Molly bit her lips to prevent herself from saying something disagreeable. She only answered,—
‘I don’t quite know that he is dying. The man said so; and papa can sometimes do something to make the last struggle easier. At any rate, it’s always a comfort to the family to have him.’
‘What dreary knowledge of death you have learned for a girl of your age! Really, if I had heard all these details of your father’s profession, I doubt if I could have brought myself to have him!’
‘He doesn’t make the illness or the death; he does his best against them. I call it a very fine thing to think of what he does or tries to do. And you will think so, too, when you see how he is watched for, and how people welcome him!’
‘Well, don’t let us talk any more of such gloomy things, to-night! I think I shall go to bed at once, I am so tired, if you will only sit by me till I get sleepy, darling. If you will talk to me, the sound of your voice will soon send me off.’
Molly got a book, and read her stepmother to sleep, preferring that to the harder task of keeping up a continual murmur of speech.
Then she stole down and went into the dining-room, where the fire was gone out; purposely neglected by the servants, to mark their displeasure at their new mistress’s having had her tea in her own room. Molly managed to light it, however, before her father came home, and collected and re-arranged some comfortable food for him. Then she knelt down again on the hearthrug, gazing into the fire in a dreamy reverie, which had enough of sadness about it to cause the tear to drop unnoticed from her eyes. But she jumped up, and shook herself into brightness at the sound of her father’s step.
‘How is Mr. Craven Smith?’ said she.
‘Dead. He just recognized me. He was one of my first patients on coming to Hollingford.’
Mr. Gibson sat down in the arm-chair made ready for him, and warmed his hands at the fire, seeming neither to need food nor talk, as he went over a train of recollections. Then he roused himself from his sadness, and looking round the room, he said, briskly enough,—
‘And where’s the new mamma?’
‘She was tired, and went to bed early. Oh, papa! must I call her “mamma” ?’
‘I should like it,’ replied he, with a slight contraction of the brows.
Molly was silent. She put a cup of tea near him; he stirred it, and sipped it, and then he recurred to the subject.
‘Why shouldn’t you call her “mamma”? I’m sure she means to do the duty of a mother to you. We all may make mistakes, and her ways may not be quite all at once our ways; but at any rate let us start with a family bond between us.’
What would Roger say was right?—that was the question that rose to Molly’s mind. She had always spoken of her father’s new wife as Mrs. Gibson, and had once burst out at Miss Brownings’ with a protestation that she would never call her ‘mamma.’ She did not feel drawn to her new relation by their intercourse that evening. She kept silence, though she knew her father was expecting an answer. At last he gave up his expectation, and turned to another subject; told about their journey, questioned her as to the Hamleys, the Brownings, Lady Harriet, and the afternoon they had passed together at the Manor-house. But there was a certain hardness and constraint in his manner, and in hers a heaviness and absence of mind. All at once she said—
‘Papa, I will call her “mamma”!’
He took her hand, and grasped it tight; but for an instant or two he did not speak. Then he said—
‘You won’t be sorry for it, Molly, when you come to lie as poor Craven Smith did to-night.’
For some time the murmurs and grumblings of the two elder servants were confined to Molly’s ears, then they spread to her father’s, who, to Molly’s dismay, made summary work with them.
‘You don’t like Mrs. Gibson’s ringing her bell so often, don’t you? You’ve been spoilt, I’m afraid; but if you don’t conform to my wife’s desires, you have the remedy in your own hands, you know.’
What servant ever resisted the temptation to give warning after such a speech as that? Betty told Molly she was going to leave in as indifferent a manner as she could possibly assume towards the girl whom she had tended and been about for the last sixteen years. Molly had hitherto considered her former nurse as a fixture in the house; she would almost as soon have thought of her father’s proposing to sever the relationship between them; and here was Betty coolly talking over whether her next place should be in town or country. But a great deal of this was assumed hardness. In a week or two Betty was in floods of tears at the prospect of leaving her nursling, and would fain have stayed and answered all the bells in the house once every quarter of an hour. Even Mr. Gibson’s masculine heart was touched by the sorrow of the old servant, which made itself obvious to him every time he came across her by her broken voice and her swollen eyes.
One day he said to Molly, ‘I wish you’d ask your mamma if Betty might not stay if she made a proper apology and all that sort of thing.’
‘I don’t much think it will be of any use,’ said Molly, in a mournful voice. ‘I know she is writing, or has written, about some under-housemaid at the Towers.’
‘Well!—all I want is peace and a decent quantity of cheerfulness when I come home. I see enough of tears at other people’s houses. After all, Betty has been with us sixteen years—a sort of service of the antique world. But the woman may be happier elsewhere. Do as you like about asking mamma; only if she agrees, I shall be quite willing.’
So Molly tried her hand at making a request to that effect to Mrs. Gibson. Her instinct told her she should be unsuccessful; but surely favour was never refused in so soft a tone.
‘My dear girl, I should never have thought of sending an old servant away—one who has had the charge of you from your birth, or nearly so. I could not have had the heart to do it. She might have stayed for ever for me, if she had only attended to all my wishes; and I am not unreasonable, am I? But, you see, she complained; and when your dear papa spoke to her, she gave warning; and it is quite against my principles ever to take an apology from a servant who has given warning.’
‘She is so sorry,’ pleaded Molly; ‘she says she will do anything you wish, and attend to all your orders, if she may only stay.’
‘But, sweet one, you seem to forget that I cannot go against my principles, however much I may be sorry for Betty. She should not have given way to ill-temper, as I said before; although I never liked her, and considered her a most inefficient servant, thoroughly spoilt by having had no mistress for so long, I should have borne with her—at least, I think I should—as long as I could. Now I have all but engaged Maria, who was under-housemaid at the Towers, so don’t let me hear any more of Betty’s sorrow, or anybody else’s sorrow, for I’m sure, what with your dear papa’s sad stories and other things, I’m getting quite low.’
Molly was silent for a moment or two.
‘Have you quite engaged Maria?’ asked she.
‘No—I said “all but engaged.” Sometimes one would think you did not hear things, dear Molly!’ replied Mrs. Gibson, petulantly. ‘Maria is living in a place where they don’t give her as much wages as she deserves. Perhaps they can’t afford it, poor things! I’m always sorry for poverty, and would never speak hardly of those who are not rich; but I have offered her two pounds more than she gets at present, so I think she’ll leave. At any rate, if they increase her wages, I shall increase my offer in proportion; so I think I’m sure to get her. Such a genteel girl!—always brings in a letter on a salver!’
‘Poor Betty!’ said Molly softly.
‘Poor old soul! I hope she’ll profit by the lesson, I’m sure,’ sighed out Mrs. Gibson; ‘but it’s a pity we hadn’t Maria before the county families began to call.’
Mrs. Gibson had been highly gratified by the circumstance of so many calls ‘from county families.’ Her husband was much respected; and many ladies from various halls, courts, and houses, who had profited by his services towards themselves and their familie
s, thought it right to pay his new wife the attention of a call when they drove into Hollingford to shop. The state of expectation into which these calls threw Mrs. Gibson rather diminished Mr. Gibson’s domestic comfort. It was awkward to be carrying hot, savoury-smelling dishes from the kitchen to the dining-room at the very time when high-born ladies, with noses of aristocratic refinement, might be calling. Still more awkward was the accident which happened in consequence of clumsy Betty’s haste to open the front door to a lofty footman’s ran-tan, which caused her to set down the basket containing dirty plates right in his mistress’s way, as she stepped gingerly through the comparative darkness of the hall; and then the young men, leaving the dining-room quietly enough, but bursting with long-repressed giggle, or no longer restraining their tendency to practical joking, no matter who might be in the passage when they made their exit. The remedy proposed by Mrs. Gibson for all these distressing grievances was a late dinner. The luncheon for the young men, as she observed to her husband, might be sent into the surgery. A few elegant cold trifles for herself and Molly would not scent the house and she would always take care to have some little dainty ready for him. He acceded, but unwillingly, for it was an innovation on the habits of a lifetime, and he felt as if he should never be able to arrange his rounds aright with this new-fangled notion of a six o’clock dinner.
‘Don’t get any dainties for me, my dear; bread-and-cheese is the chief of my diet, like it was that of the old woman’s.’
‘I know nothing of your old woman,’ replied his wife; ‘but really I cannot allow cheese to come beyond the kitchen.’
‘Then I’ll eat it there,’ said he. ‘It’s close to the stable-yard, and if I come in in a hurry I can get it in a moment.’
‘Really, Mr. Gibson, it is astonishing to compare your appearance and manners with your tastes. You look such a gentleman, as dear Lady Cumnor used to say.’
Then the cook left; also an old servant, though not so old a one as Betty. The cook did not like the trouble of late dinners; and, being a Methodist, she objected on religious grounds to trying any of Mrs. Gibson’s new receipts for French dishes. It was not scriptural, she said. There was a deal of mention of food in the Bible; but it was of sheep ready dressed, which meant mutton, and of wine, and of bread-and-milk, and figs and raisins, of fatted calves, a good well-browned fillet of veal, and such-like; but it had always gone against her conscience to cook swine-flesh and make raised pork-pies, and now if she was to be set to cook heathen dishes after the fashion of the Papists, she’d sooner give it all up together. So the cook followed in Betty’s track, and Mr. Gibson had to satisfy his healthy English appetite on badly-made omelettes, rissoles, vol-au-vents, croquets, and timbales; never being exactly sure what he was eating.
He had made up his mind before his marriage to yield in trifles, and be firm in greater things. But the differences of opinion about trifles arose every day, and were perhaps more annoying than if they had related to things of more consequence. Molly knew her father’s looks as well as she knew her alphabet; his wife did not; and being an unperceptive person, except when her own interests were dependent upon another person’s humour, never found out how he was worried by all the small daily concessions which he made to her will or her whims. He never allowed himself to put any regret into shape, even in his own mind; he repeatedly reminded himself of his wife’s good qualities, and comforted himself by thinking they should work together better as time rolled on; but he was very angry at a bachelor great-uncle of Mr. Coxe’s, who, after taking no notice of his red-headed nephew for years, suddenly sent for him, after the old man had partially recovered from a serious attack of illness, and appointed him his heir on condition that his great-nephew remained with him during the remainder of his life. This had happened almost directly after Mr. and Mrs. Gibson’s return from their wedding journey, and once or twice since that time Mr. Gibson had found himself wondering why the deuce old Benson could not have made up his mind sooner and so have rid his house of the unwelcome presence of the young lover. To do Mr. Coxe justice, in the very last conversation he had as a pupil with Mr. Gibson, he had said, with hesitating awkwardness, that perhaps the new circumstances in which he should be placed might make some difference with regard to Mr. Gibson’s opinion on—
‘Not at all,’ said Mr. Gibson, quickly. ‘You are both of you too young to know your own minds; and if my daughter was silly enough to be in love, she should never have to calculate her happiness on the chances of an old man’s death. I dare say he’ll disinherit you after all. He may do, and then you’d be worse off than ever. No! go away, and forget all this nonsense; and when you’ve done, come back and see us!’
So Mr. Coxe went away, with an oath of unalterable faithfulness in his heart; and Mr. Gibson had unwillingly to fulfil an old promise made to a gentleman farmer in the neighbourhood a year or two before, and to take the second son of Mr. Browne in young Coxe’s place. He was to be the last of the race of pupils, and he was rather more than a year younger than Molly. Mr. Gibson trusted that there would be no repetition of the Coxe romance.
CHAPTER 16
The Bride at Home
Among the ‘county people’ (as Mrs. Gibson termed them) who called upon her as a bride, were the two young Mr. Hamleys. The squire, their father, had done his congratulations, as far as he ever intended to do them, to Mr. Gibson himself when he came to the Hall; but Mrs. Hamley, unable to go and pay visits herself, anxious to show attention to her kind doctor’s new wife, and with perhaps a little sympathetic curiosity as to how Molly and her stepmother got on together, made her sons ride over to Hollingford with her cards and apologies. They came into the newly-furnished drawing-room, looking bright and fresh from their ride: Osborne first, as usual, perfectly dressed for the occasion, and with the sort of fine manner which sat so well upon him; Roger, looking like a strong-built, cheerful, intelligent country farmer, followed in his brother’s train. Mrs. Gibson was dressed for receiving callers, and made the effect she always intended to produce, of a very pretty woman, no longer in first youth, but with such soft manners and such a caressing voice, that people forgot to wonder what her real age might be. Molly was better dressed than formerly; her stepmother saw after that. She disliked anything old or shabby, or out of taste about her; it hurt her eye; and she had already fidgeted Molly into a new amount of care about the manner in which she put on her clothes, arranged her hair, and was gloved and shod. Mrs. Gibson had tried to put her through a course of rosemary washes and creams in order to improve her tanned complexion; but about that Molly was either forgetful or rebellious, and Mrs. Gibson could not well come up to the girl’s bedroom every night and see that she daubed her face and neck over with the cosmetics so carefully provided for her. Still her appearance was extremely improved, even to Osborne’s critical eye. Roger sought rather to discover in her looks and expression whether she was happy or not; his mother had especially charged him to note all these signs.
Osborne and Mrs. Gibson made themselves agreeable to each other according to the approved fashion when a young man calls on a middle-aged bride. They talked of the ‘Shakespeare and musical glasses’ of the day, each vieing with the other in their knowledge of London topics. Molly heard fragments of their conversation in the pauses of silence between Roger and herself. Her hero was coming out in quite a new character; no longer literary or poetical, or romantic or critical, he was now full of the last new play, the singers at the opera. He had the advantage over Mrs. Gibson, who, in fact, only spoke of these things from hearsay, from listening to the talk at the Towers, while Osborne had run up from Cambridge two or three times to hear this, or to see that, wonder of the season. But she had the advantage over him in greater boldness of invention to eke out her facts; and besides she had more skill in the choice and arrangement of her words, so as to make it appear as if the opinions, that were in reality quotations, were formed by herself from actual experience or personal observation; such as, in speaking of the mannerisms of a fam
ous Italian singer, she would ask—
‘Did you observe her constant trick of heaving her shoulders and clasping her hands together before she took a high note?’—which was so said as to imply that Mrs. Gibson herself had noticed this trick. Molly, who had a pretty good idea by this time of how her stepmother had passed the last year of her life, listened with no small bewilderment to this conversation; but at length decided that she must misunderstand what they were saying, as she could not gather up the missing links for the necessity of replying to Roger’s questions and remarks. Osborne was not the same Osborne he was when with his mother at the Hall.
Roger saw Molly glancing at his brother.
‘You think my brother looking ill?’ said he, lowering his voice.
‘No—not exactly.’
‘He is not well. Both my father and I are anxious about him. That run on the Continent did him harm instead of good; and his disappointment at his examination has told upon him, I’m afraid.’
‘I was not thinking he looked ill; only changed somehow.’
‘He says he must go back to Cambridge soon. Possibly it may do him good; and I shall be off next week. This is a farewell visit to you, as well as one of congratulation to Mrs. Gibson.’
‘Your mother will feel your both going away, won’t she? But of course young men will always have to live away from home.’
‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘Still she feels it a good deal; and I’m not satisfied about her health either. You will go out and see her sometimes, will you? she is very fond of you.’
‘If I may,’ said Molly, unconsciously glancing at her stepmother. She had an uncomfortable instinct that, in spite of Mrs. Gibson’s own perpetual flow of words, she could, and did, hear everything that fell from Molly’s lips.
‘Do you want any more books?’ said he. ‘If you do, make a list out, and send it to my mother before I leave, next Tuesday. After I am gone, there will be no one to go into the library and pick them out.’
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