamieson herself. She looked

up and down the church, like a bird, and nipped up her petticoats, when

she came out, as quick and sharp as ever I see. I’ll tell you what,

ma’am, she’s more like Mrs. Deacon, at the “Coach and Horses,” nor any

one.’

‘Hush, Martha!’ said Miss Matty, ‘that’s not respectful.’

‘Isn’t it, ma’am? I beg pardon, I’m sure; but Jem Hearn said so as well.

He said, she was just such a sharp stirring sort of a body——’

‘Lady,’ said Miss Pole.

‘Lady—as Mrs. Deacon.’

Another Sunday passed away, and we still averted our eyes from Mrs.

Jamieson and her guest, and made remarks to ourselves that we thought

were very severe—almost too much so. Miss Matty was evidently uneasy at

our sarcastic manner of speaking.

Perhaps by this time Lady Glenmire had found out that Mrs. Jamieson’s

was not the gayest, liveliest house in the world; perhaps Mrs. Jamieson

had found out that most of the county families were in London, and that

those who remained in the country were not so alive as they might have

been to the circumstance of Lady Glenmire being in their neighbourhood.

Great events spring out of small causes; so I will not pretend to say

what induced Mrs. Jamieson to alter her determination of excluding the

Cranford ladies, and send notes of invitation all round for a small

party on the following Tuesday. Mr. Mulliner himself brought them round.

He _would_ always ignore the fact of there being a back-door to any

house, and gave a louder rat-tat than his mistress, Mrs. Jamieson. He

had three little notes, which he carried in a large basket, in order to

impress his mistress with an idea of their great weight, though they

might easily have gone into his waistcoat pocket.

[Illustration: _Mr. Mulliner._]

Miss Matty and I quietly decided we would have a previous engagement at

home: it was the evening on which Miss Matty usually made

candle-lighters of all the notes and letters of the week; for on Mondays

her accounts were always made straight—not a penny owing from the week

before; so, by a natural arrangement, making candle-lighters fell upon a

Tuesday evening, and gave us a legitimate excuse for declining Mrs.

Jamieson’s invitation. But before our answer was written, in came Miss

Pole, with an open note in her hand.

‘So!’ she said. ‘Ah! I see you have got your note too. Better late than

never. I could have told my Lady Glenmire she would be glad enough of

our society before a fortnight was over.’

‘Yes,’ said Miss Matty, ‘we’re asked for Tuesday evening. And perhaps

you would just kindly bring your work across and drink tea with us that

night. It is my usual regular time for looking over the last week’s

bills, and notes, and letters, and making candle-lighters of them; but

that does not seem quite reason enough for saying I have a previous

engagement at home, though I meant to make it do. Now, if you would

come, my conscience would be quite at ease, and luckily the note is not

written yet.’

I saw Miss Pole’s countenance change while Miss Matty was speaking.

‘Don’t you mean to go then?’ asked she.

‘Oh no!’ said Miss Matty quietly. ‘You don’t either, I suppose?’

‘I don’t know,’ replied Miss Pole. ‘Yes, I think I do,’ said she rather

briskly; and on seeing Miss Matty looked surprised, she added, ‘You see,

one would not like Mrs. Jamieson to think that anything she could do, or

say, was of consequence enough to give offence; it would be a kind of

letting down of ourselves, that I, for one, should not like. It would be

too flattering to Mrs. Jamieson if we allowed her to suppose that what

she had said affected us a week, nay, ten days afterwards.’

‘Well! I suppose it is wrong to be hurt and annoyed so long about

anything; and, perhaps, after all, she did not mean to vex us. But I

must say I could not have brought myself to say the things Mrs. Jamieson

did about our not calling. I really don’t think I shall go.’

‘Oh, come! Miss Matty, you must go; you know our friend Mrs. Jamieson is

much more phlegmatic than most people, and does not enter into the

little delicacies of feeling which you possess in so remarkable a

degree.’

‘I thought you possessed them too, that day Mrs. Jamieson called to tell

us not to go,’ said Miss Matty innocently.

But Miss Pole, in addition to her delicacies of feeling, possessed a

very smart cap, which she was anxious to show to an admiring world; and

so she seemed to forget all her angry words uttered not a fortnight

before, and to be ready to act on what she called the great Christian

principle of ‘Forgive and forget’; and she lectured dear Miss Matty so

long on this head that she absolutely ended by assuring her it was her

duty, as a deceased rector’s daughter, to buy a new cap and go to the

party at Mrs. Jamieson’s. So ‘we were most happy to accept,’ instead of

‘regretting that we were obliged to decline.’

The expenditure on dress in Cranford was principally in that one article

referred to. If the heads were buried in smart new caps, the ladies were

like ostriches, and cared not what became of their bodies. Old gowns,

white and venerable collars, any number of brooches, up and down and

everywhere (some with dogs’ eyes painted in them; some that were like

small picture-frames with mausoleums and weeping-willows neatly executed

in hair inside; some, again, with miniatures of ladies and gentlemen

sweetly smiling out of a nest of stiff muslin), old brooches for a

permanent ornament, and new caps to suit the fashion of the day—the

ladies of Cranford always dressed with chaste elegance and propriety, as

Miss Barker once prettily expressed it.

[Illustration: _Miss Pole and the brooches._]

And with three new caps, and a greater array of brooches than had ever

been seen together at one time since Cranford was a town, did Mrs.

Forrester, and Miss Matty, and Miss Pole appear on that memorable

Tuesday evening. I counted seven brooches myself on Miss Pole’s dress.

Two were fixed negligently in her cap (one was a butterfly made of

Scotch pebbles, which a vivid imagination might believe to be the real

insect); one fastened her net neckerchief; one her collar; one

ornamented the front of her gown, midway between her throat and waist;

and another adorned the point of her stomacher. Where the seventh was I

have forgotten, but it was somewhere about her, I am sure.

But I am getting on too fast, in describing the dresses of the company.

I should first relate the gathering on the way to Mrs. Jamieson’s. That

lady lived in a large house just outside the town. A road which had

known what it was to be a street ran right before the house, which

opened out upon it without any intervening garden or court. Whatever the

sun was about, he never shone on the front of that house. To be sure,

the living rooms were at the back, looking on to a pleasant garden; the

front windows only belonged to kitchens and housekeepers’ rooms and

pantries, and in one of them Mr. Mulliner was reported to sit. Indeed,

looking askance, we often saw the back of a head covered with

hair-powder, which also extended itself over his coat-collar down to his

very waist; and this imposing back was always engaged in reading the

_St. James’s Chronicle_, opened wide, which, in some degree, accounted

for the length of time the said newspaper was in reaching us—equal

subscribers with Mrs. Jamieson, though, in right of her honourableness,

she always had the reading of it first. This very Tuesday, the delay in

forwarding the last number had been particularly aggravating; just when

both Miss Pole and Miss Matty, the former more especially, had been

wanting to see it, in order to coach up the court news ready for the

evening’s interview with the aristocracy. Miss Pole told us she had

absolutely taken time by the forelock, and been dressed by five o’clock,

in order to be ready if the _St. James’s Chronicle_ should come in at

the last moment—the very _St. James’s Chronicle_ which the powdered head

was tranquilly and composedly reading as we passed the accustomed window

this evening.

‘The impudence of the man!’ said Miss Pole, in a low indignant whisper.

‘I should like to ask him whether his mistress pays her quarter-share

for his exclusive use.’

We looked at her in admiration of the courage of her thought; for Mr.

Mulliner was an object of great awe to all of us. He seemed never to

have forgotten his condescension in coming to live at Cranford. Miss

Jenkyns, at times, had stood forth as the undaunted champion of her sex,

and spoken to him on terms of equality; but even Miss Jenkyns could get

no higher. In his pleasantest and most gracious moods he looked like a

sulky cockatoo. He did not speak except in gruff monosyllables. He would

wait in the hall when we begged him not to wait, and then look deeply

offended because we had kept him there, while, with trembling hasty

hands we prepared ourselves for appearing in company.

Miss Pole ventured on a small joke as we went upstairs, intended, though

addressed to us, to afford Mr. Mulliner some slight amusement. We all

smiled, in order to seem as if we felt at our ease, and timidly looked

for Mr. Mulliner’s sympathy. Not a muscle of that wooden face had

relaxed; and we were grave in an instant.

Mrs. Jamieson’s drawing-room was cheerful; the evening sun came

streaming into it, and the large square window was clustered round with

flowers. The furniture was white and gold; not the later style, Louis

Quatorze, I think they call it, all shells and twirls; no, Mrs.

Jamieson’s chairs and tables had not a curve or bend about them. The

chair and table legs diminished as they neared the ground, and were

straight and square in all their corners. The chairs were all a-row

against the walls, with the exception of four or five, which stood in a

circle round the fire. They were railed with white bars across the back,

and nobbed with gold; neither the railings nor the nobs invited to ease.

There was a japanned table devoted to literature, on which lay a Bible,

a Peerage, and a Prayer-Book. There was another square Pembroke table

dedicated to the Fine Arts, on which were a kaleidoscope,

conversation-cards, puzzle-cards (tied together to an interminable

length with faded pink satin ribbon), and a box painted in fond

imitation of the drawings which decorate tea-chests. Carlo lay on the

worsted-worked rug, and ungraciously barked at us as we entered. Mrs.

Jamieson stood up, giving us each a torpid smile of welcome, and looking

helplessly beyond us at Mr. Mulliner, as if she hoped he would place us

in chairs, for, if he did not, she never could. I suppose he thought we

could find our way to the circle round the fire, which reminded me of

Stonehenge, I don’t know why. Lady Glenmire came to the rescue of our

hostess, and, somehow or other, we found ourselves for the first time

placed agreeably, and not formally, in Mrs. Jamieson’s house. Lady

Glenmire, now we had time to look at her, proved to be a bright little

woman of middle age, who had been very pretty in the days of her youth,

and who was even yet very pleasant-looking. I saw Miss Pole appraising

her dress in the first five minutes, and I take her word when she said

the next day—

‘My dear! ten pounds would have purchased every stitch she had on—lace

and all.’

It was pleasant to suspect that a peeress could be poor, and partly

reconciled us to the fact that her husband had never sat in the House of

Lords; which, when we first heard of it, seemed a kind of swindling us

out of our respect on false pretences; a sort of ‘A Lord and No Lord’

business.

We were all very silent at first. We were thinking what we could talk

about, that should be high enough to interest My Lady. There had been a

rise in the price of sugar, which, as preserving-time was near, was a

piece of intelligence to all our housekeeping hearts, and would have

been the natural topic if Lady Glenmire had not been by. But we were not

sure if the peerage ate preserves—much less knew how they were made. At

last, Miss Pole, who had always a great deal of courage and _savoir

faire_, spoke to Lady Glenmire, who on her part had seemed just as much

puzzled to know how to break the silence as we were.

‘Has your ladyship been to Court lately?’ asked she; and then gave a

little glance round at us, half timid and half triumphant, as much as to

say, ‘See how judiciously I have chosen a subject befitting the rank of

the stranger.’

‘I never was there in my life,’ said Lady Glenmire, with a broad Scotch

accent, but in a very sweet voice. And then, as if she had been too

abrupt, she added: ‘We very seldom went to London—only twice, in fact,

during all my married life; and before I was married my father had far

too large a family’ (fifth daughter of Mr. Campbell was in all our

minds, I am sure) ‘to take us often from our home, even to Edinburgh.

Ye’ll have been in Edinburgh, maybe?’ said she, suddenly brightening up

with the hope of a common interest. We had none of us been there; but

Miss Pole had an uncle who once had passed a night there, which was very

pleasant.

Mrs. Jamieson, meanwhile, was absorbed in wonder why Mr. Mulliner did

not bring the tea; and at length the wonder oozed out of her mouth.