Cranford

E >> Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell >> Cranford

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He endeavoured to make peace with Miss Jenkyns soon after the
memorable dispute I have named, by a present of a wooden fire-
shovel (his own making), having heard her say how much the grating
of an iron one annoyed her. She received the present with cool
gratitude, and thanked him formally. When he was gone, she bade me
put it away in the lumber-room; feeling, probably, that no present
from a man who preferred Mr Boz to Dr Johnson could be less jarring
than an iron fire-shovel.

Such was the state of things when I left Cranford and went to
Drumble. I had, however, several correspondents, who kept me au
fait as to the proceedings of the dear little town. There was Miss
Pole, who was becoming as much absorbed in crochet as she had been
once in knitting, and the burden of whose letter was something
like, "But don't you forget the white worsted at Flint's" of the
old song; for at the end of every sentence of news came a fresh
direction as to some crochet commission which I was to execute for
her. Miss Matilda Jenkyns (who did not mind being called Miss
Matty, when Miss Jenkyns was not by) wrote nice, kind, rambling
letters, now and then venturing into an opinion of her own; but
suddenly pulling herself up, and either begging me not to name what
she had said, as Deborah thought differently, and SHE knew, or else
putting in a postscript to the effect that, since writing the
above, she had been talking over the subject with Deborah, and was
quite convinced that, etc.--(here probably followed a recantation
of every opinion she had given in the letter). Then came Miss
Jenkyns--Deborah, as she liked Miss Matty to call her, her father
having once said that the Hebrew name ought to be so pronounced. I
secretly think she took the Hebrew prophetess for a model in
character; and, indeed, she was not unlike the stern prophetess in
some ways, making allowance, of course, for modern customs and
difference in dress. Miss Jenkyns wore a cravat, and a little
bonnet like a jockey-cap, and altogether had the appearance of a
strong-minded woman; although she would have despised the modern
idea of women being equal to men. Equal, indeed! she knew they
were superior. But to return to her letters. Everything in them
was stately and grand like herself. I have been looking them over
(dear Miss Jenkyns, how I honoured her!) and I will give an
extract, more especially because it relates to our friend Captain
Brown:-

"The Honourable Mrs Jamieson has only just quitted me; and, in the
course of conversation, she communicated to me the intelligence
that she had yesterday received a call from her revered husband's
quondam friend, Lord Mauleverer. You will not easily conjecture
what brought his lordship within the precincts of our little town.
It was to see Captain Brown, with whom, it appears, his lordship
was acquainted in the 'plumed wars,' and who had the privilege of
averting destruction from his lordship's head when some great peril
was impending over it, off the misnomered Cape of Good Hope. You
know our friend the Honourable Mrs Jamieson's deficiency in the
spirit of innocent curiosity, and you will therefore not be so much
surprised when I tell you she was quite unable to disclose to me
the exact nature of the peril in question. I was anxious, I
confess, to ascertain in what manner Captain Brown, with his
limited establishment, could receive so distinguished a guest; and
I discovered that his lordship retired to rest, and, let us hope,
to refreshing slumbers, at the Angel Hotel; but shared the
Brunonian meals during the two days that he honoured Cranford with
his august presence. Mrs Johnson, our civil butcher's wife,
informs me that Miss Jessie purchased a leg of lamb; but, besides
this, I can hear of no preparation whatever to give a suitable
reception to so distinguished a visitor. Perhaps they entertained
him with 'the feast of reason and the flow of soul'; and to us, who
are acquainted with Captain Brown's sad want of relish for 'the
pure wells of English undefiled,' it may be matter for
congratulation that he has had the opportunity of improving his
taste by holding converse with an elegant and refined member of the
British aristocracy. But from some mundane failings who is
altogether free?"

Miss Pole and Miss Matty wrote to me by the same post. Such a
piece of news as Lord Mauleverer's visit was not to be lost on the
Cranford letter-writers: they made the most of it. Miss Matty
humbly apologised for writing at the same time as her sister, who
was so much more capable than she to describe the honour done to
Cranford; but in spite of a little bad spelling, Miss Matty's
account gave me the best idea of the commotion occasioned by his
lordship's visit, after it had occurred; for, except the people at
the Angel, the Browns, Mrs Jamieson, and a little lad his lordship
had sworn at for driving a dirty hoop against the aristocratic
legs, I could not hear of any one with whom his lordship had held
conversation.

My next visit to Cranford was in the summer. There had been
neither births, deaths, nor marriages since I was there last.
Everybody lived in the same house, and wore pretty nearly the same
well-preserved, old-fashioned clothes. The greatest event was,
that Miss Jenkyns had purchased a new carpet for the drawing-room.
Oh, the busy work Miss Matty and I had in chasing the sunbeams, as
they fell in an afternoon right down on this carpet through the
blindless window! We spread newspapers over the places and sat
down to our book or our work; and, lo! in a quarter of an hour the
sun had moved, and was blazing away on a fresh spot; and down again
we went on our knees to alter the position of the newspapers. We
were very busy, too, one whole morning, before Miss Jenkyns gave
her party, in following her directions, and in cutting out and
stitching together pieces of newspaper so as to form little paths
to every chair set for the expected visitors, lest their shoes
might dirty or defile the purity of the carpet. Do you make paper
paths for every guest to walk upon in London?

Captain Brown and Miss Jenkyns were not very cordial to each other.
The literary dispute, of which I had seen the beginning, was a
"raw," the slightest touch on which made them wince. It was the
only difference of opinion they had ever had; but that difference
was enough. Miss Jenkyns could not refrain from talking at Captain
Brown; and, though he did not reply, he drummed with his fingers,
which action she felt and resented as very disparaging to Dr
Johnson. He was rather ostentatious in his preference of the
writings of Mr Boz; would walk through the streets so absorbed in
them that he all but ran against Miss Jenkyns; and though his
apologies were earnest and sincere, and though he did not, in fact,
do more than startle her and himself, she owned to me she had
rather he had knocked her down, if he had only been reading a
higher style of literature. The poor, brave Captain! he looked
older, and more worn, and his clothes were very threadbare. But he
seemed as bright and cheerful as ever, unless he was asked about
his daughter's health.

"She suffers a great deal, and she must suffer more: we do what we
can to alleviate her pain;--God's will be done!" He took off his
hat at these last words. I found, from Miss Matty, that everything
had been done, in fact. A medical man, of high repute in that
country neighbourhood, had been sent for, and every injunction he
had given was attended to, regardless of expense. Miss Matty was
sure they denied themselves many things in order to make the
invalid comfortable; but they never spoke about it; and as for Miss
Jessie!--"I really think she's an angel," said poor Miss Matty,
quite overcome. "To see her way of bearing with Miss Brown's
crossness, and the bright face she puts on after she's been sitting
up a whole night and scolded above half of it, is quite beautiful.
Yet she looks as neat and as ready to welcome the Captain at
breakfast-time as if she had been asleep in the Queen's bed all
night. My dear! you could never laugh at her prim little curls or
her pink bows again if you saw her as I have done." I could only
feel very penitent, and greet Miss Jessie with double respect when
I met her next. She looked faded and pinched; and her lips began
to quiver, as if she was very weak, when she spoke of her sister.
But she brightened, and sent back the tears that were glittering in
her pretty eyes, as she said -

"But, to be sure, what a town Cranford is for kindness! I don't
suppose any one has a better dinner than usual cooked but the best
part of all comes in a little covered basin for my sister. The
poor people will leave their earliest vegetables at our door for
her. They speak short and gruff, as if they were ashamed of it:
but I am sure it often goes to my heart to see their
thoughtfulness." The tears now came back and overflowed; but after
a minute or two she began to scold herself, and ended by going away
the same cheerful Miss Jessie as ever.

"But why does not this Lord Mauleverer do something for the man who
saved his life?" said I.

"Why, you see, unless Captain Brown has some reason for it, he
never speaks about being poor; and he walked along by his lordship
looking as happy and cheerful as a prince; and as they never called
attention to their dinner by apologies, and as Miss Brown was
better that day, and all seemed bright, I daresay his lordship
never knew how much care there was in the background. He did send
game in the winter pretty often, but now he is gone abroad."

I had often occasion to notice the use that was made of fragments
and small opportunities in Cranford; the rose-leaves that were
gathered ere they fell to make into a potpourri for someone who had
no garden; the little bundles of lavender flowers sent to strew the
drawers of some town-dweller, or to burn in the chamber of some
invalid. Things that many would despise, and actions which it
seemed scarcely worth while to perform, were all attended to in
Cranford. Miss Jenkyns stuck an apple full of cloves, to be heated
and smell pleasantly in Miss Brown's room; and as she put in each
clove she uttered a Johnsonian sentence. Indeed, she never could
think of the Browns without talking Johnson; and, as they were
seldom absent from her thoughts just then, I heard many a rolling,
three-piled sentence.

Captain Brown called one day to thank Mist Jenkyns for many little
kindnesses, which I did not know until then that she had rendered.
He had suddenly become like an old man; his deep bass voice had a
quavering in it, his eyes looked dim, and the lines on his face
were deep. He did not--could not--speak cheerfully of his
daughter's state, but he talked with manly, pious resignation, and
not much. Twice over he said, "What Jessie has been to us, God
only knows!" and after the second time, he got up hastily, shook
hands all round without speaking, and left the room.

That afternoon we perceived little groups in the street, all
listening with faces aghast to some tale or other. Miss Jenkyns
wondered what could be the matter for some time before she took the
undignified step of sending Jenny out to inquire.

Jenny came back with a white face of terror. "Oh, ma'am! Oh, Miss
Jenkyns, ma'am! Captain Brown is killed by them nasty cruel
railroads!" and she burst into tears. She, along with many others,
had experienced the poor Captain's kindness.

"How?--where--where? Good God! Jenny, don't waste time in crying,
but tell us something." Miss Matty rushed out into the street at
once, and collared the man who was telling the tale.

"Come in--come to my sister at once, Miss Jenkyns, the rector's
daughter. Oh, man, man! say it is not true," she cried, as she
brought the affrighted carter, sleeking down his hair, into the
drawing-room, where he stood with his wet boots on the new carpet,
and no one regarded it.

"Please, mum, it is true. I seed it myself," and he shuddered at
the recollection. "The Captain was a-reading some new book as he
was deep in, a-waiting for the down train; and there was a little
lass as wanted to come to its mammy, and gave its sister the slip,
and came toddling across the line. And he looked up sudden, at the
sound of the train coming, and seed the child, and he darted on the
line and cotched it up, and his foot slipped, and the train came
over him in no time. O Lord, Lord! Mum, it's quite true, and
they've come over to tell his daughters. The child's safe, though,
with only a bang on its shoulder as he threw it to its mammy. Poor
Captain would be glad of that, mum, wouldn't he? God bless him!"
The great rough carter puckered up his manly face, and turned away
to hide his tears. I turned to Miss Jenkyns. She looked very ill,
as if she were going to faint, and signed to me to open the window.

"Matilda, bring me my bonnet. I must go to those girls. God
pardon me, if ever I have spoken contemptuously to the Captain!"

Miss Jenkyns arrayed herself to go out, telling Miss Matilda to
give the man a glass of wine. While she was away, Miss Matty and I
huddled over the fire, talking in a low and awe-struck voice. I
know we cried quietly all the time.

Miss Jenkyns came home in a silent mood, and we durst not ask her
many questions. She told us that Miss Jessie had fainted, and that
she and Miss Pole had had some difficulty in bringing her round;
but that, as soon as she recovered, she begged one of them to go
and sit with her sister.

"Mr Hoggins says she cannot live many days, and she shall be spared
this shock," said Miss Jessie, shivering with feelings to which she
dared not give way.

"But how can you manage, my dear?" asked Miss Jenkyns; "you cannot
bear up, she must see your tears."

"God will help me--I will not give way--she was asleep when the
news came; she may be asleep yet. She would be so utterly
miserable, not merely at my father's death, but to think of what
would become of me; she is so good to me." She looked up earnestly
in their faces with her soft true eyes, and Miss Pole told Miss
Jenkyns afterwards she could hardly bear it, knowing, as she did,
how Miss Brown treated her sister.

However, it was settled according to Miss Jessie's wish. Miss
Brown was to be told her father had been summoned to take a short
journey on railway business. They had managed it in some way--Miss
Jenkyns could not exactly say how. Miss Pole was to stop with Miss
Jessie. Mrs Jamieson had sent to inquire. And this was all we
heard that night; and a sorrowful night it was. The next day a
full account of the fatal accident was in the county paper which
Miss Jenkyns took in. Her eyes were very weak, she said, and she
asked me to read it. When I came to the "gallant gentleman was
deeply engaged in the perusal of a number of 'Pickwick,' which he
had just received," Miss Jenkyns shook her head long and solemnly,
and then sighed out, "Poor, dear, infatuated man!"

The corpse was to be taken from the station to the parish church,
there to be interred. Miss Jessie had set her heart on following
it to the grave; and no dissuasives could alter her resolve. Her
restraint upon herself made her almost obstinate; she resisted all
Miss Pole's entreaties and Miss Jenkyns' advice. At last Miss
Jenkyns gave up the point; and after a silence, which I feared
portended some deep displeasure against Miss Jessie, Miss Jenkyns
said she should accompany the latter to the funeral.

"It is not fit for you to go alone. It would be against both
propriety and humanity were I to allow it."

Miss Jessie seemed as if she did not half like this arrangement;
but her obstinacy, if she had any, had been exhausted in her
determination to go to the interment. She longed, poor thing, I
have no doubt, to cry alone over the grave of the dear father to
whom she had been all in all, and to give way, for one little half-
hour, uninterrupted by sympathy and unobserved by friendship. But
it was not to be. That afternoon Miss Jenkyns sent out for a yard
of black crape, and employed herself busily in trimming the little
black silk bonnet I have spoken about. When it was finished she
put it on, and looked at us for approbation--admiration she
despised. I was full of sorrow, but, by one of those whimsical
thoughts which come unbidden into our heads, in times of deepest
grief, I no sooner saw the bonnet than I was reminded of a helmet;
and in that hybrid bonnet, half helmet, half jockey-cap, did Miss
Jenkyns attend Captain Brown's funeral, and, I believe, supported
Miss Jessie with a tender, indulgent firmness which was invaluable,
allowing her to weep her passionate fill before they left.

Miss Pole, Miss Matty, and I, meanwhile attended to Miss Brown:
and hard work we found it to relieve her querulous and never-ending
complaints. But if we were so weary and dispirited, what must Miss
Jessie have been! Yet she came back almost calm as if she had
gained a new strength. She put off her mourning dress, and came
in, looking pale and gentle, thanking us each with a soft long
pressure of the hand. She could even smile--a faint, sweet, wintry
smile--as if to reassure us of her power to endure; but her look
made our eyes fill suddenly with tears, more than if she had cried
outright.

It was settled that Miss Pole was to remain with her all the
watching livelong night; and that Miss Matty and I were to return
in the morning to relieve them, and give Miss Jessie the
opportunity for a few hours of sleep. But when the morning came,
Miss Jenkyns appeared at the breakfast-table, equipped in her
helmet-bonnet, and ordered Miss Matty to stay at home, as she meant
to go and help to nurse. She was evidently in a state of great
friendly excitement, which she showed by eating her breakfast
standing, and scolding the household all round.

No nursing--no energetic strong-minded woman could help Miss Brown
now. There was that in the room as we entered which was stronger
than us all, and made us shrink into solemn awestruck helplessness.
Miss Brown was dying. We hardly knew her voice, it was so devoid
of the complaining tone we had always associated with it. Miss
Jessie told me afterwards that it, and her face too, were just what
they had been formerly, when her mother's death left her the young
anxious head of the family, of whom only Miss Jessie survived.

She was conscious of her sister's presence, though not, I think, of
ours. We stood a little behind the curtain: Miss Jessie knelt
with her face near her sister's, in order to catch the last soft
awful whispers.

"Oh, Jessie! Jessie! How selfish I have been! God forgive me for
letting you sacrifice yourself for me as you did! I have so loved
you--and yet I have thought only of myself. God forgive me!"

"Hush, love! hush!" said Miss Jessie, sobbing.

"And my father, my dear, dear father! I will not complain now, if
God will give me strength to be patient. But, oh, Jessie! tell my
father how I longed and yearned to see him at last, and to ask his
forgiveness. He can never know now how I loved him--oh! if I might
but tell him, before I die! What a life of sorrow his has been,
and I have done so little to cheer him!"

A light came into Miss Jessie's face. "Would it comfort you,
dearest, to think that he does know?--would it comfort you, love,
to know that his cares, his sorrows"--Her voice quivered, but she
steadied it into calmness--"Mary! he has gone before you to the
place where the weary are at rest. He knows now how you loved
him."

A strange look, which was not distress, came over Miss Brown's
face. She did not speak for come time, but then we saw her lips
form the words, rather than heard the sound--"Father, mother,
Harry, Archy;"--then, as if it were a new idea throwing a filmy
shadow over her darkened mind--"But you will be alone, Jessie!"

Miss Jessie had been feeling this all during the silence, I think;
for the tears rolled down her cheeks like rain, at these words, and
she could not answer at first. Then she put her hands together
tight, and lifted them up, and said--but not to us--"Though He slay
me, yet will I trust in Him."

In a few moments more Miss Brown lay calm and still--never to
sorrow or murmur more.

After this second funeral, Miss Jenkyns insisted that Miss Jessie
should come to stay with her rather than go back to the desolate
house, which, in fact, we learned from Miss Jessie, must now be
given up, as she had not wherewithal to maintain it. She had
something above twenty pounds a year, besides the interest of the
money for which the furniture would sell; but she could not live
upon that: and so we talked over her qualifications for earning
money.

"I can sew neatly," said she, "and I like nursing. I think, too, I
could manage a house, if any one would try me as housekeeper; or I
would go into a shop as saleswoman, if they would have patience
with me at first."

Miss Jenkyns declared, in an angry voice, that she should do no
such thing; and talked to herself about "some people having no idea
of their rank as a captain's daughter," nearly an hour afterwards,
when she brought Miss Jessie up a basin of delicately-made
arrowroot, and stood over her like a dragoon until the last
spoonful was finished: then she disappeared. Miss Jessie began to
tell me some more of the plans which had suggested themselves to
her, and insensibly fell into talking of the days that were past
and gone, and interested me so much I neither knew nor heeded how
time passed. We were both startled when Miss Jenkyns reappeared,
and caught us crying. I was afraid lest she would be displeased,
as she often said that crying hindered digestion, and I knew she
wanted Miss Jessie to get strong; but, instead, she looked queer
and excited, and fidgeted round us without saying anything. At
last she spoke.

"I have been so much startled--no, I've not been at all startled--
don't mind me, my dear Miss Jessie--I've been very much surprised--
in fact, I've had a caller, whom you knew once, my dear Miss
Jessie" -

Miss Jessie went very white, then flushed scarlet, and looked
eagerly at Miss Jenkyns.

"A gentleman, my dear, who wants to know if you would see him."

"Is it?--it is not"--stammered out Miss Jessie--and got no farther.

"This is his card," said Miss Jenkyns, giving it to Miss Jessie;
and while her head was bent over it, Miss Jenkyns went through a
series of winks and odd faces to me, and formed her lips into a
long sentence, of which, of course, I could not understand a word.

"May he come up?" asked Miss Jenkyns at last.

"Oh, yes! certainly!" said Miss Jessie, as much as to say, this is
your house, you may show any visitor where you like. She took up
some knitting of Miss Matty's and began to be very busy, though I
could see how she trembled all over.

Miss Jenkyns rang the bell, and told the servant who answered it to
show Major Gordon upstairs; and, presently, in walked a tall, fine,
frank-looking man of forty or upwards. He shook hands with Miss
Jessie; but he could not see her eyes, she kept them so fixed on
the ground. Miss Jenkyns asked me if I would come and help her to
tie up the preserves in the store-room; and though Miss Jessie
plucked at my gown, and even looked up at me with begging eye, I
durst not refuse to go where Miss Jenkyns asked. Instead of tying
up preserves in the store-room, however, we went to talk in the
dining-room; and there Miss Jenkyns told me what Major Gordon had
told her; how he had served in the same regiment with Captain
Brown, and had become acquainted with Miss Jessie, then a sweet-
looking, blooming girl of eighteen; how the acquaintance had grown
into love on his part, though it had been some years before he had
spoken; how, on becoming possessed, through the will of an uncle,
of a good estate in Scotland, he had offered and been refused,
though with so much agitation and evident distress that he was sure
she was not indifferent to him; and how he had discovered that the
obstacle was the fell disease which was, even then, too surely
threatening her sister. She had mentioned that the surgeons
foretold intense suffering; and there was no one but herself to
nurse her poor Mary, or cheer and comfort her father during the
time of illness. They had had long discussions; and on her refusal
to pledge herself to him as his wife when all should be over, he
had grown angry, and broken off entirely, and gone abroad,
believing that she was a cold-hearted person whom he would do well
to forget.

He had been travelling in the East, and was on his return home
when, at Rome, he saw the account of Captain Brown's death in
Galignani.

Just then Miss Matty, who had been out all the morning, and had
only lately returned to the house, burst in with a face of dismay
and outraged propriety.

"Oh, goodness me!" she said. "Deborah, there's a gentleman sitting
in the drawing-room with his arm round Miss Jessie's waist!" Miss
Matty's eyes looked large with terror.

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