Osborne now reproached himself with having done Mrs. Gibson injustice. She was evidently a weak, but probably a disinterested, woman; and it was only a little bit of ill-temper on her part which had caused her to speak to Roger as she had done.
‘I dare say it was rather impertinent of me to call at such an untimely hour,’ said Roger.
‘Not at all; I call at all hours, and nothing is ever said about it. It was just because she was put out that morning. I’ll answer for it she’s sorry now, and I’m sure you may go there at any time you like in future.’
Still, Roger did not choose to go again for two or three weeks, and the consequence was that the next time he called the ladies were out. Once again he had the same ill-luck, and then he received a little pretty three-cornered notecs from Mrs. Gibson:—‘MY DEAR SIR,
‘How is it that you are become so formal all on a sudden, leaving cards, instead of awaiting our return? Fie for shame! If you had seen the faces of disappointment that I did when the horrid little bits of pasteboard were displayed to our view, you would not have borne malice against me so long; for it is really punishing others as well as my naughty self. If you will come to-morrow-as early as you like—and lunch with us, I’ll own I was cross, and acknowledge myself a penitent.—Yours ever,‘HYACINTH C. F. GIBSON.’
There was no resisting this, even if there had not been strong inclination to back up the pretty words. Roger went, and Mrs. Gibson caressed and petted him in her sweetest, silkiest manner. Cynthia looked lovelier than ever to him for the slight restriction that had been laid for a time on their intercourse. She might be gay and sparkling with Osborne; with Roger she was soft and grave. Instinctively she knew her men. She saw that Osborne was only interested in her because of her position in a family with whom he was intimate; that his friendship was without the least touch of sentiment; and that his admiration was only the warm criticism of an artist for unusual beauty. But she felt how different Roger’s relation was to her. To him she was the one, alone, peerless. If his love was prohibited, it would be long years before he could sink down into tepid friendship; and to him her personal loveliness was only one of the many charms that made him tremble into passion. Cynthia was not capable of returning such feelings; she had had too little true love in her life, and perhaps too much admiration, to do so; but she appreciated this honest ardour, this loyal worship that was new to her experience. Such appreciation, and such respect for his true and affectionate nature, gave a serious tenderness to her manner to Roger, which allured him with a fresh and separate grace. Molly sat by, and wondered how it would all end, or, rather, how soon it would all end, for she thought that no girl could resist such reverent passion; and on Roger’s side there could be no doubt—alas! there could be no doubt. An older spectator might have looked far ahead, and thought of the question of pounds, shillings, and pence. Where was the necessary income for a marriage to come from?
Roger had his fellowship now, it is true; but the income of that would be lost if he married;ct he had no profession, a life-interest in the two or three thousand pounds that he inherited from his mother belonging to his father. This older spectator might have been a little surprised at the empressementcu of Mrs. Gibson’s manner to a younger son, always supposing this said spectator to have read to the depths of her worldly heart. Never had she tried to be more agreeable to Osborne, and though her attempt was a great failure when practised upon Roger, and he did not know what to say in reply to the delicate flatteries which he felt to be insincere, he saw that she intended him to consider himself henceforward free of the house; and he was too glad to avail himself of this privilege to examine over-closely into what might be her motives for her change of manner. He shut his eyes, and chose to believe that she was now desirous of making up for her little burst of temper on his previous visit.
The result of Osborne’s conference with the two doctors had been certain prescriptions which appeared to have done him much good, and which would in all probability have done him yet more, could he have been free from the recollection of the little patient wife in her solitude near Winchester. He went to her whenever he could; and, thanks to Roger, money was far more plentiful with him now than it had been. But he still shrank, and perhaps even more, from telling his father of his marriage. Some bodily instinct made him dread all agitation inexpressibly. If he had not had this money from Roger, he might have been compelled to tell his father all, and to ask for the necessary funds to provide for the wife and the coming child. But with enough in hand, and a secret, though remorseful, conviction that as long as Roger had a penny his brother was sure to have half of it, made him more reluctant than ever to irritate his father by a revelation of his secret. ‘Not just yet, not just at present,’ he kept saying both to Roger and to himself ‘By and by, if we have a boy, I will call it Roger’—and then visions of poetical and romantic reconciliations brought about between father and son, through the medium of a child, the offspring of a forbidden marriage, became still more vividly possible to him, and at any rate it was a staving-off of an unpleasant thing. He atoned to himself for taking so much of Roger’s fellowship money by reflecting that, if Roger married, he would lose this source of revenue; yet Osborne was throwing no impediment in the way of this event, rather forwarding it by promoting every possible means of his brother’s seeing the lady of his love. Osborne ended his reflections by convincing himself of his own generosity.
CHAPTER 30
Old Ways and New Ways
Mr. Preston was now installed in his new house at Hollingford ; Mr. Sheepshanks having entered into dignified idleness at the house of his married daughter, who lived in the county town. His successor had plunged with energy into all manner of improvements; and, among others, he fell to draining a piece of outlying waste and unreclaimed land of Lord Cumnor’s, which was close to Squire Hamley’s property; that very piece for which he had had the Government grant, but which now lay neglected, and only half-drained, with stacks of mossy tiles, and lines of up-turned furrows telling of abortive plans.cv It was not often that the squire rode in this direction nowadays; but the cottage of a man who had been the squire’s game-keeper in those more prosperous days when the Hamleys could afford to preserve, was close to the rush-grown ground. This old servant and tenant was ill, and had sent a message up to the Hall, asking to see the squire; not to reveal any secret, or to say anything particular, but only from the feudal loyalty, which made it seem to the dying man as if it would be a comfort to shake the hand, and look once more into the eyes of the lord and master whom he had served, and whose ancestors his own forbears had served for so many generations. And the squire was as fully alive as old Silas to the claims of the tie that existed between them. Though he hated the thought, and still more should hate the sight, of the piece of land, on the side of which Silas’s cottage stood, the squire ordered his horse, and rode off within half an hour of receiving the message. As he drew near the spot he thought he heard the sound of tools, and the hum of many voices, just as he used to hear them once, a year or two before. He listened with surprise. Yes. Instead of the still solitude he had expected, there was the clink of iron, the heavy gradual thud of the fall of barrowsful of soil—the cry and shout of labourers. But not on his land—better worth expense and trouble by far than the reedy clay common on which the men were, in fact, employed. He knew it was Lord Cumnor’s property; and he knew Lord Cumnor and his family had gone up in the world (‘the Whig rascals!’), both in wealth and in station, as the Hamleys had gone down. But all the same—in spite of long-known facts, and in spite of reason—the squire’s ready anger rose high at the sight of his neighbour doing what he had been unable to do, and he a Whig, and his family only in the county since Queen Anne’s time. He went so far as to wonder whether they might not—the labourers he meant—avail themselves of his tiles, lying so conveniently close to hand. All these thoughts, regrets, and wonders were in his mind as he rode up to the cottage he was bound to, and gave his horse in charge to a little lad, who had hitherto found his morning’s business and amusement in playing at ‘houses’ with a still younger sister, with some of the squire’s neglected tiles. But he was old Silas’s grandson, and he might have battered the rude red earthenware to pieces—a whole stack—one by one, and the squire would have said little or nothing. It was only that he would not spare one to a labourer of Lord Cumnor’s. No! not one.