автордың кітабын онлайн тегін оқу  Cranford

Elizabeth Gaskell

I Our Society

In the first place, Cran­ford is in pos­ses­sion of the Amazons; all the hold­ers of houses above a cer­tain rent are wo­men. If a mar­ried couple come to settle in the town, some­how the gen­tle­man dis­ap­pears; he is either fairly frightened to death by be­ing the only man in the Cran­ford even­ing parties, or he is ac­coun­ted for by be­ing with his re­gi­ment, his ship, or closely en­gaged in busi­ness all the week in the great neigh­bour­ing com­mer­cial town of Drumble, dis­tant only twenty miles on a rail­road. In short, whatever does be­come of the gen­tle­men, they are not at Cran­ford. What could they do if they were there? The sur­geon has his round of thirty miles, and sleeps at Cran­ford; but every man can­not be a sur­geon. For keep­ing the trim gar­dens full of choice flowers without a weed to speck them; for fright­en­ing away little boys who look wist­fully at the said flowers through the rail­ings; for rush­ing out at the geese that oc­ca­sion­ally ven­ture in to the gar­dens if the gates are left open; for de­cid­ing all ques­tions of lit­er­at­ure and polit­ics without troub­ling them­selves with un­ne­ces­sary reas­ons or ar­gu­ments; for ob­tain­ing clear and cor­rect know­ledge of every­body’s af­fairs in the par­ish; for keep­ing their neat maid­ser­vants in ad­mir­able or­der; for kind­ness (some­what dic­tat­orial) to the poor, and real tender good of­fices to each other whenever they are in dis­tress, the ladies of Cran­ford are quite suf­fi­cient. “A man,” as one of them ob­served to me once, “is so in the way in the house!” Al­though the ladies of Cran­ford know all each other’s pro­ceed­ings, they are ex­ceed­ingly in­dif­fer­ent to each other’s opin­ions. Indeed, as each has her own in­di­vidu­al­ity, not to say ec­cent­ri­city, pretty strongly de­veloped, noth­ing is so easy as verbal re­tali­ation; but, some­how, good­will reigns among them to a con­sid­er­able de­gree.

The Cran­ford ladies have only an oc­ca­sional little quar­rel, spir­ited out in a few pep­pery words and angry jerks of the head; just enough to pre­vent the even tenor of their lives from be­com­ing too flat. Their dress is very in­de­pend­ent of fash­ion; as they ob­serve, “What does it sig­nify how we dress here at Cran­ford, where every­body knows us?”  And if they go from home, their reason is equally co­gent, “What does it sig­nify how we dress here, where nobody knows us?” The ma­ter­i­als of their clothes are, in gen­eral, good and plain, and most of them are nearly as scru­pu­lous as Miss Tyler, of cleanly memory; but I will an­swer for it, the last gigot, the last tight and scanty pet­ti­coat in wear in Eng­land, was seen in Cran­ford—and seen without a smile.

I can testify to a mag­ni­fi­cent fam­ily red silk um­brella, un­der which a gentle little spin­ster, left alone of many broth­ers and sis­ters, used to pat­ter to church on rainy days. Have you any red silk um­brel­las in Lon­don? We had a tra­di­tion of the first that had ever been seen in Cran­ford; and the little boys mobbed it, and called it “a stick in pet­ti­coats.” It might have been the very red silk one I have de­scribed, held by a strong father over a troop of little ones; the poor little lady—the sur­vivor of all—could scarcely carry it.

Then there were rules and reg­u­la­tions for vis­it­ing and calls; and they were an­nounced to any young people who might be stay­ing in the town, with all the solem­nity with which the old Manx laws were read once a year on the Tin­wald Mount.

“Our friends have sent to in­quire how you are after your jour­ney to­night, my dear” (fif­teen miles in a gen­tle­man’s car­riage); “they will give you some rest to­mor­row, but the next day, I have no doubt, they will call; so be at liberty after twelve—from twelve to three are our call­ing hours.”

Then, after they had called—

“It is the third day; I dare say your mamma has told you, my dear, never to let more than three days elapse between re­ceiv­ing a call and re­turn­ing it; and also, that you are never to stay longer than a quarter of an hour.”

“But am I to look at my watch? How am I to find out when a quarter of an hour has passed?”

“You must keep think­ing about the time, my dear, and not al­low your­self to for­get it in con­ver­sa­tion.”

As every­body had this rule in their minds, whether they re­ceived or paid a call, of course no ab­sorb­ing sub­ject was ever spoken about. We kept ourselves to short sen­tences of small talk, and were punc­tual to our time.

I ima­gine that a few of the gen­tle­folks of Cran­ford were poor, and had some dif­fi­culty in mak­ing both ends meet; but they were like the Spartans, and con­cealed their smart un­der a smil­ing face. We none of us spoke of money, be­cause that sub­ject sa­voured of com­merce and trade, and though some might be poor, we were all ar­is­to­cratic. The Cran­ford­i­ans had that kindly es­prit de corps which made them over­look all de­fi­cien­cies in suc­cess when some among them tried to con­ceal their poverty. When Mrs. For­res­ter, for in­stance, gave a party in her baby-house of a dwell­ing, and the little maiden dis­turbed the ladies on the sofa by a re­quest that she might get the tea-tray out from un­der­neath, every­one took this novel pro­ceed­ing as the most nat­ural thing in the world, and talked on about house­hold forms and ce­re­mon­ies as if we all be­lieved that our host­ess had a reg­u­lar ser­vants’ hall, second table, with house­keeper and stew­ard, in­stead of the one little char­ity-school maiden, whose short ruddy arms could never have been strong enough to carry the tray up­stairs, if she had not been as­sisted in private by her mis­tress, who now sat in state, pre­tend­ing not to know what cakes were sent up, though she knew, and we knew, and she knew that we knew, and we knew that she knew that we knew, she had been busy all the morn­ing mak­ing tea-bread and sponge-cakes.

There were one or two con­sequences arising from this gen­eral but un­ac­know­ledged poverty, and this very much ac­know­ledged gen­til­ity, which were not amiss, and which might be in­tro­duced into many circles of so­ci­ety to their great im­prove­ment.  For in­stance, the in­hab­it­ants of Cran­ford kept early hours, and clattered home in their pat­tens, un­der the guid­ance of a lan­tern-bearer, about nine o’clock at night; and the whole town was abed and asleep by half-past ten. Moreover, it was con­sidered “vul­gar” (a tre­mend­ous word in Cran­ford) to give any­thing ex­pens­ive, in the way of eat­able or drink­able, at the even­ing en­ter­tain­ments. Wafer bread-and-but­ter and sponge-bis­cuits were all that the Hon­our­able Mrs. Jam­ieson gave; and she was sis­ter-in-law to the late Earl of Glen­mire, al­though she did prac­tise such “el­eg­ant eco­nomy.”

“El­eg­ant eco­nomy!” How nat­ur­ally one falls back into the phras­eo­logy of Cran­ford! There, eco­nomy was al­ways “el­eg­ant,” and money-spend­ing al­ways “vul­gar and os­ten­ta­tious”; a sort of sour-grapeism which made us very peace­ful and sat­is­fied. I never shall for­get the dis­may felt when a cer­tain Cap­tain Brown came to live at Cran­ford, and openly spoke about his be­ing poor—not in a whis­per to an in­tim­ate friend, the doors and win­dows be­ing pre­vi­ously closed, but in the pub­lic street! in a loud mil­it­ary voice! al­leging his poverty as a reason for not tak­ing a par­tic­u­lar house. The ladies of Cran­ford were already rather moan­ing over the in­va­sion of their ter­rit­or­ies by a man and a gen­tle­man. He was a half-pay cap­tain, and had ob­tained some situ­ation on a neigh­bour­ing rail­road, which had been vehe­mently pe­ti­tioned against by the little town; and if, in ad­di­tion to his mas­cu­line gender, and his con­nec­tion with the ob­nox­ious rail­road, he was so brazen as to talk of be­ing poor—why, then, in­deed, he must be sent to Coventry. Death was as true and as com­mon as poverty; yet people never spoke about that, loud out in the streets. It was a word not to be men­tioned to ears po­lite. We had ta­citly agreed to ig­nore that any with whom we as­so­ci­ated on terms of vis­it­ing equal­ity could ever be pre­ven­ted by poverty from do­ing any­thing that they wished.  If we walked to or from a party, it was be­cause the night was so fine, or the air so re­fresh­ing, not be­cause sedan-chairs were ex­pens­ive. If we wore prints, in­stead of sum­mer silks, it was be­cause we pre­ferred a wash­ing ma­ter­ial; and so on, till we blinded ourselves to the vul­gar fact that we were, all of us, people of very mod­er­ate means. Of course, then, we did not know what to make of a man who could speak of poverty as if it was not a dis­grace. Yet, some­how, Cap­tain Brown made him­self re­spec­ted in Cran­ford, and was called upon, in spite of all res­ol­u­tions to the con­trary. I was sur­prised to hear his opin­ions quoted as au­thor­ity at a visit which I paid to Cran­ford about a year after he had settled in the town. My own friends had been among the bitterest op­pon­ents of any pro­posal to visit the Cap­tain and his daugh­ters, only twelve months be­fore; and now he was even ad­mit­ted in the ta­booed hours be­fore twelve. True, it was to dis­cover the cause of a smoking chim­ney, be­fore the fire was lighted; but still Cap­tain Brown walked up­stairs, noth­ing daun­ted, spoke in a voice too large for the room, and joked quite in the way of a tame man about the house. He had been blind to all the small slights, and omis­sions of trivial ce­re­mon­ies, with which he had been re­ceived. He had been friendly, though the Cran­ford ladies had been cool; he had answered small sar­castic com­pli­ments in good faith; and with his manly frank­ness had over­powered all the shrink­ing which met him as a man who was not ashamed to be poor. And, at last, his ex­cel­lent mas­cu­line com­mon sense, and his fa­cil­ity in de­vis­ing ex­pedi­ents to over­come do­mestic di­lem­mas, had gained him an ex­traordin­ary place as au­thor­ity among the Cran­ford ladies. He him­self went on in his course, as un­aware of his pop­ular­ity as he had been of the re­verse; and I am sure he was startled one day when he found his ad­vice so highly es­teemed as to make some coun­sel which he had given in jest to be taken in sober, ser­i­ous earn­est.

It was on this sub­ject: An old lady had an Al­der­ney cow, which she looked upon as a daugh­ter. You could not pay the short quarter of an hour call without be­ing told of the won­der­ful milk or won­der­ful in­tel­li­gence of this an­imal. The whole town knew and kindly re­garded Miss Betsy Barker’s Al­der­ney; there­fore great was the sym­pathy and re­gret when, in an un­guarded mo­ment, the poor cow tumbled into a lime-pit. She moaned so loudly that she was soon heard and res­cued; but mean­while the poor beast had lost most of her hair, and came out look­ing na­ked, cold, and miser­able, in a bare skin. Every­body pit­ied the an­imal, though a few could not re­strain their smiles at her droll ap­pear­ance. Miss Betsy Barker ab­so­lutely cried with sor­row and dis­may; and it was said she thought of try­ing a bath of oil. This rem­edy, per­haps, was re­com­men­ded by some one of the num­ber whose ad­vice she asked; but the pro­posal, if ever it was made, was knocked on the head by Cap­tain Brown’s de­cided “Get her a flan­nel waist­coat and flan­nel draw­ers, ma’am, if you wish to keep her alive. But my ad­vice is, kill the poor creature at once.”

Miss Betsy Barker dried her eyes, and thanked the Cap­tain heart­ily; she set to work, and by-and-by all the town turned out to see the Al­der­ney meekly go­ing to her pas­ture, clad in dark grey flan­nel. I have watched her my­self many a time.  Do you ever see cows dressed in grey flan­nel in Lon­don?

Cap­tain Brown had taken a small house on the out­skirts of the town, where he lived with his two daugh­ters. He must have been up­wards of sixty at the time of the first visit I paid to Cran­ford after I had left it as a res­id­ence. But he had a wiry, well-trained, elastic fig­ure, a stiff mil­it­ary throw-back of his head, and a spring­ing step, which made him ap­pear much younger than he was. His eld­est daugh­ter looked al­most as old as him­self, and be­trayed the fact that his real was more than his ap­par­ent age. Miss Brown must have been forty; she had a sickly, pained, care­worn ex­pres­sion on her face, and looked as if the gaiety of youth had long faded out of sight. Even when young she must have been plain and hard-fea­tured. Miss Jessie Brown was ten years younger than her sis­ter, and twenty shades pret­tier. Her face was round and dimpled. Miss Jen­kyns once said, in a pas­sion against Cap­tain Brown (the cause of which I will tell you presently), “that she thought it was time for Miss Jessie to leave off her dimples, and not al­ways to be try­ing to look like a child.” It was true there was some­thing child­like in her face; and there will be, I think, till she dies, though she should live to a hun­dred. Her eyes were large blue won­der­ing eyes, look­ing straight at you; her nose was un­formed and snub, and her lips were red and dewy; she wore her hair, too, in little rows of curls, which heightened this ap­pear­ance. I do not know whether she was pretty or not; but I liked her face, and so did every­body, and I do not think she could help her dimples. She had some­thing of her father’s jaunti­ness of gait and man­ner; and any fe­male ob­server might de­tect a slight dif­fer­ence in the at­tire of the two sis­ters—that of Miss Jessie be­ing about two pounds per an­num more ex­pens­ive than Miss Brown’s. Two pounds was a large sum in Cap­tain Brown’s an­nual dis­burse­ments.

Such was the im­pres­sion made upon me by the Brown fam­ily when I first saw them all to­gether in Cran­ford Church. The Cap­tain I had met be­fore—on the oc­ca­sion of the smoky chim­ney, which he had cured by some simple al­ter­a­tion in the flue. In church, he held his double eye­glass to his eyes dur­ing the Morn­ing Hymn, and then lif­ted up his head erect and sang out loud and joy­fully. He made the re­sponses louder than the clerk—an old man with a pip­ing feeble voice, who, I think, felt ag­grieved at the Cap­tain’s son­or­ous bass, and quivered higher and higher in con­sequence.

On com­ing out of church, the brisk Cap­tain paid the most gal­lant at­ten­tion to his two daugh­ters. He nod­ded and smiled to his ac­quaint­ances; but he shook hands with none un­til he had helped Miss Brown to un­furl her um­brella, had re­lieved her of her pray­er­book, and had waited pa­tiently till she, with trem­bling nervous hands, had taken up her gown to walk through the wet roads.

I won­der what the Cran­ford ladies did with Cap­tain Brown at their parties. We had of­ten re­joiced, in former days, that there was no gen­tle­man to be at­ten­ded to, and to find con­ver­sa­tion for, at the card-parties. We had con­grat­u­lated ourselves upon the snug­ness of the even­ings; and, in our love for gen­til­ity, and dis­taste of man­kind, we had al­most per­suaded ourselves that to be a man was to be “vul­gar”; so that when I found my friend and host­ess, Miss Jen­kyns, was go­ing to have a party in my hon­our, and that Cap­tain and the Miss Browns were in­vited, I wondered much what would be the course of the even­ing. Card-tables, with green baize tops, were set out by day­light, just as usual; it was the third week in Novem­ber, so the even­ings closed in about four. Candles, and clean packs of cards, were ar­ranged on each table. The fire was made up; the neat maid­ser­vant had re­ceived her last dir­ec­tions; and there we stood, dressed in our best, each with a candle-lighter in our hands, ready to dart at the candles as soon as the first knock came. Parties in Cran­ford were sol­emn fest­iv­it­ies, mak­ing the ladies feel gravely elated as they sat to­gether in their best dresses. As soon as three had ar­rived, we sat down to Prefer­ence, I be­ing the un­lucky fourth. The next four comers were put down im­me­di­ately to an­other table; and presently the tea-trays, which I had seen set out in the stor­e­room as I passed in the morn­ing, were placed each on the middle of a card-table. The china was del­ic­ate egg­shell; the old-fash­ioned sil­ver glittered with pol­ish­ing; but the eat­ables were of the slight­est de­scrip­tion. While the trays were yet on the tables, Cap­tain and the Miss Browns came in; and I could see that, some­how or other, the Cap­tain was a fa­vour­ite with all the ladies present. Ruffled brows were smoothed, sharp voices lowered at his ap­proach. Miss Brown looked ill, and de­pressed al­most to gloom. Miss Jessie smiled as usual, and seemed nearly as pop­u­lar as her father. He im­me­di­ately and quietly as­sumed the man’s place in the room; at­ten­ded to every­one’s wants, lessened the pretty maid­ser­vant’s la­bour by wait­ing on empty cups and bread-and-but­ter­less ladies; and yet did it all in so easy and dig­ni­fied a man­ner, and so much as if it were a mat­ter of course for the strong to at­tend to the weak, that he was a true man through­out. He played for three­penny points with as grave an in­terest as if they had been pounds; and yet, in all his at­ten­tion to strangers, he had an eye on his suf­fer­ing daugh­ter—for suf­fer­ing I was sure she was, though to many eyes she might only ap­pear to be ir­rit­able.  Miss Jessie could not play cards: but she talked to the sit­ters-out, who, be­fore her com­ing, had been rather in­clined to be cross. She sang, too, to an old cracked pi­ano, which I think had been a spinet in its youth. Miss Jessie sang “Jock of Hazeldean” a little out of tune; but we were none of us mu­sical, though Miss Jen­kyns beat time, out of time, by way of ap­pear­ing to be so.

It was very good of Miss Jen­kyns to do this; for I had seen that, a little be­fore, she had been a good deal an­noyed by Miss Jessie Brown’s un­guarded ad­mis­sion (apro­pos of Shet­land wool) that she had an uncle, her mother’s brother, who was a shop­keeper in Ed­in­burgh. Miss Jen­kyns tried to drown this con­fes­sion by a ter­rible cough—for the Hon­our­able Mrs. Jam­ieson was sit­ting at a card-table nearest Miss Jessie, and what would she say or think if she found out she was in the same room with a shop­keeper’s niece! But Miss Jessie Brown (who had no tact, as we all agreed the next morn­ing) would re­peat the in­form­a­tion, and as­sure Miss Pole she could eas­ily get her the identical Shet­land wool re­quired, “through my uncle, who has the best as­sort­ment of Shet­land goods of any­one in Ed­in­bro’.” It was to take the taste of this out of our mouths, and the sound of this out of our ears, that Miss Jen­kyns pro­posed mu­sic; so I say again, it was very good of her to beat time to the song.

When the trays re­appeared with bis­cuits and wine, punc­tu­ally at a quarter to nine, there was con­ver­sa­tion, com­par­ing of cards, and talk­ing over tricks; but by-and-by Cap­tain Brown spor­ted a bit of lit­er­at­ure.

“Have you seen any num­bers of The Pick­wick Papers?” said he. (They were then pub­lish­ing in parts.) “Cap­ital thing!”

Now Miss Jen­kyns was daugh­ter of a de­ceased rector of Cran­ford; and, on the strength of a num­ber of ma­nu­script ser­mons, and a pretty good lib­rary of di­vin­ity, con­sidered her­self lit­er­ary, and looked upon any con­ver­sa­tion about books as a chal­lenge to her. So she answered and said, “Yes, she had seen them; in­deed, she might say she had read them.”

“And what do you think of them?” ex­claimed Cap­tain Brown. “Aren’t they fam­ously good?”

So urged Miss Jen­kyns could not but speak.

“I must say, I don’t think they are by any means equal to Dr. John­son. Still, per­haps, the au­thor is young. Let him per­severe, and who knows what he may be­come if he will take the great Doc­tor for his model?” This was evid­ently too much for Cap­tain Brown to take pla­cidly; and I saw the words on the tip of his tongue be­fore Miss Jen­kyns had fin­ished her sen­tence.

“It is quite a dif­fer­ent sort of thing, my dear madam,” he began.

“I am quite aware of that,” re­turned she.  “And I make al­low­ances, Cap­tain Brown.”

“Just al­low me to read you a scene out of this month’s num­ber,” pleaded he. “I had it only this morn­ing, and I don’t think the com­pany can have read it yet.”

“As you please,” said she, set­tling her­self with an air of resig­na­tion. He read the ac­count of the “swarry” which Sam Weller gave at Bath. Some of us laughed heart­ily. I did not dare, be­cause I was stay­ing in the house. Miss Jen­kyns sat in pa­tient grav­ity. When it was ended, she turned to me, and said with mild dig­nity—

“Fetch me Ras­selas, my dear, out of the book-room.”

When I had brought it to her, she turned to Cap­tain Brown—

“Now al­low me to read you a scene, and then the present com­pany can judge between your fa­vour­ite, Mr. Boz, and Dr. John­son.”

She read one of the con­ver­sa­tions between Ras­selas and Im­lac, in a high-pitched, majestic voice: and when she had ended, she said, “I ima­gine I am now jus­ti­fied in my pref­er­ence of Dr. John­son as a writer of fic­tion.” The Cap­tain screwed his lips up, and drummed on the table, but he did not speak. She thought she would give him a fin­ish­ing blow or two.

“I con­sider it vul­gar, and be­low the dig­nity of lit­er­at­ure, to pub­lish in num­bers.”

“How was the Ram­bler pub­lished, ma’am?” asked Cap­tain Brown in a low voice, which I think Miss Jen­kyns could not have heard.

“Dr. John­son’s style is a model for young be­gin­ners. My father re­com­men­ded it to me when I began to write let­ters—I have formed my own style upon it; I re­com­men­ded it to your fa­vour­ite.”

“I should be very sorry for him to ex­change his style for any such pom­pous writ­ing,” said Cap­tain Brown.

Miss Jen­kyns felt this as a per­sonal af­front, in a way of which the Cap­tain had not dreamed. Epis­tolary writ­ing she and her friends con­sidered as her forte. Many a copy of many a let­ter have I seen writ­ten and cor­rec­ted on the slate, be­fore she “seized the half-hour just pre­vi­ous to post-time to as­sure” her friends of this or of that; and Dr. John­son was, as she said, her model in these com­pos­i­tions. She drew her­self up with dig­nity, and only replied to Cap­tain Brown’s last re­mark by say­ing, with marked em­phasis on every syl­lable, “I prefer Dr. John­son to Mr. Boz.”

It is said—I won’t vouch for the fact—that Cap­tain Brown was heard to say, sotto voce, “D——n Dr. John­son!” If he did, he was pen­it­ent af­ter­wards, as he showed by go­ing to stand near Miss Jen­kyns’ arm­chair, and en­deav­our­ing to be­guile her into con­ver­sa­tion on some more pleas­ing sub­ject. But she was in­ex­or­able. The next day she made the re­mark I have men­tioned about Miss Jessie’s dimples.

II The Captain

It was im­possible to live a month at Cran­ford and not know the daily habits of each res­id­ent; and long be­fore my visit was ended I knew much con­cern­ing the whole Brown trio. There was noth­ing new to be dis­covered re­spect­ing their poverty; for they had spoken simply and openly about that from the very first. They made no mys­tery of the ne­ces­sity for their be­ing eco­nom­ical. All that re­mained to be dis­covered was the Cap­tain’s in­fin­ite kind­ness of heart, and the vari­ous modes in which, un­con­sciously to him­self, he mani­fes­ted it. Some little an­ec­dotes were talked about for some time after they oc­curred. As we did not read much, and as all the ladies were pretty well suited with ser­vants, there was a dearth of sub­jects for con­ver­sa­tion. We there­fore dis­cussed the cir­cum­stance of the Cap­tain tak­ing a poor old wo­man’s din­ner out of her hands one very slip­pery Sunday. He had met her re­turn­ing from the bake­house as he came from church, and no­ticed her pre­cari­ous foot­ing; and, with the grave dig­nity with which he did everything, he re­lieved her of her bur­den, and steered along the street by her side, car­ry­ing her baked mut­ton and pota­toes safely home. This was thought very ec­cent­ric; and it was rather ex­pec­ted that he would pay a round of calls, on the Monday morn­ing, to ex­plain and apo­lo­gise to the Cran­ford sense of pro­pri­ety: but he did no such thing: and then it was de­cided that he was ashamed, and was keep­ing out of sight. In a kindly pity for him, we began to say, “After all, the Sunday morn­ing’s oc­cur­rence showed great good­ness of heart,” and it was re­solved that he should be com­for­ted on his next ap­pear­ance amongst us; but, lo! he came down upon us, un­touched by any sense of shame, speak­ing loud and bass as ever, his head thrown back, his wig as jaunty and well-curled as usual, and we were ob­liged to con­clude he had for­got­ten all about Sunday.

Miss Pole and Miss Jessie Brown had set up a kind of in­tim­acy on the strength of the Shet­land wool and the new knit­ting stitches; so it happened that when I went to visit Miss Pole I saw more of the Browns than I had done while stay­ing with Miss Jen­kyns, who had never got over what she called Cap­tain Brown’s dis­par­aging re­marks upon Dr. John­son as a writer of light and agree­able fic­tion. I found that Miss Brown was ser­i­ously ill of some linger­ing, in­cur­able com­plaint, the pain oc­ca­sioned by which gave the un­easy ex­pres­sion to her face that I had taken for un­mit­ig­ated cross­ness. Cross, too, she was at times, when the nervous ir­rit­ab­il­ity oc­ca­sioned by her dis­ease be­came past en­dur­ance. Miss Jessie bore with her at these times, even more pa­tiently than she did with the bit­ter self-up­braid­ings by which they were in­vari­ably suc­ceeded. Miss Brown used to ac­cuse her­self, not merely of hasty and ir­rit­able tem­per, but also of be­ing the cause why her father and sis­ter were ob­liged to pinch, in or­der to al­low her the small lux­ur­ies which were ne­ces­sar­ies in her con­di­tion. She would so fain have made sac­ri­fices for them, and have lightened their cares, that the ori­ginal gen­er­os­ity of her dis­pos­i­tion ad­ded acerbity to her tem­per. All this was borne by Miss Jessie and her father with more than pla­cid­ity—with ab­so­lute ten­der­ness. I for­gave Miss Jessie her singing out of tune, and her ju­ven­il­ity of dress, when I saw her at home. I came to per­ceive that Cap­tain Brown’s dark Bru­tus wig and pad­ded coat (alas! too of­ten thread­bare) were rem­nants of the mil­it­ary smart­ness of his youth, which he now wore un­con­sciously. He was a man of in­fin­ite re­sources, gained in his bar­rack ex­per­i­ence. As he con­fessed, no one could black his boots to please him ex­cept him­self; but, in­deed, he was not above sav­ing the little maid­ser­vant’s la­bours in every way—know­ing, most likely, that his daugh­ter’s ill­ness made the place a hard one.

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 any­one 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 any­one 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 Miss 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 awe­struck 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 any­one 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 stor­e­room; 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 stor­e­room, 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.

Miss Jen­kyns snubbed her down in an in­stant.

“The most proper place in the world for his arm to be in. Go away, Mat­ilda, and mind your own busi­ness.” This from her sis­ter, who had hitherto been a model of fem­in­ine de­corum, was a blow for poor Miss Matty, and with a double shock she left the room.

The last time I ever saw poor Miss Jen­kyns was many years after this. Mrs. Gor­don had kept up a warm and af­fec­tion­ate in­ter­course with all at Cran­ford. Miss Jen­kyns, Miss Matty, and Miss Pole had all been to visit her, and re­turned with won­der­ful ac­counts of her house, her hus­band, her dress, and her looks. For, with hap­pi­ness, some­thing of her early bloom re­turned; she had been a year or two younger than we had taken her for. Her eyes were al­ways lovely, and, as Mrs. Gor­don, her dimples were not out of place. At the time to which I have re­ferred, when I last saw Miss Jen­kyns, that lady was old and feeble, and had lost some­thing of her strong mind.  Little Flora Gor­don was stay­ing with the Misses Jen­kyns, and when I came in she was read­ing aloud to Miss Jen­kyns, who lay feeble and changed on the sofa. Flora put down the Ram­bler when I came in.

“Ah!” said Miss Jen­kyns, “you find me changed, my dear. I can’t see as I used to do.  If Flora were not here to read to me, I hardly know how I should get through the day. Did you ever read the Ram­bler? It’s a won­der­ful book—won­der­ful! and the most im­prov­ing read­ing for Flora” (which I daresay it would have been, if she could have read half the words without spelling, and could have un­der­stood the mean­ing of a third), “bet­ter than that strange old book, with the queer name, poor Cap­tain Brown was killed for read­ing—that book by Mr. Boz, you know—Old Poz; when I was a girl—but that’s a long time ago—I ac­ted Lucy in Old Poz.” She babbled on long enough for Flora to get a good long spell at the Christ­mas Carol, which Miss Matty had left on the table.

III A Love Affair of Long Ago

I thought that prob­ably my con­nec­tion with Cran­ford would cease after Miss Jen­kyns’s death; 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 lines 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 Matty, 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 Matty 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 Matty 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 Matty slowly shook her head over each vir­tue as it was named and at­trib­uted to her sis­ter; and 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 Matty,” said I, tak­ing her hand—for in­deed I did not 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 Matty. 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 prac­tise the new name with Miss Pole that very day; and, by de­grees, Miss Mat­ilda’s feel­ing on the sub­ject was known through Cran­ford, and we all tried to drop the more fa­mil­iar name, but with so little suc­cess that by-and-by we gave up the at­tempt.

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 Hon­our­able Mrs. Jam­ieson, to whom Miss Jen­kyns her­self had al­ways yiel­ded the post of hon­our, was fat and in­ert, and very much at the mercy of her old ser­vants. If they chose that she should 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 a shadow of a love af­fair that was dimly per­ceived or sus­pec­ted long years be­fore.

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 back­wards and for­wards 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 Matty 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 coat­tails whisk into the scull­ery once, when I went on an er­rand into the stor­e­room 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 af­ter­wards by the church clock. But I did not add to Miss Matty’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. The 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 fa­vour­ite, durst have sug­ges­ted an al­ter­a­tion. To give an in­stance: we con­stantly ad­hered to the forms which were ob­served, at meal­times, 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 wine­glasses 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 sum­mer­time. As it was, we felt very gen­teel with our two glasses 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 Matty 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 Matty to stay, and had suc­ceeded in her sis­ter’s life­time. 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-par­lour, and en­joy her or­ange as she liked best. And so it was in everything. Miss Jen­kyns’s rules were made more strin­gent than ever, be­cause the framer of them was gone where there could be no ap­peal. In all things 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 plain­spoken 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 fre­quently 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 Hindu 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 Hon­our­able 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 Matty 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 a 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 any­one 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 Miss Jen­kyns.”

“Well! but they were not to marry him,” said I, im­pa­tiently.

“No; but they did not like Miss Matty 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 Matty!” said I.

“Nay, now, I don’t know any­thing more than that he offered and was re­fused. Miss Matty 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 halfway between Cran­ford and Mis­selton; and I know he made Mis­selton his mar­ket-town very soon after he had offered to Miss Matty; and I don’t think he has been into Cran­ford above once or twice since—once, when I was walk­ing with Miss Matty, 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 col­oured silks which they had just re­ceived at the shop would do to match a grey and black mous­seline-delaine that wanted a new breadth, when a tall, thin, Don Quix­ote-look­ing old man came into the shop for some wool­len gloves. I had never seen the per­son (who was rather strik­ing) be­fore, and I watched him rather at­tent­ively while Miss Matty 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 today, 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 sar­senet two-and-two­pence the yard”; and Mr. Hol­brook had caught the name, and was across the shop in two strides.

“Matty—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 good­bye with many a hope that he should soon see Miss Matty again. She went straight to her room, and never came back till our early teatime, when I thought she looked as if she had been cry­ing.

IV A Visit to an Old Bachelor

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 Matty 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 and des­patched 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 any­thing 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 sat 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 back­ground to the pinks and gilly­flowers; 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 ear­ache, and had only her cap on.

“I think it is very pretty,” said Miss Matty, 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 bed­room, 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 Shakespeare and Ge­orge Her­bert to those of our own day. He did this as nat­ur­ally as if he were think­ing aloud, and 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 Byrron,” and pro­nounced the name of Go­ethe strictly in ac­cord­ance with the Eng­lish sound of the let­ters—“As Go­ethe says, ‘Ye ever-verd­ant palaces,’ ” etc. 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 fire­place, 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-par­lour 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 count­ing­house, where he paid his la­bour­ers 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 fa­vour­ites.

“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 home­like; so, while we were at din­ner, the ser­vant-girl dus­ted and scrubbed the count­ing­house 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 house­keeper 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 Aminé 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 count­ing­house. “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 to­night 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. “Good­bye, miss,” said he; “good­bye, 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 it’s bet­ter than a fort­night; it is, I know; it was one Tues­day, after Miss Pole had been, that she went into this mop­ing way. I thought she was tired, and it would go off with a night’s rest; but no! she has gone on and on ever since, till I thought it my duty to write to you, ma’am.”

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

“Well, ma’am, mis­sus is very kind, and there’s plenty to eat and drink, and no more work but what I can do eas­ily—but—” Martha hes­it­ated.

“But what, Martha?”

“Why, it seems so hard of mis­sus not to let me have any fol­low­ers; there’s such lots of young fel­lows in the town; and many a one has as much as offered to keep com­pany with me; and I may never be in such a likely place again, and it’s like wast­ing an op­por­tun­ity. Many a girl as I know would have ’em un­be­knownst to mis­sus; but I’ve given my word, and I’ll stick to it; or else this is just the house for mis­sus never to be the wiser if they did come: and it’s such a cap­able kit­chen—there’s such dark corners in it—I’d be bound to hide any­one. 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 today 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 count­ing­house, 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 teatime, 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 to­mor­row morn­ing, every­one will give him a char­ac­ter for stead­i­ness; and he’ll be glad enough to come to­mor­row night, I’ll be bound.”

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

V Old Letters

I have of­ten no­ticed that al­most every­one 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 bank­book; 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 any­one 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 teatime 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. To­night, 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.

“We must burn them, I think,” said Miss Matty, look­ing doubt­fully at me. “No one will care for them when I am gone.” And one by one she dropped them into the middle of the fire, watch­ing each blaze up, die out, and rise away, in faint, white, ghostly semb­lance, up the chim­ney, be­fore she gave an­other to the same fate. The room was light enough now; but I, like her, was fas­cin­ated into watch­ing the de­struc­tion of those let­ters, into which the hon­est warmth of a manly heart had been poured forth.

The next let­ter, like­wise dock­eted by Miss Jen­kyns, was en­dorsed, “Let­ter of pi­ous con­grat­u­la­tion and ex­horta­tion from my ven­er­able grand­father to my be­loved mother, on oc­ca­sion of my own birth. Also some prac­tical re­marks on the de­sirab­il­ity of keep­ing warm the ex­tremit­ies of in­fants, from my ex­cel­lent grand­mother.”

The first part was, in­deed, a severe and for­cible pic­ture of the re­spons­ib­il­it­ies of moth­ers, and a warn­ing against the evils that were in the world, and ly­ing in ghastly wait for the little baby of two days old. His wife did not write, said the old gen­tle­man, be­cause he had for­bid­den it, she be­ing in­dis­posed with a sprained ankle, which (he said) quite in­ca­pa­cit­ated her from hold­ing a pen. However, at the foot of the page was a small “T. O.,” and on turn­ing it over, sure enough, there was a let­ter to “my dear, dearest Molly,” beg­ging her, when she left her room, whatever she did, to go up stairs be­fore go­ing down: and telling her to wrap her baby’s feet up in flan­nel, and keep it warm by the fire, al­though it was sum­mer, for ba­bies were so tender.

It was pretty to see from the let­ters, which were evid­ently ex­changed with some fre­quency between the young mother and the grand­mother, how the girl­ish van­ity was be­ing weeded out of her heart by love for her baby. The white “Paduasoy” figured again in the let­ters, with al­most as much vigour as be­fore. In one, it was be­ing made into a christen­ing cloak for the baby. It decked it when it went with its par­ents to spend a day or two at Ar­ley Hall. It ad­ded to its charms, when it was “the pret­ti­est little baby that ever was seen. Dear mother, I wish you could see her! Without any per­shal­ity, I do think she will grow up a reg­u­lar be­wty!” I thought of Miss Jen­kyns, grey, withered, and wrinkled, and I wondered if her mother had known her in the courts of heaven: and then I knew that she had, and that they stood there in an­gelic guise.

There was a great gap be­fore any of the rector’s let­ters ap­peared. And then his wife had changed her mode of her en­dorse­ment. It was no longer from “My dearest John;” it was from “My Hon­oured Hus­band.”  The let­ters were writ­ten on oc­ca­sion of the pub­lic­a­tion of the same ser­mon which was rep­res­en­ted in the pic­ture. The preach­ing be­fore “My Lord Judge,” and the “pub­lish­ing by re­quest,” was evid­ently the cul­min­at­ing point—the event of his life. It had been ne­ces­sary for him to go up to Lon­don to su­per­in­tend it through the press. Many friends had to be called upon and con­sul­ted be­fore he could de­cide on any printer fit for so oner­ous a task; and at length it was ar­ranged that J. and J. Riv­ing­tons were to have the hon­our­able re­spons­ib­il­ity. The worthy rector seemed to be strung up by the oc­ca­sion to a high lit­er­ary pitch, for he could hardly write a let­ter to his wife without crop­ping out into Latin. I re­mem­ber the end of one of his let­ters ran thus: “I shall ever hold the vir­tu­ous qual­it­ies of my Molly in re­mem­brance, dum memor ipse mei, dum spir­itus re­git artus,” which, con­sid­er­ing that the Eng­lish of his cor­res­pond­ent was some­times at fault in gram­mar, and of­ten in spelling, might be taken as a proof of how much he “ideal­ised his Molly;” and, as Miss Jen­kyns used to say, “People talk a great deal about ideal­ising nowadays, whatever that may mean.” But this was noth­ing to a fit of writ­ing clas­sical po­etry which soon seized him, in which his Molly figured away as “Maria.” The let­ter con­tain­ing the car­men was en­dorsed by her, “Hebrew verses sent me by my hon­oured hus­band. I thowt to have had a let­ter about killing the pig, but must wait. Mem., to send the po­etry to Sir Peter Ar­ley, as my hus­band de­sires.”  And in a post-scriptum note in his hand­writ­ing it was stated that the Ode had ap­peared in the Gen­tle­man’s Magazine, Decem­ber 1782.

Her let­ters back to her hus­band (treas­ured as fondly by him as if they had been M. T. Cicer­onis Epis­tolae) were more sat­is­fact­ory to an ab­sent hus­band and father than his could ever have been to her. She told him how De­borah sewed her seam very neatly every day, and read to her in the books he had set her; how she was a very “for­rard,” good child, but would ask ques­tions her mother could not an­swer, but how she did not let her­self down by say­ing she did not know, but took to stir­ring the fire, or send­ing the “for­rard” child on an er­rand. Matty was now the mother’s darling, and prom­ised (like her sis­ter at her age), to be a great beauty. I was read­ing this aloud to Miss Matty, who smiled and sighed a little at the hope, so fondly ex­pressed, that “little Matty might not be vain, even if she were a be­wty.”

“I had very pretty hair, my dear,” said Miss Mat­ilda; “and not a bad mouth.” And I saw her soon af­ter­wards ad­just her cap and draw her­self up.

But to re­turn to Mrs. Jen­kyns’s let­ters. She told her hus­band about the poor in the par­ish; what homely do­mestic medi­cines she had ad­min­istered; what kit­chen physic she had sent. She had evid­ently held his dis­pleas­ure as a rod in pickle over the heads of all the ne’er-do-wells. She asked for his dir­ec­tions about the cows and pigs; and did not al­ways ob­tain them, as I have shown be­fore.

The kind old grand­mother was dead when a little boy was born, soon after the pub­lic­a­tion of the ser­mon; but there was an­other let­ter of ex­horta­tion from the grand­father, more strin­gent and ad­mon­it­ory than ever, now that there was a boy to be guarded from the snares of the world. He de­scribed all the vari­ous sins into which men might fall, un­til I wondered how any man ever came to a nat­ural death. The gal­lows seemed as if it must have been the ter­min­a­tion of the lives of most of the grand­father’s friends and ac­quaint­ance; and I was not sur­prised at the way in which he spoke of this life be­ing “a vale of tears.”

It seemed curi­ous that I should never have heard of this brother be­fore; but I con­cluded that he had died young, or else surely his name would have been al­luded to by his sis­ters.

By-and-by we came to pack­ets of Miss Jen­kyns’s let­ters. These Miss Matty did re­gret to burn. She said all the oth­ers had been only in­ter­est­ing to those who loved the writers, and that it seemed as if it would have hurt her to al­low them to fall into the hands of strangers, who had not known her dear mother, and how good she was, al­though she did not al­ways spell, quite in the mod­ern fash­ion; but De­borah’s let­ters were so very su­per­ior! Anyone might profit by read­ing them. It was a long time since she had read Mrs. Chapone, but she knew she used to think that De­borah could have said the same things quite as well; and as for Mrs. Carter! people thought a deal of her let­ters, just be­cause she had writ­ten “Epic­t­etus,” but she was quite sure De­borah would never have made use of such a com­mon ex­pres­sion as “I canna be fashed!”

Miss Matty did grudge burn­ing these let­ters, it was evid­ent. She would not let them be care­lessly passed over with any quiet read­ing, and skip­ping, to my­self. She took them from me, and even lighted the second candle in or­der to read them aloud with a proper em­phasis, and without stum­bling over the big words. Oh dear! how I wanted facts in­stead of re­flec­tions, be­fore those let­ters were con­cluded! They las­ted us two nights; and I won’t deny that I made use of the time to think of many other things, and yet I was al­ways at my post at the end of each sen­tence.

The rector’s let­ters, and those of his wife and mother-in-law, had all been tol­er­ably short and pithy, writ­ten in a straight hand, with the lines very close to­gether.  So­me­times the whole let­ter was con­tained on a mere scrap of pa­per. The pa­per was very yel­low, and the ink very brown; some of the sheets were (as Miss Matty made me ob­serve) the old ori­ginal post, with the stamp in the corner rep­res­ent­ing a post-boy rid­ing for life and twanging his horn. The let­ters of Mrs. Jen­kyns and her mother were fastened with a great round red wafer; for it was be­fore Miss Edge­worth’s “pat­ron­age” had ban­ished wafers from po­lite so­ci­ety. It was evid­ent, from the tenor of what was said, that franks were in great re­quest, and were even used as a means of pay­ing debts by needy mem­bers of Parlia­ment. The rector sealed his epistles with an im­mense coat of arms, and showed by the care with which he had per­formed this ce­re­mony that he ex­pec­ted they should be cut open, not broken by any thought­less or im­pa­tient hand. Now, Miss Jen­kyns’s let­ters were of a later date in form and writ­ing. She wrote on the square sheet which we have learned to call old-fash­ioned. Her hand was ad­mir­ably cal­cu­lated, to­gether with her use of many-syl­labled words, to fill up a sheet, and then came the pride and de­light of cross­ing. Poor Miss Matty got sadly puzzled with this, for the words gathered size like snow­balls, and to­wards the end of her let­ter Miss Jen­kyns used to be­come quite ses­qui­ped­alian. In one to her father, slightly theo­lo­gical and con­tro­ver­sial in its tone, she had spoken of Herod, Tetrarch of Idumea. Miss Matty read it “Herod Petrarch of Etruria,” and was just as well pleased as if she had been right.

I can’t quite re­mem­ber the date, but I think it was in 1805 that Miss Jen­kyns wrote the longest series of let­ters—on oc­ca­sion of her ab­sence on a visit to some friends near New­castle-upon-Tyne. These friends were in­tim­ate with the com­mand­ant of the gar­rison there, and heard from him of all the pre­par­a­tions that were be­ing made to re­pel the in­va­sion of Bona­parte, which some people ima­gined might take place at the mouth of the Tyne. Miss Jen­kyns was evid­ently very much alarmed; and the first part of her let­ters was of­ten writ­ten in pretty in­tel­li­gible Eng­lish, con­vey­ing par­tic­u­lars of the pre­par­a­tions which were made in the fam­ily with whom she was resid­ing against the dreaded event; the bundles of clothes that were packed up ready for a flight to Al­ston Moor (a wild hilly piece of ground between Northum­ber­land and Cum­ber­land); the sig­nal that was to be given for this flight, and for the sim­ul­tan­eous turn­ing out of the vo­lun­teers un­der arms—which said sig­nal was to con­sist (if I re­mem­ber rightly) in ringing the church bells in a par­tic­u­lar and omin­ous man­ner. One day, when Miss Jen­kyns and her hosts were at a din­ner-party in New­castle, this warn­ing sum­mons was ac­tu­ally given (not a very wise pro­ceed­ing, if there be any truth in the moral at­tached to the fable of the Boy and the Wolf; but so it was), and Miss Jen­kyns, hardly re­covered from her fright, wrote the next day to de­scribe the sound, the breath­less shock, the hurry and alarm; and then, tak­ing breath, she ad­ded, “How trivial, my dear father, do all our ap­pre­hen­sions of the last even­ing ap­pear, at the present mo­ment, to calm and en­quir­ing minds!” And here Miss Matty broke in with—

“But, in­deed, my dear, they were not at all trivial or tri­fling at the time. I know I used to wake up in the night many a time and think I heard the tramp of the French en­ter­ing Cran­ford. Many people talked of hid­ing them­selves in the salt mines—and meat would have kept cap­it­ally down there, only per­haps we should have been thirsty. And my father preached a whole set of ser­mons on the oc­ca­sion; one set in the morn­ings, all about David and Go­liath, to spirit up the people to fight­ing with spades or bricks, if need were; and the other set in the af­ter­noons, prov­ing that Na­po­leon (that was an­other name for Bony, as we used to call him) was all the same as an Apollyon and Abad­don. I re­mem­ber my father rather thought he should be asked to print this last set; but the par­ish had, per­haps, had enough of them with hear­ing.”

Peter Mar­maduke Ar­ley Jen­kyns (“poor Peter!” as Miss Matty began to call him) was at school at Shrews­bury by this time. The rector took up his pen, and rubbed up his Latin once more, to cor­res­pond with his boy. It was very clear that the lad’s were what are called “show let­ters.”  They were of a highly men­tal de­scrip­tion, giv­ing an ac­count of his stud­ies, and his in­tel­lec­tual hopes of vari­ous kinds, with an oc­ca­sional quo­ta­tion from the clas­sics; but, now and then, the an­imal nature broke out in such a little sen­tence as this, evid­ently writ­ten in a trem­bling hurry, after the let­ter had been in­spec­ted: “Mother dear, do send me a cake, and put plenty of cit­ron in.” The “mother dear” prob­ably answered her boy in the form of cakes and “goody,” for there were none of her let­ters among this set; but a whole col­lec­tion of the rector’s, to whom the Latin in his boy’s let­ters was like a trum­pet to the old war­horse. I do not know much about Latin, cer­tainly, and it is, per­haps, an or­na­mental lan­guage, but not very use­ful, I think—at least to judge from the bits I re­mem­ber out of the rector’s let­ters. One was, “You have not got that town in your map of Ire­land; but Bo­nus Bern­ar­dus non videt om­nia, as the Pro­ver­bia say.” Presently it be­came very evid­ent that “poor Peter” got him­self into many scrapes. There were let­ters of stil­ted pen­it­ence to his father, for some wrong­do­ing; and among them all was a badly-writ­ten, badly-sealed, badly-dir­ec­ted, blot­ted note:—“My dear, dear, dear, dearest mother, I will be a bet­ter boy; I will, in­deed; but don’t, please, be ill for me; I am not worth it; but I will be good, darling mother.”

Miss Matty could not speak for cry­ing, after she had read this note. She gave it to me in si­lence, and then got up and took it to her sac­red re­cesses in her own room, for fear, by any chance, it might get burnt. “Poor Peter!” she said; “he was al­ways in scrapes; he was too easy.  They led him wrong, and then left him in the lurch. But he was too fond of mis­chief. He could never res­ist a joke. Poor Peter!”

VI Poor Peter

Poor Peter’s ca­reer lay be­fore him rather pleas­antly mapped out by kind friends, but Bo­nus Bern­ar­dus non videt om­nia, in this map too. He was to win hon­ours at the Shrews­bury School, and carry them thick to Cam­bridge, and after that, a liv­ing awaited him, the gift of his god­father, Sir Peter Ar­ley. Poor Peter! his lot in life was very dif­fer­ent to what his friends had hoped and planned. Miss Matty told me all about it, and I think it was a re­lief when she had done so.

He was the darling of his mother, who seemed to dote on all her chil­dren, though she was, per­haps, a little afraid of De­borah’s su­per­ior ac­quire­ments. De­borah was the fa­vour­ite of her father, and when Peter dis­ap­poin­ted him, she be­came his pride. The sole hon­our Peter brought away from Shrews­bury was the repu­ta­tion of be­ing the best good fel­low that ever was, and of be­ing the cap­tain of the school in the art of prac­tical jok­ing. His father was dis­ap­poin­ted, but set about rem­edy­ing the mat­ter in a manly way. He could not af­ford to send Peter to read with any tu­tor, but he could read with him him­self; and Miss Matty told me much of the aw­ful pre­par­a­tions in the way of dic­tion­ar­ies and lex­icons that were made in her father’s study the morn­ing Peter began.

“My poor mother!” said she. “I re­mem­ber how she used to stand in the hall, just near enough the study-door, to catch the tone of my father’s voice. I could tell in a mo­ment if all was go­ing right, by her face.  And it did go right for a long time.”

“What went wrong at last?” said I.  “That tire­some Latin, I dare say.”

“No! it was not the Latin. Peter was in high fa­vour with my father, for he worked up well for him. But he seemed to think that the Cran­ford people might be joked about, and made fun of, and they did not like it; nobody does. He was al­ways hoax­ing them; ‘hoax­ing’ is not a pretty word, my dear, and I hope you won’t tell your father I used it, for I should not like him to think that I was not choice in my lan­guage, after liv­ing with such a wo­man as De­borah. And be sure you never use it your­self. I don’t know how it slipped out of my mouth, ex­cept it was that I was think­ing of poor Peter and it was al­ways his ex­pres­sion. But he was a very gen­tle­manly boy in many things. He was like dear Cap­tain Brown in al­ways be­ing ready to help any old per­son or a child. Still, he did like jok­ing and mak­ing fun; and he seemed to think the old ladies in Cran­ford would be­lieve any­thing. There were many old ladies liv­ing here then; we are prin­cip­ally ladies now, I know, but we are not so old as the ladies used to be when I was a girl. I could laugh to think of some of Peter’s jokes. No, my dear, I won’t tell you of them, be­cause they might not shock you as they ought to do, and they were very shock­ing. He even took in my father once, by dress­ing him­self up as a lady that was passing through the town and wished to see the Rector of Cran­ford, ‘who had pub­lished that ad­mir­able Ass­ize Ser­mon.’ Peter said he was aw­fully frightened him­self when he saw how my father took it all in, and even offered to copy out all his Na­po­leon Bona­parte ser­mons for her—him, I mean—no, her, for Peter was a lady then. He told me he was more ter­ri­fied than he ever was be­fore, all the time my father was speak­ing. He did not think my father would have be­lieved him; and yet if he had not, it would have been a sad thing for Peter. As it was, he was none so glad of it, for my father kept him hard at work copy­ing out all those twelve Bona­parte ser­mons for the lady—that was for Peter him­self, you know. He was the lady. And once when he wanted to go fish­ing, Peter said, ‘Con­found the wo­man!’—very bad lan­guage, my dear, but Peter was not al­ways so guarded as he should have been; my father was so angry with him, it nearly frightened me out of my wits: and yet I could hardly keep from laugh­ing at the little curt­seys Peter kept mak­ing, quite slyly, whenever my father spoke of the lady’s ex­cel­lent taste and sound dis­crim­in­a­tion.”

“Did Miss Jen­kyns know of these tricks?” said I.

“Oh, no! De­borah would have been too much shocked. No, no one knew but me. I wish I had al­ways known of Peter’s plans; but some­times he did not tell me. He used to say the old ladies in the town wanted some­thing to talk about; but I don’t think they did. They had the St James’s Chron­icle three times a week, just as we have now, and we have plenty to say; and I re­mem­ber the clack­ing noise there al­ways was when some of the ladies got to­gether. But, prob­ably, school­boys talk more than ladies. At last there was a ter­rible, sad thing happened.” Miss Matty got up, went to the door, and opened it; no one was there. She rang the bell for Martha, and when Martha came, her mis­tress told her to go for eggs to a farm at the other end of the town.

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

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

Miss Matty drew her­self up, and as soon as we were alone, she wished that Martha had more maid­enly re­serve.

“We’ll put out the candle, my dear. We can talk just as well by fire­light, you know. There!  Well, you see, De­borah had gone from home for a fort­night or so; it was a very still, quiet day, I re­mem­ber, over­head; and the lilacs were all in flower, so I sup­pose it was spring. My father had gone out to see some sick people in the par­ish; I re­col­lect see­ing him leave the house with his wig and shovel-hat and cane. What pos­sessed our poor Peter I don’t know; he had the sweetest tem­per, and yet he al­ways seemed to like to plague De­borah. She never laughed at his jokes, and thought him un­gen­teel, and not care­ful enough about im­prov­ing his mind; and that vexed him.

“Well! he went to her room, it seems, and dressed him­self in her old gown, and shawl, and bon­net; just the things she used to wear in Cran­ford, and was known by every­where; and he made the pil­low into a little—you are sure you locked the door, my dear, for I should not like any­one to hear—into—into a little baby, with white long clothes. It was only, as he told me af­ter­wards, to make some­thing to talk about in the town; he never thought of it as af­fect­ing De­borah. And he went and walked up and down in the Fil­bert walk—just half-hid­den by the rails, and half-seen; and he cuddled his pil­low, just like a baby, and talked to it all the non­sense people do. Oh dear! and my father came step­ping stately up the street, as he al­ways did; and what should he see but a little black crowd of people—I daresay as many as twenty—all peep­ing through his garden rails. So he thought, at first, they were only look­ing at a new rhodo­den­dron that was in full bloom, and that he was very proud of; and he walked slower, that they might have more time to ad­mire. And he wondered if he could make out a ser­mon from the oc­ca­sion, and thought, per­haps, there was some re­la­tion between the rhodo­den­drons and the lilies of the field. My poor father! When he came nearer, he began to won­der that they did not see him; but their heads were all so close to­gether, peep­ing and peep­ing! My father was amongst them, mean­ing, he said, to ask them to walk into the garden with him, and ad­mire the beau­ti­ful ve­get­able pro­duc­tion, when—oh, my dear, I tremble to think of it—he looked through the rails him­self, and saw—I don’t know what he thought he saw, but old Clare told me his face went quite grey-white with an­ger, and his eyes blazed out un­der his frown­ing black brows; and he spoke out—oh, so ter­ribly!—and bade them all stop where they were—not one of them to go, not one of them to stir a step; and, swift as light, he was in at the garden door, and down the Fil­bert walk, and seized hold of poor Peter, and tore his clothes off his back—bon­net, shawl, gown, and all—and threw the pil­low among the people over the rail­ings: and then he was very, very angry in­deed, and be­fore all the people he lif­ted up his cane and flogged Peter!

“My dear, that boy’s trick, on that sunny day, when all seemed go­ing straight and well, broke my mother’s heart, and changed my father for life. It did, in­deed. Old Clare said, Peter looked as white as my father; and stood as still as a statue to be flogged; and my father struck hard! When my father stopped to take breath, Peter said, ‘Have you done enough, sir?’ quite hoarsely, and still stand­ing quite quiet. I don’t know what my father said—or if he said any­thing. But old Clare said, Peter turned to where the people out­side the rail­ing were, and made them a low bow, as grand and as grave as any gen­tle­man; and then walked slowly into the house. I was in the stor­e­room help­ing my mother to make cow­slip wine. I can­not abide the wine now, nor the scent of the flowers; they turn me sick and faint, as they did that day, when Peter came in, look­ing as haughty as any man—in­deed, look­ing like a man, not like a boy. ‘Mother!’ he said, ‘I am come to say, God bless you forever.’ I saw his lips quiver as he spoke; and I think he durst not say any­thing more lov­ing, for the pur­pose that was in his heart. She looked at him rather frightened, and won­der­ing, and asked him what was to do. He did not smile or speak, but put his arms round her and kissed her as if he did not know how to leave off; and be­fore she could speak again, he was gone. We talked it over, and could not un­der­stand it, and she bade me go and seek my father, and ask what it was all about. I found him walk­ing up and down, look­ing very highly dis­pleased.

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

“I durst not ask any more ques­tions. When I told my mother, she sat down, quite faint, for a minute. I re­mem­ber, a few days after, I saw the poor, withered cow­slip flowers thrown out to the leaf heap, to de­cay and die there. There was no mak­ing of cow­slip wine that year at the rect­ory—nor, in­deed, ever after.

“Presently my mother went to my father. I know I thought of Queen Es­ther and King Ahas­uerus; for my mother was very pretty and del­ic­ate-look­ing, and my father looked as ter­rible as King Ahas­uerus. Some time after they came out to­gether; and then my mother told me what had happened, and that she was go­ing up to Peter’s room at my father’s de­sire—though she was not to tell Peter this—to talk the mat­ter over with him. But no Peter was there. We looked over the house; no Peter was there! Even my father, who had not liked to join in the search at first, helped us be­fore long. The rect­ory was a very old house—steps up into a room, steps down into a room, all through. At first, my mother went call­ing low and soft, as if to re­as­sure the poor boy, ‘Peter! Peter, dear! it’s only me;’ but, by-and-by, as the ser­vants came back from the er­rands my father had sent them, in dif­fer­ent dir­ec­tions, to find where Peter was—as we found he was not in the garden, nor the hayloft, nor any­where about—my mother’s cry grew louder and wilder—‘Peter! Peter, my darling! where are you?’ for then she felt and un­der­stood that that long kiss meant some sad kind of ‘good­bye.’ The af­ter­noon went on—my mother never rest­ing, but seek­ing again and again in every pos­sible place that had been looked into twenty times be­fore, nay, that she had looked into over and over again her­self. My father sat with his head in his hands, not speak­ing ex­cept when his mes­sen­gers came in, bring­ing no tid­ings; then he lif­ted up his face, so strong and sad, and told them to go again in some new dir­ec­tion. My mother kept passing from room to room, in and out of the house, mov­ing noise­lessly, but never ceas­ing. Neither she nor my father durst leave the house, which was the meet­ing-place for all the mes­sen­gers.  At last (and it was nearly dark), my father rose up. He took hold of my mother’s arm as she came with wild, sad pace through one door, and quickly to­wards an­other. She star­ted at the touch of his hand, for she had for­got­ten all in the world but Peter.

“ ‘Molly!’ said he, ‘I did not think all this would hap­pen.’ He looked into her face for com­fort—her poor face all wild and white; for neither she nor my father had dared to ac­know­ledge—much less act upon—the ter­ror that was in their hearts, lest Peter should have made away with him­self. My father saw no con­scious look in his wife’s hot, dreary eyes, and he missed the sym­pathy that she had al­ways been ready to give him—strong man as he was, and at the dumb des­pair in her face his tears began to flow. But when she saw this, a gentle sor­row came over her coun­ten­ance, and she said, ‘Dearest John! don’t cry; come with me, and we’ll find him,’ al­most as cheer­fully as if she knew where he was. And she took my father’s great hand in her little soft one, and led him along, the tears drop­ping as he walked on that same un­ceas­ing, weary walk, from room to room, through house and garden.

“Oh, how I wished for De­borah! I had no time for cry­ing, for now all seemed to de­pend on me. I wrote for De­borah to come home. I sent a mes­sage privately to that same Mr. Hol­brook’s house—poor Mr. Hol­brook;—you know who I mean. I don’t mean I sent a mes­sage to him, but I sent one that I could trust to know if Peter was at his house. For at one time Mr. Hol­brook was an oc­ca­sional vis­itor at the rect­ory—you know he was Miss Pole’s cousin—and he had been very kind to Peter, and taught him how to fish—he was very kind to every­body, and I thought Peter might have gone off there. But Mr. Hol­brook was from home, and Peter had never been seen. It was night now; but the doors were all wide open, and my father and mother walked on and on; it was more than an hour since he had joined her, and I don’t be­lieve they had ever spoken all that time. I was get­ting the par­lour fire lighted, and one of the ser­vants was pre­par­ing tea, for I wanted them to have some­thing to eat and drink and warm them, when old Clare asked to speak to me.

“ ‘I have bor­rowed the nets from the weir, Miss Matty.  Shall we drag the ponds to­night, or wait for the morn­ing?’

“I re­mem­ber star­ing in his face to gather his mean­ing; and when I did, I laughed out loud. The hor­ror of that new thought—our bright, darling Peter, cold, and stark, and dead! I re­mem­ber the ring of my own laugh now.

“The next day De­borah was at home be­fore I was my­self again. She would not have been so weak as to give way as I had done; but my screams (my hor­rible laughter had ended in cry­ing) had roused my sweet dear mother, whose poor wan­der­ing wits were called back and col­lec­ted as soon as a child needed her care. She and De­borah sat by my bed­side; I knew by the looks of each that there had been no news of Peter—no aw­ful, ghastly news, which was what I most had dreaded in my dull state between sleep­ing and wak­ing.

“The same res­ult of all the search­ing had brought some­thing of the same re­lief to my mother, to whom, I am sure, the thought that Peter might even then be hanging dead in some of the fa­mil­iar home places had caused that never-end­ing walk of yes­ter­day. Her soft eyes never were the same again after that; they had al­ways a rest­less, crav­ing look, as if seek­ing for what they could not find. Oh! it was an aw­ful time; com­ing down like a thun­der­bolt on the still sunny day when the lilacs were all in bloom.”

“Where was Mr. Peter?” said I.

“He had made his way to Liver­pool; and there was war then; and some of the king’s ships lay off the mouth of the Mer­sey; and they were only too glad to have a fine likely boy such as him (five foot nine he was), come to of­fer him­self. The cap­tain wrote to my father, and Peter wrote to my mother.  Stay! those let­ters will be some­where here.”

We lighted the candle, and found the cap­tain’s let­ter and Peter’s too. And we also found a little simple beg­ging let­ter from Mrs. Jen­kyns to Peter, ad­dressed to him at the house of an old schoolfel­low whither she fan­cied he might have gone. They had re­turned it un­opened; and un­opened it had re­mained ever since, hav­ing been in­ad­vert­ently put by among the other let­ters of that time. This is it:—

“My dearest Peter—You did not think we should be so sorry as we are, I know, or you would never have gone away. You are too good. Your father sits and sighs till my heart aches to hear him. He can­not hold up his head for grief; and yet he only did what he thought was right. Per­haps he has been too severe, and per­haps I have not been kind enough; but God knows how we love you, my dear only boy. Don looks so sorry you are gone. Come back, and make us happy, who love you so much. I know you will come back.”

But Peter did not come back. That spring day was the last time he ever saw his mother’s face. The writer of the let­ter—the last—the only per­son who had ever seen what was writ­ten in it, was dead long ago; and I, a stranger, not born at the time when this oc­cur­rence took place, was the one to open it.

The cap­tain’s let­ter summoned the father and mother to Liver­pool in­stantly, if they wished to see their boy; and, by some of the wild chances of life, the cap­tain’s let­ter had been de­tained some­where, some­how.

Miss Matty went on, “And it was race­time, and all the post-horses at Cran­ford were gone to the races; but my father and mother set off in our own gig—and oh! my dear, they were too late—the ship was gone! And now read Peter’s let­ter to my mother!”

It was full of love, and sor­row, and pride in his new pro­fes­sion, and a sore sense of his dis­grace in the eyes of the people at Cran­ford; but end­ing with a pas­sion­ate en­treaty that she would come and see him be­fore he left the Mer­sey: “Mother; we may go into battle. I hope we shall, and lick those French: but I must see you again be­fore that time.”

“And she was too late,” said Miss Matty; “too late!”

We sat in si­lence, pon­der­ing on the full mean­ing of those sad, sad words. At length I asked Miss Matty to tell me how her mother bore it.

“Oh!” she said, “she was pa­tience it­self. She had never been strong, and this weakened her ter­ribly. My father used to sit look­ing at her: far more sad than she was. He seemed as if he could look at noth­ing else when she was by; and he was so humble—so very gentle now. He would, per­haps, speak in his old way—lay­ing down the law, as it were—and then, in a minute or two, he would come round and put his hand on our shoulders, and ask us in a low voice, if he had said any­thing to hurt us. I did not won­der at his speak­ing so to De­borah, for she was so clever; but I could not bear to hear him talk­ing so to me.

“But, you see, he saw what we did not—that it was killing my mother. Yes! killing her (put out the candle, my dear; I can talk bet­ter in the dark), for she was but a frail wo­man, and ill-fit­ted to stand the fright and shock she had gone through; and she would smile at him and com­fort him, not in words, but in her looks and tones, which were al­ways cheer­ful when he was there. And she would speak of how she thought Peter stood a good chance of be­ing ad­miral very soon—he was so brave and clever; and how she thought of see­ing him in his navy uni­form, and what sort of hats ad­mir­als wore; and how much more fit he was to be a sailor than a cler­gy­man; and all in that way, just to make my father think she was quite glad of what came of that un­lucky morn­ing’s work, and the flog­ging which was al­ways in his mind, as we all knew. But oh, my dear! the bit­ter, bit­ter cry­ing she had when she was alone; and at last, as she grew weaker, she could not keep her tears in when De­borah or me was by, and would give us mes­sage after mes­sage for Peter (his ship had gone to the Medi­ter­ranean, or some­where down there, and then he was ordered off to In­dia, and there was no over­land route then); but she still said that no one knew where their death lay in wait, and that we were not to think hers was near. We did not think it, but we knew it, as we saw her fad­ing away.

“Well, my dear, it’s very fool­ish of me, I know, when in all like­li­hood I am so near see­ing her again.

“And only think, love! the very day after her death—for she did not live quite a twelve­month after Peter went away—the very day after—came a par­cel for her from In­dia—from her poor boy. It was a large, soft, white In­dian shawl, with just a little nar­row bor­der all round; just what my mother would have liked.

“We thought it might rouse my father, for he had sat with her hand in his all night long; so De­borah took it in to him, and Peter’s let­ter to her, and all. At first, he took no no­tice; and we tried to make a kind of light care­less talk about the shawl, open­ing it out and ad­mir­ing it. Then, sud­denly, he got up, and spoke: ‘She shall be bur­ied in it,’ he said; ‘Peter shall have that com­fort; and she would have liked it.’

“Well, per­haps it was not reas­on­able, but what could we do or say? One gives people in grief their own way.  He took it up and felt it: ‘It is just such a shawl as she wished for when she was mar­ried, and her mother did not give it her. I did not know of it till after, or she should have had it—she should; but she shall have it now.’

“My mother looked so lovely in her death! She was al­ways pretty, and now she looked fair, and waxen, and young—younger than De­borah, as she stood trem­bling and shiv­er­ing by her. We decked her in the long soft folds; she lay smil­ing, as if pleased; and people came—all Cran­ford came—to beg to see her, for they had loved her dearly, as well they might; and the coun­try­wo­men brought posies; old Clare’s wife brought some white vi­ol­ets and begged they might lie on her breast.

“De­borah said to me, the day of my mother’s fu­neral, that if she had a hun­dred of­fers she never would marry and leave my father. It was not very likely she would have so many—I don’t know that she had one; but it was not less to her credit to say so. She was such a daugh­ter to my father as I think there never was be­fore or since. His eyes failed him, and she read book after book, and wrote, and copied, and was al­ways at his ser­vice in any par­ish busi­ness. She could do many more things than my poor mother could; she even once wrote a let­ter to the bishop for my father. But he missed my mother sorely; the whole par­ish no­ticed it. Not that he was less act­ive; I think he was more so, and more pa­tient in help­ing every­one. I did all I could to set De­borah at liberty to be with him; for I knew I was good for little, and that my best work in the world was to do odd jobs quietly, and set oth­ers at liberty. But my father was a changed man.”

“Did Mr. Peter ever come home?”

“Yes, once. He came home a lieu­ten­ant; he did not get to be ad­miral. And he and my father were such friends! My father took him into every house in the par­ish, he was so proud of him. He never walked out without Peter’s arm to lean upon. De­borah used to smile (I don’t think we ever laughed again after my mother’s death), and say she was quite put in a corner. Not but what my father al­ways wanted her when there was let­ter-writ­ing or read­ing to be done, or any­thing to be settled.”

“And then?” said I, after a pause.

“Then Peter went to sea again; and, by-and-by, my father died, bless­ing us both, and thank­ing De­borah for all she had been to him; and, of course, our cir­cum­stances were changed; and, in­stead of liv­ing at the rect­ory, and keep­ing three maids and a man, we had to come to this small house, and be con­tent with a ser­vant-of-all-work; but, as De­borah used to say, we have al­ways lived gen­teelly, even if cir­cum­stances have com­pelled us to sim­pli­city. Poor De­borah!”

“And Mr. Peter?” asked I.

“Oh, there was some great war in In­dia—I for­get what they call it—and we have never heard of Peter since then. I be­lieve he is dead my­self; and it some­times fid­gets me that we have never put on mourn­ing for him. And then again, when I sit by my­self, and all the house is still, I think I hear his step com­ing up the street, and my heart be­gins to flut­ter and beat; but the sound al­ways goes past—and Peter never comes.

“That’s Martha back? No!  I’ll go, my dear; I can al­ways find my way in the dark, you know. And a blow of fresh air at the door will do my head good, and it’s rather got a trick of aching.”

So she pattered off. I had lighted the candle, to give the room a cheer­ful ap­pear­ance against her re­turn.

“Was it Martha?” asked I.

“Yes. And I am rather un­com­fort­able, for I heard such a strange noise, just as I was open­ing the door.”

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

“In the street—just out­side—it soun­ded like—”

“Talk­ing?” I put in, as she hes­it­ated a little.

“No! kiss­ing—”

VII Visiting

One morn­ing, as Miss Matty and I sat at our work—it was be­fore twelve o’clock, and Miss Matty had not changed the cap with yel­low rib­bons that had been Miss Jen­kyns’s best, and which Miss Matty was now wear­ing out in private, put­ting on the one made in im­it­a­tion of Mrs. Jam­ieson’s at all times when she ex­pec­ted to be seen—Martha came up, and asked if Miss Betty Barker might speak to her mis­tress. Miss Matty as­sen­ted, and quickly dis­ap­peared to change the yel­low rib­bons, while Miss Barker came up­stairs; but, as she had for­got­ten her spec­tacles, and was rather flur­ried by the un­usual time of the visit, I was not sur­prised to see her re­turn with one cap on the top of the other. She was quite un­con­scious of it her­self, and looked at us with bland sat­is­fac­tion. Nor do I think Miss Barker per­ceived it; for, put­ting aside the little cir­cum­stance that she was not so young as she had been, she was very much ab­sorbed in her er­rand, which she de­livered her­self of with an op­press­ive mod­esty that found vent in end­less apo­lo­gies.

Miss Betty Barker was the daugh­ter of the old clerk at Cran­ford who had of­fi­ci­ated in Mr. Jen­kyns’s time. She and her sis­ter had had pretty good situ­ations as ladies’ maids, and had saved money enough to set up a mil­liner’s shop, which had been pat­ron­ised by the ladies in the neigh­bour­hood. Lady Ar­ley, for in­stance, would oc­ca­sion­ally give Miss Bark­ers the pat­tern of an old cap of hers, which they im­me­di­ately copied and cir­cu­lated among the elite of Cran­ford. I say the elite, for Miss Bark­ers had caught the trick of the place, and piqued them­selves upon their “ar­is­to­cratic con­nec­tion.” They would not sell their caps and rib­bons to any­one without a ped­i­gree. Many a farmer’s wife or daugh­ter turned away huffed from Miss Bark­ers’ se­lect mil­lin­ery, and went rather to the uni­ver­sal shop, where the profits of brown soap and moist sugar en­abled the pro­pri­etor to go straight to (Paris, he said, un­til he found his cus­tom­ers too pat­ri­otic and John Bullish to wear what the Moun­seers wore) Lon­don, where, as he of­ten told his cus­tom­ers, Queen Adelaide had ap­peared, only the very week be­fore, in a cap ex­actly like the one he showed them, trimmed with yel­low and blue rib­bons, and had been com­pli­men­ted by King Wil­liam on the be­com­ing nature of her he­ad­dress.

Miss Bark­ers, who con­fined them­selves to truth, and did not ap­prove of mis­cel­laneous cus­tom­ers, throve not­with­stand­ing.  They were self-deny­ing, good people. Many a time have I seen the eld­est of them (she that had been maid to Mrs. Jam­ieson) car­ry­ing out some del­ic­ate mess to a poor per­son. They only aped their bet­ters in hav­ing “noth­ing to do” with the class im­me­di­ately be­low theirs. And when Miss Barker died, their profits and in­come were found to be such that Miss Betty was jus­ti­fied in shut­ting up shop and re­tir­ing from busi­ness. She also (as I think I have be­fore said) set up her cow; a mark of re­spect­ab­il­ity in Cran­ford al­most as de­cided as set­ting up a gig is among some people. She dressed finer than any lady in Cran­ford; and we did not won­der at it; for it was un­der­stood that she was wear­ing out all the bon­nets and caps and out­rageous rib­bons which had once formed her stock-in-trade. It was five or six years since she had given up shop, so in any other place than Cran­ford her dress might have been con­sidered passé.

And now Miss Betty Barker had called to in­vite Miss Matty to tea at her house on the fol­low­ing Tues­day. She gave me also an im­promptu in­vit­a­tion, as I happened to be a vis­itor—though I could see she had a little fear lest, since my father had gone to live in Drumble, he might have en­gaged in that “hor­rid cot­ton trade,” and so dragged his fam­ily down out of “ar­is­to­cratic so­ci­ety.”  She pre­faced this in­vit­a­tion with so many apo­lo­gies that she quite ex­cited my curi­os­ity. “Her pre­sump­tion” was to be ex­cused. What had she been do­ing? She seemed so over­powered by it I could only think that she had been writ­ing to Queen Adelaide to ask for a re­ceipt for wash­ing lace; but the act which she so char­ac­ter­ised was only an in­vit­a­tion she had car­ried to her sis­ter’s former mis­tress, Mrs. Jam­ieson. “Her former oc­cu­pa­tion con­sidered, could Miss Matty ex­cuse the liberty?” Ah! thought I, she has found out that double cap, and is go­ing to rec­tify Miss Matty’s he­ad­dress. No! it was simply to ex­tend her in­vit­a­tion to Miss Matty and to me. Miss Matty bowed ac­cept­ance; and I wondered that, in the grace­ful ac­tion, she did not feel the un­usual weight and ex­traordin­ary height of her he­ad­dress. But I do not think she did, for she re­covered her bal­ance, and went on talk­ing to Miss Betty in a kind, con­des­cend­ing man­ner, very dif­fer­ent from the fid­gety way she would have had if she had sus­pec­ted how sin­gu­lar her ap­pear­ance was. “Mrs. Jam­ieson is com­ing, I think you said?” asked Miss Matty.

“Yes. Mrs. Jam­ieson most kindly and con­des­cend­ingly said she would be happy to come. One little stip­u­la­tion she made, that she should bring Carlo. I told her that if I had a weak­ness, it was for dogs.”

“And Miss Pole?” ques­tioned Miss Matty, who was think­ing of her pool at Prefer­ence, in which Carlo would not be avail­able as a part­ner.

“I am go­ing to ask Miss Pole. Of course, I could not think of ask­ing her un­til I had asked you, madam—the rector’s daugh­ter, madam. Be­lieve me, I do not for­get the situ­ation my father held un­der yours.”

“And Mrs. For­res­ter, of course?”

“And Mrs. For­res­ter. I thought, in fact, of go­ing to her be­fore I went to Miss Pole. Al­though her cir­cum­stances are changed, madam, she was born at Tyrrell, and we can never for­get her al­li­ance to the Bigges, of Bi­gelow Hall.”

Miss Matty cared much more for the little cir­cum­stance of her be­ing a very good card-player.

“Mrs. Fitz-Adam—I sup­pose—”

“No, madam. I must draw a line some­where. Mrs. Jam­ieson would not, I think, like to meet Mrs. Fitz-Adam. I have the greatest re­spect for Mrs. Fitz-Adam—but I can­not think her fit so­ci­ety for such ladies as Mrs. Jam­ieson and Miss Mat­ilda Jen­kyns.”

Miss Betty Barker bowed low to Miss Matty, and pursed up her mouth. She looked at me with side­long dig­nity, as much as to say, al­though a re­tired mil­liner, she was no demo­crat, and un­der­stood the dif­fer­ence of ranks.

“May I beg you to come as near half-past six to my little dwell­ing, as pos­sible, Miss Mat­ilda? Mrs. Jam­ieson dines at five, but has kindly prom­ised not to delay her visit bey­ond that time—half-past six.” And with a swim­ming curt­sey Miss Betty Barker took her leave.

My proph­etic soul fore­told a visit that af­ter­noon from Miss Pole, who usu­ally came to call on Miss Mat­ilda after any event—or in­deed in sight of any event—to talk it over with her.

“Miss Betty told me it was to be a choice and se­lect few,” said Miss Pole, as she and Miss Matty com­pared notes.

“Yes, so she said. Not even Mrs. Fitz-Adam.”

Now Mrs. Fitz-Adam was the wid­owed sis­ter of the Cran­ford sur­geon, whom I have named be­fore. Their par­ents were re­spect­able farm­ers, con­tent with their sta­tion. The name of these good people was Hog­gins. Mr. Hog­gins was the Cran­ford doc­tor now; we dis­liked the name and con­sidered it coarse; but, as Miss Jen­kyns said, if he changed it to Pig­gins it would not be much bet­ter. We had hoped to dis­cover a re­la­tion­ship between him and that Mar­chion­ess of Exeter whose name was Molly Hog­gins; but the man, care­less of his own in­terests, ut­terly ig­nored and denied any such re­la­tion­ship, al­though, as dear Miss Jen­kyns had said, he had a sis­ter called Mary, and the same Chris­tian names were very apt to run in fam­il­ies.

Soon after Miss Mary Hog­gins mar­ried Mr. Fitz-Adam, she dis­ap­peared from the neigh­bour­hood for many years. She did not move in a sphere in Cran­ford so­ci­ety suf­fi­ciently high to make any of us care to know what Mr. Fitz-Adam was. He died and was gathered to his fath­ers without our ever hav­ing thought about him at all. And then Mrs. Fitz-Adam re­appeared in Cran­ford (“as bold as a lion,” Miss Pole said), a well-to-do widow, dressed in rust­ling black silk, so soon after her hus­band’s death that poor Miss Jen­kyns was jus­ti­fied in the re­mark she made, that “bom­bazine would have shown a deeper sense of her loss.”

I re­mem­ber the con­voc­a­tion of ladies who as­sembled to de­cide whether or not Mrs. Fitz-Adam should be called upon by the old blue-blooded in­hab­it­ants of Cran­ford. She had taken a large ram­bling house, which had been usu­ally con­sidered to con­fer a pat­ent of gen­til­ity upon its ten­ant, be­cause, once upon a time, sev­enty or eighty years be­fore, the spin­ster daugh­ter of an earl had resided in it. I am not sure if the in­hab­it­ing this house was not also be­lieved to con­vey some un­usual power of in­tel­lect; for the earl’s daugh­ter, Lady Jane, had a sis­ter, Lady Anne, who had mar­ried a gen­eral of­ficer in the time of the Amer­ican war, and this gen­eral of­ficer had writ­ten one or two com­ed­ies, which were still ac­ted on the Lon­don boards, and which, when we saw them ad­vert­ised, made us all draw up, and feel that Drury Lane was pay­ing a very pretty com­pli­ment to Cran­ford.  Still, it was not at all a settled thing that Mrs. Fitz-Adam was to be vis­ited, when dear Miss Jen­kyns died; and, with her, some­thing of the clear know­ledge of the strict code of gen­til­ity went out too. As Miss Pole ob­served, “As most of the ladies of good fam­ily in Cran­ford were eld­erly spin­sters, or wid­ows without chil­dren, if we did not re­lax a little, and be­come less ex­clus­ive, by-and-by we should have no so­ci­ety at all.”

Mrs. For­res­ter con­tin­ued on the same side.

“She had al­ways un­der­stood that Fitz meant some­thing ar­is­to­cratic; there was Fitz-Roy—she thought that some of the King’s chil­dren had been called Fitz-Roy; and there was Fitz-Clar­ence, now—they were the chil­dren of dear good King Wil­liam the Fourth. Fitz-Adam!—it was a pretty name, and she thought it very prob­ably meant ‘Child of Adam.’ No one, who had not some good blood in their veins, would dare to be called Fitz; there was a deal in a name—she had had a cousin who spelt his name with two little ffs—ffoulkes—and he al­ways looked down upon cap­ital let­ters and said they be­longed to lately-in­ven­ted fam­il­ies. She had been afraid he would die a bach­elor, he was so very choice. When he met with a Mrs. ffar­ring­don, at a wa­ter­ing-place, he took to her im­me­di­ately; and a very pretty gen­teel wo­man she was—a widow, with a very good for­tune; and ‘my cousin,’ Mr. ffoulkes, mar­ried her; and it was all ow­ing to her two little ffs.”

Mrs. Fitz-Adam did not stand a chance of meet­ing with a Mr. Fitz-any­thing in Cran­ford, so that could not have been her motive for set­tling there. Miss Matty thought it might have been the hope of be­ing ad­mit­ted into the so­ci­ety of the place, which would cer­tainly be a very agree­able rise for ci-devant Miss Hog­gins; and if this had been her hope it would be cruel to dis­ap­point her.

So every­body called upon Mrs. Fitz-Adam—every­body but Mrs. Jam­ieson, who used to show how hon­our­able she was by never see­ing Mrs. Fitz-Adam when they met at the Cran­ford parties. There would be only eight or ten ladies in the room, and Mrs. Fitz-Adam was the largest of all, and she in­vari­ably used to stand up when Mrs. Jam­ieson came in, and curt­sey very low to her whenever she turned in her dir­ec­tion—so low, in fact, that I think Mrs. Jam­ieson must have looked at the wall above her, for she never moved a muscle of her face, no more than if she had not seen her. Still Mrs. Fitz-Adam per­severed.

The spring even­ings were get­ting bright and long when three or four ladies in calashes met at Miss Barker’s door. Do you know what a calash is? It is a cov­er­ing worn over caps, not un­like the heads fastened on old-fash­ioned gigs; but some­times it is not quite so large. This kind of headgear al­ways made an aw­ful im­pres­sion on the chil­dren in Cran­ford; and now two or three left off their play in the quiet sunny little street, and gathered in won­der­ing si­lence round Miss Pole, Miss Matty, and my­self. We were si­lent too, so that we could hear loud, sup­pressed whis­pers in­side Miss Barker’s house: “Wait, Peggy! wait till I’ve run up­stairs and washed my hands. When I cough, open the door; I’ll not be a minute.”

And, true enough it was not a minute be­fore we heard a noise, between a sneeze and a crow; on which the door flew open. Be­hind it stood a round-eyed maiden, all aghast at the hon­our­able com­pany of calashes, who marched in without a word. She re­covered pres­ence of mind enough to usher us into a small room, which had been the shop, but was now con­ver­ted into a tem­por­ary dress­ing-room. There we un­pinned and shook ourselves, and ar­ranged our fea­tures be­fore the glass into a sweet and gra­cious com­pany-face; and then, bow­ing back­wards with “After you, ma’am,” we al­lowed Mrs. For­res­ter to take pre­ced­ence up the nar­row stair­case that led to Miss Barker’s draw­ing-room. There she sat, as stately and com­posed as though we had never heard that odd-sound­ing cough, from which her throat must have been even then sore and rough. Kind, gentle, shab­bily-dressed Mrs. For­res­ter was im­me­di­ately con­duc­ted to the second place of hon­our—a seat ar­ranged some­thing like Prince Al­bert’s near the Queen’s—good, but not so good. The place of pree­m­in­ence was, of course, re­served for the Hon­our­able Mrs. Jam­ieson, who presently came pant­ing up the stairs—Carlo rush­ing round her on her pro­gress, as if he meant to trip her up.

And now Miss Betty Barker was a proud and happy wo­man!  She stirred the fire, and shut the door, and sat as near to it as she could, quite on the edge of her chair. When Peggy came in, tot­ter­ing un­der the weight of the tea-tray, I no­ticed that Miss Barker was sadly afraid lest Peggy should not keep her dis­tance suf­fi­ciently. She and her mis­tress were on very fa­mil­iar terms in their every­day in­ter­course, and Peggy wanted now to make sev­eral little con­fid­ences to her, which Miss Barker was on thorns to hear, but which she thought it her duty, as a lady, to repress. So she turned away from all Peggy’s asides and signs; but she made one or two very mal­apro­pos an­swers to what was said; and at last, seized with a bright idea, she ex­claimed, “Poor, sweet Carlo!  I’m for­get­ting him. Come down­stairs with me, poor it­tie dog­gie, and it shall have its tea, it shall!”

In a few minutes she re­turned, bland and be­nig­nant as be­fore; but I thought she had for­got­ten to give the “poor it­tie dog­gie” any­thing to eat, judging by the avid­ity with which he swal­lowed down chance pieces of cake. The tea-tray was abund­antly loaded—I was pleased to see it, I was so hungry; but I was afraid the ladies present might think it vul­garly heaped up. I know they would have done at their own houses; but some­how the heaps dis­ap­peared here. I saw Mrs. Jam­ieson eat­ing seed-cake, slowly and con­sid­er­ately, as she did everything; and I was rather sur­prised, for I knew she had told us, on the oc­ca­sion of her last party, that she never had it in her house, it re­minded her so much of scen­ted soap. She al­ways gave us Sa­voy bis­cuits. However, Mrs. Jam­ieson was kindly in­dul­gent to Miss Barker’s want of know­ledge of the cus­toms of high life; and, to spare her feel­ings, ate three large pieces of seed-cake, with a pla­cid, ru­min­at­ing ex­pres­sion of coun­ten­ance, not un­like a cow’s.

After tea there was some little de­mur and dif­fi­culty. We were six in num­ber; four could play at Prefer­ence, and for the other two there was Crib­bage. But all, ex­cept my­self (I was rather afraid of the Cran­ford ladies at cards, for it was the most earn­est and ser­i­ous busi­ness they ever en­gaged in), were anxious to be of the “pool.” Even Miss Barker, while de­clar­ing she did not know Spa­dille from Manille, was evid­ently hanker­ing to take a hand. The di­lemma was soon put an end to by a sin­gu­lar kind of noise. If a baron’s daugh­ter-in-law could ever be sup­posed to snore, I should have said Mrs. Jam­ieson did so then; for, over­come by the heat of the room, and in­clined to doze by nature, the tempta­tion of that very com­fort­able arm­chair had been too much for her, and Mrs. Jam­ieson was nod­ding. Once or twice she opened her eyes with an ef­fort, and calmly but un­con­sciously smiled upon us; but by-and-by, even her be­ne­vol­ence was not equal to this ex­er­tion, and she was sound asleep.

“It is very grat­i­fy­ing to me,” whispered Miss Barker at the card-table to her three op­pon­ents, whom, not­with­stand­ing her ig­nor­ance of the game, she was “bast­ing” most un­mer­ci­fully—“very grat­i­fy­ing in­deed, to see how com­pletely Mrs. Jam­ieson feels at home in my poor little dwell­ing; she could not have paid me a greater com­pli­ment.”

Miss Barker provided me with some lit­er­at­ure in the shape of three or four hand­somely-bound fash­ion-books ten or twelve years old, ob­serving, as she put a little table and a candle for my es­pe­cial be­ne­fit, that she knew young people liked to look at pic­tures. Carlo lay and snorted, and star­ted at his mis­tress’s feet. He, too, was quite at home.

The card-table was an an­im­ated scene to watch; four ladies’ heads, with niddle-nod­dling caps, all nearly meet­ing over the middle of the table in their eager­ness to whis­per quick enough and loud enough: and every now and then came Miss Barker’s “Hush, ladies! if you please, hush! Mrs. Jam­ieson is asleep.”

It was very dif­fi­cult to steer clear between Mrs. For­res­ter’s deaf­ness and Mrs. Jam­ieson’s sleep­i­ness. But Miss Barker man­aged her ar­du­ous task well. She re­peated the whis­per to Mrs. For­res­ter, dis­tort­ing her face con­sid­er­ably, in or­der to show, by the mo­tions of her lips, what was said; and then she smiled kindly all round at us, and mur­mured to her­self, “Very grat­i­fy­ing, in­deed; I wish my poor sis­ter had been alive to see this day.”

Presently the door was thrown wide open; Carlo star­ted to his feet, with a loud snap­ping bark, and Mrs. Jam­ieson awoke: or, per­haps, she had not been asleep—as she said al­most dir­ectly, the room had been so light she had been glad to keep her eyes shut, but had been listen­ing with great in­terest to all our amus­ing and agree­able con­ver­sa­tion. Peggy came in once more, red with im­port­ance. Another tray! “Oh, gen­til­ity!” thought I, “can yon en­dure this last shock?” For Miss Barker had ordered (nay, I doubt not, pre­pared, al­though she did say, “Why, Peggy, what have you brought us?” and looked pleas­antly sur­prised at the un­ex­pec­ted pleas­ure) all sorts of good things for sup­per—scal­loped oysters, pot­ted lob­sters, jelly, a dish called “little Cu­pids” (which was in great fa­vour with the Cran­ford ladies, al­though too ex­pens­ive to be given, ex­cept on sol­emn and state oc­ca­sions—ma­car­oons sopped in brandy, I should have called it, if I had not known its more re­fined and clas­sical name). In short, we were evid­ently to be feasted with all that was sweetest and best; and we thought it bet­ter to sub­mit gra­ciously, even at the cost of our gen­til­ity—which never ate sup­pers in gen­eral, but which, like most non-sup­per-eat­ers, was par­tic­u­larly hungry on all spe­cial oc­ca­sions.

Miss Barker, in her former sphere, had, I daresay, been made ac­quain­ted with the bever­age they call cherry-brandy. We none of us had ever seen such a thing, and rather shrank back when she proffered it us—“just a little, leetle glass, ladies; after the oysters and lob­sters, you know.  Shell­fish are some­times thought not very whole­some.”  We all shook our heads like fe­male man­dar­ins; but, at last, Mrs. Jam­ieson suffered her­self to be per­suaded, and we fol­lowed her lead. It was not ex­actly un­pal­at­able, though so hot and so strong that we thought ourselves bound to give evid­ence that we were not ac­cus­tomed to such things by cough­ing ter­ribly—al­most as strangely as Miss Barker had done, be­fore we were ad­mit­ted by Peggy.

“It’s very strong,” said Miss Pole, as she put down her empty glass; “I do be­lieve there’s spirit in it.”

“Only a little drop—just ne­ces­sary to make it keep,” said Miss Barker. “You know we put brandy-pep­per over our pre­serves to make them keep. I of­ten feel tipsy my­self from eat­ing dam­son tart.”

I ques­tion whether dam­son tart would have opened Mrs. Jam­ieson’s heart as the cherry-brandy did; but she told us of a com­ing event, re­spect­ing which she had been quite si­lent till that mo­ment.

“My sis­ter-in-law, Lady Glen­mire, is com­ing to stay with me.”

There was a chorus of “Indeed!” and then a pause. Each one rap­idly re­viewed her ward­robe, as to its fit­ness to ap­pear in the pres­ence of a baron’s widow; for, of course, a series of small fest­ivals were al­ways held in Cran­ford on the ar­rival of a vis­itor at any of our friends’ houses. We felt very pleas­antly ex­cited on the present oc­ca­sion.

Not long after this the maids and the lan­terns were an­nounced. Mrs. Jam­ieson had the sedan-chair, which had squeezed it­self into Miss Barker’s nar­row lobby with some dif­fi­culty, and most lit­er­ally “stopped the way.” It re­quired some skil­ful man­oeuv­ring on the part of the old chair­men (shoe­makers by day, but when summoned to carry the sedan dressed up in a strange old liv­ery—long great­coats, with small capes, co­eval with the sedan, and sim­ilar to the dress of the class in Hog­arth’s pic­tures) to edge, and back, and try at it again, and fi­nally to suc­ceed in car­ry­ing their bur­den out of Miss Barker’s front door. Then we heard their quick pit-a-pat along the quiet little street as we put on our calashes and pinned up our gowns; Miss Barker hov­er­ing about us with of­fers of help, which, if she had not re­membered her former oc­cu­pa­tion, and wished us to for­get it, would have been much more press­ing.

VIII “Your Ladyship”

Early the next morn­ing—dir­ectly after twelve—Miss Pole made her ap­pear­ance at Miss Matty’s. Some very tri­fling piece of busi­ness was al­leged as a reason for the call; but there was evid­ently some­thing be­hind. At last out it came.

“By the way, you’ll think I’m strangely ig­nor­ant; but, do you really know, I am puzzled how we ought to ad­dress Lady Glen­mire. Do you say, ‘Your Lady­ship,’ where you would say ‘you’ to a com­mon per­son? I have been puzz­ling all morn­ing; and are we to say ‘My Lady,’ in­stead of ‘Ma’am?’ Now you knew Lady Ar­ley—will you kindly tell me the most cor­rect way of speak­ing to the peer­age?”

Poor Miss Matty! she took off her spec­tacles and she put them on again—but how Lady Ar­ley was ad­dressed, she could not re­mem­ber.

“It is so long ago,” she said. “Dear! dear! how stu­pid I am! I don’t think I ever saw her more than twice. I know we used to call Sir Peter, ‘Sir Peter’—but he came much of­tener to see us than Lady Ar­ley did. De­borah would have known in a minute. ‘My lady’—‘your lady­ship.’ It sounds very strange, and as if it was not nat­ural. I never thought of it be­fore; but, now you have named it, I am all in a puzzle.”

It was very cer­tain Miss Pole would ob­tain no wise de­cision from Miss Matty, who got more be­wildered every mo­ment, and more per­plexed as to etiquettes of ad­dress.

“Well, I really think,” said Miss Pole, “I had bet­ter just go and tell Mrs. For­res­ter about our little dif­fi­culty. One some­times grows nervous; and yet one would not have Lady Glen­mire think we were quite ig­nor­ant of the etiquettes of high life in Cran­ford.”

“And will you just step in here, dear Miss Pole, as you come back, please, and tell me what you de­cide upon?  Whatever you and Mrs. For­res­ter fix upon, will be quite right, I’m sure. ‘Lady Ar­ley,’ ‘Sir Peter,’ ” said Miss Matty to her­self, try­ing to re­call the old forms of words.

“Who is Lady Glen­mire?” asked I.

“Oh, she’s the widow of Mr. Jam­ieson—that’s Mrs. Jam­ieson’s late hus­band, you know—widow of his eld­est brother. Mrs. Jam­ieson was a Miss Walker, daugh­ter of Governor Walker. ‘Your lady­ship.’ My dear, if they fix on that way of speak­ing, you must just let me prac­tice a little on you first, for I shall feel so fool­ish and hot say­ing it the first time to Lady Glen­mire.”

It was really a re­lief to Miss Matty when Mrs. Jam­ieson came on a very un­polite er­rand. I no­tice that apathetic people have more quiet im­per­tin­ence than oth­ers; and Mrs. Jam­ieson came now to in­sinu­ate pretty plainly that she did not par­tic­u­larly wish that the Cran­ford ladies should call upon her sis­ter-in-law. I can hardly say how she made this clear; for I grew very in­dig­nant and warm, while with slow de­lib­er­a­tion she was ex­plain­ing her wishes to Miss Matty, who, a true lady her­self, could hardly un­der­stand the feel­ing which made Mrs. Jam­ieson wish to ap­pear to her noble sis­ter-in-law as if she only vis­ited “county” fam­il­ies. Miss Matty re­mained puzzled and per­plexed long after I had found out the ob­ject of Mrs. Jam­ieson’s visit.

When she did un­der­stand the drift of the hon­our­able lady’s call, it was pretty to see with what quiet dig­nity she re­ceived the in­tim­a­tion thus un­cour­teously given. She was not in the least hurt—she was of too gentle a spirit for that; nor was she ex­actly con­scious of dis­ap­prov­ing of Mrs. Jam­ieson’s con­duct; but there was some­thing of this feel­ing in her mind, I am sure, which made her pass from the sub­ject to oth­ers in a less flur­ried and more com­posed man­ner than usual. Mrs. Jam­ieson was, in­deed, the more flur­ried of the two, and I could see she was glad to take her leave.

A little while af­ter­wards Miss Pole re­turned, red and in­dig­nant. “Well! to be sure! You’ve had Mrs. Jam­ieson here, I find from Martha; and we are not to call on Lady Glen­mire. Yes! I met Mrs. Jam­ieson, halfway between here and Mrs. For­res­ter’s, and she told me; she took me so by sur­prise, I had noth­ing to say. I wish I had thought of some­thing very sharp and sar­castic; I dare say I shall to­night. And Lady Glen­mire is but the widow of a Scotch baron after all! I went on to look at Mrs. For­res­ter’s Peer­age, to see who this lady was, that is to be kept un­der a glass case: widow of a Scotch peer—never sat in the House of Lords—and as poor as Job, I dare say; and she—fifth daugh­ter of some Mr. Camp­bell or other.  You are the daugh­ter of a rector, at any rate, and re­lated to the Ar­leys; and Sir Peter might have been Vis­count Ar­ley, every­one says.”

Miss Matty tried to soothe Miss Pole, but in vain. That lady, usu­ally so kind and good-hu­moured, was now in a full flow of an­ger.

“And I went and ordered a cap this morn­ing, to be quite ready,” said she at last, let­ting out the secret which gave sting to Mrs. Jam­ieson’s in­tim­a­tion. “Mrs. Jam­ieson shall see if it is so easy to get me to make fourth at a pool when she has none of her fine Scotch re­la­tions with her!”

In com­ing out of church, the first Sunday on which Lady Glen­mire ap­peared in Cran­ford, we sed­u­lously talked to­gether, and turned our backs on Mrs. Jam­ieson and her guest. If we might not call on her, we would not even look at her, though we were dy­ing with curi­os­ity to know what she was like. We had the com­fort of ques­tion­ing Martha in the af­ter­noon. Martha did not be­long to a sphere of so­ci­ety whose ob­ser­va­tion could be an im­plied com­pli­ment to Lady Glen­mire, and Martha had made good use of her eyes.

“Well, ma’am! is it the little lady with Mrs. Jam­ieson, you mean? I thought you would like more to know how young Mrs. Smith was dressed; her be­ing a bride.”  (Mrs. Smith was the butcher’s wife).

Miss Pole said, “Good gra­cious me! as if we cared about a Mrs. Smith;” but was si­lent as Martha re­sumed her speech.

“The little lady in Mrs. Jam­ieson’s pew had on, ma’am, rather an old black silk, and a shep­herd’s plaid cloak, ma’am, and very bright black eyes she had, ma’am, and a pleas­ant, sharp face; not over young, ma’am, but yet, I should guess, younger than Mrs. Jam­ieson her­self. She looked up and down the church, like a bird, and nipped up her pet­ti­coats, when she came out, as quick and sharp as ever I see. I’ll tell you what, ma’am, she’s more like Mrs. Deacon, at the Coach and Horses, nor any­one.”

“Hush, Martha!” said Miss Matty, “that’s not re­spect­ful.”

“Isn’t it, ma’am? I beg par­don, I’m sure; but Jem Hearn said so as well. He said, she was just such a sharp, stir­ring sort of a body—”

“Lady,” said Miss Pole.

“Lady—as Mrs. Deacon.”

Another Sunday passed away, and we still aver­ted our eyes from Mrs. Jam­ieson and her guest, and made re­marks to ourselves that we thought were very severe—al­most too much so. Miss Matty was evid­ently un­easy at our sar­castic man­ner of speak­ing.

Per­haps by this time Lady Glen­mire had found out that Mrs. Jam­ieson’s was not the gay­est, live­li­est house in the world; per­haps Mrs. Jam­ieson had found out that most of the county fam­il­ies were in Lon­don, and that those who re­mained in the coun­try were not so alive as they might have been to the cir­cum­stance of Lady Glen­mire be­ing in their neigh­bour­hood.  Great events spring out of small causes; so I will not pre­tend to say what in­duced Mrs. Jam­ieson to al­ter her de­term­in­a­tion of ex­clud­ing the Cran­ford ladies, and send notes of in­vit­a­tion all round for a small party on the fol­low­ing Tues­day. Mr. Mul­liner him­self brought them round. He would al­ways ig­nore the fact of there be­ing a back­door to any house, and gave a louder rat-tat than his mis­tress, Mrs. Jam­ieson. He had three little notes, which he car­ried in a large bas­ket, in or­der to im­press his mis­tress with an idea of their great weight, though they might eas­ily have gone into his waist­coat pocket.

Miss Matty and I quietly de­cided that we would have a pre­vi­ous en­gage­ment at home: it was the even­ing on which Miss Matty usu­ally made candle-light­ers of all the notes and let­ters of the week; for on Mondays her ac­counts were al­ways made straight—not a penny ow­ing from the week be­fore; so, by a nat­ural ar­range­ment, mak­ing candle-light­ers fell upon a Tues­day even­ing, and gave us a le­git­im­ate ex­cuse for de­clin­ing Mrs. Jam­ieson’s in­vit­a­tion. But be­fore our an­swer was writ­ten, in came Miss Pole, with an open note in her hand.

“So!” she said. “Ah! I see you have got your note, too. Bet­ter late than never. I could have told my Lady Glen­mire she would be glad enough of our so­ci­ety be­fore a fort­night was over.”

“Yes,” said Miss Matty, “we’re asked for Tues­day even­ing. And per­haps you would just kindly bring your work across and drink tea with us that night. It is my usual reg­u­lar time for look­ing over the last week’s bills, and notes, and let­ters, and mak­ing candle-light­ers of them; but that does not seem quite reason enough for say­ing I have a pre­vi­ous en­gage­ment at home, though I meant to make it do. Now, if you would come, my con­science would be quite at ease, and luck­ily the note is not writ­ten yet.”

I saw Miss Pole’s coun­ten­ance change while Miss Matty was speak­ing.

“Don’t you mean to go then?” asked she.

“Oh, no!” said, Miss Matty quietly.  “You don’t either, I sup­pose?”

“I don’t know,” replied Miss Pole.  “Yes, I think I do,” said she, rather briskly; and on see­ing Miss Matty look sur­prised, she ad­ded, “You see, one would not like Mrs. Jam­ieson to think that any­thing she could do, or say, was of con­sequence enough to give of­fence; it would be a kind of let­ting down of ourselves, that I, for one, should not like. It would be too flat­ter­ing to Mrs. Jam­ieson if we al­lowed her to sup­pose that what she had said af­fected us a week, nay ten days af­ter­wards.”

“Well! I sup­pose it is wrong to be hurt and an­noyed so long about any­thing; and, per­haps, after all, she did not mean to vex us. But I must say, I could not have brought my­self to say the things Mrs. Jam­ieson did about our not call­ing. I really don’t think I shall go.”

“Oh, come! Miss Matty, you must go; you know our friend Mrs. Jam­ieson is much more phleg­matic than most people, and does not enter into the little del­ic­acies of feel­ing which you pos­sess in so re­mark­able a de­gree.”

“I thought you pos­sessed them, too, that day Mrs. Jam­ieson called to tell us not to go,” said Miss Matty in­no­cently.

But Miss Pole, in ad­di­tion to her del­ic­acies of feel­ing, pos­sessed a very smart cap, which she was anxious to show to an ad­mir­ing world; and so she seemed to for­get all her angry words uttered not a fort­night be­fore, and to be ready to act on what she called the great Chris­tian prin­ciple of “For­give and for­get”; and she lec­tured dear Miss Matty so long on this head that she ab­so­lutely ended by as­sur­ing her it was her duty, as a de­ceased rector’s daugh­ter, to buy a new cap and go to the party at Mrs. Jam­ieson’s.  So “we were most happy to ac­cept,” in­stead of “re­gret­ting that we were ob­liged to de­cline.”

The ex­pendit­ure on dress in Cran­ford was prin­cip­ally in that one art­icle re­ferred to. If the heads were bur­ied in smart new caps, the ladies were like os­triches, and cared not what be­came of their bod­ies. Old gowns, white and ven­er­able col­lars, any num­ber of brooches, up and down and every­where (some with dogs’ eyes painted in them; some that were like small pic­ture-frames with mauso­leums and weep­ing-wil­lows neatly ex­ecuted in hair in­side; some, again, with mini­atures of ladies and gen­tle­men sweetly smil­ing out of a nest of stiff muslin), old brooches for a per­man­ent or­na­ment, and new caps to suit the fash­ion of the day—the ladies of Cran­ford al­ways dressed with chaste el­eg­ance and pro­pri­ety, as Miss Barker once pret­tily ex­pressed it.

And with three new caps, and a greater ar­ray of brooches than had ever been seen to­gether at one time since Cran­ford was a town, did Mrs. For­res­ter, and Miss Matty, and Miss Pole ap­pear on that mem­or­able Tues­day even­ing. I coun­ted seven brooches my­self on Miss Pole’s dress. Two were fixed neg­li­gently in her cap (one was a but­ter­fly made of Scotch pebbles, which a vivid ima­gin­a­tion might be­lieve to be the real in­sect); one fastened her net necker­chief; one her col­lar; one or­na­men­ted the front of her gown, mid­way between her throat and waist; and an­other ad­orned the point of her stom­acher.  Where the sev­enth was I have for­got­ten, but it was some­where about her, I am sure.

But I am get­ting on too fast, in de­scrib­ing the dresses of the com­pany. I should first re­late the gath­er­ing on the way to Mrs. Jam­ieson’s. That lady lived in a large house just out­side the town. A road which had known what it was to be a street ran right be­fore the house, which opened out upon it without any in­ter­ven­ing garden or court. Whatever the sun was about, he never shone on the front of that house. To be sure, the liv­ing-rooms were at the back, look­ing on to a pleas­ant garden; the front win­dows only be­longed to kit­chens and house­keep­ers’ rooms, and pan­tries, and in one of them Mr. Mul­liner was re­por­ted to sit. Indeed, look­ing askance, we of­ten saw the back of a head covered with hair powder, which also ex­ten­ded it­self over his coat-col­lar down to his very waist; and this im­pos­ing back was al­ways en­gaged in read­ing the St James’s Chron­icle, opened wide, which, in some de­gree, ac­coun­ted for the length of time the said news­pa­per was in reach­ing us—equal sub­scribers with Mrs. Jam­ieson, though, in right of her hon­our­able­ness, she al­ways had the read­ing of it first. This very Tues­day, the delay in for­ward­ing the last num­ber had been par­tic­u­larly ag­grav­at­ing; just when both Miss Pole and Miss Matty, the former more es­pe­cially, had been want­ing to see it, in or­der to coach up the Court news ready for the even­ing’s in­ter­view with ar­is­to­cracy. Miss Pole told us she had ab­so­lutely taken time by the fore­lock, and been dressed by five o’clock, in or­der to be ready if the St James’s Chron­icle should come in at the last mo­ment—the very St James’s Chron­icle which the powdered head was tran­quilly and com­posedly read­ing as we passed the ac­cus­tomed win­dow this even­ing.

“The im­pudence of the man!” said Miss Pole, in a low in­dig­nant whis­per. “I should like to ask him whether his mis­tress pays her quarter-share for his ex­clus­ive use.”

We looked at her in ad­mir­a­tion of the cour­age of her thought; for Mr. Mul­liner was an ob­ject of great awe to all of us. He seemed never to have for­got­ten his con­des­cen­sion in com­ing to live at Cran­ford. Miss Jen­kyns, at times, had stood forth as the un­daun­ted cham­pion of her sex, and spoken to him on terms of equal­ity; but even Miss Jen­kyns could get no higher. In his pleas­antest and most gra­cious moods he looked like a sulky cock­a­too. He did not speak ex­cept in gruff mono­syl­lables. He would wait in the hall when we begged him not to wait, and then look deeply of­fen­ded be­cause we had kept him there, while, with trem­bling, hasty hands we pre­pared ourselves for ap­pear­ing in com­pany.

Miss Pole ven­tured on a small joke as we went up­stairs, in­ten­ded, though ad­dressed to us, to af­ford Mr. Mul­liner some slight amuse­ment. We all smiled, in or­der to seem as if we felt at our ease, and tim­idly looked for Mr. Mul­liner’s sym­pathy. Not a muscle of that wooden face had re­laxed; and we were grave in an in­stant.

Mrs. Jam­ieson’s draw­ing-room was cheer­ful; the even­ing sun came stream­ing into it, and the large square win­dow was clustered round with flowers. The fur­niture was white and gold; not the later style, Louis Quat­orze, I think they call it, all shells and twirls; no, Mrs. Jam­ieson’s chairs and tables had not a curve or bend about them. The chair and table legs di­min­ished as they neared the ground, and were straight and square in all their corners. The chairs were all a-row against the walls, with the ex­cep­tion of four or five which stood in a circle round the fire. They were railed with white bars across the back and knobbed with gold; neither the rail­ings nor the knobs in­vited to ease. There was a ja­panned table de­voted to lit­er­at­ure, on which lay a Bible, a Peer­age, and a Prayer-Book. There was an­other square Pem­broke table ded­ic­ated to the fine arts, on which were a kal­eido­scope, con­ver­sa­tion-cards, puzzle-cards (tied to­gether to an in­ter­min­able length with faded pink satin rib­bon), and a box painted in fond im­it­a­tion of the draw­ings which dec­or­ate tea-chests. Carlo lay on the worsted-worked rug, and un­gra­ciously barked at us as we entered. Mrs. Jam­ieson stood up, giv­ing us each a tor­pid smile of wel­come, and look­ing help­lessly bey­ond us at Mr. Mul­liner, as if she hoped he would place us in chairs, for, if he did not, she never could. I sup­pose he thought we could find our way to the circle round the fire, which re­minded me of Stone­henge, I don’t know why. Lady Glen­mire came to the res­cue of our host­ess, and, some­how or other, we found ourselves for the first time placed agree­ably, and not form­ally, in Mrs. Jam­ieson’s house.  Lady Glen­mire, now we had time to look at her, proved to be a bright little wo­man of middle age, who had been very pretty in the days of her youth, and who was even yet very pleas­ant-look­ing. I saw Miss Pole ap­prais­ing her dress in the first five minutes, and I take her word when she said the next day—

“My dear! ten pounds would have pur­chased every stitch she had on—lace and all.”

It was pleas­ant to sus­pect that a peeress could be poor, and partly re­con­ciled us to the fact that her hus­band had never sat in the House of Lords; which, when we first heard of it, seemed a kind of swind­ling us out of our pro­spects on false pre­tences; a sort of “A Lord and No Lord” busi­ness.

We were all very si­lent at first. We were think­ing what we could talk about, that should be high enough to in­terest My Lady. There had been a rise in the price of sugar, which, as pre­serving-time was near, was a piece of in­tel­li­gence to all our house­keep­ing hearts, and would have been the nat­ural topic if Lady Glen­mire had not been by. But we were not sure if the peer­age ate pre­serves—much less knew how they were made. At last, Miss Pole, who had al­ways a great deal of cour­age and sa­voir faire, spoke to Lady Glen­mire, who on her part had seemed just as much puzzled to know how to break the si­lence as we were.

“Has your lady­ship been to Court lately?” asked she; and then gave a little glance round at us, half timid and half tri­umphant, as much as to say, “See how ju­di­ciously I have chosen a sub­ject be­fit­ting the rank of the stranger.”

“I never was there in my life,” said Lady Glen­mire, with a broad Scotch ac­cent, but in a very sweet voice. And then, as if she had been too ab­rupt, she ad­ded: “We very sel­dom went to Lon­don—only twice, in fact, dur­ing all my mar­ried life; and be­fore I was mar­ried my father had far too large a fam­ily” (fifth daugh­ter of Mr. Camp­bell was in all our minds, I am sure) “to take us of­ten from our home, even to Ed­in­burgh. Ye’ll have been in Ed­in­burgh, maybe?” said she, sud­denly bright­en­ing up with the hope of a com­mon in­terest. We had none of us been there; but Miss Pole had an uncle who once had passed a night there, which was very pleas­ant.

Mrs. Jam­ieson, mean­while, was ab­sorbed in won­der why Mr. Mul­liner did not bring the tea; and at length the won­der oozed out of her mouth.

“I had bet­ter ring the bell, my dear, had not I?” said Lady Glen­mire briskly.

“No—I think not—Mul­liner does not like to be hur­ried.”

We should have liked our tea, for we dined at an earlier hour than Mrs. Jam­ieson. I sus­pect Mr. Mul­liner had to fin­ish the St James’s Chron­icle be­fore he chose to trouble him­self about tea. His mis­tress fid­geted and fid­geted, and kept say­ing, “I can’t think why Mul­liner does not bring tea. I can’t think what he can be about.” And Lady Glen­mire at last grew quite im­pa­tient, but it was a pretty kind of im­pa­tience after all; and she rang the bell rather sharply, on re­ceiv­ing a half-per­mis­sion from her sis­ter-in-law to do so. Mr. Mul­liner ap­peared in dig­ni­fied sur­prise. “Oh!” said Mrs. Jam­ieson, “Lady Glen­mire rang the bell; I be­lieve it was for tea.”

In a few minutes tea was brought. Very del­ic­ate was the china, very old the plate, very thin the bread and but­ter, and very small the lumps of sugar. Sugar was evid­ently Mrs. Jam­ieson’s fa­vour­ite eco­nomy. I ques­tion if the little fili­gree sugar-tongs, made some­thing like scis­sors, could have opened them­selves wide enough to take up an hon­est, vul­gar good-sized piece; and when I tried to seize two little min­ni­kin pieces at once, so as not to be de­tec­ted in too many re­turns to the sugar-basin, they ab­so­lutely dropped one, with a little sharp clat­ter, quite in a ma­li­cious and un­nat­ural man­ner. But be­fore this happened we had had a slight dis­ap­point­ment. In the little sil­ver jug was cream, in the lar­ger one was milk. As soon as Mr. Mul­liner came in, Carlo began to beg, which was a thing our man­ners fore­bade us to do, though I am sure we were just as hungry; and Mrs. Jam­ieson said she was cer­tain we would ex­cuse her if she gave her poor dumb Carlo his tea first. She ac­cord­ingly mixed a sau­cer­ful for him, and put it down for him to lap; and then she told us how in­tel­li­gent and sens­ible the dear little fel­low was; he knew cream quite well, and con­stantly re­fused tea with only milk in it: so the milk was left for us; but we si­lently thought we were quite as in­tel­li­gent and sens­ible as Carlo, and felt as if in­sult were ad­ded to in­jury when we were called upon to ad­mire the grat­it­ude evinced by his wag­ging his tail for the cream which should have been ours.

After tea we thawed down into com­mon-life sub­jects. We were thank­ful to Lady Glen­mire for hav­ing pro­posed some more bread and but­ter, and this mu­tual want made us bet­ter ac­quain­ted with her than we should ever have been with talk­ing about the Court, though Miss Pole did say she had hoped to know how the dear Queen was from someone who had seen her.

The friend­ship be­gun over bread and but­ter ex­ten­ded on to cards. Lady Glen­mire played Prefer­ence to ad­mir­a­tion, and was a com­plete au­thor­ity as to Ombre and Quad­rille. Even Miss Pole quite for­got to say “my lady,” and “your lady­ship,” and said “Basto! ma’am”; “you have Spa­dille, I be­lieve,” just as quietly as if we had never held the great Cran­ford Parlia­ment on the sub­ject of the proper mode of ad­dress­ing a peeress.

As a proof of how thor­oughly we had for­got­ten that we were in the pres­ence of one who might have sat down to tea with a cor­onet, in­stead of a cap, on her head, Mrs. For­res­ter re­lated a curi­ous little fact to Lady Glen­mire—an an­ec­dote known to the circle of her in­tim­ate friends, but of which even Mrs. Jam­ieson was not aware. It re­lated to some fine old lace, the sole relic of bet­ter days, which Lady Glen­mire was ad­mir­ing on Mrs. For­res­ter’s col­lar.

“Yes,” said that lady, “such lace can­not be got now for either love or money; made by the nuns abroad, they tell me. They say that they can’t make it now even there. But per­haps they can, now they’ve passed the Cath­olic Eman­cip­a­tion Bill. I should not won­der. But, in the mean­time, I treas­ure up my lace very much. I daren’t even trust the wash­ing of it to my maid” (the little char­ity school­girl I have named be­fore, but who soun­ded well as “my maid”). “I al­ways wash it my­self. And once it had a nar­row es­cape. Of course, your lady­ship knows that such lace must never be starched or ironed. Some people wash it in sugar and wa­ter, and some in cof­fee, to make it the right yel­low col­our; but I my­self have a very good re­ceipt for wash­ing it in milk, which stiffens it enough, and gives it a very good creamy col­our. Well, ma’am, I had tacked it to­gether (and the beauty of this fine lace is that, when it is wet, it goes into a very little space), and put it to soak in milk, when, un­for­tu­nately, I left the room; on my re­turn, I found pussy on the table, look­ing very like a thief, but gulp­ing very un­com­fort­ably, as if she was half-chocked with some­thing she wanted to swal­low and could not. And, would you be­lieve it? At first I pit­ied her, and said ‘Poor pussy! poor pussy!’ till, all at once, I looked and saw the cup of milk empty—cleaned out! ‘You naughty cat!’ said I, and I be­lieve I was pro­voked enough to give her a slap, which did no good, but only helped the lace down—just as one slaps a chok­ing child on the back. I could have cried, I was so vexed; but I de­term­ined I would not give the lace up without a struggle for it. I hoped the lace might dis­agree with her, at any rate; but it would have been too much for Job, if he had seen, as I did, that cat come in, quite pla­cid and purring, not a quarter of an hour after, and al­most ex­pect­ing to be stroked.  ‘No, pussy!’ said I, ‘if you have any con­science you ought not to ex­pect that!’ And then a thought struck me; and I rang the bell for my maid, and sent her to Mr. Hog­gins, with my com­pli­ments, and would he be kind enough to lend me one of his top-boots for an hour? I did not think there was any­thing odd in the mes­sage; but Jenny said the young men in the sur­gery laughed as if they would be ill at my want­ing a top-boot. When it came, Jenny and I put pussy in, with her fore­feet straight down, so that they were fastened, and could not scratch, and we gave her a tea­spoon­ful of cur­rent-jelly in which (your lady­ship must ex­cuse me) I had mixed some tar­tar emetic. I shall never for­get how anxious I was for the next half-hour. I took pussy to my own room, and spread a clean towel on the floor. I could have kissed her when she re­turned the lace to sight, very much as it had gone down.  Jenny had boil­ing wa­ter ready, and we soaked it and soaked it, and spread it on a lav­ender-bush in the sun be­fore I could touch it again, even to put it in milk. But now your lady­ship would never guess that it had been in pussy’s in­side.”

We found out, in the course of the even­ing, that Lady Glen­mire was go­ing to pay Mrs. Jam­ieson a long visit, as she had given up her apart­ments in Ed­in­burgh, and had no ties to take her back there in a hurry. On the whole, we were rather glad to hear this, for she had made a pleas­ant im­pres­sion upon us; and it was also very com­fort­able to find, from things which dropped out in the course of con­ver­sa­tion, that, in ad­di­tion to many other gen­teel qual­it­ies, she was far re­moved from the “vul­gar­ity of wealth.”

“Don’t you find it very un­pleas­ant walk­ing?” asked Mrs. Jam­ieson, as our re­spect­ive ser­vants were an­nounced. It was a pretty reg­u­lar ques­tion from Mrs. Jam­ieson, who had her own car­riage in the coach-house, and al­ways went out in a sedan-chair to the very shortest dis­tances. The an­swers were nearly as much a mat­ter of course.

“Oh dear, no! it is so pleas­ant and still at night!” “Such a re­fresh­ment after the ex­cite­ment of a party!” “The stars are so beau­ti­ful!” This last was from Miss Matty.

“Are you fond of as­tro­nomy?” Lady Glen­mire asked.

“Not very,” replied Miss Matty, rather con­fused at the mo­ment to re­mem­ber which was as­tro­nomy and which was as­tro­logy—but the an­swer was true un­der either cir­cum­stance, for she read, and was slightly alarmed at Fran­cis Moore’s as­tro­lo­gical pre­dic­tions; and, as to as­tro­nomy, in a private and con­fid­en­tial con­ver­sa­tion, she had told me she never could be­lieve that the earth was mov­ing con­stantly, and that she would not be­lieve it if she could, it made her feel so tired and dizzy whenever she thought about it.

In our pat­tens we picked our way home with ex­tra care that night, so re­fined and del­ic­ate were our per­cep­tions after drink­ing tea with “my lady.”

IX Signor Brunoni

Soon after the events of which I gave an ac­count in my last pa­per, I was summoned home by my father’s ill­ness; and for a time I for­got, in anxi­ety about him, to won­der how my dear friends at Cran­ford were get­ting on, or how Lady Glen­mire could re­con­cile her­self to the dul­ness of the long visit which she was still pay­ing to her sis­ter-in-law, Mrs. Jam­ieson. When my father grew a little stronger I ac­com­pan­ied him to the sea­side, so that al­to­gether I seemed ban­ished from Cran­ford, and was de­prived of the op­por­tun­ity of hear­ing any chance in­tel­li­gence of the dear little town for the greater part of that year.

Late in Novem­ber—when we had re­turned home again, and my father was once more in good health—I re­ceived a let­ter from Miss Matty; and a very mys­ter­i­ous let­ter it was. She began many sen­tences without end­ing them, run­ning them one into an­other, in much the same con­fused sort of way in which writ­ten words run to­gether on blot­ting-pa­per. All I could make out was that, if my father was bet­ter (which she hoped he was), and would take warn­ing and wear a great­coat from Mi­chael­mas to Lady-day, if turbans were in fash­ion, could I tell her?  Such a piece of gaiety was go­ing to hap­pen as had not been seen or known of since Womb­well’s lions came, when one of them ate a little child’s arm; and she was, per­haps, too old to care about dress, but a new cap she must have; and, hav­ing heard that turbans were worn, and some of the county fam­il­ies likely to come, she would like to look tidy, if I would bring her a cap from the mil­liner I em­ployed; and oh, dear! how care­less of her to for­get that she wrote to beg I would come and pay her a visit next Tues­day; when she hoped to have some­thing to of­fer me in the way of amuse­ment, which she would not now more par­tic­u­larly de­scribe, only sea-green was her fa­vour­ite col­our. So she ended her let­ter; but in a P.S. she ad­ded, she thought she might as well tell me what was the pe­cu­liar at­trac­tion to Cran­ford just now; Signor Brun­oni was go­ing to ex­hibit his won­der­ful ma­gic in the Cran­ford Assembly Rooms on Wed­nes­day and Fri­day even­ing in the fol­low­ing week.

I was very glad to ac­cept the in­vit­a­tion from my dear Miss Matty, in­de­pend­ently of the con­juror, and most par­tic­u­larly anxious to pre­vent her from dis­fig­ur­ing her small, gentle, mou­sey face with a great Sara­cen’s head turban; and ac­cord­ingly, I bought her a pretty, neat, middle-aged cap, which, how­ever, was rather a dis­ap­point­ment to her when, on my ar­rival, she fol­lowed me into my bed­room, os­tens­ibly to poke the fire, but in real­ity, I do be­lieve, to see if the sea-green turban was not in­side the cap-box with which I had trav­elled. It was in vain that I twirled the cap round on my hand to ex­hibit back and side fronts: her heart had been set upon a turban, and all she could do was to say, with resig­na­tion in her look and voice—

“I am sure you did your best, my dear. It is just like the caps all the ladies in Cran­ford are wear­ing, and they have had theirs for a year, I dare say. I should have liked some­thing newer, I con­fess—some­thing more like the turbans Miss Betty Barker tells me Queen Adelaide wears; but it is very pretty, my dear. And I dare say lav­ender will wear bet­ter than sea-green. Well, after all, what is dress, that we should care any­thing about it? You’ll tell me if you want any­thing, my dear. Here is the bell. I sup­pose turbans have not got down to Drumble yet?”

So say­ing, the dear old lady gently be­moaned her­self out of the room, leav­ing me to dress for the even­ing, when, as she in­formed me, she ex­pec­ted Miss Pole and Mrs. For­res­ter, and she hoped I should not feel my­self too much tired to join the party. Of course I should not; and I made some haste to un­pack and ar­range my dress; but, with all my speed, I heard the ar­rivals and the buzz of con­ver­sa­tion in the next room be­fore I was ready. Just as I opened the door, I caught the words, “I was fool­ish to ex­pect any­thing very gen­teel out of the Drumble shops; poor girl! she did her best, I’ve no doubt.” But, for all that, I had rather that she blamed Drumble and me than dis­figured her­self with a turban.

Miss Pole was al­ways the per­son, in the trio of Cran­ford ladies now as­sembled, to have had ad­ven­tures. She was in the habit of spend­ing the morn­ing in ram­bling from shop to shop, not to pur­chase any­thing (ex­cept an oc­ca­sional reel of cot­ton or a piece of tape), but to see the new art­icles and re­port upon them, and to col­lect all the stray pieces of in­tel­li­gence in the town. She had a way, too, of de­murely pop­ping hither and thither into all sorts of places to grat­ify her curi­os­ity on any point—a way which, if she had not looked so very gen­teel and prim, might have been con­sidered im­per­tin­ent. And now, by the ex­press­ive way in which she cleared her throat, and waited for all minor sub­jects (such as caps and turbans) to be cleared off the course, we knew she had some­thing very par­tic­u­lar to re­late, when the due pause came—and I defy any people pos­sessed of com­mon mod­esty to keep up a con­ver­sa­tion long, where one among them sits up aloft in si­lence, look­ing down upon all the things they chance to say as trivial and con­tempt­ible com­pared to what they could dis­close, if prop­erly en­treated. Miss Pole began—

“As I was step­ping out of Gor­don’s shop today, I chanced to go into the Ge­orge (my Betty has a second-cousin who is cham­ber­maid there, and I thought Betty would like to hear how she was), and, not see­ing any­one about, I strolled up the stair­case, and found my­self in the pas­sage lead­ing to the Assembly Room (you and I re­mem­ber the Assembly Room, I am sure, Miss Matty! and the min­uets de la cour!); so I went on, not think­ing of what I was about, when, all at once, I per­ceived that I was in the middle of the pre­par­a­tions for to­mor­row night—the room be­ing di­vided with great clothes-maids, over which Crosby’s men were tack­ing red flan­nel; very dark and odd it seemed; it quite be­wildered me, and I was go­ing on be­hind the screens, in my ab­sence of mind, when a gen­tle­man (quite the gen­tle­man, I can as­sure you) stepped for­wards and asked if I had any busi­ness he could ar­range for me. He spoke such pretty broken Eng­lish, I could not help think­ing of Thad­deus of Warsaw, and the Hun­garian Broth­ers, and Santo Se­basti­ani; and while I was busy pic­tur­ing his past life to my­self, he had bowed me out of the room. But wait a minute! You have not heard half my story yet! I was go­ing down­stairs, when who should I meet but Betty’s second-cousin. So, of course, I stopped to speak to her for Betty’s sake; and she told me that I had really seen the con­juror—the gen­tle­man who spoke broken Eng­lish was Signor Brun­oni him­self. Just at this mo­ment he passed us on the stairs, mak­ing such a grace­ful bow! in reply to which I dropped a curt­sey—all for­eign­ers have such po­lite man­ners, one catches some­thing of it. But when he had gone down­stairs, I be­thought me that I had dropped my glove in the Assembly Room (it was safe in my muff all the time, but I never found it till af­ter­wards); so I went back, and, just as I was creep­ing up the pas­sage left on one side of the great screen that goes nearly across the room, who should I see but the very same gen­tle­man that had met me be­fore, and passed me on the stairs, com­ing now for­wards from the in­ner part of the room, to which there is no en­trance—you re­mem­ber, Miss Matty—and just re­peat­ing, in his pretty broken Eng­lish, the in­quiry if I had any busi­ness there—I don’t mean that he put it quite so bluntly, but he seemed very de­term­ined that I should not pass the screen—so, of course, I ex­plained about my glove, which, curi­ously enough, I found at that very mo­ment.”

Miss Pole, then, had seen the con­juror—the real, live con­juror! and nu­mer­ous were the ques­tions we all asked her.  “Had he a beard?” “Was he young, or old?” “Fair, or dark?” “Did he look”—(un­able to shape my ques­tion prudently, I put it in an­other form)—“How did he look?” In short, Miss Pole was the heroine of the even­ing, ow­ing to her morn­ing’s en­counter. If she was not the rose (that is to say the con­juror) she had been near it.

Con­jur­a­tion, sleight of hand, ma­gic, witch­craft, were the sub­jects of the even­ing. Miss Pole was slightly scep­tical, and in­clined to think there might be a sci­entific solu­tion found for even the pro­ceed­ings of the Witch of Endor. Mrs. For­res­ter be­lieved everything, from ghosts to death­watches. Miss Matty ranged between the two—al­ways con­vinced by the last speaker. I think she was nat­ur­ally more in­clined to Mrs. For­res­ter’s side, but a de­sire of prov­ing her­self a worthy sis­ter to Miss Jen­kyns kept her equally bal­anced—Miss Jen­kyns, who would never al­low a ser­vant to call the little rolls of tal­low that formed them­selves round candles “wind­ing-sheets,” but in­sisted on their be­ing spoken of as “ro­ley-po­leys!” A sis­ter of hers to be su­per­sti­tious! It would never do.

After tea, I was des­patched down­stairs into the din­ing-par­lour for that volume of the old En­cyc­lopæ­dia which con­tained the nouns be­gin­ning with C, in or­der that Miss Pole might prime her­self with sci­entific ex­plan­a­tions for the tricks of the fol­low­ing even­ing. It spoilt the pool at Prefer­ence which Miss Matty and Mrs. For­res­ter had been look­ing for­ward to, for Miss Pole be­came so much ab­sorbed in her sub­ject, and the plates by which it was il­lus­trated, that we felt it would be cruel to dis­turb her oth­er­wise than by one or two well-timed yawns, which I threw in now and then, for I was really touched by the meek way in which the two ladies were bear­ing their dis­ap­point­ment. But Miss Pole only read the more zeal­ously, im­part­ing to us no more in­form­a­tion than this—

“Ah! I see; I com­pre­hend per­fectly. A rep­res­ents the ball. Put A between B and D—no! between C and F, and turn the second joint of the third fin­ger of your left hand over the wrist of your right H. Very clear in­deed! My dear Mrs. For­res­ter, con­jur­ing and witch­craft is a mere af­fair of the al­pha­bet. Do let me read you this one pas­sage?”

Mrs. For­res­ter im­plored Miss Pole to spare her, say­ing, from a child up­wards, she never could un­der­stand be­ing read aloud to; and I dropped the pack of cards, which I had been shuff­ling very aud­ibly, and by this dis­creet move­ment I ob­liged Miss Pole to per­ceive that Prefer­ence was to have been the or­der of the even­ing, and to pro­pose, rather un­will­ingly, that the pool should com­mence. The pleas­ant bright­ness that stole over the other two ladies’ faces on this! Miss Matty had one or two twinges of self-re­proach for hav­ing in­ter­rup­ted Miss Pole in her stud­ies: and did not re­mem­ber her cards well, or give her full at­ten­tion to the game, un­til she had soothed her con­science by of­fer­ing to lend the volume of the En­cyc­lopæ­dia to Miss Pole, who ac­cep­ted it thank­fully, and said Betty should take it home when she came with the lan­tern.

The next even­ing we were all in a little gentle flut­ter at the idea of the gaiety be­fore us. Miss Matty went up to dress be­times, and hur­ried me un­til I was ready, when we found we had an hour-and-a-half to wait be­fore the “doors opened at seven pre­cisely.” And we had only twenty yards to go! However, as Miss Matty said, it would not do to get too much ab­sorbed in any­thing, and for­get the time; so she thought we had bet­ter sit quietly, without light­ing the candles, till five minutes to seven. So Miss Matty dozed, and I knit­ted.

At length we set off; and at the door un­der the car­riage­way at the Ge­orge, we met Mrs. For­res­ter and Miss Pole: the lat­ter was dis­cuss­ing the sub­ject of the even­ing with more vehe­mence than ever, and throw­ing X’s and B’s at our heads like hail­stones. She had even copied one or two of the “re­ceipts”—as she called them—for the dif­fer­ent tricks, on backs of let­ters, ready to ex­plain and to de­tect Signor Brun­oni’s arts.

We went into the cloak­room ad­join­ing the Assembly Room; Miss Matty gave a sigh or two to her de­par­ted youth, and the re­mem­brance of the last time she had been there, as she ad­jus­ted her pretty new cap be­fore the strange, quaint old mir­ror in the cloak­room. The Assembly Room had been ad­ded to the inn, about a hun­dred years be­fore, by the dif­fer­ent county fam­il­ies, who met to­gether there once a month dur­ing the winter to dance and play at cards. Many a county beauty had first swung through the min­uet that she af­ter­wards danced be­fore Queen Char­lotte in this very room. It was said that one of the Gun­nings had graced the apart­ment with her beauty; it was cer­tain that a rich and beau­ti­ful widow, Lady Wil­li­ams, had here been smit­ten with the noble fig­ure of a young artist, who was stay­ing with some fam­ily in the neigh­bour­hood for pro­fes­sional pur­poses, and ac­com­pan­ied his pat­rons to the Cran­ford Assembly. And a pretty bar­gain poor Lady Wil­li­ams had of her hand­some hus­band, if all tales were true. Now, no beauty blushed and dimpled along the sides of the Cran­ford Assembly Room; no hand­some artist won hearts by his bow, chapeau bras in hand; the old room was dingy; the sal­mon-col­oured paint had faded into a drab; great pieces of plaster had chipped off from the fine wreaths and fes­toons on its walls; but still a mouldy odour of ar­is­to­cracy lingered about the place, and a dusty re­col­lec­tion of the days that were gone made Miss Matty and Mrs. For­res­ter bridle up as they entered, and walk min­cingly up the room, as if there were a num­ber of gen­teel ob­serv­ers, in­stead of two little boys with a stick of tof­fee between them with which to be­guile the time.

We stopped short at the second front row; I could hardly un­der­stand why, un­til I heard Miss Pole ask a stray waiter if any of the county fam­il­ies were ex­pec­ted; and when he shook his head, and be­lieved not, Mrs. For­res­ter and Miss Matty moved for­wards, and our party rep­res­en­ted a con­ver­sa­tional square. The front row was soon aug­men­ted and en­riched by Lady Glen­mire and Mrs. Jam­ieson. We six oc­cu­pied the two front rows, and our ar­is­to­cratic se­clu­sion was re­spec­ted by the groups of shop­keep­ers who strayed in from time to time and huddled to­gether on the back benches. At least I con­jec­tured so, from the noise they made, and the son­or­ous bumps they gave in sit­ting down; but when, in wear­i­ness of the ob­stin­ate green cur­tain that would not draw up, but would stare at me with two odd eyes, seen through holes, as in the old tapestry story, I would fain have looked round at the merry chat­ter­ing people be­hind me, Miss Pole clutched my arm, and begged me not to turn, for “it was not the thing.” What “the thing” was, I never could find out, but it must have been some­thing em­in­ently dull and tire­some. However, we all sat eyes right, square front, gaz­ing at the tan­tal­ising cur­tain, and hardly speak­ing in­tel­li­gibly, we were so afraid of be­ing caught in the vul­gar­ity of mak­ing any noise in a place of pub­lic amuse­ment. Mrs. Jam­ieson was the most for­tu­nate, for she fell asleep.

At length the eyes dis­ap­peared—the cur­tain quivered—one side went up be­fore the other, which stuck fast; it was dropped again, and, with a fresh ef­fort, and a vig­or­ous pull from some un­seen hand, it flew up, re­veal­ing to our sight a mag­ni­fi­cent gen­tle­man in the Turk­ish cos­tume, seated be­fore a little table, gaz­ing at us (I should have said with the same eyes that I had last seen through the hole in the cur­tain) with calm and con­des­cend­ing dig­nity, “like a be­ing of an­other sphere,” as I heard a sen­ti­mental voice ejac­u­late be­hind me.

“That’s not Signor Brun­oni!” said Miss Pole de­cidedly; and so aud­ibly that I am sure he heard, for he glanced down over his flow­ing beard at our party with an air of mute re­proach. “Signor Brun­oni had no beard—but per­haps he’ll come soon.” So she lulled her­self into pa­tience. Mean­while, Miss Matty had re­con­noitred through her eye­glass, wiped it, and looked again. Then she turned round, and said to me, in a kind, mild, sor­row­ful tone—

“You see, my dear, turbans are worn.”

But we had no time for more con­ver­sa­tion. The Grand Turk, as Miss Pole chose to call him, arose and an­nounced him­self as Signor Brun­oni.

“I don’t be­lieve him!” ex­claimed Miss Pole, in a de­fi­ant man­ner. He looked at her again, with the same dig­ni­fied up­braid­ing in his coun­ten­ance. “I don’t!” she re­peated more pos­it­ively than ever.  “Signor Brun­oni had not got that muffy sort of thing about his chin, but looked like a close-shaved Chris­tian gen­tle­man.”

Miss Pole’s en­er­getic speeches had the good ef­fect of waken­ing up Mrs. Jam­ieson, who opened her eyes wide, in sign of the deep­est at­ten­tion—a pro­ceed­ing which si­lenced Miss Pole and en­cour­aged the Grand Turk to pro­ceed, which he did in very broken Eng­lish—so broken that there was no co­he­sion between the parts of his sen­tences; a fact which he him­self per­ceived at last, and so left off speak­ing and pro­ceeded to ac­tion.

Now we were as­ton­ished. How he did his tricks I could not ima­gine; no, not even when Miss Pole pulled out her pieces of pa­per and began read­ing aloud—or at least in a very aud­ible whis­per—the sep­ar­ate “re­ceipts” for the most com­mon of his tricks. If ever I saw a man frown and look en­raged, I saw the Grand Turk frown at Miss Pole; but, as she said, what could be ex­pec­ted but un­chris­tian looks from a Mus­sul­man? If Miss Pole were scep­tical, and more en­grossed with her re­ceipts and dia­grams than with his tricks, Miss Matty and Mrs. For­res­ter were mys­ti­fied and per­plexed to the highest de­gree. Mrs. Jam­ieson kept tak­ing her spec­tacles off and wip­ing them, as if she thought it was some­thing de­fect­ive in them which made the leger­de­main; and Lady Glen­mire, who had seen many curi­ous sights in Ed­in­burgh, was very much struck with the tricks, and would not at all agree with Miss Pole, who de­clared that any­body could do them with a little prac­tice, and that she would, her­self, un­der­take to do all he did, with two hours given to study the En­cyc­lopæ­dia and make her third fin­ger flex­ible.

At last Miss Matty and Mrs. For­res­ter be­came per­fectly awestricken. They whispered to­gether. I sat just be­hind them, so I could not help hear­ing what they were say­ing. Miss Matty asked Mrs. For­res­ter “if she thought it was quite right to have come to see such things?  She could not help fear­ing they were lend­ing en­cour­age­ment to some­thing that was not quite”—A little shake of the head filled up the blank. Mrs. For­res­ter replied, that the same thought had crossed her mind; she too was feel­ing very un­com­fort­able, it was so very strange. She was quite cer­tain that it was her pocket-handker­chief which was in that loaf just now; and it had been in her own hand not five minutes be­fore. She wondered who had fur­nished the bread? She was sure it could not be Dakin, be­cause he was the church­warden. Sud­denly Miss Matty half-turned to­wards me—

“Will you look, my dear—you are a stranger in the town, and it won’t give rise to un­pleas­ant re­ports—will you just look round and see if the rector is here? If he is, I think we may con­clude that this won­der­ful man is sanc­tioned by the Church, and that will be a great re­lief to my mind.”

I looked, and I saw the tall, thin, dry, dusty rector, sit­ting sur­roun­ded by Na­tional School boys, guarded by troops of his own sex from any ap­proach of the many Cran­ford spin­sters. His kind face was all agape with broad smiles, and the boys around him were in chinks of laugh­ing. I told Miss Matty that the Church was smil­ing ap­proval, which set her mind at ease.

I have never named Mr. Hayter, the rector, be­cause I, as a well-to-do and happy young wo­man, never came in con­tact with him. He was an old bach­elor, but as afraid of mat­ri­mo­nial re­ports get­ting abroad about him as any girl of eight­een: and he would rush into a shop or dive down an entry, sooner than en­counter any of the Cran­ford ladies in the street; and, as for the Prefer­ence parties, I did not won­der at his not ac­cept­ing in­vit­a­tions to them. To tell the truth, I al­ways sus­pec­ted Miss Pole of hav­ing given very vig­or­ous chase to Mr. Hayter when he first came to Cran­ford; and not the less, be­cause now she ap­peared to share so vividly in his dread lest her name should ever be coupled with his. He found all his in­terests among the poor and help­less; he had treated the Na­tional School boys this very night to the per­form­ance; and vir­tue was for once its own re­ward, for they guarded him right and left, and clung round him as if he had been the queen-bee and they the swarm. He felt so safe in their en­vir­on­ment that he could even af­ford to give our party a bow as we filed out. Miss Pole ig­nored his pres­ence, and pre­ten­ded to be ab­sorbed in con­vin­cing us that we had been cheated, and had not seen Signor Brun­oni after all.