The World's Greatest Books - Volume 4 Part 32

The years rolled on. I spent my time between Drumble and Cranford. I was thankful that I happened to be staying with Miss Matty when the Town and County Bank failed, which had such a disastrous effect on her little fortune.

It was an example to me, and I fancy it might be to many others, to see how immediately Miss Matty set about the retrenchment she knew to be right under her altered circ.u.mstances. I did the little I could. Some months back a conjuror had given a performance in the Cranford a.s.sembly Rooms. By a strange set of circ.u.mstances the ident.i.ty of Signor Brunoni was revealed. He was plain Samuel Brown, who had fallen out of his cart and had to be attended by our doctor. I went to visit the patient and his wife, and learned that she had been India. She told me a long story about being befriended, after a perilous journey, by a kind Englishman who lived right in the midst of the natives. It was his name which astonished me. Agra Jenkyns.

Could Agra Jenkyns be the long lost Peter? I resolved to say nothing to Miss Matty, but got the address from the signor (as we still called him from habit), spelt by sound, and very queer it looked, and posted a letter to him.

All sorts of plans were discussed for Miss Matty's future. I thought of all the things by which a woman, past middle age, and with the education common to ladies fifty years ago, could earn or add to a living without materially losing caste; but at length I put even this last clause on one side, and wondered what in the world Miss Matty could do. Even teaching was out of the question, for, reckoning over her accomplishments, I had to come down to reading, writing, and arithmetic--and in reading the chapter every morning she always coughed before coming to long words.

I was still in a quandary the next morning, when I received a letter from Miss Pole, so mysteriously wrapped up and with so many seals on it to secure secrecy that I had to tear the paper before I could unfold it.

It summoned me to go to Miss Pole at 11 a.m., the a.m. twice dashed under as if I were likely to come at eleven at night, when all Cranford was usually abed and asleep by ten. I went and found Miss Pole dressed in solemn array, though there were only Mrs. Forrester, crying quietly and sadly, and Mrs. FitzAdam present. Miss Pole was armed with a card, on which I imagine she had written some notes.

"Miss Smith," she began, when I entered (I was familiarly known to all Cranford as Mary, but this was a state occasion), "I have conversed in private with these ladies on the misfortune which has happened to our friend, and one and all have agreed that while we have a superfluity, it is not only a duty but a pleasure--a true pleasure, Mary!"--her voice was rather choked just here, and she had to wipe her spectacles before she could go on--"to give what we can to a.s.sist her--Miss Matilda Jenkyns. Only in consideration of the feelings of delicate independence existing in the mind of every refined female"--I was sure she had got back to the card--"we wish to contribute our mites in a secret and concealed manner, so as not to hurt the feelings I have referred to."

Well, the upshot of this solemn meeting was that each of those dear old ladies wrote down the sum she could afford annually, signed the paper and sealed it mysteriously, and I was commissioned to get my father to administer the fund in such a manner that Miss Jenkyns should imagine the money came from her own improved investments.

As I was going, Mrs. Forrester took me aside, and in the manner of one confessing a great crime the poor old lady told me how very, very little she had to live on--a confession she was brought to make from a dread lest we should think that the small contribution named in her paper bore any proportion to her love and regard for Miss Mary. And yet that sum which she so eagerly relinquished was, in truth, more than a twentieth part of what she had to live on. And when the whole income does not nearly amount to a hundred pounds, to give up a twentieth of it will necessitate many careful economies and many pieces of self-denial--small and insignificant in the world's account, but bearing a different value in another account book that I have heard of.

The upshot of it all was that dear Miss Matty was comfortably installed in her own house, and added to her slender income by selling tea! This last was my idea, and it was a proud moment for me when it realized. The small dining-room was converted into a shop, without any of its degrading characteristics, a table formed the counter, one window was retained unaltered and the other changed into a gla.s.s door, and there she was. Tea was certainly a happy commodity, as it was neither greasy nor sticky, grease and stickiness being two of the qualities which Miss Matty could not endure. Moreover, as Miss Matty said, one good thing about it was that men did not buy it, and it was of men particularly she was afraid. They had such sharp, loud ways with them, and did up accounts and counted their change so quickly.

Very little remains to be told. The approval of the Honourable Mrs.

Jamieson set the seal upon the successful career of Miss Matty as a purveyor of tea. Thus did she escape even the shadow of "vulgarity."

One afternoon I was sitting in the shop parlour with Miss Matty, when we saw a gentleman go slowly past the window and then stand opposite to the door, as if looking out for the name which we had so carefully hidden.

His clothes had an out-of-the-way foreign cut, and it flashed across me it was the Agra himself! He entered.

Miss Matty looked at him, and something of tender relaxation in his face struck home to her heart. She said: "It is--oh, sir, can you be Peter?"

and trembled from head to foot. In a moment he had her in his arms, sobbing the tearless cries of old age.

Mary Barton

"Mary Barton," although not Mrs. Gaskell's first attempt at authorship, was her first literary success; and although her later writings revealed a gain in skill, subtlety and humour, none of them equalled "Mary Barton" in dramatic intensity and fervent sincerity. This pa.s.sionate tale of the sorrows of the Manchester poor, given to the world anonymously in the year 1848, was greeted with a storm of mingled approval and disapproval. It was praised by Carlyle and Landor, but some critics attacked it fiercely as a slander on the Manchester manufacturers, and there were admirers who complained that it was too heartrending. The controversy has long since died down, but the book holds a permanent place in literature as a vivid revelation of a dark and painful phase of English life in the middle of the last century.

_I.--Rich and Poor_

"Mary," said John Barton to his daughter, "what's come o'er thee and Jem Wilson? You were great friends at one time."

"Oh, folk say he is going to be married to Molly Gibson," answered Mary, as indifferently as she could.

"Thou'st played thy cards badly, then," replied her father in a surly tone. "At one time he were much fonder o' thee than thou deservedst."

"That's as people think," said Mary pertly, for she remembered that the very morning before, when on her way to her dressmaking work, she had met Mr. Harry Carson, who had sighed, and sworn and protested all manner of tender vows. Mr. Harry Carson was the son and the idol of old Mr.

Carson, the wealthy mill-owner. Jem Wilson, her old playmate, and the son of her father's, closest friend, although he had earned a position of trust at the foundry where he worked, was but a mechanic after all!

Mary was ambitious; she knew that she had beauty; she believed that when young Mr. Carson declared he meant to marry her he spoke the truth.

It so happened that Jem, after much anxious thought, had determined that day to "put his fortune to the touch." Just after John Barton had gone out, Jem appeared at the door, looking more awkward and abashed than he had ever done before.

He thought he had better begin at once.

"Mary, it's no new story I'm going to speak about. Since we were boy and girl I ha' loved you above father and mother and all. And now, Mary, I'm foreman at the works, and I've a home to offer you, and a heart as true as ever man had to love you and cherish you. Darling, say that you'll be mine."

Mary could not speak at once.

"Mary, they say, silence gives consent," he whispered.

"No, not with me! I can never be your wife."

"Oh, Mary, think awhile!" he urged.

"Jem, it cannot be," she said calmly, although she trembled from head to foot. "Once for all, I will never marry you."

"And this is the end!" he cried pa.s.sionately. "Mary, you'll hear, maybe, of me as a drunkard, and maybe as a thief, and maybe as a murderer.

Remember! it's your cruelty that will have made me what I feel I shall become."

He rushed out of the house.

When he had gone, Mary lay half across the dresser, her head hidden in her hands, and her body shaken with violent sobs. For these few minutes had unveiled her heart to her; it had convinced her that she loved Jem above all persons or things. What were the wealth and prosperity that Mr. Harry Carson might bring to her now that she had suddenly discovered the pa.s.sionate secret of her soul?

Her first duty, she saw, was to reject the advances of her rich lover.

She avoided him as far as possible, and slighted him when he forced his presence upon her. And how was she to redress the wrong she had done to Jem in denying him her heart? She took counsel with her friend, Margaret Legh. When Mary had first known Margaret and her grandfather, Job Legh--an old man who belonged to the cla.s.s of Manchester workmen who are warm and devoted followers of science, a man whose home was like a wizard's dwelling, filled with impaled insects and books and instruments--Margaret had a secret fear of blindness. The fear had since been realised, but she remained the quiet, sensible, tender-hearted girl she had been before her great deprivation. She opposed Mary's notion of writing a letter to Jem.

"You must just wait and be patient," she advised; "being patient is the hardest work we have to do through life, I take it. Waiting is far more difficult than doing; but it's one of G.o.d's lessons we must learn, one way or another."

So Mary waited. But Jem took his disappointment as final, and her hopes of seeing him were always baffled.

John Barton, on the night of Jem's proposal, had gone to his union. The members of the union were all desperate men, ready for anything; made ready by want. Barton himself was out of work. He had seen much of the bitterness of poverty in Manchester; now he was feeling the pinch of it himself.

Ever since the death of his wife, whose end had been hastened by the sudden and complete disappearance of her darling sister Esther, the wan colourlessness of his face had been intensified; his stern enthusiasm, once latent, had become visible; his heart, tenderer than ever towards the victims of the misery around him, grew harder towards the employers, whom he believed to be the cause of that misery. Trade grew worse, but there was no sign that the masters were suffering; they still had their carriages and their comforts; the woe in these terrible years 1839, 1840, and 1841 seemed to fall wholly upon the poor. It is impossible even faintly to picture the state of distress which prevailed in Manchester at that time. Whole families went through a gradual starvation; John Barton saw them starve, saw fathers and mothers and children die of low, putrid fever in foetid cellars, and cursed the rich men who never extended a helping hand to the sufferers.

"Working folk won't be ground to the dust much longer," he declared.

"We'n ha' had as much to bear as human nature can bear."

Fiercer grew he, and more sullen. Darker and darker were the schemes he brooded over in his desolate home, or discussed with others at the meetings of the union. Even Mary did not escape his ill-temper. Once he struck her. And yet Mary was the one being on earth he devotedly loved.

What would he have thought had he known that his daughter had listened to the voice of an employer's son? But he did not know.

_II.--The Rivals_

One night, as Jem was leaving the foundry, a woman laid her hand upon his arm. A momentary glance at the faded finery she wore told him the cla.s.s to which she belonged, and he made an effort to pa.s.s on. But she grasped him firmly.