Wives and Daughters

by Elizabeth Gaskell

  ‘What greedy little vermin!’ said Miss Browning.

  Molly saw Roger’s eyes twinkle at the misapplication of the word; but though he had a strong sense of humour, it never appeared to diminish his respect for the people who amused him.

  ‘I’m sure they deserve fire and brimstone more than the poor dear innocent bees,’ said Miss Phoebe. ‘And then it seems so ungrateful of mankind, who are going to feast on the honey!’ She sighed over the thought, as if it was too much for her.

  While Molly finished reading her note, he explained its contents to Miss Browning.

  ‘My brother and I are going with my father to an agricultural meeting at Canonbury on Thursday, and my mother desired me to say to you how very much obliged she should be if you would spare her Miss Gibson for the day. She was very anxious to ask for the pleasure of your company, too, but she really is so poorly that we persuaded her to be content with Miss Gibson, as she wouldn’t scruple leaving a young lady to amuse herself, which she would be unwilling to do if you and your sister were there.’

  ‘I’m sure she’s very kind; very. Nothing would have given us more pleasure,’ said Miss Browning, drawing herself up in gratified dignity. ‘Oh, yes, we quite understand, Mr. Roger; and we fully recognize Mrs. Hamley’s kind intention. We will take the will for the deed, as the common people express it. I believe that there was an intermarriage between the Brownings and the Hamleys a generation or two ago.’

  ‘I dare say there was,’ said Roger. ‘My mother is very delicate, and obliged to humour her health, which has made her keep aloof from society.’

  ‘Then I may go?’ said Molly, sparkling with the idea of seeing her dear Mrs. Hamley again, yet afraid of appearing too desirous of leaving her kind old friends.

  ‘To be sure, my dear. Write a pretty note, and tell Mrs. Hamley how much obliged to her we are for thinking of us.’

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t wait for a note,’ said Roger. ‘I must take a message instead, for I have to meet my father at one o’clock, and it’s dose upon it now.’

  When he was gone, Molly felt so hght-hearted at the thoughts of Thursday that she could hardly attend to what the Miss Brownings were saying. One was talking about the pretty muslin gown which Molly had sent to the wash only that morning, and contriving how it could be had back again in time for her to wear; and the other, Miss Phoebe, totally inattentive to her sister’s speaking, for a wonder, was piping out a separate strain of her own, and singing Roger Hamley’s praises.

  ‘Such a fine-looking young man, and so courteous and affable. Like the young men of our youth now, is he not, sister? And yet they all say Mr. Osborne is the handsomest. What do you think, child?’

  ‘I’ve never seen Mr. Osborne,’ said Molly, blushing, and hating herself for doing so. Why was it? She had never seen him, as she said. It was only that her fancy had dwelt on him so much.

  He was gone—all the gentlemen were gone before the carriage, which came to fetch Molly on Thursday, reached Hamley Hall. But Molly was almost glad, she was so much afraid of being disappointed. Besides, she had her dear Mrs. Hamley the more to herself; the quiet sit in the morning-room, talking poetry and romance; the midday saunter into the garden, brilliant with autumnal flowers and glittering dewdrops on the gossamer webs that stretched from scarlet to blue, and thence to purple and yellow petals. As they were sitting at lunch, a strange man’s voice and step were heard in the hall; the door was opened, and a young man came in, who could be no other than Osborne. He was beautiful and languid-looking, almost as frail in appearance as his mother, whom he strongly resembled. This seeming delicacy made him appear older than he was. He was dressed to perfection, and yet with easy carelessness. He came up to his mother, and stood by her, holding her hand, while his eyes sought Molly, not boldly or impertinently, but as if appraising her critically.

  ‘Yes! I’m back again. Bullocks, I find, are not in my line. I only disappointed my father in not being able to appreciate their merits, and, I’m afraid, I didn’t care to learn. And the smell was insufferable on such a hot day.’

  ‘My dear boy, don’t make apologies to me; keep them for your father. I’m only too glad to have you back. Miss Gibson, this tall fellow is my son Osborne, as I dare say you have guessed. Osborne—Miss Gibson. Now, what will you have?’

  He looked round the table as he sat down. ‘Nothing here,’ said he. ‘Isn’t there some cold game-pie? I’ll ring for that.’

  Molly was trying to reconcile the ideal with the real. The ideal was agile, yet powerful, with Greek features and an eagle-eye, capable of enduring long fasting, and indifferent as to what he ate. The real was almost effeminate in movement, though not in figure; he had the Greek features, but his blue eyes had a cold, weary expression in them. He was dainty in eating, and had anything but a Homeric appetite. However, Molly’s hero was not to eat more than Ivanhoe,ar when he was Friar Tuck’s guest; and, after all, with a little alteration, she began to think Mr. Osborne Hamley might turn out a poetical, if not a chivalrous hero. He was extremely attentive to his mother, which pleased Molly, and, in return, Mrs. Hamley seemed charmed with him to such a degree that Molly once or twice fancied that mother and son would have been happier in her absence. Yet, again, it struck on the shrewd, if simple girl, that Osborne was mentally squinting at her in the conversation which was directed to his mother. There were little turns and fioritureas of speech which Molly could not help feeling were graceful antics of language not common in the simple daily intercourse between mother and son. But it was flattering rather than otherwise to perceive that a very fine young man, who was a poet to boot, should think it worth while to talk on the tight-rope for her benefit. And before the afternoon was ended, without there having been any direct conversation between Osborne and Molly, she had reinstated him on his throne in her imagination; indeed, she had almost felt herself disloyal to her dear Mrs. Hamley when, in the first hour after her introduction, she had questioned his claims on his mother’s idolatry. His beauty came out more and more, as he became animated in some discussion with her; and all his attitudes, if a little studied, were graceful in the extreme. Before Molly left, the squire and Roger returned from Canonbury.

  ‘Osborne here!’ said the squire, red and panting. ‘Why the deuce couldn’t you tell us you were coming home? I looked about for you everywhere, just as we were going into the ordinary. I wanted to introduce you to Grantley, and Fox, and Lord Forrest—men from the other side of the county, whom you ought to know; and Roger there missed above half his dinner hunting about for you; and all the time you’d stole away, and were quietly sitting here with the women. I wish you’d let me know the next time you make off. I’ve lost half my pleasure in looking at as fine a lot of cattle as I ever saw with thinking you might be having one of your old attacks of faintness.’

  ‘I should have had one, I think, if I’d stayed longer in that atmosphere. But I’m sorry if I’ve caused you anxiety’

  ‘Well! well!’ said the squire, somewhat mollified. ‘And Roger, too,—there I’ve been sending him here and sending him there all the afternoon.’

  ‘I didn’t mind it, sir. I was only sorry you were so uneasy. I thought Osborne had gone home, for I knew it wasn’t much in his way,’ said Roger.

  Molly intercepted a glance between the two brothers—a look of true confidence and love, which suddenly made her like them both under the aspect of relationship—new to her observation.

  Roger came up to her, and sat down by her.

  ‘Well, and how are you getting on with Huber; don’t you find him very interesting?’

  ‘I’m afraid,’ said Molly, penitently, ‘I haven’t read much. Miss Brownings like me to talk; and, besides, there is so much to do at home before papa comes back; and Miss Browning doesn’t like me to go without her. I know it sounds nothing, but it does take up a great deal of time.’

  ‘When is your father coming back?’

  ‘Next Tuesday, I believe. He cannot stay long away.’

 
‘I shall ride over and pay my respects to Mrs. Gibson,’ said he. ‘I shall come as soon as I may. Your father has been a very kind friend to me ever since I was a boy. And when I come, I shall expect my pupil to have been very diligent,’ he concluded, smiling his kind, pleasant smile at idle Molly.

  Then the carriage came round, and she had the long solitary drive back to Miss Brownings’. It was dark out of doors when she got there; but Miss Phoebe was standing on the stairs, with a lighted candle in her hand, peering into the darkness to see Molly come in.

  ‘Oh, Molly! I thought you’d never come back. Such a piece of news! Sister has gone to bed; she’s had a headache—with the excitement, I think; but she says it’s new bread. Come upstairs softly, my dear, and I’ll tell you what it is! Who do you think has been here,—drinking tea with us, too, in the most condescending manner?’

  ‘Lady Harriet?’ said Molly, suddenly enlightened by the word ‘condescending.’

  ‘Yes. Why, how did you guess it? But, after all, her call, at any rate in the first instance, was upon you. Oh, dear Molly! if you’re not in a hurry to go to bed, let me sit down quietly and tell you all about it; for my heart jumps into my mouth still when I think of how I was caught. She—that is, her ladyship—left the carriage at “The George,” and took to her feet to go shopping—just as you or I may have done many a time in our lives. And sister was taking her forty winks; and I was sitting with my gown up above my knees and my feet on the fender, pulling out my grandmother’s lace which I’d been washing. The worst has yet to be told. I’d taken off my cap, for I thought it was getting dusk and no one would come, and there was I in my black silk skull-cap, when Nancy put her head in, and whispered, “There’s a lady downstairs—a real grand one, by her talk;” and in there came my Lady Harriet, so sweet and pretty in her ways, it was some time before I forgot I had never a cap on. Sister never wakened; or never roused up, so to say. She says she thought it was Nancy bringing in the tea when she heard some one moving; for her ladyship, as soon as she saw the state of the case, came and knelt down on the rug by me, and begged my pardon so prettily for having followed Nancy upstairs without waiting for permission; and was so taken by my old lace, and wanted to know how I washed it, and where you were, and when you’d be back, and when the happy couple would be back: till sister wakened—she’s always a little bit put out, you know, when she first wakens from her afternoon nap,—and, without turning her head to see who it was, she said, quite sharp,—“Buzz, buzz, buzz! When will you learn that whispering is more fidgeting than talking out aloud? I’ve not been able to sleep at all for the chatter you and Nancy have been keeping up all this time.” You know that was a little fancy of sister’s, for she’d been snoring away as naturally as could be. So I went to her, and leant over her, and said in a low voice,—

  ‘ “Sister, it’s her ladyship and me that has been conversing.”

  “ ‘Ladyship here, ladyship there! have you lost your wits, Phoebe, that you talk such nonsense—and in your skull-cap, too!”

  ‘By this time she was sitting up—and, looking round her, she saw Lady Harriet, in her velvets and silks, sitting on our rug, smiling, her bonnet off, and her pretty hair all bright with the blaze of the fire. My word! sister was up on her feet directly; and she dropped her curtsy, and made her excuses for sleeping, as fast as might be, while I went off to put on my best cap, for sister might well say I was out of my wits to go on chatting to an earl’s daughter in an old black silk skull-cap. Black silk, too! when if I’d only known she was coming, I might have put on my new brown silk, lying idle in my top drawer. And when I came back, sister was ordering tea for her ladyship,—our tea, I mean. So I took my turn at talk, and sister slipped out to put on her Sunday silk. But I don’t think we were quite so much at our ease with her ladyship as when I sat pulling out my lace in my skull-cap. And she was quite struck with our tea, and asked where we got it, for she had never tasted any like it before; and I told her we gave only 3s. 4d. a pound for it at Johnson’s—(sister says I ought to have told her the price of our company-tea, which is 5s. a pound, only that was not what we were drinking; for, as ill-luck would have it, we’d none of it in the house)—and she said she would send us some of hers, all the way from Russia or Prussia, or some out-of-the-way place, and we were to compare and see which we liked best; and if we liked hers best, she could get it for us at 3s. a pound. And she left her love for you; and, though she was going away, you were not to forget her. Sister thought such a message would set you up too much, and told me she would not be chargeable for the giving it you. “But,” I said, “a message is a message, and it’s on Molly’s own shoulders if she’s set up by it. Let us show her an example of humility, sister, though we have been sitting cheek-by-jowl in such company.” So sister humphed, and said she’d a headache, and went to bed. And now you may tell me your news, my dear.’

  So Molly told her small events; which, interesting as they might have been at other times to the gossip-loving and sympathetic Miss Phoebe, were rather pale in the stronger light reflected from the visit of an earl’s daughter.

  CHAPTER 15

  The New Mamma

  On Tuesday afternoon Molly returned home—to the home which was already strange, and what Warwickshire people would call ‘unked,’at to her. New paint, new paper, new colours; grim servants dressed in their best, and objecting to every change—from their master’s marriage to the new oilcloth in the hall, ‘which tripped em up, and threw ’em down, and was cold to the feet, and smelt just abominable.’ All these complaints Molly had to listen to, and it was not a cheerful preparation for the reception which she already felt to be so formidable.

  The sound of the carriage-wheels was heard at last, and Molly went to the front door to meet them. Her father got out first, and took her hand and held it while he helped his bride to alight. Then he kissed her fondly, and passed her on to his wife; but her veil was so securely (and becomingly) fastened down, that it was some time before Mrs. Gibson could get her lips clear to greet her new daughter. Then there was luggage to be seen about; and both the travellers were occupied in this, while Molly stood by trembling with excitement, unable to help, and only conscious of Betty’s rather cross looks, as heavy box after heavy box jammed up the passage.

  ‘Molly, my dear, show—your mamma to her room!’

  Mr. Gibson had hesitated, because the question of the name by which Molly was to call her new relation had never occurred to him before. The colour flashed into Molly’s face. Was she to call her ‘mamma’?—the name long appropriated in her mind to some one else—to her own dead mother. The rebellious heart rose against it, but she said nothing. She led the way upstairs, Mrs. Gibson turning round, from time to time, with some fresh direction as to which bag or trunk she needed most. She hardly spoke to Molly till they were both in the newly-furnished bedroom, where a small fire had been lighted by Molly’s orders.

  ‘Now, my love, we can embrace each other in peace. 0 dear, how tired I am!’—(after the embrace had been accomplished). ‘My spirits are so easily affected with fatigue; but your dear papa has been kindness itself. Dear! what an old-fashioned bed! And what a—but it doesn’t signify. By and by we’ll renovate the house—won’t we, my dear? And you’ll be my little maid to-night, and help me to arrange a few things, for I’m just worn out with the day’s journey.’

  ‘I’ve ordered a sort of tea-dinner to be ready for you,’ said Molly. ‘Shall I go and tell them to send it in?’

  ‘I’m not sure if I can go down again to-night. It would be very comfortable to have a little table brought in here, and sit in my dressing-gown by this cheerful fire. But, to be sure, there’s your dear papa? I really don’t think he would eat anything if I were not there. One must not think about oneself, you know. Yes, I’ll come down in a quarter of an hour.’

  But Mr. Gibson had found a note awaiting him, with an immediate summons to an old patient, dangerously ill; and, snatching a mouthful of food while his horse was being saddled, he
had to resume at once his old habits of attention to his profession above everything.

  As soon as Mrs. Gibson found that he was not likely to miss her presence—he had eaten a very tolerable lunch of bread and cold meat in solitude, so her fears about his appetite in her absence were not well founded—she desired to have her meal upstairs in her own room; and poor Molly, not daring to tell the servants of this whim, had to carry up first a table, which, however small, was too heavy for her; and afterwards all the choice portions of the meal, which she had taken great pains to arrange on the table, as she had seen such things done at Hamley, intermixed with fruit and flowers that had that morning been sent in from various great houses where Mr. Gibson was respected and valued. How pretty Molly had thought her handiwork an hour or two before! How dreary it seemed as, at last released from Mrs. Gibson’s conversation, she sat down in solitude to cold tea and the drumsticks of the chicken! No one to look at her preparations, and admire her defthandedness and taste! She had thought that her father would be gratified by it, and then he had never seen it. She had meant her cares as an offering of goodwill to her stepmother, who even now was ringing her bell to have the tray taken away, and Miss Gibson summoned to her bedroom.

  Molly hastily finished her meal, and went upstairs again.

  ‘I feel so lonely, darling, in this strange house; do come and be with me, and help me to unpack. I think your dear papa might have put off his visit to Mr. Craven Smith for just this one evening.’

  ‘Mr. Craven Smith couldn’t put off his dying,’ said Molly, bluntly.

  ‘You droll girl!’ said Mrs. Gibson, with a faint laugh. ‘But if this Mr. Smith is dying, as you say, what’s the use of your father’s going off to him in such a hurry? Does he expect any legacy, or anything of that kind?’