Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell (guided reading books .txt) 📕

rooms, to change cap and collars, when Miss Pole arrested us by calling out, as she came up the stairs, “Don’t go⁠—I can’t wait⁠—it is not twelve, I know⁠—but never mind your dress⁠—I must speak to you.” We did our best to look as if it was not we who had made the hurried movement, the sound of which she had heard; for, of course, we did not like to have it supposed that we had any old clothes that it was convenient to wear out in the “sanctuary of home,” as Miss Jenkyns once prettily called the back parlour, where she was tying up preserves. So we threw our gentility with double force into our manners, and very genteel we were for two minutes while Miss Pole recovered breath, and excited our curiosity strongly by lifting up her hands in amazement, and bringing them down in silence, as if what she had to say was too big for words, and could only be expressed by pantomime.

“What do you think, Miss Matty? What do you think? Lady Glenmire is to marry⁠—is to be married, I mean⁠—Lady Glenmire⁠—Mr. Hoggins⁠—Mr. Hoggins is going to marry Lady Glenmire!”

“Marry!” said we. “Marry! Madness!”

“Marry!” said Miss Pole, with the decision that belonged to her character. “I said marry! as you do; and I also said, ‘What a fool my lady is going to make of herself!’ I could have said ‘Madness!’ but I controlled myself, for it was in a public shop that I heard of it. Where feminine delicacy is gone to, I don’t know! You and I, Miss Matty, would have been ashamed to have known that our marriage was spoken of in a grocer’s shop, in the hearing of shopmen!”

“But,” said Miss Matty, sighing as one recovering from a blow, “perhaps it is not true. Perhaps we are doing her injustice.”

“No,” said Miss Pole. “I have taken care to ascertain that. I went straight to Mrs. Fitz-Adam, to borrow a cookery-book which I knew she had; and I introduced my congratulations apropos of the difficulty gentlemen must have in housekeeping; and Mrs. Fitz-Adam bridled up, and said that she believed it was true, though how and where I could have heard it she did not know. She said her brother and Lady Glenmire had come to an understanding at last. ‘Understanding!’ Such a coarse word! But my lady will have to come down to many a want of refinement. I have reason to believe Mr. Hoggins sups on bread-and-cheese and beer every night.

“Marry!” said Miss Matty once again. “Well! I never thought of it. Two people that we know going to be married. It’s coming very near!”

“So near that my heart stopped beating when I heard of it, while you might have counted twelve,” said Miss Pole.

“One does not know whose turn may come next. Here, in Cranford, poor Lady Glenmire might have thought herself safe,” said Miss Matty, with a gentle pity in her tones.

“Bah!” said Miss Pole, with a toss of her head. “Don’t you remember poor dear Captain Brown’s song ‘Tibbie Fowler,’ and the line⁠—

‘Set her on the Tintock tap,
The wind will blaw a man till her.’ ”

“That was because Tibbie Fowler was rich, I think.”

“Well! there was a kind of attraction about Lady Glenmire that I, for one, should be ashamed to have.”

I put in my wonder. “But how can she have fancied Mr. Hoggins? I am not surprised that Mr. Hoggins has liked her.”

“Oh! I don’t know. Mr. Hoggins is rich, and very pleasant-looking,” said Miss Matty, “and very good-tempered and kindhearted.”

“She has married for an establishment, that’s it. I suppose she takes the surgery with it,” said Miss Pole, with a little dry laugh at her own joke. But, like many people who think they have made a severe and sarcastic speech, which yet is clever of its kind, she began to relax in her grimness from the moment when she made this allusion to the surgery; and we turned to speculate on the way in which Mrs. Jamieson would receive the news. The person whom she had left in charge of her house to keep off followers from her maids to set up a follower of her own! And that follower a man whom Mrs. Jamieson had tabooed as vulgar, and inadmissible to Cranford society, not merely on account of his name, but because of his voice, his complexion, his boots, smelling of the stable, and himself, smelling of drugs. Had he ever been to see Lady Glenmire at Mrs. Jamieson’s? Chloride of lime would not purify the house in its owner’s estimation if he had. Or had their interviews been confined to the occasional meetings in the chamber of the poor sick conjuror, to whom, with all our sense of the mésalliance, we could not help allowing that they had both been exceedingly kind? And now it turned out that a servant of Mrs. Jamieson’s had been ill, and Mr. Hoggins had been attending her for some weeks. So the wolf had got into the fold, and now he was carrying off the shepherdess. What would Mrs. Jamieson say? We looked into the darkness of futurity as a child gazes after a rocket up in the cloudy sky, full of wondering expectation of the rattle, the discharge, and the brilliant shower of sparks and light. Then we brought ourselves down to earth and the present time by questioning each other (being all equally ignorant, and all equally without the slightest data to build any conclusions upon) as to when it would take place? Where? How much a year Mr. Hoggins had? Whether she would drop her title? And how Martha and the other correct servants in Cranford would ever be brought to announce a married couple as Lady Glenmire and Mr. Hoggins? But would they be visited? Would Mrs. Jamieson let us? Or must we choose between the Honourable Mrs. Jamieson and the degraded Lady Glenmire? We all liked Lady Glenmire the best. She was bright, and kind, and sociable, and agreeable; and Mrs. Jamieson was dull, and inert, and pompous, and tiresome.