Molly thought that if he saw Osborne’s looks just then he would hardly think him fanciful, or be inclined to be severe. But she only said—‘Papa enjoys a joke at everything, you know. It is a relief after all the sorrow he sees.’
‘Very true. There is a great deal of sorrow in the world. I don’t think it’s a very happy place, after all. So Cynthia is gone to London?’ he added, after a pause. ‘I think I should like to have seen her again. Poor old Roger! He loves her very dearly, Molly,’ he said. Molly hardly knew how to answer him in all this; she was so struck by the change in both voice and manner.
‘Mamma has gone to the Towers,’ she began, at length. ‘Lady Cumnor wanted several things that mamma only can find. She will be sorry to miss you. We were speaking of you only yesterday, and she said how long it was since we had seen you.’
‘I think I’ve grown careless; I’ve often felt so weary and ill that it was all I could do to keep up a brave face before my father.’
‘Why did you not come and see papa?’ said Molly; ‘or write to him?’
‘I cannot tell. I drifted on, sometimes better and sometimes worse, till to-day I mustered up pluck, and came to hear what your father has got to tell me and all for no use, it seems.’
‘I am very sorry. But it is only for two days. He shall go and see you as soon as ever he returns.’
‘He must not alarm my father, remember, Molly,’ said Osborne, lifting himself by the arms of his chair into an upright position and speaking eagerly for the moment. ‘I wish to God Roger was at home!’ said he, falling back into the old posture.
‘I can’t help understanding you,’ said Molly. ‘You think yourself very ill; but isn’t it that you are tired just now?’ She was not sure if she ought to have understood what was passing in his mind; but as she did, she could not help speaking a true reply.
‘Well, sometimes I do think I’m very ill; and then, again, I think it’s only the moping life sets me fancying and exaggerating.’ He was silent for some time. Then, as if he had taken a sudden resolution, he spoke again. ‘You see, there are others depending upon me—upon my health. You haven’t forgotten what you heard that day in the library at home? No, I know you haven’t. I have seen the thought of it in your eyes often since then. I didn’t know you at that time. I think I do now.’
‘Don’t go on talking so fast,’ said Molly. ‘Rest. No one will interrupt us; I will go on with my sewing; when you want to say anything more I shall be listening.’ For she was alarmed at the strange pallor that had come over his face.
‘Thank you.’ After a time he roused himself, and began to speak very quietly, as if on an indifferent matter of fact.
‘The name of my wife is Aimée. Aimée Hamley, of course. She lives at Bishopfield, a village near Winchester. Write it down, but keep it to yourself She is a Frenchwoman, a Roman Catholic, and was a servant. She is a thoroughly good woman. I must not say how dear she is to me. I dare not. I meant once to have told Cynthia, but she didn’t seem quite to consider me as a brother. Perhaps she was shy of a new relation; but you’ll give my love to her, all the same. It is a relief to think that some one else has my secret; and you are like one of us, Molly. I can trust you almost as I can trust Roger. I feel better already, now I feel that some one else knows the whereabouts of my wife and child.’
‘Child!’ said Molly, surprised. But before he could reply, Maria had announced,
‘Miss Phoebe Browning.’
‘Fold up that paper,’ said he, quickly, putting something into her hands, ‘It is only for yourself.’
CHAPTER 46
Hollingford Gossips
My dear Molly, why didn’t you come and dine with us? I said to sister I would come and scold you well. Oh, Mr. Osborne Hamley, is that you?’ and a look of mistaken intelligence at the tête-à-tête she had disturbed came so perceptibly over Miss Phoebe’s face that Molly caught Osborne’s sympathetic eye, and both smiled at the notion.
‘I’m sure I—well! one must sometimes—I see our dinner would have been—’ Then she recovered herself into a connected sentence. ‘We only just heard of Mrs. Gibson’s having a fly from the “George,” because sister sent our Betty to pay for a couple of rabbits Tom Ostler had snared (I hope we shan’t be taken up for poachers, Mr. Osborne—snaring doesn’t require a licence, I believe?), and she heard he was gone off with the fly to the Towers with your dear mamma; for Coxe who drives the fly in general has sprained his ankle. We had just finished dinner, but when Betty said Tom Ostler would not be back until night, I said, “Why, there’s that poor dear girl left all alone by herself, and her mother such a friend of ours,”—when she was alive, I mean. But I’m sure I’m glad I’m mistaken.’
Osborne said—‘I came to speak to Mr. Gibson, not knowing he had gone to London, and Miss Gibson kindly gave me some of her lunch. I must go now.’
‘Oh dear! I am so sorry,’ fluttered out Miss Phoebe, ‘I disturbed you; but it was with the best intentions. I always was mal-àproposdp from a child.’ But Osborne was gone before she had finished her apologies. Before he left, his eyes met Molly’s with a strange look of yearning farewell that struck her at the time, and that she remembered strongly afterwards. ‘Such a nice suitable thing, and I came in the midst, and spoilt it all. I am sure you’re very kind, my dear, considering—’
‘Considering what, my dear Miss Phoebe? If you are conjecturing a love affair between Mr. Osborne Hamley and me, you never were more mistaken in your life. I think I told you so once before. Please do believe me.’
‘Oh yes! I remember. And somehow sister got it into her head it was Mr. Preston. I recollect.’
‘One guess is just as wrong as the other,’ said Molly, smiling, and trying to look perfectly indifferent, but going extremely red at the mention of Mr. Preston’s name. It was very difficult for her to keep up any conversation, for her heart was full of Osborne—his changed appearance, his melancholy words of foreboding, and his confidences about his wife—French, Catholic, servant. Molly could not help trying to piece these strange facts together by imaginations of her own, and found it very hard work to attend to kind Miss Phoebe’s unceasing patter. She came up to the point, however, when the voice ceased; and could recall, in a mechanical manner, the echo of the last words, which from both Miss Phoebe’s look, and the dying accent that lingered in Molly’s ear, she perceived to be a question. Miss Phoebe was asking her if she would go out with her. She was going to Grinstead’s, the bookseller of Hollingford; who, in addition to his regular business, was the agent for the Hollingford Book Society, received their subscriptions, kept their accounts, ordered their books from London, and, on payment of a small salary, allowed the Society to keep their volumes on shelves in his shop. It was the centre of news, and the club, as it were, of the little town. Everybody who pretended to gentility in the place belonged to it. It was a test of gentility, indeed, rather than of education or a love of literature. No shopkeeper would have thought of offering himself as a member, however great his general intelligence and love of reading; while it boasted on its list of subscribers most of the county families in the neighbourhood, some of whom subscribed to it as a sort of duty belonging to their station, without often using their privilege of reading the books; while there were residents in the little town, such as Mrs. Goodenough, who privately thought reading a great waste of time, that might be much better employed in sewing, and knitting, and pastry-making, but who nevertheless belonged to it as a mark of station, just as these good, motherly women would have thought it a terrible come-down in the world if they had not had a pretty young servant-maid to fetch them home from the tea-parties at night. At any rate, Grinstead’s was a very convenient place for a lounge. In that view of the Book Society every one agreed.