Wives and Daughters (66 page)

‘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.

M
r. 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.

‘Why? can you deny it? Is it not the truth?’

‘I ask you again, Hyacinth, who told you that Osborne Hamley’s life is in more danger than mine—or yours?’

‘Oh, don’t speak in that frightening way. My life is not in danger, I’m sure; nor yours either, love, I hope.’

He gave an impatient movement, and knocked a wineglass off the table. For the moment she felt grateful for the diversion, and busied herself in picking up the fragments: ‘bits of glass were so dangerous,’ she said. But she was startled by a voice of command, such as she had never yet heard from her husband.

‘Never mind the glass. I ask you again, Hyacinth, who told you anything about Osborne Hamley’s state of health?’

‘I am sure I wish no harm to him, and I dare say he is in very good health, as you say,’ whispered she, at last.

‘Who told——?’ began he again, sterner than ever.

‘Well, if you will know, and will make such a fuss about it,’ said she, driven to extremity, ‘it was you yourself—you or Dr. Nicholls, I am sure I forget which.’

‘I never spoke to you on the subject, and I don’t believe Nicholls did. You’d better tell me at once what you are alluding to, for I’m resolved I’ll have it out before we leave this room.’

‘I wish I’d never married again,’ she said, now fairly crying, and looking round the room, as if in vain search for a mouse-hole in which to hide herself. Then, as if the sight of the door into the store-room gave her courage, she turned and faced him.

‘You should not talk your medical secrets so loud, then, if you don’t want people to hear them. I had to go into the store-room that day Dr. Nicholls was here; cook wanted a jar of preserve, and stopped me just as I was going out—I am sure it was for no pleasure of mine, for I was sadly afraid of stickying my gloves—it was all that you might have a comfortable dinner.’

She looked as if she was going to cry again, but he gravely motioned her to go on, merely saying,—

‘Well! you overheard our conversation, I suppose?’

‘Not much,’ she answered eagerly, almost relieved by being thus helped out in her forced confession. ‘Only a sentence or two.’

‘What were they?’ he asked.

‘Why, you had just been saying something and Dr. Nicholls said, “If he has got aneurism of the aorta his days are numbered.” ’

‘Well. Anything more?’

‘Yes; you said, “I hope to God I may be mistaken; but there is a pretty clear indication of symptoms, in my opinion.” ’

‘How do you know we were speaking of Osborne Hamley?’ he asked; perhaps in hopes of throwing her off the scent. But as soon as she perceived that he was descending to her level of subterfuge, she took courage, and said in quite a different tone to the cowed one which she had been using.

‘Oh! I know. I heard his name mentioned by you both before I began to listen.’

‘Then you own you did listen?’

‘Yes,’ said she, hesitating a little now.

‘And pray how do you come to remember so exactly the name of the disease spoken of?’

‘Because I went——now don’t he angry, I really can’t see any harm in what I did———’

‘There, don’t deprecate anger. You went———’

‘Into the surgery, and looked it out. Why might not I?’

Mr. Gibson did not answer—did not look at her. His face was very pale, and both forehead and lips were contracted. At length he roused himself, sighed, and said,—

‘Well! I suppose as one brews one must bake?’

‘I don’t understand what you mean,’ pouted she.

‘Perhaps not,’ he replied. ‘I suppose that it was what you heard on that occasion that made you change your behaviour to Roger Hamley? I’ve noticed how much more civil you were to him of late.’

‘If you mean that I have ever got to like him as much as Osborne, you are very much mistaken; no, not even though he has offered to Cynthia, and is to be my son-in-law.’

‘Let me know the whole affair. You overheard,—I will own that it was Osborne about whom we were speaking, though I shall have something to say about that presently—and then, if I understand you rightly, you changed your behaviour to Roger, and made him more welcome to this house than you had ever done before, regarding him as proximate heir to the Hamley estates?’

‘I don’t know what you mean by “proximate”.’

‘Go into the surgery, and look into the dictionary then,’ said he, losing his temper for the first time during the conversation.

‘I knew,’ said she, through sobs and tears, ‘that Roger had taken a fancy to Cynthia; any one might see that; and as long as Roger was only a younger son, with no profession, and nothing but his fellowship, I thought it right to discourage him, as any one would who had a grain of common sense in them; for a clumsier, more common, awkward, stupid fellow I never saw—to be called county, I mean.’

‘Take care; you’ll have to eat your words presently when you come to fancy he’ll have Hamley some day.’

‘No, I shan’t,’ said she, not perceiving his exact drift. ‘You are vexed now because it is not Molly he’s in love with; and I call it very unjust and unfair to my poor fatherless girl. I am sure I have always tried to further Molly’s interests as if she was my own daughter.’

Mr. Gibson was too indifferent to this accusation to take any notice of it. He returned to what was of far more importance to him.

‘The point I want to be clear about is this. Did you or did you not alter your behaviour to Roger in consequence of what you overheard of my professional conversation with Dr. Nicholls? Have you not favoured his suit to Cynthia since then, on the understanding gathered from that conversation that he stood a good chance of inheriting Hamley?’

‘I suppose I have,’ said she, sulkily. ‘And if I did, I can’t see any harm in it, that I should be questioned as if I were in a witness-box. He was in love with Cynthia long before that conversation, and she liked him so much. It was not for me to cross the path of true love. I don’t see how you would have a mother love her child if she may not turn accidental circumstances to her advantage. Perhaps Cynthia might have died if she had been crossed in love; her poor father was consumptive.’

‘Don’t you know that all professional conversations are confidential? That it would be the most dishonourable thing possible for me to betray secrets which I learn in the exercise of my profession?’

‘Yes, of course, you.’

‘Well! and are not you and I one in all these respects? You cannot do a dishonourable act without my being inculpated in the disgrace. If it would be a deep disgrace for me to betray a professional secret, what would it be for me to trade on that knowledge?’

He was trying hard to be patient; but the offence was of that class which galled him insupportably.