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Wives and Daughters

E >> Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell >> Wives and Daughters



This etext was produced by Charles Aldarondo.

ELIZABETH GASKELL

WIVES AND DAUGHTERS


CHAPTER I


THE DAWN OF A GALA DAY


To begin with the old rigmarole of childhood. In a country there was
a shire, and in that shire there was a town, and in that town there
was a house, and in that house there was a room, and in that room
there was a bed, and in that bed there lay a little girl; wide awake
and longing to get up, but not daring to do so for fear of the
unseen power in the next room--a certain Betty, whose slumbers must
not be disturbed until six o'clock struck, when she wakened of
herself 'as sure as clockwork', and left the household very little
peace afterwards. It was a June morning, and early as it was, the
room was full of sunny warmth and light.

On the drawers opposite to the little white dimity bed in which
Molly Gibson lay, was a primitive kind of bonnet-stand on which was
hung a bonnet, carefully covered over from any chance of dust, with
a large cotton handkerchief, of so heavy and serviceable a texture
that if the thing underneath it had been a flimsy fabric of gauze
and lace and flowers, it would have been altogether 'scromfished'
(again to quote from Betty's vocabulary). But the bonnet was made of
solid straw, and its only trimming was a plain white ribbon put over
the crown, and forming the strings. Still, there was a neat little
quilling inside, every plait of which Molly knew, for had she not
made it herself the evening before, with infinite pains? and was
there not a little blue bow in this quilling, the very first bit of
such finery Molly had ever had the prospect of wearing?

Six o'clock now! the pleasant, brisk ringing of the church bells
told that; calling every one to their daily work, as they had done
for hundreds of years. Up jumped Molly, and ran with her bare little
feet across the room, and lifted off the handkerchief and saw once
again the bonnet; the pledge of the gay bright day to come. Then to
the window, and after some tugging she opened the casement, and let
in the sweet morning air. The dew was already off the flowers in the
garden below, but still rising from the long hay-grass in the
meadows directly beyond. At one side lay the little town of
Hollingford, into a street of which Mr. Gibson's front door opened;
and delicate columns, and little puffs of smoke were already
beginning to rise from many a cottage chimney where some housewife
was already up, and preparing breakfast for the bread-winner of the
family.

Molly Gibson saw all this, but all she thought about it was, 'Oh! it
will be a fine day! I was afraid it never, never would come; or
that, if it ever came, it would be a rainy day!' Five-and-forty
years ago, children's pleasures in a country town were very simple,
and Molly had lived for twelve long years without the occurrence of
any event so great as that which was now impending. Poor child! it
is true that she had lost her mother, which was a jar to the whole
tenour of her life; but that was hardly an event in the sense
referred to; and besides, she had been too young to be conscious of
it at the time. The pleasure she was looking forward to to-day was
her first share in a kind of annual festival in Hollingford.

The little straggling town faded away into country on one side close
to the entrance-lodge of a great park, where lived my Lord and Lady
Cumnor 'the earl' and 'the countess', as they were always called by
the inhabitants of the town; where a very pretty amount of feudal
feeling still lingered, and showed itself in a number of simple
ways, droll enough to look back upon, but serious matters of
importance at the time. It was before the passing of the Reform
Bill, but a good deal of liberal talk took place occasionally
between two or three of the more enlightened freeholders living in
Hollingford; and there was a great Tory family in the county who,
from time to time, came forward and contested the election with the
rival Whig family of Cumnor. One would have thought that the
above-mentioned liberal-talking inhabitants would have, at least,
admitted the possibility of their voting for the Hely-Harrison, and
thus trying to vindicate their independence But no such thing. 'The
earl' was lord of the manor, and owner of much of the land on which
Hollingford was built; he and his household were fed, and doctored,
and, to a certain measure, clothed by the good people of the town;
their fathers' grandfathers had always voted for the eldest son of
Cumnor Towers, and following in the ancestral track every man-jack
in the place gave his vote to the liege lord, totally irrespective
of such chimeras as political opinion.

This was no unusual instance of the influence of the great
landowners over humbler neighbours in those days before railways,
and it was well for a place where the powerful family, who thus
overshadowed it, were of so respectable a character as the Cumnors.
They expected to be submitted to, and obeyed; the simple worship of
the townspeople was accepted by the earl and countess as a right;
and they would have stood still in amazement, and with a horrid
memory of the French sansculottes who were the bugbears of their
youth, had any inhabitant of Hollingford ventured to set his will or
opinions in opposition to those of the earl. But, yielded all that
obeisance, they did a good deal for the town, and were generally
condescending, and often thoughtful and kind in their treatment of
their vassals. Lord Cumnor was a forbearing landlord; putting his
steward a little on one side sometimes, and taking the reins into
his own hands now and then, much to the annoyance of the agent, who
was, in fact, too rich and independent to care greatly for
preserving a post where his decisions might any day be overturned by
my lord's taking a fancy to go 'pottering' (as the agent
irreverently expressed it in the sanctuary of his own home), which,
being interpreted, meant that occasionally the earl asked his own
questions of his own tenants, and used his own eyes and ears in the
management of the smaller details of his property. But his tenants
liked my lord all the better for this habit of his. Lord Cumnor had
certainly a little time for gossip, which he contrived to combine
with the failing of personal intervention between the old
land-steward and the tenantry. But, then, the countess made up by
her unapproachable dignity for this weakness of the earl's. Once a
year she was condescending. She and the ladies, her daughters, had
set up a school; not a school after the manner of schools
now-a-days, where far better intellectual teaching is given to the
boys and girls of labourers and workpeople than often falls to the
lot of their betters in worldly estate; but a school of the kind we
should call 'industrial', where girls are taught to sew beautifully,
to be capital housemaids, and pretty fair cooks, and, above all, to
dress neatly in a kind of charity uniform devised by the ladies of
Cumnor Towers;--white caps, white tippets, check aprons, blue gowns,
and ready curtseys, and 'please, ma'ams', being ~de rigueur~.

Now, as the countess was absent from the Towers for a considerable
part of the year, she was glad to enlist the sympathy of the
Hollingford ladies in this school, with a view to obtaining their
aid as visitors during the many months that she and her daughters
were away. And the various unoccupied gentlewomen of the town
responded to the call of their liege lady, and gave her their
service as required; and along with it, a great deal of whispered
and fussy admiration. 'How good of the countess! So like the dear
countess--always thinking of others!' and so on; while it was always
supposed that no strangers had seen Hollingford properly, unless
they had been taken to the countess's school, and been duly
impressed by the neat little pupils, and the still neater needlework
there to be inspected. In return, there was a day of honour set
apart every summer, when with much gracious and stately hospitality,
Lady Cumnor and her daughters received all the school visitors at
the Towers, the great family mansion standing in aristocratic
seclusion in the centre of the large park, of which one of the
lodges was close to the little town. The order of this annual
festivity was this. About ten o'clock one of the Towers' carriages
rolled through the lodge, and drove to different houses, wherein
dwelt a woman to be honoured; picking them up by ones or twos, till
the loaded carriage drove back again through the ready portals,
bowled along the smooth tree-shaded road, and deposited its covey of
smartly-dressed ladies on the great flight of steps leading to the
ponderous doors of Cumnor Towers. Back again to the town; another
picking up of womankind in their best clothes, and another return,
and so on till the whole party were assembled either in the house or
in the really beautiful gardens. After the proper amount of
exhibition on the one part, and admiration on the other, had been
done, there was a collation for the visitors, and some more display
and admiration of the treasures inside the house. Towards four
o'clock, coffee was brought round; and this was a signal of the
approaching carriage that was to take them back to their own homes;
whither they returned with the happy consciousness of a well-spent
day, but with some fatigue at the long-continued exertion of
behaving their best, and talking on stilts for so many hours. Nor
were Lady Cumnor and her daughters free from something of the same
self-approbation, and something, too, of the same fatigue; the
fatigue that always follows on conscious efforts to behave as will
best please the society you are in.

For the first time in her life, Molly Gibson was to be included
among the guests at the Towers. She was much too young to be a
visitor at the school, so it was not on that account that she was to
go; but it had so happened that one day when Lord Cumnor was on a
'pottering' expedition, he had met Mr. Gibson, ~the~ doctor of the
neighbourhood, coming out of the farm-house my lord was entering;
and having some small question to ask the surgeon (Lord Cumnor
seldom passed any one of his acquaintance without asking a question
of some sort--not always attending to the answer; it was his mode of
conversation), he accompanied Mr. Gibson to the out-building, to a
ring in the wall of which the surgeon's horse was fastened. Molly
was there too, sitting square and quiet on her rough little pony,
waiting for her father. Her grave eyes opened large and wide at the
close neighbourhood and evident advance of 'the earl'; for to her
little imagination the grey-haired, red-faced, somewhat clumsy man,
was a cross between an archangel and a king.

'Your daughter, eh, Gibson?--nice little girl, how old? Pony wants
grooming though,' patting it as he talked. 'What's your name, my
dear? He's sadly behindhand with his rent, as I was saying, but if
he's really ill, I must see after Sheepshanks, who is a hardish man
of business. What's his complaint? You'll come to our
school-scrimmage on Thursday, little girl--what's-your-name? Mind
you send her, or bring her, Gibson; and just give a word to your
groom, for I'm sure that pony wasn't singed last year, now, was he?
Don't forget Thursday, little girl--what's your name?--it's a
promise between us, is it not?' And off the earl trotted, attracted
by the sight of the farmer's eldest son on the other side of the
yard.

Mr. Gibson mounted, and he and Molly rode off. They did not speak
for some time. Then she said, 'May I go, papa?' in rather an anxious
little tone of voice.

'Where, my dear?' said he, wakening up out of his own professional
thoughts.

'To the Towers--on Thursday, you know. That gentleman' (she was shy
of calling him by his title) 'asked me.'

'Would you like it, my dear? It has always seemed to me rather a
tiresome piece of gaiety--rather a tiring day, I mean--beginning so
early--and the heat, and all that.'

'Oh, papa!' said Molly reproachfully.

'You'd like to go then, would you?'

'Yes if I may!--He asked me, you know. Don't you think I may?--he
asked me twice over.'

'Well! we'll see--yes! I think we can manage it, if you wish it so
much, Molly.'

Then they were silent again. By-and-by, Molly said:

'Please, papa--I do wish to go--but I don't care about it.'

'That's rather a puzzling speech. But I suppose you mean you don't
care to go, if it will be any trouble to get you there. I can easily
manage it, however, so you may consider it settled. You'll want a
white frock, remember; you'd better tell Betty you're going, and
she'll see after making you tidy.'

Now, there were two or three things to be done by Mr. Gibson, before
he could feel quite comfortable about Molly's going to the festival
at the Towers, and each of them involved a little trouble on his
part. But he was very willing to gratify his little girl; so the
next day he rode over to the Towers, ostensibly to visit some sick
housemaid, but, in reality, to throw himself in my lady's way, and
get her to ratify Lord Cumnor's invitation to Molly. He chose his
time, with a little natural diplomacy; which, indeed, he had often
to exercise in his intercourse with the great family. He rode into
the stable-yard about twelve o'clock, a little before luncheon-time,
and yet after the worry of opening the post-bag and discussing its
contents was over. After he had put up his horse, he went in by the
back-way to the house; the 'House' on this side, the 'Towers' at the
front. He saw his patient, gave his directions to the housekeeper,
and then went out, with a rare wild-flower in his hand, to find one
of the ladies Tranmere in the garden, where, according to his hope
and calculation, he came upon Lady Cumnor too--now talking to her
daughter about the contents of an open letter which she held in her
hand, now directing a gardener about certain bedding-out plants.

'I was calling to see Nanny, and I took the opportunity of bringing
Lady Agnes the plant I was telling her about as growing on Cumnor
Moss.'

'Thank you so much, Mr. Gibson. Mamma, look! this is the ~Drosera
rotundifolia~ I have been wanting so long.'

'Ah! yes; very pretty I daresay, only I am no botanist. Nanny is
better, I hope? We can't have any one laid up next week, for the
house will be quite full of people--and here are the Danbys waiting
to offer themselves as well. One comes down for a fortnight of
quiet, at Whitsuntide, and leaves half one's establishment in town,
and as soon as people know of our being here, we get letters without
end, longing for a breath of country air, or saying how lovely the
Towers must look in spring; and I must own, Lord Cumnor is a great
deal to blame for it all, for as soon as ever we are down here, he
rides about to all the neighbours, and invites them to come over and
spend a few days.'

'We shall go back to town on Friday the 18th,' said Lady Agnes, in a
consolatory tone.

'Ah, yes! as soon as we have got over the school visitors' affair.
But it is a week to that happy day.'

'By the way!' said Mr. Gibson, availing himself of the good opening
thus presented, 'I met my lord at the Cross-trees Farm yesterday,
and he was kind enough to ask my little daughter, who was with me,
to be one of the party here on Thursday; it would give the lassie
great pleasure, I believe.' He paused for Lady Cumnor to speak.

'Oh, well! if my lord asked her, I suppose she must come, but I wish
he was not so amazingly hospitable! Not but what the little girl
will be quite welcome; only, you see, he met a younger Miss Browning
the other day, of whose existence I had never heard.'

'She visits at the school, mamma,' said Lady Agnes.

'Well, perhaps she does; I never said she did not. I knew there was
one visitor of the name of Browning; I never knew there were two,
but, of course, as soon as Lord Cumnor heard there was another, he
must needs ask her; so the carriage will have to go backwards and
forwards four times now to fetch them all. So your daughter can come
quite easily, Mr. Gibson, and I shall be very glad to see her for
your sake. She can sit bodkin with the Brownings, I suppose? You'll
arrange it all with them; and mind you get Nanny well up to her work
next week.'

Just as Mr. Gibson was going away, Lady Cumnor called after him,
'Oh! by-the-bye, Clare is here; you remember Clare, don't you? She
was a patient of yours, long ago.'

'Clare!' he repeated, in a bewildered tone.

'Don't you recollect her? Miss Clare, our old governess,' said Lady
Agnes. 'About twelve or fourteen years ago, before Lady Cuxhaven was
married.'

'Oh, yes!' said he. 'Miss Clare, who had the scarlet fever here; a
very pretty delicate girl. But I thought she was married!'

'Yes!' said Lady Cumnor. 'She was a silly little thing, and did not
know when she was well off; we were all very fond of her, I'm sure.
She went and married a poor curate, and became a stupid Mrs.
Kirkpatrick; but we always kept on calling her 'Clare.' And now he's
dead, and left her a widow, and she is staying here; and we are
racking our brains to find out some way of helping her to a
livelihood without parting her from her child. She's somewhere about
the grounds, if you like to renew your acquaintance with her.'

'Thank you, my lady. I'm afraid I cannot stop to-day. I have a long
round to go; I've stayed here too long as it is, I'm afraid.'

Long as his ride had been that day, he called on the Miss Brownings
in the evening, to arrange about Molly's accompanying them to the
Towers. They were tall handsome women, past their first youth, and
inclined to be extremely complaisant to the widowed doctor.

'Eh dear! Mr. Gibson, but we shall he delighted to have her with us.
You should never have thought of asking us such a thing,' said Miss
Browning the elder.

'I'm sure I'm hardly sleeping at nights for thinking of it,' said
Miss Phoebe. 'You know I've never been there before. Sister has many
a time; but somehow, though my name has been down on the visitors'
list these three years, the countess has never named me in her note;
and you know I could not push myself into notice, and go to such a
grand place without being asked; how could I?'

'I told Phoebe last year,' said her sister, 'that I was sure it was
only inadvertence, as one may call it, on the part of the countess,
and that her ladyship would be as hurt as any one when she didn't
see Phoebe among the school visitors; but Phoebe has got a delicate
mind, you see Mr. Gibson, and for all I could say she wouldn't go,
but stopped here at home; and it spoilt all my pleasure all that
day, I do assure you, to think of Phoebe's face, as I saw it over
the window-blinds, as I rode away; her eyes were full of tears, if
you'll believe me.'

'I had a good cry alter you was gone, Sally,' said Miss Phoebe; 'but
for all that, I think I was right in stopping away from where I was
not asked. Don't you, Mr. Gibson?'

'Certainly,' said he. 'And you see you are going this year; and last
year it rained.'

'Yes! I remember! I set myself to tidy my drawers, to string myself
up, as it were; and I was so taken up with what I was about that I
was quite startled when I heard the rain beating against the
window-panes. 'Goodness me!' said I to myself, 'whatever will become
of sister's white satin shoes, if she has to walk about on soppy
grass after such rain as this?' for, you see, I thought a deal about
her having a pair of smart shoes; and this year she has gone and got
me a white satin pair just as smart as hers, for a surprise.'

'Molly will know she's to put on her best clothes,' said Miss
Browning. 'We could perhaps lend her a few beads, or artificials, if
she wants them.'

'Molly must go in a clean white frock,' said Mr. Gibson, rather
hastily; for he did not admire the Miss Brownings' taste in dress,
and was unwilling to have his child decked up according to their
fancy; he esteemed his old servant Betty's as the more correct,
because the more simple. Miss Browning had just a shade of annoyance
in her tone as she drew herself up, and said, 'Oh! very well. It's
quite right, I'm sure.' But Miss Phoebe said, 'Molly will look very
nice in whatever she puts on, that's certain.'


CHAPTER II


A NOVICE AMONGST THE GREAT FOLK


At ten o'clock on the eventful Thursday the Towers' carriage began
its work. Molly was ready long before it made its first appearance,
although it had been settled that she and the Miss Brownings were
not to go until the last, or fourth, time of its coming. Her face
had been soaped, scrubbed, and shone brilliantly clean; her frills,
her frock, her ribbons were all snow-white. She had on a black mode
cloak that had been her mother's; it was trimmed round with rich
lace, and looked quaint and old-fashioned on the child. For the
first time in her life she wore kid gloves; hitherto she had only
had cotton ones. Her gloves were far too large for the little
dimpled fingers, but as Betty had told her they were to last her for
years, it was all very well. She trembled many a time, and almost
turned faint once with the long expectation of the morning. Berry
might say what she liked about a watched pot never boiling; Molly
never ceased to watch the approach through the winding street, and
after two hours the carriage came for her at last. She had to sit
very forward to avoid crushing the Miss Brownings' new dresses; and
yet not too forward, for fear of incommoding fat Mrs. Goodenough and
her niece, who occupied the front seat of the carriage; so that
altogether the fact of sitting down at all was rather doubtful, and
to add to her discomfort, Molly felt herself to be very
conspicuously placed in the centre of the carriage, a mark for all
the observation of Hollingford. It was far too much of a gala day
for the work of the little town to go forward with its usual
regularity. Maid-servants gazed out of upper windows; shopkeepers'
wives stood on the doorsteps; cottagers ran out, with babies in
their arms; and little children, too young to know how to behave
respectfully at the sight of an earl's carriage, huzzaed merrily as
it bowled along. The woman at the lodge held the gate open, and
dropped a low curtsey to the liveries. And now they were in the
Park; and now they were in sight of the Towers, and silence fell
upon the carriage-full of ladies, only broken by one faint remark
from Mrs. Goodenough's niece, a stranger to the town, as they drew up
before the double semicircle flight of steps which led to the door
of the mansion.

'They call that a perron, I believe, don't they?' she asked. But the
only answer she obtained was a simultaneous 'hush.' It was very
awful, as Molly thought, and she half wished herself at home again.
But she lost all consciousness of herself by-and-by when the party
strolled out into the beautiful grounds, the like of which she had
never even imagined. Green velvet lawns, bathed in sunshine,
stretched away on every side into the finely wooded park; if there
were divisions and ha-has between the soft sunny sweeps of grass,
and the dark gloom of the forest-trees beyond, Molly did not see
them; and the melting away of exquisite cultivation into the
wilderness had an inexplicable charm to her. Near the house there
were walls and fences; but they were covered with climbing roses,
and rare honeysuckles and other creepers just bursting into bloom,
There were flower-beds, too, scarlet, crimson, blue, orange; masses
of blossom lying on the greensward. Molly held Miss Browning's hand
very tight as they loitered about in company with several other
ladies, and marshalled by a daughter of the Towers, who seemed half
amused at the voluble admiration showered down upon every possible
thing and place. Molly said nothing, as became her age and position,
but every now and then she relieved her full heart by drawing a deep
breath, almost like a sigh. Presently they came to the long
glittering range of greenhouses and hothouses, and an attendant
gardener was there to admit the party. Molly did not care for this
half so much as for the flowers in the open air; but Lady Agnes had
a more scientific taste, she expatiated on the rarity of this, and
the mode of cultivation required by that plant, till Molly began to
feel very tired, and then very faint. She was too shy to speak for
some time; but at length, afraid of making a greater sensation if
she began to cry, or if she fell against the stands of precious
flowers, she caught at Miss Browning's hand, and gasped out,--

'May I go back, out into the garden? I can't breathe here!'

'Oh, yes, to be sure, love. I dare say it's hard understanding for
you, love; but it's very fine and instructive, and a deal of Latin
in it too.'

She turned hastily round not to lose another word of Lady Agnes'
lecture on orchids, and Molly turned back and passed out of the
heated atmosphere. She felt better in the fresh air; and unobserved,
and at liberty, went from one lovely spot to another, now in the
open park, now in some shut-in flower-garden, where the song of the
birds, and the drip of the central fountain, were the only sounds,
and the tree-tops made an enclosing circle in the blue June sky; she
went along without more thought as to her whereabouts than a
butterfly has, as it skims from flower to flower, till at length she
grew very weary, and wished to return to the house, but did not know
how, and felt afraid of encountering all the strangers who would be
there, unprotected by either of the Miss Brownings. The hot sun told
upon her head, and it began to ache. She saw a great wide-spreading
cedar-tree upon a burst of lawn towards which she was advancing, and
the black repose beneath its branches lured her thither. There was a
rustic seat in the shadow, and weary Molly sate down there, and
presently fell asleep.

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