Cranford
at these words)—“I don’t mean that mine has been sad, only so very
different to what I expected. I remember, one winter’s evening, sitting
over our bedroom fire with Deborah—I remember it as if it were
yesterday—and we were planning our future lives, both of us were
planning, though only she talked about it. She said she should like to
marry an archdeacon, and write his charges; and you know, my dear, she
never was married, and, for aught I know, she never spoke to an
unmarried archdeacon in her life. I never was ambitious, nor could I
have written charges, but I thought I could manage a house (my mother
used to call me her right hand), and I was always so fond of little
children—the shyest babies would stretch out their little arms to come
to me; when I was a girl, I was half my leisure time nursing in the
neighbouring cottages; but I don’t know how it was, when I grew sad and
grave—which I did a year or two after this time—the little things drew
back from me, and I am afraid I lost the knack, though I am just as fond
of children as ever, and have a strange yearning at my heart whenever I
see a mother with her baby in her arms. Nay, my dear” (and by a sudden
blaze which sprang up from a fall of the unstirred coals, I saw that her
eyes were full of tears—gazing intently on some vision of what might
have been), “do you know I dream sometimes that I have a little
child—always the same—a little girl of about two years old; she never
grows older, though I have dreamt about her for many years. I don’t
think I ever dream of any words or sound she makes; she is very
noiseless and still, but she comes to me when she is very sorry or very
glad, and I have wakened with the clasp of her dear little arms round my
neck. Only last night—perhaps because I had gone to sleep thinking of
this ball for Phœbe—my little darling came in my dream, and put up her
mouth to be kissed, just as I have seen real babies do to real mothers
before going to bed. But all this is nonsense, dear! only don’t be
frightened by Miss Pole from being married. I can fancy it may be a
very happy state, and a little credulity helps one on through life very
smoothly—better than always doubting and doubting and seeing
difficulties and disagreeables in everything.”
[Picture: Would stretch out their little arms]
If I had been inclined to be daunted from matrimony, it would not have
been Miss Pole to do it; it would have been the lot of poor Signor
Brunoni and his wife. And yet again, it was an encouragement to see
how, through all their cares and sorrows, they thought of each other and
not of themselves; and how keen were their joys, if they only passed
through each other, or through the little Phœbe.
The signora told me, one day, a good deal about their lives up to this
period. It began by my asking her whether Miss Pole’s story of the
twin-brothers were true; it sounded so wonderful a likeness, that I
should have had my doubts, if Miss Pole had not been unmarried. But the
signora, or (as we found out she preferred to be called) Mrs Brown, said
it was quite true; that her brother-in-law was by many taken for her
husband, which was of great assistance to them in their profession;
“though,” she continued, “how people can mistake Thomas for the real
Signor Brunoni, I can’t conceive; but he says they do; so I suppose I
must believe him. Not but what he is a very good man; I am sure I don’t
know how we should have paid our bill at the ‘Rising Sun’ but for the
money he sends; but people must know very little about art if they can
take him for my husband. Why, Miss, in the ball trick, where my husband
spreads his fingers wide, and throws out his little finger with quite an
air and a grace, Thomas just clumps up his hand like a fist, and might
have ever so many balls hidden in it. Besides, he has never been in
India, and knows nothing of the proper sit of a turban.”
“Have you been in India?” said I, rather astonished.
“Oh, yes! many a year, ma’am. Sam was a sergeant in the 31st; and when
the regiment was ordered to India, I drew a lot to go, and I was more
thankful than I can tell; for it seemed as if it would only be a slow
death to me to part from my husband. But, indeed, ma’am, if I had known
all, I don’t know whether I would not rather have died there and then
than gone through what I have done since. To be sure, I’ve been able to
comfort Sam, and to be with him; but, ma’am, I’ve lost six children,”
said she, looking up at me with those strange eyes that I’ve never
noticed but in mothers of dead children—with a kind of wild look in
them, as if seeking for what they never more might find. “Yes! Six
children died off, like little buds nipped untimely, in that cruel
India. I thought, as each died, I never could—I never would—love a
child again; and when the next came, it had not only its own love, but
the deeper love that came from the thoughts of its little dead brothers
and sisters. And when Phœbe was coming, I said to my husband, ‘Sam,
when the child is born, and I am strong, I shall leave you; it will cut
my heart cruel; but if this baby dies too, I shall go mad; the madness
is in me now; but if you let me go down to Calcutta, carrying my baby
step by step, it will, maybe, work itself off; and I will save, and I
will hoard, and I will beg—and I will die, to get a passage home to
England, where our baby may live?’ God bless him! he said I might go;
and he saved up his pay, and I saved every pice I could get for washing
or any way; and when Phœbe came, and I grew strong again, I set off.
It was very lonely; through the thick forests, dark again with their
heavy trees—along by the river’s side (but I had been brought up near
the Avon in Warwickshire, so that flowing noise sounded like home)—from
station to station, from Indian village to village, I went along,
carrying my child. I had seen one of the officer’s ladies with a little
picture, ma’am—done by a Catholic foreigner, ma’am—of the Virgin and the
little Saviour, ma’am. She had him on her arm, and her form was softly
curled round him, and their cheeks touched. Well, when I went to bid
good-bye to this lady, for whom I had washed, she cried sadly; for she,
too, had lost her children, but she had not another to save, like me;
and I was bold enough to ask her would she give me that print. And she
cried the more, and said her children were with that little blessed
Jesus; and gave it me, and told me that she had heard it had been
painted on the bottom of a cask, which made it have that round shape.
And when my body was very weary, and my heart was sick (for there were
times when I misdoubted if I could ever reach my home, and there were
times when I thought of my husband, and one time when I thought my baby
was dying), I took out that picture and looked at it, till I could have
thought the mother spoke to me, and comforted me. And the natives were
very kind. We could not understand one another; but they saw my baby on
my breast, and they came out to me, and brought me rice and milk, and
sometimes flowers—I have got some of the flowers dried. Then, the next
morning, I was so tired; and they wanted me to stay with them—I could
tell that—and tried to frighten me from going into the deep woods,
which, indeed, looked very strange and dark; but it seemed to me as if
Death was following me to take my baby away from me; and as if I must go
on, and on—and I thought how God had cared for mothers ever since the
world was made, and would care for me; so I bade them good-bye, and set
off afresh. And once when my baby was ill, and both she and I needed
rest, He led me to a place where I found a kind Englishman lived, right
in the midst of the natives.”
“And you reached Calcutta safely at last?”
“Yes, safely! Oh! when I knew I had only two days’ journey more before
me, I could not help it, ma’am—it might be idolatry, I cannot tell—but I
was near one of the native temples, and I went into it with my baby to
thank God for His great mercy; for it seemed to me that where others had
prayed before to their God, in their joy or in their agony, was of
itself a sacred place. And I got as servant to an invalid lady, who
grew quite fond of my baby aboard-ship; and, in two years’ time, Sam
earned his discharge, and came home to me, and to our child. Then he
had to fix on a trade; but he knew of none; and once, once upon a time,
he had learnt some tricks from an Indian juggler; so he set up
conjuring, and it answered so well that he took Thomas to help him—as
his man, you know, not as another conjuror, though Thomas has set it up
now on his own hook. But it has been a great help to us that likeness
between the twins, and made a good many tricks go off well that they
made up together. And Thomas is a good brother, only he has not the
fine carriage of my husband, so that I can’t think how he can be taken
for Signor Brunoni himself, as he says he is.”
“Poor little Phœbe!” said I, my thoughts going back to the baby she
carried all those hundred miles.
“Ah! you may say so! I never thought I should have reared her, though,
when she fell ill at Chunderabaddad; but that good, kind Aga Jenkyns
took us in, which I believe was the very saving of her.”
“Jenkyns!” said I.
“Yes, Jenkyns. I shall think all people of that name are kind; for here
is that nice old lady who comes every day to take Phœbe a walk!”
But an idea had flashed through my head; could the Aga Jenkyns be the
lost Peter? True he was reported by many to be dead. But, equally
true, some had said that he had arrived at the dignity of Great Lama of
Thibet. Miss Matty thought he was alive. I would make further inquiry.
CHAPTER XII.
ENGAGED TO BE MARRIED
WAS the “poor Peter” of Cranford the Aga Jenkyns of Chunderabaddad, or
was he not? As somebody says, that was the question.
In my own home, whenever people had nothing else to do, they blamed me
for want of discretion. Indiscretion was my bug-bear fault. Everybody
has a bug-bear fault, a sort of standing characteristic—a _pièce de
résistance_ for their friends to cut at; and in general they cut and
come again. I was tired of being called indiscreet and incautious; and
I determined for once to prove myself a model of prudence and wisdom. I
would not even hint my suspicions respecting the Aga. I would collect
evidence and carry it home to lay before my father, as the family friend
of the two Miss Jenkynses.
In my search after facts, I was often reminded of a description my
father had once given of a ladies’ committee that he had had to preside
over. He said he could not help thinking of a passage in Dickens, which
spoke of a chorus in which every man took the tune he knew best, and
sang it to his own satisfaction. So, at this charitable committee,
every lady took the subject uppermost in her mind, and talked about it
to her own great contentment, but not much to the advancement of the
subject they had met to discuss. But even that committee could have
been nothing to the Cranford ladies when I attempted to gain some clear
and definite information as to poor Peter’s height, appearance, and when
and where he was seen and heard of last. For instance, I remember
asking Miss Pole (and I thought the question was very opportune, for I
put it when I met her at a call at Mrs Forrester’s, and both the ladies
had known Peter, and I imagined that they might refresh each other’s
memories)—I asked Miss Pole what was the very last thing they had ever
heard about him; and then she named the absurd report to which I have
alluded, about his having been elected Great Lama of Thibet; and this
was a signal for each lady to go off on her separate idea. Mrs
Forrester’s start was made on the veiled prophet in Lalla Rookh—whether