Cranford, Elizabeth Gaskell [books to read to improve english TXT] 📗

There we unpinned and shook ourselves, and arranged our features before the glass into a sweet and gracious company-face; and then, bowing backwards with “After you, ma’am,” we allowed Mrs. Forrester to take precedence up the narrow staircase that led to Miss Barker’s drawing-room. There she sat, as stately and composed as though we had never heard that odd-sounding cough, from which her throat must have been even then sore and rough. Kind, gentle, shabbily-dressed Mrs. Forrester was immediately conducted to the second place of honour⁠—a seat arranged something like Prince Albert’s near the Queen’s⁠—good, but not so good. The place of preeminence was, of course, reserved for the Honourable Mrs. Jamieson, who presently came panting up the stairs⁠—Carlo rushing round her on her progress, as if he meant to trip her up.

And now Miss Betty Barker was a proud and happy woman! She stirred the fire, and shut the door, and sat as near to it as she could, quite on the edge of her chair. When Peggy came in, tottering under the weight of the tea-tray, I noticed that Miss Barker was sadly afraid lest Peggy should not keep her distance sufficiently. She and her mistress were on very familiar terms in their everyday intercourse, and Peggy wanted now to make several little confidences to her, which Miss Barker was on thorns to hear, but which she thought it her duty, as a lady, to repress. So she turned away from all Peggy’s asides and signs; but she made one or two very malapropos answers to what was said; and at last, seized with a bright idea, she exclaimed, “Poor, sweet Carlo! I’m forgetting him. Come downstairs with me, poor ittie doggie, and it shall have its tea, it shall!”

In a few minutes she returned, bland and benignant as before; but I thought she had forgotten to give the “poor ittie doggie” anything to eat, judging by the avidity with which he swallowed down chance pieces of cake. The tea-tray was abundantly loaded⁠—I was pleased to see it, I was so hungry; but I was afraid the ladies present might think it vulgarly heaped up. I know they would have done at their own houses; but somehow the heaps disappeared here. I saw Mrs. Jamieson eating seed-cake, slowly and considerately, as she did everything; and I was rather surprised, for I knew she had told us, on the occasion of her last party, that she never had it in her house, it reminded her so much of scented soap. She always gave us Savoy biscuits. However, Mrs. Jamieson was kindly indulgent to Miss Barker’s want of knowledge of the customs of high life; and, to spare her feelings, ate three large pieces of seed-cake, with a placid, ruminating expression of countenance, not unlike a cow’s.

After tea there was some little demur and difficulty. We were six in number; four could play at Preference, and for the other two there was Cribbage. But all, except myself (I was rather afraid of the Cranford ladies at cards, for it was the most earnest and serious business they ever engaged in), were anxious to be of the “pool.” Even Miss Barker, while declaring she did not know Spadille from Manille, was evidently hankering to take a hand. The dilemma was soon put an end to by a singular kind of noise. If a baron’s daughter-in-law could ever be supposed to snore, I should have said Mrs. Jamieson did so then; for, overcome by the heat of the room, and inclined to doze by nature, the temptation of that very comfortable armchair had been too much for her, and Mrs. Jamieson was nodding. Once or twice she opened her eyes with an effort, and calmly but unconsciously smiled upon us; but by-and-by, even her benevolence was not equal to this exertion, and she was sound asleep.

“It is very gratifying to me,” whispered Miss Barker at the card-table to her three opponents, whom, notwithstanding her ignorance of the game, she was “basting” most unmercifully⁠—“very gratifying indeed, to see how completely Mrs. Jamieson feels at home in my poor little dwelling; she could not have paid me a greater compliment.”

Miss Barker provided me with some literature in the shape of three or four handsomely-bound fashion-books ten or twelve years old, observing, as she put a little table and a candle for my especial benefit, that she knew young people liked to look at pictures. Carlo lay and snorted, and started at his mistress’s feet. He, too, was quite at home.

The card-table was an animated scene to watch; four ladies’ heads, with niddle-noddling caps, all nearly meeting over the middle of the table in their eagerness to whisper quick enough and loud enough: and every now and then came Miss Barker’s “Hush, ladies! if you please, hush! Mrs. Jamieson is asleep.”

It was very difficult to steer clear between Mrs. Forrester’s deafness and Mrs. Jamieson’s sleepiness. But Miss Barker managed her arduous task well. She repeated the whisper to Mrs. Forrester, distorting her face considerably, in order to show, by the motions of her lips, what was said; and then she smiled kindly all round at us, and murmured to herself, “Very gratifying, indeed; I wish my poor sister had been alive to see this day.”

Presently the door was thrown wide open; Carlo started to his feet, with a loud snapping bark, and Mrs. Jamieson awoke: or, perhaps, she had not been asleep⁠—as she said almost directly, the room had been so light she had been glad to keep her eyes shut, but had been listening with great interest to all our amusing and agreeable conversation. Peggy came in once more, red with importance. Another tray! “Oh, gentility!” thought I, “can yon endure this last shock?” For Miss Barker had ordered (nay, I doubt not, prepared, although she did say, “Why, Peggy, what have you brought us?” and looked pleasantly surprised at the unexpected pleasure) all sorts of good things for supper⁠—scalloped oysters, potted lobsters, jelly, a dish called “little Cupids” (which was in great favour with the Cranford