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Wives and Daughters

E >> Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell >> Wives and Daughters




Mrs. Gibson affected not to hear what he was saying, but held out her
limp hand once more to him.

'I suppose we shall see you when you return; and pray tell your
brother how we are longing to have a visit from him again.'

When he had left the room, Molly's heart was quite full. She had
watched his face, and read something of his feelings: his
disappointment at their non-acquiescence in his plan of a day's
pleasure in Hurst Wood, the delayed conviction that his presence was
not welcome to the wife of his old friend, which had come so slowly
upon him--perhaps, after all, these things touched Molly more keenly
than they did him. His bright look when Cynthia gave him the
rosebuds indicated a gush of sudden delight more vivid than the pain
he had shown by his previous increase of gravity.

'I can't think why he will come at such untimely hours,' said Mrs
Gibson, as soon as she heard him fairly out of the house. 'It's
different from Osborne; we are so much more intimate with him: he
came and made friends with us all the time this stupid brother of
his was muddling his brains with mathematics at Cambridge. Fellow of
Trinity, indeed! I wish he would learn to stay there, and not come
intruding here, and assuming that because I asked Osborne to join in
a picnic it was all the same to me which brother came.'

'In short, mamma, one man may steal a horse, but another must not
look over the hedge,' said Cynthia, pouting a little.

'And the two brothers have always been treated so exactly alike by
their friends, and there has been such a strong friendship between
them, that it is no wonder Roger thinks he may be welcome where
Osborne is allowed to come at all hours,' continued Molly, in high
dudgeon. 'Roger's "muddled brains," indeed! Roger, "stupid!"'

'Oh, very well, my dears! When I was young it wouldn't have been
thought becoming for girls of your age to fly out because a little
restraint was exercised as to the hours at which they should receive
the young men's calls. And they would have supposed that there might
be good reasons why their parents disapproved of the visits of
certain gentlemen, even while they were proud and pleased to see
some members of the same family.'

'But that was what I said, mamma,' said Cynthia, looking at her
mother with an expression of innocent bewilderment on her face. 'One
man may--'

'Be quiet, child! All proverbs are vulgar, and I do believe that is
the vulgarest of all. You are really catching Roger Hamley's
coarseness, Cynthia!'

'Mamma,' said Cynthia, roused to anger, 'I don't mind your abusing
me, but Mr. Roger Hamley has been very kind to me while I've not been
well: I can't bear to hear him disparaged. If he's coarse, I've no
objection to be coarse as well, for it seems to me it must mean
kindliness and pleasantness, and the bringing of pretty flowers and
presents.'

Molly's tears were brimming over at these words; she could have
kissed Cynthia for her warm partisanship, but, afraid of betraying
emotion, and 'making a scene,' as Mrs. Gibson called any signs of
warm feeling, she laid down her book hastily, and ran upstairs to
her room, and locked the door in order to breathe freely. There were
traces of tears upon her face when she returned into the
drawing-room half-an-hour afterwards, walking straight and demurely
up to her former place, where Cynthia still sate and gazed idly out
of the window, pouting and displeased; Mrs. Gibson, meanwhile,
counting her stitches aloud with great distinctness and vigour.


CHAPTER XXIX


BUSH-FIGHTING


During all the months that had elapsed since Mrs. Hamley's death,
Molly had wondered many a time about the secret she had so
unwittingly become possessed of that last day in the Hall library.
It seemed so utterly strange and unheard-of a thing to her
inexperienced mind, that a man should be married, and yet not live
with his wife--that a son should have entered into the holy state of
matrimony without his father's knowledge, and without being
recognized as the husband of some one known or unknown by all those
with whom he came in daily contact, that she felt occasionally as if
that little ten minutes of revelation must have been a vision in a
dream. Both Roger and Osborne had kept the most entire silence on
the subject ever since. Not even a look, or a pause, betrayed any
allusion to it; it even seemed to have passed out of their thoughts.
There had been the great sad event of their mother's death to fill
their minds on the next occasion of their meeting Molly; and since
then long pauses of intercourse had taken place; so that she
sometimes felt as if each of the brothers must have forgotten how
she had come to know their important secret. She often found herself
entirely forgetting it, but perhaps the consciousness of it was
present to her unawares, and enabled her to comprehend the real
nature of Osborne's feelings towards Cynthia. At any rate she never
for a moment had supposed that his gentle kind manner towards
Cynthia was anything but the courtesy of a friend; strange to say,
in these latter days Molly had looked upon Osborne's relation to
herself as pretty much the same as that in which at one time she had
considered Roger's; and she thought of the former as of some one as
nearly a brother both to Cynthia and herself, as any young man could
well be, whom they had not known in childhood, and who was in nowise
related to them. She thought that he was very much improved in
manner, and probably in character, by his mother's death. He was no
longer sarcastic, or fastidious, or vain, or self-confident. She did
not know how often all these styles of talk or of behaviour were put
on to conceal shyness or consciousness, and to veil the real self
from strangers.

Osborne's conversation and ways might very possibly have been just
the same as before, had he been thrown amongst new people; but Molly
only saw him in their own circle in which he was on terms of decided
intimacy. Still there was no doubt that he was really improved,
though perhaps not to the extent for which Molly gave him credit;
and this exaggeration on her part arose very naturally from the
fact, that he, perceiving Roger's warm admiration for Cynthia,
withdrew a little out of his brother's way; and used to go and talk
to Molly in order not to intrude himself between Roger and Cynthia.
Of the two, perhaps, Osborne preferred Molly; to her he needed not
to talk if the mood was not on him--they were on those happy terms
where silence is permissible, and where efforts to act against the
prevailing mood of the mind are not required. Sometimes, indeed,
when Osborne was in the humour to be critical and fastidious as of
yore, he used to vex Roger by insisting upon it that Molly was
prettier than Cynthia.

'You mark my words, Roger. Five years hence the beautiful Cynthia's
red and white will have become just a little coarse, and her figure
will have thickened, while Molly's will only have developed into
more perfect grace. I don't believe the girl has done growing yet; I
am sure she is taller than when I first saw her last summer.'

'Miss Kirkpatrick's eyes must always be perfection. I cannot fancy
any could come up to them: soft, grave, appealing, tender; and such
a heavenly colour--I often try to find something in nature to
compare them to; they are not like violets--that blue in the eyes is
too like physical weakness of sight; they are not like the sky--that
colour has something of cruelty in it.'

'Come, don't go on trying to match her eyes as if you were a draper,
and they a bit of ribbon; say at once "her eyes are loadstars," and
have done with it! I set up Molly's grey eyes and curling black
lashes, long odds above the other young woman's; but, of course,
it's all a matter of taste.'

And now both Osborne and Roger had left the neighbourhood. In spite
of all that Mrs. Gibson had said about Roger's visits being ill-timed
and intrusive, she began to feel as if they had been a very pleasant
variety, now they had ceased altogether. He brought in a whiff of a
new atmosphere from that of Hollingford. He and his brother had been
always ready to do numberless little things which only a man can do
for women; small services which Mr. Gibson was always too busy to
render. For the good doctor's business grew upon him. He thought
that this increase was owing to his greater skill and experience,
and he would probably have been mortified if he could have known how
many of his patients were solely biassed in sending for him, by the
fact that he was employed at the Towers. Something of this sort must
have been contemplated in the low scale of payment adopted long ago
by the Cumnor family. Of itself the money he received for going to
the Towers would hardly have paid him for horse-flesh, but then as
Lady Cumnor in her younger days had worded it,--

'It is such a thing for a man just setting up in practice for
himself to be able to say he attends at this house!'

So the prestige was tacitly sold and paid for; but neither buyer nor
seller defined the nature of the bargain. On the whole, it was as
well that Mr. Gibson spent so much of his time from home. He
sometimes thought so himself when he heard his wife's plaintive fret
or pretty babble over totally indifferent things, and perceived of
how flimsy a nature were all her fine sentiments. Still, he did not
allow himself to repine over the step he had taken; he wilfully shut
his eyes and waxed up his ears to many small things that he knew
would have irritated him if he had attended to them; and, in his
solitary rides, he forced himself to dwell on the positive
advantages that had accrued to him and his through his marriage. He
had obtained an unexceptionable chaperone, if not a tender mother,
for his little girl; a skilful manager of his formerly disorderly
household; a woman who was graceful and pleasant to look at for the
head of his table. Moreover, Cynthia reckoned for something in the
favourable side of the balance. She was a capital companion for
Molly; and the two were evidently very fond of each other. The
feminine companionship of the mother and daughter was agreeable to
him as well as to his child,--when Mrs. Gibson was moderately
sensible and not over-sentimental, he mentally added; and then he
checked himself, for he would not allow himself to become more aware
of her faults and foibles by defining them. At any rate, she was
harmless, and wonderfully just to Molly for a stepmother. She piqued
herself upon this indeed, and would often call attention to the fact
of her being unlike other women in this respect. Just then sudden
tears came into Mr. Gibson's eyes, as he remembered how quiet and
undemonstrative his little Molly had become in her general behaviour
to him; but how once or twice, when they had met upon the stairs, or
were otherwise unwitnessed, she had caught him and kissed him--hand
or cheek--in a sad passionateness of affection. But in a moment he
began to whistle an old Scotch air he had heard in his childhood,
and which had never recurred to his memory since; and five minutes
afterwards he was too busily treating a case of white swelling in
the knee of a little boy, and thinking how to relieve the poor
mother, who went out charring all day, and had to listen to the
moans of her child all night, to have any thought for his own cares,
which, if they really existed, were of so trifling a nature compared
to the hard reality of this hopeless woe.

Osborne came home first. He returned, in fact, not long after Roger
had gone away; but he was languid and unwell, and, though he did not
complain, he felt unequal to any exertion. Thus a week or more
elapsed before any of the Gibsons knew that he was at the Hall; and
then it was only by chance that they became aware of it. Mr. Gibson
met him in one of the lanes near Hamley; the acute surgeon noticed
the gait of the man as he came near, before he recognized who it
was. When he overtook him he said,--

'Why, Osborne, is it you? I thought it was an old man of fifty
loitering before me! I didn't know you had come back.'

'Yes,' said Osborne, 'I've been at home nearly ten days. I daresay I
ought to have called on your people, for I made a half promise to
Mrs. Gibson to let her know as soon as I returned; but the fact is,
I'm feeling very good-for-nothing,--this air oppresses me; I could
hardly breathe in the house, and yet I'm already tired with this
short walk.'

'You'd better get home at once; and I'll call and see you as I come
back from Rowe's.'

'No, you mustn't, on any account!' said Osborne, hastily; my father
is annoyed enough about my going from home, so often, he says,
though it was six weeks. He puts down all my languor to my having
been away,--he keeps the purse-strings, you know,' he added, with a
faint smile, 'and I'm in the unlucky position of a penniless heir,
and I've been brought up so--In fact, I must leave home from time to
time, and, if my father gets confirmed in this notion of his that my
health is worse for my absences, he will stop the supplies
altogether.'

'May I ask where you do spend your time when you are not at Hamley
Hall?' asked Mr. Gibson, with some hesitation in his manner.

'No!' replied Osborne, reluctantly. 'I will tell you this:--I stay
with friends in the country. I lead a life which ought to be
conducive to health, because it is thoroughly simple, rational, and
happy. And now I've told you more about it than my father himself
knows. He never asks me where I have been; and I shouldn't tell him
if he did--at least, I think not.'

Mr. Gibson rode on by Osborne's side, not speaking for a moment or
two.

'Osborne, whatever scrapes you may have got into, I should advise
your telling your father boldly out. I know him; and I know he'll be
angry enough at first, but he'll come round, take my word for it;
and, somehow or another, he'll find money to pay your debts and set
you free, if it's that kind of difficulty; and if it's any other
kind of entanglement, why still he's your best friend. It's this
estrangement from your father that's telling on your health, I'll be
bound.'

'No,' said Osborne, 'I beg your pardon; but it's not that; I am
really out of order. I daresay my unwillingness to encounter any
displeasure from my father is the consequence of my indisposition;
but I'll answer for it, it is not the cause of it. My instinct tells
me there is something real the matter with me.'

'Come, don't be setting up your instinct against the profession,'
said Mr. Gibson, cheerily. He dismounted, and throwing the reins of
his horse round his arm, he looked at Osborne's tongue and felt his
pulse, asking him various questions. At the end he said,--

'We'll soon bring you about, though I should like a little more
quiet talk with you, without this tugging brute for a third. If
you'll manage to ride over and lunch with us to-morrow, Dr Nicholls
will be with us; he's coming over to see old Rowe; and you shall
have the benefit of the advice of two doctors instead of one. Go
home now, you've had enough exercise for the middle of a day as hot
as this is. And don't mope in the house, listening to the
maunderings of your stupid instinct.'

'What else have I to do?' said Osborne. 'My father and I are not
companions; one can't read and write for ever, especially when there
is no end to be gained by it. I don't mind telling you--but in
confidence, recollect--that I've been trying to get some of my poems
published; but there's no one like a publisher for taking the
conceit out of one. Not a man among them would take them as a gift.'

'0 ho! so that's it, is it, Master Osborne? I thought there was some
mental cause for this depression of health. I wouldn't trouble my
head about it, if I were you, though that's always very easily said,
I know. Try your hand at prose, if you can't manage to please the
publishers with poetry; but, at any rate, don't go on fretting over
spilt milk. But I mustn't lose my time here. Come over to us
to-morrow, as I said; and what with the wisdom of two doctors, and
the wit and folly of three women, I think we shall cheer you up a
bit.'

So saying, Mr. Gibson remounted, and rode away at the long, slinging
trot so well known to the country people as the doctor's pace.

'I don't like his looks,' thought Mr. Gibson to himself at night, as
over his daybooks he reviewed the events of the day. 'And then his
pulse. But how often we're all mistaken; and, ten to one, my own
hidden enemy lies closer to me than his does to him--even taking the
worse view of the case.'

Osborne made his appearance a considerable time before luncheon the
next morning; and no one objected to the earliness of his call. He
was feeling better. There were few signs of the invalid about him;
and what few there were disappeared under the bright pleasant
influence of such a welcome as he received from all. Molly and
Cynthia had much to tell him of the small proceedings since he went
away, or to relate the conclusions of half-accomplished projects.
Cynthia was often on the point of some gay, careless inquiry as to
where he had been, and what he had been doing; but Molly, who
conjectured the truth, as often interfered to spare him the pain of
equivocation--a pain that her tender conscience would have felt for
him, much more than he would have felt it for himself.

Mr. Gibson's talk was desultory, complimentary, and sentimental,
after her usual fashion; but still, on the whole, though Osborne
smiled to himself at much that she said, it was soothing and
agreeable. Presently, Dr Nicholls and Mr. Gibson came in; the former
had had some conference with the latter on the subject of Osborne's
health; and, from time to time, the skilful old physician's sharp
and observant eyes gave a comprehensive look at Osborne.

Then there was lunch, when every one was merry and hungry, excepting
the hostess, who was trying to train her midday appetite into the
genteelest of all ways, and thought (falsely enough) that Dr
Nicholls was a good person to practise the semblance of ill-health
upon, and that he would give her the proper civil amount of
commiseration for her ailments, which every guest ought to bestow
upon a hostess who complains of her delicacy of health. The old
doctor was too cunning a man to fall into this trap. He would keep
recommending her to try the coarsest viands on the table; and, at
last, he told her if she could not fancy the cold beef to try a
little with pickled onions. There was a twinkle in his eye as he
said this, that would have betrayed his humour to any observer; but
Mr. Gibson, Cynthia, and Molly were all attacking Osborne on the
subject of some literary preference he had expressed, and Dr
Nicholls had Mrs. Gibson quite at his mercy. She was not sorry when
luncheon was over to leave the room to the three gentlemen; and ever
afterwards she spoke of Dr Nicholls as 'that bear.'

Presently, Osborne came upstairs, and, after his old fashion, began
to take up new books, and to question the girls as to their music.
Mrs. Gibson had to go out and pay some calls, so she left the three
together; and after a while they adjourned into the garden, Osborne
lounging on a chair, while Molly employed herself busily in tying up
carnations, and Cynthia gathered flowers in her careless, graceful
way.

'I hope you notice the difference in our occupations, Mr. Hamley.
Molly, you see, devotes herself to the useful, and I to the
ornamental. Please, under what head do you class what you are doing?
I think you might help one of us, instead of looking on like the
Grand Seigneur.'

'I don't know what I can do,' said he, rather plaintively. 'I should
like to be useful, but I don't know how; and my day is past for
purely ornamental work. You must let me be, I am afraid. Besides, I
am really rather exhausted by being questioned and pulled about by
those good doctors.'

'Why, you don't mean to say they have been attacking you since
lunch!' exclaimed Molly.

'Yes; indeed, they have; and they might have gone on till now if Mrs
Gibson had not come in opportunely.'

'I thought mamma had gone out some time ago!' said Cynthia, catching
wafts of the conversation as she flitted hither and thither among
the flowers.

'She came into the dining-room not five minutes ago. Do you want
her, for I see her crossing the hall at this very moment?' and
Osborne half rose.

'Oh, not at all!' said Cynthia. 'Only she seemed to be in such a
hurry to go out, I fancied she had set off long ago. She had some
errand to do for Lady Cumnor, and she thought she could manage to
catch the housekeeper, who is always in the town on Thursday.'

'Are the family coming to the Towers this autumn?'

'I believe so. But I don't know, and I don't much care. They don't
take kindly to me,' continued Cynthia, 'and so I suppose I am not
generous enough to take kindly to them.'

'I should have thought that such a very unusual blot in their
discrimination would have interested you in them as extraordinary
people,' said Osborne, with a little air of conscious gallantry.

'Isn't that a compliment?' said Cynthia, after a pause of mock
meditation. 'If any one pays me a compliment, please let it be short
and clear. I'm very stupid at finding out hidden meanings.'

'Then such speeches as "you are very pretty," or "you have charming
manners," are what you prefer. Now, I pique myself on wrapping up my
sugar-plums delicately.'

'Then would you please to write them down, and at my leisure I'll
parse them.'

'No! It would be too much trouble. I'll meet you half way, and study
clearness next time.'

'What are you two talking about?' said Molly, resting on her light
spade.

'It's only a discussion on the best way of administering
compliments,' said Cynthia, taking up her flower-basket again, but
not going out of the reach of the conversation.

'I don't like them at all in any way,' said Molly. 'But, perhaps,
it's rather sour grapes with me,' she added.

'Nonsense!' said Osborne. 'Shall I tell you what I heard of you at
the ball?'

'Or shall I provoke Mr. Preston,' said Cynthia, 'to begin upon you?
It is like turning a tap, such a stream of pretty speeches flow out
at the moment.' Her lip curled with scorn.

'For you, perhaps,' said Molly; 'but not for me.'

'For any woman. It is his notion of making himself agreeable. If you
dare me, Molly, I will try the experiment, and you'll see with what
success.'

'No, don't, pray!' said Molly, in a hurry. 'I do so dislike him!'

'Why?' said Osborne, roused to a little curiosity by her vehemence.

'Oh! I don't know. He never seems to know what one is feeling.'

'He wouldn't care if he did know,' said Cynthia. 'And he might know
he is not wanted,'

'If he chooses to stay, he cares little whether he is wanted or
not.'

'Come, this is very interesting,' said Osborne. 'It is like the
strophe and anti-strophe in a Greek chorus. Pray, go on.'

'Don't you know him?' asked Molly.

'Yes, by sight, and I think we were once introduced. But, you know,
we are much farther from Ashcombe, at Hamley, than you are here, at
Hollingford.'

'Oh! but he is coming to take Mr. Sheepshanks' place, and then he
will live here altogether,' said Molly.

'Molly! who told you that?' said Cynthia, in quite a different tone
of voice to that in which she had been speaking hitherto.

'Papa, didn't you hear him? Oh, no! it was before you were down this
morning. Papa met Mr. Sheepshanks yesterday, and he told him it was
all settled: you know we heard a rumour about it in the spring!'

Cynthia was very silent after this. Presently, she said that she had
gathered all the flowers she wanted, and that the heat was so great
she would go indoors. And then Osborne went away. But Molly had set
herself a task to dig up such roots as had already flowered, and to
put down some bedding-out plants in their stead. Tired and heated as
she was she finished it, and then went upstairs to rest, and change
her dress. According to her wont, she sought for Cynthia; there was
no reply to her soft knock at the bedroom-door opposite to her own,
and, thinking that Cynthia might have fallen asleep, and be lying
uncovered in the draught of the open window, she went in softly.
Cynthia was lying upon the bed as if she had thrown herself down on
it without caring for the ease or comfort of her position. She was
very still; and Molly took a shawl, and was going to place it over
her, when she opened her eyes, and spoke,--

'Is that you, dear? Don't go. I like to know that you are there.'

She shut her eyes again, and remained quite quiet for a few minutes
longer. Then she started up into a sitting posture, pushed her hair
away from her forehead and burning eyes, and gazed intently at
Molly.

'Do you know what I've been thinking, dear?' said she. 'I think I've
been long enough here, and that I had better go out as a governess.'

'Cynthia, what do you mean?' asked Molly, aghast. 'You've been
asleep--you've been dreaming. You're overtired,' continued she,
sitting down on the bed, and taking Cynthia's passive hand, and
stroking it softly--a mode of caressing that had come down to her
from her mother--whether as an hereditary instinct, or as a
lingering remembrance of the tender ways of the dead woman, Mr
Gibson often wondered within himself when he observed it.

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