Only Miss Phoebe would seek out Molly with even more than her former tenderness; and this tried Molly’s calmness more than all the slights put together. The soft hand, pressing hers under the table;—the continual appeals to her, so as to bring her back into the conversation—touched Molly almost to shedding tears. Sometimes the poor girl wondered to herself whether this change in the behaviour of her acquaintances was not a mere fancy of hers; whether, if she had never had that conversation with her father, in which she had borne herself so bravely at the time, she should have discovered the difference in their treatment of her. She never told her father how she felt these perpetual small slights: she had chosen to bear the burden of her own free will; nay; more, she had insisted on being allowed to do so; and it was not for her to grieve him now by showing that she shrank from the consequences of her own act. So she never even made an excuse for not going into the small gaieties, or mingling with the society of Hollingford. Only she suddenly let go the stretch of restraint she was living in, when one evening her father told her that he was really anxious about Mrs. Gibson’s cough, and should like Molly to give up a party at Mrs. Goodenough’s, to which they were all three invited, but to which Molly alone was going. Molly’s heart leaped up at the thoughts of stopping at home, even though the next moment she had to blame herself for rejoicing at a reprieve that was purchased by another’s suffering. However, the remedies prescribed by her husband did Mrs. Gibson good; and she was particularly grateful and caressing to Molly.
‘Really, dear!’ said she, stroking Molly’s head, ‘I think your hair is getting softer, and losing that disagreeable crisp curly feeling.’
Then Molly knew that her stepmother was in high good humour; the smoothness or curliness of her hair was a sure test of the favour in which Mrs. Gibson held her at the moment.
‘I am so sorry to be the cause of detaining you from this little party, but dear papa is so over-anxious about me. I have always been a kind of pet with gentlemen, and poor Mr. Kirkpatrick never knew how to make enough of me. But I think Mr. Gibson is even more foolishly fond: his last words were, “Take care of yourself, Hyacinth”; and then he came back again to say, “If you don’t attend to my directions I won’t answer for the consequences.” I shook my forefinger at him, and said, “Don’t be so anxious, you silly man.” ’
‘I hope we have done everything he told us to do,’ said Molly.
‘Oh, yes! I feel so much better. Do you know, late as it is, I think you might go to Mrs. Goodenough’s yet! Maria could take you, and I should like to see you dressed; when one has been wearing dull warm gowns for a week or two one gets quite a craving for bright colours, and evening dress. So go and get ready, dear, and then perhaps you’ll bring me back some news; for really, shut up as I have been with only papa and you for the last fortnight, I’ve got quite moped and dismal, and I can’t bear to keep young people from the gaieties suitable to their age.’
‘Oh, pray, mamma! I had so much rather not go!’
‘Very well! very well! Only I think it is rather selfish of you, when you see I am so willing to make the sacrifice for your sake.’
‘But you say it is a sacrifice to you, and I don’t want to go.’
‘Very well; did I not say you might stop at home? only pray don’t chop logic; nothing is so fatiguing to a sick person.’
Then they were silent for some time. Mrs. Gibson broke the silence by saying, in a languid voice—
‘Can’t you think of anything amusing to say, Molly?’
Molly pumped up from the depths of her mind a few little trivialities which she had nearly forgotten, but she felt that they were anything but amusing, and so Mrs. Gibson seemed to feel them; for presently she said—
‘I wish Cynthia was at home.’ And Molly felt it as a reproach to her own dullness.
‘Shall I write to her and ask her to come back?’
‘Well, I’m not sure; I wish I knew a great many things. You’ve not heard anything of poor dear Osborne Hamley lately, have you?’
Remembering her father’s charge not to speak of Osborne’s health, Molly made no reply, nor was any needed, for Mrs. Gibson went on thinking aloud—
‘You see, if Mr. Henderson has been as attentive as he was in the spring—and the chances about Roger—I shall be really grieved if anything happens to that young man, uncouth as he is; but it must be owned that Africa is not merely an unhealthy—it is a savage—and even in some parts a cannibal country. I often think of all I’ve read of it in geography books, as I lie awake at night, and if Mr. Henderson is really becoming attached! The future is hidden from us by infinite wisdom, Molly, or else I should like to know it; one would calculate one’s behaviour at the present time so much better if one only knew what events were to come. But I think, on the whole, we had better not alarm Cynthia. If we had only known in time we might have planned for her to have come down with Lord Cumnor and my lady’
‘Are they coming? Is Lady Cumnor well enough to travel?’
‘Yes, to be sure. Or else I should not have considered whether or no Cynthia could have come down with them; it would have sounded very well—more than respectable, and would have given her a position among that lawyer set in London.’
‘Then Lady Cumnor is better?’
‘To be sure. I should have thought papa would have mentioned it to you; but, to be sure, he is always so scrupulously careful not to speak about his patients. Quite right too—quite right and delicate. Why, he hardly ever tells me how they are going on.Yes! the Earl and the Countess, and Lady Harriet and Lord and Lady Cuxhaven, and Lady Agnes; and I’ve ordered a new winter bonnet and a black satin cloak.’
CHAPTER 49
Molly Gibson Finds a Champion
Lady Cumnor had so far recovered from the violence of her attack, and from the consequent operation, as to be able to be removed to the Towers for change of air; and accordingly she was brought thither by her whole family with all the pomp and state becoming an invalid peeress. There was every probability that ‘the family’ would make a longer residence at the Towers than they had done for several years, during which time they had been wanderers hither and thither in search of health. Somehow, after all, it was very pleasant and restful to come to the old ancestral home, and every member of the family enjoyed it in his or her own way; Lord Cumnor most especially. His talent for gossip and his love of small details had scarcely fair play in the hurry of a London life, and were much nipped in the bud during his Continental sojournings, as he neither spoke French fluently, nor understood it easily when spoken. Besides, he was a great proprietor, and liked to know how his land was going on; how his tenants were faring in the world. He liked to hear of their births, marriages, and deaths, and had something of a royal memory for faces. In short, if ever a peer was an old woman, Lord Cumnor was that peer; but he was a very good-natured old woman, and rode about on his stout old cob with his pockets full of half-pence for the children, and little packets of snuff for the old people. Like an old woman, too, he enjoyed an afternoon cup of tea in his wife’s sitting-room, and over his gossip’s beverage he would repeat all that he had learnt in the day. Lady Cumnor was exactly in that state of convalescence when such talk as her lord’s was extremely agreeable to her, but she had contemned the habit of listening to gossip so severely all her life, that she thought it due to consistency to listen first, and enter a supercilious protest afterwards. It had, however, come to be a family habit for all of them to gather together in Lady Cumnor’s room on their return from their daily walks or drives, or rides, and over the fire, sipping their tea at her early meal, to recount the morsels of local intelligence they had heard during the morning. When they had said all that they had to say (and not before), they had always to listen to a short homily from her ladyship on the well-worn texts,—the poorness of conversation about persons,—the probable falsehood of all they had heard, and the degradation of character implied by its repetition. On one of these November evenings they were all assembled in Lady Cumnor’s room. She was lying,—all draped in white and covered up with an Indian shawl,—on a sofa near the fire. Lady Harriet sat on the rug, close before the wood-fire, picking up fallen embers with a pair of dwarf tongs, and piling them on the red and odorous heap in the centre of the hearth. Lady Cuxhaven, notable from girlhood, was using the blind man’s holidaydt to net fruit-nets for the walls at Cuxhaven Park. Lady Cumnor’s woman was trying to see to pour out tea by the light of one small wax-candle in the background (for Lady Cumnor could not bear much light to her weakened eyes); and the great leafless branches of the trees outside the house kept sweeping against the windows, moved by the wind that was gathering.