Wives and Daughters (17 page)

‘I wish girls could dress like boys,’ said Mr. Gibson, with a little impatience. ‘How is a man to know when his daughter wants clothes? and how is he to rig her out when he finds it out, just when she needs them most and hasn’t got them?’

‘Ah, that’s the question!’ said Molly, in some despair.

‘Can’t you go to Miss Rose’s? Doesn’t she keep ready-made frocks for girls of your age?’

‘Miss Rose! I never had anything from her in my life,’ replied Molly, in some surprise; for Miss Rose was the great dressmaker and milliner of the little town, and hitherto Betty had made the girl’s frocks.

‘Well, but it seems people consider you as a young woman now, and so I suppose you must run up milliners’ bills like the rest of your kind. Not that you’re to get anything anywhere that you can’t pay for down in ready money. Here’s a ten-pound note; go to Miss Rose’s, or Miss anybody‘s, and get what you want at once. The Hamley carriage is to come for you at two, and anything that isn’t quite ready can easily be sent by their cart on Saturday, when some of their people always come to market. Nay, don’t thank me! I don’t want to have the money spent, and I don’t want you to go and leave me; I shall miss you, I know; it’s only hard necessity that drives me to send you a-visiting, and to throw away ten pounds on your clothes. There, go away; you’re a plague, and I mean to leave off loving you as fast as I can.’

‘Papa!’ holding up her finger as in warning, ‘you’re getting mysterious again; and though my honourableness is very strong, I won’t promise that it shall not yield to my curiosity if you go on hinting at untold secrets.’

‘Go away and spend your ten pounds. What did I give it you for but to keep you quiet?’

Miss Rose’s ready-made resources and Molly’s taste combined did not arrive at a very great success. She bought a lilac print, because it would wash, and would be cool and pleasant for the mornings; and this Betty could make at home before Saturday. And for high-days and holidays—by which was understood afternoons and Sundays—Miss Rose persuaded her to order a gay-coloured flimsy plaid silk, which she assured her was quite the latest fashion in London, and which Molly thought would please her father’s Scotch blood. But when he saw the scrap which she had brought home as a pattern, he cried out that the plaid belonged to no clan in existence, and that Molly ought to have known this by instinct. It was too late to change it, however, for Miss Rose had promised to cut the dress out as soon as Molly left the shop.

Mr. Gibson had hung about the town all the morning instead of going away on his usual distant rides. He passed his daughter once or twice in the street, but he did not cross over when he was on the opposite side—only gave her a look or a nod, and went on his way, scolding himself for his weakness in feeling so much pain at the thought of her absence for a fortnight or so.

‘And, after all,’ thought he, ‘I’m only where I was when she comes back; at least, if that foolish fellow goes on with his imaginating fancy. She’ll have to come back some time, and if he chooses to imagine himself constant, there’s still the devil to pay.’ Presently he began to hum the air out of the ‘Beggar’s Opera’—

O
f course the news of Miss Gibson’s approaching departure had spread through the household before the one o’clock dinner-time came; and Mr. Coxe’s dismal countenance was a source of much inward irritation to Mr. Gibson, who kept giving the youth sharp glances of savage reproof for his melancholy face and want of appetite, which he trotted out, with a good deal of sad ostentation; all of which was lost upon Molly, who was too full of her own personal concerns to have any thought or observation to spare from them, excepting once or twice when she thought of the many days that must pass over before she should again sit down to dinner with her father.

When she named this to him after the meal was done, and they were sitting together in the drawing-room, waiting for the sound of the wheels of the Hamley carriage, he laughed, and said,—

‘I’m coming over to-morrow to see Mrs. Hamley; and I dare say I shall dine at their lunch; so you won’t have to wait long before you’ve the treat of seeing the wild beast feed.’

Then they heard the approaching carriage.

‘Oh, papa,’ said Molly, catching at his hand, ‘I do so wish I was not going, now that the time is come.’

‘Nonsense; don’t let us have any sentiment. Have you got your keys? that’s more to the purpose.’

Yes; she had got her keys, and her purse; and her little box was put up on the seat by the coachman: and her father handed her in; the door was shut, and she drove away in solitary grandeur, looking back and kissing her hand to her father, who stood at the gate, in spite of his dislike of sentiment, as long as the carriage could be seen. Then he turned into the surgery, and found Mr. Coxe had had his watching too, and had, indeed, remained at the window gazing, moonstruck, at the empty road, up which the young lady had disappeared. Mr. Gibson startled him from his reverie by a sharp, almost venomous, speech about some small neglect of duty a day or two before. That night Mr. Gibson insisted on passing by the bedside of a poor girl whose parents were worn-out by many wakeful anxious nights succeeding to hard-working days.

Molly cried a little, but checked her tears as soon as she remembered how annoyed her father would have been at the sight of them. It was very pleasant driving along in the luxurious carriage, through the pretty green lanes, with dog-roses and honeysuckles so plentiful and fresh in the hedges, that she once or twice was tempted to ask the coachman to stop till she had gathered a nosegay. She began to dread the end of her little journey of seven miles; the only drawback to which was, that her silk was not a true clan-tartan, and a little uncertainty as to Miss Rose’s punctuality. At length they came to a village; straggling cottages lined the road, an old church stood on a kind of green, with the public-house close by it; there was a great tree, with a bench all round the trunk, midway between the church gates and the little inn. The wooden stocks were close to the gates. Molly had long passed the limit of her rides, but she knew this must be the village of Hamley, and they must be very near to the hall.

They swung in at the gates of the park in a few minutes, and drove up through meadow-grass, ripening for hay,—it was no grand aristocratic deer-park this—to the old red-brick hall, not three hundred yards from the high-road. There had been no footman sent with the carriage, but a respectable servant stood at the door, even before they drew up, ready to receive the expected visitor, and take her into the drawing-room where his mistress lay awaiting her.

Mrs. Hamley rose from her sofa to give Molly a gentle welcome; she kept the girl’s hand in hers after she had finished speaking, looking into her face, as if studying it, and unconscious of the faint blush she called up on the otherwise colourless cheeks.

‘I think we shall be great friends,’ said she, at length. ‘I like your face, and I am always guided by first impressions. Give me a kiss, my dear.’

It was far easier to be active than passive during this process of ‘swearing eternal friendship,’ and Molly willingly kissed the sweet pale face held up to her.

‘I meant to have gone and fetched you myself; but the heat oppresses me, and I did not feel up to the exertion. I hope you had a pleasant drive?’

‘Very,’ said Molly, with shy conciseness.

‘And now I will take you to your room; I have had you put close to me; I thought you would like it better, even though it was a smaller room than the other.’

She rose languidly, and, wrapping her light shawl round her yet elegant figure, led the way upstairs. Molly’s bedroom opened out of Mrs. Hamley’s private sitting-room, on the other side of which was her own bedroom. She showed Molly this easy means of communication, and then, telling her visitor she would await her in the sitting-room, she closed the door, and Molly was left at leisure to make acquaintance with her surroundings.

First of all, she went to the window to see what was to be seen. A flower-garden right below; a meadow of ripe grass just beyond, changing colour in long sweeps, as the soft wind blew over it; great old forest-trees a little on one side; and, beyond them again, to be seen only by standing very close to the side of the window-sill, or by putting her head out, if the window was open, the silver shimmer of a mere, about a quarter of a mile off On the opposite side to the trees and the mere, the look-out was bounded by the old walls and high peaked roofs of the extensive farm-buildings. The deliciousness of the early summer silence was only broken by the song of the birds, and the nearer hum of bees. Listening to these sounds, which enhanced the exquisite sense of stillness, and puzzling out objects obscured by distance or shadow, Molly forgot herself, and was suddenly startled into a sense of the present by a sound of voices in the next room—some servant or other speaking to Mrs. Hamley. Molly hurried to unpack her box, and arrange her few clothes in the pretty old-fashioned chest of drawers, which was to serve her as dressing-table as well. All the furniture in the room was as old-fashioned and as well-preserved as it could be. The chintz curtains were Indian calico of the last century—the colours almost washed out, but the stuff itself exquisitely dean. There was a little strip of bedside carpeting, but the wooden flooring, thus liberally displayed, was of finely-grained oak, so firmly joined, plank to plank, that no grain of dust could make its way into the interstices. There were none of the luxuries of modern days; no writing-table, or sofa, or pier-glass. In one corner of the walls was a bracket, holding an Indian jar filled with pot-pourri; and that and the climbing honeysuckle outside the open window scented the room more exquisitely than any toilette perfumes. Molly laid out her white gown (of last year’s date and size) upon the bed, ready for the (to her new) operation of dressing for dinner, and having arranged her hair and dress, and taken out her company worsted-work, she opened the door softly, and saw Mrs. Hamley lying on the sofa.

‘Shall we stay up here, my dear? I think it is pleasanter than down below; and then I shall not have to come upstairs again at dressing-time.’

‘I shall like it very much,’ replied Molly.

‘Ah! you’ve got your sewing, like a good girl,’ said Mrs. Hamley. ‘Now, I don’t sew much. I live alone a great deal. You see, both my boys are at Cambridge, and the squire is out of doors all day long—so I have almost forgotten how to sew. I read a great deal. Do you like reading?’

‘It depends upon the kind of book,’ said Molly. ‘I’m afraid I don’t like “steady reading,” as papa calls it.’

‘But you like poetry!’ said Mrs. Hamley, almost interrupting Molly. ‘I was sure you did, from your face. Have you read this last poem of Mrs. Hemans?
^x
Shall I read it aloud to you?’

So she began. Molly was not so much absorbed in listening but that she could glance round the room. The character of the furniture was much the same as in her own. Old-fashioned, of handsome material, and faultlessly clean; the age and the foreign appearance of it gave an aspect of comfort and picturesqueness to the whole apartment. On the walls there hung some crayon sketches—portraits. She thought she could make out that one of them was a likeness of Mrs. Hamley in her beautiful youth. And then she became interested in the poem, and dropped her work, and listened in a manner that was after Mrs. Hamley’s own heart. When the reading of the poem was ended, Mrs. Hamley replied to some of Molly’s words of admiration, by saying:

‘Ah! I think I must read you some of Osborne’s poetry some day; under seal of secrecy, remember; but I really fancy they are almost as good as Mrs. Hemans’s.’

To be nearly as good as Mrs. Hemans’s was saying as much to the young ladies of that day, as saying that poetry is nearly as good as Tennyson’s would be in this. Molly looked up with eager interest.

‘Mr. Osborne Hamley? Does your son write poetry?’

‘Yes. I really think I may say he is a poet. He is a very brilliant, clever young man, and he quite hopes to get a fellowship at Trinity. He says he is sure to be high up among the wranglers, and that he expects to get one of the Chancellor’s medals.
^y
That is his likeness—the one hanging against the wall behind you.’

Molly turned round, and saw one of the crayon sketches—representing two boys, in the most youthful kind of jackets and trousers, and falling collars. The elder was sitting down, reading intently. The younger was standing by him, and evidently trying to call the attention of the reader off to some object out of doors—out of the window of the very room in which they were sitting, as Molly discovered when she began to recognize the articles of furniture faintly indicated in the picture.

‘I like their faces!’ said Molly. ‘I suppose it is so long ago now, that I may speak of their likenesses to you as if they were somebody else; may not I?’

‘Certainly,’ said Mrs. Hamley, as soon as she understood what Molly meant. ‘Tell me just what you think of them, my dear; it will amuse me to compare your impressions with what they really are.’

‘Oh! but I did not mean to guess at their characters. I could not do it; and it would be impertinent, if I could. I can only speak about their faces as I see them in the picture.’

‘Well! tell me what you think of them!’

‘The eldest—the reading boy—is very beautiful; but I can’t quite make out his face yet, because his head is down, and I can’t see the eyes. That is the Mr. Osborne Hamley who writes poetry?’

‘Yes. He is not quite so handsome now; but he was a beautiful boy. Roger was never to be compared with him.’

‘No; he is not handsome. And yet I like his face. I can see his eyes. They are grave and solemn-looking; but all the rest of his face is rather merry than otherwise. It looks too steady and sober, too good a face, to go tempting his brother to leave his lesson.’