Day after day the course of these small frivolities was broken in upon by the news Mr. Gibson brought of Mrs. Hamley’s nearer approach to death. Molly—very often sitting by Cynthia, and surrounded by ribbon, and wire, and net—heard the bulletins like the toll of a funeral bell at a marriage feast. Her father sympathized with her. It was the loss of a dear friend to him too; but he was so accustomed to death, that it seemed to him but as it was, the natural end of all things human. To Molly, the death of some one she had known so well and loved so much, was a sad and gloomy phenomenon. She loathed the small vanities with which she was surrounded, and would wander out into the frosty garden, and pace the walk, which was both sheltered and concealed by evergreens.
At length—and yet it was not so long, not a fortnight since Molly had left the Hall—the end came. Mrs. Hamley had sunk out of life as gradually as she had sunk out of consciousness and her place in this world. The quiet waves closed over her, and her place knew her no more.
‘They all sent their love to you, Molly,’ said her father. ‘Roger said he knew how you would feel it.’
Mr. Gibson had come in very late, and was having a solitary dinner in the dining-room. Molly was sitting near him to keep him company. Cynthia and her mother were upstairs. The latter was trying on a head-dress which Cynthia had made for her.
Molly remained downstairs after her father had gone out afresh on his final round among his town patients. The fire was growing very low, and the lights were waning. Cynthia came softly in, and taking Molly’s listless hand, that hung down by her side, sat at her feet on the rug, chafing her chilly fingers without speaking. The tender action thawed the tears that had been gathering heavily at Molly’s heart, and they came dropping down her cheeks.
‘You loved her dearly, did you not, Molly?’
‘Yes,’ sobbed Molly; and then there was a silence.
‘Had you known her long?’
‘No, not a year. But I had seen a great deal of her. I was almost like a daughter to her; she said so. Yet I never bid her good-bye, or anything. Her mind became weak and confused.’
‘She had only sons, I think?’
‘No; only Mr. Osborne and Mr. Roger Hamley. She had a daughter once—“Fanny” Sometimes, in her illness, she used to call me “Fanny” .’
The two girls were silent for some time, both gazing into the fire. Cynthia spoke first:—
‘I wish I could love people as you do, Molly!’
‘Don’t you?’ said the other, in surprise.
‘No. A good number of people love me, I believe, or at least they think they do; but I never seem to care much for any one. I do believe I love you, little Molly, whom I have only known for ten days, better than any one.’
‘Not than your mother?’ said Molly, in grave astonishment.
‘Yes, than my mother!’ replied Cynthia, half-smiling. ‘It’s very shocking, I dare say; but it is so. Now, don’t go and condemn me. I don’t think love for one’s mother quite comes by nature; and remember how much I have been separated from mine! I loved my father, if you will,’ she continued, with the force of truth in her tone, and then she stopped; ‘but he died when I was quite a little thing, and no one believes that I remember him. I heard mamma say to a caller, not a fortnight after his funeral, “Oh, no, Cynthia is too young; she has quite forgotten him”—and I bit my lips, to keep from crying out, “Papa! papa! have I?” But it’s of no use. Well, then mamma had to go out as a governess; she couldn’t help it, poor thing! but she didn’t much care for parting with me. I was a trouble, I dare say. So I was sent to school at four years old; first one school, and then another; and in the holidays, mamma went to stay at grand houses, and I was generally left with the schoolmistresses. Once I went to the Towers; and mamma lectured me continually, and yet I was very naughty, I believe. And so I never went again; and I was very glad of it, for it was a horrid place.’
‘That it was,’ said Molly, who remembered her own day of tribulation there.
‘And once I went to London, to stay with my uncle Kirkpatrick. He is a lawyer, and getting on now; but then he was poor enough, and had six or seven children. It was winter-time, and we were all shut up in a small house in Doughty Street. But, after all, that wasn’t so bad.’
‘But then you lived with your mother when she began school at Ashcombe. Mr. Preston told me that, when I stayed that day at the Manor-house.’
‘What did he tell you?’ asked Cynthia, almost fiercely.
‘Nothing but that. Oh, yes! He praised your beauty and wanted me to tell you what he had said.’
‘I should have hated you if you had,’ said Cynthia.
‘Of course I never thought of doing such a thing,’ replied Molly. ‘I didn’t like him; and Lady Harriet spoke of him the next day as if he wasn’t a person to be liked.’
Cynthia was quite silent. At length she said,—
‘I wish I was good!’
‘So do I,’ said Molly, simply. She was thinking again of Mrs. Hamley,—Only the actions of the just
Smell sweet and blossom in the dust,
and ‘goodness’ just then seemed to her to be the only endearing thing in the world.
‘Nonsense, Molly! You are good. At least, if you’re not good, what am I? There’s a rule-of-three sum for you to do! But it’s no use talking; I am not good, and I never shall be now. Perhaps I might be a heroine still, but I shall never be a good woman, I know.’
‘Do you think it easier to be a heroine?’
‘Yes, as far as one knows of heroines from history. I’m capable of a great jerk, an effort, and then a relaxation—but steady, everyday goodness is beyond me. I must be a moral kangaroo!’
Molly could not follow Cynthia’s ideas; she could not distract herself from the thoughts of the sorrowing group at the Hall.
‘How I should like to see them all! and yet one can do nothing at such a time! Papa says the funeral is to be on Tuesday, and that, after that, Roger Hamley is to go back to Cambridge. It will seem as if nothing had happened! I wonder how the squire and Mr. Osborne Hamley will get on together.’
‘He’s the eldest son, is he not? Why shouldn’t he and his father get on well together?’
‘Oh! I don’t know. That is to say, I do know, but I think I ought not to tell.’
‘Don’t be so pedantically truthful, Molly. Besides, your manner shows when you speak the truth and when you speak falsehood, without troubling yourself to use words. I knew exactly what your “I don’t know” meant. I never consider myself bound to be truthful, so I beg we may be on equal terms.’
Cynthia might well say she did not consider herself bound to be truthful; she literally said what came uppermost, without caring very much whether it was accurate or not. But there was no ill-nature, and, in a general way, no attempt at procuring any advantage for herself in all her deviations; and there was often such a latent sense of fun in them that Molly could not help being amused with them in fact, though she condemned them in theory. Cynthia’s playfulness of manner glossed such failings over with a kind of charm; and yet, at times, she was so soft and sympathetic that Molly could not resist her, even when she affirmed the most startling things. The little account she made of her own beauty pleased Mr. Gibson extremely; and her pretty deference to him won his heart. She was restless too, till she had attacked Molly’s dress, after she had remodelled her mother’s.