Wives and Daughters

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 Animal^ch—and very pretty!’

Mr. Gibson bowed, much pleased at such a compliment from such a man, was he lord or not. It is very likely that if Molly had been a stupid listener, Lord Hollingford would not have discovered her beauty; or the converse might be asserted—if she had not been young and pretty, he would not have exerted himself to talk on scientific subjects in a manner which she could understand. But in whatever way Molly had won his approbation and admiration, there was no doubt that she had earned it somehow. And, when she next returned to her place, Mrs. Gibson greeted her with soft words and a gracious smile; for it does not require much reasoning power to discover, that if it is a very fine thing to be mother-in-law to a very magnificent three-tailed bashaw, it presupposes that the wife who makes the connexion between the two parties is in harmony with her mother. And so far had Mrs. Gibson’s thoughts wandered into futurity. She only wished that the happy chance had fallen to Cynthia’s instead of to Molly’s lot. But Molly was a docile, sweet creature, very pretty, and remarkably intelligent, as my lord had said. It was a pity that Cynthia preferred making millinery to reading; but perhaps that could be rectified. And there was Lord Cumnor coming to speak to her, and Lady Cumnor nodding to her, and indicating a place by her side.

It was not an unsatisfactory ball upon the whole to Mrs. Gibson, although she paid the usual penalty for sitting up beyond her usual hour in perpetual glare and movement. The next morning she awoke irritable and fatigued; and a little of the same feeling oppressed both Cynthia and Molly. The former was lounging in the window-seat, holding a three-days-old newspaper in her hand, which she was making a pretence of reading, when she was startled by her mother’s saying—

‘Cynthia! can’t you take up a book and improve yourself? I am sure your conversation will never be worth listening to, unless you read something better than newspapers. Why don’t you keep up your French? There was some French book that Molly was reading—Le Règne Animal, I think.’

‘No! I never read it!’ said Molly, blushing. ‘Mr. Roger Hamley sometimes read pieces out of it when I was first at the Hall, and told me what it was about.’

‘Oh! well. Then I suppose I was mistaken. But it comes to all the same thing. Cynthia, you really must learn to settle yourself to some improving reading every morning.’

Rather to Molly’s surprise, Cynthia did not reply a word; but dutifully went and brought down from among her Boulogne school-books, Le Siècle de Louis XIV.^ci But after a while Molly saw that this ‘improving reading’ was just as much a mere excuse for Cynthia’s thinking her own thoughts as the newspaper had been.

CHAPTER 27

Father and Sons

Things were not going on any better at Hamley Hall. Nothing had occurred to change the state of dissatisfied feeling into which the squire and his eldest son had respectively fallen; and the long continuance merely of dissatisfaction is sure of itself to deepen the feeling. Roger did all in his power to bring the father and son together; but sometimes wondered if it would not have been better to leave them alone; for they were falling into the habit of each making him their confidant, and so defining emotions and opinions which would have had less distinctness if they had been unexpressed. There was little enough relief in the daily life at the Hall to help them all to shake off the gloom; and it even told on the health of both the squire and Osborne. The squire became thinner, his skin as well as his clothes began to hang loose about him, and the freshness of his colour turned to red streaks, till his cheeks looked like Eardiston pippins, instead of resembling ‘a Katherine pear on the side that’s next the sun.’ Roger thought that his father sat indoors and smoked in his study more than was good for him, but it had become difficult to get him far afield; he was too much afraid of coming across some sign of the discontinued drainage works, or being irritated afresh by the sight of his depreciated timber. Osborne was wrapt up in the idea of arranging his poems for the press, and so working out his wish for independence. What with daily writing to his wife—taking his letters himself to a distant post-office, and receiving hers there—touching up his sonnets, &c., with fastidious care; and occasionally giving himself the pleasure of a visit to the Gibsons, and enjoying the society of the two pleasant girls there, he found little time for being with his father. Indeed, Osborne was too self-indulgent, or ‘sensitive,’ as he termed it, to bear well with the squire’s gloomy fits, or too frequent querulousness. The consciousness of his secret, too, made Osborne uncomfortable in his father’s presence. It was very well for all parties that Roger was not ‘sensitive,’ for, if he had been, there were times when it would have been hard to bear little spurts of domestic tyranny, by which his father strove to assert his power over both his sons. One of these occurred very soon after the night of the Hollingford charity ball.

Roger had induced his father to come out with him; and the squire had, on his son’s suggestion, taken with him his long-unused spud. The two had wandered far afield; perhaps the elder man had found the unwonted length of exercise too much for him; for, as he approached the house, on his return, he became what nurses call in children ‘fractious,’ and ready to turn on his companion for every remark he made. Roger understood the case by instinct, as it were, and bore it all with his usual sweetness of temper. They entered the house by the front door; it lay straight on their line of march. On the old cracked yellow-marble slab, there lay a card with Lord Hollingford’s name on it, which Robinson, evidently on the watch for their return, hastened out of his pantry to deliver to Roger.

‘His lordship was very sorry not to see you, Mr. Roger, and his lordship left a note for you. Mr. Osborne took it, I think, when he passed through. I asked his lordship if he would like to see Mr. Osborne, who was indoors, as I thought. But his lordship said he was pressed for time, and told me to make his excuses.’

‘Didn’t he ask for me?’ growled the squire.

‘No, sir; I can’t say as his lordship did. He would never have thought of Mr. Osborne, sir, if I hadn’t named him. It was Mr. Roger he seemed so keen after.’

‘Very odd,’ said the squire. Roger said nothing, although he naturally felt some curiosity He went into the drawing-room, not quite aware that his father was following him. Osborne sat at a table near the fire, pen in hand, looking over one of his poems, and dotting the i‘s, crossing the t’s, and now and then pausing over the alteration of a word.

‘Oh, Roger!’ he said, as his brother came in, ‘here’s been Lord Hollingford wanting to see you.’

‘I know,’ replied Roger.

‘And he’s left a note for you. Robinson tried to persuade him it was for my father, so he’s added a “junior” (Roger Hamley, Esq., junior) in pencil.’ The squire was in the room by this time, and what he had overheard rubbed him up still more the wrong way. Roger took his unopened note and read it.

‘What does he say?’ asked the squire.

Roger handed him the note. It contained an invitation to dinner to meet M. Geoffroi St. H., whose views on certain subjects Roger had been advocating in the article Lord Hollingford had spoken about to Molly, when he danced with her at the Hollingford ball. M. Geoffroi St.^cj H. was in England now, and was expected to pay a visit at the Towers in the course of the following week. He had expressed a wish to meet the author of the paper which had already attracted the attention of the French comparative anatomists;¹ and Lord Hollingford added a few words as to his own desire to make the acquaintance of a neighbour whose tastes were so similar to his own; and then followed a civil message from Lord and Lady Cumnor.

Lord Hollingford’s hand was cramped and rather illegible. The squire could not read it all at once, and was enough put out to decline any assistance in deciphering it. At last he made it out.

‘So my lord-lieutenant is taking some notice of the Hamleys at last. The election is coming on, is it? But I can tell him we’re not to be got so easily. I suppose this trap is set for you, Osborne? What’s this you’ve been writing that the French mounseer is so taken with?’

‘It is not me, sir!’ said Osborne. ‘Both note and call are for Roger.’

‘I don’t understand it,’ said the squire. ‘These Whig fellows have never done their duty by me; not that I want it of them. The Duke of Debenham used to pay the Hamleys a respect due to ’em—the oldest landowners in the county—but since he died, and this shabby Whig lord has succeeded him, I’ve never dined at the lord-lieutenant’s —no, not once.’

‘But I think, sir, I’ve heard you say Lord Cumnor used to invite you,—only you did not choose to go,’ said Roger.

‘Yes. What d’ye mean by that? Do you suppose I was going to desert the principles of my family, and curry favour with the Whigs?^ck No! leave that to them. They can ask the heir of the Hamleys fast enough when a county election is coming on.’

‘I tell you, sir,’ said Osborne, in the irritable tone he sometimes used when his father was particularly unreasonable, ‘It is not me Lord Hollingford is inviting; it is Roger. Roger is making himself known for what he is, a first-rate fellow,’ continued Osborne—a sting of self-reproach mingling with his generous pride in his brother—‘and he is getting himself a name; he’s been writing about these new French theories and discoveries, and this foreign savant^cl very naturally wants to make his acquaintance, and so Lord Hollingford asks him to dine. It’s as clear as can be,’ lowering his tone, and addressing himself to Roger; ‘it has nothing to do with politics, if my father would but see it.’

Of course the squire heard this little aside with the unlucky uncertainty of hearing which is a characteristic of the beginning of deafness; and its effect on him was perceptible in the increased acrimony of his next speech.

‘You young men think you know everything. I tell you it’s a palpable Whig trick. And what business has Roger—if it is Roger the man wants—to go currying favour with the French? In my day we were content to hate ’em and to lick ’em. But it’s just like your conceit, Osborne, setting yourself up to say it’s your younger brother they’re asking, and not you; I tell you it’s you. They think the eldest son was sure to be called after his father, Roger—Roger Hamley, junior. It’s as plain as a pike-staff. They know they can’t catch me with chaff, but they’ve got up this French dodge. What business had you to go writing about the French, Roger? I should have thought you were too sensible to take any notice of their fancies and theories; but if it is you they’ve asked, I’ll not have you going and meeting these foreigners at a Whig house. They ought to have asked Osborne. He’s the representative of the Hamleys, if I’m not; and they can’t get me, let ‘em try ever so. Besides, Osborne has got a bit of the mounseer about him, which he caught with being so fond of going off to the Continent, instead of coming back to his good old English home.’

He went on repeating much of what he had said before, till he left the room. Osborne had kept on replying to his unreasonable grumblings, which had only added to his anger; and as soon as the squire was fairly gone, Osborne turned to Roger, and said—

‘Of course you’ll go, Roger? ten to one he’ll be in another mind to-morrow’

‘No,’ said Roger, bluntly enough—for he was extremely disappointed; ‘I won’t run the chance of vexing him. I shall refuse.’

‘Don’t be such a fool!’ exclaimed Osborne. ‘Really, my father is too unreasonable. You heard how he kept contradicting himself; and such a man as you to be kept under like a child by———’

‘Don’t let us talk any more about it, Osborne,’ said Roger, writing away fast. When the note was written, and sent off, he came and put his hand caressingly on Osborne’s shoulder as he sat pretending to read, but in reality vexed with both his father and his brother, though on very different grounds.

‘How go the poems, old fellow? I hope they’re nearly ready to bring out.’

‘No, they’re not; and if it were not for the money, I shouldn’t care if they were never published. What’s the use of fame, if one mayn’t reap the fruits of it?’

‘Come, now, we’ll have no more of that; let’s talk about the money. I shall be going up for my fellowship examination next week, and then we’ll have a purse in common, for they’ll never think of not giving me a fellowship now I’m senior wrangler. I’m short enough myself at present, and I don’t like to bother my father; but when I’m fellow, you shall take me down to Winchester, and introduce me to the little wife.’

‘It will be a month next Monday since I left her,’ said Osborne, laying down his papers and gazing into the fire, as if by so doing he could call up her image. ‘In her letter this morning she bids me give you such a pretty message. It won’t bear translating into English; you must read it for yourself,’ continued he, pointing out a line or two in a letter he drew out of his pocket.

Roger suspected that one or two of the words were wrongly spelt; but their purport was so gentle and loving, and had such a touch of simple, respectful gratitude in them, that he could not help being drawn afresh to the little unseen sister-in-law, whose acquaintance Osborne had made by helping her to look for some missing article of the children’s, whom she was taking for their daily walk in Hyde Park. For Mrs. Osborne Hamley had been nothing more than a French bonne;^cm very pretty, very graceful, and very much tyrannized over by the rough little boys and girls she had in charge. She was a little orphan girl, who had charmed the heads of a travelling English family, as she brought madame some articles of lingerie at an hotel; and she had been hastily engaged by them as bonne to their children, partly as a pet and play-thing herself, partly because it would be so good for the children to learn French from a native (of Alsace!). By and by her mistress ceased to take any particular notice of Aimée in the bustle of London and London gaiety; but though feeling more and more forlorn in a strange land every day, the French girl strove hard to do her duty. One touch of kindness, however, was enough to set the fountain gushing; and she and Osborne naturally fell into an ideal state of love, to be rudely disturbed by the indignation of the mother, when accident discovered to her the attachment existing between her children’s bonne and a young man of an entirely different class. Aimée answered truly to all her mistress’s questions; but no worldly wisdom, nor any lesson to be learnt from another’s experience, could in the least disturb her entire faith in her lover. Perhaps Mrs. Townshend did no more than her duty in immediately sending Aimée back to Metz, where she had first met with her, and where such relations as remained to the girl might be supposed to be residing. But, altogether, she knew so little of the kind of people or life to which she was consigning her deposed protégée that Osborne, after listening with impatient indignation to the lecture which Mrs. Townshend gave him when he insisted on seeing her in order to learn what had become of his love, that the young man set off straight for Metz in hot haste, and did not let the grass grow under his feet until he had made Aimee his wife. All this had occurred the previous autumn, and Roger did not know of the step his brother had taken until it was irrevocable. Then came the mother’s death, which, besides the simplicity of its own overwhelming sorrow, brought with it the loss of the kind, tender mediatrix, who could always soften and turn his father’s heart. It is doubtful, however, if even she could have succeeded in this, for the squire looked high, and over high, for the wife of his heir; he detested all foreigners, and moreover held all Roman Catholics in dread and abomination something akin to our ancestors’ hatred of witchcraft. All these prejudices were strengthened by his grief Argument would always have glanced harmless away off his shield of utter unreason; but a loving impulse, in a happy moment, might have softened his heart to what he most detested in the former days. But the happy moments came not now, and the loving impulses were trodden down by the bitterness of his frequent remorse, not less than by his growing irritability; so Aimée lived solitary in the little cottage near Winchester in which Osborne had installed her when she first came to England as his wife, and in the dainty furnishing of which he had run himself so deeply into debt. For Osborne consulted his own fastidious taste in his purchases rather than her simple childlike wishes and wants, and looked upon the little Frenchwoman rather as the future mistress of Hamley Hall than as the wife of a man who was wholly dependent on others at present. He had chosen a southern county as being far removed from those midland shires where the name of Hamley of Hamley was well and widely known; for he did not wish his wife to assume only for a time a name which was not justly and legally her own. In all these arrangements he had willingly striven to do his full duty by her; and she repaid him with passionate devotion and admiring reverence. If his vanity had met with a check, or his worthy desires for college honours had been disappointed, he knew where to go for a comforter; one who poured out praise till her words were choked in her throat by the rapidity of her thoughts, and who poured out the small vials of her indignation on every one who did not acknowledge and bow down to her husband’s merits. If she ever wished to go to the château—that was his home—and to be introduced to his family, Aimée never hinted a word of it to him. Only she did yearn, and she did plead, for a little more of her husband’s company; and the good reasons which had convinced her of the necessity of his being so much away when he was present to urge them, failed in their efficacy when she tried to reproduce them to herself in his absence.

The afternoon of the day on which Lord Hollingford called, Roger was going upstairs, three steps at a time, when, at a turn on the landing, he encountered his father. It was the first time he had seen him since their conversation about the Towers’ invitation to dinner. The squire stopped his son by standing right in the middle of the passage.

‘Thou’rt going to meet the mounseer, my lad?’ said he, half as affirmation, half as question.

‘No sir; I sent off James almost immediately with a note declining it. I don’t care about it—that’s to say, not to signify.’

‘Why did you take me up so sharp, Roger?’ said his father, pettishly. ‘You all take me up so hastily nowadays. I think it’s hard when a man mustn’t be allowed a bit of crossness when he’s tired and heavy at heart—that I do.’

‘But, father, I should never like to go to a house where they had slighted you.’

‘Nay, nay, lad,’ said the squire, brightening up a little; ‘I think I slighted them. They asked me to dinner, after my lord was made lieutenant, time after time, but I never would go near ’em. I call that my slighting them.’

And no more was said at the time; but the next day the squire again stopped Roger.

‘I’ve been making Jem try on his livery-coat that he hasn’t worn this three or four years—he’s got too stout for it now.’

‘Well, he needn’t wear it, need he? and Dawson’s lad will be glad enough of it,—he’s sadly in want of clothes.’

‘Aye, aye; but who’s to go with you when you call at the Towers? It’s but polite to call after Lord What’s-his-name has taken the trouble to come here; and I shouldn’t like you to go without a groom.’

‘My dear father! I shouldn’t know what to do with a man riding at my back. I can find my way to the stable-yard for myself, or there’ll be some man about to take my horse. Don’t trouble yourself about that.’

‘Well, you’re not Osborne, to be sure. Perhaps it won’t strike ’em as strange for you. But you must look up, and hold your own, and remember you’re one of the Hamleys, who’ve been on the same land for hundreds of years, while they’re but trumpery Whig folk who only came into the county in Queen Anne’s time.’

CHAPTER 28

Rivalry

For some days after the ball Cynthia seemed languid, and was very silent. Molly, who had promised herself fully as much enjoyment in talking over the past gaiety with Cynthia as in the evening itself, was disappointed when she found that all conversation on the subject was rather evaded than encouraged. Mrs. Gibson, it is true, was ready to go over the ground as many times as any one liked; but her words were always like ready-made clothes, and never fitted individual thoughts. Anybody might have used them, and, with a change of proper names, they might have served to describe any ball. She repeatedly used the same language in speaking about it, till Molly knew the sentences and their sequence, even to irritation.

‘Ah! Mr. Osborne, you should have been there! I said to myself many a time how you really should have been there—you and your brother, of course.’

‘I thought of you very often during the evening!’

‘Did you? Now that I call very kind of you. Cynthia, darling! Do you hear what Mr. Osborne Hamley was saying?’ as Cynthia came into the room just then. ‘He thought of us all on the evening of the ball.’

‘He did better than merely remember us then,’ said Cynthia, with her soft, slow smile. ‘We owe him thanks for those beautiful flowers, mamma.’

‘Oh!’ said Osborne, ‘you must not thank me exclusively. I believe it was my thought, but Roger took all the trouble of it.’

‘I consider the thought as everything,’ said Mrs. Gibson. ‘Thought is spiritual, while action is merely material.’

This fine sentence took the speaker herself by surprise; and in such conversation as was then going on, it is not necessary to accurately define the meaning of everything that is said.

‘I’m afraid the flowers were too late to be of much use, though,’ continued Osborne. ‘I met Preston the next morning and of course we talked about the ball. I was sorry to find he had been beforehand with us.’

‘He only sent one nosegay, and that was for Cynthia,’ said Molly, looking up from her work. ‘And it did not come till after we had received the flowers from Hamley’ Molly caught a sight of Cynthia’s face before she bent down again to her sewing. It was scarlet in colour, and there was a flash of anger in her eyes. Both she and her mother hastened to speak as soon as Molly had finished, but Cynthia’s voice was choked with passion, and Mrs. Gibson had the word.

‘Mr. Preston’s bouquet was just one of those formal affairs any one can buy at a nursery-garden, which always strike me as having no sentiment in them. I would far rather have two or three lilies of the valley gathered for me by a person I like, than the most expensive bouquet that could be bought!’

‘Mr. Preston had no business to speak as if he had forestalled you,’ said Cynthia. ‘It came just as we were ready to go, and I put it into the fire directly.’

‘Cynthia, my dear love!’ said Mrs. Gibson (who had never heard of the fate of the flowers until now), ‘what an idea of yourself you will give to Mr. Osborne Hamley; but to be sure, I can understand it. You inherit my feeling—my prejudice—sentimental I grant, against bought flowers.’

Cynthia was silent for a moment; then she said, ‘I used some of your flowers, Mr. Hamley, to dress Molly’s hair. It was a great temptation, for the colour so exactly matched her coral ornaments; but I believe she thought it treacherous to disturb the arrangement, so I sought to take all the blame on myself.’

‘The arrangement was my brother’s, as I told you; but I am sure he would have preferred seeing them in Miss Gibson’s hair rather than in the blazing fire. Mr. Preston comes far the worst off.’ Osborne was rather amused at the whole affair, and would have liked to probe Cynthia’s motives a little farther. He did not hear Molly saying in as soft a voice as if she were talking to herself, ‘I wore mine just as they were sent,’ for Mrs Gibson came in with a total change of the subject.

‘Speaking of lilies of the valley, is it true that they grow wild in Hurstwood? It is not the season for them to be in flower yet; but when it is, I think we must take a walk there—with our luncheon in a basket—a little picnic in fact. You’ll join us, won’t you?’ turning to Osborne. ‘I think it’s a charming plan! You could ride to Hollingford and put up your horse here, and we could have a long day in the woods and all come home to dinner—dinner with a basket of lilies in the middle of the table!’

‘I should like it very much,’ said Osborne; ‘but I may not be at home. Roger is more likely to be here, I believe, at that time—a month hence.’ He was thinking of the visit to London to sell his poems, and the run down to Winchester which he anticipated afterwards—the end of May had been the period fixed for this pleasure for some time, not merely in his own mind, but in writing to his wife.

‘Oh, but you must be with us! We must wait for Mr. Osborne Hamley, must not we, Cynthia?’

‘I’m afraid the lilies won’t wait,’ replied Cynthia.

‘Well, then, we must put it off till dog-rose and honeysuckle time. You will be at home then, won’t you? or does the London season present too many attractions?’

‘I don’t exactly know when dog-roses are in flower!’

‘Not know, and you a poet? Don’t you remember the lines—It was the time of roses,

We plucked them as we went?’

‘Yes; but that doesn’t specify the time of year that is the time of roses; and I believe my movements are guided more by the lunar calendar than the floral. You had better take my brother for your companion; he is practical in his love of flowers, I am only theoretical.’

‘Does that fine word “theoretical” imply that you are ignorant?’ asked Cynthia.

‘Of course we shall be happy to see your brother; but why can’t we have you too? I confess to a little timidity in the presence of one so deep and learned as your brother is, from all accounts. Give me a little charming ignorance, if we must call it by that hard word.’

Osborne bowed. It was very pleasant to him to be petted and flattered, even though he knew all the time that it was only flattery. It was an agreeable contrast to the home that was so dismal to him, to come to this house, where the society of two agreeable girls, and the soothing syrup of their mother’s speeches, awaited him whenever he liked to come. To say nothing of the difference that struck upon his senses, poetical though he might esteem himself, of a sitting-room full of flowers, and tokens of women’s presence, where all the chairs were easy, and all the tables well covered with pretty things, to the great drawing-room at home; where the draperies were threadbare, and the seats uncomfortable, and no sign of féminine presence ever now lent a grace to the stiff arrangement of the furniture. Then the meals, light and well cooked, suited his taste and delicate appetite so much better than the rich and heavy viands prepared by the servants at the hall. Osborne was becoming a little afraid of falling into the habit of paying too frequent visits to the Gibsons (and that, not because he feared the consequences of his intercourse with the two young ladies; for he never thought of them excepting as friends;—the fact of his marriage was constantly present to his mind, and Aimee too securely enthroned in his heart, for him to remember that he might be looked upon by others in the light of a possible husband); but the reflection forced itself upon him occasionally, whether he was not trespassing too often on hospitality which he had at present no means of returning.

But Mrs. Gibson, in her ignorance of the true state of affairs, was secretly exultant in the attraction which made him come so often and lounge away the hours in her house and garden. She had no doubt that it was Cynthia who drew him thither; and if the latter had been a little more amenable to reason, her mother would have made more frequent allusions than she did to the crisis which she thought was approaching. But she was restrained by the intuitive conviction that if her daughter became conscious of what was impending, and was made aware of Mrs. Gibson’s cautious and quiet efforts to forward the catastrophe, the wilful girl would oppose herself to it with all her skill and power. As it was, Mrs. Gibson trusted that Cynthia’s affections would become engaged before she knew where she was, and that in that case she would not attempt to frustrate her mother’s delicate scheming, even though she did perceive it. But Cynthia had come across too many varieties of flirtation, admiration, and even passionate love, to be for a moment at fault as to the quiet friendly nature of Osborne’s attentions. She received him always as a sister might a brother. It was different when Roger returned from his election as fellow of Trinity. The trembling diffidence, the hardly suppressed ardour of his manner, made Cynthia understand before long with what kind of love she had now to deal. She did not put it into so many words—no, not even in her secret heart—but she recognized the difference between Roger’s relation to her and Osborne’s long before Mrs. Gibson found it out. Molly was, however, the first to discover the nature of Roger’s attention. The first time they saw him after the ball, it came out to her observant eyes. Cynthia had not been looking well since that evening; she went slowly about the house, pale and heavy-eyed; and, fond as she usually was of exercise and the free fresh air, there was hardly any persuading her now to go out for a walk. Molly watched this fading with tender anxiety, but to all her questions as to whether she had felt over-fatigued with her dancing, whether anything had occurred to annoy her, and all such inquiries, she replied in languid negatives. Once Molly touched on Mr. Preston’s name, and found that this was a subject on which Cynthia was raw; now, Cynthia’s face lighted up with spirit, and her whole body showed her ill-repressed agitation, but she only said a few sharp words, expressive of anything but kindly feeling towards the gentleman, and then bade Molly never name his name to her again. Still, the latter could not imagine that he was more than intensely distasteful to her friend, as well as to herself; he could not be the cause of Cynthia’s present indisposition. But this indisposition lasted so many days without change or modification, that even Mrs. Gibson noticed it, and Molly became positively uneasy. Mrs. Gibson considered Cynthia’s quietness and languor as the natural consequence of’ dancing with everybody who asked her’ at the ball. Partners whose names were in the ‘Red Book’^cn would not have produced half the amount of fatigue, according to Mrs. Gibson’s judgment apparently, and if Cynthia had been quite well, very probably she would have hit the blot in her mother’s speech with one of her touches of sarcasm. Then, again, when Cynthia did not rally, Mrs. Gibson grew impatient, and accused her of being fanciful and lazy; at length, and partly at Molly’s instance, there came an appeal to Mr. Gibson, and a professional examination of the supposed invalid, which Cynthia hated more than anything, especially when the verdict was, that there was nothing very much the matter, only a general lowness of tone, and depression of health and spirits, which would soon be remedied by tonics, and, meanwhile, she was not to be roused to exertion.

‘If there is one thing I dislike,’ said Cynthia to Mr. Gibson, after he had pronounced tonics to be the cure for her present state, ‘it is the way doctors have of giving tablespoonfuls of nauseous mixtures as a certain remedy for sorrows and cares.’ She laughed up in his face as she spoke; she had always a pretty word and smile for him, even in the midst of her loss of spirits.

‘Come! you acknowledge you have “sorrows” by that speech: we’ll make a bargain; if you’ll tell me your sorrows and cares, I’ll try and find some other remedy for them than giving you what you are pleased to term my nauseous mixtures.’

‘No,’ said Cynthia, colouring; ‘I never said I had sorrows and cares; I spoke generally. What should I have a sorrow about?—you and Molly are only too kind to me,’ her eyes filling with tears.

‘Well, well, we’ll not talk of such gloomy things, and you shall have some sweet emulsion to disguise the taste of the bitters I shall be obliged to fall back upon.’

‘Please, don’t. If you but knew how I dislike emulsions and disguises! I do want bitters—and if I sometimes—if I’m obliged to—if I’m not truthful myself, I do like truth in others—at least, sometimes.’ She ended her sentence with another smile, but it was rather faint and watery.

Now the first person out of the house to notice Cynthia’s change of look and manner was Roger Hamley—and yet he did not see her until, under the influence of the nauseous mixture, she was beginning to recover. But his eyes were scarcely off her during the first five minutes he was in the room. All the time he was trying to talk to Mrs. Gibson in reply to her civil platitudes, he was studying Cynthia, and at the first convenient pause he came and stood before Molly, so as to interpose his person between her and the rest of the room; for some visitors had come in subsequent to his entrance.

‘Molly, how ill your sister is looking! What is it? Has she had advice? You must forgive me, but so often those who live together in the same house don’t observe the first approaches of illness.’

Now Molly’s love for Cynthia was fast and unwavering, but if anything tried it, it was the habit Roger had fallen into of always calling Cynthia Molly’s sister in speaking to the latter. From any one else it would have been a matter of indifference to her, and hardly to be noticed; it vexed both ear and heart when Roger used the expression; and there was a curtness of manner as well as of words in her reply.

‘Oh! she was over-tired by the ball. Papa has seen her, and says she will be all right very soon.’

‘I wonder if she wants change of air?’ said Roger, meditatively. ‘I wish—I do wish we could have her at the Hall; you and your mother too, of course. But I don’t see how it would be possible—or else how charming it would be!’

Molly felt as if a visit to the Hall under such circumstances would be altogether so different an affair to all her former ones, that she could hardly tell if she should like it or not.

Roger went on—

‘You got our flowers in time, did you not? Ah! you don’t know how often I thought of you that evening! And you enjoyed it too, didn’t you?—you had plenty of agreeable partners, and all that makes a first ball delightful? I heard that your sister danced every dance.’

‘It was very pleasant,’ said Molly, quietly. ‘But after all, I’m not sure if I want to go to another just yet; there seems to be so much trouble connected with a ball.’

‘Ah! you are thinking of your sister, and her not being well?’

‘No, I was not,’ said Molly, rather bluntly. ‘I was thinking of the dress, and the dressing, and the weariness the next day’

He might think her unfeeling if he liked; she felt as if she had only too much feeling just then, for it was bringing on her a strange contraction of heart. But he was too inherently good himself to put any harsh construction on her speech. Just before he went away, while he was ostensibly holding her hand and wishing her good-bye, he said to her in a voice too low to be generally heard—

‘Is there anything I could do for your sister? We have plenty of books, as you know, if she cares for reading.’ Then, receiving no affirmative look or word from Molly in reply to this suggestion, he went on—‘Or flowers? she likes flowers. Oh! and our forced strawberries are just ready—I will bring some over to-morrow.’

‘I am sure she will like them,’ said Molly.

For some reason or other, unknown to the Gibsons, a longer interval than usual occurred between Osborne’s visits, while Roger came almost every day, always with some fresh offering by which he openly sought to relieve Cynthia’s indisposition as far as it lay in his power. Her manner to him was so gentle and gracious that Mrs. Gibson became alarmed, lest, in spite of his “uncouthness” (as she was pleased to term it), he might come to be preferred to Osborne, who was so strangely neglecting his own interests, in Mrs. Gibson’s opinion. In her quiet way, she contrived to pass many slights upon Roger; but the darts rebounded from his generous nature that could not have imagined her motives, and fastened themselves on Molly. She had often been called naughty and passionate when she was a child; and she thought now that she began to understand that she really had a violent temper. What seemed neither to hurt Roger nor annoy Cynthia made Molly’s blood boil; and now she had once discovered Mrs. Gibson’s wish to make Roger’s visits shorter and less frequent, she was always on the watch for indications of this desire. She read her stepmother’s heart when the latter made allusions to the squire’s weakness, now that Osborne was absent from the Hall, and that Roger was so often away among his friends during the day—

‘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 vision^co 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 charing^cq 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.

Osborne came home first. He returned, in fact, not long after Roger had gone away; but he was languid and unwell, and, though he did not complain, he felt unequal to any exertion. Thus a week or more elapsed before any of the Gibsons knew that he was at the Hall; and then it was only by chance that they became aware of it. Mr. Gibson met him in one of the lanes near Hamley; the acute surgeon noticed the gait of the man as he came near, before he recognized who it was. When he overtook him he said—

‘Why, Osborne, is it you? I thought it was an old man of fifty loitering before me! I didn’t know you had come back.’

‘Yes,’ said Osborne, ‘I’ve been at home nearly ten days. I dare say I ought to have called on your people, for I made a half-promise to Mrs. Gibson to let her know as soon as I returned; but the fact is, I’m feeling very good-for-nothing-this air oppresses me; I could hardly breathe in the house, and yet I’m already tired with this short walk.’

‘You’d better get home at once; and I’ll call and see you as I come back from Rowe’s.’

‘No, you mustn’t on any account!’ said Osborne, hastily; ‘my father is annoyed enough about my going from home so often, he says, though I hadn’t been from it for six weeks. He puts down all my languor to my having been away—he keeps the purse-strings, you know,’ he added, with a faint smile, ‘and I’m in the unlucky position of a penniless heir, and I’ve been brought up so—in fact, I must leave home from time to time, and, if my father gets confirmed in this notion of his that my health is worse for my absence, he will stop the supplies altogether.’

‘May I ask where you do spend your time when you are not at Hamley Hall?’ asked Mr. Gibson, with some hesitation in his manner.

‘No!’ replied Osborne, reluctantly. ‘I will tell you this: I stay with friends in the country. I lead a life which ought to be conducive to health, because it is thoroughly simple, rational, and happy. And now I’ve told you more about it than my father himself knows. He never asks me where I have been; and I shouldn’t tell him if he did—at least, I think not.’

Mr. Gibson rode on by Osborne’s side, not speaking for a moment or two.

‘Osborne, whatever scrapes you may have got into, I should advise your telling your father boldly out. I know him; and I know he’ll be angry enough at first, but he’ll come round, take my word for it; and, somehow or another, he’ll find money to pay your debts and set you free, if it’s that kind of difficulty; and if it’s any other kind of entanglement, why, still he’s your best friend. It’s this estrangement from your father that’s telling on your health, I’ll be bound.’

‘No,’ said Osborne, ‘I beg your pardon; but it’s not that; I am really out of order. I dare say my unwillingness to encounter any displeasure from my father is the consequence of my indisposition; but I’ll answer for it, it is not the cause of it. My instinct tells me there is something really the matter with me.’

‘Come, don’t be setting up your instinct against the profession,’ said Mr. Gibson, cheerily.

He dismounted, and throwing the reins of his horse round his arm, he looked at Osborne’s tongue and felt his pulse, asking him various questions; at the end he said—

‘We’ll soon bring you about, though I should like a little more quiet talk with you, without this tugging brute for third. If you’ll manage to ride over and lunch with us to-morrow, Dr. Nicholls will be with us; he’s coming over to see old Rowe; and you shall have the benefit of the advice of two doctors instead of one. Go home now, you’ve had enough exercise for the middle of a day as hot as this is. And don’t mope in the house, listening to the maunderings of your stupid instinct.’

‘What else have I to do?’ said Osborne. ‘My father and I are not companions; one can’t read and write for ever, especially when there’s no end to be gained by it. I don’t mind telling you—but in confidence, recollect—that I’ve been trying to get some of my poems published; but there’s no one like a publisher for taking the conceit out of one. Not a man among them would have them as a gift.’

‘Oho! so that’s it, is it, Master Osborne, I thought there was some mental cause to this depression of health. I wouldn’t trouble my head about it, if I were you, though that’s always very easily said, I know. Try your hand at prose, if you can’t manage to please the publishers with poetry; but, at any rate, don’t go on fretting over spilt milk. But I mustn’t lose my time here. Come over to us to-morrow, as I said; and what with the wisdom of two doctors, and the wit and folly of three women, I think we shall cheer you up a bit.’

So saying, Mr. Gibson remounted, and rode away at the long, sling trot so well known to the country people as the doctor’s pace.

‘I don’t like his looks,’ thought Mr. Gibson to himself at night, as over his day-books he reviewed the events of the day. ‘And then his pulse. But how often we’re all mistaken; and, ten to one, my own hidden enemy lies closer to me than his does to him—even taking the worse view of the case.’

Osborne made his appearance a considerable time before luncheon the next morning; and no one objected to the earliness of his call. He was feeling better. There were few signs of the invalid about him; and what few there were disappeared under the bright pleasant influence of such a welcome as he received from all. Molly and Cynthia had much to tell him of the small proceedings since he went away, or to relate the conclusion of half-accomplished projects. Cynthia was often on the point of some gay, careless inquiry as to where he had been, and what be had been doing; but Molly, who conjectured the truth, as often interfered to spare him the pain of equivocation—a pain that her tender conscience would have felt for him, much more than he would have felt it for himself.

Mrs. Gibson’s talk was desultory, complimentary, and sentimental, after her usual fashion; but still, on the whole, though Osborne smiled to himself at much that she said, it was soothing and agreeable. Presently Dr. Nicholls and Mr. Gibson came in; the former had had some conference with the latter on the subject of Osborne’s health; and, from time to time, the skilful old physician’s sharp and observant eyes gave a comprehensive look at Osborne.

Then there was lunch, when every one was merry and hungry, excepting the hostess, who was trying to train her midday appetite into the genteelest of all ways, and thought (falsely enough) that Dr. Nicholls was a good person to practise the semblance of ill-health upon, and that he would give her the proper civil amount of commiseration for her ailments, which every guest ought to bestow upon a hostess who complains of her delicacy of health. The old doctor was too cunning a man to fall into this trap. He would keep recommending her to try the coarsest viands on the table; and, at last, he told her if she could not fancy the cold beef to try a little with pickled onions. There was a twinkle in his eye as he said this, that would have betrayed his humour to any observer; but Mr. Gibson, Cynthia, and Molly were all attacking Osborne on the subject of some literary preference he had expressed, and Dr. Nicholls had Mrs. Gibson quite at his mercy. She was not sorry when luncheon was over to leave the room to the three gentlemen; and ever afterwards she spoke of Dr. Nicholls as ‘that bear.’

Presently, Osborne came upstairs, and, after his old fashion began to take up new books, and to question the girls as to their music. Mr. Gibson had to go out and pay some calls, so he left the three together; and after a while they adjourned into the garden, Osborne lounging on a chair, while Molly employed herself busily in tying up carnations, and Cynthia gathered flowers in her careless, graceful way.

‘I hope you notice the difference in our occupations, Mr. Hamley. Molly, you see, devotes herself to the useful, and I to the ornamental. Please, under what head do you class what you are doing? I think you might help one of us, instead of looking on like the Grand Seigneur.’

‘I don’t know what I can do,’ said he, rather plaintively. ‘I should like to be useful, but I don’t know how; and my day is past for purely ornamental work. You must let me be, I’m afraid. Besides, I’m really rather exhausted by being questioned and pulled about by those good doctors.’

‘Why, you don’t mean to say they have been attacking you since lunch!’ exclaimed Molly.

‘Yes; indeed, they have; and they might have gone on till now if Mrs. Gibson had not come in opportunely.’

‘I thought mamma had gone out some time ago!’ said Cynthia, catching wafts of the conversation as she flitted hither and thither among the flowers.

‘She came into the dining-room not five minutes ago. Do you want her, for I see her crossing the hall at this very moment?’ and Osborne half rose.

‘Oh, not at all!’ said Cynthia. ‘Only she seemed to be in such a hurry to go out, I fancied she had set off long ago. She had some errand to do for Lady Cumnor, and she thought she could manage to catch the housekeeper, who is always in the town on Thursday.’

‘Are the family coming to the Towers this autumn?’

‘I believe so. But I don’t know, and I don’t much care. They don’t take kindly to me,’ continued Cynthia, ‘and so I suppose I’m not generous enough to take kindly to them.’

‘I should have thought that such a very unusual blot in their discrimination would have interested you in them as extraordinary people,’ said Osborne, with a little air of conscious gallantry.

‘Isn’t that a compliment?’ said Cynthia, after a pause of mock meditation. ‘If any one pays me a compliment, please let it be short and clear. I’m very stupid at finding out hidden meanings.’

‘Then such speeches as “you are very pretty,” or “you have charming manners,” are what you prefer. Now, I pique myself on wrapping up my sugar-plums delicately.’

‘Then would you please to write them down, and at my leisure I’ll parse them.’

‘No! It would be too much trouble. I’ll meet you half way, and study clearness next time.’

‘What are you two talking about?’ said Molly, resting on her light spade.

‘It’s only a discussion on the best way of administering compliments,’ said Cynthia, taking up her flower-basket again, but not going out of the reach of the conversation.

‘I don’t like them at all in any way,’ said Molly. ‘But perhaps, it’s rather sour grapes with me,’ she added.

‘Nonsense!’ said Osborne. ‘Shall I tell you what I heard of you at the ball?’

‘Or shall I provoke Mr. Preston,’ said Cynthia, ‘to begin upon you? It’s like turning a tap, such a stream of pretty speeches flows out at the moment.’ Her lip curled with scorn.

‘For you, perhaps,’ said Molly; ‘but not for me.’

‘For any woman. It is his notion of making himself agreeable. If you dare me, Molly, I’ll try the experiment, and you’ll see with what success.

‘No, don’t, pray!’ said Molly, in a hurry. ‘I do so dislike him!’

‘Why?’ said Osborne, roused to a little curiosity by her vehemence.

‘Oh! I don’t know. He never seems to know what one is feeling.’

‘He wouldn’t care if he did know,’ said Cynthia. ‘And he might know he is not wanted.’

‘If he chooses to stay, he cares little whether he is wanted or not.’

‘Come, this is very interesting,’ said Osborne. ‘It is like the strophe and anti-strophe in a Greek chorus. Pray, go on.’

‘Don’t you know him?’ asked Molly.

‘Yes, by sight, and I think we were once introduced. But, you know, we are much farther from Ashcombe, at Hamley, than you are here, at Hollingford.’

‘Oh! but he’s coming to take Mr. Sheepshanks’ place, and then he will live here altogether,’ said Molly.

‘Molly! who told you that?’ said Cynthia, in quite a different tone of voice to that in which she had been speaking hitherto.

‘Papa,—didn’t you hear him? Oh, no! it was before you were down this morning. Papa met Mr. Sheepshanks yesterday, and he told him it was all settled: you know we heard a rumour about it in the spring!’

Cynthia was very silent after this. Presently, she said that she had gathered all the flowers she wanted, and that the heat was so great she would go indoors. And then Osborne went away. But Molly had set herself a task to dig up such roots as had already flowered, and to put down some bedding-out plants in their stead. Tired and heated as she was she finished it, and then went upstairs to rest, and change her dress. According to her wont, she sought for Cynthia; there was no reply to her soft knock at the bedroom-door opposite to her own, and, thinking that Cynthia might have fallen asleep, and be lying uncovered in the draught of the open window, she went in softly. Cynthia was lying upon the bed as if she had thrown herself down on it without caring for the ease or comfort of her position. She was very still; and Molly took a shawl, and was going to place it over her, when she opened her eyes, and spoke—

‘Is that you, dear? Don’t go. I like to know that you are there.’

She shut her eyes again, and remained quite quiet for a few minutes longer. Then she started up into a sitting posture, pushed her hair away from her forehead and burning eyes, and gazed intently at Molly.

‘Do you know what I’ve been thinking, dear?’ said she. ‘I think I’ve been long enough here, and that I had better go out as a governess.’

‘Cynthia! what do you mean?’ asked Molly, aghast. ‘You’ve been asleep—you’ve been dreaming. You’re over-tired,’ continued she, sitting down on the bed, and taking Cynthia’s passive hand, and stroking it softly—a mode of caressing that had come down to her from her mother—whether as an hereditary instinct, or as a lingering remembrance of the tender ways of the dead woman, Mr. Gibson often wondered within himself when he observed it.

‘Oh, how good you are, Molly! I wonder, if I had been brought up like you, whether I should have been as good. But I’ve been tossed about so.’

‘Then, don’t go and be tossed about any more,’ said Molly, softly.

‘Oh, dear! I had better go. But, you see, no one ever loved me like you, and, I think, your father—doesn’t he, Molly? And it’s hard to be driven out.’

‘Cynthia, I am sure you’re not well, or else you’re not half awake.’

Cynthia sat with her arms encircling her knees, and looking at vacancy.

‘Well!’ said she, at last, heaving a great sigh; but, then, smiling as she caught Molly’s anxious face, ‘I suppose there’s no escaping one’s doom; and anywhere else I should be much more forlorn and unprotected.’

‘What do you mean by your doom?’

‘Ah, that’s telling, little one,’ said Cynthia, who seemed now to have recovered her usual manner. ‘I don’t mean to have one, though. I think that, though I am an arrant coward at heart, I can show fight.’

‘With whom?’ asked Molly, really anxious to probe the mystery—if, indeed, there was one—to the bottom, in the hope of some remedy being found for the distress Cynthia was in when first Molly entered.

Again Cynthia was lost in thought; then, catching the echo of Molly’s last words in her mind, she said—

“‘With whom?”—oh! show fight with whom?—why, my doom, to be sure. Am not I a grand young lady to have a doom? Why, Molly, child, how pale and grave you look!’ said she, kissing her all of a sudden. ‘You ought not to care so much for me; I’m not good enough for you to worry yourself about me. I’ve given myself up a long time ago as a heartless baggage!’

‘Nonsense! I wish you wouldn’t talk so, Cynthia!’

‘And I wish you wouldn’t always take me “at the foot of the letter,” ^cr as an English girl at school used to translate it. Oh, how hot it is! Is it never going to get cool again? My child! what dirty hands you’ve got, and face too; and I’ve been kissing you—I dare say I’m dirty with it, too. Now, isn’t that like one of mamma’s speeches? But, for all that, you look more like a delving Adam than a spinning Eve.’ This had the effect that Cynthia intended; the daintily clean Molly became conscious of her soiled condition, which she had forgotten while she had been attending to Cynthia, and she hastily withdrew to her own room. When she had gone, Cynthia noiselessly locked the door; and, taking her purse out of her desk, she began to count over her money. She counted it once—she counted it twice, as if desirous of finding out some mistake which should prove it to be more than it was; but the end of it all was a sigh.

‘What a fool!—what a fool I was!’ said she, at length. ‘But even if I don’t go out as a governess, I shall make it up in time.’

Some weeks after the time he had anticipated when he spoke of his departure to the Gibsons, Roger returned back to the Hall. One morning when he called, Osborne told them that his brother had been at home for two or three days.

‘And why has he not come here, then?’ said Mrs. Gibson. ‘It is not kind of him not to come and see us as soon as he can. Tell him I say so—pray do.’

Osborne had gained one or two ideas as to her treatment of Roger the last time he had called. Roger had not complained of it, or even mentioned it till, that very morning, when Osborne was on the point of starting, and had urged Roger to accompany him, the latter had told him something of what Mrs. Gibson had said. He spoke rather as if he was more amused than annoyed; but Osborne could read that he was chagrined at those restrictions placed upon calls which were the greatest pleasure of his life. Neither of them let out the suspicion which had entered both their minds—the well-grounded suspicion arising from the fact that Osborne’s visits, be they paid early or late, had never yet been met with a repulse.

Osborne now reproached himself with having done Mrs. Gibson injustice. She was evidently a weak, but probably a disinterested, woman; and it was only a little bit of ill-temper on her part which had caused her to speak to Roger as she had done.

‘I dare say it was rather impertinent of me to call at such an untimely hour,’ said Roger.

‘Not at all; I call at all hours, and nothing is ever said about it. It was just because she was put out that morning. I’ll answer for it she’s sorry now, and I’m sure you may go there at any time you like in future.’

Still, Roger did not choose to go again for two or three weeks, and the consequence was that the next time he called the ladies were out. Once again he had the same ill-luck, and then he received a little pretty three-cornered note^cs from Mrs. Gibson:—‘MY DEAR SIR,

‘How is it that you are become so formal all on a sudden, leaving cards, instead of awaiting our return? Fie for shame! If you had seen the faces of disappointment that I did when the horrid little bits of pasteboard were displayed to our view, you would not have borne malice against me so long; for it is really punishing others as well as my naughty self. If you will come to-morrow-as early as you like—and lunch with us, I’ll own I was cross, and acknowledge myself a penitent.—Yours ever,‘HYACINTH C. F. GIBSON.’

There was no resisting this, even if there had not been strong inclination to back up the pretty words. Roger went, and Mrs. Gibson caressed and petted him in her sweetest, silkiest manner. Cynthia looked lovelier than ever to him for the slight restriction that had been laid for a time on their intercourse. She might be gay and sparkling with Osborne; with Roger she was soft and grave. Instinctively she knew her men. She saw that Osborne was only interested in her because of her position in a family with whom he was intimate; that his friendship was without the least touch of sentiment; and that his admiration was only the warm criticism of an artist for unusual beauty. But she felt how different Roger’s relation was to her. To him she was the one, alone, peerless. If his love was prohibited, it would be long years before he could sink down into tepid friendship; and to him her personal loveliness was only one of the many charms that made him tremble into passion. Cynthia was not capable of returning such feelings; she had had too little true love in her life, and perhaps too much admiration, to do so; but she appreciated this honest ardour, this loyal worship that was new to her experience. Such appreciation, and such respect for his true and affectionate nature, gave a serious tenderness to her manner to Roger, which allured him with a fresh and separate grace. Molly sat by, and wondered how it would all end, or, rather, how soon it would all end, for she thought that no girl could resist such reverent passion; and on Roger’s side there could be no doubt—alas! there could be no doubt. An older spectator might have looked far ahead, and thought of the question of pounds, shillings, and pence. Where was the necessary income for a marriage to come from?

Roger had his fellowship now, it is true; but the income of that would be lost if he married;^ct he had no profession, a life-interest in the two or three thousand pounds that he inherited from his mother belonging to his father. This older spectator might have been a little surprised at the empressement^cu of Mrs. Gibson’s manner to a younger son, always supposing this said spectator to have read to the depths of her worldly heart. Never had she tried to be more agreeable to Osborne, and though her attempt was a great failure when practised upon Roger, and he did not know what to say in reply to the delicate flatteries which he felt to be insincere, he saw that she intended him to consider himself henceforward free of the house; and he was too glad to avail himself of this privilege to examine over-closely into what might be her motives for her change of manner. He shut his eyes, and chose to believe that she was now desirous of making up for her little burst of temper on his previous visit.

The result of Osborne’s conference with the two doctors had been certain prescriptions which appeared to have done him much good, and which would in all probability have done him yet more, could he have been free from the recollection of the little patient wife in her solitude near Winchester. He went to her whenever he could; and, thanks to Roger, money was far more plentiful with him now than it had been. But he still shrank, and perhaps even more, from telling his father of his marriage. Some bodily instinct made him dread all agitation inexpressibly. If he had not had this money from Roger, he might have been compelled to tell his father all, and to ask for the necessary funds to provide for the wife and the coming child. But with enough in hand, and a secret, though remorseful, conviction that as long as Roger had a penny his brother was sure to have half of it, made him more reluctant than ever to irritate his father by a revelation of his secret. ‘Not just yet, not just at present,’ he kept saying both to Roger and to himself ‘By and by, if we have a boy, I will call it Roger’—and then visions of poetical and romantic reconciliations brought about between father and son, through the medium of a child, the offspring of a forbidden marriage, became still more vividly possible to him, and at any rate it was a staving-off of an unpleasant thing. He atoned to himself for taking so much of Roger’s fellowship money by reflecting that, if Roger married, he would lose this source of revenue; yet Osborne was throwing no impediment in the way of this event, rather forwarding it by promoting every possible means of his brother’s seeing the lady of his love. Osborne ended his reflections by convincing himself of his own generosity.

CHAPTER 30

Old Ways and New Ways

Mr. Preston was now installed in his new house at Hollingford ; Mr. Sheepshanks having entered into dignified idleness at the house of his married daughter, who lived in the county town. His successor had plunged with energy into all manner of improvements; and, among others, he fell to draining a piece of outlying waste and unreclaimed land of Lord Cumnor’s, which was close to Squire Hamley’s property; that very piece for which he had had the Government grant, but which now lay neglected, and only half-drained, with stacks of mossy tiles, and lines of up-turned furrows telling of abortive plans.^cv It was not often that the squire rode in this direction nowadays; but the cottage of a man who had been the squire’s game-keeper in those more prosperous days when the Hamleys could afford to preserve, was close to the rush-grown ground. This old servant and tenant was ill, and had sent a message up to the Hall, asking to see the squire; not to reveal any secret, or to say anything particular, but only from the feudal loyalty, which made it seem to the dying man as if it would be a comfort to shake the hand, and look once more into the eyes of the lord and master whom he had served, and whose ancestors his own forbears had served for so many generations. And the squire was as fully alive as old Silas to the claims of the tie that existed between them. Though he hated the thought, and still more should hate the sight, of the piece of land, on the side of which Silas’s cottage stood, the squire ordered his horse, and rode off within half an hour of receiving the message. As he drew near the spot he thought he heard the sound of tools, and the hum of many voices, just as he used to hear them once, a year or two before. He listened with surprise. Yes. Instead of the still solitude he had expected, there was the clink of iron, the heavy gradual thud of the fall of barrowsful of soil—the cry and shout of labourers. But not on his land—better worth expense and trouble by far than the reedy clay common on which the men were, in fact, employed. He knew it was Lord Cumnor’s property; and he knew Lord Cumnor and his family had gone up in the world (‘the Whig rascals!’), both in wealth and in station, as the Hamleys had gone down. But all the same—in spite of long-known facts, and in spite of reason—the squire’s ready anger rose high at the sight of his neighbour doing what he had been unable to do, and he a Whig, and his family only in the county since Queen Anne’s time. He went so far as to wonder whether they might not—the labourers he meant—avail themselves of his tiles, lying so conveniently close to hand. All these thoughts, regrets, and wonders were in his mind as he rode up to the cottage he was bound to, and gave his horse in charge to a little lad, who had hitherto found his morning’s business and amusement in playing at ‘houses’ with a still younger sister, with some of the squire’s neglected tiles. But he was old Silas’s grandson, and he might have battered the rude red earthenware to pieces—a whole stack—one by one, and the squire would have said little or nothing. It was only that he would not spare one to a labourer of Lord Cumnor’s. No! not one.

Old Silas lay in a sort of closet, opening out of the family living-room. The small window that gave it light looked right on to the ‘moor,’ as it was called; and by day the check curtain was drawn aside so that he might watch the progress of the labour. Everything about the old man was clean, of course; and, with Death, the leveller, so close at hand, it was the labourer who made the first advances, and put out his horny hand to the squire.

‘I thought you’d come, squire. Your father came for to see my father as he lay a-dying.’

‘Come, come, my man!’ said the squire, easily affected, as he always was. ‘Don’t talk of dying; we shall soon have you out, never fear. They’ve sent you up some soup from the Hall, as I bade ’em, haven’t they?’

‘Aye, aye, I’ve had all as I could want for to eat and to drink. The young squire and Master Roger was here yesterday.’

‘Yes, I know’

‘But I’m a deal nearer heaven to-day, I am. I should like you to look after th’ covers in th’ West Spinney, squire; them gorse, you know, where th’ old fox had her hole—her as give ’em so many a run. You’ll mind it, squire, though you was but a lad. I could laugh to think on her tricks yet.’ And, with a weak attempt at a laugh, he got himself into a violent fit of coughing, which alarmed the squire, who thought he would never get his breath again. His daughter-in-law came in at the sound, and told the squire that he had these coughing-bouts very frequently, and that she thought he would go off in one of them before long. This opinion of hers was spoken simply out before the old man, who now lay gasping and exhausted upon his pillow. Poor people acknowledge the inevitableness and the approach of death in a much more straightforward manner than is customary among more educated folk. The squire was shocked at her hard-heartedness, as he considered it; but the old man himself had received much tender kindness from his daughter-in-law; and what she had just said was no more news to him than the fact that the sun would rise to-morrow. He was more anxious to go on with his story.

‘Them navvies—I call ’em navvies because some on ‘em is strangers, though some on ’em is th’ men as was turned off your own works, squire, when there came orders to stop ‘em last fall—they’re a-pulling up gorse and bush to light their fire for warming up their messes. It’s a long way off to their homes, and they mostly dine here; and there’ll be nothing of a cover left, if you don’t see after ’em. I thought I should like to tell ye afore I died. Parson’s been here; but I did na tell him. He’s all for the earl’s folk, and he’d not ha’ heeded. It’s the earl as put him into his church, I reckon, for he said what a fine thing it were for to see so much employment a-given to the poor, and he never said nought o’ th’ sort when your works were agait, squire.’

This long speech had been interrupted by many a cough and gasp for breath; and having delivered himself of what was on his mind, he turned his face to the wall, and appeared to be going to sleep. Presently he roused himself with a start.

‘I know I flogged him well, I did. But he were after pheasant’s eggs, and I didn’t know he were an orphan. Lord, forgive me!’

‘He’s thinking on David Morton, the cripple, as used to go about trapping venison,’ whispered the woman.

‘Why, he died long ago—twenty year, I should think,’ replied the squire.

‘Aye, but when grandfather goes off i’ this way to sleep after a bout of talking he seems to be dreaming on old times. He’ll not waken up yet, sir; you’d best sit down if you’d like to stay,’ she continued, as she went into the houseplace and dusted a chair with her apron. ‘He was very particular in bidding me wake him if he were asleep, and you or Mr. Roger was to call. Mr. Roger said he’d be coming again this morning—but he’ll likely sleep an hour or more, if he’s let alone.’

‘I wish I’d said good-bye; I should like to have done that.’

‘He drops off so sudden,’ said the woman. ‘But if you’d be better pleased to have said it, squire, I’ll waken him up a bit.’

‘No, no!’ the squire called out as the woman was going to be as good as her word. ‘I’ll come again, perhaps to-morrow And tell him I was sorry; for I am indeed. And be sure and send to the Hall for anything you want! Mr. Roger is coming, is he? He’ll bring me word how he is, later on. I should like to have bidden him good-bye.’

So, giving sixpence to the child who had held his horse, the squire mounted. He sat still a moment, looking at the busy work going on before him, and then at his own half-completed drainage. It was a bitter pill. He had objected to borrowing from Government, in the first instance; and then his wife had persuaded him to the step; and after it was once taken, he was as proud as could be of the only concession to the spirit of progress he ever made in his life. He had read and studied the subject pretty thoroughly, if also very slowly, during the time his wife had been influencing him. He was tolerably well up in agriculture, if in nothing else; and at one time he had taken the lead among the neighbouring landowners, when he first began tile-drainage.^cw In those days people used to speak of Squire Hamley’s hobby; and at market ordinaries, or county dinners, they rather dreaded setting him off on long repetitions of arguments from the different pamphlets on the subject which he had read. And now the proprietors all around him were draining—draining; his interest to Government was running on all the same, though his works were stopped, and his tiles deteriorating in value. It was not a soothing consideration, and the squire was almost ready to quarrel with his shadow. He wanted a vent for his ill humour; and suddenly remembering the devastations on his covers, which he had heard about not a quarter of an hour before, he rode up to the men busy at work on Lord Cumnor’s land. Just before he got up to them he encountered Mr. Preston, also on horseback, come to overlook his labourers. The squire did not know him, personally, but from the agent’s manner of speaking, and the deference that was evidently paid to him, Mr. Hamley saw that he was a responsible person. So he addressed the agent: ‘I beg your pardon, I suppose you are the manager of these works?’

Mr. Preston replied,—‘Certainly. I am that and many other things besides, at your service. I have succeeded Mr. Sheepshanks in the management of my lord’s property. Mr. Hamley of Hamley, I believe?’

The squire bowed stiffly. He did not like his name to be asked or presumed upon in that manner. An equal might conjecture who he was, or recognize him, but, till he announced himself, an inferior had no right to do more than address him respectfully as ‘sir.’ That was the squire’s code of etiquette.

‘I am Mr. Hamley of Hamley I suppose you are as yet ignorant of the boundary of Lord Cumnor’s land, and so I will inform you that my property begins at the pond yonder—just where you see the rise in the ground.’

‘I am perfectly acquainted with that fact, Mr. Hamley,’ said Mr. Preston, a little annoyed at the ignorance attributed to him. ‘But may I inquire why my attention is called to it just now?’

The squire was beginning to boil over; but he tried to keep his temper in. The effort was very much to be respected, for it was a great one. There was something in the handsome and well-dressed agent’s tone and manner inexpressibly irritating to the squire, and it was not lessened by an involuntary comparison of the capital roadster on which Mr. Preston was mounted with his own ill-groomed and aged cob.

‘I have been told that your men out yonder do not respect these boundaries, but are in the habit of plucking up gorse from my covers to light their fires.’

‘It is possible they may!’ said Mr. Preston, lifting his eyebrows, his manner being more nonchalant than his words. ‘I dare say they think no great harm of it. However, I’ll inquire.’

‘Do you doubt my word, sir?’ said the squire, fretting his mare till she began to dance about.‘I tell you I’ve heard it only within this last half-hour.’

‘I don’t mean to doubt your word, Mr. Hamley; it’s the last thing I should think of doing. But you must excuse my saying that the argument which you have twice brought up for the authenticity of your statement, “that you have heard it within the last half-hour,” is not quite so forcible as to preclude the possibility of a mistake.’

‘I wish you’d only say in plain language that you doubt my word,’ said the squire, clenching and slightly raising his horsewhip. ‘I can’t make out what you mean—you use so many words.’

‘Pray don’t lose your temper, sir. I said I should inquire. You have not seen the men pulling up gorse yourself, or you would have named it. I, surely, may doubt the correctness of your information until I have made some inquiry; at any rate, that is the course I shall pursue, and if it gives you offence I shall be sorry, but I shall do it just the same. When I am convinced that harm has been done to your property, I shall take steps to prevent it for the future, and of course, in my lord’s name, I shall pay you compensation—it may probably amount to half-a-crown.’ He added these words last in a lower tone, as if to himself, with a slight contemptuous smile on his face.

‘Quiet, mare, quiet,’ said the squire, quite unaware that he was the cause of her impatient movements by the way he was perpetually tightening her reins; and also, perhaps, he unconsciously addressed the injunction to himself

Neither of them saw Roger Hamley, who was approaching them with long, steady steps. He had seen his father from the door of old Silas’s cottage, and, as the poor fellow was still asleep, he was coming to speak to his father, and was near enough now to hear the next words.

‘I don’t know who you are, but I’ve known land-agents who were gentlemen, and I’ve known some who were not. You belong to this last set, young man,’ said the squire, ‘that you do. I should like to try my horsewhip on you for your insolence.’

‘Pray, Mr. Hamley,’ replied Mr. Preston, coolly, ‘curb your temper a little, and reflect. I really feel sorry to see a man of your age in such a passion:’—moving a little farther off, however, but really more with a desire to save the irritated man from carrying his threat into execution, out of a dislike to the slander and excitement it would cause, than from any personal dread. Just at this moment Roger Hamley came close up. He was panting a little and his eyes were very stern and dark; but he spoke quietly enough.

‘Mr. Preston, I can hardly understand what you mean by your last words. But remember, my father is a gentleman of age and position, and not accustomed to receive advice as to the management of his temper from young men like you.’

‘I desired him to keep his men off my land,’ said the squire to his son—his wish to stand well in Roger’s opinion restraining his temper a little; but though his words might be a little calmer, there were all other signs of passion present—the discoloured complexion, the trembling hands, the fiery cloud in his eyes. ‘He refused, and doubted my word.’

Mr. Preston turned to Roger, as if appealing from Philip drunk to Philip sober, and spoke in a tone of cool explanation, which, though not insolent in words, was excessively irritating in manner.

‘Your father has misunderstood me—perhaps it is no wonder,’ trying to convey, by a look of intelligence at the son, his opinion that the father was in no state to hear reason. ‘I never refused to do what was just and right. I only required further evidence as to the past wrong-doing; your father took offence at this,’ and then he shrugged his shoulders, and lifted his eyebrows in a manner he had formerly learnt in France.

‘At any rate, sir! I can scarcely reconcile the manner and words to my father, which I heard you use when I first came up, with the deference you ought to have shown to a man of his age and position. As to the fact of the trespass——’

‘They are pulling up all the gorse, Roger—there’ll be no cover whatever for game soon,’ put in the squire.

Roger bowed to his father, but took up his speech at the point it was at before the interruption.

‘I will inquire into it myself at a cooler moment; and if I find that such trespass or damage has been committed, of course I shall expect that you will see it put a stop to. Come, father! I am going to see old Silas—perhaps you don’t know that he is very ill.’ So he endeavoured to wile the squire away to prevent further words. He was not entirely successful.

Mr. Preston was enraged by Roger’s calm and dignified manner, and threw after them this parting shaft, in the shape of a loud soliloquy, —

‘Position, indeed! What are we to think of the position of a man who begins works like these without counting the cost, and comes to a standstill, and has to turn off^cx his labourers just at the beginning of winter, leaving———’

They were too far off to hear the rest. The squire was on the point of turning back before this, but Roger took hold of the reins of the old mare, and led her over some of the boggy ground, as if to guide her into sure footing, but, in reality, because he was determined to prevent the renewal of the quarrel. It was well that the cob knew him, and was, indeed, old enough to prefer quietness to dancing ; for Mr. Hamley plucked hard at the reins, and at last broke out with an oath.—‘Damn it, Roger! I’m not a child; I won’t be treated as such. Leave go, I say!’

Roger let go; they were now on firm ground, and he did not wish any watchers to think that he was exercising any constraint over his father; and this quiet obedience to his impatient commands did more to soothe the squire than anything else could have effected just then.

‘I know I turned them off—what could I do? I’d no more money for their weekly wages; it’s a loss to me, as you know. He doesn’t know, no one knows, but I think your mother would, how it cut me to turn ’em off just before winter set in. I lay awake many a night thinking of it, and I gave them what I had—I did, indeed. I hadn’t got money to pay ‘em, but I had three barren cows fattened, and gave every scrap of meat to the men, and I let ’em go into the woods and gather what was fallen, and I winked at their breaking off old branches, and now to have it cast up against me by that cur—that servant. But I’ll go on with the works, by—, I will, if only to spite him. I’ll show him who I am. My position, indeed! A Hamley of Hamley takes a higher position than his master. I’ll go on with the works, see if I don‘t! I’m paying between one and two hundred a year interest on Government money. I’ll raise some more if I go to the Jews; Osborne has shown me the way, and Osborne shall pay for it—he shall. I’ll not put up with insults. You shouldn’t have stopped me, Roger! I wish to heaven I’d horsewhipped the fellow!’

He was lashing himself again into an impotent rage, painful to a son to witness; but just then the little grandchild of old Silas, who had held the squire’s horse during his visit to the sick man, came running up, breathless:

‘Please, sir, please, squire, mammy has sent me; grandfather has wakened up sudden, and mammy says he’s dying, and would you please come; she says he’d take it as a kind compliment, she’s sure.’

So they went to the cottage, the squire speaking never a word, but suddenly feeling as if lifted out of a whirlwind and set down in a still and awful place.

CHAPTER 31

A Passive Coquette

It is not to be supposed that such an encounter as Mr. Preston had just had with Roger Hamley sweetened the regards in which the two young men henceforward held each other. They had barely spoken to one another before, and but seldom met; for the land-agent’s employment had hitherto lain at Ashcombe, some sixteen or seventeen miles from Hamley He was older than Roger by several years; but during the time he had lived in the country Osborne and Roger had been at school and at college. Mr. Preston was prepared to dislike the Hamleys for many unreasonable reasons. Cynthia and Molly had both spoken of the brothers with familiar regard, implying considerable intimacy; their flowers had been preferred to his on the occasion of the ball; most people spoke well of them; and Mr. Preston had an animal’s instinctive jealousy and combativeness against all popular young men. Their ‘position’—poor as the Hamleys might be—was far higher than his own in the county; and, moreover, he was agent to the great Whig lord, whose political interests were diametrically opposed to those of the old Tory squire. Not that Lord Cumnor troubled himself much about his political interests. His family had obtained property and title from the Whigs at the time of the Hanoverian succession; and so, traditionally, he was a Whig, and had belonged in his youth to Whig clubs, where he had lost considerable sums of money to Whig gamblers. All this was satisfactory and consistent enough. And if Lord Hollingford had not been returned for the county on the Whig interest—as his father had been before him, until he had succeeded to the title—it is quite probable Lord Cumnor would have considered the British constitution in danger, and the patriotism of his ancestors ungratefully ignored. But, excepting at elections, he had no notion of making Whig and Tory a party cry. He had lived too much in London, and was of too sociable a nature, to exclude any man who jumped with his humour from the hospitality he was always ready to offer, be the agreeable acquaintance Whig, Tory, or Radical. But in the county of which he was lord-lieutenant, the old party distinction was still a shibboleth by which men were tested for their fitness for social intercourse, as well as on the hustings. If by any chance a Whig found himself at a Tory dinner-table—or vice versa—the food was hard of digestion, and wine and viands were criticized rather than enjoyed. A marriage between the young people of the separate parties was almost as unheard-of and prohibited an alliance as that of Romeo and Juliet’s. And of course Mr. Preston was not a man in whose breast such prejudices would die away. They were an excitement to him for one thing, and called out all his talent for intrigue on behalf of the party to which he was allied. Moreover, he considered it as loyalty to his employer to ‘scatter his enemies’ by any means in his power. He had always hated and despised the Tories in general; and after that interview on the marshy common in front of Silas’s cottage, he hated the Hamleys, and Roger especially, with a very choice and particular hatred. ‘That prig,’ as hereafter he always designated Roger—‘he shall pay for it yet,’ he said to himself by way of consolation, after the father and son had left him. ‘What a lout it is!‘—watching the receding figures. ‘The old chap has twice as much spunk,’ as the squire tugged at his bridle reins. ‘The old mare could make her way better without being led, my fine fellow. But I see through your dodge. You’re afraid of your old father turning back and getting into another rage. Position indeed! a beggarly squire—a man who did turn off his men just before winter, to rot or starve, for all he cared—it’s just like a venal old Tory.’ And, under the cover of sympathy with the dismissed labourers, Mr. Preston indulged his own private pique very pleasantly.

Mr. Preston had many causes for rejoicing: he might have forgotten this discomfiture, as he chose to feel it, in the remembrance of an increase of income, and in the popularity he enjoyed in his new abode. All Hollingford came forwards to do the earl’s new agent honour. Mr. Sheepshanks had been a crabbed, crusty old bachelor, frequenting inn-parlours on market days, not unwilling to give dinners to three or four chosen friends and familiars, with whom, in return, he dined from time to time, and with whom, also, he kept up an amicable rivalry in the matter of wines. But he ‘did not appreciate female society,’ as Miss Browning elegantly worded his unwillingness to accept the invitations of the Hollingford ladies. He was unrefined enough to speak of these invitations to his intimate friends aforesaid in the following manner: ‘Those old women’s worrying,’ but, of course, they never heard of this. Litde quarter-of-sheet notes, without any envelopes-that invention was unknown in those days—but sealed in the corners when folded up instead of gummed as they are fastened at present, occasionally passed between Mr. Sheepshanks and the Miss Brownings, Mrs. Goodenough, or others. From the first of these ladies the form ran as follows: —‘Miss Browning and her sister, Miss Phoebe Browning, present their respectful compliments to Mr. Sheepshanks, and beg to inform him that a few friends have kindly consented to favour them with their company at tea on Thursday next. Miss Browning and Miss Phoebe will take it very kindly if Mr. Sheepshanks will join their litde circle.’

Now for Mrs. Goodenough.

‘Mrs. Goodenough’s respects to Mr. Sheepshanks, and hopes he is in good health. She would be very glad if he would favour her with his company to tea on Monday. My daughter, in Combermere, has sent me a couple of guinea-fowls, and Mrs. Goodenough hopes Mr. Sheepshanks will stay and take a bit of supper.’

No need for the dates of the days of the month. The good ladies would have thought that the world was coming to an end if the invitation had been sent out a week before the party therein named. But not even guinea-fowls for supper could tempt Mr. Sheepshanks. He remembered the made-wines he had tasted in former days at Hollingford parties, and shuddered. Bread-and-cheese, with a glass of bitter-beer, or a little brandy-and-water, partaken of in his old clothes (which had worn into shapes of loose comfort, and smelt strongly of tobacco), he liked better than roast guinea-fowl and birch-wine, even without throwing into the balance the stiff uneasy coat, and the tight neck-cloth and tighter shoes. So the ex-agent had been seldom, if ever, seen at the Hollingford tea-parties. He might have had his form of refusal stereotyped, it was so invariably the same.

‘Mr. Sheepshanks’ duty to Miss Browning and her sister’ (to Mrs. Goodenough, or to others, as the case might be). ‘Business of importance prevents him from availing himself of their polite invitation; for which he begs to return his best thanks.’

But now that Mr. Preston had succeeded, and come to live in Hollingford, things were changed.

He accepted every civility right and left, and won golden opinions accordingly. Parties were made in his honour, ‘just as if he had been a bride,’ Miss Phoebe Browning said; and to all of them he went.

‘What’s the man after?’ said Mr. Sheepshanks to himself, when he heard of his successor’s affabihty, and sociability, and amiabihty, and a variety of other agreeable ‘ilities,’ from the friends whom the old steward still retained at Hollingford. ‘Preston’s not a man to put himself out for nothing. He’s deep. He’ll be after something solider than popularity.’

The sagacious old bachelor was right. Mr. Preston was ‘after’ something more than mere popularity. He went wherever he had a chance of meeting Cynthia Kirkpatrick.

It might be that Molly’s spirits were more depressed at this time than they were in general; or that Cynthia was exultant, unawares to herself, in the amount of attention and admiration she was receiving, from Roger by day, from Mr. Preston in the evening, but the two girls seemed to have parted company in cheerfulness. Molly was always gentle, but very grave and silent. Cynthia, on the contrary, was merry, full of pretty mockeries, and hardly ever silent. When first she came to Hollingford one of her great charms had been that she was such a gracious listener; now her excitement, by whatever caused, made her too restless to hold her tongue; yet what she said was too pretty, too witty, not to be a winning and sparkling interruption, eagerly welcomed by those who were under her sway. Mr. Gibson was the only one who observed this change, and reasoned upon it. ‘She’s in a mental fever of some kind,’ thought he to himself ‘She’s very fascinating, but I don’t quite understand her.’

If Molly had not been so entirely loyal to her friend, she might have thought this constant brilliancy a little tiresome when brought into every-day life; it was not the sunshiny rest of a placid lake, it was rather the glitter of the pieces of a broken mirror, which confuses and bewilders. Cynthia would not talk quietly about anything now; subjects of thought or conversation seemed to have lost their relative value. There were exceptions to this mood of hers, when she sank into deep fits of silence, that would have been gloomy had it not been for the never varying sweetness of her temper. If there was a little kindness to be done to either Mr. Gibson or Molly, Cynthia was just as ready as ever to do it; nor did she refuse to do anything her mother wished, however fidgety might be the humour that prompted the wish. But in this latter case Cynthia’s eyes were not quickened by her heart.

Molly was dejected, she knew not why. Cynthia had drifted a little apart; that was not it. Her stepmother had whimsical moods; and if Cynthia displeased her, she would oppress Molly with small kindnesses and pseudo-affection. Or else everything was wrong, the world was out of joint, and Molly had failed in her mission to set it right, and was to be blamed accordingly. But Molly was of too steady a disposition to be much moved by the changeableness of an unreasonable person. She might be annoyed or irritated, but she was not depressed. That was not it. The real cause was certainly this. As long as Roger was drawn to Cynthia, and sought her of his own accord, it had been a sore pain and bewilderment to Molly’s heart; but it was a straightforward attraction, and one which Molly acknowledged, in her humility and great power of loving, to be the most natural thing in the world. She would look at Cynthia’s beauty and grace, and feel as if no one could resist it. And when she witnessed all the small signs of honest devotion which Roger was at no pains to conceal, she thought, with a sigh, that surely no girl could help relinquishing her heart to such tender, strong keeping as Roger’s character ensured. She would have been willing to cut off her right hand, if need were, to forward his attachment to Cynthia; and the self-sacrifice would have added a strange zest to a happy crisis. She was indignant at what she considered Mrs. Gibson’s obtuseness to so much goodness and worth; and when she called Roger a ‘country lout,’ or any other depreciative epithet, Molly would pinch herself in order to keep silent. But after all, those were peaceful days compared to the present, when she, seeing the wrong side of the tapestry, after the wont of those who dwell in the same house with a plotter, became aware that Mrs. Gibson had totally changed her behaviour to Roger, for some cause unknown to Molly.

But he was always exactly the same; ‘steady as old Time,’ as Mrs. Gibson called him, with her usual originality; ‘a rock of strength, under whose very shadow there is rest,’ as Mrs. Hamley had once spoken of him. So the cause of Mrs. Gibson’s altered manner lay not in him. Yet now he was sure of a welcome, let him come at any hour he would. He was playfully reproved for having taken Mrs. Gibson’s words too literally, and for never coming before lunch. But he said he considered her reasons for such words to be valid, and should respect them. And this was done out of his simplicity, and from no tinge of malice. Then in their family conversations at home, Mrs. Gibson was constantly making projects for throwing Roger and Cynthia together, with so evident a betrayal of her wish to bring about an engagement, that Molly chafed at the net spread so evidently, and at Roger’s blindness in coming so willingly to be entrapped. She forgot his previous willingness, his former evidences of manly fondness for the beautiful Cynthia; she only saw plots of which he was the victim, and Cynthia the conscious if passive bait. She felt as if she could not have acted as Cynthia did; no, not even to gain Roger’s love. Cynthia heard and saw as much of the domestic background as she did, and yet she submitted to the role assigned to her! To be sure, this role would have been played by her unconsciously; the things prescribed were what she would naturally have done; but because they were prescribed—by implication only, it is true—Molly would have resisted; have gone out, for instance, when she was expected to stay at home; or have lingered in the garden when a long country walk was planned. At last—for she could not help loving Cynthia, come what would—she determined to believe that Cynthia was entirely unaware of all; but it was with an effort that she brought herself to believe it.

It may be all very pleasant ‘to sport with Amaryllis in the shade, or with the tangles of Naera’s hair,’^cy but young men at the outset of their independent life have many other cares in this prosaic England to occupy their time and their thoughts. Roger was fellow at Trinity, to be sure; and from the outside it certainly appeared as if his position, as long as he chose to keep unmarried, was a very easy one. His was not a nature, however, to sink down into inglorious ease, even had his fellowship income been at his disposal. He looked forward to an active life; in what direction he had not yet determined. He knew what were his talents and his tastes; and did not wish the former to lie buried, nor the latter, which he regarded as gifts, fitting him for some peculiar work, to be disregarded or thwarted. He rather liked awaiting an object, secure in his own energy to force his way to it, when he once saw it clearly. He reserved enough of money for his own personal needs, which were small, and for the ready furtherance of any project he might see fit to undertake; the rest of his income was Osborne’s; given and accepted in the spirit which made the bond between these two brothers so rarely perfect. It was only the thought of Cynthia that threw Roger off his balance. A strong man in everything else, about her he was as a child. He knew that he could not marry and retain his fellowship; his intention was to hold himself loose from any employment or profession until he had found one to his mind, so there was no immediate prospect—no prospect for many years, indeed, that he would be able to marry. Yet he went on seeking Cynthia’s sweet company, listening to the music of her voice, basking in her sunshine, and feeding his passion in every possible way, just like an unreasoning child. He knew that it was folly—and yet he did it; and it was perhaps this that made him so sympathetic with Osborne. Roger racked his brains about Osborne’s affairs much more frequently than Osborne troubled himself Indeed, he had become so ailing and languid of late, that even the squire made only very faint objections to his desire for frequent change of scene, though formerly he used to grumble so much at the necessary expenditure it involved.

‘After all, it does not cost much,’ the squire said to Roger one day. ‘Choose how he does it, he does it cheaply; he used to come and ask me for twenty, where now he does it for five. But he and I have lost each other’s language, that’s what we have! and my dictionary’ (only he called it ‘dixonary’) ‘has all got wrong because of those confounded debts—which he will never explain to me, or talk about—he always holds me off at arm’s length when I begin upon it—he does, Roger—me, his old dad, as was his primest favourite of all, when he was a little bit of a chap!’

The squire dwelt so much upon Osborne’s reserved behaviour to himself, that brooding over this one subject perpetually he became more morose and gloomy than ever in his manner to his son, resenting the want of the confidence and affection that he thus repelled. So much so that Roger, who desired to avoid being made the receptacle of his father’s complaints against Osborne—and Roger’s passive listening was the sedative his father always sought—had often to have recourse to the discussion of the drainage works as a counter-irritant. The squire had felt Mr. Preston’s speech about the dismissal of his work-people very keenly; it fell in with the reproaches of his own conscience, though, as he would repeat to Roger over and over again,—‘I could not help it—how could I?—I was drained dry of ready money—I wish the land was drained as dry as I am,’ said he, with a touch of humour that came out before he was aware, and at which he smiled sadly enough. ‘What was I to do, I ask you, Roger? I know I was in a rage—I’ve had a deal to make me so—and maybe I did not think as much about consequences as I should have done, when I gave orders for ’em to be sent off; but I couldn’t have done otherwise if I’d ha’ thought for a twelvemonth in cool blood. Consequences! I hate consequences; they’ve always been against me; they have. I’m so tied up I can’t cut down a stick more, and that’s a “consequence” of having the property so deucedly well settled; I wish I’d never had any ancestors. Aye, laugh, lad! it does me good to see thee laugh a bit, after Osborne’s long face, which always grows longer at sight o’ me!’

‘Look here, father!’ said Roger suddenly, ‘I’ll manage somehow about the money for the works. You trust to me; give me two months to turn myself in, and you shall have some money, at any rate, to begin with.’

The squire looked at him, and his face brightened as a child’s does at the promise of a pleasure made to him by some one on whom he can rely. He became a little graver, however, as he said,—‘But how will you get it? It’s hard enough work.’

‘Never mind; I’ll get it—a hundred or so at first—I don’t yet know how—but remember, father, I’m a senior wrangler, and a “very promising young writer,” as that review called me. Oh, you don’t know what a fine fellow you’ve got for a son. You should have read that review to know all my wonderful merits.’

‘I did, Roger. I heard Gibson speaking of it, and I made him get it for me. I should have understood it better if they could have called the animals by their English names, and not put so much of their French jingo into it.’

‘But it was an answer to an article by a French writer,’ pleaded Roger.

‘I’d ha’ let him alone!’ said the squire, earnestly. ‘We had to beat ’em, and we did it at Waterloo; but I’d not demean myself by answering any of their lies, if I was you. But I got through the review, for all their Latin and French; I did, and if you doubt me, you just look at the end of the great ledger, turn it upside down, and you’ll find I’ve copied out all the fine words they said of you: “careful observer,” “strong nervous English,” “rising philosopher.” Oh! I can nearly say it all off by heart, for many a time when I am frabbed by bad debts, or Osborne’s bills, or moidered with accounts, I turn the ledger wrong way up, and smoke a pipe over it, while I read those pieces out of the review which speak about you, lad!’

CHAPTER 32

Coming Events

Roger had turned over many plans in his mind, by which he thought that he could obtain sufficient money for the purpose he desired to accomplish. His careful grandfather, who had been a merchant in the city, had so tied up the few thousands he had left to his daughter, that although, in case of her death before her husband’s, the latter might enjoy the life-interest thereof, yet, in case of both their deaths, their second son did not succeed to the property till he was five-and-twenty; and if he died before that age, the money that would then have been his went to one of his cousins on the maternal side. In short, the old merchant had taken as many precautions about his legacy as if it had been for tens, instead of units of thousands. Of course Roger might have slipped through all these meshes by insuring his life until the specified age; and probably if he had consulted any lawyer this course would have been suggested to him. But he disliked taking any one into his confidence on the subject of his father’s want of ready money. He had obtained a copy of his grandfather’s will at Doctors’ Commons,^cz and he imagined that all the contingencies involved in it would be patent to the light of nature and common sense. He was a little mistaken in this, but not the less resolved that money in some way he would have in order to fulfil his promise to his father, and for the ulterior purpose of giving the squire some daily interest to distract his thoughts from the regrets and cares that were almost weakening his mind. It was ‘Roger Hamley, senior wrangler and fellow of Trinity to the highest bidder, no matter what honest employment,’ and presently it came down to ‘any bidder at all.’

Another perplexity and distress at this time weighed upon Roger. Osborne, heir to the estate, was going to have a child. The Hamley property was entailed on ‘heirs-male born in lawful wedlock.’ Was the ‘wedlock’ lawful? Osborne never seemed to doubt that it was—never seemed, in fact, to think twice about it. And if he, the husband, did not, how much less did Aimee, the trustful wife. Yet who could tell how much misery any shadows of illegality might cast into the future? One evening Roger, sitting by the languid, careless, dilettante Osborne, began to question him as to the details of the marriage. Osborne knew instinctively at what Roger was aiming. It was not that he did not desire perfect legality in justice to his wife; it was that he was so indisposed at the time that he hated to be bothered. It was something like the refrain of Gray’s Scandinavian Prophetess: ‘Leave me, leave me to repose.’

‘But do try and tell me how you managed it.’

‘How tiresome you are, Roger!’ put in Osborne.

‘Well, I dare say I am. Go on!’

‘I’ve told you Morrison married us. You remember old Morrison at Trinity?’

‘Yes; as good and blunder-headed a fellow as ever lived.’

‘Well, he’s taken orders; and the examination for priest’s orders fatigued him so much that he got his father to give him a hundred or two for a tour on the Continent. He meant to get to Rome, because he heard that there were such pleasant winters there. So he turned up at Metz in August.’

‘I don’t see why.’

‘No more did he. He never was great in geography, you know; and somehow he thought that Metz, pronounced French fashion, must be on the road to Rome. Some one had told him so in fun. However, it was very well for me that I met with him there, for I was determined to be married, and that without loss of time.’

‘But Aimée is a Catholic?’

‘That’s true! but you see I am not. You don’t suppose I would do her any wrong, Roger?’ asked Osborne, sitting up in his lounging-chair, and speaking rather indignantly to Roger, his face suddenly flushing red.

‘No! I’m sure you would not mean it; but you see there’s a child coming, and this estate is entailed on ‘heirs-male.’ Now, I want to know if the marriage is legal or not? and it seems to me it’s a ticklish question.’

‘Oh!’ said Osborne, falling back into repose, ‘if that’s all, I suppose you’re next heir-male, and I can trust you as I can myself. You know my marriage is bona fide in intention, and I believe it to be legal in fact. We went over to Strasbourg; Aimée picked up a friend—a good middle-aged Frenchwoman—who served half as bridesmaid, half as chaperon, and then we went before the mayor—prefet—what do you call them? I think Morrison rather enjoyed the spree. I signed all manner of papers in the prefecture; I did not read them over, for fear lest I could not sign them conscientiously. It was the safest plan. Aimée kept trembling so I thought she would faint; and then we went off to the nearest English chaplaincy, Carlsruhe, and the chaplain was away, so Morrison easily got the loan of the chapel, and we were married the next day.’

‘But surely some registration or certificate was necessary?’

‘Morrison said he would undertake all those forms; and he ought to know his own business. I know I tipped him pretty well for the job.’

‘You must be married again,’ said Roger, after a pause, ‘and that before the child is born. Have you got a certificate of the marriage?’

‘I dare say Morrison has got it somewhere. But I believe I’m legally married according to the laws both of England and France; I really do, old fellow. I’ve got the préfet’s papers somewhere.’

‘Never mind! you shall be married again in England.¹ Aimée goes to the Roman Catholic chapel at Prestham, doesn’t she?’

‘Yes. She is so good I wouldn’t disturb her in her religion for the world.’

‘Then you shall be married both there and at the church of the parish in which she lives as well,’ said Roger, decidedly.

‘It’s a great deal of trouble, unnecessary trouble, and unnecessary expense, I should say,’ said Osborne. ‘Why can’t you leave well alone? Neither Aimée nor I are of the sort of stuff to turn scoundrels and deny the legality of our marriage; and if the child is a boy and my father dies, and I die, why I’m sure you’ll do him justice, as sure as I am of myself, old fellow!’

‘But if I die into the bargain? Make a hecatomb of the present Hamleys all at once, while you are about it. Who succeeds as heir-male?’

Osborne thought for a moment. ‘One of the Irish Hamleys, I suppose. I fancy they are needy chaps. Perhaps you’re right. But what need to have such gloomy forebodings?’

‘The law makes one have foresight in such affairs,’ said Roger. ‘So I’ll go down to Aimée next week when I’m in town, and I’ll make all necessary arrangements before you come. I think you’ll be happier if it is all done.’

‘I shall be happier if I’ve a chance of seeing the little woman, that I grant you. But what is taking you up to town? I wish I’d money to run about like you, instead of being shut up for ever in this dull old house.’

Osborne was apt occasionally to contrast his position with Roger’s in a tone of complaint, forgetting that both were the results of character, and also that out of his income Roger gave up so large a portion for the maintenance of his brother’s wife. But if this ungenerous thought of Osborne’s had been set clearly before his conscience, he would have smote his breast and cried ‘Mea culpa’ with the best of them; it was only that he was too indolent to keep an unassisted conscience.

‘I shouldn’t have thought of going up,’ said Roger, reddening as if he had been accused of spending another’s money instead of his own, ‘if I hadn’t had to go up on business. Lord Hollingford has written for me; he knows my great wish for employment, and has heard of something which he considers suitable; there’s his letter if you care to read it. But it does not tell anything definitely.’

Osborne read the letter and returned it to Roger. After a moment or two of silence he said,—‘Why do you want money? Are we taking too much from you? It’s a great shame of me; but what can I do? Only suggest a career for me, and I’ll follow it to-morrow.’ He spoke as if Roger had been reproaching him.

‘My dear fellow, don’t get those notions into your head! I must do something for myself some time, and I’ve been on the look-out. Besides, I want my father to go on with his drainage; it would do good both to his health and his spirits. If I can advance any part of the money requisite, he and you shall pay me interest until you can return the capital.’

‘Roger, you’re the providence of the family,’ exclaimed Osborne, suddenly struck by admiration at his brother’s conduct, and forgetting to contrast it with his own.

So Roger went up to London and Osborne followed him, and for two or three weeks the Gibsons saw nothing of the brothers. But as wave succeeds to wave, so interest succeeds to interest. ‘The family,’ as they were called, came down for their autumn sojourn at the Towers, and again the house was full of visitors, and the Towers’ servants, and carriages, and liveries were seen in the two streets of Hollingford, just as they might have been seen for scores of autumns past.

So runs the round of life from day to day. Mrs. Gibson found the chances of intercourse with the Towers rather more personally exciting than Roger’s visits, or the rarer calls of Osborne Hamley. Cynthia had an old antipathy to the great family who had made so much of her mother and so little of her; and whom she considered as in some measure the cause why she had seen so little of her mother in the days when the little girl had craved for love and found none. Moreover, Cynthia missed her slave, although she did not care for Roger one thousandth part of what he did for her; yet she had found it not unpleasant to have a man whom she thoroughly respected, and whom men in general respected, the subject of her eye, the glad ministrant to each scarce spoken wish, a person in whose sight all her words were pearls or diamonds, all her actions heavenly graciousness, and in whose thoughts she reigned supreme. She had no modest unconsciousness about her; and yet she was not vain. She knew of all this worship; and when from circumstances she no longer received it she missed it. The Earl and the Countess, Lord Hollingford and Lady Harriet, lords and ladies in general, liveries, dresses, bags of game, and rumours of riding parties were as nothing to her compared to Roger’s absence. And yet she did not love him. No, she did not love him. Molly knew that Cynthia did not love him. Molly grew angry with her many and many a time as the conviction of this fact was forced upon her. Molly did not know her own feelings; Roger had no overwhelming interest in what they might be; while his very life-breath seemed to depend on what Cynthia felt and thought. Therefore Molly had keen insight into her ‘sister’s’ heart; and she knew that Cynthia did not love Roger. Molly could have cried with passionate regret at the thought of the unvalued treasure lying at Cynthia’s feet, and it would have been a merely unselfish regret. It was the old fervid tenderness: ‘do not wish for the moon, O my darling, for I cannot give it thee.’ Cynthia’s love was the moon Roger yearned for; and Molly saw that it was far away and out of reach, else would she have strained her heart-cords to give it to Roger.

‘I am his sister,’ she would say to herself. ‘That old bond is not done away with, though he is too much absorbed by Cynthia to speak about it just now. His mother called me “Fanny”; it was almost like an adoption. I must wait and watch, and see if I can do anything for my brother.’

One day Lady Harriet came to call on the Gibsons, or rather on Mrs. Gibson, for the latter retained her old jealousy if any one else in Holhngford was supposed to be on intimate terms at the great house, or in the least acquainted with their plans. Mr. Gibson might possibly know as much, but then he was professionally bound to secrecy. Out of the house she considered Mr. Preston as her rival, and he was aware that she did so, and delighted in teasing her by affecting a knowledge of family plans and details of affairs of which she was ignorant. Indoors she was jealous of the fancy Lady Harriet had evidently taken for her stepdaughter, and she contrived to place quiet obstacles in the way of a too frequent intercourse between them. These obstacles were not unlike the shield of the knight in the old story; only instead of the two sides presented to the two travellers approaching it from opposite quarters, one of which was silver, and one of which was gold, Lady Harriet saw the smooth and shining yellow radiance, while poor Molly only perceived a dull and heavy lead. To Lady Harriet it was ‘Molly is gone out; she will be sorry to miss you, but she was obliged to go to see some old friends of her mother’s whom she ought not to neglect; as I said to her, constancy is everything. It is Sterne, I think, who says, “Thine own and thy mother’s friends forsake not.” But, dear Lady Harriet, you’ll stop till she comes home, won’t you? I know how fond you are of her; in fact’ (with a little surface playfulness) ‘I sometimes say you come more to see her than your poor old Clare.’

To Molly it had previously been—

‘Lady Harriet is coming here this morning. I can’t have any one else coming in. Tell Maria to say I’m not at home. Lady Harriet has always so much to tell me; dear Lady Harriet! I’ve known all her secrets since she was twelve years old.You two girls must keep out of the way. Of course she’ll ask for you, out of common civility; but you would only interrupt us if you came in, as you did the other day;’—now addressing Molly—‘I hardly like to say so, but I thought it was very forward.’

‘Maria told me she had asked for me,’ put in Molly, simply.

‘Very forward indeed!’ continued Mrs. Gibson, taking no further notice of the interruption, except to strengthen the words to which Molly’s little speech had been intended as a correction.

‘I think this time I must secure her ladyship from the chances of such an intrusion, by taking care that you are out of the house, Molly. You had better go to the Holly Farm, and speak about those damsons I ordered, and which have never been sent.’

‘I’ll go,’ said Cynthia. ‘It’s far too long a walk for Molly; she’s had a bad cold, and is not as strong as she was a fortnight ago. I delight in long walks. If you want Molly out of the way, mamma, send her to the Miss Brownings’, they are always glad to see her.’

‘I never said I wanted Molly out of the way, Cynthia,’ replied Mrs. Gibson. ‘You always put things in such an exaggerated—I should almost say, so coarse a manner. I am sure, Molly, my love, you could never have so misunderstood me; it is only on Lady Harriet’s account.’

‘I don’t think I can walk as far as the Holly Farm; papa would take the message; Cynthia need not go.’

‘Well! I’m the last person in the world to tax any one’s strength; I’d sooner never see damson preserve again. Suppose you do go and see Miss Browning; you can pay her a nice long call, you know she likes that; and ask after Miss Phoebe’s cold, from me, you know. They were friends of your mother’s, my dear, and I would not have you break off old friendships for the world. “Constancy above everything” is my motto, as you know, and the memory of the dead ought always to be cherished.’

‘Now, mamma, where am I to go?’ asked Cynthia. ‘Though Lady Harriet doesn’t care for me as much as she does for Molly—indeed, quite the contrary I should say—yet she might ask after me, and I had better be safely out of the way.’

‘True!’ said Mrs. Gibson, meditatively, yet unconscious of any satire in Cynthia’s speech.

‘She is much less likely to ask for you, my dear: I almost think you might remain in the house, or you might go to the Holly Farm; I really do want the damsons; or you might stay here in the dining-room, you know, so as to be ready to arrange lunch prettily, if she does take a fancy to stay for it. She is very fanciful, is dear Lady Harriet! I would not like her to think we made any difference in our meals because she stayed. “Simple elegance,” as I tell her, “always is what we aim at.” But still you could put out the best service, and arrange some flowers, and ask cook what there is for dinner that she could send us for lunch, and make it all look pretty, and impromptu, and natural. I think you had better stay at home, Cynthia, and then you could fetch Molly from Miss Brownings’ in the afternoon, you know, and you two could take a walk together.’

‘After Lady Harriet was fairly gone! I understand, mamma. Off with you, Molly. Make haste, or Lady Harriet may come and ask for you as well as mamma. I’ll take care and forget where you are going to, so that no one shall learn from me where you are, and I’ll answer for mamma’s loss of memory.’

‘Child! what nonsense you talk; you quite confuse me with being so silly,’ said Mrs. Gibson, fluttered and annoyed as she usually was with the Lilliputian darts^da Cynthia flung at her. She had recourse to her accustomed feckless piece of retaliation—bestowing some favour on Molly; and this did not hurt Cynthia one whit.

‘Molly, darling, there’s a very cold wind, though it looks so fine. You had better put on my Indian shawl; and it will look so pretty, too, on your grey gown—scarlet and grey; it’s not everybody I would lend it to, but you’re so careful.’

‘Thank you,’ said Molly: and she left Mrs. Gibson in careless uncertainty as to whether her offer would be accepted or not.

Lady Harriet was sorry to miss Molly, as she was fond of the girl; but as she perfectly agreed with Mrs. Gibson’s truism about ‘constancy’ and ‘old friends,’ she saw no occasion for saying any more about the affair, but sat down in a little low chair with her feet on the fender. This said fender was made of bright, bright steel, and was strictly tabooed to all household and plebeian feet; indeed the position if they assumed it, was considered low-bred and vulgar.

‘That’s right, dear Lady Harriet! you can’t think what a pleasure it is to me to welcome you at my own fireside, into my humble home.’

‘Humble! now, Clare, that’s a little bit of nonsense, begging your pardon. I don’t call this pretty little drawing-room a bit of a “humble home.” It is as full of comforts, and of pretty things too, as any room of its size can be.’

‘Ah! how small you must feel it! even I had to reconcile myself to it at first.’

‘Well! perhaps your schoolroom was larger, but remember how bare it was, how empty of anything but deal tables, and forms, and mats. Oh, indeed, Clare, I quite agree with mamma, who always says you have done very well for yourself; and Mr. Gibson too! What an agreeable, well-informed man!’

‘Yes, he is,’ said his wife, slowly, as if she did not like to relinquish her role of a victim to circumstances quite immediately. ‘He is very agreeable, very; only we see so little of him; and of course he comes home tired and hungry, and not inclined to talk to his own family, and apt to go to sleep.’

‘Come, come!’ said Lady Harriet, ‘I’m going to have my turn now. We’ve had the complaint of a doctor’s wife, now hear the moans of a peer’s daughter. Our house is so overrun with visitors; and literally to-day I have come to you for a little solitude.’

‘Solitude!’ exclaimed Mrs. Gibson. ‘Would you rather be alone?’ slightly aggrieved.

‘No, you dear silly woman; my solitude requires a listener, to whom I may say, “how sweet is solitude.” But I am tired of the responsibility of entertaining. Papa is so openhearted, he asks every friend he meets with to come and pay us a visit. Mamma is really a great invalid, but she does not choose to give up her reputation for good health, having always considered illness a want of self-control. So she gets wearied and worried by a crowd of people who are all of them open-mouthed for amusement of some kind; just like a brood of fledglings in a nest; so I have to be parent-bird, and pop morsels into their yellow leathery bills, to find them swallowed down before I can think of where to find the next. Oh, it’s “entertaining” in the largest, literalest, most dreariest sense of the word. So I have told a few lies this morning, and come off here for quietness and the comfort of complaining!’

Lady Harriet threw herself back in her chair, and yawned; Mrs. Gibson took one of her ladyship’s hands in a soft sympathizing manner, and murmured,—

‘Poor Lady Harriet!’ and then she purred affectionately.

After a pause Lady Harriet started up and said—‘I used to take you as my arbiter of morals when I was a little girl. Tell me, do you think it wrong to tell lies?’

‘Oh, my dear! how can you ask such questions?—of course it is, very wrong,—very wicked indeed, I think I may say. But I know you were only joking when you said you had told lies.’

‘No, indeed, I wasn’t. I told as plump, fat lies as you would wish to hear. I said I “was obliged to go into Hollingford on business,” when the truth was there was no obligation in the matter, only an insupportable desire of being free from my visitors for an hour or two, and my only business was to come here, and yawn, and complain, and lounge at my leisure. I really think I’m unhappy at having told a story, as children express it.’

‘But, my dear Lady Harriet,’ said Mrs. Gibson, a little puzzled as to the exact meaning of the words that were trembling on her tongue, ‘I am sure you thought that you meant what you said when you said it.’

‘No, I didn’t,’ put in Lady Harriet.

‘And besides, if you didn’t, it was the fault of the tiresome people who drove you into such straits—yes, it was certainly their fault, not yours—and then you know the conventions of society—ah, what trammels they are!’

Lady Harriet was silent for a minute or two; then she said,—‘Tell me, Clare; you’ve told lies sometimes, haven’t you?’

‘Lady Harriet! I think you might have known me better; but I know you don’t mean it, dear.’

‘Yes, I do.You must have told white lies, at any rate. How did you feel after them?’

‘I should have been miserable if I ever had. I should have died of self-reproach. “The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,” has always seemed to me such a fine passage. But then I have so much that is unbending in my nature, and in our sphere of life there are so few temptations; if we are humble we are also simple, and unshackled by etiquette.’

‘Then you blame me very much? If somebody else will blame me, I shan’t be so unhappy at what I said this morning.’

‘I am sure I never blamed you, not in my innermost heart, dear Lady Harriet. Blame you, indeed! That would be presumption in me.’

‘I think I shall set up a confessor! and it shan’t be you, Clare, for you have always been only too indulgent to me.’

After a pause she said,—‘Can you give me some lunch, Clare? I don’t mean to go home till three. My “business” will take me till then, as the people at the Towers are duly informed.’

‘Certainly. I shall be delighted! but you know we are very simple in our habits.’

‘Oh, I only want a little bread-and-butter, and perhaps a slice of cold meat—you must not give yourself any trouble, Clare—perhaps you dine now? let me sit down just like one of your family.’

‘Yes, you shall. I won’t make any alteration;—it will be so pleasant to have you sharing our family meal, dear Lady Harriet. But we dine late, we only lunch now. How low the fire is getting; I really am forgetting everything in the pleasure of this tête-à-tête!’

So she rang twice; with great distinctness, and with a long pause between the rings. Maria brought in coals.

But the signal was as well understood by Cynthia as the ‘Hall of Apollo’ was by the servants of Lucullus. The brace of partridges that were to have been for the late dinner were instantly put down to the fire; and the prettiest china brought out, and the table decked with flowers and fruit, arranged with all Cynthia’s usual dexterity and taste. So that when the meal was announced, and Lady Harriet entered the room, she could not but think her hostess’s apologies had been quite unnecessary; and be more and more convinced that Clare had done very well for herself. Cynthia now joined the party, pretty and elegant as she always was; but somehow she did not take Lady Harriet’s fancy; she only noticed her on account of her being her mother’s daughter. Her presence made the conversation more general, and Lady Harriet gave out several pieces of news, none of them of any great importance to her, but as what had been talked about by the circle of visitors assembled at the Towers.

‘Lord Hollingford ought to have been with us,’ she said, amongst other things; ‘but he is obliged, or fancies himself obliged, which is all the same thing, to stay in town about this Crichton legacy!’

‘A legacy? To Lord Hollingford? I am so glad!’

‘Don’t be in a hurry to be glad! It’s nothing for him but trouble. Didn’t you hear of that rich eccentric Mr. Crichton, who died some time ago, and—fired by the example of Lord Bridgewater,^db I suppose—left a sum of money in the hands of trustees, of whom my brother is one, to send out a man with a thousand fine qualifications, to make a scientific voyage, with a view to bringing back specimens of the fauna of distant lands, and so forming the nucleus of a museum which is to be called the Crichton Museum, and so perpetuate the founder’s name. Such various forms does man’s vanity take! Sometimes it simulates philanthropy; sometimes a love of science!’

‘It seems to me a very laudable and useful object, I am sure,’ said Mrs. Gibson, safely.

‘I dare say it is, taking it from the public-good view. But it’s rather tiresome to us privately, for it keeps Hollingford in town—or between it and Cambridge—and each place as dull and empty as can be, just when we want him down at the Towers. The thing ought to have been decided long ago, and there’s some danger of the legacy lapsing. The two other trustees have run away to the Continent, feeling, as they say, the utmost confidence in him, but in reality shirking their responsibilities. However, I believe he likes it, so I ought not to grumble. He thinks he is going to be very successful in the choice of this man—and he belongs to this county, too,—young Hamley of Hamley, if he can only get his college to let him go, for he is a fellow of Trinity, senior wrangler or something; and they’re not so foolish as to send their crack man to be eaten up by lions and tigers!’

‘It must be Roger Hamley!’ exclaimed Cynthia, her eyes brightening, and her cheeks flushing.

‘He’s not the eldest son; he can scarcely be called Hamley of Hamley!’ said Mrs. Gibson.

‘Hollingford’s man is a fellow of Trinity, as I said before.’

‘Then it is Mr. Roger Hamley,’ said Cynthia; ‘and he’s up in London about some business! What news for Molly when she comes home!’

‘Why, what has Molly to do with it?’ asked Lady Harriet. ‘Is^_______?’ and she looked into Mrs. Gibson’s face for an answer. Mrs. Gibson in reply gave an intelligent and very expressive glance at Cynthia, who, however, did not perceive it.

‘Oh, no! not at all,’ and Mrs. Gibson nodded a little at her daughter, as much as to say, ‘If any one, that.’

Lady Harriet began to look at the pretty Miss Kirkpatrick with fresh interest; her brother had spoken in such a manner of this young Mr. Hamley that every one connected with the phoenix was worthy of observation. Then, as if the mention of Molly’s name had brought her afresh into her mind, Lady Harriet said,—‘And where is Molly all this time? I should like to see my little mentor. I hear she is very much grown since those days.’

‘Oh! when she once gets gossiping with the Miss Brownings, she never knows when to come home,’ said Mrs. Gibson.

‘The Miss Brownings? Oh! I’m so glad you named them! I’m very fond of them. Pecksy and Flapsy; I may call them so in Molly’s absence. I’ll go and see them before I go home, and then perhaps I shall see my dear little Molly too. Do you know, Clare, I’ve quite taken a fancy to that girl!’

So Mrs. Gibson, after all her precautions, had to submit to Lady Harriet’s leaving her half an hour earlier than she otherwise would have done in order to ‘make herself common’ (as Mrs. Gibson expressed it) by calling on the Miss Brownings.

But Molly had left before Lady Harriet arrived.

Molly went the long walk to the Holly Farm to order the damsons, out of a kind of penitence. She had felt conscious of anger at being sent out of the house by such a palpable manoeuvre as that which her stepmother had employed. Of course she did not meet Cynthia, so she went alone along the pretty lanes, with grassy sides and high-hedge banks not at all in the style of modern agriculture. At first she made herself uncomfortable with questioning herself as to how far it was right to leave unnoticed the small domestic failings—the webs, the distortions of truth which had prevailed in their household ever since her father’s second marriage. She knew that very often she longed to protest, but did not do it, from the desire of sparing her father any discord; and she saw by his face that he, too, was occasionally aware of certain things that gave him pain, as showing that his wife’s standard of conduct was not as high as he would have liked. It was a wonder to Molly whether this silence was right or wrong. With a girl’s want of toleration, and want of experience to teach her the force of circumstances, and of temptation, she had often been on the point of telling her stepmother some forcible home truths. But, possibly, her father’s example of silence, and often some piece of kindness on Mrs. Gibson’s part (for after her way, and when in a good temper, she was very kind to Molly), made her hold her tongue.

That night at dinner, Mrs. Gibson repeated the conversation between herself and Lady Harriet, giving it a very strong individual colouring, as was her wont, and telling nearly the whole of what had passed, although implying that there was a great deal said which was so purely confidential, that she was bound in honour not to repeat it. Her three auditors listened to her without interrupting her much—indeed, without bestowing extreme attention on what she was saying, until she came to the fact of Lord Hollingford’s absence in London, and the reason for it.

‘Roger Hamley going off on a scientific expedition!’ exclaimed Mr. Gibson, suddenly awakened into vivacity.

‘Yes. At least it is not settled finally; but as Lord Hollingford is the only trustee who takes any interest—and being Lord Cumnor’s son—it is next to certain.’

‘I think I must have a voice in the matter,’ said Mr. Gibson; and he relapsed into silence, keeping his ears open, however, henceforward.

‘How long will he be away?’ asked Cynthia. ‘We shall miss him sadly.’

Molly’s lips formed an acquiescing ‘yes’ to this remark, but no sound was heard. There was a buzzing in her ears as if the others were going on with the conversation, but the words they uttered seemed indistinct and blurred; they were merely conjectures, and did not interfere with the one great piece of news. To the rest of the party she appeared to be eating her dinner as usual, and, if she was silent, there was one listener the more to Mrs. Gibson’s stream of prattle, and Mr. Gibson’s and Cynthia’s remarks.

CHAPTER 33

Brightening Prospects

It was a day or two afterwards, that Mr. Gibson made time to ride round by Hamley, desirous to learn more exact particulars of this scheme for Roger than he could obtain from any extraneous source, and rather puzzled to know whether he should interfere in the project or not. The state of the case was this:—Osborne’s symptoms were, in Mr. Gibson’s opinion, signs of his having a fatal disease. Dr. Nicholls had differed from him on this head, and Mr. Gibson knew that the old physician had had long experience, and was considered very skilful in the profession. Still he believed that he himself was right, and, if so, the complaint was one which might continue for years in the same state as at present, or might end the young man’s life in an hour—a minute. Supposing that Mr. Gibson was right, would it be well for Roger to be away where no sudden calls for his presence could reach him—away for two years? Yet if the affair was concluded, the interference of a medical man might accelerate the very evil to be feared; and after all Dr. Nicholls might be right, and the symptoms might proceed from some other cause. Might? Yes. Probably did? No. Mr. Gibson could not bring himself to say yes to this latter form of sentence. So he rode on, meditating; his reins slack, his head a little bent. It was one of those still and lovely autumn days when the red and yellow leaves are hanging-pegs to dewy, brilliant gossamer-webs; when the hedges are full of trailing brambles, loaded with ripe blackberries; when the air is full of the farewell whistles and pipes of birds, clear and short—not the long full-throated warbles of spring; when the whirr of the partridge’s wing is heard in the stubble-fields, as the sharp hoof-blows fall on the paved lanes; when here and there a leaf floats and flutters down to the ground, although there is not a single breath of wind. The country surgeon felt the beauty of the seasons perhaps more than most men. He saw more of it by day, by night, in storm and sunshine, or in the still, soft cloudy weather. He never spoke about what he felt on the subject; indeed, he did not put his feelings into words, even to himself But if his mood ever approached to the sentimental it was on such days as this. He rode into the stable-yard, gave his horse to a man, and went into the house by a side entrance. In the passage he met the squire.

‘That’s capital, Gibson! what good wind blew you here? You’ll have some lunch? it’s on the table; I only just this minute left the room.’ And he kept shaking Mr. Gibson’s hand all the time till he had placed him, nothing loth, at the well-covered dining-table.

‘What’s this I hear about Roger?’ said Mr. Gibson, plunging at once into the subject.

‘Aha! so you’ve heard, have you? It’s famous, isn’t it! He’s a boy to be proud of, is old Roger. Steady Roger; we used to think him slow, but it seems to me that slow and sure wins the race. But tell me; what have you heard? how much is known? Nay, you must have a glass full. It’s old ale, such as we don’t brew nowadays; it’s as old as Osborne. We brewed it that autumn, and we called it the young squire’s ale. I thought to have tapped it on his marriage, but I don’t know when that will come to pass, so we’ve tapped it now in Roger’s honour.’

The old squire had evidently been enjoying the young squire’s ale to the verge of prudence. It was indeed as he said, ‘as strong as brandy,’ and Mr. Gibson had to sip it very carefully, as he ate his cold roast beef

‘Well! and what have you heard? There’s a deal to hear, and all good news, though I shall miss the lad, I know that.’

‘I did not know that it was settled; I only heard that it was in progress.’

‘Well, it was only in progress, as you call it, till last Tuesday. He never let me know anything about it, though; he says he thought I might be fidgety with thinking of the pros and cons. So I never knew a word on’t till I had a letter from my Lord Hollingford—where is it?’ pulling out a great black leathern receptacle for all manner of papers. And putting on his spectacles, he read aloud their headings.

‘ “Measurement of timber, new railways,” “drench for cows, from Farmer Hayes,” “Dobson’s accounts,”—’um ‘um—here it is. Now read that letter,’ handing it to Mr. Gibson.

It was a manly, feeling, sensible letter, explaining to the old father in very simple language the services which were demanded by the terms of the will to which he and two or three others were trustees; the liberal allowance for expenses, the still more liberal reward for performance, which had tempted several men of considerable renown to offer themselves as candidates for the appointment. Lord Hollingford then went on to say that, having seen a good deal of Roger lately, since the publication of his article in reply to the French osteologist, he had had reason to think that in him the trustees would find united the various qualities required in a greater measure than in any of the applicants who had at that time presented themselves. Roger had deep interest in the subject, much acquired knowledge, and at the same time, great natural powers of comparison and classification of facts; he had shown himself to be an observer of a fine and accurate kind, he was of the right age, in the very prime of health and strength, and unshackled by any family ties. Here Mr. Gibson paused for consideration. He hardly cared to ascertain by what steps the result had been arrived at—he already knew what that result was; but his mind was again arrested as his eye caught on the remuneration offered, which was indeed most liberal; and then he read with attention the high praise bestowed on the son in this letter to the father. The squire had been watching Mr. Gibson—waiting till he came to this part—and he rubbed his hands together as he said,—

‘Aye! you’ve come to it at last. It’s the best part of the whole, isn’t it? God bless the boy! and from a Whig, mind you, which makes it the more handsome. And there’s more to come still. I say, Gibson, I think my luck is turning at last,’ passing him on yet another letter to read. ‘That only came this morning; but I’ve acted on it already, I sent for the foreman of the drainage works at once, I did; and to-morrow, please God, they’ll be at work again.’

Mr. Gibson read the second letter, from Roger. To a certain degree it was a modest repetition of what Lord Hollingford had said, with an explanation of how he had come to take so decided a step in life without consulting his father. He did not wish him to be in suspense, for one reason. Another was that he felt, as no one else could feel for him, that by accepting this offer, he entered upon the kind of life for which he knew himself to be most fitted. And then he merged the whole into business. He said that he knew well the suffering his father had gone through when he had to give up his drainage works for want of money; that he, Roger, had been enabled at once to raise money upon the remuneration he was to receive on the accomplishment of his two years’ work; and that he had insured his life at once, in order to provide for the repayment of the money he had raised, in case he did not live to return to England. He said that the sum he had borrowed on this security would at once be forwarded to his father.

Mr. Gibson laid down the letter without speaking a word for some time; then he said,—

‘He’ll have to pay a pretty sum for insuring his life beyond seas.’

‘He has got his fellowship money,’ said the squire, a little depressed at Mr. Gibson’s remark.

‘Yes; that’s true. And he’s a strong young fellow, as I know.’

‘I wish I could tell his mother,’ said the squire in an undertone.

‘It seems all settled now,’ said Mr. Gibson, more in reply to his own thoughts than to the squire’s remark.

‘Yes!’ said the squire; ‘and they’re not going to let the grass grow under his feet. He’s to be off as soon as he can get his scientific traps ready. I almost wish he wasn’t to go. You don’t seem quite to like it, doctor?’

‘Yes, I do,’ said Mr. Gibson in a more cheerful tone than before. ‘It can’t be helped now without doing a mischief,’ thought he to himself. ‘Why, squire, I think it a great honour to have such a son. I envy you, that’s what I do. Here’s a lad of three- or four-and-twenty distinguishing himself in more ways than one, and as simple and affectionate at home as any fellow need to be—not a bit set up.’

‘Aye, aye; he’s twice as much a son to me as Osborne, who has been all his life set up on nothing at all, as one may say.’

‘Come, squire, I must not hear anything against Osborne; we may praise one, without hitting at the other. Osborne has not had the strong health which has enabled Roger to work as he has done. I met a man who knew his tutor at Trinity the other day, and of course we began cracking about Roger—it’s not every day that one can reckon a senior wrangler among one’s friends, and I’m nearly as proud of the lad as you are. This Mr. Mason told me the tutor said that only half of Roger’s success was owing to his mental powers; the other half was owing to his perfect health, which enabled him to work harder and more continuously than most men without suffering. He said that in all his experience he had never known any one with an equal capacity for mental labour;¹ and that he could come again with fresh appetite to his studies after shorter intervals of rest than most. Now I, being a doctor, trace a good deal of his superiority to the material cause of a thoroughly good constitution, which Osborne has not got.’

‘Osborne might have if he got out o’ doors more,’ said the squire, moodily; ‘but except when he can loaf into Hollingford he doesn’t care to go out at all. I hope,’ he continued, with a glance of sudden suspicion at Mr. Gibson, ‘he’s not after one of your girls? I don’t mean any offence, you know; but he’ll have the estate, and it won’t be free, and he must marry money. I don’t think I could allow it in Roger; but Osborne’s the eldest son, you know.’

Mr. Gibson reddened; he was offended for a moment. Then the partial truth of what the squire said was presented to his mind, and he remembered their old friendship, so he spoke quietly, if shortly.

‘I don’t believe there’s anything of the kind going on. I’m not much at home, you know; but I’ve never heard or seen anything that should make me suppose that there is. When I do, I’ll let you know.’

‘Now, Gibson, don’t go and be offended. I’m glad for the boys to have a pleasant house to go to, and I thank you and Mrs. Gibson for making it pleasant. Only keep off love; it can come to no good. That’s all. I don’t believe Osborne will ever earn a farthing to keep a wife during my life, and if I were to die to-morrow, she would have to bring some money to clear the estate. And if I do speak as I shouldn’t have done formerly—a little sharp or so—why, it’s because I’ve been worried by many a care no one knows anything of.’

‘I’m not going to take offence,’ said Mr. Gibson, ‘but let us understand each other dearly. If you don’t want your sons to come as much to my house as they do, tell them so yourself I like the lads, and am glad to see them; but if they do come, you must take the consequences, whatever they are, and not blame me, or them either, for what may happen from the frequent intercourse between two young men and two young women; and what is more, though, as I said, I see nothing whatever of the kind you fear at present, and have promised to tell you of the first symptoms I do see, yet farther than that I won’t go. If there is an attachment at any future time, I won’t interfere.’

‘I shouldn’t so much mind if Roger fell in love with your Molly. He can fight for himself, you see, and she’s an uncommon nice girl. My poor wife was so fond of her,’ answered the squire. ‘It’s Osborne and the estate I’m thinking of!’

‘Well, then, tell him not to come near us. I shall be sorry, but you will be safe.’

‘I’ll think about it; but he’s difficult to manage. I’ve always to get my blood well up before I can speak my mind to him.’

Mr. Gibson was leaving the room, but at these words he turned and laid his hand on the squire’s arm.

‘Take my advice, squire. As I said, there is no harm done as yet, as far as I know. Prevention is better than cure. Speak out, but speak gently to Osborne, and do it at once. I shall understand how it is if he doesn’t show his face for some months in my house. If you speak gently to him, he’ll take the advice as from a friend. If he can assure you there’s no danger, of course he’ll come just as usual, when he likes.’

It was all very fine giving the squire this good advice; but as Osborne had already formed the very kind of marriage his father most deprecated, it did not act quite as well as Mr. Gibson had hoped. The squire began the conversation with unusual self-control; but he grew irritated when Osborne denied his father’s right to interfere in any marriage he might contemplate; denied it with a certain degree of doggedness and weariness of the subject that drove the squire into one of his passions; and although on after-reflection he remembered that he had his son’s promise and solemn word not to think of either Cynthia or Molly for his wife, yet the father and son had passed through one of those altercations which help to estrange men for life. Each had said bitter things to the other; and, if the brotherly affection had not been so true between Osborne and Roger, they too might have become alienated in consequence of the squire’s exaggerated and injudicious comparison of their characters and deeds. But as Roger in his boyhood had loved Osborne too well to be jealous of the praise and love the eldest son, the beautiful brilliant lad, had received, to the disparagement of his own plain awkwardness and slowness, so now Osborne strove against any feeling of envy or jealousy with all his might; but his efforts were conscious, Roger’s had been the simple consequence of affection, and the end to poor Osborne was that he became moody and depressed in mind and body; but both father and son concealed their feelings in Roger’s presence. When he came home just before sailing, busy and happy, the squire caught his infectious energy, and Osborne looked up and was cheerful.

There was no time to be lost. He was bound to a hot climate, and must take all advantage possible of the winter months. He was to go first to Paris, to have interviews with some of the scientific men there. Some of his outfit, instruments, &c., were to follow him to Havre, from which port he was to embark, after transacting his business in Paris. The squire learnt all his arrangements and plans, and even tried in after-dinner conversations to penetrate into the questions involved in the researches his son was about to make. But Roger’s visit home could not be prolonged beyond two days.

The last day he rode into Hollingford earlier than he needed to have done to catch the London coach, in order to bid the Gibsons good-bye. He had been too actively busy for some time to have leisure to bestow much thought on Cynthia; but there was no need for fresh meditation on that subject. Her image as a prize to be worked for, to be served for seven years, and seven years more,^dc was safe and sacred in his heart. It was very bad, this going away, and wishing her good-bye for two long years; and he wondered much during his ride how far he should be justified in telling her mother, perhaps in telling her own sweet self, what his feelings were without expecting, nay, indeed reprobating, any answer on her part. Then she would know at any rate how dearly she was beloved by one who was absent; how in all difficulties or dangers the thought of her would be a polar star, high up in the heavens, and so on, and so on; for, with all a lover’s quickness of imagination and triteness of fancy, he called her a star, a flower, a nymph, a witch, an angel, or a mermaid, a nightingale, a siren, as one or another of her attributes rose up before him.

CHAPTER 34

A Lover’s Mistake

It was afternoon. Molly had gone out for a walk. Mrs. Gibson had been paying some calls. Lazy Cynthia had declined accompanying either. A daily walk was not a necessity to her as it was to Molly. On a lovely day, or with an agreeable object, or where the fancy took her, she could go as far as any one; but these were exceptional cases; in general, she was not disposed to disturb herself from her indoor occupations. Indeed, not one of the ladies would have left the house, had they been aware that Roger was in the neighbourhood; for they were aware that he was to come down but once before his departure, and that his stay at home then would be but for a short time, and they were all anxious to wish him good-bye before his long absence. But they had understood that he was not coming to the Hall until the following week, and therefore they had felt themselves at full liberty this afternoon to follow their own devices.

Molly chose a walk that had been a favourite with her ever since she was a child. Something or other had happened just before she left home that made her begin wondering how far it was right, for the sake of domestic peace, to pass over without comment the little deviations from right that people perceive in those whom they live with. Or whether, as they are placed in families for distinct purposes, not by chance merely, there are not duties involved in this aspect of their lot in life,—whether by continually passing over failings, their own standard is not lowered,—the practical application of these thoughts being a dismal sort of perplexity on Molly’s part as to whether her father was quite aware of her stepmother’s perpetual lapses from truth; and whether his blindness was wilful or not. Then she felt bitterly enough that although she was sure as could be that there was no real estrangement between her and her father, yet that there were perpetual obstacles thrown in the way of their intercourse; and she thought with a sigh that if he would but come in with authority, he might cut his way clear to the old intimacy with his daughter, and that they might have all the former walks and talks, and quips and cranks, and glimpses of real confidence once again; things that her stepmother did not value, yet which she, like the dog in the manger, prevented Molly enjoying. But after all Molly was a girl, not so far removed from childhood; and in the middle of her grave regrets and perplexities, her eye was caught by the sight of some fine ripe blackberries flourishing away high up on the hedge-bank among scarlet hips and green and russet leaves. She did not care much for blackberries herself; but she had heard Cynthia say that she liked them; and besides there was the charm of scrambling and gathering them; so she forgot all about her troubles, and went climbing up the banks, and clutching at her almost inaccessible prizes, and slipping down again triumphant, to carry them back to the large leaf which was to serve her as a basket. One or two of them she tasted, but they were as vapid to her palate as ever. The skirt of her pretty print gown was torn out of the gathers, and even with the fruit she had eaten ‘her pretty lips with blackberries were all besmeared and dyed,’ when having gathered as many and more than she could possibly carry, she set off home, hoping to escape into her room and mend her gown before it had offended Mrs. Gibson’s neat eye. The front door was easily opened from the outside, and when Molly was out of the clear light of the open air and in the shadow of the hall, she saw a face peep out of the dining-room before she quite recognized whose it was; and then Mrs. Gibson came softly out, sufficiently at least to beckon her into the room. When Molly had entered Mrs. Gibson closed the door. Poor Molly expected a reprimand for her torn gown and untidy appearance, but was soon relieved by the expression of Mrs. Gibson’s face—mysterious and radiant.

‘I’ve been watching for you, dear. Don’t go upstairs into the drawing-room, love. It might be a little interruption just now. Roger Hamley is there with Cynthia; and I’ve reason to think—in fact I did open the door unawares, but I shut it again softly, and I don’t think they heard me. Is not it charming? Young love, you know, ah, how sweet it is!’

‘Do you mean that Roger has proposed to Cynthia?’ asked Molly.

‘Not exactly that. But I don’t know; of course I know nothing. Only I did hear him say that he had meant to leave England without speaking of his love, but that the temptation of seeing her alone had been too great for him. It was symptomatic, was it not, my dear? And all I wanted was to let him come to a crisis without interruption. So I’ve been watching for you to prevent your going in and disturbing them.’

‘But I may go to my own room, mayn’t I?’ pleaded Molly.

‘Of course,’ said Mrs. Gibson, a little testily. ‘Only I had expected sympathy from you at such an interesting moment.’

But Molly did not hear these last words. She had escaped upstairs, and shut the door. Instinctively she had carried her leaf full of blackberries—what would blackberries be to Cynthia now? She felt as if she could not understand it all; but as for that matter, what could she understand? Nothing. For a few minutes her brain seemed in too great a whirl to comprehend anything but that she was being carried on in earth’s diurnal course, with rocks, and stones and trees,¹ with as little volition on her part as if she were dead. Then the room grew stifling, and instinctively she went to the open casement window, and leant out, gasping for breath. Gradually the consciousness of the soft peaceful landscape stole into her mind, and stilled the buzzing confusion. There, bathed in the almost level rays of the autumn sunlight, lay the landscape she had known and loved from childhood; as quiet, as full of low humming life as it had been at this hour for many generations. The autumn flowers blazed out in the garden below, the lazy cows were in the meadow beyond, chewing their cud in the green after-math; the evening fires had just been made up in the cottages beyond, in preparation for the husband’s homecoming, and were sending up soft curls of blue smoke into the still air; the children, let loose from school, were shouting merrily in the distance, and she——Just then she heard nearer sounds; an opened door, steps on the lower flight of stairs. He could not have gone without even seeing her. He never, never would have done so cruel a thing—never would have forgotten poor little Molly, however happy he might be. No! there were steps and voices, and the drawing-room door was opened and shut once more. She laid down her head on her arms that rested upon the window-sill, and cried,—she had been so distrustful as to have let the idea enter her mind that he could go without wishing her good-bye, her, whom his mother had so loved, and called by the name of his little dead sister. And as she thought of the tender love Mrs. Hamley had borne her she cried the more, for the vanishing of such love for her off the face of the earth. Suddenly the drawing-room door opened, and some one was heard coming upstairs; it was Cynthia’s step. Molly hastily wiped her eyes, and stood up and tried to look unconcerned; it was all she had time to do before Cynthia, after a little pause at the closed door, had knocked; and on an answer being given, had said, without opening the door,—‘Molly! Mr. Roger Hamley is here, and wants to wish you good-bye before he goes.’ Then she went downstairs again, as if anxious just at that moment to avoid even so short a tête-à-tête with Molly. With a gulp and a fit of resolution as a child makes up its mind to swallow a nauseous dose of medicine, Molly went instantly down to the drawing-room.

Roger was talking earnestly to Mrs. Gibson in the bow of the window when Molly entered; Cynthia was standing near, listening, but taking no part in the conversation. Her eyes were downcast, and she did not look up as Molly drew shyly near.

Roger was saying,—‘I could never forgive myself if I had accepted a pledge from her. She shall be free till my return; but the hope, the words, her sweet goodness, have made me happy beyond description. Oh, Molly!’ suddenly becoming aware of her presence, and turning to her, and taking her hand in both of his,—‘I think you have long guessed my secret, have you not? I once thought of speaking to you before I left, and confiding it all to you. But the temptation has been too great,—I have told Cynthia how fondly I love her, as far as words can tell; and she says then he looked at Cynthia with passionate delight, and seemed to forget in that gaze that he had left his sentence to Molly half finished.

Cynthia did not seem inclined to repeat her saying, whatever it was, but her mother spoke for her.

‘My dear sweet girl values your love as it ought to be valued, I am sure. And I believe,’ looking at Cynthia and Roger with intelligent archness, ‘I could tell tales as to the cause of her indisposition in the spring.’

‘Mother,’ said Cynthia, suddenly,‘you know it was no such thing. Pray don’t invent stories about me. I have engaged myself to Mr. Roger Hamley, and that is enough.’

‘Enough! more than enough!’ said Roger. ‘I will not accept your pledge. I am bound, but you are free. I like to feel bound, it makes me happy and at peace, but with all the chances involved in the next two years, you must not shackle yourself by promises.’

Cynthia did not speak at once; she was evidently revolving something in her own mind. Mrs. Gibson took up the word.

‘You are very generous, I am sure. Perhaps it will be better not to mention it.’

‘I would much rather have it kept a secret,’ said Cynthia, interrupting.

‘Certainly, my dear love. That was just what I was going to say. I once knew a young lady who heard of the death of a young man in America, whom she had known pretty well; and she immediately said she had been engaged to him, and even went so far as to put on weeds; and it was a false report, for he came back well and merry, and declared to everybody he had never so much as thought about her. So it was very awkward for her. These things had much better be kept secret until the proper time has come for divulging them.’

Even then and there Cynthia could not resist the temptation of saying,—‘Mamma, I will promise you I won’t put on weeds whatever reports come of Mr. Roger Hamley.’

‘Roger, please!’ he put in, in a tender whisper.

‘And you will all be witnesses that he has professed to think of me, if he is tempted afterwards to deny the fact. But at the same time I wish it to be kept a secret until his return—and I am sure you will all be so kind at to attend to my wish. Please, Roger! Please, Molly! Mamma, I must especially beg it of you!’

Roger would have granted anything when she asked him by that name, and in that tone. He took her hand in silent pledge of his reply. Molly felt as if she could never bring herself to name the affair as a common piece of news. So it was only Mrs. Gibson that answered aloud,—

‘My dear child! why “especially” to poor me? You know I’m the most trustworthy person alive!’

The little pendule on the chimney-piece struck the half-hour.

‘I must go!’ said Roger, in dismay. ‘I had no idea it was so late. I shall write from Paris. The coach will be at the “George” by this time, and will only stay five minutes. Dearest Cynthia———’ he took her hand, and then, as if the temptation was irresistible, he drew her to him and kissed her. ‘Only remember you are free!’ said he, as he released her and passed on to Mrs. Gibson.

‘If I had considered myself free,’ said Cynthia, blushing a little, but ready with a repartee to the last,—‘if I thought myself free, do you think I would have allowed that?’

Then Molly’s turn came, and the old brotherly tenderness came back into his look, his voice, his bearing.

‘Molly! you won’t forget me, I know; I shall never forget you, nor your goodness to—her.’ His voice began to quiver, and it was best to be gone. Mrs. Gibson was pouring out, unheard and unheeded words of farewell; Cynthia was rearranging some flowers in a vase on the table, the defects in which had caught her artistic eye, without the consciousness penetrating to her mind. Molly stood numbed to the heart; neither glad nor sorry, nor anything but stunned. She felt the slackened touch of the warm grasping hand; she looked up—for till now her eyes had been downcast, as if there were heavy weights to their lids—and the place was empty where he had been; his quick step was heard on the stair, the front door was opened and shut; and then as quick as lightning Molly ran up to the front attic—the lumber-room, whose window commanded the street down which he must pass. The window-clasp was unused and stiff, Molly tugged at it—unless it was open, and her head put out, that last chance would be gone.

‘I must see him again; I must! I must!’ she wailed out, as she was pulling. There he was, running hard to catch the London coach; his luggage had been left at the ‘George’ before he came up to wish the Gibsons good-bye. In all his hurry, Molly saw him turn round and shade his eyes from the level rays of the westering sun, and rake the house with his glances—in hopes, she knew, of catching one more glimpse of Cynthia. But apparently he saw no one, not even Molly at the attic casement; for she had drawn back when he turned, and kept herself in shadow; for she had no right to put herself forward as the one to watch and yearn for farewell signs. None came—another moment—he was out of her sight for years.

She shut the window softly, and shivered all over. She left the attic and went to her own room; but she did not begin to take off her out-of-door things till she heard Cynthia’s foot on the stairs.Then she hastily went to the toilet-table, and began to untie her bonnet-strings; but they were in a knot, and took time to undo. Cynthia’s step stopped at Molly’s door; she opened it a little and said,—‘May I come in, Molly?’

‘Certainly,’ said Molly, longing to be able to say ‘No’ all the time. Molly did not turn to meet her, so Cynthia came up behind her, and putting her two hands round Molly’s waist, peeped over her shoulder, putting out her lips to be kissed. Molly could not resist the action—the mute entreaty for a caress. But, in the moment before, she had caught reflections of the two faces in the glass; her own, red-eyed, pale, with lips dyed with blackberry juice, her curls tangled, her bonnet pulled awry, her gown torn—and contrasted it with Cynthia’s brightness and bloom, and the trim elegance of her dress. ‘Oh! it is no wonder!’ thought poor Molly, as she turned, and put her arms round Cynthia, and laid her head for an instant on her shoulder—the weary, aching head that sought a loving pillow in that supreme moment! The next she had raised herself, and taken Cynthia’s two hands, and was holding her off a little, the better to read her face.

‘Cynthia! you do love him dearly, don’t you?’

Cynthia winced a little aside from the penetrating steadiness of those eyes.

‘You speak with all the solemnity of an adjuration, Molly!’ said she, laughing a little at first to cover her nervousness, and then looking up at Molly. ‘Don’t you think I’ve given a proof of it? But you know I’ve often told you I’ve not the gift of loving; I said pretty much the same thing to him. I can respect, and I fancy I can admire, and I can like, but I never feel carried off my feet by love for any one, not even for you, little Molly, and I am sure I love you more than——’

‘No, don’t!’ said Molly, putting her hand before Cynthia’s mouth, in almost a passion of impatience. ‘Don‘t, don’t—I won’t hear you—I ought not to have asked you—it makes you tell lies!’

‘Why, Molly!’ said Cynthia, in her turn seeking to read Molly’s face, ‘what’s the matter with you? One might think you cared for him yourself.’

‘I?’ said Molly, all the blood rushing to her heart suddenly; then it returned, and she had courage to speak, and she spoke the truth as she believed it, though not the real actual truth.

‘I do care for him; I think you have won the love of a prince amongst men. Why, I am proud to remember that he has been to me as a brother, and I love him as a sister, and I love you doubly because he has honoured you with his love.’

‘Come, that’s not complimentary!’ said Cynthia, laughing, but not ill-pleased to hear her lover’s praises, and even willing to depreciate him a little in order to hear more.

‘He’s well enough, I dare say, and a great deal too learned and clever for a stupid girl like me; but even you must acknowledge he is very plain and awkward; and I like pretty things and pretty people.’

‘Cynthia, I won’t talk to you about him. You know you don’t mean what you are saying, and only say it out of contradiction, because I praise him. He shan’t be run down by you, even in joke.’

‘Well, then, we won’t talk of him at all. I was so surprised when he began to speak—so———’ and Cynthia looked very lovely, blushing and dimpling up as she remembered his words and looks. Suddenly she recalled herself to the present time, and her eye caught on the leaf full of blackberries—the broad, green leaf, so fresh and crisp when Molly had gathered it an hour or so ago, but now soft and flabby, and dying. Molly saw it, too, and felt a strange kind of sympathetic pity for the poor inanimate leaf.

‘Oh! what blackberries! you’ve gathered them for me, I know!’ said Cynthia, sitting down and beginning to feed herself daintily, touching them lightly with the ends of her taper fingers, and dropping each ripe berry into her open mouth. When she had eaten about half she stopped suddenly short.

‘How I should like to have gone as far as Paris with him!’ she exclaimed. ‘I suppose it wouldn’t have been proper; but how pleasant it would have been! I remember at Boulogne’ (another blackberry), ‘how I used to envy the English who were going to Paris; it seemed to me then as if nobody stopped at Boulogne, but dull, stupid schoolgirls.’

‘When will he be there?’ asked Molly.

‘On Wednesday, he said. I’m to write to him there; at any rate he is going to write to me.’

Molly went about the adjustment of her dress in a quiet, business-like manner, not speaking much; Cynthia, although sitting still, seemed very restless. Oh! how much Molly wished that she would go.

‘Perhaps, after all,’ said Cynthia, after a pause of apparent meditation, ‘we shall never be married.’

‘Why do you say that?’ said Molly, almost bitterly. ‘You have nothing to make you think so. I wonder how you can bear to think you won’t, even for a moment.’

‘Oh!’ said Cynthia; ‘you must not go and take me au grand serieux.^dd I dare say I don’t mean what I say, but you see everything seems a dream at present. Still, I think the chances are equal—the chances for and against our marriage, I mean. Two years! it’s a long time! he may change his mind, or I may; or some one else may turn up, and I may get engaged to him: what should you think of that, Molly? I’m putting such a gloomy thing as death quite on one side, you see; yet in two years how much may happen!’

‘Don’t talk so, Cynthia, please don’t,’ said Molly, piteously. ‘One would think you didn’t care for him, and he cares so much for you!’

‘Why, did I say I did not care for him? I was only calculating chances. I’m sure I hope nothing will happen to prevent the marriage. Only, you know it may, and I thought I was taking a step in wisdom, in looking forward to all the evils that might befall. I’m sure all the wise people I’ve ever known thought it a virtue to have gloomy prognostics of the future. But you’re not in a mood for wisdom or virtue, I see; so I’ll go and get ready for dinner, and leave you to your vanities of dress.’

She took Molly’s face in both her hands, before Molly was aware of her intention, and kissed it playfully. Then she left Molly to herself.

CHAPTER 35

The Mother’s Manœuvre

Mr. Gibson was not at home at dinner—detained by some patient, most probably. This was not an unusual occurrence; but it was rather an unusual occurrence for Mrs. Gibson to go down into the dining-room, and sit with him as he ate his deferred meal when he came in an hour or two later. In general, she preferred her easy chair, or her corner of the sofa, upstairs in the drawing-room, though it was very rarely that she would allow Molly to avail herself of her stepmother’s neglected privilege. Molly would fain have gone down and kept her father company every night that he had these solitary meals; but for peace and quietness she gave up her own wishes on the matter.

Mrs. Gibson took a seat by the fire in the dining-room, and patiently waited for the auspicious moment when Mr. Gibson, having satisfied his healthy appetite, turned from the table, and took his place by her side. She got up, and with unaccustomed attention she moved the wine and glasses so that he could help himself without moving from his chair.

‘There, now! are you comfortable? for I have a great piece of news to tell you!’ said she, when all was arranged.

‘I thought there was something on hand,’ said he, smiling. ‘Now for it!’

‘Roger Hamley has been here this afternoon to bid us good-bye.’

‘Good-bye! is he gone? I didn’t know he was going so soon!’ exclaimed Mr. Gibson.

‘Yes: never mind, that’s not it.’

‘But tell me; has he left this neighbourhood? I wanted to have seen him.’

‘Yes, yes. He left love and regret, and all that sort of thing for you. Now let me get on with my story: he found Cynthia alone, proposed to her, and was accepted.’

‘Cynthia? Roger proposed to her, and she accepted him?’ repeated Mr. Gibson, slowly.

‘Yes, to be sure. Why not? you speak as if it was something so very surprising.’

‘Did I? But I am surprised. He’s a very fine young fellow, and I wish Cynthia joy; but do you like it? It will have to be a very long engagement.’

‘Perhaps,’ said she, in a knowing manner.

‘At any rate he will be away for two years,’ said Mr. Gibson.

‘A great deal may happen in two years,’ she replied.

‘Yes! he will have to run many risks, and go into many dangers, and will come back no nearer to the power of maintaining a wife than when he went out.’

‘I don’t know that,’ she replied, still in the arch manner of one possessing superior knowledge. ‘A little bird did tell me that Osborne’s life is not so very secure; and then—what will Roger be? Heir to the estate.’

‘Who told you that about Osborne?’ said he, facing round upon her, and frightening her with his sudden sternness of voice and manner. It seemed as if absolute fire came out of his long dark sombre eyes. ‘Who told you, I say?’

She made a faint rally back into her former playfulness.