Part 15

“Cynthia is not a dunce either,” said Mrs. Gibson, afraid lest her daughter’s opinion of herself might be taken seriously. “But I have always observed that some people have a talent for one thing and some for another. Now Cynthia’s talents are not for science and the severer studies. Do you remember, love, what trouble I had to teach you the use of the globes?”

“Yes; and I don’t know longitude from latitude now; and I’m always puzzled as to which is perpendicular and which is horizontal.”

“Yet, I do assure you,” her mother continued, rather addressing herself to Osborne, “that her memory for poetry is prodigious. I have heard her repeat the ‘Prisoner of Chillon’ from beginning to end.”

“It would be rather a bore to have to hear her, I think,” said Mr. Gibson, smiling at Cynthia, who gave him back one of her bright looks of mutual understanding.

“Ah, Mr. Gibson, I have found out before now that you have no soul for poetry; and Molly there is your own child. She reads such deep books—all about facts and figures: she’ll be quite a blue-stocking by and by.”

“Mamma,” said Molly, reddening, “you think it was a deep book because there were the shapes of the different cells of bees in it! but it was not at all deep. It was very interesting.”

“Never mind, Molly,” said Osborne. “I stand up for blue-stockings.”

“And I object to the distinction implied in what you say,” said Roger. “It was not deep, _ergo_, it was very interesting. Now, a book may be both deep and interesting.”

“Oh, if you are going to chop logic and use Latin words, I think it is time for us to leave the room,” said Mrs. Gibson.

“Don’t let us run away as if we were beaten, mamma,” said Cynthia. “Though it may be logic, I for one can understand what Mr. Roger Hamley said just now; and I read some of Molly’s books; and whether it was deep or not, I found it very interesting—more so than I should think the ‘Prisoner of Chillon’ nowadays. I’ve displaced the Prisoner to make room for Johnnie Gilpin as my favourite poem.”

“How could you talk such nonsense, Cynthia!” said Mrs. Gibson, as the girls followed her upstairs. “You know you are not a dunce. It is all very well not to be a blue-stocking, because gentle-people don’t like that kind of woman; but running yourself down, and contradicting all I said about your liking for Byron, and poets and poetry—to Osborne Hamley of all men, too!”

Mrs. Gibson spoke quite crossly for her.

“But, mamma,” Cynthia replied, “I am either a dunce, or I am not. If I am, I did right to own it; if I am not, he’s a dunce if he doesn’t find out I was joking.”

“Well,” said Mrs. Gibson, a little puzzled by this speech, and wanting some elucidatory addition.

“Only that if he’s a dunce his opinion of me is worth nothing. So, any way, it doesn’t signify.”

“You really bewilder me with your nonsense, child. Molly is worth twenty of you.”

“I quite agree with you, mamma,” said Cynthia, turning round to take Molly’s hand.

“Yes; but she ought not to be,” said Mrs. Gibson, still irritated. “Think of the advantages you’ve had.”

“I’m afraid I had rather be a dunce than a blue-stocking,” said Molly; for the term had a little annoyed her, and the annoyance was rankling still.

“Hush; here they are coming: I hear the dining-room door! I never meant you were a blue-stocking, dear, so don’t look vexed—Cynthia, my love, where did you get those lovely flowers—anemones, are they? They suit your complexion so exactly.”

“Come, Molly, don’t look so grave and thoughtful,” exclaimed Cynthia. “Don’t you perceive mamma wants us to be smiling and amiable?”

A Visit to an Old Bachelor

From _Cranford_, 1853

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 dispatched 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 gillyflowers; 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 earache, 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 Shakspeare 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 Goëthe says, ‘Ye ever-verdant palaces,’” etc. 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, when 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 new-fangled 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!”

Marriage

From _Cranford_.

But when she was gone, Miss Pole began a long congratulation to Miss Matty that so far they had escaped marriage, which she noticed always made people credulous to the last degree; indeed, she thought it argued great natural credulity in a woman if she could not keep herself from being married; and in what Lady Glenmire had said about Mr. Hoggins’s robbery, we had a specimen of what people came to, if they gave way to such a weakness; evidently, Lady Glenmire would swallow anything, if she could believe the poor vamped-up story about a neck of mutton and a pussy, with which he had tried to impose on Miss Pole, only she had always been on her guard against believing too much of what men said.

We were thankful, as Miss Pole desired us to be, that we had never been married; but I think, of the two, we were even more thankful that the robbers had left Cranford; at least I judge so from a speech of Miss Matty’s that evening, as we sat over the fire, in which she evidently looked upon a husband as a great protector against thieves, burglars, and ghosts; and said, that she did not think that she should dare to be always warning young people against matrimony, as Miss Pole did continually;—to be sure, marriage was a risk, as she saw now she had had some experience; but she remembered the time when she had looked forward to being married as much as anyone.

“Not to any particular person, my dear,” said she, hastily checking herself up as if she were afraid of having admitted too much; “only the old story, you know, of ladies always saying, ‘_When_ I marry,’ and gentlemen, ‘_If_ I marry.’” It was a joke spoken in rather a sad tone, and I doubt if either of us smiled; but I could not see Miss Matty’s face by the flickering firelight. In a little while she continued:

“But after all I have not told you the truth. It is so long ago, and no one ever knew how much I thought of it at the time, unless, indeed, my dear mother guessed; but I may say that there was a time when I did not think I should have been only Miss Matty Jenkyns all my life; for even if I did meet anyone who wished to marry me now (and, as Miss Pole says, one is never too safe), I could not take him—I hope he would not take it too much to heart, but I could _not_ take him—or any one but the person I once thought I should be married to, and he is dead and gone, and he never knew how it all came about that I said ‘No,’ when I had thought many and many a time——Well, it’s no matter what I thought. God ordains it all, and I am very happy, my dear. No one has such kind friends as I,” continued she, taking my hand and holding it in hers.

If I had never known of Mr. Holbrook, I could have said something in this pause, but as I had, I could not think of anything that would come in naturally, and so we both kept silence for a little time.

“My father once made us,” she began, “keep a diary, in two columns; on one side we were to put down in the morning what we thought would be the course and events of the coming day, and at night we were to put down on the other side what really had happened. It would be to some people rather a sad way of telling their lives”—(a tear dropped upon my hand 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 a 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 Phoebe—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.”

A Love Affair of Long Ago

From _Cranford_.

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 postmistress at Cranford that his name was _Mr._ Thomas Holbrook, yeoman.

* * * * *

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 anyone she had ever heard, except the late Rector.

“And how came Miss Matilda not to marry him?” asked I.

“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?”

“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 gunpowder, 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-de-laine 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 enquiry 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.

The Cat and the Lace

From _Cranford_.

Mrs. Forrester related a curious little fact to Lady Glenmire—an anecdote known to the circle of her intimate friends, but of which even Mrs. Jamieson was not aware. It related to some fine old lace, the sole relic of better days, which Lady Glenmire was admiring on Mrs. Forrester’s collar.