Cranford
seen, from some dark lurking-place, that Miss Pole had carried off her
plate, and thus have a double motive for attacking our house.
[Picture: Asked him to take care of us]
But until Lady Glenmire came to call next day we heard of nothing
unusual. The kitchen fire-irons were in exactly the same position
against the back door as when Martha and I had skilfully piled them up,
like spillikins, ready to fall with an awful clatter if only a cat had
touched the outside panels. I had wondered what we should all do if
thus awakened and alarmed, and had proposed to Miss Matty that we should
cover up our faces under the bed-clothes so that there should be no
danger of the robbers thinking that we could identify them; but Miss
Matty, who was trembling very much, scouted this idea, and said we owed
it to society to apprehend them, and that she should certainly do her
best to lay hold of them and lock them up in the garret till morning.
When Lady Glenmire came, we almost felt jealous of her. Mrs Jamieson’s
house had really been attacked; at least there were men’s footsteps to
be seen on the flower borders, underneath the kitchen windows, “where
nae men should be;” and Carlo had barked all through the night as if
strangers were abroad. Mrs Jamieson had been awakened by Lady Glenmire,
and they had rung the bell which communicated with Mr Mulliner’s room in
the third storey, and when his night-capped head had appeared over the
bannisters, in answer to the summons, they had told him of their alarm,
and the reasons for it; whereupon he retreated into his bedroom, and
locked the door (for fear of draughts, as he informed them in the
morning), and opened the window, and called out valiantly to say, if the
supposed robbers would come to him he would fight them; but, as Lady
Glenmire observed, that was but poor comfort, since they would have to
pass by Mrs Jamieson’s room and her own before they could reach him, and
must be of a very pugnacious disposition indeed if they neglected the
opportunities of robbery presented by the unguarded lower storeys, to go
up to a garret, and there force a door in order to get at the champion
of the house. Lady Glenmire, after waiting and listening for some time
in the drawing-room, had proposed to Mrs Jamieson that they should go to
bed; but that lady said she should not feel comfortable unless she sat
up and watched; and, accordingly, she packed herself warmly up on the
sofa, where she was found by the housemaid, when she came into the room
at six o’clock, fast asleep; but Lady Glenmire went to bed, and kept
awake all night.
When Miss Pole heard of this, she nodded her head in great satisfaction.
She had been sure we should hear of something happening in Cranford that
night; and we had heard. It was clear enough they had first proposed to
attack her house; but when they saw that she and Betty were on their
guard, and had carried off the plate, they had changed their tactics and
gone to Mrs Jamieson’s, and no one knew what might have happened if
Carlo had not barked, like a good dog as he was!
Poor Carlo! his barking days were nearly over. Whether the gang who
infested the neighbourhood were afraid of him, or whether they were
revengeful enough, for the way in which he had baffled them on the night
in question, to poison him; or whether, as some among the more
uneducated people thought, he died of apoplexy, brought on by too much
feeding and too little exercise; at any rate, it is certain that, two
days after this eventful night, Carlo was found dead, with his poor legs
stretched out stiff in the attitude of running, as if by such unusual
exertion he could escape the sure pursuer, Death.
We were all sorry for Carlo, the old familiar friend who had snapped at
us for so many years; and the mysterious mode of his death made us very
uncomfortable. Could Signor Brunoni be at the bottom of this? He had
apparently killed a canary with only a word of command; his will seemed
of deadly force; who knew but what he might yet be lingering in the
neighbourhood willing all sorts of awful things!
We whispered these fancies among ourselves in the evenings; but in the
mornings our courage came back with the daylight, and in a week’s time
we had got over the shock of Carlo’s death; all but Mrs Jamieson. She,
poor thing, felt it as she had felt no event since her husband’s death;
indeed, Miss Pole said, that as the Honourable Mr Jamieson drank a good
deal, and occasioned her much uneasiness, it was possible that Carlo’s
death might be the greater affliction. But there was always a tinge of
cynicism in Miss Pole’s remarks. However, one thing was clear and
certain—it was necessary for Mrs Jamieson to have some change of scene;
and Mr Mulliner was very impressive on this point, shaking his head
whenever we inquired after his mistress, and speaking of her loss of
appetite and bad nights very ominously; and with justice too, for if she
had two characteristics in her natural state of health they were a
facility of eating and sleeping. If she could neither eat nor sleep,
she must be indeed out of spirits and out of health.
Lady Glenmire (who had evidently taken very kindly to Cranford) did not
like the idea of Mrs Jamieson’s going to Cheltenham, and more than once
insinuated pretty plainly that it was Mr Mulliner’s doing, who had been
much alarmed on the occasion of the house being attacked, and since had
said, more than once, that he felt it a very responsible charge to have
to defend so many women. Be that as it might, Mrs Jamieson went to
Cheltenham, escorted by Mr Mulliner; and Lady Glenmire remained in
possession of the house, her ostensible office being to take care that
the maid-servants did not pick up followers. She made a very
pleasant-looking dragon; and, as soon as it was arranged for her stay in
Cranford, she found out that Mrs Jamieson’s visit to Cheltenham was just
the best thing in the world. She had let her house in Edinburgh, and
was for the time house-less, so the charge of her sister-in-law’s
comfortable abode was very convenient and acceptable.
Miss Pole was very much inclined to instal herself as a heroine, because
of the decided steps she had taken in flying from the two men and one
woman, whom she entitled “that murderous gang.” She described their
appearance in glowing colours, and I noticed that every time she went
over the story some fresh trait of villainy was added to their
appearance. One was tall—he grew to be gigantic in height before we had
done with him; he of course had black hair—and by-and-by it hung in
elf-locks over his forehead and down his back. The other was short and
broad—and a hump sprouted out on his shoulder before we heard the last
of him; he had red hair—which deepened into carroty; and she was almost
sure he had a cast in the eye—a decided squint. As for the woman, her
eyes glared, and she was masculine-looking—a perfect virago; most
probably a man dressed in woman’s clothes; afterwards, we heard of a
beard on her chin, and a manly voice and a stride.
If Miss Pole was delighted to recount the events of that afternoon to
all inquirers, others were not so proud of their adventures in the
robbery line. Mr Hoggins, the surgeon, had been attacked at his own
door by two ruffians, who were concealed in the shadow of the porch, and
so effectually silenced him that he was robbed in the interval between
ringing his bell and the servant’s answering it. Miss Pole was sure it
would turn out that this robbery had been committed by “her men,” and
went the very day she heard the report to have her teeth examined, and
to question Mr Hoggins. She came to us afterwards; so we heard what she
had heard, straight and direct from the source, while we were yet in the
excitement and flutter of the agitation caused by the first
intelligence; for the event had only occurred the night before.
“Well!” said Miss Pole, sitting down with the decision of a person who
has made up her mind as to the nature of life and the world (and such
people never tread lightly, or seat themselves without a bump), “well,
Miss Matty! men will be men. Every mother’s son of them wishes to be
considered Samson and Solomon rolled into one—too strong ever to be
beaten or discomfited—too wise ever to be outwitted. If you will
notice, they have always foreseen events, though they never tell one for
one’s warning before the events happen. My father was a man, and I know
the sex pretty well.”
She had talked herself out of breath, and we should have been very glad
to fill up the necessary pause as chorus, but we did not exactly know
what to say, or which man had suggested this diatribe against the sex;
so we only joined in generally, with a grave shake of the head, and a
soft murmur of “They are very incomprehensible, certainly!”
“Now, only think,” said she. “There, I have undergone the risk of
having one of my remaining teeth drawn (for one is terribly at the mercy
of any surgeon-dentist; and I, for one, always speak them fair till I
have got my mouth out of their clutches), and, after all, Mr Hoggins is
too much of a man to own that he was robbed last night.”
“Not robbed!” exclaimed the chorus.
“Don’t tell me!” Miss Pole exclaimed, angry that we could be for a
moment imposed upon. “I believe he was robbed, just as Betty told me,
and he is ashamed to own it; and, to be sure, it was very silly of him
to be robbed just at his own door; I daresay he feels that such a thing
won’t raise him in the eyes of Cranford society, and is anxious to
conceal it—but he need not have tried to impose upon me, by saying I
must have heard an exaggerated account of some petty theft of a neck of
mutton, which, it seems, was stolen out of the safe in his yard last
week; he had the impertinence to add, he believed that that was taken by
the cat. I have no doubt, if I could get at the bottom of it, it was
that Irishman dressed up in woman’s clothes, who came spying about my
house, with the story about the starving children.”
After we had duly condemned the want of candour which Mr Hoggins had
evinced, and abused men in general, taking him for the representative
and type, we got round to the subject about which we had been talking
when Miss Pole came in; namely, how far, in the present disturbed state
of the country, we could venture to accept an invitation which Miss
Matty had just received from Mrs Forrester, to come as usual and keep
the anniversary of her wedding-day by drinking tea with her at five
o’clock, and playing a quiet pool afterwards. Mrs Forrester had said
that she asked us with some diffidence, because the roads were, she
feared, very unsafe. But she suggested that perhaps one of us would not
object to take the sedan, and that the others, by walking briskly, might
keep up with the long trot of the chairmen, and so we might all arrive
safely at Over Place, a suburb of the town. (No; that is too large an
expression: a small cluster of houses separated from Cranford by about
two hundred yards of a dark and lonely lane.) There was no doubt but
that a similar note was awaiting Miss Pole at home; so her call was a
very fortunate affair, as it enabled us to consult together. We would
all much rather have declined this invitation; but we felt that it would
not be quite kind to Mrs Forrester, who would otherwise be left to a
solitary retrospect of her not very happy or fortunate life. Miss Matty
and Miss Pole had been visitors on this occasion for many years, and now
they gallantly determined to nail their colours to the mast, and to go
through Darkness Lane rather than fail in loyalty to their friend.
But when the evening came, Miss Matty (for it was she who was voted into
the chair, as she had a cold), before being shut down in the sedan, like