SOON after the events of which I gave an account in my last paper, I was
summoned home by my father's illness; and for a time I forgot, in anxiety about
him, to wonder how my dear friends at Cranford were getting on, or how Lady
Glenmire could reconcile herself to the dulness of the long visit which she was
still paying to her sister-in-law, Mrs Jamieson. When my father grew a little
stronger I accompanied him to the seaside, so that altogether I seemed banished
from Cranford, and was deprived of the opportunity of hearing any chance
intelligence of the dear little town for the greater part of that year.
Late in November - when we had returned home again, and my father was once
more in good health - I received a letter from Miss Matty; and a very mysterious
letter it was. She began many sentences without ending them, running them one
into another, in much the same confused sort of way in which written words run
together on blotting-paper. All I could make out was that, if my father was
better (which she hoped he was), and would take warning and wear a great-coat
from Michaelmas to Lady-day, if turbans were in fashion, could I tell her? Such
a piece of gaiety was going to happen as had not been seen or known of since
Wombwell's lions came, when one of them ate a little child's arm; and she was,
perhaps, too old to care about dress, but a new cap she must have; and, having
heard that turbans were worn, and some of the county families likely to come,
she would like to look tidy, if I would bring her a cap from the milliner I
employed; and oh, dear! how careless of her to forget that she wrote to beg I
would come and pay her a visit next Tuesday; when she hoped to have something to
offer me in the way of amusement, which she would not now more particularly
describe, only sea-green was her favourite colour. So she ended her letter; but
in a P.S. she added, she thought she might as well tell me what was the peculiar
attraction to Cranford just now; Signor Brunoni was going to exhibit his
wonderful magic in the Cranford Assembly Rooms on Wednesday and Friday evening
in the following week.
I was very glad to accept the invitation from my dear Miss Matty,
independently of the conjuror, and most particularly anxious to prevent her from
disfiguring her small, gentle, mousey face with a great Saracen's head turban;
and accordingly, I bought her a pretty, neat, middle-aged cap, which, however,
was rather a disappointment to her when, on my arrival, she followed me into my
bedroom, ostensibly to poke the fire, but in reality, I do believe, to see if
the sea-green turban was not inside the cap-box with which I had travelled. It
was in vain that I twirled the cap round on my hand to exhibit back and side
fronts: her heart had been set upon a turban, and all she could do was to say,
with resignation in her look and voice -
"I am sure you did your best, my dear. It is just like the caps all the
ladies in Cranford are wearing, and they have had theirs for a year, I dare say.
I should have liked something newer, I confess - something more like the turbans
Miss Betty Barker tells me Queen Adelaide wears; but it is very pretty, my dear.
And I dare say lavender will wear better than sea-green. Well, after all, what
is dress, that we should care anything about it? You'll tell me if you want
anything, my dear. Here is the bell. I suppose turbans have not got down to
Drumble yet?"
So saying, the dear old lady gently bemoaned herself out of the room, leaving
me to dress for the evening, when, as she informed me, she expected Miss Pole
and Mrs Forrester, and she hoped I should not feel myself too much tired to join
the party. Of course I should not; and I made some haste to unpack and arrange
my dress; but, with all my speed, I heard the arrivals and the buzz of
conversation in the next room before I was ready. Just as I opened the door, I
caught the words, "I was foolish to expect anything very genteel out of the
Drumble shops; poor girl! she did her best, I've no doubt." But, for all that, I
had rather that she blamed Drumble and me than disfigured herself with a turban.
Miss Pole was always the person, in the trio of Cranford ladies now
assembled, to have had adventures. She was in the habit of spending the morning
in rambling from shop to shop, not to purchase anything (except an occasional
reel of cotton or a piece of tape), but to see the new articles and report upon
them, and to collect all the stray pieces of intelligence in the town. She had a
way, too, of demurely popping hither and thither into all sorts of places to
gratify her curiosity on any point - a way which, if she had not looked so very
genteel and prim, might have been considered impertinent. And now, by the
expressive way in which she cleared her throat, and waited for all minor
subjects (such as caps and turbans) to be cleared off the course, we knew she
had something very particular to relate, when the due pause came - and I defy
any people possessed of common modesty to keep up a conversation long, where one
among them sits up aloft in silence, looking down upon all the things they
chance to say as trivial and contemptible compared to what they could disclose,
if properly entreated. Miss Pole began -
"As I was stepping out of Gordon's shop to-day, I chanced to go into the
'George' (my Betty has a second-cousin who is chambermaid there, and I thought
Betty would like to hear how she was), and, not seeing anyone about, I strolled
up the staircase, and found myself in the passage leading to the Assembly Room
(you and I remember the Assembly Room, I am sure, Miss Matty! and the minuets de
la cour!); so I went on, not thinking of what I was about, when, all at once, I
perceived that I was in the middle of the preparations for to-morrow night - the
room being divided with great clothes-maids, over which Crosby's men were
tacking red flannel; very dark and odd it seemed; it quite bewildered me, and I
was going on behind the screens, in my absence of mind, when a gentleman (quite
the gentleman, I can assure you) stepped forwards and asked if I had any
business he could arrange for me. He spoke such pretty broken English, I could
not help thinking of Thaddeus of Warsaw, and the Hungarian Brothers, and Santo
Sebastiani; and while I was busy picturing his past life to myself, he had bowed
me out of the room. But wait a minute! You have not heard half my story yet! I
was going downstairs, when who should I meet but Betty's second-cousin. So, of
course, I stopped to speak to her for Betty's sake; and she told me that I had
really seen the conjuror - the gentleman who spoke broken English was Signor
Brunoni himself. Just at this moment he passed us on the stairs, making such a
graceful bow! in reply to which I dropped a curtsey - all foreigners have such
polite manners, one catches something of it. But when he had gone downstairs, I
bethought me that I had dropped my glove in the Assembly Room (it was safe in my
muff all the time, but I never found it till afterwards); so I went back, and,
just as I was creeping up the passage left on one side of the great screen that
goes nearly across the room, who should I see but the very same gentleman that
had met me before, and passed me on the stairs, coming now forwards from the
inner part of the room, to which there is no entrance - you remember, Miss Matty
- and just repeating, in his pretty broken English, the inquiry if I had any
business there - I don't mean that he put it quite so bluntly, but he seemed
very determined that I should not pass the screen - so, of course, I explained
about my glove, which, curiously enough, I found at that very moment."
Miss Pole, then, had seen the conjuror - the real, live conjuror! and
numerous were the questions we all asked her. "Had he a beard?" "Was he young,
or old?" "Fair, or dark?" "Did he look" - (unable to shape my question
prudently, I put it in another form) - "How did he look?" In short, Miss Pole
was the heroine of the evening, owing to her morning's encounter. If she was not
the rose (that is to say the conjuror) she had been near it.
Conjuration, sleight of hand, magic, witchcraft, were the subjects of the
evening. Miss Pole was slightly sceptical, and inclined to think there might be
a scientific solution found for even the proceedings of the Witch of Endor. Mrs
Forrester believed everything, from ghosts to death-watches. Miss Matty ranged
between the two - always convinced by the last speaker. I think she was
naturally more inclined to Mrs Forrester's side, but a desire of proving herself
a worthy sister to Miss Jenkyns kept her equally balanced - Miss Jenkyns, who
would never allow a servant to call the little rolls of tallow that formed
themselves round candles "winding-sheets," but insisted on their being spoken of
as "roley-poleys!" A sister of hers to be superstitious! It would never do.
After tea, I was despatched downstairs into the dining-parlour for that
volume of the old Encyclopaedia which contained the nouns beginning with C, in
order that Miss Pole might prime herself with scientific explanations for the
tricks of the following evening. It spoilt the pool at Preference which Miss
Matty and Mrs Forrester had been looking forward to, for Miss Pole became so
much absorbed in her subject, and the plates by which it was illustrated, that
we felt it would be cruel to disturb her otherwise than by one or two well-timed
yawns, which I threw in now and then, for I was really touched by the meek way
in which the two ladies were bearing their disappointment. But Miss Pole only
read the more zealously, imparting to us no more information than this -
"Ah! I see; I comprehend perfectly. A represents the ball. Put A between B
and D - no! between C and F, and turn the second joint of the third finger of
your left hand over the wrist of your right H. Very clear indeed! My dear Mrs
Forrester, conjuring and witchcraft is a mere affair of the alphabet. Do let me
read you this one passage?"
Mrs Forrester implored Miss Pole to spare her, saying, from a child upwards,
she never could understand being read aloud to; and I dropped the pack of cards,
which I had been shuffling very audibly, and by this discreet movement I obliged
Miss Pole to perceive that Preference was to have been the order of the evening,
and to propose, rather unwillingly, that the pool should commence. The pleasant
brightness that stole over the other two ladies' faces on this! Miss Matty had
one or two twinges of self-reproach for having interrupted Miss Pole in her
studies: and did not remember her cards well, or give her full attention to the
game, until she had soothed her conscience by offering to lend the volume of the
Encyclopaedia to Miss Pole, who accepted it thankfully, and said Betty should
take it home when she came with the lantern.
The next evening we were all in a little gentle flutter at the idea of the
gaiety before us. Miss Matty went up to dress betimes, and hurried me until I
was ready, when we found we had an hour-and-a- half to wait before the "doors
opened at seven precisely." And we had only twenty yards to go! However, as Miss
Matty said, it would not do to get too much absorbed in anything, and forget the
time; so she thought we had better sit quietly, without lighting the candles,
till five minutes to seven. So Miss Matty dozed, and I knitted.
At length we set off; and at the door under the carriage-way at the "George,"
we met Mrs Forrester and Miss Pole: the latter was discussing the subject of the
evening with more vehemence than ever, and throwing X's and B's at our heads
like hailstones. She had even copied one or two of the "receipts" - as she
called them - for the different tricks, on backs of letters, ready to explain
and to detect Signor Brunoni's arts.
We went into the cloak-room adjoining the Assembly Room; Miss Matty gave a
sigh or two to her departed youth, and the remembrance of the last time she had
been there, as she adjusted her pretty new cap before the strange, quaint old
mirror in the cloak-room. The Assembly Room had been added to the inn, about a
hundred years before, by the different county families, who met together there
once a month during the winter to dance and play at cards. Many a county beauty
had first swung through the minuet that she afterwards danced before Queen
Charlotte in this very room. It was said that one of the Gunnings had graced the
apartment with her beauty; it was certain that a rich and beautiful widow, Lady
Williams, had here been smitten with the noble figure of a young artist, who was
staying with some family in the neighbourhood for professional purposes, and
accompanied his patrons to the Cranford Assembly. And a pretty bargain poor Lady
Williams had of her handsome husband, if all tales were true. Now, no beauty
blushed and dimpled along the sides of the Cranford Assembly Room; no handsome
artist won hearts by his bow, CHAPEAU BRAS in hand; the old room was dingy; the
salmon-coloured paint had faded into a drab; great pieces of plaster had chipped
off from the fine wreaths and festoons on its walls; but still a mouldy odour of
aristocracy lingered about the place, and a dusty recollection of the days that
were gone made Miss Matty and Mrs Forrester bridle up as they entered, and walk
mincingly up the room, as if there were a number of genteel observers, instead
of two little boys with a stick of toffee between them with which to beguile the
time.
We stopped short at the second front row; I could hardly understand why,
until I heard Miss Pole ask a stray waiter if any of the county families were
expected; and when he shook his head, and believed not, Mrs Forrester and Miss
Matty moved forwards, and our party represented a conversational square. The
front row was soon augmented and enriched by Lady Glenmire and Mrs Jamieson. We
six occupied the two front rows, and our aristocratic seclusion was respected by
the groups of shop-keepers who strayed in from time to time and huddled together
on the back benches. At least I conjectured so, from the noise they made, and
the sonorous bumps they gave in sitting down; but when, in weariness of the
obstinate green curtain that would not draw up, but would stare at me with two
odd eyes, seen through holes, as in the old tapestry story, I would fain have
looked round at the merry chattering people behind me, Miss Pole clutched my
arm, and begged me not to turn, for "it was not the thing." What "the thing"
was, I never could find out, but it must have been something eminently dull and
tiresome. However, we all sat eyes right, square front, gazing at the
tantalising curtain, and hardly speaking intelligibly, we were so afraid of
being caught in the vulgarity of making any noise in a place of public
amusement. Mrs Jamieson was the most fortunate, for she fell asleep.
At length the eyes disappeared - the curtain quivered - one side went up
before the other, which stuck fast; it was dropped again, and, with a fresh
effort, and a vigorous pull from some unseen hand, it flew up, revealing to our
sight a magnificent gentleman in the Turkish costume, seated before a little
table, gazing at us (I should have said with the same eyes that I had last seen
through the hole in the curtain) with calm and condescending dignity, "like a
being of another sphere," as I heard a sentimental voice ejaculate behind me.
"That's not Signor Brunoni!" said Miss Pole decidedly; and so audibly that I
am sure he heard, for he glanced down over his flowing beard at our party with
an air of mute reproach. "Signor Brunoni had no beard - but perhaps he'll come
soon." So she lulled herself into patience. Meanwhile, Miss Matty had
reconnoitred through her eye-glass, wiped it, and looked again. Then she turned
round, and said to me, in a kind, mild, sorrowful tone -
"You see, my dear, turbans ARE worn."
But we had no time for more conversation. The Grand Turk, as Miss Pole chose
to call him, arose and announced himself as Signor Brunoni.
"I don't believe him!" exclaimed Miss Pole, in a defiant manner. He looked at
her again, with the same dignified upbraiding in his countenance. "I don't!" she
repeated more positively than ever. "Signor Brunoni had not got that muffy sort
of thing about his chin, but looked like a close-shaved Christian gentleman."
Miss Pole's energetic speeches had the good effect of wakening up Mrs
Jamieson, who opened her eyes wide, in sign of the deepest attention - a
proceeding which silenced Miss Pole and encouraged the Grand Turk to proceed,
which he did in very broken English - so broken that there was no cohesion
between the parts of his sentences; a fact which he himself perceived at last,
and so left off speaking and proceeded to action.
Now we WERE astonished. How he did his tricks I could not imagine; no, not
even when Miss Pole pulled out her pieces of paper and began reading aloud - or
at least in a very audible whisper - the separate "receipts" for the most common
of his tricks. If ever I saw a man frown and look enraged, I saw the Grand Turk
frown at Miss Pole; but, as she said, what could be expected but unchristian
looks from a Mussulman? If Miss Pole were sceptical, and more engrossed with her
receipts and diagrams than with his tricks, Miss Matty and Mrs Forrester were
mystified and perplexed to the highest degree. Mrs Jamieson kept taking her
spectacles off and wiping them, as if she thought it was something defective in
them which made the legerdemain; and Lady Glenmire, who had seen many curious
sights in Edinburgh, was very much struck with the tricks, and would not at all
agree with Miss Pole, who declared that anybody could do them with a little
practice, and that she would, herself, undertake to do all he did, with two
hours given to study the Encyclopaedia and make her third finger flexible.
At last Miss Matty and Mrs Forrester became perfectly awestricken. They
whispered together. I sat just behind them, so I could not help hearing what
they were saying. Miss Matty asked Mrs Forrester "if she thought it was quite
right to have come to see such things? She could not help fearing they were
lending encouragement to something that was not quite" - A little shake of the
head filled up the blank. Mrs Forrester replied, that the same thought had
crossed her mind; she too was feeling very uncomfortable, it was so very
strange. She was quite certain that it was her pocket- handkerchief which was in
that loaf just now; and it had been in her own hand not five minutes before. She
wondered who had furnished the bread? She was sure it could not be Dakin,
because he was the churchwarden. Suddenly Miss Matty half-turned towards me -
"Will you look, my dear - you are a stranger in the town, and it won't give
rise to unpleasant reports - will you just look round and see if the rector is
here? If he is, I think we may conclude that this wonderful man is sanctioned by
the Church, and that will be a great relief to my mind.
I looked, and I saw the tall, thin, dry, dusty rector, sitting surrounded by
National School boys, guarded by troops of his own sex from any approach of the
many Cranford spinsters. His kind face was all agape with broad smiles, and the
boys around him were in chinks of laughing. I told Miss Matty that the Church
was smiling approval, which set her mind at ease.
I have never named Mr Hayter, the rector, because I, as a well-to- do and
happy young woman, never came in contact with him. He was an old bachelor, but
as afraid of matrimonial reports getting abroad about him as any girl of
eighteen: and he would rush into a shop or dive down an entry, sooner than
encounter any of the Cranford ladies in the street; and, as for the Preference
parties, I did not wonder at his not accepting invitations to them. To tell the
truth, I always suspected Miss Pole of having given very vigorous chase to Mr
Hayter when he first came to Cranford; and not the less, because now she
appeared to share so vividly in his dread lest her name should ever be coupled
with his. He found all his interests among the poor and helpless; he had treated
the National School boys this very night to the performance; and virtue was for
once its own reward, for they guarded him right and left, and clung round him as
if he had been the queen-bee and they the swarm. He felt so safe in their
environment that he could even afford to give our party a bow as we filed out.
Miss Pole ignored his presence, and pretended to be absorbed in convincing us
that we had been cheated, and had not seen Signor Brunoni after all.
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