Cranford Page #9

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

								

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 rule and regulation had been a subject of
plaintive whispered murmur to me during Miss Jenkyns’s life; but now that
she was gone, I do not think that even I, who was a favourite, durst have
suggested an alteration.  To give an instance: we constantly adhered to
the forms which were observed, at meal-times, in “my father, the rector’s
house.”  Accordingly, we had always wine and dessert; but the decanters
were only filled when there was a party, and what remained was seldom
touched, though we had two wine-glasses apiece every day after dinner,
until the next festive occasion arrived, when the state of the remainder
wine was examined into in a family council.  The dregs were often given
to the poor: but occasionally, when a good deal had been left at the last
party (five months ago, it might be), it was added to some of a fresh
bottle, brought up from the cellar.  I fancy poor Captain Brown did not
much like wine, for I noticed he never finished his first glass, and most
military men take several.  Then, as to our dessert, Miss Jenkyns used to
gather currants and gooseberries for it herself, which I sometimes
thought would have tasted better fresh from the trees; but then, as Miss
Jenkyns observed, there would have been nothing for dessert in
summer-time.  As it was, we felt very genteel with our two glasses
apiece, and a dish of gooseberries at the top, of currants and biscuits
at the sides, and two decanters at the bottom.  When oranges came in, a
curious proceeding was gone through.  Miss Jenkyns did not like to cut
the fruit; for, as she observed, the juice all ran out nobody knew where;
sucking (only I think she used some more recondite word) was in fact the
only way of enjoying oranges; but then there was the unpleasant
association with a ceremony frequently gone through by little babies; and
so, after dessert, in orange season, Miss Jenkyns and Miss Matty used to
rise up, possess themselves each of an orange in silence, and withdraw to
the privacy of their own rooms to indulge in sucking oranges.

I had once or twice tried, on such occasions, to prevail on Miss Matty to
stay, and had succeeded in her sister’s lifetime.  I held up a screen,
and did not look, and, as she said, she tried not to make the noise very
offensive; but now that she was left alone, she seemed quite horrified
when I begged her to remain with me in the warm dining-parlour, and enjoy
her orange as she liked best.  And so it was in everything.  Miss
Jenkyns’s rules were made more stringent than ever, because the framer of
them was gone where there could be no appeal.  In all things else Miss
Matilda was meek and undecided to a fault.  I have heard Fanny turn her
round twenty times in a morning about dinner, just as the little hussy
chose; and I sometimes fancied she worked on Miss Matilda’s weakness in
order to bewilder her, and to make her feel more in the power of her
clever servant.  I determined that I would not leave her till I had seen
what sort of a person Martha was; and, if I found her trustworthy, I
would tell her not to trouble her mistress with every little decision.

Martha was blunt and plain-spoken to a fault; otherwise she was a brisk,
well-meaning, but very ignorant girl.  She had not been with us a week
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