‘I had better ring the bell, my dear, had not I?’ said Lady Glenmire

briskly.

‘No—I think not—Mulliner does not like to be hurried.’

We should have liked our tea, for we dined at an earlier hour than Mrs.

Jamieson. I suspect Mr. Mulliner had to finish the _St. James’s

Chronicle_ before he chose to trouble himself about tea. His mistress

fidgeted and fidgeted, and kept saying, ‘I can’t think why Mulliner does

not bring tea. I can’t think what he can be about.’ And Lady Glenmire at

last grew quite impatient, but it was a pretty kind of impatience after

all; and she rang the bell rather sharply, on receiving a

half-permission from her sister-in-law to do so. Mr. Mulliner appeared

in dignified surprise. ‘Oh!’ said Mrs. Jamieson, ‘Lady Glenmire rang the

bell; I believe it was for tea.’

[Illustration: ‘_In dignified surprise._’]

In a few minutes tea was brought. Very delicate was the china, very old

the plate, very thin the bread and butter, and very small the lumps of

sugar. Sugar was evidently Mrs. Jamieson’s favourite economy. I question

if the little filigree sugar-tongs, made something like scissors, could

have opened themselves wide enough to take up an honest, vulgar,

good-sized piece; and when I tried to seize two little minnikin pieces

at once, so as not to be detected in too many returns to the

sugar-basin, they absolutely dropped one, with a little sharp clatter,

quite in a malicious and unnatural manner. But before this happened, we

had had a slight disappointment. In the little silver jug was cream, in

the larger one was milk. As soon as Mr. Mulliner came in, Carlo began to

beg, which was a thing our manners forbade us to do, though I am sure we

were just as hungry; and Mrs. Jamieson said she was certain we would

excuse her if she gave her poor dumb Carlo his tea first. She

accordingly mixed a saucerful for him, and put it down for him to lap;

and then she told us how intelligent and sensible the dear little fellow

was; he knew cream quite well, and constantly refused tea with only milk

in it; so the milk was left for us; but we silently thought we were

quite as intelligent and sensible as Carlo, and felt as if insult were

added to injury when we were called upon to admire the gratitude evinced

by his wagging his tail for the cream which should have been ours.

After tea we thawed down into common life-subjects. We were thankful to

Lady Glenmire for having proposed some more bread and butter, and this

mutual want made us better acquainted with her than we should ever have

been with talking about the Court, though Miss Pole did say she had

hoped to know how the dear Queen was from some one who had seen her.

The friendship begun over bread and butter extended on to cards. Lady

Glenmire played Preference to admiration, and was a complete authority

as to Ombre and Quadrille. Even Miss Pole quite forgot to say ‘my lady,’

and ‘your ladyship,’ and said ‘Basto! ma’am’; ‘you have Spadille, I

believe,’ just as quietly as if we had never held the great Cranford

parliament on the subject of the proper mode of addressing a peeress.

As a proof of how thoroughly we had forgotten that we were in the

presence of one who might have sat down to tea with a coronet instead of

a cap on her head, Mrs. Forrester related a curious little fact to Lady

Glenmire—an anecdote known to the circle of her intimate friends, but of

which even Mrs. Jamieson was not aware. It related to some fine old

lace, the sole relic of better days, which Lady Glenmire was admiring on

Mrs. Forrester’s collar.

‘Yes,’ said that lady, ‘such lace cannot be got now for either love or

money; made by the nuns abroad, they tell me. They say that they can’t

make it now, even there. But perhaps they can now they’ve passed the

Catholic Emancipation Bill. I should not wonder. But, in the meantime, I

treasure up my lace very much. I daren’t even trust the washing of it to

my maid’ (the little charity school-girl I have named before, but who

sounded well as ‘my maid’). ‘I always wash it myself. And once it had a

narrow escape. Of course, your ladyship knows that such lace must never

be starched or ironed. Some people wash it in sugar and water, and some

in coffee, to make it the right yellow colour; but I myself have a very

good receipt for washing it in milk, which stiffens it enough, and gives

it a very good creamy colour. Well, ma’am, I had tacked it together (and

the beauty of this fine lace is that, when it is wet, it goes into a

very little space), and put it to soak in milk, when, unfortunately, I

left the room; on my return I found pussy on the table, looking very

like a thief, but gulping very uncomfortably, as if she was half-choked

with something she wanted to swallow and could not. And, would you

believe it? At first I pitied her, and said “Poor pussy! poor pussy!”

till, all at once, I looked and saw the cup of milk empty—cleaned out!

“You naughty cat!” said I; and I believe I was provoked enough to give

her a slap, which did no good, but only helped the lace down—just as one

slaps a choking child on the back. I could have cried, I was so vexed;

but I determined I would not give the lace up without a struggle for it.

I hoped the lace might disagree with her, at any rate; but it would have

been too much for Job, if he had seen, as I did, that cat come in, quite

placid and purring, not a quarter of an hour after, and almost expecting

to be stroked. “No, pussy!” said I, “if you have any conscience you

ought not to expect that!” And then a thought struck me; and I rang the

bell for my maid, and sent her to Mr. Hoggins, with my compliments, and

would he be kind enough to lend me one of his top-boots for an hour? I

did not think there was anything odd in the message; but Jenny said the

young men in the surgery laughed as if they would be ill at my wanting a

top-boot. When it came, Jenny and I put pussy in, with her fore-feet

straight down, so that they were fastened, and could not scratch, and we

gave her a teaspoonful of currant-jelly in which (your ladyship must

excuse me) I had mixed some tartar emetic. I shall never forget how

anxious I was for the next half-hour. I took pussy to my own room, and

spread a clean towel on the floor. I could have kissed her when she

returned the lace to sight, very much as it had gone down. Jenny had

boiling water ready, and we soaked it and soaked it, and spread it on a

lavender-bush in the sun before I could touch it again, even to put it

in milk. But now your ladyship would never guess that it had been in

pussy’s inside.’

We found out, in the course of the evening, that Lady Glenmire was going

to pay Mrs. Jamieson a long visit, as she had given up her apartments in

Edinburgh, and had no ties to take her back there in a hurry. On the

whole, we were rather glad to hear this, for she had made a pleasant

impression upon us; and it was also very comfortable to find, from

things which dropped out in the course of conversation, that, in

addition to many other genteel qualities, she was far removed from the

‘vulgarity of wealth.’

‘Don’t you find it very unpleasant walking?’ asked Mrs. Jamieson, as our

respective servants were announced. It was a pretty regular question

from Mrs. Jamieson, who had her own carriage in the coach-house, and

always went out in a sedan-chair to the very shortest distances. The

answers were nearly as much a matter of course.

‘Oh dear, no! it is so pleasant and still at night!’ ‘Such a refreshment

after the excitement of a party!’ ‘The stars are so beautiful!’ This

last was from Miss Matty.

‘Are you fond of astronomy?’ Lady Glenmire asked.

‘Not very,’ replied Miss Matty, rather confused at the moment to

remember which was astronomy and which was astrology—but the answer was

true under either circumstance, for she read, and was slightly alarmed

at Francis Moore’s astrological predictions; and, as to astronomy, in a

private and confidential conversation, she had told me she never could

believe that the earth was moving constantly, and that she would not

believe it if she could, it made her feel so tired and dizzy whenever

she thought about it.

In our pattens we picked our way home with extra care that night, so

refined and delicate were our perceptions after drinking tea with ‘my

lady.’

[Illustration: Chapter 9: tailpiece]

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

[Illustration: Chapter 9: Signor Brunoni]

Soon after the events of which I gave an account in my last paper, I was

summoned home by my father’s illness; and for a time I forgot, in

anxiety about him, to wonder how my dear friends at Cranford were

getting on, or how Lady Glenmire could reconcile herself to the dulness

of the long visit which she was still paying to her sister-in-law, Mrs.

Jamieson. When my father grew a little stronger I accompanied him to the

seaside, so that altogether I seemed banished from Cranford, and was

deprived of the opportunity of hearing any chance intelligence of the

dear little town for the greater part of that year.

Late in November—when we had returned home again, and my father was once

more in good health—I received a letter from Miss Matty; and a very

mysterious letter it was. She began many sentences without ending them,

running them one into another, in much the same confused sort of way in

which written words run together on blotting-paper. All I could make out

was that, if my father was better (which she hoped he was), and would

take warning and wear a greatcoat from Michaelmas to Lady-day, if

turbans were in fashion, could I tell her? Such a piece of gaiety was

going to happen as had not been seen or known of since Wombwell’s lions

came, when one of them ate a little child’s arm; and she was, perhaps,

too old to care about dress, but a new cap she must have; and, having

heard that turbans were worn, and some of the county families likely to

come, she would like to look tidy, if I would bring her a cap from the

milliner I employed; and oh, dear! how careless of her to forget that

she wrote to beg I would come and pay her a visit next Tuesday; when she

hoped to have something to offer me in the way of amusement, which she

would not now more particularly describe, only sea-green was her

favourite colour. So she ended her letter; but in a P.S. she added, she

thought she might as well tell me what was the peculiar attraction to

Cranford just now; Signor Brunoni was going to exhibit his wonderful

magic in the Cranford Assembly Rooms on Wednesday and Friday evening in

the following week.

I was very glad to accept the invitation from my dear Miss Matty,

independently of the conjuror, and most particularly anxious to prevent

her from disfiguring her small, gentle, mousey face with a great

Saracen’s head turban; and, accordingly, I bought her a pretty, neat,

middle-aged cap, which, however, was rather a disappointment to her

when, on my arrival, she followed me into my bedroom, ostensibly to poke

the fire, but in reality, I do believe, to see if the sea-green turban

was not inside the cap-box with which I had travelled. It was in vain

that I twirled the cap round on my hand to exhibit back and side-fronts:

her heart had been set upon a turban, and all she could do was to say,

with resignation in her look and voice—

‘I am sure you did your best, my dear. It is just like the caps all the

ladies in Cranford are wearing, and they have had theirs for a year, I

daresay. I should have liked something newer, I confess—something more

like the turbans Miss Betty Barker tells me Queen Adelaide wears; but it

is very pretty, my dear. And I daresay lavender will wear better than

sea-green. Well, after all, what is dress, that we should care about it!

You’ll tell me if you want anything, my dear. Here is the bell. I

suppose turbans have not got down to Drumble yet?’

So saying, the dear old lady gently bemoaned herself out of the room,

leaving me to dress for the evening, when, as she informed me, she

expected Miss Pole and Mrs. Forrester, and she hoped I should not feel

myself too much tired to join the party. Of course I should not; and I

made some haste to unpack and arrange my dress; but, with all my speed,

I heard the arrivals and the buzz of conversation in the next room

before I was ready. Just as I opened the door, I caught the words, ‘I

was foolish to expect anything very genteel out of the Drumble shops;

poor girl! she did her best, I’ve no doubt.’ But, for all that, I had

rather that she blamed Drumble and me than disfigured herself with a

turban.

Miss Pole was always the person, in the trio of Cranford ladies now

assembled, to have had adventures. She was in the habit of spending the

morning in rambling from shop to shop, not to purchase anything (except

an occasional reel of cotton, or a piece of tape), but to see the new

articles and report upon them, and to collect all the stray pieces of

intelligence in the town. She had a way, too, of demurely popping hither

and thither into all sorts of places to gratify her curiosity on any

point—a way which, if she had not looked so very genteel and prim, might

have been considered impertinent. And now, by the expressive way in

which she cleared her throat, and waited for all minor subjects (such as

caps and turbans) to be cleared off the course, we knew she had

something very particular to relate, when the due pause came—and I defy

any people, possessed of common modesty, to keep up a conversation long,

where one among them sits up aloft in silence, looking down upon all the

things they chance to say as trivial and contemptible compared to what

they could disclose, if properly entreated. Miss Pole began—

‘As I was stepping out of Gordon’s shop to-day, I chanced to go into the

“George” (my Betty has a second-cousin who is chambermaid there, and I

thought Betty would like to hear how she was), and, not seeing any one

about, I strolled up the staircase, and found myself in the passage

leading to the Assembly Room (you and I remember the Assembly Room, I am

sure, Miss Matty! and the menuets de la cour!); so I went on, not

thinking of what I was about, when, all at once, I perceived that I was

in the middle of the preparations for to-morrow night—the room being

divided with great clothes-maids, over which Crosby’s men were tacking

red flannel; very dark and odd it seemed; it quite bewildered me, and I

was going on behind the screens, in my absence of mind, when a gentleman

(quite the gentleman, I can assure you) stepped forwards and asked if I

had any business he could arrange for me. He spoke such pretty broken

English, I could not help thinking of Thaddeus of Warsaw, and the

Hungarian Brothers, and Santo Sebastiani; and while I was busy picturing

his past life to myself, he had bowed me out of the room. But wait a

minute! You have not heard half my story yet! I was going downstairs,

when who should I meet but Betty’s second-cousin. So, of course, I

stopped to speak to her for Betty’s sake; and she told me that I had

really seen the conjuror—the gentleman who spoke broken English was

Signor Brunoni himself. Just at this moment he passed us on the stairs,

making such a graceful bow! in reply to which I dropped a curtsey—all

foreigners have such polite manners, one catches something of it. But,

when he had gone downstairs, I bethought me that I had dropped my glove

in the Assembly Room (it was safe in my muff all the time, but I never

found it till afterwards); so I went back, and, just as I was creeping

up the passage left on one side of the great screen that goes nearly

across the room, who should I see but the very same gentleman that had

met me before, and passed me on the stairs, coming now forwards from the

inner part of the room, to which there is no entrance—you remember, Miss

Matty—and just repeating, in his pretty broken English, the inquiry if I

had any business there—I don’t mean that he put it quite so bluntly, but

he seemed very determined that I should not pass the screen—so, of

course, I explained about my glove, which, curiously enough, I found at

that very moment.’

[Illustration: ‘_Making such a graceful bow._’]

Miss Pole, then, had seen the conjuror—the real, live conjuror! and

numerous were the questions we all asked her. ‘Had he a beard?’ ‘Was he

young, or old?’ ‘Fair, or dark?’ ‘Did he look’—(unable to shape my

question prudently, I put it in another form)—‘How did he look?’ In

short, Miss Pole was the heroine of the evening, owing to her morning’s

encounter. If she was not the rose (that is to say, the conjuror), she

had been near it.

Conjuration, sleight of hand, magic, witchcraft, were the subjects of

the evening. Miss Pole was slightly sceptical, and inclined to think

there might be a scientific solution found for even the proceedings of

the Witch of Endor. Mrs. Forrester believed everything, from ghosts to

death-watches. Miss Matty ranged between the two—always convinced by the

last speaker. I think she was naturally more inclined to Mrs.

Forrester’s side, but a desire of proving herself a worthy sister to

Miss Jenkyns kept her equally balanced—Miss Jenkyns, who would never

allow a servant to call the little rolls of tallow that formed

themselves round candles ‘winding-sheets,’ but insisted on their being

spoken of as ‘roley-poleys!’ A sister of hers to be superstitious! It

would never do.

After tea, I was despatched downstairs into the dining-parlour for that

volume of the old Encyclopædia which contained the nouns beginning with

C, in order that Miss Pole might prime herself with scientific

explanations for the tricks of the following evening. It spoilt the pool

at Preference which Miss Matty and Mrs. Forrester had been looking

forward to, for Miss Pole became so much absorbed in her subject, and

the plates by which it was illustrated, that we felt it would be cruel

to disturb her otherwise than by one or two well-timed yawns, which I

threw in now and then, for I was really touched by the meek way in which

the two ladies were bearing their disappointment. But Miss Pole only

read the more zealously, imparting to us no more interesting information

than this—

‘Ah! I see; I comprehend perfectly. A represents the ball. Put A between

B and D—no! between C and F, and turn the second joint of the third

finger of your left hand over the wrist of your right H. Very clear

indeed! My dear Mrs. Forrester, conjuring and witchcraft is a mere

affair of the alphabet. Do let me read you this one passage?’

Mrs. Forrester implored Miss Pole to spare her, saying, from a child

upwards, she never could understand being read aloud to; and I dropped

the pack of cards, which I had been shuffling very audibly, and by this

discreet movement I obliged Miss Pole to perceive that Preference was to

have been the order of the evening, and to propose, rather unwillingly,

that the pool should commence. The pleasant brightness that stole over

the other two ladies’ faces on this! Miss Matty had one or two twinges

of self-reproach for having interrupted Miss Pole in her studies: and

did not remember her cards well, or give her full attention to the game,

until she had soothed her conscience by offering to lend the volume of

the Encyclopædia to Miss Pole, who accepted it thankfully, and said

Betty should take it home when she came with the lantern.

The next evening we were all in a little gentle flutter at the idea of

the gaiety before us. Miss Matty went up to dress betimes, and hurried

me until I was ready, when we found we had an hour and a half to wait

before the ‘doors opened at seven precisely.’ And we had only twenty

yards to go! However, as Miss Matty said, it would not do to get too

much absorbed in anything and forget the time; so she thought we had

better sit quietly, without lighting the candles, till five minutes to

seven. So Miss Matty dozed, and I knitted.

At length we set off; and at the door, under the carriage-way at the

‘George,’ we met Mrs. Forrester and Miss Pole: the latter was discussing

the subject of the evening with more vehemence than ever, and throwing

$1’$2 and $1’$2 at our heads like hailstones. She had even copied one or

two of the ‘receipts’—as she called them—for the different tricks, on

backs of letters, ready to explain and to detect Signor Brunoni’s arts.

We went into the cloak-room adjoining the Assembly Room; Miss Matty gave

a sigh or two to her departed youth, and the remembrance of the last

time she had been there, as she adjusted her pretty new cap before the

strange, quaint old mirror in the cloak-room. The Assembly Room had been

added to the inn, about a hundred years before, by the different county

families, who met together there once a month during the winter to dance

and play at cards. Many a county beauty had first swum through the

minuet that she afterwards danced before Queen Charlotte in this very

room. It was said that one of the Gunnings had graced the apartment with

her beauty; it was certain that a rich and beautiful widow, Lady

Williams, had here been smitten with the noble figure of a young artist,

who was staying with some family in the neighbourhood for professional

purposes, and accompanied his patrons to the Cranford Assembly. And a

pretty bargain poor Lady Williams had of her handsome husband, if all

tales were true. Now, no beauty blushed and dimpled along the sides of

the Cranford Assembly Room; no handsome artist won hearts by his bow,

_chapeau bras_ in hand; the old room was dingy; the salmon-coloured

paint had faded into a drab; great pieces of plaster had chipped off

from the white wreaths and festoons on its walls; but still a mouldy

odour of aristocracy lingered about the place, and a dusty recollection

of the days that were gone made Miss Matty and Mrs. Forrester bridle up

as they entered, and walk mincingly up the room, as if there were a

number of genteel observers, instead of two little boys with a stick of

toffy between them with which to beguile the time.

[Illustration: ‘_Walk mincingly up the room._’]

We stopped short at the second front row; I could hardly understand why,

until I heard Miss Pole ask a stray waiter if any of the county families

were expected; and when he shook his head, and believed not, Mrs.

Forrester and Miss Matty moved forwards, and our party represented a

conversational square. The front row was soon augmented and enriched by

Lady Glenmire and Mrs. Jamieson. We six occupied the two front rows, and

our aristocratic seclusion was respected by the groups of shopkeepers

who strayed in from time to time and huddled together on the back

benches. At least I conjectured so, from the noise they made, and the

sonorous bumps they gave in sitting down; but when, in weariness of the

obstinate green curtain that would not draw up, but would stare at me

with two odd eyes, seen through holes, as in the old tapestry story, I

would fain have looked round at the merry chattering people behind me,

Miss Pole clutched my arm, and begged me not to turn, for ‘it was not

the thing.’ What ‘the thing’ was, I never could find out, but it must

have been something eminently dull and tiresome. However, we all sat

eyes right, square front, gazing at the tantalising curtain, and hardly

speaking intelligibly, we were so afraid of being caught in the

vulgarity of making any noise in a place of public amusement. Mrs.

Jamieson was the most fortunate, for she fell asleep.

At length the eyes disappeared—the curtain quivered—one side went up

before the other, which stuck fast; it was dropped again, and, with a

fresh effort, and a vigorous pull from some unseen hand, it flew up,

revealing to our sight a magnificent gentleman in the Turkish costume,

seated before a little table, gazing at us (I should have said with the

same eyes that I had last seen through the hole in the curtain) with

calm and condescending dignity, ‘like a being of another sphere,’ as I

heard a sentimental voice ejaculate behind me.

‘That’s not Signor Brunoni!’ said Miss Pole decidedly; and so audibly

that I am sure he heard, for he glanced down over his flowing beard at

our party with an air of mute reproach. ‘Signor Brunoni had no beard—but

perhaps he’ll come soon.’ So she lulled herself into patience.

Meanwhile, Miss Matty had reconnoitred through her eye-glass, wiped it,

and looked again. Then she turned round, and said to me, in a kind,

mild, sorrowful tone—

‘You see, my dear, turbans _are_ worn.’

But we had no time for more conversation. The Grand Turk, as Miss Pole

chose to call him, arose and announced himself as Signor Brunoni.

‘I don’t believe him!’ exclaimed Miss Pole, in a defiant manner. He

looked at her again, with the same dignified upbraiding in his

countenance. ‘I don’t!’ she repeated more positively than ever. ‘Signor

Brunoni had not got that muffy sort of thing about his chin, but looked

like a close-shaved Christian gentleman.’

Miss Pole’s energetic speeches had the good effect of wakening up Mrs.

Jamieson, who opened her eyes wide, in sign of the deepest attention—a

proceeding which silenced Miss Pole and encouraged the Grand Turk to

proceed, which he did in very broken English—so broken that there was no

cohesion between the parts of his sentences; a fact which he himself

perceived at last, and so left off speaking and proceeded to action.

Now we _were_ astonished. How he did his tricks I could not imagine; no,

not even when Miss Pole pulled out her pieces of paper and began reading

aloud—or at least in a very audible whisper—the separate ‘receipts’ for

the most common of his tricks. If ever I saw a man frown and look

enraged, I saw the Grand Turk frown at Miss Pole; but, as she said, what

could be expected but unchristian looks from a Mussulman? If Miss Pole

were sceptical, and more engrossed with her receipts and diagrams than

with his tricks, Miss Matty and Mrs. Forrester were mystified and

perplexed to the highest degree. Mrs. Jamieson kept taking her

spectacles off and wiping them, as if she thought it was something

defective in them which made the legerdemain; and Lady Glenmire, who had

seen many curious sights in Edinburgh, was very much struck with the

tricks, and would not at all agree with Miss Pole, who declared that

anybody could do them with a little practice, and that she would,

herself, undertake to do all he did, with two hours given to study the

Encyclopædia and make her third finger flexible.

At last Miss Matty and Mrs. Forrester became perfectly awe-stricken.

They whispered together. I sat just behind them, so I could not help

hearing what they were saying. Miss Matty asked Mrs. Forrester ‘if she

thought it was quite right to have come to see such things? She could

not help fearing they were lending encouragement to something that was

not quite——’ A little shake of the head filled up the blank. Mrs.

Forrester replied that the same thought had crossed her mind; she, too,

was feeling very uncomfortable, it was so very strange. She was quite

certain that it was her pocket-handkerchief which was in that loaf just

now; and it had been in her own hand not five minutes before. She

wondered who had furnished the bread? She was sure it could not be

Dakin, because he was the churchwarden. Suddenly Miss Matty half-turned

towards me——

‘Will you look, my dear—you are a stranger in the town, and it won’t

give rise to unpleasant reports—will you just look round and see if the

rector is here? If he is, I think we may conclude that this wonderful

man is sanctioned by the Church, and that will be a great relief to my

mind.’

[Illustration: ‘_The Church smiling approval._’]

I looked, and I saw the tall, thin, dry, dusty rector, sitting

surrounded by National School boys, guarded by troops of his own sex

from any approach of the many Cranford spinsters. His kind face was all

agape with broad smiles, and the boys around him were in chinks of

laughing. I told Miss Matty that the Church was smiling approval, which

set her mind at ease.

I have never named Mr. Hayter, the rector, because I, as a well-to-do

and happy young woman, never came in contact with him. He was an old

bachelor, but as afraid of matrimonial reports getting abroad about him

as any girl of eighteen: and he would rush into a shop, or drive down an

entry, sooner than encounter any of the Cranford ladies in the street;

and, as for the Preference parties, I did not wonder at his not

accepting invitations to them. To tell the truth, I always suspected

Miss Pole of having given very vigorous chase to Mr. Hayter when he

first came to Cranford; and not the less, because now she appeared to

share so vividly in his dread lest her name should ever be coupled with

his. He found all his interests among the poor and helpless; he had

treated the National School boys this very night to the performance; and

virtue was for once its own reward, for they guarded him right and left,

and clung round him as if he had been the queen-bee and they the swarm.

He felt so safe in their environment that he could even afford to give

our party a bow as we filed out. Miss Pole ignored his presence, and

pretended to be absorbed in convincing us that we had been cheated, and

had not seen Signor Brunoni after all.

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

I think a series of circumstances dated from Signor Brunoni’s visit to

Cranford, which seemed at the time connected in our minds with him,

though I don’t know that he had anything really to do with them. All at

once all sorts of uncomfortable rumours got afloat in the town. There

were one or two robberies—real _bonâ fide_ robberies; men had up before

the magistrates and committed for trial—and that seemed to make us all

afraid of being robbed; and for a long time, at Miss Matty’s, I know, we

used to make a regular expedition all round the kitchens and cellars

every night, Miss Matty leading the way, armed with the poker, I

following with the hearth-brush, and Martha carrying the shovel and

fire-irons with which to sound the alarm; and by the accidental hitting

together of them she often frightened us so much that we bolted

ourselves up, all three together, in the back-kitchen, or store-room, or

wherever we happened to be, till, when our affright was over, we

recollected ourselves, and set out afresh with double valiance. By day

we heard strange stories from the shopkeepers and cottagers, of carts

that went about in the dead of night, drawn by horses shod with felt,

and guarded by men in dark clothes, going round the town, no doubt in

search of some unwatched house or some unfastened door.

[Illustration: ‘_A regular expedition._’]

Miss Pole, who affected great bravery herself, was the principal person

to collect and arrange these reports so as to make them assume their

most fearful aspect.

But we discovered that she had begged one of Mr. Hoggins’s worn-out hats

to hang up in her lobby, and we (at least I) had doubts as to whether

she really would enjoy the little adventure of having her house broken

into, as she protested she should. Miss Matty made no secret of being an

arrant coward, but she went regularly through her housekeeper’s duty of

inspection—only the hour for this became earlier and earlier, till at

last we went the rounds at half-past six, and Miss Matty adjourned to

bed soon after seven, ‘in order to get the night over the sooner.’

Cranford had so long piqued itself on being an honest and moral town

that it had grown to fancy itself too genteel and well-bred to be

otherwise, and felt the stain upon its character at this time doubly.

But we comforted ourselves with the assurance which we gave to each

other that the robberies could never have been committed by any Cranford

person; it must have been a stranger or strangers who brought this

disgrace upon the town, and occasioned as many precautions as if we were

living among the Red Indians or the French.

This last comparison of our nightly state of defence and fortification

was made by Mrs. Forrester, whose father had served under General

Burgoyne in the American war, and whose husband had fought the French in

Spain. She indeed inclined to the idea that, in some way, the French

were connected with the small thefts, which were ascertained facts, and

the burglaries and highway robberies, which were rumours. She had been

deeply impressed with the idea of French spies at some time in her life;

and the notion could never be fairly eradicated, but sprang up again

from time to time. And now her theory was this: The Cranford people

respected themselves too much, and were too grateful to the aristocracy

who were so kind as to live near the town, ever to disgrace their

bringing up by being dishonest or immoral; therefore, we must believe

that the robbers were strangers—if strangers, why not foreigners?—if

foreigners, who so likely as the French? Signor Brunoni spoke broken

English like a Frenchman; and, though he wore a turban like a Turk, Mrs.

Forrester had seen a print of Madame de Staël with a turban on, and

another of Mr. Denon in just such a dress as that in which the conjuror

had made his appearance, showing clearly that the French, as well as the

Turks, wore turbans. There could be no doubt Signor Brunoni was a

Frenchman—a French spy come to discover the weak and undefended places

of England, and doubtless he had his accomplices. For her part, she,

Mrs. Forrester, had always had her own opinion of Miss Pole’s adventure

at the ‘George Inn’—seeing two men where only one was believed to be.

French people had ways and means which, she was thankful to say, the

English knew nothing about; and she had never felt quite easy in her

mind about going to see that conjuror—it was rather too much like a

forbidden thing, though the rector was there. In short, Mrs. Forrester

grew more excited than we had ever known her before, and, being an

officer’s daughter and widow, we looked up to her opinion, of course.

Really I do not know how much was true or false in the reports which

flew about like wildfire just at this time; but it seemed to me then

that there was every reason to believe that at Mardon (a small town

about eight miles from Cranford) houses and shops were entered by holes

made in the walls, the bricks being silently carried away in the dead of

the night, and all done so quietly that no sound was heard either in or

out of the house. Miss Matty gave it up in despair when she heard of

this. ‘What was the use,’ said she, ‘of locks and bolts, and bells to

the windows, and going round the house every night? That last trick was

fit for a conjuror. Now she did believe that Signor Brunoni was at the

bottom of it.’

One afternoon, about five o’clock, we were startled by a hasty knock at

the door. Miss Matty bade me run and tell Martha on no account to open

the door till she (Miss Matty) had reconnoitred through the window; and

she armed herself with a footstool to drop down on the head of the

visitor, in case he should show a face covered with black crape, as he

looked up in answer to her inquiry of who was there. But it was nobody

but Miss Pole and Betty. The former came upstairs, carrying a little

hand-basket, and she was evidently in a state of great agitation.

‘Take care of that!’ said she to me, as I offered to relieve her of her

basket. ‘It’s my plate. I am sure there is a plan to rob my house

to-night. I am come to throw myself on your hospitality, Miss Matty.

Betty is going to sleep with her cousin at the “George.” I can sit up

here all night if you will allow me; but my house is so far from any

neighbours, and I don’t believe we could be heard if we screamed ever

so!’

‘But,’ said Miss Matty, ‘what has alarmed you so much? Have you seen any

men lurking about the house?’

‘Oh yes!’ answered Miss Pole. ‘Two very bad-looking men have gone three

times past the house, very slowly; and an Irish beggar-woman came not

half-an-hour ago, and all but forced herself in past Betty, saying her

children were starving, and she must speak to the mistress. You see, she

said “mistress,” though there was a hat hanging up in the hall, and it

would have been more natural to have said “master.” But Betty shut the

door in her face, and came up to me, and we got the spoons together, and

sat in the parlour-window watching till we saw Thomas Jones going from

his work, when we called to him and asked him to take care of us into

the town.’

[Illustration: ‘_Armed with a footstool._’]

We might have triumphed over Miss Pole, who had professed such bravery

until she was frightened; but we were too glad to perceive that she

shared in the weaknesses of humanity to exult over her; and I gave up my

room to her very willingly, and shared Miss Matty’s bed for the night.

But before we retired, the two ladies rummaged up, out of the recesses

of their memory, such horrid stories of robbery and murder that I quite

quaked in my shoes. Miss Pole was evidently anxious to prove that such

terrible events had occurred within her experience that she was

justified in her sudden panic; and Miss Matty did not like to be

outdone, and capped every story with one yet more horrible, till it

reminded me, oddly enough, of an old story I had read somewhere, of a

nightingale and a musician, who strove one against the other which could

produce the most admirable music, till poor Philomel dropped down dead.

One of the stories that haunted me for a long time afterwards was of a

girl who was left in charge of a great house in Cumberland on some

particular fair-day, when the other servants all went off to the

gaieties. The family were away in London, and a pedlar came by, and

asked to leave his large and heavy pack in the kitchen, saying he would

call for it again at night; and the girl (a gamekeeper’s daughter),

roaming about in search of amusement, chanced to hit upon a gun hanging

up in the hall, and took it down to look at the chasing; and it went off

through the open kitchen door, hit the pack, and a slow dark thread of

blood came oozing out. (How Miss Pole enjoyed this part of the story,

dwelling on each word as if she loved it!) She rather hurried over the

further account of the girl’s bravery, and I have but a confused idea

that, somehow, she baffled the robbers with Italian irons, heated

red-hot, and then restored to blackness by being dipped in grease.

We parted for the night with an awe-stricken wonder as to what we should

hear of in the morning—and, on my part, with a vehement desire for the

night to be over and gone: I was so afraid lest the robbers should have

seen, from some dark lurking-place, that Miss Pole had carried off her

plate, and thus have a double motive for attacking our house.

But until Lady Glenmire came to call next day we heard of nothing

unusual. The kitchen fire-irons were in exactly the same position

against the back door as when Martha and I had skilfully piled them up,

like spillikins, ready to fall with an awful clatter if only a cat had

touched the outside panels. I had wondered what we should all do if thus

awakened and alarmed, and had proposed to Miss Matty that we should

cover up our faces under the bed-clothes, so that there should be no

danger of the robbers thinking that we could identify them; but Miss

Matty, who was trembling very much, scouted this idea, and said we owed

it to society to apprehend them, and that she should certainly do her

best to lay hold of them and lock them up in the garret till morning.

[Illustration: ‘_Called out valiantly._’]

When Lady Glenmire came, we almost felt jealous of her. Mrs. Jamieson’s

house had really been attacked; at least there were men’s footsteps to

be seen on the flower borders, underneath the kitchen windows, ‘where

nae men should be;’ and Carlo had barked all through the night as if

strangers were abroad. Mrs. Jamieson had been awakened by Lady Glenmire,

and they had rung the bell which communicated with Mr. Mulliner’s room

in the third story, and when his nightcapped head had appeared over the

banisters, in answer to the summons, they had told him of their alarm,

and the reasons for it; whereupon he retreated into his bedroom, and

locked the door (for fear of draughts, as he informed them in the

morning), and opened the window, and called out valiantly to say, if the

supposed robbers would come to him he would fight them; but, as Lady

Glenmire observed, that was but poor comfort, since they would have to

pass by Mrs. Jamieson’s room and her own before they could reach him,

and must be of a very pugnacious disposition indeed if they neglected

the opportunities of robbery presented by the unguarded lower stories,

to go up to a garret, and there force a door in order to get at the

champion of the house. Lady Glenmire, after waiting and listening for

some time in the drawing-room, had proposed to Mrs. Jamieson that they

should go to bed; but that lady said she should not feel comfortable

unless she sat up and watched; and, accordingly, she packed herself

warmly up on the sofa, where she was found by the housemaid, when she

came into the room at six o’clock, fast asleep; but Lady Glenmire went

to bed, and kept awake all night.

When Miss Pole heard of this, she nodded her head in great satisfaction.

She had been sure we should hear of something happening in Cranford that

night; and we had heard. It was clear enough they had first proposed to

attack her house; but when they saw that she and Betty were on their

guard, and had carried off the plate, they had changed their tactics and

gone to Mrs. Jamieson’s, and no one knew what might have happened if

Carlo had not barked, like a good dog as he was!

Poor Carlo! his barking days were nearly over. Whether the gang who

infested the neighbourhood were afraid of him, or whether they were

revengeful enough, for the way in which he had baffled them on the night

in question, to poison him; or whether, as some among the more

uneducated people thought, he died of apoplexy, brought on by too much

feeding and too little exercise; at any rate, it is certain that, two

days after this eventful night, Carlo was found dead, with his poor

little legs stretched out stiff in the attitude of running, as if by

such unusual exertion he could escape the sure pursuer, Death.

We were all sorry for Carlo, the old familiar friend who had snapped at

us for so many years; and the mysterious mode of his death made us very

uncomfortable. Could Signor Brunoni be at the bottom of this? He had

apparently killed a canary with only a word of command; his will seemed

of deadly force; who knew but what he might yet be lingering in the

neighbourhood willing all sorts of awful things!

We whispered these fancies among ourselves in the evenings; but in the

mornings our courage came back with the daylight, and in a week’s time

we had got over the shock of Carlo’s death; all but Mrs. Jamieson. She,

poor thing, felt it as she had felt no event since her husband’s death;

indeed Miss Pole said, that, as the Honourable Mr. Jamieson drank a good

deal, and occasioned her much uneasiness, it was possible that Carlo’s

death might be the greater affliction. But there was always a tinge of

cynicism in Miss Pole’s remarks. However, one thing was clear and

certain—it was necessary for Mrs. Jamieson to have some change of scene;

and Mr. Mulliner was very impressive on this point, shaking his head

whenever we inquired after his mistress, and speaking of her loss of

appetite and bad nights very ominously; and with justice too, for if she

had two characteristics in her natural state of health they were a

facility of eating and sleeping. If she could neither eat nor sleep, she

must be indeed out of spirits and out of health.

[Illustration: ‘_Speaking very ominously._’]

Lady Glenmire (who had evidently taken very kindly to Cranford) did not

like the idea of Mrs. Jamieson’s going to Cheltenham, and more than once

insinuated pretty plainly that it was Mr. Mulliner’s doing, who had been

much alarmed on the occasion of the house being attacked, and since had

said, more than once, that he felt it a very responsible charge to have

to defend so many women. Be that as it might, Mrs. Jamieson went to

Cheltenham, escorted by Mr. Mulliner; and Lady Glenmire remained in

possession of the house, her ostensible office being to take care that

the maid-servants did not pick up followers. She made a very

pleasant-looking dragon; and, as soon as it was arranged for her stay in

Cranford, she found out that Mrs. Jamieson’s visit to Cheltenham was

just the best thing in the world. She had let her house in Edinburgh,

and was for the time houseless, so the charge of her sister-in-law’s

comfortable abode was very convenient and acceptable.

Miss Pole was very much inclined to instal herself as a heroine, because

of the decided steps she had taken in flying from the two men and one

woman, whom she entitled ‘that murderous gang.’ She described their

appearance in glowing colours, and I noticed that every time she went

over the story some fresh trait of villany was added to their

appearance. One was tall—he grew to be gigantic in height before we had

done with him; he of course had black hair—and by and by it hung in

elf-locks over his forehead and down his back. The other was short and

broad—and a hump sprouted out on his shoulder before we heard the last

of him; he had red hair—which deepened into carroty; and she was almost

sure he had a cast in the eye—a decided squint. As for the woman, her

eyes glared, and she was masculine looking—a perfect virago; most

probably a man dressed in woman’s clothes: afterwards, we heard of a

beard on her chin, and a manly voice and a stride.

If Miss Pole was delighted to recount the events of that afternoon to

all inquirers, others were not so proud of their adventures in the

robbery line. Mr. Hoggins, the surgeon, had been attacked at his own

door by two ruffians, who were concealed in the shadow of the porch, and

so effectually silenced him that he was robbed in the interval between

ringing his bell and the servant’s answering it. Miss Pole was sure it

would turn out that this robbery had been committed by ‘her men,’ and

went the very day she heard the report to have her teeth examined, and

to question Mr. Hoggins. She came to us afterwards; so we heard what she

had heard, straight and direct from the source, while we were yet in the

excitement and flutter of the agitation caused by the first

intelligence; for the event had only occurred the night before.

[Illustration: ‘_To have her teeth examined._’]

‘Well!’ said Miss Pole, sitting down with the decision of a person who

has made up her mind as to the nature of life and the world (and such

people never tread lightly, or seat themselves without a bump), ‘well,

Miss Matty! men will be men. Every mother’s son of them wishes to be

considered Samson and Solomon rolled into one—too strong ever to be

beaten or discomfited—too wise ever to be outwitted. If you will notice,

they have always foreseen events, though they never tell one for one’s

warning before the events happen. My father was a man, and I know the

sex pretty well.’

She had talked herself out of breath, and we should have been very glad

to fill up the necessary pause as chorus, but we did not exactly know

what to say, or which man had suggested this diatribe against the sex;

so we only joined in generally, with a grave shake of the head, and a

soft murmur of ‘They are very incomprehensible, certainly!’

‘Now, only think,’ said she. ‘There, I have undergone the risk of having

one of my remaining teeth drawn (for one is terribly at the mercy of any

surgeon-dentist; and I, for one, always speak them fair till I have got

my mouth out of their clutches), and, after all, Mr. Hoggins is too much

of a man to own that he was robbed last night.’

‘Not robbed!’ exclaimed the chorus.

‘Don’t tell me!’ Miss Pole exclaimed, angry that we could be for a

moment imposed upon. ‘I believe he was robbed, just as Betty told me,

and he is ashamed to own it; and, to be sure, it was very silly of him

to be robbed just at his own door; I daresay he feels that such a thing

won’t raise him in the eyes of Cranford society, and is anxious to

conceal it—but he need not have tried to impose upon me by saying I must

have heard an exaggerated account of some petty theft of a neck of

mutton, which, it seems, was stolen out of the safe in his yard last

week; he had the impertinence to add, he believed that that was taken by

the cat. I have no doubt, if I could get at the bottom of it, it was

that Irishman dressed up in woman’s clothes, who came spying about my

house, with the story about the starving children.’

After we had duly condemned the want of candour which Mr. Hoggins had

evinced, and abused men in general, taking him for the representative

and type, we got round to the subject about which we had been talking

when Miss Pole came in; namely, how far, in the present disturbed state

of the country, we could venture to accept an invitation which Miss

Matty had just received from Mrs. Forrester, to come as usual and keep

the anniversary of her wedding-day by drinking tea with her at five

o’clock, and playing a quiet pool afterwards. Mrs. Forrester had said

that she asked us with some diffidence, because the roads were, she

feared, very unsafe. But she suggested that perhaps one of us would not

object to take the sedan, and that the others, by walking briskly, might

keep up with the long trot of the chairmen, and so we might all arrive

safely at Over Place, a suburb of the town. (No; that is too large an

expression: a small cluster of houses separated from Cranford by about

two hundred yards of a dark and lonely lane.) There was no doubt but

that a similar note was awaiting Miss Pole at home; so her call was a

very fortunate affair, as it enabled us to consult together. . . . We

would all much rather have declined this invitation; but we felt that it

would not be quite kind to Mrs. Forrester, who would otherwise be left

to a solitary retrospect of her not very happy or fortunate life. Miss

Matty and Miss Pole had been visitors on this occasion for many years,

and now they gallantly determined to nail their colours to the mast, and

to go through Darkness-lane rather than fail in loyalty to their friend.

[Illustration: ‘_Implored the chairman._’]

But when the evening came, Miss Matty (for it was she who was voted into

the chair, as she had a cold), before being shut down in the sedan, like

jack-in-a-box, implored the chairman, whatever might befall, not to run

away and leave her fastened up there, to be murdered; and even after

they had promised, I saw her tighten her features into the stern

determination of a martyr, and she gave me a melancholy and ominous

shake of the head through the glass. However, we got there safely, only

rather out of breath, for it was who could trot hardest through

Darkness-lane, and I am afraid poor Miss Matty was sadly jolted.

Mrs. Forrester had made extra preparations, in acknowledgment of our

exertion in coming to see her through such dangers. The usual forms of

genteel ignorance as to what her servants might send up were all gone

through; and harmony and Preference seemed likely to be the order of the

evening, but for an interesting conversation that began I don’t know

how, but which had relation, of course, to the robbers who infested the

neighbourhood of Cranford.

Having braved the dangers of Darkness-lane, and thus having a little

stock of reputation for courage to fall back upon; and also, I dare say,

desirous of proving ourselves superior to men (_videlicet_ Mr. Hoggins)

in the article of candour, we began to relate our individual fears, and

the private precautions we each of us took. I owned that my pet

apprehension was eyes—eyes looking at me, and watching me, glittering

out from some dull, flat, wooden surface; and that if I dared to go up

to my looking-glass when I was panic-stricken, I should certainly turn

it round, with its back towards me, for fear of seeing eyes behind me

looking out of the darkness. I saw Miss Matty nerving herself up for a

confession; and at last out it came. She owned that, ever since she had

been a girl, she had dreaded being caught by her last leg, just as she

was getting into bed, by some one concealed under it. She said, when she

was younger and more active, she used to take a flying leap from a

distance, and so bring both her legs up safely into bed at once; but

that this had always annoyed Deborah, who piqued herself upon getting

into bed gracefully, and she had given it up in consequence. But now the

old terror would often come over her, especially since Miss Pole’s house

had been attacked (we had got quite to believe in the fact of the attack

having taken place), and yet it was very unpleasant to think of looking

under a bed, and seeing a man concealed, with a great, fierce face

staring out at you; so she had bethought herself of something—perhaps I

had noticed that she had told Martha to buy her a penny ball, such as

children play with—and now she rolled this ball under the bed every

night; if it came out on the other side, well and good; if not she

always took care to have her hand on the bell-rope, and meant to call

out John and Harry, just as if she expected men-servants to answer her

ring.

We all applauded this ingenious contrivance, and Miss Matty sank back

into satisfied silence, with a look at Mrs. Forrester as if to ask for

_her_ private weakness.

[Illustration: ‘_He was a sharp lad._’]

Mrs. Forrester looked askance at Miss Pole, and tried to change the

subject a little by telling us that she had borrowed a boy from one of

the neighbouring cottages and promised his parents a hundredweight of

coals at Christmas, and his supper every evening, for the loan of him at

nights. She had instructed him in his possible duties when he first

came; and, finding him sensible, she had given him the Major’s sword

(the Major was her late husband), and desired him to put it very

carefully behind his pillow at night, turning the edge towards the head

of the pillow. He was a sharp lad, she was sure; for, spying out the

Major’s cocked hat, he had said, if he might have that to wear, he was

sure he could frighten two Englishmen, or four Frenchmen, any day. But

she had impressed upon him anew that he was to lose no time in putting

on hats or anything else; but, if he heard any noise, he was to run at

it with his drawn sword. On my suggesting that some accident might occur

from such slaughterous and indiscriminate directions, and that he might

rush on Jenny getting up to wash, and have spitted her before he had

discovered that she was not a Frenchman, Mrs. Forrester said she did not

think that that was likely, for he was a very sound sleeper, and

generally had to be well shaken or cold-pigged in a morning before they

could rouse him. She sometimes thought such dead sleep must be owing to

the hearty suppers the poor lad ate, for he was half-starved at home,

and she told Jenny to see that he got a good meal at night.

Still this was no confession of Mrs. Forrester’s peculiar timidity, and

we urged her to tell us what she thought would frighten her more than

anything. She paused, and stirred the fire, and snuffed the candles, and

then she said, in a sounding whisper—

‘Ghosts!’

She looked at Miss Pole, as much as to say she had declared it, and

would stand by it. Such a look was a challenge in itself. Miss Pole came

down upon her with indigestion, spectral illusions, optical delusions,

and a great deal out of Dr. Ferrier and Dr. Hibbert besides. Miss Matty

had rather a leaning to ghosts, as I have mentioned before, and what

little she did say was all on Mrs. Forrester’s side, who, emboldened by

sympathy, protested that ghosts were a part of her religion; that surely

she, the widow of a Major in the army, knew what to be frightened at,

and what not; in short, I never saw Mrs. Forrester so warm either before

or since, for she was a gentle, meek, enduring old lady in most things.

Not all the elder-wine that ever was mulled could this night wash out

the remembrance of this difference between Miss Pole and her hostess.

Indeed, when the elder-wine was brought in, it gave rise to a new burst

of discussion; for Jenny, the little maiden who staggered under the

tray, had to give evidence of having seen a ghost with her own eyes, not

so many nights ago, in Darkness-lane, the very lane we were to go

through on our way home.

[Illustration: ‘_Leading questions._’]

In spite of the uncomfortable feeling which this last consideration gave

me, I could not help being amused at Jenny’s position, which was

exceedingly like that of a witness being examined and cross-examined by

two counsel who are not at all scrupulous about asking leading

questions. The conclusion I arrived at was, that Jenny had certainly

seen something beyond what a fit of indigestion would have caused. A

lady all in white, and without her head, was what she deposed and

adhered to, supported by a consciousness of the secret sympathy of her

mistress under the withering scorn with which Miss Pole regarded her.

And not only she, but many others, had seen this headless lady, who sat

by the roadside wringing her hands as in deep grief. Mrs. Forrester

looked at us from time to time with an air of conscious triumph; but

then she had not to pass through Darkness-lane before she could bury

herself beneath her own familiar bed-clothes.

We preserved a discreet silence as to the headless lady while we were

putting on our things to go home, for there was no knowing how near the

ghostly head and ears might be, or what spiritual connection they might

be keeping up with the unhappy body in Darkness-lane; and, therefore,

even Miss Pole felt that it was as well not to speak lightly on such

subjects, for fear of vexing or insulting that woe-begone trunk. At

least, so I conjecture; for, instead of the busy clatter usual in the

operation, we tied on our cloaks as sadly as mutes at a funeral. Miss

Matty drew the curtains round the windows of the chair to shut out

disagreeable sights, and the men (either because they were in spirits

that their labours were so nearly ended, or because they were going down

hill) set off at such a round and merry pace that it was all Miss Pole

and I could do to keep up with them. She had breath for nothing beyond

an imploring ‘Don’t leave me!’ uttered as she clutched my arm so tightly

that I could not have quitted her, ghost or no ghost. What a relief it

was when the men, weary of their burden and their quick trot, stopped

just where Headingley-causeway branches off from Darkness-lane! Miss

Pole unloosed me and caught at one of the men.

‘Could not you—could not you take Miss Matty round by

Headingley-causeway?—the pavement in Darkness-lane jolts so, and she is

not very strong.’

A smothered voice was heard from the inside of the chair:

‘Oh! pray go on! What is the matter? What is the matter? I will give you

sixpence more to go on very fast; pray don’t stop here.’

‘And I’ll give you a shilling,’ said Miss Pole, with tremulous dignity,

‘if you’ll go by Headingley-causeway.’

The two men grunted acquiescence and took up the chair, and went along

the causeway, which certainly answered Miss Pole’s kind purpose of

saving Miss Matty’s bones; for it was covered with soft thick mud, and

even a fall there would have been easy till the getting up came, when

there might have been some difficulty in extrication.

[Illustration: Chapter 10: tailpiece]

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

[Illustration]

The next morning I met Lady Glenmire and Miss Pole setting out on a long

walk to find some old woman who was famous in the neighbourhood for her

skill in knitting woollen stockings. Miss Pole said to me, with a smile

half-kindly and half-contemptuous upon her countenance, ‘I have been

just telling Lady Glenmire of our poor friend Mrs. Forrester, and her

terror of ghosts. It comes from living so much alone, and listening to

the bug-a-boo stories of that Jenny of hers.’ She was so calm and so

much above superstitious fears herself that I was almost ashamed to say

how glad I had been of her Headingley-causeway proposition the night

before, and turned off the conversation to something else.

[Illustration: ‘_Perplexed about the exact path._’]

In the afternoon Miss Pole called on Miss Matty to tell her of the

adventure—the real adventure they had met with on their morning’s walk.

They had been perplexed about the exact path which they were to take

across the fields in order to find the knitting old woman, and had

stopped to inquire at a little wayside public-house, standing on the

high road to London, about three miles from Cranford. The good woman had

asked them to sit down and rest themselves while she fetched her

husband, who could direct them better than she could; and, while they

were sitting in the sanded parlour, a little girl came in. They thought

that she belonged to the landlady, and began some trifling conversation

with her; but, on Mrs. Roberts’s return, she told them that the little

thing was the only child of a couple who were staying in the house. And

then she began a long story, out of which Lady Glenmire and Miss Pole

could only gather one or two decided facts, which were that, about six

weeks ago, a light spring cart had broken down just before their door,

in which there were two men, one woman, and this child. One of the men

was seriously hurt—no bones broken, only ‘shaken,’ the landlady called

it; but he had probably sustained some severe internal injury, for he

had languished in their house ever since, attended by his wife, the

mother of this little girl. Miss Pole had asked what he was, what he

looked like. And Mrs. Roberts had made answer that he was not like a

gentleman, nor yet like a common person; if it had not been that he and

his wife were such decent, quiet people, she could almost have thought

he was a mountebank, or something of that kind, for they had a great box

in the cart, full of she did not know what. She had helped to unpack it,

and take out their linen and clothes, when the other man—his twin

brother, she believed he was—had gone off with the horse and cart.

Miss Pole had begun to have her suspicions at this point, and expressed

her idea that it was rather strange that the box and cart and horse and

all should have disappeared; but good Mrs. Roberts seemed to have become

quite indignant at Miss Pole’s implied suggestion; in fact, Miss Pole

said, she was as angry as if Miss Pole had told her that she herself was

a swindler. As the best way of convincing the ladies, she bethought her

of begging them to see the wife; and, as Miss Pole said, there was no

doubting the honest, worn, bronze face of the woman, who, at the first

tender word from Lady Glenmire, burst into tears, which she was too weak

to check until some word from the landlady made her swallow down her

sobs, in order that she might testify to the Christian kindness shown by

Mr. and Mrs. Roberts. Miss Pole came round with a swing to as vehement a

belief in the sorrowful tale as she had been sceptical before; and, as a

proof of this, her energy in the poor sufferer’s behalf was nothing

daunted when she found out that he, and no other, was our Signor

Brunoni, to whom all Cranford had been attributing all manner of evil

this six weeks past! Yes! his wife said his proper name was Samuel

Brown—‘Sam,’ she called him—but to the last we preferred calling him

‘the Signor’; it sounded so much better.

[Illustration: ‘_Riding over._’]

The end of their conversation with the Signora Brunoni was that it was

agreed that he should be placed under medical advice, and for any

expense incurred in procuring this Lady Glenmire promised to hold

herself responsible, and had accordingly gone to Mr. Hoggins to beg him

to ride over to the ‘Rising Sun’ that very afternoon, and examine into

the signor’s real state; and, as Miss Pole said, if it was desirable to

remove him to Cranford to be more immediately under Mr. Hoggins’s eye,

she would undertake to seek for lodgings and arrange about the rent.

Mrs. Roberts had been as kind as could be all throughout, but it was

evident that their long residence there had been a slight inconvenience.

Before Miss Pole left us, Miss Matty and I were as full of the morning’s

adventure as she was. We talked about it all the evening, turning it in

every possible light, and we went to bed anxious for the morning, when

we should surely hear from some one what Mr. Hoggins thought and

recommended; for, as Miss Matty observed, though Mr. Hoggins did say

‘Jack’s up,’ ‘a fig for his heels,’ and called Preference ‘Pref,’ she

believed he was a very worthy man and a very clever surgeon. Indeed, we

were rather proud of our doctor at Cranford, as a doctor. We often

wished, when we heard of Queen Adelaide or the Duke of Wellington being

ill, that they would send for Mr. Hoggins; but, on consideration, we

were rather glad they did not, for, if we were ailing, what should we do

if Mr. Hoggins had been appointed Physician-in-Ordinary to the Royal

Family? As a surgeon we were proud of him; but as a man—or rather, I

should say, as a gentleman—we could only shake our heads over his name

and himself, and wished that he had read Lord Chesterfield’s Letters in

the days when his manners were susceptible of improvement. Nevertheless,

we all regarded his dictum in the signor’s case as infallible, and when

he said that with care and attention he might rally, we had no more fear

for him.

[Illustration: ‘_Airing the Sedan Chair._’]

But, although we had no more fear, everybody did as much as if there was

great cause for anxiety—as indeed there was until Mr. Hoggins took

charge of him. Miss Pole looked out clean and comfortable, if homely,

lodgings; Miss Matty sent the sedan-chair for him, and Martha and I

aired it well before it left Cranford by holding a warming-pan full of

red-hot coals in it, and then shutting it up close, smoke and all, until

the time when he should get into it at the ‘Rising Sun.’ Lady Glenmire

undertook the medical department under Mr. Hoggins’s directions, and

rummaged up all Mrs. Jamieson’s medicine glasses, and spoons, and

bed-tables, in a free-and-easy way, that made Miss Matty feel a little

anxious as to what that lady and Mr. Mulliner might say, if they knew.

Mrs. Forrester made some of the bread-jelly, for which she was so

famous, to have ready as a refreshment in the lodgings when he should

arrive. A present of this bread-jelly was the highest mark of favour

dear Mrs. Forrester could confer. Miss Pole had once asked her for the

receipt, but she had met with a very decided rebuff; that lady told her

that she could not part with it to any one during her life, and that

after her death it was bequeathed, as her executors would find, to Miss

Matty. What Miss Matty, or, as Mrs. Forrester called her (remembering

the clause in her will and the dignity of the occasion), Miss Matilda

Jenkyns—might choose to do with the receipt when it came into her

possession—whether to make it public, or to hand it down as an

heirloom—she did not know, nor would she dictate. And a mould of this

admirable, digestible, unique bread-jelly was sent by Mrs. Forrester to

our poor sick conjuror. Who says that the aristocracy are proud? Here

was a lady, by birth a Tyrrell, and descended from the great Sir Walter

that shot King Rufus, and in whose veins ran the blood of him who

murdered the little princes in the Tower, going every day to see what

dainty dishes she could prepare for Samuel Brown, a mountebank! But,

indeed, it was wonderful to see what kind feelings were called out by

this poor man’s coming amongst us. And also wonderful to see how the

great Cranford panic, which had been occasioned by his first coming in

his Turkish dress, melted away into thin air on his second coming—pale

and feeble, and with his heavy, filmy eyes, that only brightened a very

little when they fell upon the countenance of his faithful wife, or

their pale and sorrowful little girl.

[Illustration: ‘_In Darkness Lane._’]

Somehow we all forgot to be afraid. I daresay it was that finding out

that he, who had first excited our love of the marvellous by his

unprecedented arts, had not sufficient every-day gifts to manage a

shying horse, made us feel as if we were ourselves again. Miss Pole came

with her little basket at all hours of the evening, as if her lonely

house and the unfrequented road to it had never been infested by that

‘murderous gang’; Mrs. Forrester said she thought that neither Jenny nor

she need mind the headless lady who wept and wailed in Darkness Lane,

for surely the power was never given to such beings to harm those who

went about to try to do what little good was in their power, to which

Jenny tremblingly assented; but the mistress’s theory had little effect

on the maid’s practice until she had sewn two pieces of red flannel in

the shape of a cross on her inner garment.

I found Miss Matty covering her penny ball—the ball that she used to

roll under her bed—with gay-coloured worsted in rainbow stripes.

‘My dear,’ said she, ‘my heart is sad for that little careworn child.

Although her father is a conjuror, she looks as if she had never had a

good game of play in her life. I used to make very pretty balls in this

way when I was a girl, and I thought I would try if I could not make

this one smart and take it to Phœbe this afternoon. I think “the

gang” must have left the neighbourhood, for one does not hear any more

of their violence and robbery now.’

[Illustration: ‘_The boys who stole the apples._’]

We were all of us far too full of the signor’s precarious state to talk

either about robbers or ghosts. Indeed, Lady Glenmire said she never had

heard of any actual robberies, except that two little boys had stolen

some apples from Farmer Benson’s orchard, and that some eggs had been

missed on a market-day off widow Hayward’s stall. But that was expecting

too much of us; we could not acknowledge that we had only had this small

foundation for all our panic. Miss Pole drew herself up at this remark

of Lady Glenmire’s, and said ‘that she wished she could agree with her

as to the very small reason we had had for alarm, but with the

recollection of a man disguised as a woman who had endeavoured to force

himself into her house while his confederates waited outside; with the

knowledge gained from Lady Glenmire herself, of the footprints seen on

Mrs. Jamieson’s flower borders; with the fact before her of the

audacious robbery committed on Mr. Hoggins at his own door——’ But here

Lady Glenmire broke in with a very strong expression of doubt as to

whether this last story was not an entire fabrication founded upon the

theft of a cat; she grew so red while she was saying all this that I was

not surprised at Miss Pole’s manner of bridling up, and I am certain, if

Lady Glenmire had not been ‘her ladyship,’ we should have had a more

emphatic contradiction than the ‘Well, to be sure!’ and similar

fragmentary ejaculations, which were all that she ventured upon in my

lady’s presence. But when she was gone Miss Pole began a long

congratulation to Miss Matty that so far they had escaped marriage,

which she noticed always made people credulous to the last degree;

indeed, she thought it argued great natural credulity in a woman if she

could not keep herself from being married; and in what Lady Glenmire had

said about Mr. Hoggins’s robbery we had a specimen of what people came

to if they gave way to such a weakness; evidently Lady Glenmire would

swallow anything if she could believe the poor vamped-up story about a

neck of mutton and a pussy with which he had tried to impose on Miss

Pole, only she had always been on her guard against believing too much

of what men said.

We were thankful, as Miss Pole desired us to be, that we had never been

married; but I think, of the two, we were even more thankful that the

robbers had left Cranford; at least I judge so from a speech of Miss

Matty’s that evening, as we sat over the fire, in which she evidently

looked upon a husband as a great protector against thieves, burglars,

and ghosts; and said that she did not think that she should dare to be

always warning young people against matrimony, as Miss Pole did

continually; to be sure, marriage was a risk, as she saw, now she had

had some experience; but she remembered the time when she had looked

forward to being married as much as any one.

‘Not to any particular person, my dear,’ said she, hastily checking

herself up as if she were afraid of having admitted too much; ‘only the

old story, you know, of ladies always saying, “_When_ I marry,” and

gentlemen, “_If_ I marry.”’ It was a joke spoken in rather a sad tone,

and I doubt if either of us smiled; but I could not see Miss Matty’s

face by the flickering fire-light. In a little while she continued—

‘But, after all, I have not told you the truth. It is so long ago, and

no one ever knew how much I thought of it at the time, unless, indeed,

my dear mother guessed; but I may say that there was a time when I did

not think I should have been only Miss Matty Jenkyns all my life; for

even if I did meet with any one who wished to marry me now (and, as Miss

Pole says, one is never too safe), I could not take him—I hope he would

not take it too much to heart, but I could _not_ take him—or any one but

the person I once thought I should be married to; and he is dead and

gone, and he never knew how it all came about that I said “No,” when I

had thought many and many a time—— Well, it’s no matter what I thought.

God ordains it all, and I am very happy, my dear. No one has such kind

friends as I,’ continued she, taking my hand and holding it in hers.

If I had never known of Mr. Holbrook, I could have said something in

this pause, but as I had, I could not think of anything that would come

in naturally, and so we both kept silence for a little time.

[Illustration: ‘_A diary in two columns._’]

‘My father once made us,’ she began, ‘keep a diary, in two columns; on

one side we were to put down in the morning what we thought would be the

course and events of the coming day, and at night we were to put down on

the other side what really had happened. It would be to some people

rather a sad way of telling their lives’ (a tear dropped upon my hand at

these words)—‘I don’t mean that mine has been sad, only so very

different to what I expected. I remember, one winter’s evening, sitting

over our bedroom fire with Deborah—I remember it as if it were

yesterday—and we were planning our future lives, both of us were

planning, though only she talked about it. She said she should like to

marry an archdeacon, and write his charges; and you know, my dear, she

never was married, and, for aught I know, she never spoke to an

unmarried archdeacon in her life. I never was ambitious, nor could I

have written charges, but I thought I could manage a house (my mother

used to call me her right hand), and I was always so fond of little

children—the shyest babies would stretch out their little arms to come

to me; when I was a girl, I was half my leisure time nursing in the

neighbouring cottages; but I don’t know how it was, when I grew sad and

grave—which I did a year or two after this time—the little things drew

back from me, and I am afraid I lost the knack, though I am just as fond

of children as ever, and have a strange yearning at my heart whenever I

see a mother with her baby in her arms. Nay, my dear’ (and by a sudden

blaze which sprang up from a fall of the unstirred coals, I saw that her

eyes were full of tears—gazing intently on some vision of what might

have been), ‘do you know, I dream sometimes that I have a little

child—always the same—a little girl of about two years old; she never

grows older, though I have dreamt about her for many years. I don’t

think I ever dream of any words or sound she makes; she is very

noiseless and still, but she comes to me when she is very sorry or very

glad, and I have wakened with the clasp of her dear little arms round my

neck. Only last night—perhaps because I had gone to sleep thinking of

this ball for Phœbe—my little darling came in my dream, and put up

her mouth to be kissed, just as I have seen real babies do to real

mothers before going to bed. But all this is nonsense, dear! only don’t

be frightened by Miss Pole from being married. I can fancy it may be a

very happy state, and a little credulity helps one on through life very

smoothly—better than always doubting and doubting and seeing

difficulties and disagreeables in everything.’

If I had been inclined to be daunted from matrimony, it would not have

been Miss Pole to do it; it would have been the lot of poor Signor

Brunoni and his wife. And yet again, it was an encouragement to see how,

through all their cares and sorrows, they thought of each other and not

of themselves; and how keen were their joys, if they only passed through

each other, or through the little Phœbe.

The signora told me, one day, a good deal about their lives up to this

period. It began by my asking her whether Miss Pole’s story of the twin

brothers was true; it sounded so wonderful a likeness, that I should

have had my doubts, if Miss Pole had not been unmarried. But the

signora, or (as we found out she preferred to be called) Mrs. Brown,

said it was quite true; that her brother-in-law was by many taken for

her husband, which was of great assistance to them in their profession;

‘though,’ she continued, ‘how people can mistake Thomas for the real

Signor Brunoni, I can’t conceive; but he says they do; so I suppose I

must believe him. Not but what he is a very good man; I am sure I don’t

know how we should have paid our bill at the ‘Rising Sun’ but for the

money he sends; but people must know very little about art if they can

take him for my husband. Why, miss, in the ball trick, where my husband

spreads his fingers wide, and throws out his little finger with quite an

air and a grace, Thomas just clumps up his hand like a fist, and might

have ever so many balls hidden in it. Besides, he has never been in

India, and knows nothing of the proper sit of a turban.’

‘Have you been in India?’ said I, rather astonished.

‘Oh yes! many a year, ma’am. Sam was a sergeant in the 31st; and when

the regiment was ordered to India, I drew a lot to go, and I was more

thankful than I can tell; for it seemed as if it would only be a slow

death to me to part from my husband. But, indeed, ma’am, if I had known

all, I don’t know whether I would not rather have died there and then

than gone through what I have done since. To be sure, I’ve been able to

comfort Sam, and to be with him; but, ma’am, I’ve lost six children,’

said she, looking up at me with those strange eyes that I’ve never

noticed but in mothers of dead children—with a kind of wild look in

them, as if seeking for what they never more might find. ‘Yes! Six

children died off, like little buds nipped untimely, in that cruel

India. I thought, as each died, I never could—I never would—love a child

again; and when the next came, it had not only its own love, but the

deeper love that came from the thoughts of its little dead brothers and

sisters. And when Phœbe was coming, I said to my husband, “Sam, when

the child is born, and I am strong I shall leave you; it will cut my

heart cruel; but if this baby dies too, I shall go mad; the madness is

in me now; but if you let me go down to Calcutta, carrying my baby step

by step, it will, maybe, work itself off; and I will save, and I will

hoard, and I will beg—and I will die, to get a passage home to England,

where our baby may live?” God bless him! he said I might go; and he

saved up his pay, and I saved every pice I could get for washing or any

way; and when Phœbe came, and I grew strong again, I set off. It was

very lonely; through the thick forests, dark again with their heavy

trees—along by the river’s side (but I had been brought up near the Avon

in Warwickshire, so that flowing noise sounded like home)—from station

to station, from Indian village to village, I went along, carrying my

child. I had seen one of the officers’ ladies with a little picture,

ma’am—done by a Catholic foreigner, ma’am—of the Virgin and the little

Saviour, ma’am. She had him on her arm, and her form was softly curled

round him, and their cheeks touched. Well, when I went to bid good-bye

to this lady, for whom I had washed, she cried sadly; for she, too, had

lost her children, but she had not another to save, like me; and I was

bold enough to ask her, would she give me that print. And she cried the

more, and said _her_ children were with that little blessed Jesus; and

gave it me, and told me she had heard it had been painted on the bottom

of a cask, which made it have that round shape. And when my body was

very weary, and my heart was sick (for there were times when I

misdoubted if I could ever reach my home, and there were times when I

thought of my husband, and one time when I thought my baby was dying), I

took out that picture and looked at it, till I could have thought the

mother spoke to me, and comforted me. And the natives were very kind. We

could not understand one another; but they saw my baby on my breast, and

they came out to me, and brought me rice and milk, and sometimes

flowers—I have got some of the flowers dried. Then, the next morning, I

was so tired; and they wanted me to stay with them—I could tell that—and

tried to frighten me from going into the deep woods, which, indeed,

looked very strange and dark; but it seemed to me as if Death was

following me to take my baby away from me; and as if I must go on, and

on—and I thought how God had cared for mothers ever since the world was

made, and would care for me; so I bade them goodbye, and set off afresh.

And once when my baby was ill, and both she and I needed rest, He led me

to a place where I found a kind Englishman lived, right in the midst of

the natives.’

‘And you reached Calcutta safely at last?’

‘Yes, safely. Oh! when I knew I had only two days’ journey more before

me, I could not help it, ma’am—it might be idolatry, I cannot tell—but I

was near one of the native temples, and I went into it with my baby to

thank God for his great mercy; for it seemed to me that where others had

prayed before to their God, in their joy or in their agony, was of

itself a sacred place. And I got as servant to an invalid lady, who grew

quite fond of my baby aboardship; and, in two years’ time, Sam earned

his discharge, and came home to me, and to our child. Then he had to fix

on a trade; but he knew of none; and once, once upon a time, he had

learnt some tricks from an Indian juggler; so he set up conjuring, and

it answered so well that he took Thomas to help him—as his man, you

know, not as another conjuror, though Thomas has set it up now on his

own hook. But it has been a great help to us that likeness between the

twins, and made a good many tricks go off well that they made up

together. And Thomas is a good brother, only he has not the fine

carriage of my husband, so that I can’t think how he can be taken for

Signor Brunoni himself, as he says he is.’

‘Poor little Phœbe!’ said I, my thoughts going back to the baby she

carried all those hundred miles.

‘Ah! you may say so! I never thought I should have reared her, though,

when she fell ill at Chunderabaddad; but that good kind Aga Jenkyns took

us in, which I believe was the very saving of her.’

‘Jenkyns!’ said I.

‘Yes, Jenkyns. I shall think all people of that name are kind; for here

is that nice old lady who comes every day to take Phœbe a walk!’

But an idea had flashed through my head: could the Aga Jenkyns be the

lost Peter? True, he was reported by many to be dead. But, equally true,

some had said that he had arrived at the dignity of Great Lama of

Thibet. Miss Matty thought he was alive. I would make further inquiry.

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

[Illustration: Chapter 12: Engaged to be married]

Was the ‘poor Peter’ of Cranford the Aga Jenkyns of Chunderabaddad, or

was he not? As somebody says, that was the question.

In my own home, whenever people had nothing else to do, they blamed me

for want of discretion. Indiscretion was my bugbear fault. Everybody has

a bugbear fault; a sort of standing characteristic—_a pièce de

résistance_ for their friends to cut at; and in general they cut and

come again. I was tired of being called indiscreet and incautious; and I

determined for once to prove myself a model of prudence and wisdom. I

would not even hint my suspicions respecting the Aga. I would collect

evidence and carry it home to lay before my father, as the family friend

of the two Miss Jenkynses.

In my search after facts I was often reminded of a description my father

had once given of a Ladies’ Committee that he had had to preside over.

He said he could not help thinking of a passage in Dickens, which spoke

of a chorus in which every man took the tune he knew best, and sang it

to his own satisfaction. So, at this charitable committee, every lady

took the subject uppermost in her mind, and talked about it to her own

great contentment, but not much to the advancement of the subject they

had met to discuss. But even that committee could have been nothing to

the Cranford ladies when I attempted to gain some clear and definite

information as to poor Peter’s height, appearance, and when and where he

was seen and heard of last. For instance, I remember asking Miss Pole

(and I thought the question was very opportune, for I put it when I met

her at a call at Mrs. Forrester’s, and both the ladies had known Peter,

and I imagined that they might refresh each other’s memories)—I asked

Miss Pole what was the very last thing they had ever heard about him;

and then she named the absurd report to which I have alluded, about his

having been elected Great Lama of Thibet; and this was a signal for each

lady to go off on her separate idea. Mrs. Forrester’s start was made on

the veiled prophet in Lalla Rookh—whether I thought he was meant for the

Great Lama, though Peter was not so ugly, indeed rather handsome, if he

had not been freckled. I was thankful to see her double upon Peter; but,

in a moment, the delusive lady was off upon Rowlands’ Kalydor, and the

merits of cosmetics and hair oils in general, and holding forth so

fluently that I turned to listen to Miss Pole, who (through the llamas,

the beasts of burden) had got to Peruvian bonds, and the share market,

and her poor opinion of joint-stock banks in general, and of that one in

particular in which Miss Matty’s money was invested. In vain I put in

‘When was it—in what year was it that you heard that Mr. Peter was the

Great Lama?’ They only joined issue to dispute whether llamas were

carnivorous animals or not; in which dispute they were not quite on fair

grounds, as Mrs. Forrester (after they had grown warm and cool again)

acknowledged that she always confused carnivorous and graminivorous

together, just as she did horizontal and perpendicular; but then she

apologised for it very prettily, by saying that in her day the only use

people made of four-syllabled words was to teach how they should be

spelt.

The only fact I gained from this conversation was that certainly Peter

had last been heard of in India, ‘or that neighbourhood’; and that this

scanty intelligence of his whereabouts had reached Cranford in the year

when Miss Pole had bought her Indian muslin gown, long since worn out

(we washed it and mended it, and traced its decline and fall into a

window-blind, before we could go on); and in a year when Wombwell came

to Cranford, because Miss Matty had wanted to see an elephant in order

that she might the better imagine Peter riding on one; and had seen a

boa-constrictor too, which was more than she wished to imagine in her

fancy-pictures of Peter’s locality; and in a year when Miss Jenkyns had

learnt some piece of poetry off by heart, and used to say, at all the

Cranford parties, how Peter was ‘surveying mankind from China to Peru,’

which everybody had thought very grand, and rather appropriate, because

India was between China and Peru, if you took care to turn the globe to

the left instead of the right.

[Illustration: ‘_Miss Jenkyns used to say._’]

I suppose all these inquiries of mine, and the consequent curiosity

excited in the minds of my friends, made us blind and deaf to what was

going on around us. It seemed to me as if the sun rose and shone, and as

if the rain rained on Cranford, just as usual, and I did not notice any

sign of the times that could be considered as a prognostic of any

uncommon event; and, to the best of my belief, not only Miss Matty and

Mrs. Forrester, but even Miss Pole herself, whom we looked upon as a

kind of prophetess, from the knack she had of foreseeing things before

they came to pass—although she did not like to disturb her friends by

telling them her foreknowledge—even Miss Pole herself was breathless

with astonishment when she came to tell us of the astounding piece of

news. But I must recover myself; the contemplation of it, even at this

distance of time, has taken away my breath and my grammar, and unless I

subdue my emotion, my spelling will go too.

[Illustration: ‘_It was too big for words._’]

We were sitting—Miss Matty and I—much as usual, she in the blue chintz

easy-chair, with her back to the light, and her knitting in her hand, I

reading aloud the _St. James’s Chronicle_. A few minutes more, and we

should have gone to make the little alterations in dress usual before

calling-time (twelve o’clock) in Cranford. I remember the scene and the

date well. We had been talking of the signor’s rapid recovery since the

warmer weather had set in, and praising Mr. Hoggins’s skill, and

lamenting his want of refinement and manner (it seems a curious

coincidence that this should have been our subject, but so it was), when

a knock was heard—a caller’s knock—three distinct taps—and we were

flying (that is to say, Miss Matty could not walk very fast, having had

a touch of rheumatism) to our rooms, to change cap and collars, when

Miss Pole arrested us by calling out, as she came up the stairs, ‘Don’t

go—I can’t wait—it is not twelve, I know—but never mind your dress—I

must speak to you.’ We did our best to look as if it was not we who had

made the hurried movement, the sound of which she had heard; for, of

course, we did not like to have it supposed that we had any old clothes

that it was convenient to wear out in the ‘sanctuary of home,’ as Miss

Jenkyns once prettily called the back parlour, where she was tying up

preserves. So we threw our gentility with double force into our manners,

and very genteel we were for two minutes while Miss Pole recovered

breath, and excited our curiosity strongly by lifting up her hands in

amazement, and bringing them down in silence, as if what she had to say

was too big for words, and could only be expressed by pantomime.

‘What do you think, Miss Matty? What _do_ you think? Lady Glenmire is to

marry—is to be married, I mean—Lady Glenmire—Mr. Hoggins—Mr. Hoggins is

going to marry Lady Glenmire!’

‘Marry!’ said we. ‘Marry! Madness!’

‘Marry!’ said Miss Pole, with the decision that belonged to her

character. ‘_I_ said marry! as you do; and I also said, “What a fool my

lady is going to make of herself!” I could have said “Madness!” but I

controlled myself, for it was in a public shop that I heard of it. Where

feminine delicacy is gone to, I don’t know! You and I, Miss Matty, would

have been ashamed to have known that our marriage was spoken of in a

grocer’s shop, in the hearing of shopmen!’

‘But,’ said Miss Matty, sighing as one recovering from a blow, ‘perhaps

it is not true. Perhaps we are doing her injustice.’

‘No,’ said Miss Pole. ‘I have taken care to ascertain that. I went

straight to Mrs. Fitz-Adam, to borrow a cookery book which I knew she

had; and I introduced my congratulations _à propos_ of the difficulty

gentlemen must have in housekeeping; and Mrs. Fitz-Adam bridled up, and

said that she believed it was true, though how and where I could have

heard it she did not know. She said her brother and Lady Glenmire had

come to an understanding at last. “Understanding!” such a coarse word!

But my lady will have to come down to many a want of refinement. I have

reason to believe Mr. Hoggins sups on bread-and-cheese and beer every

night.’

‘Marry!’ said Miss Matty once again. ‘Well! I never thought of it. Two

people that we know going to be married. It’s coming very near!’

[Illustration: ‘_Bread and cheese_.’]

‘So near that my heart stopped beating, when I heard of it, while you

might have counted twelve,’ said Miss Pole.

‘One does not know whose turn may come next. Here, in Cranford, poor

Lady Glenmire might have thought herself safe,’ said Miss Matty, with a

gentle pity in her tones.

‘Bah!’ said Miss Pole, with a toss of her head. ‘Don’t you remember poor

dear Captain Brown’s song “Tibbie Fowler,” and the line—

“Set her on the Tintock Tap,

The wind will blaw a man till her.”’

‘That was because “Tibbie Fowler” was rich, I think.’

‘Well! there is a kind of attraction about Lady Glenmire that I, for

one, should be ashamed to have.’

I put in my wonder. ‘But how can she have fancied Mr. Hoggins? I am not

surprised that Mr. Hoggins has liked her.’

‘Oh! I don’t know. Mr. Hoggins is rich, and very pleasant-looking,’ said

Miss Matty, ‘and very good-tempered and kind-hearted.’

[Illustration: ‘_Lady Glenmire_.’]

‘She has married for an establishment, that’s it. I suppose she takes

the surgery with it,’ said Miss Pole, with a little dry laugh at her own

joke. But, like many people who think they have made a severe and

sarcastic speech, which yet is clever of its kind, she began to relax in

her grimness from the moment when she made this allusion to the surgery;

and we turned to speculate on the way in which Mrs. Jamieson would

receive the news. The person whom she had left in charge of her house to

keep off followers from her maids to set up a follower of her own! And

that follower a man whom Mrs. Jamieson had tabooed as vulgar, and

inadmissible to Cranford society, not merely on account of his name, but

because of his voice, his complexion, his boots, smelling of the stable,

and himself, smelling of drugs. Had he ever been to see Lady Glenmire at

Mrs. Jamieson’s? Chloride of lime would not purify the house in its

owner’s estimation if he had. Or had their interviews been confined to

the occasional meetings in the chamber of the poor sick conjuror, to

whom, with all our sense of the _mésalliance_, we could not help

allowing that they had both been exceedingly kind? And now it turned out

that a servant of Mrs. Jamieson’s had been ill, and Mr. Hoggins had been

attending her for some weeks. So the wolf had got into the fold, and now

he was carrying off the shepherdess. What would Mrs. Jamieson say? We

looked into the darkness of futurity as a child gazes after a rocket up

in the cloudy sky, full of wondering expectation of the rattle, the

discharge, and the brilliant shower of sparks and light. Then we brought

ourselves down to earth and the present time by questioning each other

(being all equally ignorant, and all equally without the slightest data

to build any conclusions upon) as to when IT would take place? Where?

How much a year Mr. Hoggins had? Whether she would drop her title? And

how Martha and the other correct servants in Cranford would ever be

brought to announce a married couple as Lady Glenmire and Mr. Hoggins?

But would they be visited? Would Mrs. Jamieson let us? Or must we choose

between the Honourable Mrs. Jamieson and the degraded Lady Glenmire? We

all liked Lady Glenmire the best. She was bright, and kind, and

sociable, and agreeable; and Mrs. Jamieson was dull, and inert, and

pompous, and tiresome. But we had acknowledged the sway of the latter so

long, that it seemed like a kind of disloyalty now even to meditate

disobedience to the prohibition we anticipated.

Mrs. Forrester surprised us in our darned caps and patched collars; and

we forgot all about them in our eagerness to see how she would bear the

information, which we honourably left to Miss Pole to impart, although,

if we had been inclined to take unfair advantage, we might have rushed

in ourselves, for she had a most out-of-place fit of coughing for five

minutes after Mrs. Forrester entered the room. I shall never forget the

imploring expression of her eyes as she looked at us over her

pocket-handkerchief. They said as plain as words could speak, ‘Don’t let

nature deprive me of the treasure which is mine, although for a time I

can make no use of it.’ And we did not.

Mrs. Forrester’s surprise was equal to ours; and her sense of injury

rather greater, because she had to feel for her Order, and saw more

fully than we could do how such conduct brought stains on the

aristocracy.

When she and Miss Pole left us we endeavoured to subside into calmness;

but Miss Matty was really upset by the intelligence she had heard. She

reckoned it up, and it was more than fifteen years since she had heard

of any of her acquaintance going to be married, with the one exception

of Miss Jessie Brown; and, as she said, it gave her quite a shock, and

made her feel as if she could not think what would happen next.

I don’t know whether it is a fancy of mine, or a real fact, but I have

noticed that, just after the announcement of an engagement in any set,

the unmarried ladies in that set flutter out in an unusual gaiety and

newness of dress, as much as to say, in a tacit and unconscious manner,

‘We also are spinsters.’ Miss Matty and Miss Pole talked and thought

more about bonnets, gowns, caps, and shawls, during the fortnight that

succeeded this call, than I had known them do for years before. But it

might be the spring weather, for it was a warm and pleasant March; and

merinoes and beavers, and woollen materials of all sorts were but

ungracious receptacles of the bright sun’s glancing rays. It had not

been Lady Glenmire’s dress that had won Mr. Hoggins’s heart, for she

went about on her errands of kindness more shabby than ever. Although in

the hurried glimpses I caught of her at church or elsewhere she appeared

rather to shun meeting any of her friends, her face seemed to have

almost something of the flush of youth in it; her lips looked redder and

more trembling full than in their old compressed state, and her eyes

dwelt on all things with a lingering light, as if she was learning to

love Cranford and its belongings. Mr. Hoggins looked broad and radiant,

and creaked up the middle aisle at church in a bran-new pair of

top-boots—an audible, as well as visible, sign of his purposed change of

state; for the tradition went, that the boots he had worn till now were

the identical pair in which he first set out on his rounds in Cranford

twenty-five years ago; only they had been new-pieced, high and low, top

and bottom, heel and sole, black leather and brown leather, more times

than any one could tell.

[Illustration: ‘_Mr Hoggins looked radiant._’]

None of the ladies in Cranford chose to sanction the marriage by

congratulating either of the parties. We wished to ignore the whole

affair until our liege lady, Mrs. Jamieson, returned. Till she came back

to give us our cue, we felt that it would be better to consider the

engagement in the same light as the Queen of Spain’s legs—facts which

certainly existed, but the less said about the better. This restraint

upon our tongues—for you see if we did not speak about it to any of the

parties concerned, how could we get answers to the questions that we

longed to ask?—was beginning to be irksome, and our idea of the dignity

of silence was paling before our curiosity, when another direction was

given to our thoughts, by an announcement on the part of the principal

shopkeeper of Cranford, who ranged the trades from grocer and

cheesemonger to man-milliner, as occasion required, that the Spring

Fashions were arrived, and would be exhibited on the following Tuesday

at his rooms in High Street. Now Miss Matty had been only waiting for

this before buying herself a new silk gown. I had offered, it is true,

to send to Drumble for patterns, but she had rejected my proposal,

gently implying that she had not forgotten her disappointment about the

sea-green turban. I was thankful that I was on the spot now, to

counteract the dazzling fascination of any yellow or scarlet silk.

I must say a word or two here about myself. I have spoken of my father’s

old friendship for the Jenkyns family; indeed, I am not sure if there

was not some distant relationship. He had willingly allowed me to remain

all the winter at Cranford, in consideration of a letter which Miss

Matty had written to him about the time of the panic, in which I suspect

she had exaggerated my powers and my bravery as a defender of the house.

But now that the days were longer and more cheerful, he was beginning to

urge the necessity of my return; and I only delayed in a sort of odd

forlorn hope that if I could obtain any clear information, I might make

the account given by the signora of the Aga Jenkyns tally with that of

‘poor Peter,’ his appearance and disappearance, which I had winnowed out

of the conversation of Miss Pole and Mrs. Forrester.

[Illustration: Chapter 12: tailpiece]

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

[Illustration: Chapter 13: Stopped Payment]

The very Tuesday morning on which Mr. Johnson was going to show the

fashions, the post-woman brought two letters to the house. I say the

post-woman, but I should say the postman’s wife. He was a lame

shoemaker, a very clean, honest man, much respected in the town; but he

never brought the letters round except on unusual occasions, such as

Christmas Day or Good Friday; and on those days the letters, which

should have been delivered at eight in the morning, did not make their

appearance until two or three in the afternoon, for every one liked poor

Thomas, and gave him a welcome on these festive occasions. He used to

say, ‘He was welly stawed wi’ eating, for there were three or four

houses where nowt would serve ’em but he must share in their breakfast’;

and by the time he had done his last breakfast, he came to some other

friend who was beginning dinner; but come what might in the way of

temptation, Tom was always sober, civil, and smiling; and, as Miss

Jenkyns used to say, it was a lesson in patience, that she doubted not

would call out that precious quality in some minds, where, but for

Thomas, it might have lain dormant and undiscovered. Patience was

certainly very dormant in Miss Jenkyns’s mind. She was always expecting

letters, and always drumming on the table till the post-woman had called

or gone past. On Christmas day and Good Friday she drummed from

breakfast till church, from church-time till two-o’clock—unless when the

fire wanted stirring, when she invariably knocked down the fire-irons,

and scolded Miss Matty for it. But equally certain was the hearty

welcome and the good dinner for Thomas; Miss Jenkyns standing over him

like a bold dragoon, questioning him as to his children—what they were

doing—what school they went to; upbraiding him if another was likely to

make its appearance, but sending even the little babies the shilling and

the mince-pie which was her gift to all the children, with half-a-crown

in addition for both father and mother. The post was not half of so much

consequence to dear Miss Matty; but not for the world would she have

diminished Thomas’s welcome and his dole, though I could see that she

felt rather shy over the ceremony, which had been regarded by Miss

Jenkyns as a glorious opportunity for giving advice and benefiting her

fellow-creatures. Miss Matty would steal the money all in a lump into

his hand, as if she were ashamed of herself. Miss Jenkyns gave him each

individual coin separate, with a ‘There! that’s for yourself; that’s for

Jenny,’ etc. Miss Matty would even beckon Martha out of the kitchen

while he ate his food; and once, to my knowledge, winked at its rapid

disappearance into a blue cotton pocket-handkerchief. Miss Jenkyns

almost scolded him if he did not leave a clean plate, however heaped it

might have been, and gave an injunction with every mouthful.

[Illustration: ‘_Each individual coin._’]