‘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.’