A Love Affair At Cranford.
I am tempted to relate it, as having interested me in a quiet sort of way, and as being the latest intelligence of Our Society at Cranford.
I thought, after Miss Jenkyns's death, that probably my connection with Cranford would cease; at least that it would have to be kept up by correspondence, which bears much the same relation to personal intercourse that the books of dried plants I sometimes see (“Hortus Siccus,” I think they call the thing), do to the living and fresh flowers in the lanes and meadows. I was pleasantly surprised, therefore, by receiving a letter from Miss Pole (who had always come in for a supplementary week after my annual visit to Miss Jenkyns), proposing that I should go and stay with her; and then, in a couple of days after my acceptance, came a note from Miss Matey, in which, in a rather circuitous and very humble manner, she told me how much pleasure I should confer, if I could spend a week or two with her, either before or after I had been at Miss Pole's; “for,” she said, “since my dear sister's death, I am well aware I have no attractions to offer; it is only to the kindness of my friends that I can owe their company.”
Of course, I promised to come to dear Miss Matey, as soon as I had ended my visit to Miss Pole; and the day after my arrival at Cranford, I went to see her, much wondering what the house would be like without Miss Jenkyns, and rather dreading the changed aspect of things. Miss Matey began to cry as soon as she saw me. She was evidently nervous from having anticipated my call. I comforted her as well as I could; and I found the best consolation I could give, was the honest praise that came from my heart as I spoke of the deceased. Miss Matey slowly shook her head over each virtue as it was named, and attributed to her sister; at last she could not restrain the tears which had long been silently flowing, but hid her face behind her handkerchief, and sobbed aloud.
“Dear Miss Matey!” said I, taking her hand—for indeed I did know in what way to tell her how sorry I was for her, left deserted in the world. She put down her handkerchief, and said,
“My dear, I'd rather you did not call me [pg 458] Matey. She did not like it; but I did many a thing she did not like, I'm afraid—and now she's gone! If you please, my love, will you call me Matilda?”
I promised faithfully, and began to practice the new name with Miss Pole that very day; and, by degrees, Miss Matilda's feelings on the subject were known through Cranford, and the appellation of Matey was dropped by all, except a very old woman who had been nurse in the rector's family, and had persevered through many long years, in calling the Miss Jenkynses “the girls;” she said “Matey,” to the day of her death.
My visit to Miss Pole was very quiet. Miss Jenkyns had so long taken the lead in Cranford, that, now she was gone, they hardly knew how to give a party. The Honorable Mrs. Jamieson, to whom Miss Jenkyns herself had always yielded the post of honor, was fat and inert and very much at the mercy of her old servants. If they chose her to give a party, they reminded her of the necessity for so doing; if not, she let it alone. There was all the more time for me to hear old-world stories from Miss Pole, while she sat knitting, and I making my father's shirts. I always took a quantity of plain sewing to Cranford; for, as we did not read much, or walk much, I found it a capital time to get through my work. One of Miss Pole's stories related to the love affair I am coming to; gradually, not in a hurry, for we are never in a hurry at Cranford.
Presently, the time arrived, when I was to remove to Miss Matilda's house. I found her timid and anxious about the arrangements for my comfort. Many a time, while I was unpacking, did she come backward and forward to stir the fire, which burned all the worse for being so frequently poked.
“Have you drawers enough, dear?” asked she. “I don't know exactly how my sister used to arrange them. She had capital methods. I am sure she would have trained a servant in a week to make a better fire than this, and Fanny has been with me four months.”
This subject of servants was a standing grievance, and I could not wonder much at it; for if gentlemen were scarce, and almost unheard of in the “genteel society” of Cranford, they or their counterparts—handsome young men—abounded in the lower classes. The pretty, neat servant-maids had their choice of desirable “followers;” and their mistresses, without having the sort of mysterious dread of men and matrimony that Miss Matilda had, might well feel a little anxious, lest the heads of their comely maids should be turned by the joiner, or the butcher, or the gardener; who were obliged by their callings, to come to the house; and who, as ill-luck would have it, were generally handsome and unmarried. Fanny's lovers, if she had any—and Miss Matilda suspected her of so many flirtations, that, if she had not been very pretty, I should have doubted her having one—were a constant anxiety to her mistress. She was forbidden, by the articles of her engagement, to have “followers;” and though she had answered innocently enough, doubling up the hem of her apron as she spoke, “Please, ma'am, I never had more than one at a time,” Miss Matey prohibited that one. But a vision of a man seemed to haunt the kitchen. Fanny assured me that it was all fancy; or else I should have said myself that I had seen a man's coat-tails whisk into the scullery once, when I went on an errand into the store-room at night; and another evening when, our watches having stopped, I went to look at the clock, there was a very odd appearance, singularly like a young man squeezed up between the clock and the back of the open kitchen-door; and I thought Fanny snatched up the candle very hastily, so as to throw the shadow on the clock-face, while she very positively told me the time half-an-hour too early, as we found out afterward by the church-clock. But I did not add to Miss Matey's anxieties by naming my suspicions, especially as Fanny said to me, the next day, that it was such a queer kitchen for having odd shadows about it, she really was almost afraid to stay; “for you know, Miss,” she added, “I don't see a creature from six o'clock tea, till missus rings the bell for prayers at ten.”
However, it so fell out that Fanny had to leave; and Miss Matilda begged me to stay and “settle her” with the new maid; to which I consented, after I had heard from my father that he did not want me at home. The new servant was a rough, honest-looking country-girl, who had only lived in a farm-place before; but I liked her looks when she came to be hired; and I promised Miss Matilda to put her in the ways of the house. These said ways were religiously such as Miss Matilda thought her sister would approve. Many a domestic rule and regulation had been a subject of plaintive whispered murmur, to me, during Miss Jenkyns's life; but now that she was gone, I do not think that even I, who was a favorite, durst have suggested an alteration. To give an instance: we constantly adhered to the forms which were observed, at meal times, “in my father the rector's house.” Accordingly, we had always wine and dessert; but the decanters were only filled when there was a party; and what remained was seldom touched, though we had two wine glasses apiece every day after dinner, until the next festive occasion arrived; when the state of the remainder wine was examined into, in a family council. The dregs were often given to the poor; but occasionally when a good deal had been left, at the last party (five months ago, it might be) it was added to some of a fresh bottle, brought up from the cellar. I fancy poor Captain Brown did not much like wine; for I noticed he never finished his first glass, and most military men take several. Then, as to our dessert, Miss Jenkyns used to gather currants and gooseberries for it herself, which I sometimes thought would have tasted better fresh from the trees; but then, as Miss Jenkyns observed, there would have been nothing for dessert in summer-time. As it was, we felt very genteel with our two glasses [pg 459] apiece, and a dish of gooseberries at the top, of currants and biscuits at the sides, and two decanters at the bottom. When oranges came in, a curious proceeding was gone through. Miss Jenkyns did not like to cut the fruit; for, as she observed, the juice all ran out, nobody knew where; sucking (only, I think, she used some more recondite word) was in fact the only way of enjoying oranges; but then there was the unpleasant association with a ceremony frequently gone through by little babies; and so, after dessert, in orange season, Miss Jenkyns and Miss Matey used to rise up, possess themselves each of an orange in silence, and withdraw to the privacy of their own rooms, to indulge in sucking oranges.
I had once or twice tried, on such occasions, to prevail on Miss Matey to stay; and had succeeded in her sister's life-time. I held up a screen, and did not look, and, as she said, she tried not to make the noise very offensive; but now that she was left alone, she seemed quite horrified when I begged her to remain with me in the warm dining-parlor, and enjoy her orange as she liked best. And so it was in every thing. Miss Jenkyns's rules were made more stringent than ever, because the framer of them was gone where there could be no appeal. In every thing else Miss Matilda was meek and undecided to a fault. I have heard Fanny turn her round twenty times in a morning about dinner, just as the little hussy chose; and I sometimes fancied she worked on Miss Matilda's weakness, in order to bewilder her, and to make her feel more in the power of her clever servant. I determined that I would not leave her till I had seen what sort of a person Martha was; and, if I found her trustworthy, I would tell her not to trouble her mistress with every little decision.
Martha was blunt and plain-spoken to a fault; otherwise she was a brisk, well-meaning, but very ignorant girl. She had not been with us a week before Miss Matilda and I were astounded one morning by the receipt of a letter from a cousin of hers, who had been twenty or thirty years in India, and who had lately, as we had seen by the Army List, returned to England, bringing with him an invalid wife, who had never been introduced to her English relations. Major Jenkyns wrote to propose that he and his wife should spend a night at Cranford, on his way to Scotland—at the inn, if it did not suit Miss Matilda to receive them into her house; in which case they should hope to be with her as much as possible during the day. Of course, it must suit her, as she said; for all Cranford knew that she had her sister's bedroom at liberty; but I am sure she wished the Major had stopped in India and forgotten his cousins out and out.
“Oh! how must I manage!” asked she, helplessly. “If Deborah had been alive, she would have known what to do with a gentleman-visitor. Must I put razors in his dressing-room? Dear! dear! and I've got none. Deborah would have had them. And slippers, and coat-brushes?” I suggested that probably he would bring all these things with him. “And after dinner, how am I to know when to get up, and leave him to his wine? Deborah would have done it so well; she would have been quite in her element. Will he want coffee, do you think?” I undertook the management of the coffee, and told her I would instruct Martha in the art of waiting, in which it must be owned she was terribly deficient; and that I had no doubt Major and Mrs. Jenkyns would understand the quiet mode in which a lady lived by herself in a country town. But she was sadly fluttered. I made her empty her decanters, and bring up two fresh bottles of wine. I wished I could have prevented her from being present at my instructions to Martha; for she continually cut in with some fresh direction, muddling the poor girl's mind, as she stood open-mouthed, listening to us both.
“Hand the vegetables round,” said I (foolishly, I see now—for it was aiming at more than we could accomplish with quietness and simplicity); and then, seeing her look bewildered, I added, “Take the vegetables round to people, and let them help themselves.”
“And mind you go first to the ladies,” put in Miss Matilda. “Always go to the ladies before gentlemen, when you are waiting.”
“I'll do it as you tell me, ma'am,” said Martha; “but I like lads best.”
We felt very uncomfortable and shocked at this speech of Martha's; yet I don't think she meant any harm; and, on the whole, she attended very well to our directions, except that she “nudged” the Major, when he did not help himself as soon as she expected, to the potatoes, while she was handing them round.
The Major and his wife were quiet, unpretending people enough when they did come; languid, as all East Indians are, I suppose. We were rather dismayed at their bringing two servants with them, a Hindoo body-servant for the Major, and a steady elderly maid for his wife; but they slept at the inn, and took off a good deal of the responsibility by attending carefully to their master's and mistress's comfort. Martha, to be sure, had never ended her staring at the East Indian's white turban, and brown complexion, and I saw that Miss Matilda shrunk away from him a little as he waited at dinner. Indeed, she asked me, when they were gone, if he did not remind me of Blue Beard? On the whole, the visit was most satisfactory, and is a subject of conversation even now with Miss Matilda; at the time it greatly excited Cranford, and even stirred up the apathetic and Honorable Mrs. Jamieson to some expression of interest when I went to call and thank her for the kind answers she had vouchsafed to Miss Matilda's inquiries as to the arrangement of a gentleman's dressing-room—answers which I must confess she had given in the wearied manner of the Scandinavian prophetess—
“Leave me, leave me to repose.”
And now I come to the love affair.
It seems that Miss Pole had a cousin, once or twice removed, who had offered to Miss Matey [pg 460] long ago. Now, this cousin lived four or five miles from Cranford on his own estate; but his property was not large enough to entitle him to rank higher than a yeoman; or rather, with something of the “pride which apes humility,” he had refused to push himself on, as so many of his class had done, into the ranks of the squires. He would not allow himself to be called Thomas Holbrook, Esq.; he even sent back letters with this address, telling the postmistress at Cranford that his name was Mr. Thomas Holbrook, yeoman. He rejected all domestic innovations; he would have the house door stand open in summer, and shut in winter, without knocker or bell to summon a servant. The closed fist or the knob of the stick did this office for him, if he found the door locked. He despised every refinement which had not its root deep down in humanity. If people were not ill, he saw no necessity for moderating his voice. He spoke the dialect of the country in perfection, and constantly used it in conversation; although Miss Pole (who gave me these particulars) added, that he read aloud more beautifully and with more feeling than any one she had ever heard, except the late Rector.
“And how came Miss Matilda not to marry him?” asked I.
“Oh, I don't know. She was willing enough, I think; but you know Cousin Thomas would not have been enough of a gentleman for the Rector, and Mrs. and Miss Jenkyns.”
“Well! but they were not to marry him,” said I, impatiently.
“No; but they did not like Miss Matey to marry below her rank. You know she was the Rector's daughter, and somehow they are related to Sir Peter Arley: Miss Jenkyns thought a deal of that.”
“Poor Miss Matey!” said I.
“Nay, now, I don't know any thing more than that he offered and was refused. Miss Matey might not like him—and Miss Jenkyns might never have said a word—it is only a guess of mine.”
“Has she never seen him since?” I inquired.
“No, I think not. You see, Woodley, Cousin Thomas's house, lies half-way between Cranford and Misselton; and I know he made Misselton his market-town very soon after he had offered to Miss Matey; and I don't think he has been into Cranford above once or twice since—once, when I was walking with Miss Matey in High-street; and suddenly she darted from me, and went up Shire-lane. A few minutes after I was startled by meeting Cousin Thomas.”
“How old is he?” I asked, after a pause of castle-building.
“He must be about seventy, I think, my dear,” said Miss Pole, blowing up my castle, as if by gunpowder, into small fragments.
Very soon after—at least during my long visit to Miss Matilda—I had the opportunity of seeing Mr. Holbrook; seeing, too, his first encounter with his former love, after thirty or forty years' separation. I was helping to decide whether any of the new assortment of colored silks which they had just received at the shop, would help to match a gray and black mousseline-de-laine that wanted a new breadth, when a tall, thin, Don Quixote-looking old man came into the shop for some woolen gloves. I had never seen the person (who was rather striking) before, and I watched him rather attentively, while Miss Matey listened to the shopman. The stranger wore a blue coat with brass buttons, drab breeches, and gaiters, and drummed with his fingers on the counter until he was attended to. When he answered the shop-boy's question, “What can I have the pleasure of showing you to-day, sir?” I saw Miss Matilda start, and then suddenly sit down; and instantly I guessed who it was. She had made some inquiry which had to be carried round to the other shopman.
“Miss Jenkyns wants the black sarcenet two-and-twopence the yard;” and Mr. Holbrook had caught the name, and was across the shop in two strides.
“Matey—Miss Matilda—Miss Jenkyns! God bless my soul! I should not have known you. How are you? how are you?” He kept shaking her hand in a way which proved the warmth of his friendship; but he repeated so often, as if to himself, “I should not have known you!” that any sentimental romance which I might be inclined to build, was quite done away with by his manner.
However, he kept talking to us all the time we were in the shop; and then waving the shopman with the unpurchased gloves on one side, with “Another time, sir! another time!” he walked home with us. I am happy to say my client, Miss Matilda, also left the shop in an equally bewildered state, not having purchased either green or red silk. Mr. Holbrook was evidently full with honest, loud-spoken joy at meeting his old love again; he touched on the changes that had taken place; he even spoke of Miss Jenkyns as “Your poor sister! Well, well! we have all our faults;” and bade us good-by with many a hope that he should soon see Miss Matey again. She went straight to her room; and never came back till our early tea-time, when I thought she looked as if she had been crying.
A few days after, a note came from Mr. Holbrook, asking us—impartially asking both of us—in a formal, old-fashioned style, to spend a day at his house—a long June day—for it was June now. He named that he had also invited his cousin, Miss Pole; so that we might join in a fly, which could be put up at his house.
I expected Miss Matey to jump at this invitation; but, no! Miss Pole and I had the greatest difficulty in persuading her to go. She thought it was improper; and was even half-annoyed when we utterly ignored the idea of any impropriety in her going with two other ladies to see her old lover. Then came a more serious difficulty. She did not think Deborah would have liked her to go. This took us half a day's good hard talking to get over; but, at the first sentence of relenting, I seized the opportunity, and wrote [pg 461] and dispatched an acceptance in her name—fixing day and hour, that all might be decided and done with.
The next morning she asked me if I would go down to the shop with her; and there, after much hesitation, we chose out three caps to be sent home and tried on, that the most becoming might be selected to take with us on Thursday.
She was in a state of silent agitation all the way to Woodley. She had evidently never been there before; and, although she little dreamt I knew any thing of her early story, I could perceive she was in a tremor at the thought of seeing the place which might have been her home, and round which it is probable that many of her innocent girlish imaginations had clustered. It was a long drive there, through paved jolting lanes. Miss Matilda sate bolt upright, and looked wistfully out of the windows, as we drew near the end of our journey. The aspect of the country was quiet and pastoral. Woodley stood among fields; and there was an old-fashioned garden, where roses and currant-bushes touched each other, and where the feathery asparagus formed a pretty back-ground to the pinks and gilly-flowers; there was no drive up to the door; we got out at a little gate, and walked up a straight box-edged path.
“My cousin might make a drive, I think,” said Miss Pole, who was afraid of ear-ache, and had only her cap on.
“I think it is very pretty,” said Miss Matey, with a soft plaintiveness in her voice, and almost in a whisper; for just then Mr. Holbrook appeared at the door, rubbing his hands in very effervescence of hospitality. He looked more like my idea of Don Quixote than ever, and yet the likeness was only external. His respectable housekeeper stood modestly at the door to bid us welcome; and, while she led the elder ladies upstairs to a bed-room, I begged to look about the garden. My request evidently pleased the old gentleman; who took me all round the place, and showed me his six-and-twenty cows, named after the different letters of the alphabet. As we went along, he surprised me occasionally by repeating apt and beautiful quotations from the poets, ranging easily from Shakspeare and George Herbert to those of our own day. He did this as naturally as if he were thinking aloud, that their true and beautiful words were the best expression he could find for what he was thinking or feeling. To be sure he called Byron “my Lord Byron,” and pronounced the name of Goethe strictly in accordance with the English sound of the letters—“As Goëthe says, 'Ye ever verdant palaces,'” &c. Altogether, I never met with a man, before or since, who had spent so long a life in a secluded and not impressive country, with ever-increasing delight in the daily and yearly change of season and beauty.
When he and I went in, we found that dinner was nearly ready in the kitchen—for so I suppose the room ought to be called, as there were oak dressers and cupboards all round, all over by the side of the fire-place, and only a small Turkey-carpet in the middle of the flag-floor. The room might have been easily made into a handsome dark-oak dining-parlor, by removing the oven, and a few other appurtenances of a kitchen, which were evidently never used; the real cooking-place being at some distance. The room in which we were expected to sit was a stiffly furnished, ugly apartment; but that in which we did sit was what Mr. Holbrook called the counting-house, where he paid his laborers their weekly wages, at a great desk near the door. The rest of the pretty sitting-room—looking into the orchard, and all covered over with dancing tree-shadows—was filled with books. They lay on the ground, they covered the walls, they strewed the table. He was evidently half ashamed and half proud of his extravagance in this respect. They were of all kinds—poetry, and wild weird tales prevailing. He evidently chose his books in accordance with his own tastes, not because such and such were classical, or established favorites.
“Ah!” he said, “we farmers ought not to have much time for reading; yet somehow one can't help it.”
“What a pretty room!” said Miss Matey, sotto voce.
“What a pleasant place!” said I, aloud, almost simultaneously.
“Nay! if you like it,” replied he; “but can you sit on these great black leather three-cornered chairs? I like it better than the best parlor; but I thought ladies would take that for the smarter place.”
It was the smarter place; but, like most smart things, not at all pretty, or pleasant, or home-like; so, while we were at dinner, the servant-girl dusted and scrubbed the counting-house chairs, and we sate 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 Matey.
“No more do I,” said he. “My housekeeper will have things in her new fashion; or else I tell her, that when I was a young man, we used to keep strictly to my father's rule, ‘No broth, no ball; no ball, no beef;’ and always began dinner with broth. Then we had suet puddings, boiled in the broth with the beef; and then the meat itself. If we did not sup our broth, we had no ball, which we liked a deal better; and the beef came last of all, and only those had it who had done justice to the broth and the ball. Now folks begin with sweet things, and turn their dinners topsy-turvy.”
When the ducks and green pease came, we looked at each other in dismay; we had only two-pronged, black-handled forks. It is true, the steel was as bright as silver; but, what were we to do? Miss Matey picked up her peas, one by one, on the point of the prongs, much as Aminé ate her grains of rice after her previous feast with the Ghoul. Miss Pole sighed over [pg 462] 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, shoveled 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 pease went away almost untouched.
After dinner, a clay-pipe was brought in, and a spittoon; and, asking us to retire to another room, where he would soon join us, if we disliked tobacco-smoke, he presented his pipe to Miss Matey, and requested her to fill the bowl. This was a compliment to a lady in his youth; but it was rather inappropriate to propose it as an honor to Miss Matey, who had been trained by her sister to hold smoking of every kind in utter abhorrence. But if it was a shock to her refinement, it was also a gratification to her feelings to be thus selected; so she daintily stuffed the strong tobacco into the pipe; and then we withdrew.
“It is very pleasant dining with a bachelor,” said Miss Matey, softly, as we settled ourselves in the counting-house. “I only hope it is not improper; so many pleasant things are!”
“What a number of books he has!” said Miss Pole, looking round the room. “And how dusty they are!”
“I think it must be like one of the great Dr. Johnson's rooms,” said Miss Matey. “What a superior man your cousin must be!”
“Yes!” said Miss Pole; “he is a great reader; but I am afraid he has got into very uncouth habits with living alone.”
“Oh! uncouth is too hard a word. I should call him eccentric; very clever people always are!” replied Miss Matey.
When Mr. Holbrook returned, he proposed a walk in the fields; but the two elder ladies were afraid of damp and dirt; and had only very unbecoming calashes to put over their caps; so they declined; and I was again his companion in a turn which he said he was obliged to take, to see after his niece. He strode along, either wholly forgetting my existence, or soothed into silence by his pipe—and yet it was not silence exactly. He walked before me, with a stooping gait, his hands clasped behind him; and, as some tree, or cloud, or glimpse 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;
“More black than ash-buds in the front of March,
A cedar spread his dark-green layers of shade.”
“Capital term—‘layers!’ Wonderful man!” I did not know whether he was speaking to me or not; but I put in an assenting “wonderful,” although I knew nothing about it; just because I was tired of being forgotten, and of being consequently silent.
He turned sharp round. “Ay! you may say ‘wonderful.’ Why, when I saw the review of his poems in ‘Blackwood,’ I set off within an hour, and walked seven miles to Misselton (for the horses were not in the way), and ordered them. Now, what color are ash-buds in March?”
Is the man going mad? thought I. He is very like Don Quixote.
“What color are they, I say?” repeated he, vehemently.
“I am sure I don't know, sir,” said I, with the meekness of ignorance.
“I knew you didn't. No more did I—an old fool that I am! till this young man comes and tells me. ‘Black as ash-buds in March.’ And I've lived all my life in the country; more shame for me not to know. Black; they are jet-black, madam.” And he went off again, swinging along to the music of some rhyme he had got hold of.
When he came home nothing would serve him but that he must read us the poems he had been speaking of; and Miss Pole encouraged him in his proposal, I thought, because she wished me to hear his beautiful reading, of which she had boasted; but she afterward said it was because she had got to a difficult part of her crotchet, and wanted to count her stitches without having to talk. Whatever he had proposed would have been right to Miss Matey; although she did fall sound asleep within five minutes after he began a long poem called “Locksley Hall,” and had a comfortable nap, unobserved, till he ended; when the cessation of his voice wakened her up, and she said, feeling that something was expected, and that Miss Pole was counting:
“What a pretty book!”
“Pretty! madam! it's beautiful! Pretty, indeed!”
“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 Matey at the time he said it; but after we had lost sight of the old house among the trees, her sentiments toward 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 [pg 463] out; she was always careful of Miss Matey, and to-night she made use of this unlucky speech:
“Eh! dear ma'am, to think of your going out on an evening in such a thin shawl! It is no better than muslin. At your age, ma'am, you should be careful.”
“My age!” said Miss Matey, almost speaking crossly, for her; for she was usually gentle. “My age! Why, how old do you think I am, that you talk about my age?”
“Well, ma'am! I should say you were not far short of sixty; but folks' looks is often against them—and I'm sure I meant no harm.”
“Martha, I'm not yet fifty-two!” said Miss Matey, with grave emphasis; for probably the remembrance of her youth had come very vividly before her this day, and she was annoyed at finding that golden time so far away in the past.
But she never spoke of any former and more intimate acquaintance with Mr. Holbrook. She had probably met with so little sympathy in her early love, that she had shut it up close in her heart; and it was only by a sort of watching, which I could hardly avoid, since Miss Pole's confidence, that I saw how faithful her poor heart had been in its sorrow and its silence.
She gave me some good reason for wearing her best cap every day, and sate 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 sate with his head bent down, whistling, after we had replied to his inquiries about our safe return. Suddenly, he jumped up.
“Well, madam! have you any commands for Paris? I'm going there in a week or two.”
“To Paris!” we both exclaimed.
“Yes, ma'am! I've never been there, and always had a wish to go; and I think if I don't go soon, I mayn't go at all; so as soon as the hay is got in I shall go, before harvest-time.”
We were so much astonished, that we had no commissions.
Just as he was going out of the room, he turned back, with his favorite exclamation:
“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-by, Miss,” said he; “good-by, Matey! take care of yourself.” And he was gone. But he had given her a book, and he had called her Matey, just as he used to do thirty years ago.
“I wish he would not go to Paris,” said Miss Matilda, anxiously. “I don't believe frogs will agree with him; he used to have to be very careful what he ate, which was curious in so strong-looking a young man.”
Soon after this I took my leave, giving many an injunction to Martha to look after her mistress, and to let me know if she thought that Miss Matilda was not so well; in which case I would volunteer a visit to my old friend, without noticing Martha's intelligence to her.
Accordingly I received a line or two from Martha every now and then; and, about November, I had a note to say her mistress was “very low, and sadly off her food;” and the account made me so uneasy, that, although Martha did not decidedly summon me, I packed up my things and went.
I received a warm welcome, in spite of the little flurry produced by my impromptu visit, for I had only been able to give a day's notice. Miss Matilda looked miserably ill; and I prepared to comfort and cosset her.
I went down to have a private talk with Martha.
“How long has your mistress been so poorly?” I asked, as I stood by the kitchen fire.
“Well! I think it's better than a fortnight; it is, I know: it was one Tuesday after Miss Pole had been here that she went into this moping way. I thought she was tired, and it would go off with a night's rest; but, no! she has gone on and on ever since, till I thought it my duty to write to you, ma'am.”
“You did quite right, Martha. It is a comfort to think she has so faithful a servant about her. And I hope you find your place comfortable?”
“Well, ma'am, missus is very kind, and there's plenty to eat and drink, and no more work but what I can do easily—but—” Martha hesitated.
“But what, Martha?”
“Why, it seems so hard of missus not to let me have any followers; there's such lots of young fellows in the town; and many a one has as much as offered to keep company with me; and I may never be in such a likely place again, and it's like wasting an opportunity. Many a girl as I know would have 'em unbeknownst to missus; but I've given my word, and I'll stick to it; or else this is just the house for missus never to be the wiser if they did come: and it's such a capable kitchen—there's such good dark corners in it—I'd be bound to hide any one. I counted up last Sunday night—for I'll not deny I was crying because I had to shut the door in Jem Hearn's face; and he's a steady young man, fit for any girl; only I had given missus my word.” Martha was all but crying again; and I had little comfort to give her, for I knew, from old experience, of the horror with which both the Miss Jenkynses looked upon “followers;” and in Miss Matey'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 any thing, but only saying, what a wonderful city [pg 464] Paris was! Paris has much to answer for, if it's killed my cousin Thomas, for a better man never lived.”
“Does Miss Matilda know of his illness?” asked I; a new light as to the cause of her indisposition dawning upon me.
“Dear! to be sure, yes! Has she not told you? I let her know a fortnight ago, or more, when first I heard of it. How odd, she shouldn't have told you!”
Not at all, I thought; but I did not say any thing. I felt almost guilty of having spied too curiously into that tender heart, and I was not going to speak of its secrets—hidden, Miss Matey believed, from all the world. I ushered Miss Pole into Miss Matilda's 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 dim parties far away in the distance, when Miss Matey and Miss Pole were young!) and how Deborah and her mother had started the benefit society for the poor, and taught girls cooking and plain sewing; and how Deborah had once danced with a lord; and how she used to visit at Sir Peter Arley's, and try to remodel the quiet rectory establishment on the plans of Arley Hall, where they kept thirty servants; and how she had nursed Miss Matey through a long, long illness, of which I had never heard before, but which I now dated in my own mind as following the dismissal of the suit of Mr. Holbrook. So we talked softly and quietly of old times, through the long November evening.
The next day Miss Pole brought us word that Mr. Holbrook was dead. Miss Matey heard the news in silence; in fact, from the account on the previous day, it was only what we had to expect. Miss Pole kept calling upon us for some 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 Matey could not speak, she was trembling so nervously; so I said what I really felt: and after a call of some duration—all the time of which I have no doubt Miss Pole thought Miss Matey received the news very calmly—our visitor took her leave. But the effort at self-control Miss Matey had made to conceal her feelings—a concealment she practiced 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 Honorable 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 Matey.
The evening of the day on which we heard of Mr. Holbrook's death, Miss Matilda was very silent and thoughtful; after prayers she called Martha back, and then she stood uncertain what to say.
“Martha!” she said at last; “you are young,” and then she made so long a pause that Martha, to remind her of her half-finished sentence, dropped a courtesy, and said:
“Yes, please, ma'am; two-and-twenty last third 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 Jim Hearn, and he's a joiner, making three-and-sixpence a day, and six foot one in his stocking-feet, please ma'am; and if you'll ask about him to-morrow morning, every one will give him a character for steadiness; and he'll be glad enough to come to-morrow night, I'll be bound.”
Though Miss Matey was startled, she submitted to Fate and Love.