‘Cynthia! Dear child, where have you come from? Why in the world have you come? My poor nerves! My heart is quite fluttering; but, to be sure, it’s no wonder with all this anxiety I have to undergo. Why have you come back?’
‘Because of the anxiety you speak of, mamma. I never knew—you never told me how ill Molly was.’
‘Nonsense! I beg your pardon, my dear, but it’s really nonsense. Molly’s illness is only nervous, Mr. Gibson says. A nervous fever; but you must remember nerves are mere fancy, and she’s getting better. Such a pity for you to have left your uncle’s. Who told you about Molly
?
’
‘Lady Harriet. She wrote about some wool—’
‘I know—I know. But you might have known she always exaggerates things. Not but what I have been almost worn out with nursing. Perhaps, after all, it is a very good thing you have come, my dear; and now you shall come down into the dining-room and have some lunch, and tell me all the Hyde Park Street news—into my room,—don’t go into yours yet—Molly is so sensitive to noise!’
While Cynthia ate her lunch, Mrs. Gibson went on questioning. ‘And your aunt, how is her cold? And Helen, quite strong again? Margaretta as pretty as ever? The boys are at Harrow, I suppose? And my old favourite, Mr. Henderson?’ She could not manage to slip in this last inquiry naturally; in spite of herself, there was a change of tone, an accent of eagerness. Cynthia did not reply on the instant; she poured herself out some water with great deliberation, and then said,—
‘My aunt is quite well; Helen is as strong as she ever is, and Margaretta very pretty. The boys are at Harrow, and I conclude that Mr. Henderson is enjoying his usual health, for he was to dine at my uncle’s to-day.’
‘Take care, Cynthia. Look how you are cutting that gooseberry tart,’ said Mrs. Gibson, with sharp annoyance; not provoked by Cynthia’s present action, although it gave excuse for a little vent of temper. ‘I can’t think how you could come off in this sudden kind of way; I am sure it must have annoyed your uncle and aunt. I dare say they’ll never ask you again.’
‘On the contrary, I am to go back there as soon as ever I can be easy to leave Molly.’
‘“Easy to leave Molly.” Now that really is nonsense, and rather uncomplimentary to me, I must say nursing her as I have been doing, daily, and almost nightly; for I have been wakened times out of number by Mr. Gibson getting up, and going to see if she had had her medicine properly.’
‘I’m afraid she has been very ill?’ asked Cynthia.
‘Yes, she has, in one way; but not in another. It was what I call more a tedious than an interesting illness. There was no immediate danger, but she lay much in the same state from day to day.’
‘I wish I had known!’ sighed Cynthia. ‘Do you think I might go and see her now?’
‘I’ll go and prepare her. You’ll find her a good deal better than she has been. Ah! here’s Mr. Gibson!’ He came into the dining-room, hearing voices. Cynthia thought that he looked much older.
‘You here!’ said he, coming forward to shake hands. ‘Why, how did you come?’
‘By the “Umpire.” I never knew Molly had been so ill, or I would have come directly.’ Her eyes were full of tears. Mr. Gibson was touched; he shook her hand again, and murmured, ‘You’re a good girl, Cynthia.’
‘She’s heard one of dear Lady Harriet’s exaggerated accounts,’ said Mrs. Gibson, ‘and come straight off. I tell her it’s very foolish, for Molly is a great deal better now.’
‘Very foolish,’ said Mr. Gibson, echoing his wife’s words, but smiling at Cynthia. ‘But sometimes one likes foolish people for their folly, better than wise people for their wisdom.’
‘I am afraid folly always annoys me,’ said his wife. ‘However, Cynthia is here, and what is done, is done.’
‘Very true, my dear. And now I’ll run up and see my little girl, and tell her the good news. You’d better follow me in a couple of minutes.’ This to Cynthia.
Molly’s delight at seeing her showed itself first in a few happy tears; and then in soft caresses and inarticulate sounds of love. Once or twice she began, ‘It is such a pleasure,’ and there she stopped short. But the eloquence of these five words sank deep into Cynthia’s heart. She had returned just at the right time, when Molly wanted the gentle fillip of the society of a fresh and yet a familiar person. Cynthia’s tact made her talkative or silent, gay or grave, as the varying humour of Molly required. She listened, too, with the semblance, if not the reality, of unwearied interest, to Molly’s continual recurrence to all the time of distress and sorrow at Hamley Hall, and to the scenes which had then so deeply impressed themselves upon her susceptible nature. Cynthia instinctively knew that the repetition of all these painful recollections would ease the oppressed memory, which refused to dwell on anything but what had occurred at a time of feverish disturbance of health. So she never interrupted Molly, as Mrs. Gibson had so frequently done, with—‘You told me all that before, my dear. Let us talk of something else;’ or, ‘Really I cannot allow you to be always dwelling on painful thoughts. Try and be a little more cheerful. Youth is gay. You are young, and therefore you ought to be gay. That is put in a famous form of speech; I forget exactly what it is called.’
So Molly’s health and spirits improved rapidly after Cynthia’s return: and although she was likely to retain many of her invalid habits during the summer, she was able to take drives, and enjoy the fine weather; it was only her as yet tender spirits that required a little management. All the Hollingford people forgot that they had ever thought of her except as a darling of the town; and each in his or her way showed kind interest in her father’s child. Miss Browning and Miss Phoebe considered it quite a privilege that they were allowed to see her a fortnight or three weeks before any one else; Mrs. Goodenough, spectacles on nose, stirred dainty messes in a silver saucepan for Molly’s benefit; the Towers sent books, and forced fruit, and new caricatures, and strange and delicate poultry; humble patients of ‘ the doctor,’ as Mr. Gibson was usually termed, left the earliest cauliflowers they could grow in their cottage gardens, with ‘their duty for Miss.’
The last of all, though strongest in regard, most piteously eager in interest, came Squire Hamley himself. When she was at the worst, he rode over every day to hear the smallest detail, facing even Mrs. Gibson (his abomination), if her husband was not at home, to ask and hear, and ask and hear, till the tears were unconsciously stealing down his cheeks. Every resource of his heart, or his house, or his lands were searched and tried, if it could bring a moment’s pleasure to her; and whatever it might be that came from him, at her very worst time, it brought out a dim smile upon her face.
CHAPTER 55
An Absent Lover Returns
A
nd now it was late June; and to Molly’s and her father’s extreme urgency in pushing, and Mr. and Mrs. Kirkpatrick’s affectionate persistency in pulling, Cynthia had yielded, and had gone back to finish her interrupted visit in London, but not before the bruit of her previous sudden return to nurse Molly had told strongly in her favour in the fluctuating opinion of the little town. Her affair with Mr. Preston was thrust into the shade; while every one was speaking of her warm heart. Under the gleam of Molly’s recovery everything assumed a rosy hue, as indeed became the time when actual roses were fully in bloom.
One morning Mrs. Gibson brought Molly a great basket of flowers that had been sent from the Hall. Molly still breakfasted in bed, but she had just come down, and was now well enough to arrange the flowers for the drawing-room, and as she did so with these blossoms, she made some comments on each.
‘Ah! these white pinks! They were Mrs. Hamley’s favourite flower; and so like her! This little bit of sweetbrier, it quite scents the room. It has pricked my fingers, but never mind. Oh, mamma, look at this rose! I forget its name, but it is very rare, and grows up in the sheltered corner of the wall, near the mulberry-tree. Roger bought the tree for his mother with his own money when he was quite a boy; he showed it me, and made me notice it.’
‘I dare say it was Roger who got it now. You heard papa say he had seen him yesterday.’
‘No! Roger! Roger come home!’ said Molly, turning first red, then very white.
‘Yes. Oh, I remember you had gone to bed before papa came in, and he was called off early to tiresome Mrs. Beale. Yes, Roger turned up at the Hall the day before yesterday.’
But Molly leaned back against her chair, too faint to do more at the flowers for some time. She had been startled by the suddenness of the news. ‘Roger come home!’
It happened that Mr. Gibson was unusually busy on this particular day, and he did not come home till late in the afternoon. But Molly kept her place in the drawing-room all the time, not even going to take her customary siesta, so anxious was she to hear everything about Roger’s return, which as yet appeared to her almost incredible. But it was quite natural in reality; the long monotony of her illness had made her lose all count of time. When Roger left England, his idea was to coast round Africa on the eastern side until he reached the Cape; and thence to make what further journey or voyage might seem to him best in pursuit of his scientific objects. To Cape Town all his letters had been addressed of late; and there, two months before, he had received the intelligence of Osborne’s death, as well as Cynthia’s hasty letter of relinquishment. He did not consider that he was doing wrong in returning to England immediately and reporting himself to the gentlemen who had sent him out, with a full explanation of the circumstances relating to Osborne’s private marriage and sudden death. He offered, and they accepted his offer, to go out again for any time that they might think equivalent to the five months he was yet engaged to them for. They were most of them gentlemen of property, and saw the full importance of proving the marriage of an eldest son, and installing his child as the natural heir to a long-descended estate. This much information, but in a more condensed form, Mr. Gibson gave to Molly, in a very few minutes. She sat up on her sofa, looking very pretty with the flush on her cheeks, and the brightness in her eyes.
‘Well!’ said she, when her father stopped speaking.
‘Well! what?’ asked he, playfully.
‘Oh! why, such a number of things. I’ve been waiting all day to ask you all about everything. How is he looking?’
‘If a young man of twenty-four ever does take to growing taller, I should say that he was taller. As it is, I suppose it’s only that he looks broader, stronger—more muscular.’
‘Oh! is he changed?’ asked Molly, a little disturbed by this account.
‘No, not changed; and yet not the same. He’s as brown as a berry for one thing; caught a little of the negro tinge, and a beard as fine and sweeping as my bay mare’s tail.’
‘A beard! But go on, papa. Does he talk as he used to do? I should know his voice amongst ten thousand.’
‘I didn’t catch any Hottentot twang, if that’s what you mean. Nor did he say, “Caesar and Pompey berry much alike, ’specially Pompey,” which is the only specimen of negro language I can remember just at this moment.’
‘And which I never could see the wit of,’ said Mrs. Gibson, who had come into the room after the conversation had begun; and did not understand what it was aiming at. Molly fidgeted; she wanted to go on with her questions and keep her father to definite and matter-of-fact answers, and she knew that when his wife chimed into a conversation, Mr. Gibson was very apt to find out that he must go about some necessary piece of business.
‘Tell me, how are they all getting on together?’ It was an inquiry which she did not make in general before Mrs. Gibson, for Molly and her father had tacitly agreed to keep silence on what they knew or had observed, respecting the three who formed the present family at the Hall.
‘Oh!’ said Mr. Gibson, ‘Roger is evidently putting everything to rights in his firm, quiet way.’
“‘Things to rights.” Why, what’s wrong?’ asked Mrs. Gibson quickly. ‘The squire and the French daughter-in-law don’t get on well together, I suppose? I am always so glad Cynthia acted with the promptitude she did; it would have been very awkward for her to have been mixed up with all these complications. Poor Roger! to find himself supplanted by a child when he comes home!’
‘You were not in the room, my dear, when I was telling Molly of the reasons for Roger’s return; it was to put his brother’s child at once into his rightful and legal place. So now, when he finds the work partly done to his hands, he is happy and gratified in proportion.’
‘Then he is not much affected by Cynthia’s breaking off her engagement?’ (Mrs. Gibson could afford to call it an ‘engagement’ now.) ‘I never did give him credit for very deep feelings.’
‘On the contrary, he feels it very acutely. He and I had a long talk about it, yesterday.’
Both Molly and Mrs. Gibson would have liked to have heard something more about this conversation; but Mr. Gibson did not choose to go on with the subject. The only point which he disclosed was that Roger had insisted on his right to have a personal interview with Cynthia; and, on hearing that she was in London at present, had deferred any further explanation or expostulation by letter, preferring to await her return.
Molly went on with her questions on other subjects. ‘And Mrs. Osborne Hamley? How is she?’
‘Wonderfully brightened up by Roger’s presence. I don’t think I have ever seen her smile before; but she gives him the sweetest smiles from time to time. They are evidently good friends; and she loses her strange startled look when she speaks to him. I suspect she has been quite aware of the squire’s wish that she should return to France; and has been hard put to it to decide whether to leave her child or not. The idea that she would have to make some such decision came upon her when she was completely shattered by grief and illness, and she hasn’t had any one to consult as to her duty until Roger came, upon whom she has evidently firm reliance. He told me something of this himself.’