‘Marriage is a very solemn thing, Martha.’
‘It is indeed, ma’am,’ quoth Jem. ‘Not that I’ve no objections to Martha.’
‘You’ve never let me a-be for asking me for a fix when I would be married,’ said Martha – her face all afire, and ready to cry with vexation – ‘and now you’re shaming me before my missus and all.’
‘Nay, now! Martha, don’t ee! don’t ee! only a man likes to have breathing-time,’ said Jem, trying to possess himself of her hand, but in vain. Then seeing that she was more seriously hurt than he had imagined, he seemed to try to rally his scattered faculties, and with more straightforward dignity than, ten minutes before, I should have thought it possible for him to assume, he turned to Miss Matty, and said, ‘I hope, ma’am, you know that I am bound to respect every one who has been kind to Martha. I always looked on her as to be my wife – some time; and she has often and often spoke of you as the kindest lady that ever was; and though the plain truth is I would not like to be troubled with lodgers of the common run, yet if, ma’am, you’d honour us by living with us, I’m sure Martha would do her best to make you comfortable; and I’d keep out of your way as much as I could, which I reckon would be the best kindness such an awkward chap as me could do.’
Miss Matty had been very busy with taking off her spectacles, wiping them, and replacing them; but all she could say was, ‘Don’t let any thought of me hurry you into marriage: pray don’t! Marriage is such a very solemn thing!’
‘But Miss Matilda will think of your plan, Martha,’ said I, struck with the advantages that it offered, and unwilling to lose the opportunity of considering about it. ‘And I’m sure neither she nor I can ever forget your kindness; nor yours either, Jem.’
‘Why, yes, ma’am! I’m sure I mean kindly, though I’m a bit fluttered by being pushed straight a-head into matrimony, as it were, and mayn’t express myself conformable. But I’m sure I’m willing enough, and give me time to get accustomed; so, Martha, wench, what’s the use of crying so, and slapping me if I come near?’
This last was sotto voce, and had the effect of making Martha bounce out of the room, to be followed and soothed by her lover. Whereupon Miss Matty sat down and cried very heartily, and accounted for it by saying that the thought of Martha being married so soon gave her quite a shock, and that she should never forgive herself if she thought she was hurrying the poor creature. I think my pity was more for Jem, of the two; but both Miss Matty and I appreciated to the full the kindness of the honest couple, although we said little about this, and a good deal about the chances and dangers of matrimony.
The next morning, very early, I received a note from Miss Pole, so mysteriously wrapped up, and with so many seals on it to secure secrecy, that I had to tear the paper before I could unfold it. And when I came to the writing I could hardly understand the meaning, it was so involved and oracular. I made out, however, that I was to go to Miss Pole’s at eleven o’clock; the number eleven being written in full length as well as in numerals, and A.M. twice dashed under, as if I were very likely to come at eleven at night, when all Cranford was usually a-bed and asleep by ten. There was no signature except Miss Pole’s initials, reversed, P. E.; but as Martha had given me the note, ‘with Miss Pole’s kind regards,’ it needed no wizard to find out who sent it; and if the writer’s name was to be kept secret, it was very well that I was alone when Martha delivered it.
I went, as requested, to Miss Pole’s. The door was opened to me by her little maid Lizzy, in Sunday trim, as if some grand event was impending over this workday. And the drawing-room up-stairs was arranged in accordance with this idea. The table was set out, with the best green card-cloth, and writing materials upon it. On the little chiffonier was a tray with a newly-decanted bottle of cowslip wine, and some ladies’-finger biscuits. Miss Pole herself was in solemn array, as if to receive visitors, although it was only eleven o’clock. Mrs Forrester was there, crying quietly and sadly, and my arrival seemed only to call forth fresh tears. Before we had finished our greetings, performed with lugubrious mystery of demeanour, there was another rat-tat-tat, and Mrs Fitz-Adam appeared, crimson with walking and excitement. It seemed as if this was all the company expected; for now Miss Pole made several demonstrations of being about to open the business of the meeting, by stirring the fire, opening and shutting the door, and coughing and blowing her nose. Then she arranged us all round the table, taking care to place me opposite to her; and last of all, she inquired of me if the sad report was true, as she feared it was, that Miss Matty had lost all her fortune?
Of course, I had but one answer to make; and I never saw more unaffected sorrow depicted on any countenance than I did there on the three before me.
‘I wish Mrs Jamieson was here!’ said Mrs Forrester at last; but to judge from Mrs Fitz-Adam’s face, she could not second the wish.
‘But without Mrs Jamieson,’ said Miss Pole, with just a sound of offended merit in her voice, ‘we, the ladies of Cranford, in my drawing-room assembled, can resolve upon something. I imagine we are none of us what may be called rich, though we all possess a genteel competency, sufficient for tastes that are elegant and refined, and would not, if they could, be vulgarly ostentatious.’ (Here I observed Miss Pole refer to a small card concealed in her hand, on which I imagine she had put down a few notes.)
‘Miss Smith,’ she continued, addressing me (familiarly known as ‘Mary’ to all the company assembled, but this was a state occasion), ‘I have conversed in private – I made it my business to do so yesterday afternoon – with these ladies on the misfortune which has happened to our friend, – and one and all of us have agreed that, while we have a superfluity, it is not only a duty but a pleasure, – a true pleasure, Mary!’ – her voice was rather choked just here, and she had to wipe her spectacles before she could go on – ‘to give what we can to assist her – Miss Matilda Jenkyns. Only, in consideration of the feelings of delicate independence existing in the mind of every refined female’ – I was sure she had got back to the card now – ‘we wish to contribute our mites in a secret and concealed manner, so as not to hurt the feelings I have referred to. And our object in requesting you to meet us this morning, is, that believing you are the daughter – that your father is, in fact, her confidential adviser in all pecuniary matters, we imagined that, by consulting with him, you might devise some mode in which our contribution could be made to appear the legal due which Miss Matilda Jenkyns ought to receive from——. Probably, your father, knowing her investments, can fill up the blank.’
Miss Pole concluded her address, and looked round for approval and agreement.
‘I have expressed your meaning, ladies, have I not? And while Miss Smith considers what reply to make, allow me to offer you some little refreshment.’
I had no great reply to make; I had more thankfulness at my heart for their kind thoughts than I cared to put into words; and so I only mumbled out something to the effect ‘that I would name what Miss Pole had said to my father, and that if anything could be arranged for dear Miss Matty,’ – and here I broke down utterly, and had to be refreshed with a glass of cowslip wine before I could check the crying which had been repressed for the last two or three days. The worst was, all the ladies cried in concert. Even Miss Pole cried, who had said a hundred times that to betray emotion before any one was a sign of weakness and want of self-control. She recovered herself into a slight degree of impatient anger, directed against me, as having set them all off; and, moreover, I think she was vexed that I could not make a speech back in return for hers; and if I had known beforehand what was to be said, and had a card on which to express the probable feelings that would rise in my heart, I would have tried to gratify her. As it was, Mrs Forrester was the person to speak when we had recovered our composure.
‘I don’t mind, among friends, stating that I – no! I’m not poor exactly, but I don’t think I’m what you may call rich; I wish I were, for dear Miss Matty’s sake – but, if you please, I’ll write down,
in a sealed paper, what I can give. I only wish it was more: my dear Mary, I do indeed.’
Now I saw why paper, pens, and ink were provided. Every lady wrote down the sum she could give annually, signed the paper, and sealed it mysteriously. If their proposal was acceded to, my father was to be allowed to open the papers, under pledge of secrecy. If not, they were to be returned to their writers.
When this ceremony had been gone through, I rose to depart; but each lady seemed to wish to have a private conference with me. Miss Pole kept me in the drawing-room to explain why, in Mrs Jamieson’s absence, she had taken the lead in this ‘movement,’ as she was pleased to call it, and also to inform me that she had heard from good sources that Mrs Jamieson was coming home directly in a state of high displeasure against her sister-in-law, who was forthwith to leave her house; and was, she believed, to return to Edinburgh that very afternoon. Of course this piece of intelligence could not be communicated before Mrs Fitz-Adam, more especially as Miss Pole was inclined to think that Lady Glenmire’s engagement to Mr Hoggins could not possibly hold against the blaze of Mrs Jamieson’s displeasure. A few hearty inquiries after Miss Matty’s health concluded my interview with Miss Pole.
On coming downstairs I found Mrs Forrester waiting for me at the entrance to the dining parlour; she drew me in, and when the door was shut, she tried two or three times to begin on some subject, which was so unapproachable apparently, that I began to despair of our ever getting to a clear understanding. At last out it came; the poor old lady trembling all the time as if it were a great crime which she was exposing to daylight, in telling me how very, very little she had to live upon; a confession which she was brought to make from a dread lest we should think that the small contribution named in her paper bore any proportion to her love and regard for Miss Matty. And yet that sum which she so eagerly relinquished was, in truth, more than a twentieth part of what she had to live upon, and keep house, and a little serving-maid, all as became one born a Tyrrell. And when the whole income does not nearly amount to a hundred pounds, to give up a twentieth of it will necessitate many careful economies, and many pieces of self-denial – small and insignificant in the world’s account, but bearing a different value in another account-book that I have heard of. She did so wish she was rich, she said; and this wish she kept repeating, with no thought of herself in it, only with a longing, yearning desire to be able to heap up Miss Matty’s measure of comforts.
It was some time before I could console her enough to leave her; and then, on quitting the house, I was waylaid by Mrs Fitz-Adam, who had also her confidence to make of pretty nearly the opposite description. She had not liked to put down all that she could afford, and was ready to give. She told me she thought she never could look Miss Matty in the face again if she presumed to be giving her so much as she should like to do. ‘Miss Matty!’ continued she, ‘that I thought was such a fine young lady, when I was nothing but a country girl, coming to market with eggs and butter, and such like things. For my father, though well-to-do, would always make me go on as my mother had done before me; and I had to come into Cranford every Saturday, and see after sales and prices, and what not. And one day, I remember, I met Miss Matty in the lane that leads to Combehurst; she was walking on the footpath, which, you know, is raised a good way above the road, and a gentleman rode beside her, and was talking to her, and she was looking down at some primroses she had gathered, and pulling them all to pieces, and I do believe she was crying. But after she had passed, she turned round and ran after me to ask – oh, so kindly – about my poor mother, who lay on her deathbed; and when I cried she took hold of my hand to comfort me – and the gentleman waiting for her all the time – and her poor heart very full of something, I am sure; and I thought it such an honour to be spoken to in that pretty way by the rector’s daughter, who visited at Arley Hall. I have loved her ever since, though perhaps I’d no right to do it; but if you can think of any way in which I might be allowed to give a little more without any one knowing it, I should be so much obliged to you, my dear. And my brother would be delighted to doctor her for nothing – medicines, leeches, and all. I know that he and her ladyship – (my dear, I little thought, in the days I was telling you of, that I should ever come to be sister-in-law to a ladyship!) – would do anything for her. We all would.’
I told her I was quite sure of it, and promised all sorts of things, in my anxiety to get home to Miss Matty, who might well be wondering what had become of me, – absent from her two hours without being able to account for it. She had taken very little note of time, however, as she had been occupied in numberless little arrangements preparatory to the great step of giving up her house. It was evidently a relief to her to be doing something in the way of retrenchment; for, as she said, whenever she paused to think, the recollection of the poor fellow with his bad five-pound note came over her, and she felt quite dishonest; only if it made her so uncomfortable, what must it not be doing to the directors of the bank, who must know so much more of the misery consequent upon this failure? She almost made me angry by dividing her sympathy between these directors (whom she imagined overwhelmed by self-reproach for the mismanagement of other people’s affairs) and those who were suffering like her. Indeed, of the two, she seemed to think poverty a lighter burden than self-reproach; but I privately doubted if the directors would agree with her.
Old hoards were taken out and examined as to their money value, which luckily was small, or else I don’t know how Miss Matty would have prevailed upon herself to part with such things as her mother’s wedding-ring, the strange uncouth brooch with which her father had disfigured his shirt-frill, &c. However, we arranged things a little in order as to their pecuniary estimation, and were all ready for my father when he came the next morning.
I am not going to weary you with the details of all the business we went through; and one reason for not telling about them is, that I did not understand what we were doing at the time, and cannot recollect it now. Miss Matty and I sat assenting to accounts, and schemes, and reports, and documents, of which I do not believe we either of us understood a word; for my father was clear-headed and decisive, and a capital man of business, and if we made the slightest inquiry, or expressed the slightest want of comprehension, he had a sharp way of saying, ‘Eh? eh? it’s as clear as daylight. What’s your objection?’ And as we had not comprehended anything of what he had proposed, we found it rather difficult to shape our objections; in fact, we never were sure if we had any. So, presently Miss Matty got into a nervously acquiescent state, and said, ‘Yes,’ and ‘Certainly,’ at every pause, whether required or not: but when I once joined in as chorus to a ‘Decidedly’, pronounced by Miss Matty in a tremblingly dubious tone, my father fired round at me and asked me ‘What there was to decide?’ And I am sure, to this day, I have never known. But, in justice to him, I must say, he had come over from Drumble to help Miss Matty when he could ill spare the time, and when his own affairs were in a very anxious state.
While Miss Matty was out of the room, giving orders for luncheon – and sadly perplexed between her desire of honouring my father by a delicate dainty meal, and her conviction that she had no right, now that all her money was gone, to indulge this desire, – I told him of the meeting of the Cranford ladies at Miss Pole’s the day before. He kept brushing his hand before his eyes as I spoke; – and when I went back to Martha’s offer the evening before, of receiving Miss Matty as a lodger, he fairly walked away from me to the window, and began drumming with his fingers upon it. Then he turned abruptly round, and said, ‘See, Mary, how a good innocent life makes friends all round. Confound it! I could make a good lesson out of it if I were a parson; but as it is, I can’t get a tail to my sentences – only I’m sure you feel what I want to say. You and I will have a walk after lunch, and talk a bit more about these plans.’
The lunch – a hot savoury mutton-chop, and a little of the cold lion sliced and fried – was now brought in. Every morsel of this last dish was finished, to Marth
a’s great gratification. Then my father bluntly told Miss Matty he wanted to talk to me alone, and that he would stroll out and see some of the old places, and then I could tell her what plan we thought desirable. Just before we went out, she called me back and said, ‘Remember, dear, I’m the only one left – I mean, there’s no one to be hurt by what I do. I’m willing to do anything that’s right and honest; and I don’t think, if Deborah knows where she is, she’ll care so very much if I’m not genteel; because, you see, she’ll know all, dear. Only let me see what I can do, and pay the poor people as far as I’m able.’
I gave her a hearty kiss, and ran after my father. The result of our conversation was this. If all parties were agreeable, Martha and Jem were to be married with as little delay as possible, and they were to live on in Miss Matty’s present abode; the sum which the Cranford ladies had agreed to contribute annually being sufficient to meet the greater part of the rent, and leaving Martha free to appropriate what Miss Matty should pay for her lodgings to any little extra comforts required. About the sale, my father was dubious at first. He said the old rectory furniture, however carefully used and reverently treated, would fetch very little; and that little would be but as a drop in the sea of the debts of the Town and County Bank. But when I represented how Miss Matty’s tender conscience would be soothed by feeling that she had done what she could, he gave way; especially after I had told him the five-pound note adventure, and he had scolded me well for allowing it. I then alluded to my idea that she might add to her small income by selling tea; and, to my surprise (for I had nearly given up the plan), my father grasped at it with all the energy of a tradesman. I think he reckoned his chickens before they were hatched, for he immediately ran up the profits of the sales that she could effect in Cranford to more than twenty pounds a-year. The small dining-parlour was to be converted into a shop, without any of its degrading characteristics; a table was to be the counter; one window was to be retained unaltered, and the other changed into a glass door. I evidently rose in his estimation for having made this bright suggestion. I only hoped we should not both fall in Miss Matty’s.