Wives and Daughters (Illustrated). Elizabeth Gaskell
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silent, saw this stumble, and putting out his hand held her up from falling. He still held her hand when the occasion was past; this little physical failure impressed on his heart how young and helpless she was, and he yearned to her, remembering the passion of sorrow in which he had found her, and longing to be of some little tender bit of comfort to her, before they parted—before their tête-à-tête walk was merged in the general familiarity of the household life. Yet he did not know what to say.
"You will have thought me hard," he burst out at length, as they were nearing the drawing-room windows and the garden-door. "I never can manage to express what I feel—somehow I always fall to philosophizing—but I am sorry for you. Yes, I am; it's beyond my power to help you, as far as altering facts goes, but I can feel for you, in a way which it's best not to talk about, for it can do no good. Remember how sorry I am for you! I shall often be thinking of you, though I daresay it's best not to talk about it again."
She said, "I know you are sorry," under her breath, and then she broke away, and ran indoors, and upstairs to the solitude of her own room. He went straight to his mother, who was sitting before the untasted luncheon, as much annoyed by the mysterious unpunctuality of her visitor as she was capable of being with anything; for she had heard that Mr. Gibson had been, and was gone, and she could not discover if he had left any message for her; and her anxiety about her own health, which some people esteemed hypochondriacal, always made her particularly craving for the wisdom which might fall from her doctor's lips.
"Where have you been, Roger? Where is Molly?—Miss Gibson, I mean," for she was careful to keep up a barrier of forms between the young man and young woman who were thrown together in the same household.
"I've been out dredging. (By the way, I left my net on the terrace walk.) I found Miss Gibson sitting there, crying as if her heart would break. Her father is going to be married again."
"Married again! You don't say so."
"Yes, he is; and she takes it very hardly, poor girl. Mother, I think if you could send some one to her with a glass of wine, a cup of tea, or something of that sort—she was very nearly fainting—"
"I'll go to her myself, poor child," said Mrs. Hamley, rising.
"Indeed you must not," said he, laying his hand upon her arm. "We have kept you waiting already too long; you are looking quite pale. Hammond can take it," he continued, ringing the bell. She sate down again, almost stunned with surprise.
"Whom is he going to marry?"
"I don't know. I didn't ask, and she didn't tell me."
"That's so like a man. Why, half the character of the affair lies in the question of who it is that he is going to marry."
"I daresay I ought to have asked. But somehow I'm not a good one on such occasions. I was as sorry as could be for her, and yet I couldn't tell what to say."
"What did you say?"
"I gave her the best advice in my power."
"Advice! you ought to have comforted her. Poor little Molly!"
"I think that if advice is good it's the best comfort."
"That depends on what you mean by advice. Hush! here she is."
To their surprise, Molly came in, trying hard to look as usual. She had bathed her eyes, and arranged her hair; and was making a great struggle to keep from crying, and to bring her voice into order. She was unwilling to distress Mrs. Hamley by the sight of pain and suffering. She did not know that she was following Roger's injunction to think more of others than of herself—but so she was. Mrs. Hamley was not sure if it was wise in her to begin on the piece of news she had just heard from her son; but she was too full of it herself to talk of anything else. "So I hear your father is going to be married, my dear? May I ask whom it is to?"
"Mrs. Kirkpatrick. I think she was governess a long time ago at the Countess of Cumnor's. She stays with them a great deal, and they call her Clare, and I believe they are very fond of her." Molly tried to speak of her future stepmother in the most favourable manner she knew how.
"I think I've heard of her. Then she's not very young? That's as it should be. A widow too. Has she any family?"
"One girl, I believe. But I know so little about her!"
Molly was very near crying again.
"Never mind, my dear. That will all come in good time. Roger, you've hardly eaten anything; where are you going?"
"To fetch my dredging-net. It's full of things I don't want to lose. Besides, I never eat much, as a general thing." The truth was partly told, not all. He thought he had better leave the other two alone. His mother had such sweet power of sympathy, that she would draw the sting out of the girl's heart when she had her alone. As soon as he was gone, Molly lifted up her poor swelled eyes, and, looking at Mrs. Hamley, she said,—"He was so good to me. I mean to try and remember all he said."
"I'm glad to hear it, love; very glad. From what he told me, I was afraid he had been giving you a little lecture. He has a good heart, but he isn't so tender in his manner as Osborne. Roger is a little rough sometimes."
"Then I like roughness. It did me good. It made me feel how badly—oh, Mrs. Hamley, I did behave so badly to papa this morning!"
She rose up and threw herself into Mrs. Hamley's arms, and sobbed upon her breast. Her sorrow was not now for the fact that her father was going to be married again, but for her own ill-behaviour.
If Roger was not tender in words, he was in deeds. Unreasonable and possibly exaggerated as Molly's grief had appeared to him, it was real suffering to her; and he took some pains to lighten it, in his own way, which was characteristic enough. That evening he adjusted his microscope, and put the treasures he had collected in his morning's ramble on a little table; and then he asked his mother to come and admire. Of course Molly came too, and this was what he had intended. He tried to interest her in his pursuit, cherished her first little morsel of curiosity, and nursed it into a very proper desire for further information. Then he brought out books on the subject, and translated the slightly pompous and technical language into homely every-day speech. Molly had come down to dinner, wondering how the long hours till bedtime would ever pass away: hours during which she must not speak on the one thing that would be occupying her mind to the exclusion of all others; for she was afraid that already she had wearied Mrs. Hamley with it during their afternoon tête-à-tête. But prayers and bedtime came long before she expected; she had been refreshed by a new current of thought, and she was very thankful to Roger. And now there was to-morrow to come, and a confession of penitence to be made to her father.
But Mr. Gibson did not want speech or words. He was not fond of expressions of feeling at any time, and perhaps, too, he felt that the less said the better on a subject about which it was evident that his daughter and he were not thoroughly and impulsively in harmony. He read her repentance in her eyes; he saw how much she had suffered; and he had a sharp pang at his heart in consequence. And he stopped her from speaking out her regret at her behaviour the day before, by a "There, there, that will do. I know all you want to say. I know my little Molly—my silly little goosey—better than she knows herself. I've brought you an invitation. Lady Cumnor wants you to go and spend next Thursday at the Towers!"
"Do you wish me to go?" said she, her heart sinking.
"I wish you and Hyacinth to become better acquainted—to learn to love each other."
"Hyacinth!" said Molly, entirely bewildered.
"Yes; Hyacinth! It's the silliest name I ever heard of; but it's hers, and I must call her by it. I can't bear Clare, which is what my lady and all the family at the Towers call her; and 'Mrs. Kirkpatrick' is formal and nonsensical too, as she'll change her name so soon."
"When, papa?" asked Molly, feeling as if she were living in a strange, unknown world.
"Not till after Michaelmas." And then, continuing on his own thoughts, he added, "And the worst is, she's gone and perpetuated her own affected name by having her daughter called after her. Cynthia! One thinks of the moon, and the man in the moon with his bundle of