Cranford Page #8

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

								

Major Gordon upstairs; and, presently, in walked a tall, fine,
frank-looking man of forty or upwards.  He shook hands with Miss Jessie;
but he could not see her eyes, she kept them so fixed on the ground.
Miss Jenkyns asked me if I would come and help her to tie up the
preserves in the store-room; and though Miss Jessie plucked at my gown,
and even looked up at me with begging eye, I durst not refuse to go where
Miss Jenkyns asked.  Instead of tying up preserves in the store-room,
however, we went to talk in the dining-room; and there Miss Jenkyns told
me what Major Gordon had told her; how he had served in the same regiment
with Captain Brown, and had become acquainted with Miss Jessie, then a
sweet-looking, blooming girl of eighteen; how the acquaintance had grown
into love on his part, though it had been some years before he had
spoken; how, on becoming possessed, through the will of an uncle, of a
good estate in Scotland, he had offered and been refused, though with so
much agitation and evident distress that he was sure she was not
indifferent to him; and how he had discovered that the obstacle was the
fell disease which was, even then, too surely threatening her sister.
She had mentioned that the surgeons foretold intense suffering; and there
was no one but herself to nurse her poor Mary, or cheer and comfort her
father during the time of illness.  They had had long discussions; and on
her refusal to pledge herself to him as his wife when all should be over,
he had grown angry, and broken off entirely, and gone abroad, believing
that she was a cold-hearted person whom he would do well to forget.  He
had been travelling in the East, and was on his return home when, at
Rome, he saw the account of Captain Brown’s death in Galignani.

Just then Miss Matty, who had been out all the morning, and had only
lately returned to the house, burst in with a face of dismay and outraged
propriety.

“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.

          [Picture: “With his arm around Miss Jessie’s waist!”]

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 daresay 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 III—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
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