Cranford
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
death-watches. 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 carriage-way 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 cloak-room 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 cloak-room. 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 eye-glass,
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