Part 44

It seems that Miss Pole had a cousin, once or twice removed, who had offered to Miss Matey long ago. Now, this cousin lived four or five miles from Cranford, on his own estate; but his property was not large enough to entitle him to rank higher than a yeoman; or, rather, with something of the “pride which apes humility,” he had refused to push himself on, as so many of his class had done, into the rank of the squires. He would not allow himself to be called Thomas Holbrook, Esq. He even sent back letters with this address, telling the postmistress at Cranford that his name was Mr. Thomas Holbrook, yeoman. He rejected all domestic innovations. He would have the house door stand open in summer, and shut in winter, without knocker or bell to summon a servant. The closed fist, or the knob of the stick, did this office for him, if he found the door locked. He despised every refinement which had not its root deep down in humanity. If people were not ill, he saw no necessity for moderating his voice. He spoke the dialect of the country in perfection, and constantly used it in conversation; although Miss Pole (who gave me these particulars) added, that he read aloud more beautifully, and with more feeling, than any one she had ever heard, except the late rector.

“And how came Miss Matilda not to marry him?” asked I.

“Oh, I don’t know. She was willing enough, I think; but you know Cousin Thomas would not have been enough of a gentleman for the rector and Mrs. and Miss Jenkyns.”

“Well, but they were not to marry him,” said I, impatiently.

“No, but they did not like Miss Matey to marry below her rank. You know she was the rector’s daughter, and somehow they are related to Sir Peter Arley; Miss Jenkyns thought a deal of that.”

“Poor Miss Matey!” said I.

“Nay, now, I don’t know anything more than that he offered and was refused. Miss Matey might not like him; and Miss Jenkyns might never have said a word: it is only a guess of mine.”

“Has she never seen him since?” I inquired.

“No, I think not. You see Woodley (Cousin Thomas’s house) lies half-way between Cranford and Misselton; and I know he made Misselton his market-town very soon after he had offered to Miss Matey; and I don’t think he has been into Cranford above once or twice since. Once, when I was walking with Miss Matey in High Street, she suddenly darted from me and went up Shire Lane. A few minutes after, I was startled by meeting Cousin Thomas.”

“How old is he?” I asked, after a pause of castle-building.

“He must be about seventy, I think, my dear,” said Miss Pole, blowing up my castle, as if by gun-powder, into small fragments.

Very soon after, I had the opportunity of seeing Mr. Holbrook; seeing, too, his first encounter with his former love, after thirty or forty years’ separation. I was helping to decide whether any of the new assortment of colored silks, which they had just received at the shop, would help to match a gray and black mousseline-de-laine that wanted a new breadth, when a tall, thin, Don Quixote-looking old man came into the shop for some woollen gloves. I had never seen the person before, and I watched him rather attentively, while Miss Matey listened to the shopman. The stranger was rather striking. He wore a blue coat, with brass buttons, drab breeches, and gaiters, and drummed with his fingers on the counter, until he was attended to. When he answered the shop-boy’s question, “What can I have the pleasure of showing you to-day, sir?” I saw Miss Matilda start, and then suddenly sit down; and instantly I guessed who it was. She had made some inquiry which had to be carried round to the other shop.

“Miss Jenkyns wants the black sarcenet, two-and-twopence the yard.” Mr. Holbrook caught the name, and was across the shop in two strides.

“Matey,--Miss Matilda,--Miss Jenkyns! Bless my soul! I should not have known you. How are you? how are you?” He kept shaking her hand, in a way which proved the warmth of his friendship; but he repeated so often, as if to himself, “I should not have known you!” that any sentimental romance I might be inclined to build was quite done away with by his manner.

However, he kept talking to us all the time we were in the shop; and then waving the shopman, with the unpurchased gloves, on one side, with “Another time, sir! another time!” he walked home with us. I am happy to say Miss Matilda also left the shop in an equally bewildered state; not having purchased either green or red silk. Mr. Holbrook was evidently full with honest, loud-spoken joy at meeting his old love again. He touched on the changes that had taken place; he even spoke of Miss Jenkyns as “Your poor sister! Well, well! we have all our faults”; and bade us good by with many a hope that he should soon see Miss Matey again. She went straight to her room, and never came back till our early tea-time, when I thought she looked as if she had been crying.

A few days after, a note came from Mr. Holbrook, asking us,--impartially asking both of us,--in a formal, old-fashioned style, to spend a day at his house,--a long, June day,--for it was June now. He named that he had also invited his cousin, Miss Pole; so that we might join in a fly, which could be put up at his house.

I expected Miss Matey to jump at this invitation; but, no! Miss Pole and I had the greatest difficulty in persuading her to go. She thought it was improper; and was even half annoyed when we utterly ignored the idea of any impropriety in her going with two other ladies to see her old lover. Then came a more serious difficulty. She did not think Deborah would have liked her to go. This took us half a day’s good hard talking to get over; but, at the first sentence of relenting, I seized the opportunity, and wrote and despatched an acceptance in her name,--fixing day and hour, that all might be decided and done with.

The next morning she asked me if I would go down to the shop with her; and there, after much hesitation, we chose out three caps to be sent home and tried on, that the most becoming might be selected to take with us on Thursday.

She was in a state of silent agitation all the way to Woodley. She had evidently never been there before, and although she little dreamt I knew anything of her early story, I could perceive she was in a tremor at the thought of seeing the place which might have been her home, and round which it is probable that many of her innocent, girlish imaginations had clustered. It was a long drive there, through paved, jolting lanes. Miss Matilda sat bolt upright, and looked wistfully out of the windows, as we drew near the end of our journey. The aspect of the country was quiet and pastoral. Woodley stood among fields, and there was an old-fashioned garden, where roses and currant-bushes touched each other, and where the feathery asparagus formed a pretty background to the pinks and gilly-flowers. There was no drive up to the door. We got out at a little gate, and walked up a straight, box-edged path.

“My cousin might make a drive, I think,” said Miss Pole, who was afraid of ear-ache, and had only her cap on.

“I think it is very pretty,” said Miss Matey, with a soft plaintiveness in her voice, and almost in a whisper, for just then Mr. Holbrook appeared at the door, rubbing his hands in the very effervescence of hospitality. He looked more like my idea of Don Quixote than ever, and yet the likeness was only external. His respectable housekeeper stood modestly at the door to bid us welcome; and, while she led the elder ladies up-stairs to a bed-room, I begged to look about the garden. My request evidently pleased the old gentleman, who took me all round the place, and showed me his six-and-twenty cows, named after the different letters of the alphabet. As we went along, he surprised me occasionally by repeating apt and beautiful quotations from the poets, ranging easily from Shakespeare and George Herbert, to those of our own day. He did this as naturally as if he were thinking aloud; as if their true and beautiful words were the best expression he could find for what he was thinking or feeling. To be sure he called Byron “my lord Byrron,” and pronounced the name of Goethe strictly in accordance with the English sound of the letters. Altogether, I never met with a man, before or since, who had spent so long a life in a secluded and not impressive country, with ever-increasing delight in the daily and yearly change of season and beauty.

When he and I went in, we found that dinner was nearly ready in the kitchen; for so I suppose the room ought to be called, as there were oak dressers and cupboards all round, all over by the side of the fireplace, and only a small Turkey carpet in the middle of the flag-floor. The room might have been easily made into a handsome, dark-oak dining-parlor, by removing the oven, and a few other appurtenances of a kitchen, which were evidently never used; the real cooking-place being at some distance. The room in which we were expected to sit was a stiffly furnished, ugly apartment; but that in which we did sit was what Mr. Holbrook called the counting-house, where he paid his laborers their weekly wages, at a great desk near the door. The rest of the pretty sitting-room--looking into the orchard, and all covered over with dancing tree-shadows--was filled with books. They lay on the ground, they covered the walls, they strewed the table. He was evidently half ashamed and half proud of his extravagance in this respect. They were of all kinds; poetry, and wild, weird tales prevailing. He evidently chose his books in accordance with his own tastes, not because such and such were classical, or established favorites.

“Ah!” he said, “we farmers ought not to have much time for reading; yet somehow one can’t help it.”

“What a pretty room!” said Miss Matey, sotto voce.

“What a pleasant place!” said I, aloud, almost simultaneously.

“Nay! if you like it,” replied he; “but can you sit on these great black leather three-cornered chairs? I like it better than the best parlor; but I thought ladies would take that for the smarter place.”

It was the smarter place; but, like most smart things, not at all pretty, or pleasant, or home-like; so, while we were at dinner, the servant-girl dusted and scrubbed the counting-house chairs, and we sat there all the rest of the day.

We had pudding before meat, and I thought Mr. Holbrook was going to make some apology for his old-fashioned ways; for he began, “I don’t know whether you like new-fangled ways.”