Cranford

E >> Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell >> Cranford

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"Ah!" he said, "we farmers ought not to have much time for reading;
yet somehow one can't help it."

"What a pretty room!" said Miss Matty, sotto voce.

"What a pleasant place!" said I, aloud, almost simultaneously.

"Nay! if you like it," replied he; "but can you sit on these great,
black leather, three-cornered chairs? I like it better than the
best parlour; but I thought ladies would take that for the smarter
place."

It was the smarter place, but, like most smart things, not at all
pretty, or pleasant, or home-like; so, while we were at dinner, the
servant-girl dusted and scrubbed the counting-house chairs, and we
sat there all the rest of the day.

We had pudding before meat; and I thought Mr Holbrook was going to
make some apology for his old-fashioned ways, for he began -

"I don't know whether you like newfangled ways."

"Oh, not at all!" said Miss Matty.

"No more do I," said he. "My house-keeper WILL have these in her
new fashion; or else I tell her that, when I was a young man, we
used to keep strictly to my father's rule, 'No broth, no ball; no
ball, no beef'; and always began dinner with broth. Then we had
suet puddings, boiled in the broth with the beef: and then the
meat itself. If we did not sup our broth, we had no ball, which we
liked a deal better; and the beef came last of all, and only those
had it who had done justice to the broth and the ball. Now folks
begin with sweet things, and turn their dinners topsy-turvy."

When the ducks and green peas came, we looked at each other in
dismay; we had only two-pronged, black-handled forks. It is true
the steel was as bright as silver; but what were we to do? Miss
Matty picked up her peas, one by one, on the point of the prongs,
much as Amine ate her grains of rice after her previous feast with
the Ghoul. Miss Pole sighed over her delicate young peas as she
left them on one side of her plate untasted, for they WOULD drop
between the prongs. I looked at my host: the peas were going
wholesale into his capacious mouth, shovelled up by his large
round-ended knife. I saw, I imitated, I survived! My friends, in
spite of my precedent, could not muster up courage enough to do an
ungenteel thing; and, if Mr Holbrook had not been so heartily
hungry, he would probably have seen that the good peas went away
almost untouched.

After dinner, a clay pipe was brought in, and a spittoon; and,
asking us to retire to another room, where he would soon join us,
if we disliked tobacco-smoke, he presented his pipe to Miss Matty,
and requested her to fill the bowl. This was a compliment to a
lady in his youth; but it was rather inappropriate to propose it as
an honour to Miss Matty, who had been trained by her sister to hold
smoking of every kind in utter abhorrence. But if it was a shock
to her refinement, it was also a gratification to her feelings to
be thus selected; so she daintily stuffed the strong tobacco into
the pipe, and then we withdrew.

"It is very pleasant dining with a bachelor," said Miss Matty
softly, as we settled ourselves in the counting-house. "I only
hope it is not improper; so many pleasant things are!"

"What a number of books he has!" said Miss Pole, looking round the
room. "And how dusty they are!"

"I think it must be like one of the great Dr Johnson's rooms," said
Miss Matty. "What a superior man your cousin must be!"

"Yes!" said Miss Pole, "he's a great reader; but I am afraid he has
got into very uncouth habits with living alone."

"Oh! uncouth is too hard a word. I should call him eccentric; very
clever people always are!" replied Miss Matty.

When Mr Holbrook returned, he proposed a walk in the fields; but
the two elder ladies were afraid of damp, and dirt, and had only
very unbecoming calashes to put on over their caps; so they
declined, and I was again his companion in a turn which he said he
was obliged to take to see after his men. He strode along, either
wholly forgetting my existence, or soothed into silence by his
pipe--and yet it was not silence exactly. He walked before me with
a stooping gait, his hands clasped behind him; and, as some tree or
cloud, or glimpse of distant upland pastures, struck him, he quoted
poetry to himself, saying it out loud in a grand sonorous voice,
with just the emphasis that true feeling and appreciation give. We
came upon an old cedar tree, which stood at one end of the house -

"The cedar spreads his dark-green layers of shade."

"Capital term--'layers!' Wonderful man!" I did not know whether
he was speaking to me or not; but I put in an assenting
"wonderful," although I knew nothing about it, just because I was
tired of being forgotten, and of being consequently silent.

He turned sharp round. "Ay! you may say 'wonderful.' Why, when I
saw the review of his poems in Blackwood, I set off within an hour,
and walked seven miles to Misselton (for the horses were not in the
way) and ordered them. Now, what colour are ash-buds in March?"

Is the man going mad? thought I. He is very like Don Quixote.

"What colour are they, I say?" repeated he vehemently.

"I am sure I don't know, sir," said I, with the meekness of
ignorance.

"I knew you didn't. No more did I--an old fool that I am!--till
this young man comes and tells me. Black as ash-buds in March.
And I've lived all my life in the country; more shame for me not to
know. Black: they are jet-black, madam." And he went off again,
swinging along to the music of some rhyme he had got hold of.

When we came back, nothing would serve him but he must read us the
poems he had been speaking of; and Miss Pole encouraged him in his
proposal, I thought, because she wished me to hear his beautiful
reading, of which she had boasted; but she afterwards said it was
because she had got to a difficult part of her crochet, and wanted
to count her stitches without having to talk. Whatever he had
proposed would have been right to Miss Matty; although she did fall
sound asleep within five minutes after he had begun a long poem,
called "Locksley Hall," and had a comfortable nap, unobserved, till
he ended; when the cessation of his voice wakened her up, and she
said, feeling that something was expected, and that Miss Pole was
counting -

"What a pretty book!"

"Pretty, madam! it's beautiful! Pretty, indeed!"

"Oh yes! I meant beautiful" said she, fluttered at his disapproval
of her word. "It is so like that beautiful poem of Dr Johnson's my
sister used to read--I forget the name of it; what was it, my
dear?" turning to me.

"Which do you mean, ma'am? What was it about?"

"I don't remember what it was about, and I've quite forgotten what
the name of it was; but it was written by Dr Johnson, and was very
beautiful, and very like what Mr Holbrook has just been reading."

"I don't remember it," said he reflectively. "But I don't know Dr
Johnson's poems well. I must read them."

As we were getting into the fly to return, I heard Mr Holbrook say
he should call on the ladies soon, and inquire how they got home;
and this evidently pleased and fluttered Miss Matty at the time he
said it; but after we had lost sight of the old house among the
trees her sentiments towards the master of it were gradually
absorbed into a distressing wonder as to whether Martha had broken
her word, and seized on the opportunity of her mistress's absence
to have a "follower." Martha looked good, and steady, and composed
enough, as she came to help us out; she was always careful of Miss
Matty, and to-night she made use of this unlucky speech -

"Eh! dear ma'am, to think of your going out in an evening in such a
thin shawl! It's no better than muslin. At your age, ma'am, you
should be careful."

"My age!" said Miss Matty, almost speaking crossly, for her, for
she was usually gentle--"My age! Why, how old do you think I am,
that you talk about my age?"

"Well, ma'am, I should say you were not far short of sixty: but
folks' looks is often against them--and I'm sure I meant no harm."

"Martha, I'm not yet fifty-two!" said Miss Matty, with grave
emphasis; for probably the remembrance of her youth had come very
vividly before her this day, and she was annoyed at finding that
golden time so far away in the past.

But she never spoke of any former and more intimate acquaintance
with Mr Holbrook. She had probably met with so little sympathy in
her early love, that she had shut it up close in her heart; and it
was only by a sort of watching, which I could hardly avoid since
Miss Pole's confidence, that I saw how faithful her poor heart had
been in its sorrow and its silence.

She gave me some good reason for wearing her best cap every day,
and sat near the window, in spite of her rheumatism, in order to
see, without being seen, down into the street.

He came. He put his open palms upon his knees, which were far
apart, as he sat with his head bent down, whistling, after we had
replied to his inquiries about our safe return. Suddenly he jumped
up -

"Well, madam! have you any commands for Paris? I am going there in
a week or two."

"To Paris!" we both exclaimed.

"Yes, madam! I've never been there, and always had a wish to go;
and I think if I don't go soon, I mayn't go at all; so as soon as
the hay is got in I shall go, before harvest time."

We were so much astonished that we had no commissions.

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

"God bless my soul, madam! but I nearly forgot half my errand.
Here are the poems for you you admired so much the other evening at
my house." He tugged away at a parcel in his coat-pocket. "Good-
bye, miss," said he; "good-bye, Matty! take care of yourself." And
he was gone.

But he had given her a book, and he had called her Matty, just as
he used to do thirty years to.

"I wish he would not go to Paris," said Miss Matilda anxiously. "I
don't believe frogs will agree with him; he used to have to be very
careful what he ate, which was curious in so strong-looking a young
man."

Soon after this I took my leave, giving many an injunction to
Martha to look after her mistress, and to let me know if she
thought that Miss Matilda was not so well; in which case I would
volunteer a visit to my old friend, without noticing Martha's
intelligence to her.

Accordingly I received a line or two from Martha every now and
then; and, about November I had a note to say her mistress was
"very low and sadly off her food"; and the account made me so
uneasy that, although Martha did not decidedly summon me, I packed
up my things and went.

I received a warm welcome, in spite of the little flurry produced
by my impromptu visit, for I had only been able to give a day's
notice. Miss Matilda looked miserably ill; and I prepared to
comfort and cosset her.

I went down to have a private talk with Martha.

"How long has your mistress been so poorly?" I asked, as I stood by
the kitchen fire.

"Well! I think its better than a fortnight; it is, I know; it was
one Tuesday, after Miss Pole had been, that she went into this
moping way. I thought she was tired, and it would go off with a
night's rest; but no! she has gone on and on ever since, till I
thought it my duty to write to you, ma'am."

"You did quite right, Martha. It is a comfort to think she has so
faithful a servant about her. And I hope you find your place
comfortable?"

"Well, ma'am, missus is very kind, and there's plenty to eat and
drink, and no more work but what I can do easily--but--" Martha
hesitated.

"But what, Martha?"

"Why, it seems so hard of missus not to let me have any followers;
there's such lots of young fellows in the town; and many a one has
as much as offered to keep company with me; and I may never be in
such a likely place again, and it's like wasting an opportunity.
Many a girl as I know would have 'em unbeknownst to missus; but
I've given my word, and I'll stick to it; or else this is just the
house for missus never to be the wiser if they did come: and it's
such a capable kitchen--there's such dark corners in it--I'd be
bound to hide any one. I counted up last Sunday night--for I'll
not deny I was crying because I had to shut the door in Jem Hearn's
face, and he's a steady young man, fit for any girl; only I had
given missus my word." Martha was all but crying again; and I had
little comfort to give her, for I knew, from old experience, of the
horror with which both the Miss Jenkynses looked upon "followers";
and in Miss Matty's present nervous state this dread was not likely
to be lessened.

I went to see Miss Pole the next day, and took her completely by
surprise, for she had not been to see Miss Matilda for two days.

"And now I must go back with you, my dear, for I promised to let
her know how Thomas Holbrook went on; and, I'm sorry to say, his
housekeeper has sent me word to-day that he hasn't long to live.
Poor Thomas! that journey to Paris was quite too much for him. His
housekeeper says he has hardly ever been round his fields since,
but just sits with his hands on his knees in the counting-house,
not reading or anything, but only saying what a wonderful city
Paris was! Paris has much to answer for if it's killed my cousin
Thomas, for a better man never lived."

"Does Miss Matilda know of his illness?" asked I--a new light as to
the cause of her indisposition dawning upon me.

"Dear! to be sure, yes! Has not she told you? I let her know a
fortnight ago, or more, when first I heard of it. How odd she
shouldn't have told you!"

Not at all, I thought; but I did not say anything. I felt almost
guilty of having spied too curiously into that tender heart, and I
was not going to speak of its secrets--hidden, Miss Matty believed,
from all the world. I ushered Miss Pole into Miss Matilda's little
drawing-room, and then left them alone. But I was not surprised
when Martha came to my bedroom door, to ask me to go down to dinner
alone, for that missus had one of her bad headaches. She came into
the drawing-room at tea-time, but it was evidently an effort to
her; and, as if to make up for some reproachful feeling against her
late sister, Miss Jenkyns, which had been troubling her all the
afternoon, and for which she now felt penitent, she kept telling me
how good and how clever Deborah was in her youth; how she used to
settle what gowns they were to wear at all the parties (faint,
ghostly ideas of grim parties, far away in the distance, when Miss
Matty and Miss Pole were young!); and how Deborah and her mother
had started the benefit society for the poor, and taught girls
cooking and plain sewing; and how Deborah had once danced with a
lord; and how she used to visit at Sir Peter Arley's, and tried to
remodel the quiet rectory establishment on the plans of Arley Hall,
where they kept thirty servants; and how she had nursed Miss Matty
through a long, long illness, of which I had never heard before,
but which I now dated in my own mind as following the dismissal of
the suit of Mr Holbrook. So we talked softly and quietly of old
times through the long November evening.

The next day Miss Pole brought us word that Mr Holbrook was dead.
Miss Matty heard the news in silence; in fact, from the account of
the previous day, it was only what we had to expect. Miss Pole
kept calling upon us for some expression of regret, by asking if it
was not sad that he was gone, and saying -

"To think of that pleasant day last June, when he seemed so well!
And he might have lived this dozen years if he had not gone to that
wicked Paris, where they are always having revolutions."

She paused for some demonstration on our part. I saw Miss Matty
could not speak, she was trembling so nervously; so I said what I
really felt; and after a call of some duration--all the time of
which I have no doubt Miss Pole thought Miss Matty received the
news very calmly--our visitor took her leave.

Miss Matty made a strong effort to conceal her feelings--a
concealment she practised even with me, for she has never alluded
to Mr Holbrook again, although the book he gave her lies with her
Bible on the little table by her bedside. She did not think I
heard her when she asked the little milliner of Cranford to make
her caps something like the Honourable Mrs Jamieson's, or that I
noticed the reply -

"But she wears widows' caps, ma'am?"

"Oh! I only meant something in that style; not widows', of course,
but rather like Mrs Jamieson's."

This effort at concealment was the beginning of the tremulous
motion of head and hands which I have seen ever since in Miss
Matty.

The evening of the day on which we heard of Mr Holbrook's death,
Miss Matilda was very silent and thoughtful; after prayers she
called Martha back and then she stood uncertain what to say.

"Martha!" she said, at last, "you are young"--and then she made so
long a pause that Martha, to remind her of her half-finished
sentence, dropped a curtsey, and said -

"Yes, please, ma'am; two-and-twenty last third of October, please,
ma'am."

"And, perhaps, Martha, you may some time meet with a young man you
like, and who likes you. I did say you were not to have followers;
but if you meet with such a young man, and tell me, and I find he
is respectable, I have no objection to his coming to see you once a
week. God forbid!" said she in a low voice, "that I should grieve
any young hearts." She spoke as if she were providing for some
distant contingency, and was rather startled when Martha made her
ready eager answer -

"Please, ma'am, there's Jem Hearn, and he's a joiner making three-
and-sixpence a-day, and six foot one in his stocking-feet, please,
ma'am; and if you'll ask about him to-morrow morning, every one
will give him a character for steadiness; and he'll be glad enough
to come to-morrow night, I'll be bound."

Though Miss Matty was startled, she submitted to Fate and Love.

CHAPTER V--OLD LETTERS

I have often noticed that almost every one has his own individual
small economies--careful habits of saving fractions of pennies in
some one peculiar direction--any disturbance of which annoys him
more than spending shillings or pounds on some real extravagance.
An old gentleman of my acquaintance, who took the intelligence of
the failure of a Joint-Stock Bank, in which some of his money was
invested, with stoical mildness, worried his family all through a
long summer's day because one of them had torn (instead of cutting)
out the written leaves of his now useless bank-book; of course, the
corresponding pages at the other end came out as well, and this
little unnecessary waste of paper (his private economy) chafed him
more than all the loss of his money. Envelopes fretted his soul
terribly when they first came in; the only way in which he could
reconcile himself to such waste of his cherished article was by
patiently turning inside out all that were sent to him, and so
making them serve again. Even now, though tamed by age, I see him
casting wistful glances at his daughters when they send a whole
inside of a half-sheet of note paper, with the three lines of
acceptance to an invitation, written on only one of the sides. I
am not above owning that I have this human weakness myself. String
is my foible. My pockets get full of little hanks of it, picked up
and twisted together, ready for uses that never come. I am
seriously annoyed if any one cuts the string of a parcel instead of
patiently and faithfully undoing it fold by fold. How people can
bring themselves to use india-rubber rings, which are a sort of
deification of string, as lightly as they do, I cannot imagine. To
me an india-rubber ring is a precious treasure. I have one which
is not new--one that I picked up off the floor nearly six years
ago. I have really tried to use it, but my heart failed me, and I
could not commit the extravagance.

Small pieces of butter grieve others. They cannot attend to
conversation because of the annoyance occasioned by the habit which
some people have of invariably taking more butter than they want.
Have you not seen the anxious look (almost mesmeric) which such
persons fix on the article? They would feel it a relief if they
might bury it out of their sight by popping it into their own
mouths and swallowing it down; and they are really made happy if
the person on whose plate it lies unused suddenly breaks off a
piece of toast (which he does not want at all) and eats up his
butter. They think that this is not waste.

Now Miss Matty Jenkyns was chary of candles. We had many devices
to use as few as possible. In the winter afternoons she would sit
knitting for two or three hours--she could do this in the dark, or
by firelight--and when I asked if I might not ring for candles to
finish stitching my wristbands, she told me to "keep blind man's
holiday." They were usually brought in with tea; but we only burnt
one at a time. As we lived in constant preparation for a friend
who might come in any evening (but who never did), it required some
contrivance to keep our two candles of the same length, ready to be
lighted, and to look as if we burnt two always. The candles took
it in turns; and, whatever we might be talking about or doing, Miss
Matty's eyes were habitually fixed upon the candle, ready to jump
up and extinguish it and to light the other before they had become
too uneven in length to be restored to equality in the course of
the evening.

One night, I remember this candle economy particularly annoyed me.
I had been very much tired of my compulsory "blind man's holiday,"
especially as Miss Matty had fallen asleep, and I did not like to
stir the fire and run the risk of awakening her; so I could not
even sit on the rug, and scorch myself with sewing by firelight,
according to my usual custom. I fancied Miss Matty must be
dreaming of her early life; for she spoke one or two words in her
uneasy sleep bearing reference to persons who were dead long
before. When Martha brought in the lighted candle and tea, Miss
Matty started into wakefulness, with a strange, bewildered look
around, as if we were not the people she expected to see about her.
There was a little sad expression that shadowed her face as she
recognised me; but immediately afterwards she tried to give me her
usual smile. All through tea-time her talk ran upon the days of
her childhood and youth. Perhaps this reminded her of the
desirableness of looking over all the old family letters, and
destroying such as ought not to be allowed to fall into the hands
of strangers; for she had often spoken of the necessity of this
task, but had always shrunk from it, with a timid dread of
something painful. To-night, however, she rose up after tea and
went for them--in the dark; for she piqued herself on the precise
neatness of all her chamber arrangements, and used to look uneasily
at me when I lighted a bed-candle to go to another room for
anything. When she returned there was a faint, pleasant smell of
Tonquin beans in the room. I had always noticed this scent about
any of the things which had belonged to her mother; and many of the
letters were addressed to her--yellow bundles of love-letters,
sixty or seventy years old.

Miss Matty undid the packet with a sigh; but she stifled it
directly, as if it were hardly right to regret the flight of time,
or of life either. We agreed to look them over separately, each
taking a different letter out of the same bundle and describing its
contents to the other before destroying it. I never knew what sad
work the reading of old-letters was before that evening, though I
could hardly tell why. The letters were as happy as letters could
be--at least those early letters were. There was in them a vivid
and intense sense of the present time, which seemed so strong and
full, as if it could never pass away, and as if the warm, living
hearts that so expressed themselves could never die, and be as
nothing to the sunny earth. I should have felt less melancholy, I
believe, if the letters had been more so. I saw the tears stealing
down the well-worn furrows of Miss Matty's cheeks, and her
spectacles often wanted wiping. I trusted at last that she would
light the other candle, for my own eyes were rather dim, and I
wanted more light to see the pale, faded ink; but no, even through
her tears, she saw and remembered her little economical ways.

The earliest set of letters were two bundles tied together, and
ticketed (in Miss Jenkyns's handwriting) "Letters interchanged
between my ever-honoured father and my dearly-beloved mother, prior
to their marriage, in July 1774." I should guess that the rector
of Cranford was about twenty-seven years of age when he wrote those
letters; and Miss Matty told me that her mother was just eighteen
at the time of her wedding. With my idea of the rector derived
from a picture in the dining-parlour, stiff and stately, in a huge
full-bottomed wig, with gown, cassock, and bands, and his hand upon
a copy of the only sermon he ever published--it was strange to read
these letters. They were full of eager, passionate ardour; short
homely sentences, right fresh from the heart (very different from
the grand Latinised, Johnsonian style of the printed sermon
preached before some judge at assize time). His letters were a
curious contrast to those of his girl-bride. She was evidently
rather annoyed at his demands upon her for expressions of love, and
could not quite understand what he meant by repeating the same
thing over in so many different ways; but what she was quite clear
about was a longing for a white "Paduasoy"--whatever that might be;
and six or seven letters were principally occupied in asking her
lover to use his influence with her parents (who evidently kept her
in good order) to obtain this or that article of dress, more
especially the white "Paduasoy." He cared nothing how she was
dressed; she was always lovely enough for him, as he took pains to
assure her, when she begged him to express in his answers a
predilection for particular pieces of finery, in order that she
might show what he said to her parents. But at length he seemed to
find out that she would not be married till she had a "trousseau"
to her mind; and then he sent her a letter, which had evidently
accompanied a whole box full of finery, and in which he requested
that she might be dressed in everything her heart desired. This
was the first letter, ticketed in a frail, delicate hand, "From my
dearest John." Shortly afterwards they were married, I suppose,
from the intermission in their correspondence.

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