Wives and Daughters (29 page)

She had never spoken so long a sentence to him before; and when she had said it, though she did not take her eyes away from his, as they stood steadily looking at each other, she blushed a little; she could not have told why. Nor did he tell himself why a sudden pleasure came over him as he gazed at her simple, expressive face—and for a moment lost the sense of what she was saying, in the sensation of pity for her sad earnestness. In an instant more he was himself again. Only it is pleasant to the wisest, most reasonable youth of one or two-and-twenty to find himself looked up to as a mentor by a girl of seventeen.

‘I know, I understand. Yes: it is now we have to do with. Don’t let us go into metaphysics.’ Molly opened her eyes wide at this. Had she been talking metaphysics without knowing it? ‘One looks forward to a mass of trials, which will only have to be encountered one by one, little by little. Oh, here is my mother! she will tell you better than I can.

 

And the tête-à-tête was merged in a trio. Mrs. Hamley lay down; she had not been well all day—she had missed Molly, she said—and now she wanted to hear of all the adventures that had occurred to the girl at the Towers. Molly sat on a stool close to the head of the sofa, and Roger, though at first he took up a book and tried to read that he might be no restraint, soon found his reading all a pretence: it was so interesting to listen to Molly’s little narrative, and, besides, if he could give her any help in her time of need, was it not his duty to make himself acquainted with all the circumstances of her case?

And so they went on during all the remaining time of Molly’s stay at Hamley. Mrs. Hamley sympathized, and liked to hear details; as the French say, her sympathy was given
en detail,
the squire’s
en gros.
He was very sorry for her evident grief, and almost felt guilty, as if he had had a share in bringing it about, by the mention he had made of the possibility of Mr. Gibson’s marrying again, when first Molly came on her visit to them. He said to his wife more than once:

“Pon my word now, I wish I’d never spoken those unlucky words that first day at dinner. Do you remember how she took them up
^?
It was like a prophecy of what was to come, now, wasn’t it? And she looked pale from that day, and I don’t think she has ever fairly enjoyed her food since. I must take more care what I say for the future. Not but what Gibson is doing the very best thing, both for himself and her, that he can do. I told him so only yesterday. But I’m very sorry for the little girl, though. I wish I’d never spoken about it, that I do! but it was like a prophecy, wasn’t it?’

Roger tried hard to find out a reasonable and right method of comfort; for he, too, in his way, was sorry for the girl, who bravely struggled to be cheerful, in spite of her own private grief, for his mother’s sake. He felt as if high principle and noble precept ought to perform an immediate work. But they do not, for there is always the unknown quantity of individual experience and feeling, which offer a tacit resistance, the amount incalculable by another, to all good counsel and high decree. But the bond between the Mentor and his Telemachus
^al
strengthened every day. He endeavoured to lead her out of morbid thought into interest in other than personal things; and, naturally enough, his own objects of interests came readiest to hand. She felt that he did her good, she did not know why or how; but after a talk with him she always fancied that she had got the clue to goodness and peace, whatever befell.

M
eanwhile the love-affairs between the middle-aged couple were prospering well, after a fashion; after the fashion that they liked best, although it might probably have appeared dull and prosaic to younger people. Lord Cumnor had come down in great glee at the news he had heard from his wife at the Towers. He, too, seemed to think he had taken an active part in bringing about the match by only speaking about it. His first words on the subject to Lady Cumnor were—

‘I told you so. Now didn’t I say what a good, suitable affair this affair between Gibson and Clare would be! I don’t know when I have been so much pleased. You may despise the trade of match-maker, my lady, but I am very proud of it. After this, I shall go on looking out for suitable cases among the middle-aged people of my acquaintance. I shan’t meddle with young folks, they are so apt to be fanciful;but I have been so successful in this, that I do think it is good encouragement to go on.’

‘Go on—with what?’ asked Lady Cumnor, dryly. ‘Oh planning!’

‘You can’t deny that I planned this match.’

‘I don’t think you are likely to do either much good or harm by planning,’ she replied, with cool, good sense.

‘It puts it into people’s heads, my dear.’

‘Yes, if you speak about your plans to them, of course it does. But in this case you never spoke to either Mr. Gibson or Clare, did you?’

All at once the recollection of how Clare had come upon the passage in Lord Cumnor’s letter flashed on his lady, but she did not say anything about it, but left her husband to flounder about as best he might.

‘No! I never spoke to them; of course not.’

‘Then you must be strongly mesmeric, and your will acted upon theirs, if you are to take credit for any part in the affair,’ continued his pitiless wife.

‘I really can’t say. It’s no use looking back to what I said or did. I’m very well satisfied with it, and that’s enough, and I mean to show them how much I’m pleased. I shall give Clare something towards her rigging-out, and they shall have a breakfast at Ashcombe Manor-house. I’ll write to Preston about it. When did you say they were to be married?’

‘I think they’d better wait till Christmas, and I have told them so. It would amuse the children, going over to Ashcombe for the wedding; and if it’s bad weather during the holidays I’m always afraid of their finding it dull at the Towers. It’s very different if it’s a good frost, and they can go out skating and sledging in the park. But these last two years it has been so wet for them, poor dears!’

‘And will the other poor dears be content to wait to make a holiday for your grandchildren? “To make a Roman holiday.” Pope, or somebody else, has a line of poetry like that. “To make a Roman holiday,” ’—he repeated, pleased with his unusual aptitude at quotation.

‘It’s Byron, and it’s nothing to do with the subject in hand. I’m surprised at your lordship’s quoting Byron—he was a very immoral poet.’

‘I saw him take his oaths in the House of Lords,’ said Lord Cumnor, apologetically.

‘Well! the less said about him the better,’ said Lady Cumnor. ‘I have told Clare that she had better not think of being married before Christmas: and it won’t do for her to give up her school in a hurry either.’

But Clare did not intend to wait till Christmas; and for this once she carried her point against the will of the countess, and without many words, or any open opposition. She had a harder task in setting aside Mr. Gibson’s desire to have Cynthia over for the wedding, even if she went back to her school at Boulogne directly after the ceremony. At first she had said that it would be delightful, a charming plan; only she feared that she must give up her own wishes to have her child near her at such a time, on account of the expense of the double journey.

But Mr. Gibson, economical as he was in his habitual expenditure, had a really generous heart. He had already shown it in entirely relinquishing his future wife’s life-interest in the very small property the late Mr. Kirkpatrick had left in favour of Cynthia; while he arranged that she should come to his home as a daughter as soon as she left the school she was at. The life-interest was about £30 a year. Now he gave Mrs. Kirkpatrick three £5 notes, saying that he hoped they would do away with the objections to Cynthia’s coming over to the wedding; and at the time Mrs. Kirkpatrick felt as if they would, and caught the reflection of his strong wish, and fancied it was her own. If the letter could have been written and the money sent off that day, while the reflected glow of affection lasted, Cynthia would have been bridesmaid to her mother. But a hundred little interruptions came in the way of letter-writing, and the value affixed to the money increased: money had been so much needed, so hardly earned in Mrs. Kirkpatrick’s life; while the perhaps necessary separation of mother and child had lessened the amount of affection the former had to bestow. So she persuaded herself, afresh, that it would be unwise to disturb Cynthia at her studies; to interrupt the fulfilment of her duties just after the semestre had begun afresh; and she wrote a letter to Madame Lefevre so well imbued with this persuasion, that an answer which was almost an echo of her words was returned, the sense of which being conveyed to Mr. Gibson, who was no great French scholar, settled the vexed question, to his moderate but unfeigned regret. But the £15 were not returned. Indeed, not merely that sum, but a great part of the hundred which Lord Cumnor had given her for her trousseau, was required to pay off debts at Ashcombe; for the school had been anything but flourishing since Mrs. Kirkpatrick had had it. It was very much to her credit that she preferred clearing herself from debt to purchasing wedding finery. But it was one of the few points to be respected in Mrs. Kirkpatrick that she had always been careful in payment to the shops where she dealt; it was a little sense of duty cropping out. Whatever other faults might arise from her superficial and flimsy character, she was always uneasy till she was out of debt. Yet she had no scruple in appropriating her future husband’s money to her own use, when it was decided that it was not to be employed as he intended. What new articles she bought for herself were all such as would make a show, and an impression upon the ladies of Hollingford. She argued with herself that linen, and all underclothing, would never be seen; while she knew that every gown she had would give rise to much discussion, and would be counted up in the little town.

So her stock of underclothing was very small, and scarcely any of it new; but it was made of dainty material, and was finely mended up by her deft fingers, many a long night after her pupils were in bed; inwardly resolving all the time she sewed, that hereafter some one else should do her plain work. Indeed, many a little circumstance of former subjection to the will of others rose up before her during these quiet hours, as an endurance or a suffering never to occur again. So apt are people to look forward to a different kind of life from that to which they have been accustomed, as being free from care and trial! She recollected how, one time during this very summer at the Towers, after she was engaged to Mr. Gibson, when she had taken above an hour to arrange her hair in some new mode carefully studied from Mrs. Bradley’s fashion-book-after all, when she came down, looking her very best, as she thought, and ready for her lover, Lady Cumnor had sent her back again to her room, just as if she had been a little child, to do her hair over again, and not to make such a figure of fun of herself! Another time she had been sent to change her gown for one in her opinion far less becoming, but which suited Lady Cumnor’s taste better. These were little things; but they were late samples of what in different shapes she had had to endure for many years; and her liking for Mr. Gibson grew in proportion to her sense of the evils from which he was going to serve as a means of escape. After all, that interval of hope and plain sewing, intermixed though it was by tuition, was not disagreeable. Her wedding-dress was secure. Her former pupils at the Towers were going to present her with that; they were to dress her from head to foot on the auspicious day. Lord Cumnor, as has been said, had given her a hundred pounds for her trousseau, and had sent Mr. Preston a carte-blanche order for the wedding-breakfast in the old hall in Ashcombe Manor House. Lady Cumnor—a little put out by the marriage not being deferred till her grandchildren’s Christmas holidays—had nevertheless given Mrs. Kirkpatrick an excellent English-made watch and chain; more clumsy but more serviceable than the little foreign elegance that had hung at her side so long, and misled her so often.

Her preparations were thus in a very considerable state of forwardness, while Mr. Gibson had done nothing as yet towards any new arrangement or decoration of his house for his intended bride. He knew he ought to do something. But what? Where to begin, when so much was out of order, and he had so little time for superintendence? At length he came to the wise decision of asking one of the Miss Brownings, for old friendship’s sake, to take the trouble of preparing what was immediately requisite; and resolved to leave all the more ornamental decorations that he proposed to the taste of his future wife. But before making his request, he had to tell of his engagement, which had hitherto been kept a secret from the townspeople, who had set down his frequent visits at the Towers to the score of the countess’s health. He felt how he should have laughed in his sleeve at any middle-aged widower who came to him with a confession of the kind he had now to make to Miss Brownings, and disliked the idea of the necessary call: but it was to be done, so one evening he went in ‘promiscuous,’
^am
as they called it, and told them his story. At the end of the first chapter—that is to say, at the end of the story of Mr. Coxe’s calf-love, Miss Browning held up her hands in surprise.

‘To think of Molly, as I have held in long-clothes, coming to have a lover! Well, to be sure! Sister Phoebe—’ (she was just coming into the room), ‘here’s a piece of news! Molly Gibson has got a lover! One may almost say she’s had an offer! Mr. Gibson, may not one?—and she’s but sixteen!’

‘Seventeen, sister,’ said Miss Phoebe, who piqued herself on knowing all about dear Mr. Gibson’s domestic affairs. ‘Seventeen, the 22nd of last June.’

‘Well, have it your own way. Seventeen, if you like to call her so!’ said Miss Browning, impatiently. ‘The fact is still the same—she’s got a lover; and it seems to me she was in long-clothes only yesterday.’