Wives and Daughters ELIZABETH GASKELL CHAPTER 19-P2 pot

Wives and Daughters
ELIZABETH GASKELL

CHAPTER 19-P2

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, sate 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-by, 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
daresay; 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
daresay. 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 wintertime, 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 enduring 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 every-day 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 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.

'Now for you, sweet one,' said she as she began upon one of Molly's gowns. 'I've
been working as connoisseur until now. Now I begin as amateur.'

She brought down her pretty artificial flowers, plucked out of her own best
bonnet to put into Molly's, saying they would suit her complexion, and that a
knot of ribbons would do well enough for her. All the time she worked, she
sang; she had a sweet voice in singing, as well as in speaking, and used to run
up and down her gay French chansons without any difficulty; so flexible in the
art was she. Yet she did not seem to care for music. She rarely touched the
piano, on which Molly practised with daily conscientiousness. Cynthia was
always willing to answer questions about her previous life, though, after the
first, she rarely alluded to it of herself; but she was a most sympathetic listener
to all Molly's innocent confidences of joys and sorrows; sympathizing even to
the extent of wondering how she could endure Mr Gibson's second marriage,

and why she did not take some active steps of rebellion.

In spite of all this agreeable and pungent variety of companionship at home,
Molly yearned after the Hamleys. If there had been a woman in that family she
would probably have received many little notes, and heard of numerous details
which were now lost to her, or summed up in condensed accounts of her father's
visits at the Hall, which, since his dear patient was dead, were only occasional.

'Yes! The squire is a good deal changed; but he's better than he was. There's an
unspoken estrangement between him and Osborne; one can see it in the silence
and constraint of their manners; but outwardly they are friendly - civil at any
rate. The squire will always respect Osborne as his heir, and the future
representative of the family. Osborne doesn't look well; he says he wants
change. I think he's weary of the domestic tete-a-tete, or domestic dissension.
But he feels his mother's death acutely. It's a wonder that he and his father are
not drawn together by their common loss. Roger's away at Cambridge too -
examination for the mathematical tripos. Altogether the aspect of both people
and place is changed; it is but natural!'

Such is perhaps the summing-up of the news of the Hamleys, as contained in
many bulletins. They always ended in some kind message to Molly.

Mrs Gibson generally said, as a comment upon her husband's account of
Osborne's melancholy, -

'My dear! why don't you ask him to dinner here? A little quiet dinner, you
know. Cook is quite up to it; and we would all of us wear blacks and lilacs;' he
couldn't consider that as gaiety.'

Mr Gibson took no more notice of these suggestions than by shaking his head.

He had grown accustomed to his wife by this time, and regarded silence on his
own part as a great preservative against long inconsequential arguments. But
every time that Mrs Gibson was struck by Cynthia's beauty, she thought it more
and more advisable that Mr Osborne Hamley should be cheered up by a quiet
little dinner-party. As yet no one but the ladies of Hollingford and Mr Ashton,
the vicar - that hopeless and impracticable old bachelor - had seen Cynthia; and
what was the good of having a lovely daughter, if there were none but old
women to admire her?

Cynthia herself appeared extremely indifferent upon the subject, and took very
little notice of her mother's constant talk about the gaieties that were possible,
and the gaieties that were impossible, in Hollingford. She exerted herself just as
much to charm the two Miss Brownings as she would have done to delight
Osborne Hamley, or any other young heir. That is to say, she used no exertion,
but simply followed her own nature, which was to attract every one of those she
was thrown amongst. The exertion seemed rather to be to refrain from doing so,
and to protest, as she so often did, by slight words and expressive looks against
her mother's words and humours - alike against her folly and her caresses.
Molly was almost sorry for Mrs Gibson, who seemed so unable to gain
influence over her child. One day Cynthia read Molly's thought.

'I am not good, and I told you so. Somehow I cannot forgive her for her neglect
of me as a child, when I would have clung to her. Besides, I hardly ever heard
from her when I was at school. And I know she put a stop to my coming over to
her wedding. I saw the letter she wrote to Madame Lefevre. A child should be
brought up with its parents, if it is to think them infallible when it grows up.'

'But though it may know that there must be faults,' replied Molly, 'it ought to
cover them over and try to forget their existence.'

'It ought. But don't you see I have grown up outside the pale of duty and
"oughts." Love me as r am, sweet one, for I shall never be better.'