The Cranford Chronicles

  I was sorry for Mr Gray. He had been to see me several times, and had helped me to bear my illness in a better spirit than I should have done without his good advice and prayers. And I had gathered, from little things he said, how much his heart was set upon this new scheme. I liked him so much, and I loved and respected my lady so well, that I could not bear them to be on the cool terms to which they were constantly getting. Yet I could do nothing but keep silence.

  I suppose my lady understood something of what was passing in my mind; for, after a minute or two, she went on: –

  ‘If Mr Gray knew all I know – if he had my experience, he would not be so ready to speak of setting up his new plans in opposition to my judgement. Indeed,’ she continued, lashing herself up with her own recollections, ‘times are changed when the parson of a village comes to beard the liege lady in her own house. Why, in my grandfather’s days, the parson was family chaplain too, and dined at the Hall every Sunday. He was helped last, and expected to have done first. I remember seeing him take up his plate and knife and fork, and say, with his mouth full all the time he was speaking: “If you please, Sir Urian, and my Lady, I’ll follow the beef into the housekeeper’s room;” for, you see, unless he did so, he stood no chance of a second helping. A greedy man, that parson was, to be sure! I recollect his once eating up the whole of some little bird at dinner, and by way of diverting attention from his greediness, he told how he had heard that a rook soaked in vinegar and then dressed in a particular way, could not be distinguished from the bird he was then eating. I saw by the grim look of my grandfather’s face that the parson’s doing and saying displeased him; and, child as I was, I had some notion what was coming, when, as I was riding out on my little, white pony, by my grandfather’s side, the next Friday, he stopped one of the gamekeepers, and bade him shoot one of the oldest rooks he could find. I knew no more about it till Sunday, when a dish was set right before the parson, and Sir Urian said: “Now, Parson Hemming, I have had a rook shot, and soaked in vinegar, and dressed as you described last Sunday. Fall to, man, and eat it with as good an appetite as you had last Sunday. Pick the bones clean, or by —, no more Sunday dinners shall you eat at my table!” I gave one look at poor Mr Hemming’s face, as he tried to swallow the first morsel, and make believe as though he thought it very good; but I could not look again, for shame, although my grandfather laughed, and kept asking us all round if we knew what could have become of the parson’s appetite.’

  ‘And did he finish it?’ I asked.

  ‘O yes, my dear. What my grandfather said was to be done, was done always. He was a terrible man in his anger! But to think of the difference between Parson Hemming and Mr Gray! or even of poor, dear Mr Mountford and Mr Gray. Mr Mountford would never have withstood me as Mr Gray did!’

  ‘And your ladyship really thinks that it would not be right to have a Sunday-school?’ I asked, feeling very timid as I put the question.

  ‘Certainly not. As I told Mr Gray, I consider a knowledge of the Creed, and of the Lord’s Prayer, as essential to salvation; and that any child may have, whose parents bring it regularly to church. Then there are the Ten Commandments, which teach simple duties in the plainest language. Of course, if a lad is taught to read and write (as that unfortunate boy has been who was here this morning) his duties become complicated, and his temptations much greater, while, at the same time, he has no hereditary principles and honourable training to serve as safeguards. I might take up my old simile of the race-horse and cart-horse. I am distressed,’ continued she, with a break in her ideas, ‘about that boy. The whole thing reminds me so much of a story of what happened to a friend of mine – Clément de Créquy. Did I ever tell you about him?’

  ‘No, your ladyship,’ I replied.

  ‘Poor Clément! More than twenty years ago, Lord Ludlow and I spent a winter in Paris. He had many friends there; perhaps not very good or very wise men, but he was so kind that he liked every one, and every one liked him. We had an apartment, as they call it there, in the Rue de Lille; we had the first-floor of a grand hotel, with the basement for our servants. On the floor above us the owner of the house lived, a Marquise de Créquy, a widow. They tell me that the Créquy coat-of-arms is still emblazoned, after all these terrible years, on a shield above the arched porte-cochère, just as it was then, though the family is quite extinct. Madame de Créquy had only one son, Clément, who was just the same age as my Urian – you may see his portrait in the great hall – Urian’s, I mean.’ I knew that Master Urian had been drowned at sea; and often had I looked at the presentment of his bonny hopeful face, in his sailor’s dress, with right hand outstretched to a ship on the sea in the distance as if he had just said, ‘Look at her! all her sails are set, and I’m just off.’ Poor Master Urian! he went down in this very ship not a year after the picture was taken! But now I will go back to my lady’s story. ‘I can see those two boys playing now,’ continued she, softly, shutting her eyes, as if the better to call up the vision, ‘as they used to do five-and-twenty years ago in those old-fashioned French gardens behind our hotel. Many a time have I watched them from my windows. It was, perhaps, a better play-place than an English garden would have been, for there were but few flower-beds, and no lawn at all to speak about; but instead, terraces and balustrades, and vases and flights of stone steps more in the Italian style; and there were jets-d’eau, and little fountains that could be set playing by turning water-cocks that were hidden here and there. How Clément delighted in turning the water on to surprise Urian, and how gracefully he did the honours, as it were, to my dear, rough, sailor lad! Urian was as dark as a gypsy boy, and cared little for his appearance, and resisted all my efforts at setting off his black eyes and tangled curls; but Clément, without ever showing that he thought about himself and his dress, was always dainty and elegant, even though his clothes were sometimes but threadbare. He used to be dressed in a kind of hunter’s green suit, open at the neck and half-way down the chest to beautiful old lace frills; his long golden curls fell behind just like a girl’s, and his hair in front was cut over his straight dark eyebrows in a line almost as straight. Urian learnt more of a gentleman’s carefulness and propriety of appearance from that lad in two months than he had done in years from all my lectures. I recollect one day, when the two boys were in full romp – and, my window being open, I could hear them perfectly – and Urian was daring Clément to some scrambling or climbing, which Clément refused to undertake, but in a hesitating way, as though he longed to do it if some reason had not stood in the way; and at times, Urian, who was hasty and thoughtless, poor fellow, told Clément that he was afraid. “Fear!” said the French boy, drawing himself up; “you do not know what you say. If you will be here at six to-morrow morning, when it is only just light, I will take that starling’s nest on the top of yonder chimney.” “But why not now, Clément?” said Urian, putting his arm round Clément’s neck. “Why then, and not now, just when we are in the humour for it?” “Because we De Créquys are poor, and my mother cannot afford me another suit of clothes this year, and yonder stone carving is all jagged, and would tear my coat and breeches. Now, tomorrow morning I could go up with nothing on but an old shirt.”

  ‘“But you would tear your legs.”

  ‘“My race do not care for pain,” said the boy, drawing himself from Urian’s arm, and walking a few steps away, with a becoming pride and reserve; for he was hurt at being spoken to as if he were afraid, and annoyed at having to confess the true reason for declining the feat. But Urian was not to be thus baffled. He went up to Clément, and put his arm once more about his neck, and I could see the two lads as they walked down the terrace away from the hotel windows: first Urian spoke eagerly, looking with imploring fondness into Clément’s face, which sought the ground, till at last the French boy spoke, and by-and-by his arm was round Urian too, and they paced backwards and forwards in deep talk, but gravely, as became men, rather than boys.

  ‘All at once, from the little chapel at the corner of t
he large garden belonging to the Missions Etrangères, I heard the tinkle of the little bell, announcing the elevation of the host. Down on his knees went Clément, hands crossed, eyes bent down: while Urian stood looking on in respectful thought.

  ‘What a friendship that might have been! I never dream of Urian without seeing Clément too – Urian speaks to me, or does something – but Clément only flits round Urian, and never seems to see any one else!

  ‘But I must not forget to tell you, that the next morning, before he was out of his room, a footman of Madame de Créquy’s brought Urian the starling’s nest.

  ‘Well! we came back to England, and the boys were to correspond; and Madame de Créquy and I exchanged civilities; and Urian went to sea.

  ‘After that, all seemed to drop away. I cannot tell you all. However, to confine myself to the De Créquys. I had a letter from Clément; I knew he felt his friend’s death deeply; but I should never have learnt it from the letter he sent. It was formal, and seemed like chaff to my hungering heart. Poor fellow! I dare say he had found it hard to write. What could he – or any one – say to a mother who has lost her child? The world does not think so, and, in general, one must conform to the customs of the world; but, judging from my own experience, I should say that reverent silence at such times is the tenderest balm. Madame de Créquy wrote too. But I knew she could not feel my loss so much as Clément, and therefore her letter was not such a disappointment. She and I went on being civil and polite in the way of commissions, and occasionally introducing friends to each other, for a year or two, and then we ceased to have any intercourse. Then the terrible Revolution came. No one who did not live at those times can imagine the daily expectation of news – the hourly terror of rumours affecting the fortunes and lives of those whom most of us had known as pleasant hosts, receiving us with peaceful welcome in their magnificent houses. Of course, there was sin enough and suffering enough behind the scenes; but we English visitors to Paris had seen little or nothing of that – and I had sometimes thought, indeed, how even Death seemed loth to choose his victims out of that brilliant throng whom I had known. Madame de Créquy’s one boy lived; while three out of my six were gone since we had met! I do not think all lots are equal, even now that I know the end of her hopes; but I do say, that whatever our individual lot is, it is our duty to accept it, without comparing it with that of others.

  ‘The times were thick with gloom and terror. “What next?” was the question we asked of every one who brought us news from Paris. Where were these demons hidden when, so few years ago, we danced and feasted, and enjoyed the brilliant salons and the charming friendships of Paris?

  ‘One evening, I was sitting alone in Saint James’s Square; my lord off at the club with Mr Fox and others: he had left me, thinking that I should go to one of the many places to which I had been invited for that evening; but I had no heart to go anywhere, for it was poor Urian’s birthday, and I had not even rung for lights, though the day was fast closing in, but was thinking over all his pretty ways, and on his warm affectionate nature, and how often I had been too hasty in speaking to him, for all I loved him so dearly; and how I seemed to have neglected and dropped his dear friend Clément, who might even now be in need of help in that cruel, bloody Paris. I say I was thinking reproachfully of all this, and particularly of Clément de Créquy in connection with Urian, when Fenwick brought me a note, sealed with a coat-of-arms I knew well, though I could not remember at the moment where I had seen it. I puzzled over it, as one does sometimes, for a minute or more, before I opened the letter. In a moment I saw it was from Clément de Créquy. “My mother is here,” he said: “she is very ill, and I am bewildered in this strange country. May I entreat you to receive me for a few minutes?” The bearer of the note was the woman of the house where they lodged. I had her brought up into the anteroom, and questioned her myself, while my carriage was being brought round. They had arrived in London a fortnight or so before: she had not known their quality, judging them (according to her kind) by their dress and their luggage; poor enough, no doubt. The lady had never left her bedroom since her arrival; the young man waited upon her, did everything for her, never left her, in fact; only she (the messenger) had promised to stay within call, as soon as she returned, while he went out somewhere. She could hardly understand him, he spoke English so badly. He had never spoken it, I dare say, since he had talked to my Urian.

  Chapter V

  ‘IN THE HURRY of the moment I scarce knew what I did. I bade the housekeeper put up every delicacy she had, in order to tempt the invalid, whom yet I hoped to bring back with me to our house. When the carriage was ready, I took the good woman with me to show us the exact way, which my coachman professed not to know; for, indeed, they were staying at but a poor kind of place at the back of Leicester Square, of which they had heard, as Clément told me afterwards, from one of the fishermen who had carried them across from the Dutch coast in their disguises as a Friesland peasant and his mother. They had some jewels of value concealed round their persons; but their ready money was all spent before I saw them, and Clément had been unwilling to leave his mother, even for the time necessary to ascertain the best mode of disposing of the diamonds. For, overcome with distress of mind and bodily fatigue, she had reached London only to take to her bed in a sort of low, nervous fever, in which her chief and only idea seemed to be, that Clément was about to be taken from her to some prison or other; and if he were out of her sight, though but for a minute, she cried like a child, and could not be pacified or comforted. The landlady was a kind, good woman, and though she but half understood the case, she was truly sorry for them, as foreigners, and the mother sick in a strange land.

  ‘I sent her forwards to request permission for my entrance. In a moment I saw Clément – a tall, elegant young man, in a curious dress of coarse cloth, standing at the open door of a room, and evidently – even before he accosted me – striving to soothe the terrors of his mother inside. I went towards him, and would have taken his hand, but he bent down and kissed mine.

  ‘“May I come in, madame?” I asked, looking at the poor sick lady, lying in the dark, dingy bed, her head propped up on coarse and dirty pillows, and gazing with affrighted eyes at all that was going on.

  ‘“Clément! Clément! come to me!” she cried; and when he went to the bedside she turned on one side, and took his hand in both of hers, and began stroking it, and looking up in his face. I could scarce keep back my tears.

  ‘He stood there quite still, except that from time to time he spoke to her in a low tone. At last I advanced into the room, so that I could talk to him, without renewing her alarm. I asked for the doctor’s address; for I had heard that they had called in some one, at their landlady’s recommendation: but I could hardly understand Clément’s broken English, and mispronunciation of our proper names, and was obliged to apply to the woman herself. I could not say much to Clément, for his attention was perpetually needed by his mother, who never seemed to perceive that I was there. But I told him not to fear, however long I might be away, for that I would return before night; and, bidding the woman take charge of all the heterogeneous things the housekeeper had put up, and leaving one of my men in the house, who could understand a few words of French, with directions that he was to hold himself at Madame de Créquy’s orders until I sent or gave him fresh commands, I drove off to the doctor’s. What I wanted was his permission to remove Madame de Créquy to my own house, and to learn how it best could be done; for I saw that every movement in the room, every sound, except Clément’s voice, brought on a fresh access of trembling and nervous agitation.

  ‘The doctor was, I should think, a clever man; but he had that kind of abrupt manner which people get who have much to do with the lower orders.

  ‘I told him the story of his patient, the interest I had in her, and the wish I entertained of removing her to my own house.

  ‘“It can’t be done,” said he. “Any change will kill her.”

  ‘“But it mus
t be done,” I replied. “And it shall not kill her.”

  ‘“Then I have nothing more to say,” said he, turning away from the carriage-door, and making as though he would go back into the house.

  ‘“Stop a moment. You must help me; and, if you do, you shall have reason to be glad, for I will give you fifty pounds down with pleasure. If you won’t do it, another shall.”

  ‘He looked at me, then (furtively) at the carriage, hesitated, and then said: “You do not mind expense, apparently. I suppose you are a rich lady of quality. Such folks will not stick at such trifles as the life or death of a sick woman to get their own way. I suppose I must e’en help you, for if I don’t, another will.”

  ‘I did not mind what he said, so that he would assist me. I was pretty sure that she was in a state to require opiates; and I had not forgotten Christopher Sly, you may be sure, so I told him what I had in my head. That in the dead of night – the quiet time in the streets – she should be carried in a hospital litter, softly and warmly covered over, from the Leicester Square lodging-house to rooms that I would have in perfect readiness for her. As I planned, so it was done. I let Clément know, by a note, of my design. I had all prepared at home, and we walked about my house as though shod with velvet, while the porter watched at the open door. At last, through the darkness, I saw the lanterns carried by my men, who were leading the little procession. The litter looked like a hearse; on one side walked the doctor, on the other Clément: they came softly and swiftly along. I could not try any farther experiment; we dared not change her clothes; she was laid in the bed in the landlady’s coarse night-gear, and covered over warmly, and left in the shaded, scented room, with a nurse and the doctor watching by her, while I led Clément to the dressing-room adjoining, in which I had had a bed placed for him. Farther than that he would not go; and there I had refreshments brought. Meanwhile, he had shown his gratitude by every possible action (for we none of us dared to speak): he had kneeled at my feet, and kissed my hand, and left it wet with his tears. He had thrown up his arms to Heaven, and prayed earnestly, as I could see by the movement of his lips. I allowed him to relieve himself by these dumb expressions, if I may so call them – and then I left him, and went to my own rooms to sit up for my lord, and tell him what I had done.