CHAPTER XI.

SAMUEL BROWN

THE next morning I met Lady Glenmire and Miss Pole setting out on a long

walk to find some old woman who was famous in the neighbourhood for her

skill in knitting woollen stockings. Miss Pole said to me, with a smile

half-kindly and half-contemptuous upon her countenance, “I have been

just telling Lady Glenmire of our poor friend Mrs Forrester, and her

terror of ghosts. It comes from living so much alone, and listening to

the bug-a-boo stories of that Jenny of hers.” She was so calm and so

much above superstitious fears herself that I was almost ashamed to say

how glad I had been of her Headingley Causeway proposition the night

before, and turned off the conversation to something else.

In the afternoon Miss Pole called on Miss Matty to tell her of the

adventure—the real adventure they had met with on their morning’s walk.

They had been perplexed about the exact path which they were to take

across the fields in order to find the knitting old woman, and had

stopped to inquire at a little wayside public-house, standing on the

high road to London, about three miles from Cranford. The good woman

had asked them to sit down and rest themselves while she fetched her

husband, who could direct them better than she could; and, while they

were sitting in the sanded parlour, a little girl came in. They thought

that she belonged to the landlady, and began some trifling conversation

with her; but, on Mrs Roberts’s return, she told them that the little

thing was the only child of a couple who were staying in the house. And

then she began a long story, out of which Lady Glenmire and Miss Pole

could only gather one or two decided facts, which were that, about six

weeks ago, a light spring-cart had broken down just before their door,

in which there were two men, one woman, and this child. One of the men

was seriously hurt—no bones broken, only “shaken,” the landlady called

it; but he had probably sustained some severe internal injury, for he

had languished in their house ever since, attended by his wife, the

mother of this little girl. Miss Pole had asked what he was, what he

looked like. And Mrs Roberts had made answer that he was not like a

gentleman, nor yet like a common person; if it had not been that he and

his wife were such decent, quiet people, she could almost have thought

he was a mountebank, or something of that kind, for they had a great box

in the cart, full of she did not know what. She had helped to unpack

it, and take out their linen and clothes, when the other man—his

twin-brother, she believed he was—had gone off with the horse and cart.

Miss Pole had begun to have her suspicions at this point, and expressed

her idea that it was rather strange that the box and cart and horse and

all should have disappeared; but good Mrs Roberts seemed to have become

quite indignant at Miss Pole’s implied suggestion; in fact, Miss Pole

said she was as angry as if Miss Pole had told her that she herself was

a swindler. As the best way of convincing the ladies, she bethought her

of begging them to see the wife; and, as Miss Pole said, there was no

doubting the honest, worn, bronzed face of the woman, who at the first

tender word from Lady Glenmire, burst into tears, which she was too weak

to check until some word from the landlady made her swallow down her

sobs, in order that she might testify to the Christian kindness shown by

Mr and Mrs Roberts. Miss Pole came round with a swing to as vehement a

belief in the sorrowful tale as she had been sceptical before; and, as

a proof of this, her energy in the poor sufferer’s behalf was nothing

daunted when she found out that he, and no other, was our Signor

Brunoni, to whom all Cranford had been attributing all manner of evil

this six weeks past! Yes! his wife said his proper name was Samuel

Brown—“Sam,” she called him—but to the last we preferred calling him

“the Signor”; it sounded so much better.

The end of their conversation with the Signora Brunoni was that it was

agreed that he should be placed under medical advice, and for any

expense incurred in procuring this Lady Glenmire promised to hold

herself responsible, and had accordingly gone to Mr Hoggins to beg him

to ride over to the “Rising Sun” that very afternoon, and examine into

the signor’s real state; and, as Miss Pole said, if it was desirable to

remove him to Cranford to be more immediately under Mr Hoggins’s eye,

she would undertake to see for lodgings and arrange about the rent. Mrs

Roberts had been as kind as could be all throughout, but it was evident

that their long residence there had been a slight inconvenience.

Before Miss Pole left us, Miss Matty and I were as full of the morning’s

adventure as she was. We talked about it all the evening, turning it in

every possible light, and we went to bed anxious for the morning, when

we should surely hear from someone what Mr Hoggins thought and

recommended; for, as Miss Matty observed, though Mr Hoggins did say

“Jack’s up,” “a fig for his heels,” and called Preference “Pref.” she

believed he was a very worthy man and a very clever surgeon. Indeed, we

were rather proud of our doctor at Cranford, as a doctor. We often

wished, when we heard of Queen Adelaide or the Duke of Wellington being

ill, that they would send for Mr Hoggins; but, on consideration, we were

rather glad they did not, for, if we were ailing, what should we do if

Mr Hoggins had been appointed physician-in-ordinary to the Royal Family?

As a surgeon we were proud of him; but as a man—or rather, I should

say, as a gentleman—we could only shake our heads over his name and

himself, and wished that he had read Lord Chesterfield’s Letters in the

days when his manners were susceptible of improvement. Nevertheless, we

all regarded his dictum in the signor’s case as infallible, and when he

said that with care and attention he might rally, we had no more fear

for him.

But, although we had no more fear, everybody did as much as if there was

great cause for anxiety—as indeed there was until Mr Hoggins took charge

of him. Miss Pole looked out clean and comfortable, if homely,

lodgings; Miss Matty sent the sedan-chair for him, and Martha and I

aired it well before it left Cranford by holding a warming-pan full of

red-hot coals in it, and then shutting it up close, smoke and all, until

the time when he should get into it at the “Rising Sun.” Lady Glenmire

undertook the medical department under Mr Hoggins’s directions, and

rummaged up all Mrs Jamieson’s medicine glasses, and spoons, and

bed-tables, in a free-and-easy way, that made Miss Matty feel a little

anxious as to what that lady and Mr Mulliner might say, if they knew.

Mrs Forrester made some of the bread-jelly, for which she was so famous,

to have ready as a refreshment in the lodgings when he should arrive. A

present of this bread-jelly was the highest mark of favour dear Mrs

Forrester could confer. Miss Pole had once asked her for the receipt,

but she had met with a very decided rebuff; that lady told her that she

could not part with it to any one during her life, and that after her

death it was bequeathed, as her executors would find, to Miss Matty.

What Miss Matty, or, as Mrs Forrester called her (remembering the clause

in her will and the dignity of the occasion), Miss Matilda Jenkyns—might

choose to do with the receipt when it came into her possession—whether

to make it public, or to hand it down as an heirloom—she did not know,

nor would she dictate. And a mould of this admirable, digestible,

unique bread-jelly was sent by Mrs Forrester to our poor sick conjuror.

Who says that the aristocracy are proud? Here was a lady by birth a

Tyrrell, and descended from the great Sir Walter that shot King Rufus,

and in whose veins ran the blood of him who murdered the little princes

in the Tower, going every day to see what dainty dishes she could

prepare for Samuel Brown, a mountebank! But, indeed, it was wonderful

to see what kind feelings were called out by this poor man’s coming

amongst us. And also wonderful to see how the great Cranford panic,

which had been occasioned by his first coming in his Turkish dress,

melted away into thin air on his second coming—pale and feeble, and with

his heavy, filmy eyes, that only brightened a very little when they fell

upon the countenance of his faithful wife, or their pale and sorrowful

little girl.

Somehow we all forgot to be afraid. I daresay it was that finding out

that he, who had first excited our love of the marvellous by his

unprecedented arts, had not sufficient every-day gifts to manage a

shying horse, made us feel as if we were ourselves again. Miss Pole

came with her little basket at all hours of the evening, as if her

lonely house and the unfrequented road to it had never been infested by

that “murderous gang”; Mrs Forrester said she thought that neither Jenny

nor she need mind the headless lady who wept and wailed in Darkness

Lane, for surely the power was never given to such beings to harm those

who went about to try to do what little good was in their power, to

which Jenny tremblingly assented; but the mistress’s theory had little

effect on the maid’s practice until she had sewn two pieces of red

flannel in the shape of a cross on her inner garment.

I found Miss Matty covering her penny ball—the ball that she used to

roll under her bed—with gay-coloured worsted in rainbow stripes.

“My dear,” said she, “my heart is sad for that little careworn child.

Although her father is a conjuror, she looks as if she had never had a

good game of play in her life. I used to make very pretty balls in this

way when I was a girl, and I thought I would try if I could not make

this one smart and take it to Phœbe this afternoon. I think ‘the gang’

must have left the neighbourhood, for one does not hear any more of

their violence and robbery now.”

We were all of us far too full of the signor’s precarious state to talk

either about robbers or ghosts. Indeed, Lady Glenmire said she never

had heard of any actual robberies, except that two little boys had

stolen some apples from Farmer Benson’s orchard, and that some eggs had

been missed on a market-day off Widow Hayward’s stall. But that was

expecting too much of us; we could not acknowledge that we had only had

this small foundation for all our panic. Miss Pole drew herself up at

this remark of Lady Glenmire’s, and said “that she wished she could

agree with her as to the very small reason we had had for alarm, but

with the recollection of a man disguised as a woman who had endeavoured

to force himself into her house while his confederates waited outside;

with the knowledge gained from Lady Glenmire herself, of the footprints

seen on Mrs Jamieson’s flower borders; with the fact before her of the

audacious robbery committed on Mr Hoggins at his own door”—But here Lady

Glenmire broke in with a very strong expression of doubt as to whether

this last story was not an entire fabrication founded upon the theft of

a cat; she grew so red while she was saying all this that I was not

surprised at Miss Pole’s manner of bridling up, and I am certain, if

Lady Glenmire had not been “her ladyship,” we should have had a more

emphatic contradiction than the “Well, to be sure!” and similar

fragmentary ejaculations, which were all that she ventured upon in my

lady’s presence. But when she was gone Miss Pole began a long

congratulation to Miss Matty that so far they had escaped marriage,

which she noticed always made people credulous to the last degree;

indeed, she thought it argued great natural credulity in a woman if she

could not keep herself from being married; and in what Lady Glenmire had

said about Mr Hoggins’s robbery we had a specimen of what people came to

if they gave way to such a weakness; evidently Lady Glenmire would

swallow anything if she could believe the poor vamped-up story about a

neck of mutton and a pussy with which he had tried to impose on Miss

Pole, only she had always been on her guard against believing too much

of what men said.

We were thankful, as Miss Pole desired us to be, that we had never been

married; but I think, of the two, we were even more thankful that the

robbers had left Cranford; at least I judge so from a speech of Miss

Matty’s that evening, as we sat over the fire, in which she evidently

looked upon a husband as a great protector against thieves, burglars,

and ghosts; and said that she did not think that she should dare to be

always warning young people against matrimony, as Miss Pole did

continually; to be sure, marriage was a risk, as she saw, now she had

had some experience; but she remembered the time when she had looked

forward to being married as much as any one.

“Not to any particular person, my dear,” said she, hastily checking

herself up, as if she were afraid of having admitted too much; “only the

old story, you know, of ladies always saying, ‘_When_ I marry,’ and

gentlemen, ‘_If_ I marry.’” It was a joke spoken in rather a sad tone,

and I doubt if either of us smiled; but I could not see Miss Matty’s

face by the flickering fire-light. In a little while she continued—

“But, after all, I have not told you the truth. It is so long ago, and

no one ever knew how much I thought of it at the time, unless, indeed,

my dear mother guessed; but I may say that there was a time when I did

not think I should have been only Miss Matty Jenkyns all my life; for

even if I did meet with any one who wished to marry me now (and, as Miss

Pole says, one is never too safe), I could not take him—I hope he would

not take it too much to heart, but I could _not_ take him—or any one but

the person I once thought I should be married to; and he is dead and

gone, and he never knew how it all came about that I said ‘No,’ when I

had thought many and many a time—Well, it’s no matter what I thought.

God ordains it all, and I am very happy, my dear. No one has such kind

friends as I,” continued she, taking my hand and holding it in hers.

If I had never known of Mr Holbrook, I could have said something in this

pause, but as I had, I could not think of anything that would come in

naturally, and so we both kept silence for a little time.

“My father once made us,” she began, “keep a diary, in two columns; on

one side we were to put down in the morning what we thought would be the

course and events of the coming day, and at night we were to put down on

the other side what really had happened. It would be to some people

rather a sad way of telling their lives,” (a tear dropped upon my hand

at these words)—“I don’t mean that mine has been sad, only so very

different to what I expected. I remember, one winter’s evening, sitting

over our bedroom fire with Deborah—I remember it as if it were

yesterday—and we were planning our future lives, both of us were

planning, though only she talked about it. She said she should like to

marry an archdeacon, and write his charges; and you know, my dear, she

never was married, and, for aught I know, she never spoke to an

unmarried archdeacon in her life. I never was ambitious, nor could I

have written charges, but I thought I could manage a house (my mother

used to call me her right hand), and I was always so fond of little

children—the shyest babies would stretch out their little arms to come

to me; when I was a girl, I was half my leisure time nursing in the

neighbouring cottages; but I don’t know how it was, when I grew sad and

grave—which I did a year or two after this time—the little things drew

back from me, and I am afraid I lost the knack, though I am just as fond

of children as ever, and have a strange yearning at my heart whenever I

see a mother with her baby in her arms. Nay, my dear” (and by a sudden

blaze which sprang up from a fall of the unstirred coals, I saw that her

eyes were full of tears—gazing intently on some vision of what might

have been), “do you know I dream sometimes that I have a little

child—always the same—a little girl of about two years old; she never

grows older, though I have dreamt about her for many years. I don’t

think I ever dream of any words or sound she makes; she is very

noiseless and still, but she comes to me when she is very sorry or very

glad, and I have wakened with the clasp of her dear little arms round my

neck. Only last night—perhaps because I had gone to sleep thinking of

this ball for Phœbe—my little darling came in my dream, and put up her

mouth to be kissed, just as I have seen real babies do to real mothers

before going to bed. But all this is nonsense, dear! only don’t be

frightened by Miss Pole from being married. I can fancy it may be a

very happy state, and a little credulity helps one on through life very

smoothly—better than always doubting and doubting and seeing

difficulties and disagreeables in everything.”

[Picture: Would stretch out their little arms]

If I had been inclined to be daunted from matrimony, it would not have

been Miss Pole to do it; it would have been the lot of poor Signor

Brunoni and his wife. And yet again, it was an encouragement to see

how, through all their cares and sorrows, they thought of each other and

not of themselves; and how keen were their joys, if they only passed

through each other, or through the little Phœbe.

The signora told me, one day, a good deal about their lives up to this

period. It began by my asking her whether Miss Pole’s story of the

twin-brothers were true; it sounded so wonderful a likeness, that I

should have had my doubts, if Miss Pole had not been unmarried. But the

signora, or (as we found out she preferred to be called) Mrs Brown, said

it was quite true; that her brother-in-law was by many taken for her

husband, which was of great assistance to them in their profession;

“though,” she continued, “how people can mistake Thomas for the real

Signor Brunoni, I can’t conceive; but he says they do; so I suppose I

must believe him. Not but what he is a very good man; I am sure I don’t

know how we should have paid our bill at the ‘Rising Sun’ but for the

money he sends; but people must know very little about art if they can

take him for my husband. Why, Miss, in the ball trick, where my husband

spreads his fingers wide, and throws out his little finger with quite an

air and a grace, Thomas just clumps up his hand like a fist, and might

have ever so many balls hidden in it. Besides, he has never been in

India, and knows nothing of the proper sit of a turban.”

“Have you been in India?” said I, rather astonished.

“Oh, yes! many a year, ma’am. Sam was a sergeant in the 31st; and when

the regiment was ordered to India, I drew a lot to go, and I was more

thankful than I can tell; for it seemed as if it would only be a slow

death to me to part from my husband. But, indeed, ma’am, if I had known

all, I don’t know whether I would not rather have died there and then

than gone through what I have done since. To be sure, I’ve been able to

comfort Sam, and to be with him; but, ma’am, I’ve lost six children,”

said she, looking up at me with those strange eyes that I’ve never

noticed but in mothers of dead children—with a kind of wild look in

them, as if seeking for what they never more might find. “Yes! Six

children died off, like little buds nipped untimely, in that cruel

India. I thought, as each died, I never could—I never would—love a

child again; and when the next came, it had not only its own love, but

the deeper love that came from the thoughts of its little dead brothers

and sisters. And when Phœbe was coming, I said to my husband, ‘Sam,

when the child is born, and I am strong, I shall leave you; it will cut

my heart cruel; but if this baby dies too, I shall go mad; the madness

is in me now; but if you let me go down to Calcutta, carrying my baby

step by step, it will, maybe, work itself off; and I will save, and I

will hoard, and I will beg—and I will die, to get a passage home to

England, where our baby may live?’ God bless him! he said I might go;

and he saved up his pay, and I saved every pice I could get for washing

or any way; and when Phœbe came, and I grew strong again, I set off.

It was very lonely; through the thick forests, dark again with their

heavy trees—along by the river’s side (but I had been brought up near

the Avon in Warwickshire, so that flowing noise sounded like home)—from

station to station, from Indian village to village, I went along,

carrying my child. I had seen one of the officer’s ladies with a little

picture, ma’am—done by a Catholic foreigner, ma’am—of the Virgin and the

little Saviour, ma’am. She had him on her arm, and her form was softly

curled round him, and their cheeks touched. Well, when I went to bid

good-bye to this lady, for whom I had washed, she cried sadly; for she,

too, had lost her children, but she had not another to save, like me;

and I was bold enough to ask her would she give me that print. And she

cried the more, and said her children were with that little blessed

Jesus; and gave it me, and told me that she had heard it had been

painted on the bottom of a cask, which made it have that round shape.

And when my body was very weary, and my heart was sick (for there were

times when I misdoubted if I could ever reach my home, and there were

times when I thought of my husband, and one time when I thought my baby

was dying), I took out that picture and looked at it, till I could have

thought the mother spoke to me, and comforted me. And the natives were

very kind. We could not understand one another; but they saw my baby on

my breast, and they came out to me, and brought me rice and milk, and

sometimes flowers—I have got some of the flowers dried. Then, the next

morning, I was so tired; and they wanted me to stay with them—I could

tell that—and tried to frighten me from going into the deep woods,

which, indeed, looked very strange and dark; but it seemed to me as if

Death was following me to take my baby away from me; and as if I must go

on, and on—and I thought how God had cared for mothers ever since the

world was made, and would care for me; so I bade them good-bye, and set

off afresh. And once when my baby was ill, and both she and I needed

rest, He led me to a place where I found a kind Englishman lived, right

in the midst of the natives.”

“And you reached Calcutta safely at last?”

“Yes, safely! Oh! when I knew I had only two days’ journey more before

me, I could not help it, ma’am—it might be idolatry, I cannot tell—but I

was near one of the native temples, and I went into it with my baby to

thank God for His great mercy; for it seemed to me that where others had

prayed before to their God, in their joy or in their agony, was of

itself a sacred place. And I got as servant to an invalid lady, who

grew quite fond of my baby aboard-ship; and, in two years’ time, Sam

earned his discharge, and came home to me, and to our child. Then he

had to fix on a trade; but he knew of none; and once, once upon a time,

he had learnt some tricks from an Indian juggler; so he set up

conjuring, and it answered so well that he took Thomas to help him—as

his man, you know, not as another conjuror, though Thomas has set it up

now on his own hook. But it has been a great help to us that likeness

between the twins, and made a good many tricks go off well that they

made up together. And Thomas is a good brother, only he has not the

fine carriage of my husband, so that I can’t think how he can be taken

for Signor Brunoni himself, as he says he is.”

“Poor little Phœbe!” said I, my thoughts going back to the baby she

carried all those hundred miles.

“Ah! you may say so! I never thought I should have reared her, though,

when she fell ill at Chunderabaddad; but that good, kind Aga Jenkyns

took us in, which I believe was the very saving of her.”

“Jenkyns!” said I.

“Yes, Jenkyns. I shall think all people of that name are kind; for here

is that nice old lady who comes every day to take Phœbe a walk!”

But an idea had flashed through my head; could the Aga Jenkyns be the

lost Peter? True he was reported by many to be dead. But, equally

true, some had said that he had arrived at the dignity of Great Lama of

Thibet. Miss Matty thought he was alive. I would make further inquiry.