Wives and Daughters (106 page)

‘You may see my letter, mamma,’ said Molly, ‘there is really nothing in it.’

‘And to think of her writing, and crossing to you
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who don’t value it, while my poor heart is yearning after my lost child! Really, life is somewhat hard to bear at times.’

Then there was silence-for a while.

‘Do tell me something about your visit, Molly. Is Roger very broken-hearted? Does he talk much about Cynthia?’

‘No. He does not mention her often; hardly ever, I think.’

‘I never thought he had much feeling. If he had had, he would not have let her go so easily.’

‘I don’t see how he could help it. When he came to see her after his return, she was already engaged to Mr. Henderson-he had come down that very day,’ said Molly, with perhaps more heat than the occasion required.

‘My poor head!’ said Mrs. Gibson, putting her hands up to her head. ‘One may see you’ve been stopping with people of robust health, and-excuse my saying it, Molly, of your friends-of unrefined habits, you’ve got to talk in so loud a voice. But do remember my head, Molly. So Roger has quite forgotten Cynthia, has he? Oh! what inconstant creatures men are! He will be falling in love with some grandee next, mark my words! They are making a pet and a lion of him, and he’s just the kind of weak young man to have his head turned by it all; and to propose to some fine lady of rank, who would no more think of marrying him than of marrying her footman.’

‘I don’t think it is likely,’ said Molly, stoutly. ‘Roger is too sensible for anything of the kind.’

‘That’s just the fault I always found with him; sensible and cold-hearted! Now, that’s a kind of character which may be very valuable, but which revolts me. Give me warmth of heart, even with a little of that extravagance of feeling which misleads the judgment, and conducts into romance. Poor Mr. Kirkpatrick! That was just his character. I used to tell him that his love for me was quite romantic. I think I have told you about his walking five miles in the rain to get me a muffin once when I was ill?’

‘Yes!’ said Molly. ‘It was very kind of him.’

‘So imprudent, too! Just what one of your sensible, cold-hearted, commonplace people would never have thought of doing. With his cough and all.’

‘I hope he didn’t suffer for it?’ replied Molly, anxious at any cost to keep off the subject of the Hamleys, upon which she and her stepmother always disagreed, and on which she found it difficult to keep her temper.

‘Yes, indeed, he did! I don’t think he ever got over the cold he caught that day. I wish you had known him, Molly. I sometimes wonder what would have happened if you had been my real daughter, and Cynthia dear papa’s, and Mr. Kirkpatrick and your own dear mother had all lived. People talk a good deal about natural affinities. It would have been a question for a philosopher.’ She began to think on the impossibilities she had suggested.

‘I wonder how the poor little boy is?’ said Molly, after a pause, speaking out her thought.

‘Poor little child! When one thinks how little his prolonged existence is to be desired, one feels that his death would be a boon.’

‘Mamma! what do you mean?’ asked Molly, much shocked. ‘Why, every one cares for his life as the most precious thing! You have never seen him! He is the bonniest, sweetest little fellow that can be! What do you mean?’

‘I should have thought that the squire would have desired a better-born heir than the offspring of a servant,—with all his ideas about descent and blood and family. And I should have thought that it was a little mortifying to Roger-who must naturally have looked upon himself as his brother’s heir-to find a little interloping child, half French, half English, stepping into his shoes!’

‘You don’t know how fond they are of him,—the squire looks upon him as the apple of his eye.’

‘Molly! Molly! pray don’t let me hear you using such vulgar expressions. When shall I teach you true refinement—that refinement which consists in never even thinking a vulgar, commonplace thing! Proverbs and idioms are never used by people of education. “Apple of his eye!” I am really shocked.’

‘Well, mamma, I’m very sorry; but after all, what I wanted to say as strongly as I could was, that the squire loves the little boy as much as his own child; and that Roger-oh! what a shame to think that Roger-’ And she stopped suddenly short, as if she were choked.

‘I don’t wonder at your indignation, my dear!’ said Mrs. Gibson. ‘It is just what I should have felt at your age. But one learns the baseness of human nature with advancing years. I was wrong, though, to undeceive you so early—but depend upon it, the thought I alluded to has crossed Roger Hamley’s mind!’

‘All sorts of thoughts cross one’s mind—it depends upon whether one gives them harbour and encouragement,’ said Molly

‘My dear, if you must have the last word, don’t let it be a truism. But let us talk on some more interesting subject. I asked Cynthia to buy me a silk gown in Paris, and I said I would send her word what colour I fixed upon—I think dark blue is the most becoming to my complexion; what do you say?’

Molly agreed, sooner than take the trouble of thinking about the thing at all; she was far too full of her silent review of all the traits in Roger’s character which had lately come under her notice, and that gave the lie direct to her stepmother’s supposition. Just then they heard Mr. Gibson’s step downstairs. But it was some time before he made his entrance into the room where they were sitting.

‘How is little Roger?’ said Molly, eagerly.

‘Beginning with scarlet fever, I’m afraid. It’s well you left when you did, Molly. You’ve never had it. We must stop up all intercourse with the Hall for a time. If there’s one illness I dread, it is this.’

‘But you go and come back to us, papa.’

‘Yes. But I always take plenty of precautions. However, no need to talk about risks that lie in the way of one’s duty. It is unnecessary risks that we must avoid.’

‘Will he have it badly?’ asked Molly

‘I can’t tell. I shall do my best for the wee laddie.’

Whenever Mr. Gibson’s feelings were touched, he was apt to recur to the language of his youth. Molly knew now that he was much interested in the case.

For some days there was imminent danger to the little boy; for some weeks there was a more chronic form of illness to contend with; but when the immediate danger was over and the warm daily interest was past, Molly began to realize that, from the strict quarantine her father evidently thought it necessary to establish between the two houses, she was not likely to see Roger again before his departure for Africa. Oh! if she had but made more of the uncared-for days that she had passed with him at the Hall! Worse than uncared for; days on which she had avoided him; refused to converse freely with him; given him pain by her change of manner; for she had read in his eyes, heard in his voice, that he had been perplexed and pained, and now her imagination dwelt on and exaggerated the expression of his tones and looks.

One evening after dinner, her father said,—

‘As the country-people say, I’ve done a stroke of work to-day Roger Hamley and I have laid our heads together and we’ve made a plan by which Mrs. Osborne and her boy will leave the Hall.’

‘What did I say the other day, Molly?’ said Mrs. Gibson, interrupting, and giving Molly a look of extreme intelligence.

‘And go into lodgings at Jennings’ farm; not four hundred yards from the Park-field gate,’ continued Mr. Gibson.‘The squire and his daughter-in-law have got to be much better friends over the little fellow’s sick-bed; and I think he sees now how impossible it would be for the mother to leave her child, and go and be happy in France, which has been the notion running in his head all this time. To buy her off, in fact. But that one night, when I was very uncertain whether I could bring him through, they took to crying together, and condoling with each other; and it was just like tearing down a curtain that had been between them; they have been rather friends than otherwise ever since. Still, Roger’-(Molly’s cheeks grew warm and her eyes soft and bright; it was such a pleasure to hear his name)-‘and I both agree that his mother knows much better how to manage the boy than his grandfather does. I suppose that was the one good thing she got from that hard-hearted mistress of hers. She certainly has been well trained in the management of children. And it makes her impatient, and annoyed, and unhappy, when she sees the squire giving the child nuts and ale, and all sorts of silly indulgences, and spoiling him in every possible way. Yet she’s a coward, and doesn’t speak out her mind. Now by being in lodgings, and having her own servants—nice pretty rooms they are, too; we went to see them, and Mrs. Jennings promises to attend well to Mrs. Osborne Hamley, and is very much honoured, and all that sort of thing-not ten minutes’ walk from the Hall, too, so that she and the little chap may easily go backwards and forwards as often as they like, and yet she may keep the control over the child’s discipline and diet. In short, I think I’ve done a good day’s work,’ he continued, stretching himself a little; and then with a shake rousing himself, and making ready to go out again, to see a patient who had sent for him in his absence.

‘A good day’s work!’ he repeated to himself as he ran downstairs. ‘I don’t know when I have been so happy!’ For he had not told Molly all that had passed between him and Roger. Roger had begun a fresh subject of conversation just as Mr. Gibson was hastening away from the Hall, after completing the new arrangement for Aimée and her child.

‘You know that I set off next Tuesday, Mr. Gibson, don’t you?’ said Roger, a little abruptly.

‘To be sure. I hope you’ll be as successful in all your scientific objects as you were the last time, and have no sorrows awaiting you when you come back.’

‘Thank you. Yes. I hope so. You don’t think there’s any danger of infection now, do you?’

‘No! If the disease were to spread through the household, I think we should have had some signs of it before now. One is never sure, remember, with scarlet fever.’

Roger was silent for a minute or two. ‘Should you be afraid,’ he said at length, ‘of seeing me at your house?’

‘Thank you; but I think I would rather decline the pleasure of your society there at present. It’s only three weeks or a month since the child began. Besides, I shall be over here again before you go. I’m always on my guard against symptoms of dropsy. I have known it supervene.’

‘Then I shall not see Molly again!’ said Roger, in a tone and with a look of great disappointment.

Mr. Gibson turned his keen, observant eyes upon the young man, and looked at him in as penetrating a manner as if he had been beginning with an unknown illness. Then the doctor and the father compressed his lips and gave vent to a long intelligent whistle. ‘Whew!’ said he.

Roger’s bronzed cheeks took a deeper shade.

‘You will take a message to her from me, won’t you? A message of farewell!’ he pleaded.

‘Not I. I’m not going to be a message-carrier between any young man and young woman. I’ll tell my womenkind I forbade you to come near the house, and that you’re sorry to go away without bidding good-bye. That’s all I shall say.’

‘But you do not disapprove?—I see you guess why. Oh! Mr. Gibson, just speak to me one word of what must be in your heart, though you are pretending not to understand why I would give worlds to see Molly again before I go.’

‘My dear boy!’ said Mr. Gibson, more affected than he liked to show, and laying his hand on Roger’s shoulder. Then he pulled himself up, and said gravely enough,—

‘Mind, Molly is not Cynthia. If she were to care for you, she is not one who could transfer her love to the next comer.’

‘You mean not as readily as I have done,’ replied Roger. ‘I only wish you could know what a different feeling this is to my boyish love for Cynthia.’

‘I wasn’t thinking of you when I spoke; but, however, as I might have remembered afterwards that you were not a model of constancy, let us hear what you have to say for yourself.’

‘Not much. I did love Cynthia very much. Her manners and her beauty bewitched me; but her letters,-short, hurried letters,—sometimes showing that she really hadn’t taken the trouble to read mine through,—I cannot tell you the pain they gave me! Twelve months’ solitude, in frequent danger of one’s life—face to face with death-sometimes ages a man like many years’ experience. Still I longed for the time when I should see her sweet face again, and hear her speak. Then the letter at the Cape!—and still I hoped. But you know how I found her, when I went to have the interview which I trusted might end in the renewal of our relations,-engaged to Mr. Henderson. I saw her walking with him in your garden, coquetting with him about a flower, just as she used to do with me. I can see the pitying look in Molly’s eyes as she watched me; I can see it now. And I could beat myself for being such a blind fool as to- What must she think of me? how she must despise me, choosing the false Duessa.’
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‘Come, come! Cynthia isn’t so bad as that. She’s a very fascinating, faulty creature.’

‘I know! I know! I will never allow any one to say a word against her. If I called her the false Duessa it was because I wanted to express my sense of the difference between her and Molly as strongly as I could. You must allow for a lover’s exaggeration. Besides, all I wanted to say was,-Do you think that Molly, after seeing and knowing that I had loved a person so inferior to herself, could ever be brought to listen to me?’

‘I don’t know. I can’t tell. And even if I could, I wouldn’t. Only if it’s any comfort to you, I may say what my experience has taught me. Women are queer, unreasoning creatures, and are just as likely as not to love a man who has been throwing away his affection.’

‘Thank you, sir!’ said Roger, interrupting him. ‘I see you mean to give me encouragement. And I had resolved never to give Molly a hint of what I felt till I returned,—and then to try and win her by every means in my power. I determined not to repeat the former scene in the former place,—in your drawing-room,-however, I might be tempted. And perhaps, after all, she avoided me when she was here last.’