Wives and Daughters

by Elizabeth Gaskell

  ‘Mr. Gibson and I should be so delighted if you could have stopped to dinner; but, of course, we cannot be so selfish as to ask you to stay when we remember how your father would be left alone. We were saying yesterday we wondered how he bore his solitude, poor old gentleman!’

  Or, as soon as Roger came with his bunch of early roses, it was desirable for Cynthia to go and rest in her own room, while Molly had to accompany Mrs. Gibson on some improvised errand or call. Still, Roger, whose object was to give pleasure to Cynthia, and who had, from his boyhood, been always certain of Mr. Gibson’s friendly regard, was slow to perceive that he was not wanted. If he did not see Cynthia, that was his loss; at any rate, he heard how she was, and left her some little thing which he believed she would like, and was willing to risk the chance of his own gratification by calling four or five times in the hope of seeing her once. At last there came a day when Mrs. Gibson went beyond her usual negative snubbiness, and when, in some unwonted fit of crossness, for she was a very placid-tempered person in general, she was guilty of positive rudeness.

  Cynthia was very much better. Tonics had ministered to a mind diseased, though she hated to acknowledge it; her pretty bloom and much of her light-heartedness had come back, and there was no cause remaining for anxiety. Mrs. Gibson was sitting at her embroidery in the drawing-room, and the two girls were at the window, Cynthia laughing at Molly’s earnest endeavours to imitate the French accent in which the former had been reading a page of Voltaire. For the duty, or the farce, of settling to ‘improving reading’ in the mornings was still kept up, although Lord Hollingford, the unconscious suggester of the idea, had gone back to town without making any of the efforts to see Molly again that Mrs. Gibson anticipated on the night of the ball. That Alnaschar visionco had fallen to the ground. It was as yet early morning; a delicious, fresh, lovely June day, the air redolent with the scents of flower-growth and bloom; and half the time the girls had been ostensibly employed in the French reading they had been leaning out of the open window trying to reach a cluster of climbing roses. They had secured them at last, and the buds lay on Cynthia’s lap, but many of the petals had fallen off; so, though the perfume lingered about the window-seat, the full beauty of the flowers had passed away. Mrs. Gibson had once or twice reproved them for the merry noise they were making, which hindered her in the business of counting the stitches in her pattern; and she had set herself a certain quantity to do that morning before going out, and was of that nature which attaches infinite importance to fulfilling small resolutions, made about indifferent trifles without any reason whatever.

  ‘Mr. Roger Hamley,’ was announced. ‘So tiresome!’ said Mrs. Gibson, almost in his hearing, as she pushed away her embroidery frame. She put out her cold, motionless hand to him, with a half-murmured word of welcome, still eyeing her lost embroidery. He took no apparent notice, and passed on to the window.

  ‘How delicious!’ said he. ‘No need for any more Hamley roses now yours are out.’

  ‘I agree with you,’ said Mrs. Gibson, replying to him before either Cynthia or Molly could speak, though he addressed his words to them. ‘You have been very kind in bringing us flowers so long; but now our own are out we need not trouble you any more.’

  He looked at her with a little surprise clouding his honest face; it was perhaps more at the tone than the words. Mrs. Gibson, however, had been bold enough to strike the first blow, and she determined to go on as opportunity offered. Molly would perhaps have been more pained if she had not seen Cynthia’s colour rise. She waited for her to speak, if need were; for she knew that Roger’s defence, if defence were required, might be safely entrusted to Cynthia’s ready wit.

  He put out his hand for the shattered cluster of roses that lay in Cynthia’s lap.

  ‘At any rate,’ said he, ‘my trouble—if Mrs. Gibson considers it has been a trouble to me—will be overpaid, if I may have this.’

  ‘Old lamps for new,’ said Cynthia, smiling as she gave it to him. ‘I wish one could always buy nosegays such as you have brought us, as cheaply.’

  ‘You forget the waste of time that, I think, we must reckon as part of the payment,’ said her mother. ‘Really, Mr. Hamley, we must learn to shut our doors on you if you come so often, and at such early hours! I settle myself to my own employment regularly after breakfast till lunch-time; and it is my wish to keep Cynthia and Molly to a course of improving reading and study—so desirable for young people of their age, if they are to become intelligent, companionable women; but with early visitors it is quite impossible to observe any regularity of habits.’

  All this was said in that sweet, false tone which of late had gone through Molly like the scraping of a slate-pencil on a slate. Roger’s face changed. His ruddy colour grew paler for a moment, and he looked grave and not pleased. In another moment the wonted frankness of expression returned. Why should not he, he asked himself, believe her? it was early to call; it did interrupt regular occupation. So he spoke, and said—

  ‘I believe I have been very thoughtless—I’ll not come so early again; but I had some excuse to-day; my brother told me you had made a plan for going to see Hurstwood when the roses were out, and they are earlier than usual this year—I’ve been round to see. He spoke of a long day there, going before lunch——’

  ‘The plan was made with Mr. Osborne Hamley. I could not think of going without him!’ said Mrs. Gibson, coldly.

  ‘I had a letter from him this morning, in which he named your wish, and he says he fears he cannot be at home till they are out of flower. I dare say they are not much to see in reality, but the day is so lovely I thought that the plan of going to Hurstwood would be a charming excuse for being out of doors.’

  ‘Thank you. How kind you are! and so good, too, in sacrificing your natural desire to be with your father as much as possible.’

  ‘I am glad to say my father is so much better than he was in the winter that he spends much of his time out of doors in his fields. He has been accustomed to go about alone, and I—we think that as great a return to his former habits as he can be induced to make is the best for him.’

  ‘And when do you return to Cambridge?’

  There was some hesitation in Roger’s manner as he replied—

  ‘It is uncertain. You probably know that I am a fellow of Trinity now. I hardly yet know what my future plans may be; I am thinking of going up to London soon.’

  ‘Ah! London is the true place for a young man,’ said Mrs. Gibson, with decision, as if she had reflected a good deal on the question. ‘If it were not that we really are so busy this morning, I should have been tempted to make an exception to our general rule; one more exception, for your early visits have made us make too many already. Perhaps, however, we may see you again before you go?’

  ‘Certainly I shall come,’ replied he, rising to take his leave, and still holding the demolished roses in his hand. Then, addressing himself more especially to Cynthia, he added, ‘My stay in London will not exceed a fortnight or so—is there anything I can do for you—or you?’ turning a little to Molly.

  ‘No, thank you very much,’ said Cynthia, very sweetly, and then, acting on a sudden impulse, she leant out of the window, and gathered him some half-opened roses. ‘You deserve these; do throw that poor shabby bunch away.’

  His eyes brightened, his cheeks glowed. He took the offered buds, but did not throw away the other bunch.

  ‘At any rate, I may come after lunch is over, and the afternoons and evenings will be the most delicious time of day a month hence.’ He said this to both Molly and Cynthia, but in his heart he addressed it to the latter.

  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 Hurstwood, 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 rose-buds 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 brain 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 sat and gazed idly out of the window, pouting and displeased; Mrs. Gibson, meanwhile, counting her stitches aloud with great distinctness and vigour.

  CHAPTER 29

  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 feeling 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 regarded 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’m sure she’s 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 lodestars,”cp 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 that 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 a woman; 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 biased 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 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 chaperon, 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 on 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 charingcq 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.