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 welclass="underline" 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.