Cranford
I believe,” just as quietly as if we had never held the great Cranford
Parliament on the subject of the proper mode of addressing a peeress.
As a proof of how thoroughly we had forgotten that we were in the
presence of one who might have sat down to tea with a coronet, instead
of a cap, on her head, Mrs Forrester related a curious little fact to
Lady Glenmire—an anecdote known to the circle of her intimate friends,
but of which even Mrs Jamieson was not aware. It related to some fine
old lace, the sole relic of better days, which Lady Glenmire was
admiring on Mrs Forrester’s collar.
“Yes,” said that lady, “such lace cannot be got now for either love or
money; made by the nuns abroad, they tell me. They say that they can’t
make it now even there. But perhaps they can, now they’ve passed the
Catholic Emancipation Bill. I should not wonder. But, in the meantime,
I treasure up my lace very much. I daren’t even trust the washing of it
to my maid” (the little charity school-girl I have named before, but who
sounded well as “my maid”). “I always wash it myself. And once it had
a narrow escape. Of course, your ladyship knows that such lace must
never be starched or ironed. Some people wash it in sugar and water,
and some in coffee, to make it the right yellow colour; but I myself
have a very good receipt for washing it in milk, which stiffens it
enough, and gives it a very good creamy colour. Well, ma’am, I had
tacked it together (and the beauty of this fine lace is that, when it is
wet, it goes into a very little space), and put it to soak in milk,
when, unfortunately, I left the room; on my return, I found pussy on the
table, looking very like a thief, but gulping very uncomfortably, as if
she was half-choked with something she wanted to swallow and could not.
And, would you believe it? At first I pitied her, and said ‘Poor
pussy! poor pussy!’ till, all at once, I looked and saw the cup of milk
empty—cleaned out! ‘You naughty cat!’ said I, and I believe I was
provoked enough to give her a slap, which did no good, but only helped
the lace down—just as one slaps a choking child on the back. I could
have cried, I was so vexed; but I determined I would not give the lace
up without a struggle for it. I hoped the lace might disagree with her,
at any rate; but it would have been too much for Job, if he had seen, as
I did, that cat come in, quite placid and purring, not a quarter of an
hour after, and almost expecting to be stroked. ‘No, pussy!’ said I,
‘if you have any conscience you ought not to expect that!’ And then a
thought struck me; and I rang the bell for my maid, and sent her to Mr
Hoggins, with my compliments, and would he be kind enough to lend me one
of his top-boots for an hour? I did not think there was anything odd in
the message; but Jenny said the young men in the surgery laughed as if
they would be ill at my wanting a top-boot. When it came, Jenny and I
put pussy in, with her 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.”
[Picture: We gave her a teaspoonful of current-jelly]
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.”
CHAPTER 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 great-coat 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 to-day, I chanced to go into the
‘George’ (my Betty has a second-cousin who is chambermaid there, and I
thought Betty would like to hear how she was), and, not seeing 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 to-morrow night—the room being
divided with great clothes-maids, over which Crosby’s men were tacking
red flannel; very dark and odd it seemed; it quite bewildered me, and I
was going on behind the screens, in my absence of mind, when a
gentleman (quite the gentleman, I can assure you) stepped forwards and
asked if I had any business he could arrange for me. He spoke such
pretty broken English, I could not help thinking of Thaddeus of Warsaw,
and the Hungarian Brothers, and Santo Sebastiani; and while I was busy