Cranford
“Oh, I don’t know. She was willing enough, I think; but you know Cousin
Thomas would not have been enough of a gentleman for the rector and Miss
Jenkyns.”
“Well! but they were not to marry him,” said I, impatiently.
“No; but they did not like Miss Matty to marry below her rank. You know
she was the rector’s daughter, and somehow they are related to Sir Peter
Arley: Miss Jenkyns thought a deal of that.”
“Poor Miss Matty!” said I.
“Nay, now, I don’t know anything more than that he offered and was
refused. Miss Matty might not like him—and Miss Jenkyns might never
have said a word—it is only a guess of mine.”
“Has she never seen him since?” I inquired.
“No, I think not. You see Woodley, Cousin Thomas’s house, lies half-way
between Cranford and Misselton; and I know he made Misselton his
market-town very soon after he had offered to Miss Matty; and I don’t
think he has been into Cranford above once or twice since—once, when I
was walking with Miss Matty, in High Street, and suddenly she darted
from me, and went up Shire Lane. A few minutes after I was startled by
meeting Cousin Thomas.”
“How old is he?” I asked, after a pause of castle-building.
“He must be about seventy, I think, my dear,” said Miss Pole, blowing up
my castle, as if by gun-powder, into small fragments.
Very soon after—at least during my long visit to Miss Matilda—I had the
opportunity of seeing Mr Holbrook; seeing, too, his first encounter with
his former love, after thirty or forty years’ separation. I was helping
to decide whether any of the new assortment of coloured silks which they
had just received at the shop would do to match a grey and black
mousseline-delaine that wanted a new breadth, when a tall, thin, Don
Quixote-looking old man came into the shop for some woollen gloves. I
had never seen the person (who was rather striking) before, and I
watched him rather attentively while Miss Matty listened to the shopman.
The stranger wore a blue coat with brass buttons, drab breeches, and
gaiters, and drummed with his fingers on the counter until he was
attended to. When he answered the shop-boy’s question, “What can I have
the pleasure of showing you to-day, sir?” I saw Miss Matilda start, and
then suddenly sit down; and instantly I guessed who it was. She had
made some inquiry which had to be carried round to the other shopman.
“Miss Jenkyns wants the black sarsenet two-and-twopence the yard”; and
Mr Holbrook had caught the name, and was across the shop in two strides.
“Matty—Miss Matilda—Miss Jenkyns! God bless my soul! I should not have
known you. How are you? how are you?” He kept shaking her hand in a
way which proved the warmth of his friendship; but he repeated so often,
as if to himself, “I should not have known you!” that any sentimental
romance which I might be inclined to build was quite done away with by
his manner.
However, he kept talking to us all the time we were in the shop; and
then waving the shopman with the unpurchased gloves on one side, with
“Another time, sir! another time!” he walked home with us. I am happy
to say my client, Miss Matilda, also left the shop in an equally
bewildered state, not having purchased either green or red silk. Mr
Holbrook was evidently full with honest loud-spoken joy at meeting his
old love again; he touched on the changes that had taken place; he even
spoke of Miss Jenkyns as “Your poor sister! Well, well! we have all our
faults”; and bade us good-bye with many a hope that he should soon see
Miss Matty again. She went straight to her room, and never came back
till our early tea-time, when I thought she looked as if she had been
crying.
[Picture: Mr Holbrook ... bade us good-bye]
CHAPTER IV.
A VISIT TO AN OLD BACHELOR
A FEW days after, a note came from Mr Holbrook, asking us—impartially
asking both of us—in a formal, old-fashioned style, to spend a day at
his house—a long June day—for it was June now. He named that he had
also invited his cousin, Miss Pole; so that we might join in a fly,
which could be put up at his house.
I expected Miss Matty to jump at this invitation; but, no! Miss Pole
and I had the greatest difficulty in persuading her to go. She thought
it was improper; and was even half annoyed when we utterly ignored the
idea of any impropriety in her going with two other ladies to see her
old lover. Then came a more serious difficulty. She did not think
Deborah would have liked her to go. This took us half a day’s good hard
talking to get over; but, at the first sentence of relenting, I seized
the opportunity, and wrote and despatched an acceptance in her
name—fixing day and hour, that all might be decided and done with.
The next morning she asked me if I would go down to the shop with her;
and there, after much hesitation, we chose out three caps to be sent
home and tried on, that the most becoming might be selected to take with
us on Thursday.
She was in a state of silent agitation all the way to Woodley. She had
evidently never been there before; and, although she little dreamt I
knew anything of her early story, I could perceive she was in a tremor
at the thought of seeing the place which might have been her home, and
round which it is probable that many of her innocent girlish
imaginations had clustered. It was a long drive there, through paved
jolting lanes. Miss Matilda sat bolt upright, and looked wistfully out
of the windows as we drew near the end of our journey. The aspect of
the country was quiet and pastoral. Woodley stood among fields; and
there was an old-fashioned garden where roses and currant-bushes touched
each other, and where the feathery asparagus formed a pretty background
to the pinks and gilly-flowers; there was no drive up to the door. We
got out at a little gate, and walked up a straight box-edged path.
“My cousin might make a drive, I think,” said Miss Pole, who was afraid
of ear-ache, and had only her cap on.
“I think it is very pretty,” said Miss Matty, with a soft plaintiveness
in her voice, and almost in a whisper, for just then Mr Holbrook
appeared at the door, rubbing his hands in very effervescence of
hospitality. He looked more like my idea of Don Quixote than ever, and
yet the likeness was only external. His respectable housekeeper stood
modestly at the door to bid us welcome; and, while she led the elder
ladies upstairs to a bedroom, I begged to look about the garden. My
request evidently pleased the old gentleman, who took me all round the
place and showed me his six-and-twenty cows, named after the different
letters of the alphabet. As we went along, he surprised me occasionally
by repeating apt and beautiful quotations from the poets, ranging easily
from Shakespeare and George Herbert to those of our own day. He did
this as naturally as if he were thinking aloud, and their true and
beautiful words were the best expression he could find for what he was
thinking or feeling. To be sure he called Byron “my Lord Byrron,” and
pronounced the name of Goethe strictly in accordance with the English
sound of the letters—“As Goethe says, ‘Ye ever-verdant palaces,’” &c.
Altogether, I never met with a man, before or since, who had spent so
long a life in a secluded and not impressive country, with
ever-increasing delight in the daily and yearly change of season and
beauty.
When he and I went in, we found that dinner was nearly ready in the
kitchen—for so I suppose the room ought to be called, as there were oak
dressers and cupboards all round, all over by the side of the fireplace,
and only a small Turkey carpet in the middle of the flag-floor. The
room might have been easily made into a handsome dark oak dining-parlour
by removing the oven and a few other appurtenances of a kitchen, which
were evidently never used, the real cooking-place being at some
distance. The room in which we were expected to sit was a
stiffly-furnished, ugly apartment; but that in which we did sit was what
Mr Holbrook called the counting-house, where he paid his labourers their
weekly wages at a great desk near the door. The rest of the pretty
sitting-room—looking into the orchard, and all covered over with dancing
tree-shadows—was filled with books. They lay on the ground, they
covered the walls, they strewed the table. He was evidently half
ashamed and half proud of his extravagance in this respect. They were
of all kinds—poetry and wild weird tales prevailing. He evidently chose
his books in accordance with his own tastes, not because such and such
were classical or established favourites.
“Ah!” he said, “we farmers ought not to have much time for reading; yet
somehow one can’t help it.”
“What a pretty room!” said Miss Matty, _sotto voce_.
“What a pleasant place!” said I, aloud, almost simultaneously.
“Nay! if you like it,” replied he; “but can you sit on these great,
black leather, three-cornered chairs? I like it better than the best
parlour; but I thought ladies would take that for the smarter place.”
It was the smarter place, but, like most smart things, not at all
pretty, or pleasant, or home-like; so, while we were at dinner, the
servant-girl dusted and scrubbed the counting-house chairs, and we sat
there all the rest of the day.
We had pudding before meat; and I thought Mr Holbrook was going to make
some apology for his old-fashioned ways, for he began—
“I don’t know whether you like newfangled ways.”
“Oh, not at all!” said Miss Matty.
“No more do I,” said he. “My housekeeper _will_ have these in her new
fashion; or else I tell her that, when I was a young man, we used to
keep strictly to my father’s rule, ‘No broth, no ball; no ball, no
beef’; and always began dinner with broth. Then we had suet puddings,
boiled in the broth with the beef: and then the meat itself. If we did
not sup our broth, we had no ball, which we liked a deal better; and the
beef came last of all, and only those had it who had done justice to the
broth and the ball. Now folks begin with sweet things, and turn their
dinners topsy-turvy.”
When the ducks and green peas came, we looked at each other in dismay;
we had only two-pronged, black-handled forks. It is true the steel was
as bright as silver; but what were we to do? Miss Matty picked up her
peas, one by one, on the point of the prongs, much as Aminé ate her
grains of rice after her previous feast with the Ghoul. Miss Pole
sighed over her delicate young peas as she left them on one side of her
plate untasted, for they _would_ drop between the prongs. I looked at
my host: the peas were going wholesale into his capacious mouth,
shovelled up by his large round-ended knife. I saw, I imitated, I
survived! My friends, in spite of my precedent, could not muster up
courage enough to do an ungenteel thing; and, if Mr Holbrook had not
been so heartily hungry, he would probably have seen that the good peas
went away almost untouched.
After dinner, a clay pipe was brought in, and a spittoon; and, asking us
to retire to another room, where he would soon join us, if we disliked
tobacco-smoke, he presented his pipe to Miss Matty, and requested her to
fill the bowl. This was a compliment to a lady in his youth; but it was
rather inappropriate to propose it as an honour to Miss Matty, who had
been trained by her sister to hold smoking of every kind in utter
abhorrence. But if it was a shock to her refinement, it was also a
gratification to her feelings to be thus selected; so she daintily
stuffed the strong tobacco into the pipe, and then we withdrew.
“It is very pleasant dining with a bachelor,” said Miss Matty softly, as
we settled ourselves in the counting-house. “I only hope it is not
improper; so many pleasant things are!”
“What a number of books he has!” said Miss Pole, looking round the room.