Cranford
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
coat-tails whisk into the scullery once, when I went on an errand into
the store-room 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 meal-times, 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 wine-glasses 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 summer-time. 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 plain-spoken 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 Hindoo 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
post-mistress 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 any one
she had ever heard, except the late rector.
“And how came Miss Matilda not to marry him?” asked I.