CHAPTER XII.

ENGAGED TO BE MARRIED

WAS the “poor Peter” of Cranford the Aga Jenkyns of Chunderabaddad, or

was he not? As somebody says, that was the question.

In my own home, whenever people had nothing else to do, they blamed me

for want of discretion. Indiscretion was my bug-bear fault. Everybody

has a bug-bear fault, a sort of standing characteristic—a _pièce de

résistance_ for their friends to cut at; and in general they cut and

come again. I was tired of being called indiscreet and incautious; and

I determined for once to prove myself a model of prudence and wisdom. I

would not even hint my suspicions respecting the Aga. I would collect

evidence and carry it home to lay before my father, as the family friend

of the two Miss Jenkynses.

In my search after facts, I was often reminded of a description my

father had once given of a ladies’ committee that he had had to preside

over. He said he could not help thinking of a passage in Dickens, which

spoke of a chorus in which every man took the tune he knew best, and

sang it to his own satisfaction. So, at this charitable committee,

every lady took the subject uppermost in her mind, and talked about it

to her own great contentment, but not much to the advancement of the

subject they had met to discuss. But even that committee could have

been nothing to the Cranford ladies when I attempted to gain some clear

and definite information as to poor Peter’s height, appearance, and when

and where he was seen and heard of last. For instance, I remember

asking Miss Pole (and I thought the question was very opportune, for I

put it when I met her at a call at Mrs Forrester’s, and both the ladies

had known Peter, and I imagined that they might refresh each other’s

memories)—I asked Miss Pole what was the very last thing they had ever

heard about him; and then she named the absurd report to which I have

alluded, about his having been elected Great Lama of Thibet; and this

was a signal for each lady to go off on her separate idea. Mrs

Forrester’s start was made on the veiled prophet in Lalla Rookh—whether

I thought he was meant for the Great Lama, though Peter was not so ugly,

indeed rather handsome, if he had not been freckled. I was thankful to

see her double upon Peter; but, in a moment, the delusive lady was off

upon Rowland’s Kalydor, and the merits of cosmetics and hair oils in

general, and holding forth so fluently that I turned to listen to Miss

Pole, who (through the llamas, the beasts of burden) had got to Peruvian

bonds, and the share market, and her poor opinion of joint-stock banks

in general, and of that one in particular in which Miss Matty’s money

was invested. In vain I put in “When was it—in what year was it that

you heard that Mr Peter was the Great Lama?” They only joined issue to

dispute whether llamas were carnivorous animals or not; in which dispute

they were not quite on fair grounds, as Mrs Forrester (after they had

grown warm and cool again) acknowledged that she always confused

carnivorous and graminivorous together, just as she did horizontal and

perpendicular; but then she apologised for it very prettily, by saying

that in her day the only use people made of four-syllabled words was to

teach how they should be spelt.

The only fact I gained from this conversation was that certainly Peter

had last been heard of in India, “or that neighbourhood”; and that this

scanty intelligence of his whereabouts had reached Cranford in the year

when Miss Pole had bought her Indian muslin gown, long since worn out

(we washed it and mended it, and traced its decline and fall into a

window-blind before we could go on); and in a year when Wombwell came to

Cranford, because Miss Matty had wanted to see an elephant in order that

she might the better imagine Peter riding on one; and had seen a

boa-constrictor too, which was more than she wished to imagine in her

fancy-pictures of Peter’s locality; and in a year when Miss Jenkyns had

learnt some piece of poetry off by heart, and used to say, at all the

Cranford parties, how Peter was “surveying mankind from China to Peru,”

which everybody had thought very grand, and rather appropriate, because

India was between China and Peru, if you took care to turn the globe to

the left instead of the right.

I suppose all these inquiries of mine, and the consequent curiosity

excited in the minds of my friends, made us blind and deaf to what was

going on around us. It seemed to me as if the sun rose and shone, and

as if the rain rained on Cranford, just as usual, and I did not notice

any sign of the times that could be considered as a prognostic of any

uncommon event; and, to the best of my belief, not only Miss Matty and

Mrs Forrester, but even Miss Pole herself, whom we looked upon as a kind

of prophetess, from the knack she had of foreseeing things before they

came to pass—although she did not like to disturb her friends by telling

them her foreknowledge—even Miss Pole herself was breathless with

astonishment when she came to tell us of the astounding piece of news.

But I must recover myself; the contemplation of it, even at this

distance of time, has taken away my breath and my grammar, and unless I

subdue my emotion, my spelling will go too.

We were sitting—Miss Matty and I—much as usual, she in the blue chintz

easy-chair, with her back to the light, and her knitting in her hand, I

reading aloud the _St James’s Chronicle_. A few minutes more, and we

should have gone to make the little alterations in dress usual before

calling-time (twelve o’clock) in Cranford. I remember the scene and the

date well. We had been talking of the signor’s rapid recovery since

the warmer weather had set in, and praising Mr Hoggins’s skill, and

lamenting his want of refinement and manner (it seems a curious

coincidence that this should have been our subject, but so it was), when

a knock was heard—a caller’s knock—three distinct taps—and we were

flying (that is to say, Miss Matty could not walk very fast, having had

a touch of rheumatism) to our 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!”

[Picture: What do you think, Miss Matty]

“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 _à propos_ of the difficulty

gentlemen must have in house-keeping; 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 kind-hearted.”

“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. But we had acknowledged the

sway of the latter so long, that it seemed like a kind of disloyalty now

even to meditate disobedience to the prohibition we anticipated.

Mrs Forrester surprised us in our darned caps and patched collars; and

we forgot all about them in our eagerness to see how she would bear the

information, which we honourably left to Miss Pole, to impart, although,

if we had been inclined to take unfair advantage, we might have rushed

in ourselves, for she had a most out-of-place fit of coughing for five

minutes after Mrs Forrester entered the room. I shall never forget the

imploring expression of her eyes, as she looked at us over her

pocket-handkerchief. They said, as plain as words could speak, “Don’t

let Nature deprive me of the treasure which is mine, although for a time

I can make no use of it.” And we did not.

Mrs Forrester’s surprise was equal to ours; and her sense of injury

rather greater, because she had to feel for her Order, and saw more

fully than we could do how such conduct brought stains on the

aristocracy.

When she and Miss Pole left us we endeavoured to subside into calmness;

but Miss Matty was really upset by the intelligence she had heard. She

reckoned it up, and it was more than fifteen years since she had heard

of any of her acquaintance going to be married, with the one exception

of Miss Jessie Brown; and, as she said, it gave her quite a shock, and

made her feel as if she could not think what would happen next.

I don’t know whether it is a fancy of mine, or a real fact, but I have

noticed that, just after the announcement of an engagement in any set,

the unmarried ladies in that set flutter out in an unusual gaiety and

newness of dress, as much as to say, in a tacit and unconscious manner,

“We also are spinsters.” Miss Matty and Miss Pole talked and thought

more about bonnets, gowns, caps, and shawls, during the fortnight that

succeeded this call, than I had known them do for years before. But it

might be the spring weather, for it was a warm and pleasant March; and

merinoes and beavers, and woollen materials of all sorts were but

ungracious receptacles of the bright sun’s glancing rays. It had not

been Lady Glenmire’s dress that had won Mr Hoggins’s heart, for she went

about on her errands of kindness more shabby than ever. Although in the

hurried glimpses I caught of her at church or elsewhere she appeared

rather to shun meeting any of her friends, her face seemed to have

almost something of the flush of youth in it; her lips looked redder and

more trembling full than in their old compressed state, and her eyes

dwelt on all things with a lingering light, as if she was learning to

love Cranford and its belongings. Mr Hoggins looked broad and radiant,

and creaked up the middle aisle at church in a brand-new pair of

top-boots—an audible, as well as visible, sign of his purposed change of

state; for the tradition went, that the boots he had worn till now were

the identical pair in which he first set out on his rounds in Cranford

twenty-five years ago; only they had been new-pieced, high and low, top

and bottom, heel and sole, black leather and brown leather, more times

than any one could tell.

None of the ladies in Cranford chose to sanction the marriage by

congratulating either of the parties. We wished to ignore the whole

affair until our liege lady, Mrs Jamieson, returned. Till she came back

to give us our cue, we felt that it would be better to consider the

engagement in the same light as the Queen of Spain’s legs—facts which

certainly existed, but the less said about the better. This restraint

upon our tongues—for you see if we did not speak about it to any of the

parties concerned, how could we get answers to the questions that we

longed to ask?—was beginning to be irksome, and our idea of the dignity

of silence was paling before our curiosity, when another direction was

given to our thoughts, by an announcement on the part of the principal

shopkeeper of Cranford, who ranged the trades from grocer and

cheesemonger to man-milliner, as occasion required, that the spring

fashions were arrived, and would be exhibited on the following Tuesday

at his rooms in High Street. Now Miss Matty had been only waiting for

this before buying herself a new silk gown. I had offered, it is true,

to send to Drumble for patterns, but she had rejected my proposal,

gently implying that she had not forgotten her disappointment about the

sea-green turban. I was thankful that I was on the spot now, to

counteract the dazzling fascination of any yellow or scarlet silk.

I must say a word or two here about myself. I have spoken of my

father’s old friendship for the Jenkyns family; indeed, I am not sure if

there was not some distant relationship. He had willingly allowed me to

remain all the winter at Cranford, in consideration of a letter which

Miss Matty had written to him about the time of the panic, in which I

suspect she had exaggerated my powers and my bravery as a defender of

the house. But now that the days were longer and more cheerful, he was

beginning to urge the necessity of my return; and I only delayed in a

sort of odd forlorn hope that if I could obtain any clear information, I

might make the account given by the signora of the Aga Jenkyns tally

with that of “poor Peter,” his appearance and disappearance, which I had

winnowed out of the conversation of Miss Pole and Mrs Forrester.