Wives and Daughters (18 page)

‘Ah! but it was not a lesson. I remember the painter, Mr. Green, once saw Osborne reading some poetry, while Roger was trying to persuade him to come out and have a ride in the hay-cart—that was the “motive” of the picture, to speak artistically. Roger is not much of a reader; at least, he doesn’t care for poetry, and books of romance, or sentiment. He is so fond of natural history; and that takes him, like the squire, a great deal out of doors; and when he is in, he is always reading scientific books that bear upon his pursuits. He is a good, steady fellow, though, and gives us great satisfaction, but he is not likely to have such a brilliant career as Osborne.’

Molly tried to find out in the picture the characteristics of the two boys as they were now explained to her by their mother; and in questions and answers about the various drawings hung round the room the time passed away until the dressing-bell rang for the six o’clock dinner.

Molly was rather dismayed by the offers of the maid whom Mrs. Hamley had sent to assist her. ‘I am afraid they expect me to be very smart,’ she kept thinking to herself. ‘If they do, they’ll be disappointed; that’s all. But I wish my plaid silk gown had been ready.’

She looked at herself in the glass with some anxiety, for the first time in her life. She saw a slight, lean figure, promising to be tall; a complexion browner than cream-coloured, although in a year or two it might have that tint; plentiful curly black hair, tied up in a bunch behind with a rose-coloured ribbon; long, almond-shaped, soft grey eyes, shaded both above and below by curling black eyelashes.

‘I don’t think I am pretty,’ thought Molly, as she turned away from the glass; ‘and yet I am not sure.’ She would have been sure, if, instead of inspecting herself with such solemnity, she had smiled her own sweet merry smile, and called out the gleam of her teeth, and the charm of her dimples.

She found her way downstairs into the drawing-room in good time; she could look about her, and learn how to feel at home in her new quarters. The room was forty feet long or so, fitted up with yellow satin at some distant period; high spindle-legged chairs and pembroke tables abounded. The carpet was of the same date as the curtains, and was threadbare in many places; and in others was covered with drugget. Stands of plants, great jars of flowers; old Indian China and cabinets gave the room the pleasant aspect it certainly had. And to add to it, there were five high, long windows on one side of the room, all opening to the prettiest bit of flower-garden in the grounds—or what was considered as such—brilliant—coloured, geometrically-shaped beds converging to a sundial in the midst. The squire came in abruptly, and in his morning dress; he stood at the door, as if surprised at the white-robed stranger in possession of his hearth. Then, suddenly remembering himself, but not before Molly had begun to feel very hot, he said—

‘Why, God bless my soul, I’d quite forgotten you; you’re Miss Gibson, Gibson’s daughter, aren’t you? Come to pay us a visit? I’m sure I’m very glad to see you, my dear.’

By this time, they had met in the middle of the room, and he was shaking Molly’s hand with vehement friendliness, intended to make up for his not knowing her at first.

‘I must go and dress, though,’ said he, looking at his soiled gaiters. ‘Madam likes it. It’s one of her fine London ways, and she’s broken me into it at last. Very good plan, though, and quite right to make oneself fit for ladies’ society. Does your father dress for dinner, Miss Gibson?’ He did not stay to wait for her answer, but hastened away to perform his toilette.

They dined at a small table in a great large room. There were so few articles of furniture in it, and the apartment itself was so vast, that Molly longed for the snugness of the home dining-room; nay, it is to be feared that, before the stately dinner at Hamley Hall came to an end, she even regretted the crowded chairs and tables, the hurry of eating, the quick unformal manner in which everybody seemed to finish their meal as fast as possible, and to return to the work they had left. She tried to think that at six o’clock all the business of the day was ended, and that people might linger if they chose. She measured the distance from the sideboard to the table with her eye, and made allowances for the men who had to carry things backwards and forwards; but, all the same, this dinner appeared to her a wearisome business, prolonged because the squire liked it, for Mrs. Hamley seemed tired out. She ate even less than Molly, and sent for fan and smelling-bottle to amuse herself with, until at length the tablecloth was cleared away, and the dessert was put upon a mahogany table, polished like a looking-glass.

The squire had hitherto been too busy to talk, except about the immediate concerns of the table, and one or two of the greatest breaks to the usual monotony of his days; a monotony in which he delighted, but which sometimes became oppressive to his wife. Now, however, peeling his orange, he turned to Molly—

‘To-morrow, you’ll have to do this for me, Miss Gibson.’

‘Shall I? I’ll do it to-day, if you like, sir.’

‘No; to-day I shall treat you as a visitor, with all proper ceremony. To-morrow I shall send you errands, and call you by your Christian name.’

‘I shall like that,’ said Molly.

‘I was wanting to call you something less formal than Miss Gibson,’ said Mrs. Hamley.

‘My name is Molly. It is an old-fashioned name, and I was christened Mary. But papa likes Molly.’

‘That’s right. Keep to the good old fashions, my dear.’

‘Well, I must say I think Mary is prettier than Molly, and quite as old a name, too,’ said Mrs. Hamley.

‘I think it was,’ said Molly, lowering her voice, and dropping her eyes, ‘because mamma was Mary, and I was called Molly while she lived.’

‘Ah, poor thing,’ said the squire, not perceiving his wife’s signs to change the subject, ‘I remember how sorry every one was when she died; no one thought she was delicate, she had such a fresh colour, till all at once she popped off, as one may say.’

‘It must have been a terrible blow to your father,’ said Mrs. Hamley, seeing that Molly did not know what to answer.

‘Aye, aye. It came so sudden, so soon after they were married.’

‘I thought it was nearly four years,’ said Molly.

‘And four years is soon—is a short time to a couple who look to spending their lifetime together. Every one thought Gibson would have married again.’

‘Hush,’ said Mrs. Hamley, seeing in Molly’s eyes and change of colour how completely this was a new idea to her. But the squire was not so easily stopped.

‘Well—I’d perhaps better not have said it, but it’s the truth; they did. He’s not likely to marry now, so one may say it out. Why, your father is past forty, isn’t he?’

‘Forty-three. I don’t believe he ever thought of marrying again,’ said Molly, recurring to the idea, as one does to that of danger which has passed by, without one’s being aware of it.

‘No! I don’t believe he did, my dear. He looks to me just like a man who would be constant to the memory of his wife. You must not mind what the squire says.’

‘Ah! you’d better go away, if you’re going to teach Miss Gibson such treason as that against the master of the house.’

Molly went into the drawing-room with Mrs. Hamley, but her thoughts did not change with the room. She could not help dwelling on the danger which she fancied she had escaped, and was astonished at her own stupidity at never having imagined such a possibility as her father’s second marriage. She felt that she was answering Mrs. Hamley’s remarks in a very unsatisfactory manner.

‘There is papa, with the squire!’ she suddenly exclaimed. There they were coming across the flower-garden from the stable-yard, her father switching his boots with his riding-whip, in order to make them presentable in Mrs. Hamley’s drawing-room. He looked so exactly like his usual self, his home-self, that the seeing him in the flesh was the most efficacious way of dispelling the phantom fears of a second wedding, which were beginning to harass his daughter’s mind; and the pleasant conviction that he could not rest till he had come over to see how she was going on in her new home, stole into her heart, although he spoke but little to her, and that little was all in a joking tone. After he had gone away, the squire undertook to teach her cribbage, and she was happy enough now to give him all her attention. He kept on prattling while they played; sometimes in relation to the cards; at others telling her of small occurrences which he thought might interest her.

‘So you don’t know my boys, even by sight. I should have thought you would have done, for they’re fond enough of riding into Hollingford; and I know Roger has often enough been to borrow books from your father. Roger is a scientific sort of a fellow. Osborne is clever, like his mother. I shouldn’t wonder if he published a book some day. You’re not counting right, Miss Gibson. Why, I could cheat you as easily as possible.’ And so on, till the butler came in with a solemn look, placed a large prayer-book before his master, who huddled the cards away in a hurry, as if caught in an incongruous employment; and then the maids and men trooped in to prayers—the windows were still open, and the sounds of the solitary corncrake, and the owl hooting in the trees, mingled with the words spoken. Then to bed; and so ended the day.

Molly looked out of her chamber window—leaning on the sill, and snuffing up the night-odours of the honeysuckle. The soft velvet darkness hid everything that was at any distance from her; although she was as conscious of their presence as if she had seen them.

‘I think I shall be very happy here,’ was in Molly’s thoughts, as she turned away at length, and began to prepare for bed. Before long the squire’s words, relating to her father’s second marriage, came across her, and spoilt the sweet peace of her final thoughts. ‘Who could he have married?’ she asked herself. ‘Miss Eyre? Miss Browning? Miss Phoebe? Miss Goodenough?’ One by one, each of these was rejected for sufficient reasons. Yet the unsatisfied question rankled in her mind, and darted out of ambush to disturb her dreams.

Mrs. Hamley did not come down to breakfast; and Molly found out, with a little dismay, that the squire and she were to have it tête-à-tête. On the first morning he put aside his newspapers—one an old-established Tory journal, with all the local and country news, which was the most interesting to him; the other the
Morning Chronicle,
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which he called his dose of bitters, and which called out many a strong expression and tolerably pungent oath. To-day, however, he was ‘on his manners,’ as he afterwards explained to Molly; and he plunged about, trying to find ground for a conversation. He could talk of his wife and his sons, his estate, and his mode of farming; his tenants, and the mismanagement of the last county election. Molly’s interests were her father, Miss Eyre, her garden and pony; in a fainter degree Miss Brownings, the Cumnor Charity School, and the new gown that was to come from Miss Rose’s; into the midst of which the one great question, ‘Who was it that people thought it was possible papa might marry?’ kept popping up into her mouth, like a troublesome Jack-in-the-box. For the present, however, the lid was snapped down upon the intruder as often as he showed his head between her teeth. They were very polite to each other during the meal; and it was not a little tiresome to both. When it was ended the squire withdrew into his study to read the untasted newspapers. It was the custom to call the room in which Squire Hamley kept his coats, boots, and gaiters, his different sticks and favourite spud,
^aa
his gun and fishing-rods, ‘the study.’ There was a bureau in it, and a three-cornered armchair, but no books were visible. The greater part of them were kept in a large, musty-smelling room, in an unfrequented part of the house; so unfrequented that the housemaid often neglected to open the window-shutters, which looked into a part of the grounds overgrown with the luxuriant growth of shrubs. Indeed, it was a tradition in the servants’ hall that, in the late squire’s time—he who had been plucked at college—the library windows had been boarded up to avoid paying the window-tax.
^‡
And when the ‘young gentlemen’ were at home, the housemaid, without a single direction to that effect, was regular in her charge of this room; opened the windows and lighted fires daily, and dusted the handsomely-bound volumes, which were really a very fair collection of the standard literature in the middle of the last century. All the books that had been purchased since that time were held in small bookcases between each two of the drawing-room windows, and in Mrs. Hamley’s own sitting-room upstairs. Those in the drawing-room were quite enough to employ Molly; indeed she was so deep in one of Sir Walter Scott’s novels that she jumped as if she had been shot, when, an hour or so after breakfast, the squire came to the gravel-path outside one of the windows, and called to ask her if she would like to come out of doors and go about the garden and home-fields with him.

‘It must be a little dull for you, my girl, all by yourself, with nothing but books to look at, in the mornings here; but you see, madam has a fancy for being quiet in the mornings: she told your father about it, and so did I, but I felt sorry for you all the same, when I saw you sitting on the ground, all alone, in the drawing-room.’

Molly had been in the very middle of the
Bride of
Lammermoor,
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and would gladly have stayed indoors to finish it, but she felt the squire’s kindness all the same. They went in and out of old-fashioned greenhouses, over trim lawns; the squire unlocked the great walled kitchen-garden, and went about giving directions to gardeners; and all the time Molly followed him like a little dog, her mind quite full of ‘Ravenswood’ and ‘Lucy Ashton.’ Presently, every place near the house had been inspected and regulated, and the squire was more at liberty to give his attention to his companion, as they passed through the little wood that separated the gardens from the adjoining fields. Molly, too, plucked away her thoughts from the seventeenth century; and, somehow or other, that question, which had so haunted her before, came out of her lips before she was aware—a literal impromptu, —