‘And Mr Peter?’ asked I.
‘Oh, there was some great war in India – I forget what they call it – and we have never heard of Peter since then. I believe he is dead myself; and it sometimes fidgets me that we have never put on mourning for him. And then, again, when I sit by myself, and all the house is still, I think I hear his step coming up the street, and my heart begins to flutter and beat; but the sound always goes past – and Peter never comes.
‘That’s Martha back? No! I’ll go, my dear; I can always find my way in the dark, you know. And a blow of fresh air at the door will do my head good, and it’s rather got a trick of aching.’
So she pattered off. I had lighted the candle, to give the room a cheerful appearance against her return.
‘Was it Martha?’ asked I.
‘Yes. And I am rather uncomfortable, for I heard such a strange noise just as I was opening the door.’
‘Where?’ I asked, for her eyes were round with affright.
‘In the street – just outside – it sounded like –’
‘Talking?’ I put in, as she hesitated a little.
‘No! kissing –’
Chapter VII
VISITING
ONE MORNING, AS Miss Matty and I sat at our work – it was before twelve o’clock, and Miss Matty had not changed the cap with yellow ribbons that had been Miss Jenkyns’s best, and which Miss Matty was now wearing out in private, putting on the one made in imitation of Mrs Jamieson’s at all times when she expected to be seen – Martha came up, and asked if Miss Betty Barker might speak to her mistress. Miss Matty assented, and quickly disappeared to change the yellow ribbons, while Miss Barker came up-stairs; but as she had forgotten her spectacles, and was rather flurried by the unusual time of the visit, I was not surprised to see her return with one cap on the top of the other. She was quite unconscious of it herself, and looked at us with bland satisfaction. Nor do I think Miss Barker perceived it; for, putting aside the little circumstance that she was not so young as she had been, she was very much absorbed in her errand; which she delivered herself of, with an oppressive modesty that found vent in endless apologies.
Miss Betty Barker was the daughter of the old clerk at Cranford, who officiated in Mr Jenkyns’s time. She and her sister had had pretty good situations as ladies’ maids, and had saved money enough to set up a milliner’s shop, which had been patronized by the ladies in the neighbourhood. Lady Arley, for instance, would occasionally give Miss Barkers the pattern of an old cap of hers, which they immediately copied and circulated among the élite of Cranford. I say the élite, for Miss Barkers had caught the trick of the place, and piqued themselves upon their ‘aristocratic connexion.’ They would not sell their caps and ribbons to any one without a pedigree. Many a farmer’s wife or daughter turned away huffed from Miss Barkers’ select millinery, and went rather to the universal shop, where the profits of brown soap and moist sugar enabled the proprietor to go straight to (Paris, he said, until he found his customers too patriotic and John Bullish to wear what the Mounseers wore) London; where, as he often told his customers, Queen Adelaide had appeared, only the very week before, in a cap exactly like the one he showed them, trimmed with yellow and blue ribbons, and had been complimented by King William on the becoming nature of her head-dress.
Miss Barkers, who confined themselves to truth, and did not approve of miscellaneous customers throve notwithstanding. They were self-denying, good people. Many a time have I seen the eldest of them (she that had been maid to Mrs Jamieson) carrying out some delicate mess to a poor person. They only aped their betters in having ‘nothing to do’ with the class immediately below theirs. And when Miss Barker died, their profits and income were found to be such that Miss Betty was justified in shutting up shop and retiring from business. She also (as I think I have before said) set up her cow; a mark of respectability in Cranford almost as decided as setting up a gig is among some people. She dressed finer than any lady in Cranford; and we did not wonder at it; for it was understood that she was wearing out all the bonnets and caps, and outrageous ribbons, which had once formed her stock-in-trade. It was five or six years since she had given up shop: so in any other place than Cranford her dress might have been considered passée.
And now, Miss Betty Barker had called to invite Miss Matty to tea at her house on the following Tuesday. She gave me also an impromptu invitation, as I happened to be a visitor; though I could see she had a little fear lest, since my father had gone to live in Drumble, he might have engaged in that ‘horrid cotton trade,’ and so dragged his family down out of ‘aristocratic society.’ She prefaced this invitation with so many apologies, that she quite excited my curiosity. ‘Her presumption’ was to be excused. What had she been doing? She seemed so overpowered by it, I could only think that she had been writing to Queen Adelaide, to ask for a receipt for washing lace; but the act which she so characterised was only an invitation she had carried to her sister’s former mistress, Mrs Jamieson. ‘Her former occupation considered, could Miss Matty excuse the liberty?’ Ah! thought I, she has found out that double cap, and is going to rectify Miss Matty’s head-dress. No! it was simply to extend her invitation to Miss Matty and to me. Miss Matty bowed acceptance; and I wondered that, in the graceful action, she did not feel the unusual weight and extraordinary height of her head-dress. But I do not think she did; for she recovered her balance, and went on talking to Miss Betty in a kind, condescending manner, very different from the fidgety way she would have had, if she had suspected how singular her appearance was.
‘Mrs Jamieson is coming, I think you said?’ asked Miss Matty.
‘Yes. Mrs Jamieson most kindly and condescendingly said she would be happy to come. One little stipulation she made, that she should bring Carlo. I told her that if I had a weakness, it was for dogs.’
‘And Miss Pole?’ questioned Miss Matty, who was thinking of her pool at Preference, in which Carlo would not be available as a partner.
‘I am going to ask Miss Pole. Of course, I could not think of asking her until I had asked you, madam – the Rector’s daughter, madam. Believe me, I do not forget the situation my father held under yours.’
‘And Mrs Forrester, of course?’
‘And Mrs Forrester. I thought, in fact, of going to her before I went to Miss Pole. Although her circumstances are changed, madam, she was born a Tyrrell, and we can never forget her alliance to the Bigges, of Bigelow Hall.’
Miss Matty cared much more for the little circumstance of her being a very good card-player.
‘Mrs Fitz-Adam – I suppose –’
‘No, madam. I must draw a line somewhere. Mrs Jamieson would not, I think, like to meet Mrs Fitz-Adam. I have the greatest respect for Mrs Fitz-Adam – but I cannot think her fit society for such ladies as Mrs Jamieson and Miss Matilda Jenkyns.’
Miss Betty Barker bowed low to Miss Matty, and pursed up her mouth. She looked at me with sidelong dignity, as much as to say, although a retired milliner, she was no democrat, and understood the difference of ranks.
‘May I beg you to come as near half-past six, to my little dwelling, as possible, Miss Matilda? Mrs Jamieson dines at five, but has kindly promised not to delay her visit beyond that time – half-past six.’ And with a swimming curtsey Miss Betty Barker took her leave.
My prophetic soul foretold a visit that afternoon from Miss Pole, who usually came to call on Miss Matilda after any event – or indeed in sight of any event – to talk it over with her.
‘Miss Betty told me it was to be a choice and select few,’ said Miss Pole, as she and Miss Matty compared notes.
‘Yes, so she said. Not even Mrs Fitz-Adam.’
Now Mrs Fitz-Adam was the widowed sister of the Cranford surgeon, whom I have named before. Their parents were respectable farmers, content with their station. The name of these good people was Hoggins. Mr Hoggins was the Cranford doctor now; we disliked the name, and considered it coarse; but, as Miss Jenkyns said, if he changed it to Piggins it would no
t be much better. We had hoped to discover a relationship between him and that Marchioness of Exeter whose name was Molly Hoggins; but the man, careless of his own interests, utterly ignored and denied any such relationship; although, as dear Miss Jenkyns had said, he had a sister called Mary, and the same Christian names were very apt to run in families.
Soon after Miss Mary Hoggins married Mr Fitz-Adam, she disappeared from the neighbourhood for many years. She did not move in a sphere in Cranford society sufficiently high to make any of us care to know what Mr Fitz-Adam was. He died and was gathered to his fathers, without our ever having thought about him at all. And then Mrs Fitz-Adam reappeared in Cranford (‘as bold as a lion,’ Miss Pole said) a well-to-do widow, dressed in rustling black silk, so soon after her husband’s death, that poor Miss Jenkyns was justified in the remark she made, that ‘bombazine would have shown a deeper sense of her loss.’
I remember the convocation of ladies, who assembled to decide whether or not Mrs Fitz-Adam should be called upon by the old blue-blooded inhabitants of Cranford. She had taken a large rambling house, which had been usually considered to confer a patent of gentility upon its tenant; because, once upon a time, seventy or eighty years before, the spinster daughter of an earl had resided in it. I am not sure if the inhabiting this house was not also believed to convey some unusual power of intellect; for the earl’s daughter, Lady Jane, had a sister, Lady Anne, who had married a general officer in the time of the American War; and this general officer had written one or two comedies, which were still acted on the London boards; and which, when we saw them advertised, made us all draw up, and feel that Drury Lane was paying a very pretty compliment to Cranford. Still, it was not at all a settled thing that Mrs Fitz-Adam was to be visited, when dear Miss Jenkyns died; and, with her, something of the clear knowledge of the strict code of gentility went out too. As Miss Pole observed, ‘As most of the ladies of good family in Cranford were elderly spinsters, or widows without children, if we did not relax a little, and become less exclusive, by-and-by we should have no society at all.’
Mrs Forrester continued on the same side.
‘She had always understood that Fitz meant something aristocratic; there was Fitz-Roy – she thought that some of the King’s children had been called Fitz-Roy; and there was Fitz-Clarence now – they were the children of dear good King William the Fourth. Fitz-Adam! – it was a pretty name; and she thought it very probably meant “Child of Adam.” No one, who had not some good blood in their veins, would dare to be called Fitz; there was a deal in a name – she had had a cousin who spelt his name with two little ff’s – ffoulkes – and he always looked down upon capital letters, and said they belonged to lately-invented families. She had been afraid he would die a bachelor, he was so very choice. When he met with a Mrs ffaringdon, at a watering-place, he took to her immediately; and a very pretty genteel woman she was – a widow with a very good fortune; and “my cousin,” Mr ffoulkes, married her; and it was all owing to her two little ff’s.’
Mrs Fitz-Adam did not stand a chance of meeting with a Mr Fitz-anything in Cranford, so that could not have been her motive for settling there. Miss Matty thought it might have been the hope of being admitted in the society of the place, which would certainly be a very agreeable rise for ci-devant Miss Hoggins; and if this had been her hope, it would be cruel to disappoint her.
So everybody called upon Mrs Fitz-Adam – everybody but Mrs Jamieson, who used to show how honourable she was by never seeing Mrs Fitz-Adam, when they met at the Cranford parties. There would be only eight or ten ladies in the room, and Mrs Fitz-Adam was the largest of all, and she invariably used to stand up when Mrs Jamieson came in, and curtsey very low to her whenever she turned in her direction – so low, in fact, that I think Mrs Jamieson must have looked at the wall above her, for she never moved a muscle of her face, no more than if she had not seen her. Still Mrs Fitz-Adam persevered.
The spring evenings were getting bright and long, when three or four ladies in calashes met at Miss Barker’s door. Do you know what a calash is? It is a covering worn over caps, not unlike the heads fastened on old-fashioned gigs; but sometimes it is not quite so large. This kind of headgear always made an awful impression on the children in Cranford; and now two or three left off their play in the quiet sunny little street, and gathered, in wondering silence, round Miss Pole, Miss Matty, and myself. We were silent too, so that, we could hear loud, suppressed whispers inside Miss Barker’s house: ‘Wait, Peggy! wait till I’ve run upstairs and washed my hands. When I cough, open the door; I’ll not be a minute.’
And, true enough, it was not a minute before we heard a noise, between a sneeze and a crow; on which the door flew open. Behind it stood a round-eyed maiden, all aghast at the honourable company of calashes, who marched in without a word. She recovered presence of mind enough to usher us into a small room, which had been the shop, but was now converted into a temporary dressing-room. There we unpinned and shook ourselves, and arranged our features before the glass into a sweet and gracious company-face; and then, bowing backwards with ‘After you, ma’am,’ we allowed Mrs Forrester to take precedence up the narrow staircase that led to Miss Barker’s drawing-room. There she sat, as stately and composed as though we had never heard that odd-sounding cough, from which her throat must have been even then sore and rough. Kind, gentle, shabbily-dressed Mrs Forrester was immediately conducted to the second place of honour – a seat arranged something like Prince Albert’s near the Queen’s – good, but not so good. The place of pre-eminence was, of course, reserved for the Honourable Mrs Jamieson, who presently came panting up the stairs – Carlo rushing round her on her progress, as if he meant to trip her up.
And now, Miss Betty Barker was a proud and happy woman! She stirred the fire, and shut the door, and sat as near to it as she could, quite on the edge of her chair. When Peggy came in, tottering under the weight of the tea-tray, I noticed that Miss Barker was sadly afraid lest Peggy should not keep her distance sufficiently. She and her mistress were on very familiar terms in their everyday intercourse, and Peggy wanted now to make several little confidences to her, which Miss Barker was on thorns to hear; but which she thought it her duty, as a lady, to repress. So she turned away from all Peggy’s asides and signs; but she made one or two very mal-apropos answers to what was said; and at last, seized with a bright idea, she exclaimed, ‘Poor sweet Carlo! I’m forgetting him. Come down stairs with me, poor ittie doggie, and it shall have its tea, it shall!’
In a few minutes she returned, bland and benignant as before; but I thought she had forgotten to give the ‘poor ittie doggie’ anything to eat; judging by the avidity with which he swallowed down chance pieces of cake. The tea-tray was abundantly loaded. I was pleased to see it, I was so hungry; but I was afraid the ladies present might think it vulgarly heaped up. I know they would have done at their own houses; but somehow the heaps disappeared here. I saw Mrs Jamieson eating seed-cake, slowly and considerately, as she did everything; and I was rather surprised, for I knew she had told us, on the occasion of her last party, that she never had it in her house, it reminded her so much of scented soap. She always gave us Savoy biscuits. However, Mrs Jamieson was kindly indulgent to Miss Barker’s want of knowledge of the customs of high life; and, to spare her feelings, ate three large pieces of seed-cake, with a placid, ruminating expression of countenance, not unlike a cow’s.
After tea there was some little demur and difficulty. We were six in number; four could play at Preference, and for the other two there was Cribbage. But all, except myself – (I was rather afraid of the Cranford ladies at cards, for it was the most earnest and serious business they ever engaged in) – were anxious to be of the ‘pool.’ Even Miss Barker, while declaring she did not know Spadille from Manille, was evidently hankering to take a hand. The dilemma was soon put an end to by a singular kind of noise. If a Baron’s daughter-in-law could ever be supposed to snore, I should have said Mrs Jamieson did so then; for, overcome by the heat of the r
oom, and inclined to doze by nature, the temptation of that very comfortable arm-chair had been too much for her, and Mrs Jamieson was nodding. Once or twice she opened her eyes with an effort, and calmly but unconsciously smiled upon us; but, by-and-by, even her benevolence was not equal to this exertion, and she was sound asleep.
‘It is very gratifying to me,’ whispered Miss Barker at the card-table to her three opponents, whom, notwithstanding her ignorance of the game, she was ‘basting’ most unmercifully – ‘very gratifying indeed, to see how completely Mrs Jamieson feels at home in my poor little dwelling; she could not have paid me a greater compliment.’
Miss Barker provided me with some literature in the shape of three or four handsomely bound fashion-books ten or twelve years old, observing, as she put a little table and a candle for my especial benefit, that she knew young people liked to look at pictures. Carlo lay, and snorted, and started at his mistress’s feet. He, too, was quite at home.
The card-table was an animated scene to watch; four ladies’ heads, with niddle-noddling caps, all nearly meeting over the middle of the table, in their eagerness to whisper quick enough and loud enough: and every now and then came Miss Barker’s ‘Hush, ladies! if you please, hush! Mrs Jamieson is asleep.’
It was very difficult to steer clear between Mrs Forrester’s deafness and Mrs Jamieson’s sleepiness. But Miss Barker managed her arduous task well. She repeated the whisper to Mrs Forrester, distorting her face considerably, in order to show, by the motions of her lips, what was said; and then she smiled kindly all round at us, and murmured to herself, ‘Very gratifying, indeed; I wish my poor sister had been alive to see this day.’