‘Please, ma’am,’ said Fanny, ‘there’s no bottom to the cage, and Polly would fly away.’
‘And there’s no top,’ exclaimed cook. ‘He might get out at the top quite easy.’
‘Let me see,’ said Miss Pole, brushing past, thinking no doubt that her superior intelligence was all that was needed to set things to rights. On the ground lay a bundle, or a circle of hoops, neatly covered over with calico, no more like a cage for Polly-Cockatoo than I am like a cage. Cook took something up between her finger and thumb, and lifted the unsightly present from Paris. How I wish it had stayed there! - but foolish ambition has brought people to ruin before now; and my twenty shillings are gone, sure enough, and there must be some use or some ornament intended by the maker of the thing before us.
‘Don’t you think it’s a mousetrap, ma’am?’ asked Fanny, dropping her little curtsey.
For reply, the cook lifted up the machine, and showed how easily mice might run out; and Fanny shrank back abashed. Cook was evidently set against the new Invention, and muttered about its being all of a piece with French things French cooks, French plums (nasty dried-up things), French rolls (as had no substance in ‘em).
Miss Pole’s good manners, and desire of making the best of things in my presence, induced her to try and drown cook’s mutterings.
‘Indeed, I think it will make a very nice cage for Polly-Cockatoo. How pleased he will be to go from one hoop to another, just like a ladder, and with a board or two at the bottom, and nicely tied up at the top -’
Fanny was struck with a new idea.
‘Please, ma’am, my sister-in-law has got an aunt as lives lady’s-maid with Sir John’s daughter - Miss Arley. And they did say as she wore iron petticoats all made of hoops -’
‘Nonsense, Fanny!’ we all cried; for such a thing had not been heard of in all Drumble, let alone Cranford, and I was rather looked upon in the light of a fast young woman by all the laundresses of Cranford, because I had two corded petticoats.
‘Go mind thy business, wench,’ said cook, with the utmost contempt. ‘I’ll warrant we’ll manage th’ cage without thy help.’
‘It is near dinner-time, Fanny, and the cloth not laid,’ said Miss Pole, hoping the remark might cut two ways; but cook had no notion of going. She stood on the bottom step of the stairs, holding the Paris perplexity aloft in the air.
‘It might do for a meat-safe,’ said she. ‘Cover it o’er wi’ canvas, to keep th’ files out. It is a good framework, I reckon, anyhow!’ She held her head on one side, like a connoisseur in meat-safes, as she was.
Miss Pole said, ‘Are you sure Mrs Gordon called it a cage, Mary? Because she is a woman of her word, and would not have called it so if it was not.’
‘Look here; I have the letter in my pocket.’
‘“I have wondered how I could best fulfil your commission for me to purchase something to the value of” - um, um, never mind - “fashionable and pretty for dear Miss Pole, and at length I have decided upon one of the new kind of ‘cages’“ (look here, Miss Pole; here is the word, C.A.G.E.), “which are made so much lighter and more elegant in Paris than in England. Indeed, I am not sure if they have ever reached you, for it is not a month since I saw the first of the kind in Paris.”‘
‘Does she say anything about Polly-Cockatoo?’ asked Miss Pole. ‘That would settle the matter at once, as showing that she had him in her mind.’
‘No - nothing.’
Just then Fanny came along the passage with the tray full of dinner-things in her hands. When she had put them down, she stood at the door of the dining-room taking a distant view of the article. ‘Please, ma’am, it looks like a petticoat without any stuff in it; indeed it does, if I’m to be whipped for saying it.’
But she only drew down upon herself a fresh objurgation from the cook; and sorry and annoyed, I seized the opportunity of taking the thing out of cook’s hand, and carrying it upstairs, for it was full time to get ready for dinner. But we had very little appetite for our meal, and kept constantly making suggestions, one to the other, as to the nature and purpose of this Paris ‘cage,’ but as constantly snubbing poor little Fanny’s reiteration of ‘Please, ma’am, I do believe it’s a kind of petticoat - indeed I do.’ At length Miss Pole turned upon her with almost as much vehemence as cook had done, only in choicer language.
‘Don’t be so silly, Fanny. Do you think ladies are like children, and must he put in go-carts; or need wire guards like fires to surround them; or can get warmth out of bits of whalebone and steel; a likely thing indeed! Don’t keep talking about what you don’t understand.’
So our maiden was mute for the rest of the meal. After dinner we had Polly brought upstairs in her old cage, and I held out the new one, and we turned it about in every way. At length Miss Pole said .
‘Put Polly-Cockatoo back, and shut him up in his cage. You hold this French thing up’ (alas I that my present should be called a ‘thing’), ‘and I’ll sew a bottom on to it. I’ll lay a good deal, they’ve forgotten to sew in the bottom before sending it off.’ So I held and she sewed; and then she held and I sewed, till it was all done. Just as we had put Polly-Cockatoo in, and were closing up the top with a pretty piece of old yellow ribbon - and, indeed, it was not a bad-looking cage after all our trouble - Mr Hoggins came up-stairs, having been seen by Fanny before he had time to knock at the door.
‘Hallo!’ said he, almost tumbling over us, as we were sitting on the floor at our work. ‘What’s this?’
‘It’s this pretty present for Polly-Cockatoo,’ said Miss Pole, raising herself up with as much dignity as she could, ‘that Mary has had sent from Paris for me.’ Miss Pole was in great spirits now we had got Polly in; I can’t say that I was.
Mr Hoggins began to laugh in his boisterous vulgar way.
‘For Polly - ha! ha! It’s meant for you, Miss Pole - ha! ha! It’s a new invention to hold your gowns out - ha! ha!’
‘Mr Hoggins! you may be a surgeon, and a very clever one, but nothing - not even your profession - gives you a right to be indecent.’
Miss Pole was thoroughly roused, and I trembled in my shoes. But Mr Hoggins only laughed the more. Polly screamed in concert, but Miss Pole stood in stiff rigid propriety, very red in the face.
‘I beg your pardon, Miss Pole, I am sure. But I am pretty certain I am right. It’s no indecency that I can see; my wife and Mrs Fitz-Adam take in a Paris fashion-book between ‘em, and I can’t help seeing the plates of fashions sometimes - ha! ha! ha! Look, Polly has got out of his queer prison - ha I ha! ha!’
Just then Mr Peter came in; Miss Matty was so curious to know if the expected present had arrived. Mr Hoggins took them by the arm, and pointed to the poor thing lying on the ground, but could not explain for laughing. Miss Pole said:
‘Although I am not accustomed to give an explanation of my conduct to gentlemen, yet, being insulted in my own house by - by Mr Hoggins, I must appeal to the brother of my old friend - my very oldest friend. Is this article a lady’s petticoat, or a bird’s cage?’
She held it up as she made this solemn inquiry. Mr Hoggins seized the moment to leave the room, in shame, as I supposed, but, in reality, to fetch his wife’s fashion-book; and, before I had completed the narration of the story of my unlucky commission, he returned, and, holding the fashion-plate open by the side of the extended article, demonstrated the identity of the two.
But Mr Peter had always a smooth way of turning off anger, by either his fun or a compliment. ‘It is a cage,’ said he, bowing to Miss Pole; ‘but it is a cage for an angel, instead of a bird! Come along, Hoggins, I want to speak to you!’
And, with an apology, he took the offending and victorious surgeon out of Miss Pole’s presence. For a good while we said nothing; and we were now rather shy of little Fanny’s superior wisdom when she brought up tea, But towards night our spirits revived, and we were quite ourselves again, when Miss Pole proposed that we should cut up the pieces of steel or whalebone - which, to do them just
ice, were very elastic - and make ourselves two very comfortable English calashes out of them with the aid of a piece of dyed silk which Miss Pole had by her.
THE END.
CHRISTMAS STORMS AND SUNSHINE
In the town of ---- (no matter where) there circulated two local newspapers (no matter when). Now the Flying Post was long established and respectable -- alias bigoted and Tory; the Examiner was spirited and intelligent -- alias new-fangled and democratic. Every week these newspapers contained articles abusing each other; as cross and peppery as articles could be, and evidently the production of irritated minds, although they seemed to have one stereotyped commencement, -- ‘Though the article appearing in last week’s Post (or Examiner) is below contempt, yet we have been induced,’ &c., &c., and every Saturday the Radical shopkeepers shook hands together, and agreed that the Post was done for, by the slashing, clever Examiner; while the more dignified Tories began by regretting that Johnson should think that low paper, only read by a few of the vulgar, worth wasting his wit upon; however the Examiner was at its last gasp.
It was not though. It lived and flourished; at least it paid its way, as one of the heroes of my story could tell. He was chief compositor, or whatever title may be given to the head-man of the mechanical part of a newspaper. He hardly confined himself to that department. Once or twice, unknown to the editor, when the manuscript had fallen short, he had filled up the vacant space by compositions of his own; announcements of a forthcoming crop of green peas in December; a grey thrush having been seen, or a white hare, or such interesting phenomena; invented for the occasion, I must confess; but what of that? His wife always knew when to expect a little specimen of her husband’s literary talent by a peculiar cough, which served as prelude; and, judging from this encouraging sign, and the high-pitched and emphatic voice in which he read them, she was inclined to think, that an ‘Ode to an early Rose-bud,’ in the corner devoted to original poetry, and a letter in the correspondence department, signed ‘Pro Bono Publico,’ were her husband’s writing, and to hold up her head accordingly.
I never could find out what it was that occasioned the Hodgsons to lodge in the same house as the Jenkinses. Jenkins held the same office in the Tory paper as Hodgson did in the Examiner, and, as I said before, I leave you to give it a name. But Jenkins had a proper sense of his position, and a proper reverence for all in authority, from the king down to the editor and sub-editor. He would as soon have thought of borrowing the king’s crown for a nightcap, or the king’s sceptre for a walking-stick, as he would have thought of filling up any spare corner with any production of his own; and I think it would have even added to his contempt of Hodgson (if that were possible), had he known of the ‘productions of his brain,’ as the latter fondly alluded to the paragraphs he inserted, when speaking to his wife..
Jenkins had his wife too. Wives were wanting to finish the completeness of the quarrel, which existed one memorable Christmas week, some dozen years ago, between the two neighbours, the two compositors. And with wives, it was a very pretty, a very complete quarrel. To make the opposing parties still more equal, still more well-matched, if the Hodgsons had a baby (‘such a baby! -- a poor, puny little thing’), Mrs Jenkins had a cat (‘such a cat! a great, nasty, miowling tom-cat, that was always stealing the milk put by for little Angel’s supper’). And now, having matched Greek with Greek, I must proceed to the tug of war. It was the day before Christmas; such a cold east wind! such an inky sky! such a blue-black look in people’s faces, as they were driven out more than usual, to complete their purchases for the next day’s festival.
Before leaving home that morning, Jenkins had given some money to his wife to buy the next day’s dinner.
‘My dear, I wish for turkey and sausages. It may be a weakness, but I own I am partial to sausages. My deceased mother was. Such tastes are hereditary. As to the sweets -- whether plum-pudding or mince-pies -- I leave such considerations to you; I only beg you not to mind expense. Christmas comes but once a year.’
And again he had called out from the bottom of the first flight of stairs, just close to the Hodgsons’ door (‘such ostentatiousness,’ as Mrs Hodgson observed), ‘You will not forget the sausages, my dear?’
‘I should have liked to have had something above common, Mary,’ said Hodgson, as they too made their plans for the next day, ‘but I think roast beef must do for us. You see, love, we’ve a family.’
‘Only one, Jem! I don’t want more than roast beef though, I’m sure. Before I went to service, mother and me would have thought roast beef a very fine dinner.’
‘Well, let’s settle it then, roast beef and a plum-pudding; and now, good-bye. Mind and take care of little Tom. I thought he was a bit hoarse this morning.’
And off he went to his work.
Now, it was a good while since Mrs Jenkins and Mrs Hodgson had spoken to each other, although they were quite as much in possession of the knowledge of events and opinions as though they did. Mary knew that Mrs Jenkins despised her for not having a real lace cap, which Mrs Jenkins had; and for having been a servant, which Mrs Jenkins had not; and the little occasional pinchings which the Hodgsons were obliged to resort to, to make both ends meet, would have been very patiently endured by Mary, if she had not winced under Mrs Jenkins’s knowledge of such economy. But she had her revenge. She had a child, and Mrs Jenkins had none. To have had a child, even such a puny baby as little Tom, Mrs Jenkins would have worn commonest caps, and cleaned grates, and drudged her fingers to the bone. The great unspoken disappointment of her life soured her temper, and turned her thoughts inward, and made her morbid and selfish.
‘Hang that cat! he’s been stealing again! he’s gnawed the cold mutton in his nasty mouth till it’s not fit to set before a Christian; and I’ve nothing else for Jem’s dinner. But I’ll give it him now I’ve caught him, that I will!’
So saying, Mary Hodgson caught up her husband’s Sunday cane, and despite pussy’s cries and scratches, she gave him such a beating as she hoped might cure him of his thievish propensities; when lo! and behold, Mrs Jenkins stood at the door with a face of bitter wrath.
‘Aren’t you ashamed of yourself ma’am, to abuse a poor dumb animal, ma’am, as knows no better than to take food when he sees it, ma’am? He only follows the nature which God has given, ma’am; and it’s a pity your nature, ma’am, which I’ve heard, is of the stingy saving species, does not make you shut your cupboard-door a little closer. There is such a thing as law for brute animals. I’ll ask Mr Jenkins, but I don’t think them Radicals has done away with that law yet, for all their Reform Bill, ma’am. My poor precious love of a Tommy, is he hurt? and is his leg broke for taking a mouthful of scraps, as most people would give away to a beggar, -- if he’d take ‘em?’ wound up Mrs Jenkins, casting a contemptuous look on the remnant of a scrag end of mutton.
Mary felt very angry and very guilty. For she really pitied the poor limping animal as he crept up to his mistress, and there lay down to bemoan himself; she wished she had not beaten him so hard, for it certainly was her own careless way of never shutting the cupboard-door that had tempted him to his fault. But the sneer at her little bit of mutton turned her penitence to fresh wrath, and she shut the door in Mrs Jenkins’s face, as she stood caressing her cat in the lobby, with such a bang, that it wakened little Tom, and he began to cry.
Everything was to go wrong with Mary to-day. Now baby was awake, who was to take her husband’s dinner to the office? She took the child in her arms, and tried to hush him off to sleep again, and as she sung she cried, she could hardly tell why, -- a sort of reaction from her violent angry feelings. She wished she had never beaten the poor cat; she wondered if his leg was really broken. What would her mother say if she knew how cross and cruel her little Mary was getting? If she should live to beat her child in one of her angry fits?
It was of no use lullabying while she sobbed so; it must be given up, and she must just carry her baby in her arms, and take him with her to the office, for
it was long past dinner-time. So she pared the mutton carefully, although by so doing she reduced the meat to an infinitesimal quantity, and taking the baked potatoes out of the oven, she popped them piping hot into her basket with the et-cæteras of plate, butter, salt, and knife and fork.
It was, indeed, a bitter wind. She bent against it as she ran, and the flakes of snow were sharp and cutting as ice. Baby cried all the way, though she cuddled him up in her shawl. Then her husband had made his appetite up for a potato pie, and (literary man as he was) his body got so much the better of his mind, that he looked rather black at the cold mutton. Mary had no appetite for her own dinner when she arrived at home again. So, after she had tried to feed baby, and he had fretfully refused to take his bread and milk, she laid him down as usual on his quilt, surrounded by play-things, while she sided away, and chopped suet for the next day’s pudding. Early in the afternoon a parcel came, done up first in brown paper, then in such a white, grass-bleached, sweet-smelling towel, and a note from her dear, dear mother; in which quaint writing she endeavoured to tell her daughter that she was not forgotten at Christmas time; but that learning that Farmer Burton was killing his pig, she had made interest for some of his famous pork, out of which she had manufactured some sausages, and flavoured them just as Mary used to like when she lived at home.
‘Dear, dear mother!’ said Mary to herself. ‘There never was any one like her for remembering other folk. What rare sausages she used to make! Home things have a smack with ‘em no bought things can ever have. Set them up with their sausages! I’ve a notion if Mrs Jenkins had ever tasted mother’s she’d have no fancy for them town-made things Fanny took in just now.’
And so she went on thinking about home, till the smiles and the dimples came out again at the remembrance of that pretty cottage, which would look green even now in the depth of winter, with its pyracanthus, and its holly-bushes, and the great Portugal laurel that was her mother’s pride. And the back path through the orchard to Farmer Burton’s; how well she remembered it. The bushels of unripe apples she had picked up there, and distributed among his pigs, till he had scolded her for giving them so much green trash.
Delphi Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell Page 409
