Cranford Page #11

Cranford is an episodic novel by the English writer Elizabeth Gaskell. It first appeared in instalments in the magazine Household Words, then was published with minor revisions as a book with the title Cranford in 1853.

• Novel

								

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.
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