Cranford
own mind as following the dismissal of the suit of Mr Holbrook. So we
talked softly and quietly of old times through the long November
evening.
The next day Miss Pole brought us word that Mr Holbrook was dead. Miss
Matty heard the news in silence; in fact, from the account of the
previous day, it was only what we had to expect. Miss Pole kept calling
upon us for some expression of regret, by asking if it was not sad that
he was gone, and saying—
“To think of that pleasant day last June, when he seemed so well! And
he might have lived this dozen years if he had not gone to that wicked
Paris, where they are always having revolutions.”
She paused for some demonstration on our part. I saw Miss Matty could
not speak, she was trembling so nervously; so I said what I really felt;
and after a call of some duration—all the time of which I have no doubt
Miss Pole thought Miss Matty received the news very calmly—our visitor
took her leave.
Miss Matty made a strong effort to conceal her feelings—a concealment
she practised even with me, for she has never alluded to Mr Holbrook
again, although the book he gave her lies with her Bible on the little
table by her bedside. She did not think I heard her when she asked the
little milliner of Cranford to make her caps something like the
Honourable Mrs Jamieson’s, or that I noticed the reply—
“But she wears widows’ caps, ma’am?”
“Oh! I only meant something in that style; not widows’, of course, but
rather like Mrs Jamieson’s.”
This effort at concealment was the beginning of the tremulous motion of
head and hands which I have seen ever since in Miss Matty.
The evening of the day on which we heard of Mr Holbrook’s death, Miss
Matilda was very silent and thoughtful; after prayers she called Martha
back and then she stood uncertain what to say.
“Martha!” she said, at last, “you are young”—and then she made so long a
pause that Martha, to remind her of her half-finished sentence, dropped
a curtsey, and said—
“Yes, please, ma’am; two-and-twenty last third of October, please,
ma’am.”
“And, perhaps, Martha, you may some time meet with a young man you like,
and who likes you. I did say you were not to have followers; but if
you meet with such a young man, and tell me, and I find he is
respectable, I have no objection to his coming to see you once a week.
God forbid!” said she in a low voice, “that I should grieve any young
hearts.” She spoke as if she were providing for some distant
contingency, and was rather startled when Martha made her ready eager
answer—
“Please, ma’am, there’s Jem Hearn, and he’s a joiner making
three-and-sixpence a-day, and six foot one in his stocking-feet, please,
ma’am; and if you’ll ask about him to-morrow morning, every one will
give him a character for steadiness; and he’ll be glad enough to come
to-morrow night, I’ll be bound.”
Though Miss Matty was startled, she submitted to Fate and Love.
CHAPTER V.
OLD LETTERS
I HAVE often noticed that almost every one has his own individual small
economies—careful habits of saving fractions of pennies in some one
peculiar direction—any disturbance of which annoys him more than
spending shillings or pounds on some real extravagance. An old
gentleman of my acquaintance, who took the intelligence of the failure
of a Joint-Stock Bank, in which some of his money was invested, with
stoical mildness, worried his family all through a long summer’s day
because one of them had torn (instead of cutting) out the written leaves
of his now useless bank-book; of course, the corresponding pages at the
other end came out as well, and this little unnecessary waste of paper
(his private economy) chafed him more than all the loss of his money.
Envelopes fretted his soul terribly when they first came in; the only
way in which he could reconcile himself to such waste of his cherished
article was by patiently turning inside out all that were sent to him,
and so making them serve again. Even now, though tamed by age, I see
him casting wistful glances at his daughters when they send a whole
inside of a half-sheet of note paper, with the three lines of acceptance
to an invitation, written on only one of the sides. I am not above
owning that I have this human weakness myself. String is my foible. My
pockets get full of little hanks of it, picked up and twisted together,
ready for uses that never come. I am seriously annoyed if any one cuts
the string of a parcel instead of patiently and faithfully undoing it
fold by fold. How people can bring themselves to use india-rubber
rings, which are a sort of deification of string, as lightly as they do,
I cannot imagine. To me an india-rubber ring is a precious treasure. I
have one which is not new—one that I picked up off the floor nearly six
years ago. I have really tried to use it, but my heart failed me, and I
could not commit the extravagance.
Small pieces of butter grieve others. They cannot attend to
conversation because of the annoyance occasioned by the habit which some
people have of invariably taking more butter than they want. Have you
not seen the anxious look (almost mesmeric) which such persons fix on
the article? They would feel it a relief if they might bury it out of
their sight by popping it into their own mouths and swallowing it down;
and they are really made happy if the person on whose plate it lies
unused suddenly breaks off a piece of toast (which he does not want at
all) and eats up his butter. They think that this is not waste.
Now Miss Matty Jenkyns was chary of candles. We had many devices to use
as few as possible. In the winter afternoons she would sit knitting for
two or three hours—she could do this in the dark, or by firelight—and
when I asked if I might not ring for candles to finish stitching my
wristbands, she told me to “keep blind man’s holiday.” They were
usually brought in with tea; but we only burnt one at a time. As we
lived in constant preparation for a friend who might come in any evening
(but who never did), it required some contrivance to keep our two
candles of the same length, ready to be lighted, and to look as if we
burnt two always. The candles took it in turns; and, whatever we might
be talking about or doing, Miss Matty’s eyes were habitually fixed upon
the candle, ready to jump up and extinguish it and to light the other
before they had become too uneven in length to be restored to equality
in the course of the evening.
One night, I remember this candle economy particularly annoyed me. I
had been very much tired of my compulsory “blind man’s holiday,”
especially as Miss Matty had fallen asleep, and I did not like to stir
the fire and run the risk of awakening her; so I could not even sit on
the rug, and scorch myself with sewing by firelight, according to my
usual custom. I fancied Miss Matty must be dreaming of her early life;
for she spoke one or two words in her uneasy sleep bearing reference to
persons who were dead long before. When Martha brought in the lighted
candle and tea, Miss Matty started into wakefulness, with a strange,
bewildered look around, as if we were not the people she expected to see
about her. There was a little sad expression that shadowed her face as
she recognised me; but immediately afterwards she tried to give me her
usual smile. All through tea-time her talk ran upon the days of her
childhood and youth. Perhaps this reminded her of the desirableness of
looking over all the old family letters, and destroying such as ought
not to be allowed to fall into the hands of strangers; for she had often
spoken of the necessity of this task, but had always shrunk from it,
with a timid dread of something painful. To-night, however, she rose up
after tea and went for them—in the dark; for she piqued herself on the
precise neatness of all her chamber arrangements, and used to look
uneasily at me when I lighted a bed-candle to go to another room for
anything. When she returned there was a faint, pleasant smell of
Tonquin beans in the room. I had always noticed this scent about any of
the things which had belonged to her mother; and many of the letters
were addressed to her—yellow bundles of love-letters, sixty or seventy
years old.
Miss Matty undid the packet with a sigh; but she stifled it directly, as
if it were hardly right to regret the flight of time, or of life either.
We agreed to look them over separately, each taking a different letter
out of the same bundle and describing its contents to the other before
destroying it. I never knew what sad work the reading of old letters
was before that evening, though I could hardly tell why. The letters
were as happy as letters could be—at least those early letters were.
There was in them a vivid and intense sense of the present time, which
seemed so strong and full, as if it could never pass away, and as if the
warm, living hearts that so expressed themselves could never die, and be
as nothing to the sunny earth. I should have felt less melancholy, I
believe, if the letters had been more so. I saw the tears stealing down
the well-worn furrows of Miss Matty’s cheeks, and her spectacles often
wanted wiping. I trusted at last that she would light the other candle,
for my own eyes were rather dim, and I wanted more light to see the
pale, faded ink; but no, even through her tears, she saw and remembered
her little economical ways.
The earliest set of letters were two bundles tied together, and ticketed
(in Miss Jenkyns’s handwriting) “Letters interchanged between my
ever-honoured father and my dearly-beloved mother, prior to their
marriage, in July 1774.” I should guess that the rector of Cranford was
about twenty-seven years of age when he wrote those letters; and Miss
Matty told me that her mother was just eighteen at the time of her
wedding. With my idea of the rector derived from a picture in the
dining-parlour, stiff and stately, in a huge full-bottomed wig, with
gown, cassock, and bands, and his hand upon a copy of the only sermon he
ever published—it was strange to read these letters. They were full of
eager, passionate ardour; short homely sentences, right fresh from the
heart (very different from the grand Latinised, Johnsonian style of the
printed sermon preached before some judge at assize time). His letters
were a curious contrast to those of his girl-bride. She was evidently
rather annoyed at his demands upon her for expressions of love, and
could not quite understand what he meant by repeating the same thing
over in so many different ways; but what she was quite clear about was a
longing for a white “Paduasoy”—whatever that might be; and six or seven
letters were principally occupied in asking her lover to use his
influence with her parents (who evidently kept her in good order) to
obtain this or that article of dress, more especially the white
“Paduasoy.” He cared nothing how she was dressed; she was always lovely
enough for him, as he took pains to assure her, when she begged him to
express in his answers a predilection for particular pieces of finery,
in order that she might show what he said to her parents. But at length
he seemed to find out that she would not be married till she had a
“trousseau” to her mind; and then he sent her a letter, which had
evidently accompanied a whole box full of finery, and in which he
requested that she might be dressed in everything her heart desired.
This was the first letter, ticketed in a frail, delicate hand, “From my
dearest John.” Shortly afterwards they were married, I suppose, from
the intermission in their correspondence.
“We must burn them, I think,” said Miss Matty, looking doubtfully at me.
“No one will care for them when I am gone.” And one by one she dropped