Wives and Daughters (53 page)

Lady Harriet, who was rather different to Miss Piper, and no more minded crossing the room alone than if the lookers-on were so many cabbages, spied the Gibson party pretty quickly out, and came across to them.

‘Here we are at last. How dy’e do, dear? Why, little one,’ (to Molly) ‘how nice you’re looking! Aren’t we shamefully late?’

‘Oh! It’s only just past twelve,’ said Mrs. Gibson; ‘and I dare say you dined very late.’

‘It was not that; it was that ill-mannered woman, who went to her own room after we came out from dinner, and she and Lady Alice stayed there invisible, till we thought they were putting on some splendid attire—as they ought to have done—and at half-past ten, when mamma sent up to them to say the carriages were at the door, the duchess sent down for some beef-tea, and at last appeared d l’ enfant
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as you see her. Mamma is so angry with her, and some of the others are annoyed at not coming earlier, and one or two are giving themselves airs about coming at all. Papa is the only one not affected by it.’ Then, turning to Molly, Lady Harriet asked—

‘Have you been dancing much, Miss Gibson?’

‘Yes; not every dance, but nearly all.’

It was a simple question enough; but Lady Harriet’s speaking at all to Molly had become to Mrs. Gibson almost like shaking a red rag at a bull; it was the one thing sure to put her out of temper. But she would not have shown this to Lady Harriet for the world; only she contrived to baffle any endeavours at further conversation between the two, by placing herself betwixt Lady Harriet and Molly, when the former asked to sit down in the absent Cynthia’s room.

‘I won’t go back to those people, I am so mad with them; and, besides, I hardly saw you the other day, and I must have some gossip with you.’ So she sat down by Mrs. Gibson, and, as Mrs. Goodenough afterwards expressed it, ‘looked like anybody else.’ Mrs. Goodenough said this to excuse herself for a little misadventure she fell into. She had taken a deliberate survey of the grandees at the upper end of the room, spectacles on nose, and had inquired in no very measured voice, who everybody was, from Mr. Sheepshanks, my lord’s agent, and her very good neighbour, who in vain tried to check her loud ardour for information by replying to her in whispers. But she was rather deaf as well as blind, so his low tones only brought upon him fresh inquiries. Now, satisfied as far as she could be, and on her way to departure, and the extinguishing of fire and candle-light, she stopped opposite to Mrs. Gibson, and thus addressed her by way of renewal of their former subject of conversation:—

‘Such a shabby thing for a duchess I never saw; not a bit of a diamond near her! They’re none of ’em worth looking at except the countess, and she’s always a personable woman, and not so lusty as she was. But they’re not worth waiting up for till this time o’ night.’

There was a moment’s pause. Then Lady Harriet put her hand out, and said—

‘You don’t remember me, but I know you from having seen you at the Towers. Lady Cumnor is a good deal thinner than she was, but we hope her health is better for it.’

‘It’s Lady Harriet,’ said Mrs. Gibson to Mrs. Goodenough, in reproachful dismay.

‘Deary me, your ladyship! I hope I’ve given no offence! But, you see—that is to say, your ladyship sees, that it’s late hours for such folks as me, and I only stayed out of my bed to see the duchess, and I thought she’d come in diamonds and a coronet; and it puts one out, at my age, to be disappointed in the only chance I’m like to have of so fine a sight.’

‘I’m put out too,’ said Lady Harriet. ‘I wanted to have come early, and here we are as late as this. I’m so cross and ill-tempered, I should be glad to hide myself in bed as soon as you will do.’

She said this so sweetly that Mrs. Goodenough relaxed into a smile, and her crabbedness into a compliment.

‘I don’t believe as ever your ladyship can be cross and ill-tempered with that pretty face. I’m an old woman, so you must let me say so.’ Lady Harriet stood up, and made a low curtsy Then holding out her hand, she said—

‘I won’t keep you up any longer; but I’ll promise one thing in return for your pretty speech; if ever I am a duchess, I’ll come and show myself to you in all my robes and gewgaws. Good-night, madam!’

‘There! I knew how it would be!’ said she, not resuming her seat. ‘And on the eve of a county election too.’

‘Oh! you must not take old Mrs. Goodenough as a specimen, dear Lady Harriet. She is always a grumbler! I am sure no one else would complain of your all being as late as you liked,’ said Mrs. Gibson.

‘What do you say, Molly?’ said Lady Harriet, suddenly turning her eyes on Molly’s face. ‘Don’t you think we’ve lost some of our popularity—which at this time means votes—by coming so late? Come, answer me! you used to be a famous little truthteller.’

‘I don’t know about popularity or votes,’ said Molly, rather unwillingly. ‘But I think many people were sorry you did not come sooner; and isn’t that rather a proof of popularity?’ she added.

‘That’s a very neat and diplomatic answer,’ said Lady Harriet, smiling, and tapping Molly’s cheek with her fan.

‘Molly knows nothing about it,’ said Mrs. Gibson, a little off her guard. ‘It would be very impertinent if she or any one else questioned Lady Cumnor’s perfect right to come when she chose.’

‘Well, all I know is, I must go back to mamma now; but I shall make another raid into these regions by and by, and you must keep a place for me. Ah! there are———Miss Brownings; you see I don’t forget my lesson, Miss Gibson.’

‘Molly, I cannot have you speaking so to Lady Harriet,’ said Mrs. Gibson as soon as she was left alone with her stepdaughter. ‘You would never have known her at all if it had not been for me, and don’t be always putting yourself into our conversation.’

‘But I must speak if she asks me questions,’ pleaded Molly.

‘Well! if you must, you must, I acknowledge. I’m candid about that, at any rate. But there’s no need for you to set up to have an opinion at your age.’

‘I don’t know how to help it,’ said Molly.

‘She’s such a whimsical person; look there, if she’s not talking to Miss Phoebe; and Miss Phoebe is so weak she’ll be easily led away into fancying she is hand and glove with Lady Harriet. If there is one thing I hate more than another, it is the trying to make out an intimacy with great people.’

Molly felt innocent enough, so she offered no justification of herself, and made no reply. Indeed she was more occupied in watching Cynthia. She could not understand the change that seemed to have come over her. She was dancing, it was true, with the same lightness and grace as before, but the smooth bounding motion as of a feather blown onwards by the wind, was gone. She was conversing with her partner, but without the soft animation that usually shone out upon her countenance. And when she was brought back to her seat Molly noticed her changed colour, and her dreamily abstracted eyes.

‘What is the matter, Cynthia?’ asked she, in a very low voice.

‘Nothing,’ said Cynthia, suddenly looking up, and in an accent of what was, in her, sharpness. ‘Why should there be?’

‘I don’t know; but you look different to what you did—tired or something.’

‘There is nothing the matter, or, if there is, don’t talk about it. It is all your fancy’

This was a rather contradictory speech, to be interpreted by intuition rather than by logic. Molly understood that Cynthia wished for quietness and silence. But what was her surprise, after the speeches that had passed before, and the implication of Cynthia’s whole manner to Mr. Preston, to see him come up to her, and, without a word, offer his arm and lead her away to dance. It appeared to strike Mrs. Gibson as something remarkable; for, forgetting her late passage at arms with Molly, she asked, wonderingly, as if almost distrusting the evidence of her senses—

‘Is Cynthia going to dance with Mr. Preston?’

Molly had scarcely time to answer before she herself was led off by her partner. She could hardly attend to him or to the figures of the quadrille for watching for Cynthia among the moving forms.

Once she caught a glimpse of her standing still—downcast—listening to Mr. Preston’s eager speech. Again she was walking languidly among the dancers, almost as if she took no notice of those around her. When she and Molly joined each other again, the shade on Cynthia’s face had deepened to gloom. But, at the same time, if a physiognomist
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had studied her expression, he would have read in it defiance and anger, and perhaps also a little perplexity. While this quadrille was going on, Lady Harriet had been speaking to her brother.

‘Hollingford!’ she said, laying her hand on his arm, and drawing him a little apart from the well-born crowd amid which he stood, silent and abstracted, ‘you don’t know how these good people here have been hurt and disappointed with our being so late, and with the duchess’s ridiculous simplicity of dress.’

‘Why should they mind it?’ asked he, taking advantage of her being out of breath with eagerness.

‘Oh, don’t be so wise and stupid; don’t you see, we’re a show and a spectacle—it’s like having a pantomime with harlequin and columbine in plain clothes.’

‘I don’t understand how——’ he began.

‘Then take it upon trust. They really are a little disappointed, whether they are logical or not in being so, and we must try and make it up to them; for one thing, because I can’t bear our vassals to look dissatisfied and disloyal, and then there’s the election in June.’

‘I really would as soon be out of the House as in it.’

‘Nonsense; it would grieve papa beyond measure—but there is no time to talk about that now. You must go and dance with some of the townspeople, and I’ll ask Sheepshanks to introduce me to a respectable young farmer. Can’t you get Captain James to make himself useful? There he goes with Lady Alice! If I don’t get him introduced to the ugliest tailor’s daughter I can find for the next dance!’ She put her arm in her brother’s as she spoke, as if to lead him to some partner. He resisted, however—resisted piteously.

‘Pray don’t, Harriet. You know I can’t dance. I hate it; I always did. I don’t know how to get through a quadrille.’

‘It’s a country dance!’ said she, resolutely.

‘It’s all the same. And what shall I say to my partner? I haven’t a notion: I shall have no subject in common. Speak of being disappointed, they’ll be ten times more disappointed when they find I can neither dance nor talk!’

‘I’ll be merciful; don’t be so cowardly. In their eyes a lord may dance like a bear—as some lords not very far from me are—if he likes, and they’ll take it for grace. And you shall begin with Molly Gibson, your friend the doctor’s daughter. She’s a good, simple, intelligent little girl, which you’ll think a great deal more of, I suppose, than of the frivolous fact of her being very pretty. Clare! will you allow me to introduce my brother to Miss Gibson? he hopes to engage her for this dance. “Lord Hollingfbrd,—Miss Gibson”!’

Poor Lord Hollingford! there was nothing for him but to follow his sister’s very explicit lead, and Molly and he walked off to their places, each heartily wishing their dance together well over. Lady Harriet flew off to Mr. Sheepshanks to secure her respectable young farmer, and Mrs. Gibson remained alone, wishing that Lady Cumnor would send one of her attendant gentlemen for her. It would be so much more agreeable to be sitting even at the fag-end of nobility than here on a bench with everybody; hoping that everybody would see Molly dancing away with a lord, yet vexed that the chance had so befallen that Molly instead of Cynthia was the young lady singled out; wondering if simplicity of dress was now become the highest fashion, and pondering on the possibility of cleverly inducing Lady Harriet to introduce Lord Albert Monson to her own beautiful daughter, Cynthia.

Molly found Lord Hollingford, the wise and learned Lord Hollingford, strangely stupid in understanding the mystery of‘cross hands and back again, down the middle and up again.’ He was constantly getting hold of the wrong hands, and as constantly stopping when he had returned to his place, quite unaware that the duties of society and the laws of the game required that he should go on capering till he had arrived at the bottom of the room. He perceived that he had performed his part very badly, and apologized to Molly when once they had arrived at that haven of comparative peace; and he expressed his regret so simply and heartily that she felt at her ease with him at once, especially when he confided to her his reluctance at having to dance at all, and his only doing it under his sister’s compulsion. To Molly he was an elderly widower, almost as old as her father, and by and by they got into very pleasant conversation. She learnt from him that Roger Hamley had just been publishing a paper in some scientific periodical, which had excited considerable attention, as it was intended to confute some theory of a great French physiologist, and Roger’s article proved the writer to be possessed of a most unusual amount of knowledge on the subject. This piece of news was of great interest to Molly; and, in her questions, she herself evinced so much intelligence, and a mind so well prepared for the reception of information, that Lord Hollingford at any rate would have felt his quest of popularity a very easy affair indeed, if he might have gone on talking quietly to Molly during the rest of the evening. When he took her back to her place, he found Mr. Gibson there, and fell into talk with him, until Lady Harriet once more came to stir him up to his duties. Before very long, however, he returned to Mr. Gibson’s side, and began telling him of this paper of Roger Hamley‘s, of which Mr. Gibson had not yet heard. In the midst of their conversation, as they stood close by Mrs. Gibson, Lord Hollingford saw Molly in the distance, and interrupted himself to say, ‘What a charming little lady that daughter of yours is! Most girls of her age are so difficult to talk to; but she is intelligent and full of interest in all sorts of sensible things; well read, too—she was up in
Le Règne
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—and very pretty!’