“Oh, goodness me!” she said. “Deborah, there’s a gentleman sitting in the drawing-room with his arm round Miss Jessie’s waist!” Miss Matty’s eyes looked large with terror.
Miss Jenkyns snubbed her down in an instant.
“The most proper place in the world for his arm to be in. Go away, Matilda, and mind your own business.” This, from her sister who had hitherto been a model of feminine decorum, was a blow for poor Miss Matty, and with a double shock she left the room.
The last time I ever saw poor Miss Jenkyns was many years after this. Mrs. Gordon had kept up a warm and affectionate intercourse with all at Cranford. Miss Jenkyns, Miss Matty, and Miss Pole had all been to visit her, and returned with wonderful accounts of her house, her husband, her dress, and her looks. For, with happiness, something of her early bloom returned; she had been a year or two younger than we had taken her for. Her eyes were always lovely, and, as Mrs. Gordon, her dimples were not out of place. At the time to which I have referred, when I last saw Miss Jenkyns, that lady was old and feeble, and had lost something of her strong mind. Little Flora Gordon was staying with the Misses Jenkyns, and when I came in she was reading aloud to Miss Jenkyns, who lay feeble and changed on the sofa. Flora put down the Rambler when I came in.
“Ah!” said Miss Jenkyns, “you find me changed, my dear. I can’t see as I used to do. If Flora were not here to read to me, I hardly know how I should get through the day. Did you ever read the Rambler? It’s a wonderful book—wonderful! and the most improving reading for Flora” (which I dare say it would have been if she could have read half the words without spelling, and could have understood the meaning of a third), “better than that strange old book, with the queer name, poor Captain Brown was killed for reading—that book by Mr. Boz, you know—‘Old Poz’; when I was a girl—but that’s a long time ago—I acted Lucy in ‘Old Poz.’” She babbled on long enough for Flora to get a good long spell at the “Christmas Carol,” which Miss Matty had left on the table.
CHAPTER 3 A Love Affair of Long Ago
I thought that probably my connection with Cranford would cease after Miss Jenkyns’s death; at least, that it would have to be kept up by correspondence, which bears much the same relation to personal intercourse that the books of dried plants I sometimes see (“Hortus Siccus,” I think they call the thing) do to the living and fresh flowers in the lanes and meadows. I was pleasantly surprised, therefore, by receiving a letter from Miss Pole (who had always come in for a supplementary week after my annual visit to Miss Jenkyns) proposing that I should go and stay with her; and then, in a couple of days after my acceptance, came a note from Miss Matty, in which, in a rather circuitous and very humble manner, she told me how much pleasure I should confer if I could spend a week or two with her, either before or after I had been at Miss Pole’s; “for,” she said, “since my dear sister’s death, I am well aware I have no attractions to offer; it is only to the kindness of my friends that I can owe their company.”
Of course I promised to come to dear Miss Matty as soon as I had ended my visit to Miss Pole; and the day after my arrival at Cranford I went to see her, much wondering what the house would be like without Miss Jenkyns, and rather dreading the changed aspect of things. Miss Matty began to cry as soon as she saw me. She was evidently nervous from having anticipated my call. I comforted her as well as I could; and I found the best consolation I could give was the honest praise that came from my heart as I spoke of the deceased. Miss Matty slowly shook her head over each virtue as it was named and attributed to her sister; and at last she could not restrain the tears which had long been silently flowing, but hid her face behind her handkerchief and sobbed aloud.
“Dear Miss Matty,” said I, taking her hand—for indeed I did not know in what way to tell her how sorry I was for her, left deserted in the world. She put down her handkerchief and said—
“My dear, I’d rather you did not call me Matty. She did not like it; but I did many a thing she did not like, I’m afraid—and now she’s gone! If you please, my love, will you call me Matilda?”
I promised faithfully, and began to practise the new name with Miss Pole that very day; and, by degrees, Miss Matilda’s feeling on the subject was known through Cranford, and we all tried to drop the more familiar name, but with so little success that by and by we gave up the attempt.
My visit to Miss Pole was very quiet. Miss Jenkyns had so long taken the lead in Cranford that, now she was gone, they hardly knew how to give a party. The Honourable Mrs. Jamieson, to whom Miss Jenkyns herself had always yielded the post of honour, was fat and inert, and very much at the mercy of her old servants. If they chose that she should give a party, they reminded her of the necessity for so doing: if not, she let it alone. There was all the more time for me to hear old-world stories from Miss Pole, while she sat knitting, and I making my father’s shirts. I always took a quantity of plain sewing to Cranford; for, as we did not read much, or walk much, I found it a capital time to get through my work. One of Miss Pole’s stories related to a shadow of a love affair that was dimly perceived or suspected long years before.
Presently the time arrived when I was to remove to Miss Matilda’s 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