‘Really, Charles, considering that she is in your charge, I think you might have saved her from the chatter and patter of Mr. Watson; I can only stand it when I am in the strongest health.’
Why was Molly in Sir Charles’s charge? why? Then Roger remembered many little things that might serve to confirm the fancy he had got into his head; and he went to bed puzzled and annoyed. It seemed to him such an incongruous, hastily-got-up sort of engagement, if engagement it really was. On Saturday they were more fortunate: they had a long tête-à-tête in the most public place in the house—on a sofa in the hall where Molly was resting at Lady Harriet’s command before going upstairs after a walk. Roger was passing through, and saw her, and came to her. Standing before her, and making pretence of playing with the gold-fish in a great marble basin close at hand,—
‘I was very unlucky,’ said he. ‘I wanted to get near you last night, but it was quite impossible. You were so busy talking to Mr. Watson, until Sir Charles Morton came and carried you off—with such an air of authority? Have you known him long?’
Now this was not at all the manner in which Roger had predetermined that he would speak of Sir Charles to Molly; but the words came out in spite of himself.
‘No! not long. I never saw him before I came here—on Tuesday. But Lady Harriet told him to see that I did not get tired, for I wanted to come down; but you know I have not been strong. He is a cousin of Lady Harriet’s, and does all she tells him to do.’
‘Oh! he’s not handsome; but I believe he’s a very sensible man.’
‘Yes! I should think so. He is so silent though, that I can hardly judge.’
‘He bears a very high character in the county,’ said Roger, willing now to give him his full due.
Molly stood up.
‘I must go upstairs,’ she said; ‘I only sat down here for a minute or two because Lady Harriet bade me.’
‘Stop a little longer,’ said he. ‘This is really the pleasantest place; this basin of water-lilies gives one the idea, if not the sensation of coolness; besides—it seems so long since I saw you, and I’ve a message from my father to give you. He is very angry with you.’
‘Angry with me!’ said Molly in surprise.
‘Yes! He heard that you had come here for change of air; and he was offended that you hadn’t come to us—to the Hall, instead. He said that you should have remembered old friends!’
Molly took all this quite gravely, and did not at first notice the smile on his face.
‘Oh! I am so sorry!’ said she. ‘But will you please tell him how it all happened? Lady Harriet called the very day when it was settled that I was not to go to—’ Cynthia’s wedding, she was going to add, but she suddenly stopped short, and, blushing deeply, changed the expression, ‘go to London, and she planned it all in a minute, and convinced mamma and papa, and had her own way. There was really no resisting her.’
‘I think you will have to tell all this to my father yourself if you mean to make your peace. Why can you not come on to the Hall when you leave the Towers?’
To go in the cool manner suggested from one house to another, after the manner of a royal progress, was not at all according to Molly’s primitive home-keeping notions. She made answer,—
‘I should like it very much some time. But I must go home first. They will want me more than ever now—’
Again she felt herself touching on a sore subject, and stopped short. Roger became annoyed at her so constantly conjecturing what he must be feeling on the subject of Cynthia’s marriage. With sympathetic perception she had discerned that the idea must give him pain; and perhaps she also knew that he would dislike to show the pain; but she had not the presence of mind or ready wit to give a skilful turn to the conversation. All this annoyed Roger, he could hardly tell why. He determined to take the metaphorical bull by the horns. Until that was done, his footing with Molly would always be insecure; as it always is between two friends, who mutually avoid a subject to which their thoughts perpetually recur.
‘Ah, yes!’ said he. ‘Of course you must be of double importance now Miss Kirkpatrick has left you. I saw her marriage in The Times yesterday.’
His tone of voice was changed in speaking of her, but her name had been named between them, and that was the great thing to accomplish.
‘Still,’ he continued, ‘I think I must urge my father’s claim for a short visit, and all the more, because I can really see the apparent improvement in your health since I came—only yesterday. Besides, Molly,’ it was the old familiar Roger of former days who spoke now, ‘I think you could help us at home. Aimée is shy and awkward with my father, and he has never taken quite kindly to her,—yet I know they would like and value each other, if some one could but bring them together,—and it would be such a comfort to me if this could take place before I have to leave.’
‘To leave—are you going away again?’
‘Yes. Have you not heard? I didn’t complete my engagement. I’m going again in September for six months.’
‘I remember. But somehow I fancied—you seemed to have settled down into the old way at the Hall.’
‘So my father appears to think. But it is not likely I shall ever make it my home again; and that is partly the reason I want my father to adopt the notion of Aimée’s living with him. Ah, here are all the people coming back from their walk. However, I shall see you again; perhaps this afternoon we may get a little quiet time, for I’ve a great deal to consult you about.’
They separated then, and Molly went upstairs very happy; very full and warm at her heart; it was so pleasant to have Roger talking to her in this way, like a friend; she had once thought that she could never look upon the great brown-bearded celebrity in the former light of almost brotherly intimacy, but now it was all coming right. There was no opportunity for renewed confidences that afternoon. Molly went a quiet decorous drive as fourth with two dowagers and one spinster; but it was very pleasant to think that she should see him again at dinner, and again to-morrow. On the Sunday evening, as they all were sitting and loitering on the lawn before dinner, Roger went on with what he had to say about the position of his sister-in-law in his father’s house; the mutual bond between the mother and grandfather being the child; who was also, through jealousy, the bone of contention and the severance. There were many details to be given in order to make Molly quite understand the difficulty of the situations on both sides; and the young man and the girl became absorbed in what they were talking about, and wandered away into the shade of the long avenue. Lady Harriet separated herself from a group and came up to Lord Hollingford, who was sauntering a little apart, and putting her arm within his with the familiarity of a favourite sister, she said—
‘Don’t you think that your pattern young man, and my favourite young woman, are finding out each other’s good qualities?’
He had not been observing as she had been.
‘Who do you mean?’ said he.
‘Look along the avenue; who are those?’
‘Mr. Hamley and—is it not Miss Gibson? I can’t quite make out. Oh! if you’re letting your fancy run off in that direction, I can tell you it’s quite waste of time. Roger Hamley is a man who will soon have a European reputation!’
‘That’s very possible, and yet it doesn’t make any difference in my opinion. Molly Gibson is capable of appreciating him.’
‘She is a very pretty, good little country-girl. I don’t mean to say anything against her, but—’
‘Remember the Charity Ball; you called her “unusually intelligent” after you had danced with her there. But, after all, we’re like the genie and the fairy in the Arabian Nights Entertainment, who each cried up the merits of the Prince Caramalzaman and the Princess Badoura.’
‘Hamley is not a marrying man.’
‘How do you know?’
‘I know that he has very little private fortune, and I know that science is not a remunerative profession, if profession it can be called.’
‘Oh, if that’s all—a hundred things may happen—some one may leave him a fortune—or this tiresome little heir that nobody wanted may die.’
‘Hush, Harriet, that’s the worst of allowing yourself to plan far ahead for the future; you are sure to contemplate the death of some one, and to reckon upon the contingency as affecting events.’
‘As if lawyers were not always doing something of the kind.’
‘Leave it to those to whom it is necessary. I dislike planning marriages, or looking forward to deaths, about equally.’
‘You are getting very prosaic and tiresome, Hollingford!’
‘Only getting!’ said he, smiling. ‘I thought you had always looked upon me as a tiresome matter-of-fact fellow.’
‘Now, if you’re going to fish for a compliment I am gone. Only remember my prophecy when my vision comes to pass; or make a bet, and whoever wins shall spend the money on a present to Prince Caramalzaman or Princess Badoura, as the case may be.’
Lord Hollingford remembered his sister’s words as he heard Roger say to Molly as he was leaving the Towers on the following day,—
‘Then I may tell my father that, you will come and pay him a visit next week? You don’t know what pleasure it will give him.’ He had been on the point of saying will give us, but he had an instinct which told him it was as well to consider Molly’s promised visit as exclusively made to his father.
The next day Molly went home; she was astonished at herself for being so sorry to leave the Towers; and found it difficult, if not impossible, to reconcile the long-fixed idea of the house, as a place wherein to suffer all a child’s tortures of dismay and forlornness, with her new and fresh conception. She had gained health, she had had pleasure, the faint fragrance of a new and unacknowledged hope had stolen into her life. No wonder that Mr. Gibson was struck with the improvement in her looks, and Mrs. Gibson impressed with her increased grace.
‘Ah Molly,’ said she, ‘it’s really wonderful to see what a little good society will do for a girl. Even a week of association with such people as one meets with at the Towers is, as somebody said of a lady of rank whose name I have forgotten, “a polite education in itself.” There is something quite different about you—a je ne sais quoi
ei
—that would tell me at once that you have been mingling with the aristocracy. With all her charms, it was what my darling Cynthia wanted; not that Mr. Henderson thought so, for a more devoted lover can hardly be conceived. He absolutely bought her a parure of diamonds. I was obliged to say to him that I had studied to preserve her simplicity of taste, and that he must not corrupt her with too much luxury. But I was rather disappointed at their going off without a maid. It was the one blemish in the arrangements—the spot in the sun. Dear Cynthia, when I think of her, I do assure you, Molly, I make it my nightly prayer that I may be able to find you just such another husband. And all this time you have never told me who you met at the Towers?’
Molly ran over a list of names. Roger Hamley’s came last.
‘Upon my word! That young man is pushing his way up!’
‘The Hamleys are a far older family than the Cumnors,’ said Molly, flushing up.
‘Now, Molly, I can’t have you democratic. Rank is a great distinction. It is quite enough to have dear papa with democratic tendencies. But we won’t begin to quarrel. Now that you and I are left alone, we ought to be bosom friends, and I hope we shall be. Roger Hamley did not say much about that unfortunate little Osborne Hamley, I suppose?’
‘On the contrary, he says his father dotes on the child; and he seemed very proud of him, himself.’
‘I thought the squire must be getting very much infatuated with something. I dare say the French mother takes care of that. Why! he has scarcely taken any notice of you for this month or more, and before that you were everything.’
It was about six weeks since Cynthia’s engagement had become publicly known, and that might have had something to do with the squire’s desertion, Molly thought. But she said,—
‘The squire has sent me an invitation to go and stay there next week if you have no objection, mamma. They seem to want a companion for Mrs. Osborne Hamley, who is not very strong.’
‘I can hardly tell what to say,—I don’t like your having to associate with a Frenchwoman of doubtful rank; and I can’t bear the thought of losing my child—my only daughter now. I did ask Helen Kirkpatrick, but she can’t come for some time; and the house is going to be altered. Papa has consented to build me another room at last, for Cynthia and Mr. Henderson will, of course, come and see us; we shall have many more visitors, I expect, and your bedroom will make a capital lumber-room; and Maria wants a week’s holiday. I am always so unwilling to put any obstacles in the way of one’s pleasure, —weakly unwilling, I believe,—but it certainly would be very convenient to have you out of the house for a few days; so, for once, I will waive my own wish for your companionship, and plead your cause with papa.’
Miss Brownings came to call and hear the double batch of news. Mrs. Goodenough had come the very day on which they had returned from Miss Hornblower’s, to tell them the astounding fact of Molly Gibson having gone on a visit to the Towers; not to come back at night, but to sleep there, to be there for two or three days, just as if she was a young lady of quality. So Miss Brownings came to hear all the details of the wedding from Mrs. Gibson, and the history of Molly’s visit at the Towers as well. But Mrs. Gibson did not like this divided interest, and some of her old jealousy of Molly’s intimacy at the Towers had returned.
‘Now, Molly,’ said Miss Browning, ‘let us hear how you behaved among the great folks. You must not be set up with all their attention; remember that they pay it to you for your good father’s sake.’
‘Molly is, I think, quite aware,’ put in Mrs. Gibson, in her most soft and languid tone, ‘that she owes her privilege of visiting at such a house to Lady Cumnor’s kind desire to set my mind quite at liberty at the time of Cynthia’s marriage. As soon as ever I had returned home, Molly came back; indeed, I should not have thought it right to let her intrude upon their kindness beyond what was absolutely necessary.