Wives and Daughters Part 59

"A man's promise is to override a woman's wish, then, is it?"

"I don't see any reason why it should not."

"Will you trust in my reasons when I tell you it will cause me a great deal of distress if it gets known?" She said this in so pleading a voice, that if Mr. Gibson had not been thoroughly displeased and annoyed by his previous conversation with her mother, he must have yielded to her. As it was, he said, coldly,--"Telling Roger's father is not making it public. I don't like this exaggerated desire for such secrecy, Cynthia. It seems to me as if something more than is apparent was concealed behind it."

"Come, Molly," said Cynthia, suddenly; "let us sing that duet I've been teaching you; it's better than talking as we are doing."

It was a little lively French duet. Molly sang it carelessly, with heaviness at her heart; but Cynthia sang it with spirit and apparent merriment; only she broke down in hysterics at last, and flew upstairs to her own room. Molly, heeding nothing else--neither her father nor Mrs. Gibson's words--followed her, and found the door of her bedroom locked, and for all reply to her entreaties to be allowed to come in, she heard Cynthia sobbing and crying.

It was more than a week after the incidents just recorded before Mr. Gibson found himself at liberty to call on the Squire; and he heartily hoped that long before then, Roger's letter might have arrived from Paris, telling his father the whole story. But he saw at the first glance that the Squire had heard nothing unusual to disturb his equanimity. He was looking better than he had done for months past; the light of hope was in his eyes, his face seemed of a healthy ruddy colour, gained partly by his resumption of outdoor employment in the superintendence of the works, and partly because the happiness he had lately had through Roger's means, caused his blood to flow with regular vigour. He had felt Roger's going away, it is true; but whenever the sorrow of parting with him pressed too heavily upon him, he filled his pipe, and smoked it out over a long, slow, deliberate, re-perusal of Lord Hollingford's letter, every word of which he knew by heart; but expressions in which he made a pretence to himself of doubting, that he might have an excuse for looking at his son's praises once again. The first greetings over, Mr. Gibson plunged into his subject.

"Any news from Roger yet?"

"Oh, yes; here's his letter," said the Squire, producing his black leather case, in which Roger's missive had been placed along with the other very heterogeneous contents.

Mr. Gibson read it, hardly seeing the words after he had by one rapid glance a.s.sured himself that there was no mention of Cynthia in it.

"Hum! I see he doesn't name one very important event that has befallen him since he left you," said Mr. Gibson, seizing on the first words that came. "I believe I'm committing a breach of confidence on one side; but I'm going to keep the promise I made the last time I was here. I find there is something--something of the kind you apprehended--you understand--between him and my step-daughter, Cynthia Kirkpatrick. He called at our house to wish us good-by, while waiting for the London coach, found her alone, and spoke to her. They don't call it an engagement, but of course it is one."

"Give me back the letter," said the Squire, in a constrained kind of voice. Then he read it again, as if he had not previously mastered its contents, and as if there might be some sentence or sentences he had overlooked.

"No!" he said at last, with a sigh. "He tells me nothing about it.

Lads may play at confidences with their fathers, but they keep a deal back." The Squire appeared more disappointed at not having heard of this straight from Roger than displeased at the fact itself, Mr.

Gibson thought. But he let him take his time.

"He's not the eldest son," continued the Squire, talking as it were to himself. "But it's not the match I should have planned for him. How came you, sir," said he, firing round on Mr. Gibson, suddenly--"to say when you were last here, that there was nothing between my sons and either of your girls? Why, this must have been going on all the time!"

"I'm afraid it was. But I was as ignorant about it as the babe unborn. I only heard of it on the evening of the day of Roger's departure."

"And that's a week ago, sir. What's kept you quiet ever since?"

"I thought that Roger would tell you himself."

"That shows you've no sons. More than half their life is unknown to their fathers. Why, Osborne there, we live together--that's to say, we have our meals together, and we sleep under the same roof--and yet--Well! well! life is as G.o.d has made it. You say it's not an engagement yet? But I wonder what I'm doing? Hoping for my lad's disappointment in the folly he's set his heart on--and just when he's been helping me. Is it a folly, or is it not? I ask you, Gibson, for you must know this girl. She hasn't much money, I suppose?"

"About thirty pounds a year, at my pleasure during her mother's life."

"Whew! It's well he's not Osborne. They'll have to wait. What family is she of? None of 'em in trade, I reckon, from her being so poor?"

"I believe her father was grandson of a certain Sir Gerald Kirkpatrick. Her mother tells me it is an old baronetcy. I know nothing of such things."

"That's something. I do know something of such things, as you are pleased to call them. I like honourable blood."

Mr. Gibson could not help saying, "But I'm afraid that only one-eighth of Cynthia's blood is honourable; I know nothing further of her relations excepting the fact that her father was a curate."

"Professional. That's a step above trade at any rate. How old is she?"

"Eighteen or nineteen."

"Pretty?"

"Yes, I think so; most people do; but it's all a matter of taste.

Come, Squire, judge for yourself. Ride over and take lunch with us any day you like. I may not be in; but her mother will be there, and you can make acquaintance with your son's future wife."

This was going too fast, however; presuming too much on the quietness with which the Squire had been questioning him. Mr. Hamley drew back within his sh.e.l.l, and spoke in a surly manner as he replied,--

"Roger's 'future wife!' He'll be wiser by the time he comes home. Two years among the black folk will have put more sense in him."

"Possible, but not probable, I should say," replied Mr. Gibson.

"Black folk are not remarkable for their powers of reasoning, I believe, so that they haven't much chance of altering his opinion by argument, even if they understood each other's language; and certainly if he shares my taste, their peculiarity of complexion will only make him appreciate white skins the more."

"But you said it was no engagement," growled the Squire. "If he thinks better of it, you won't keep him to it, will you?"

"If he wishes to break it off, I shall certainly advise Cynthia to be equally willing, that's all I can say. And I see no reason for discussing the affair further at present. I've told you how matters stand because I promised you I would, if I saw anything of this kind going on. But in the present condition of things, we can neither make nor mar; we can only wait." And he took up his hat to go. But the Squire was discontented.

"Don't go, Gibson. Don't take offence at what I've said, though I'm sure I don't know why you should. What's the girl like in herself?"

"I don't know what you mean," said Mr. Gibson. But he did; only he was vexed, and did not choose to understand.

"Is she--well, is she like your Molly?--sweet-tempered and sensible--with her gloves always mended, and neat about the feet, and ready to do anything one asks her just as if doing it was the very thing she liked best in the world?"

Mr. Gibson's face relaxed now, and he could understand all the Squire's broken sentences and unexplained meanings.

"She is much prettier than Molly to begin with, and has very winning ways. She's always well-dressed and smart-looking, and I know she hasn't much to spend on her clothes, and always does what she's asked to do, and is ready enough with her pretty, lively answers. I don't think I ever saw her out of temper; but then I'm not sure if she takes things keenly to heart, and a certain obtuseness of feeling goes a great way towards a character for good temper, I've observed.

Altogether I think Cynthia is one in a hundred."

The Squire meditated a little. "Your Molly is one in a thousand, to my mind. But then, you see, she comes of no family at all,--and I don't suppose she'll have a chance of much money." This he said as if he were thinking aloud, and without reference to Mr. Gibson, but it nettled the latter, and he replied somewhat impatiently,--

"Well, but as there's no question of Molly in this business, I don't see the use of bringing her name in, and considering either her family or her fortune."

"No, to be sure not," said the Squire, rousing up. "My wits had gone far afield, and I'll own I was only thinking what a pity it was she wouldn't do for Osborne. But, of course, it's out of the question--out of the question."

"Yes," said Mr. Gibson, "and if you will excuse me, Squire, I really must go now, and then you'll be at liberty to send your wits afield uninterrupted." This time he was at the door before the Squire called him back. He stood impatiently hitting his top-boots with his riding-whip, waiting for the interminable last words.

"I say, Gibson, we're old friends, and you're a fool if you take anything I say as an offence. Madam your wife and I didn't hit it off the only time I ever saw her. I won't say she was silly, but I think one of us was silly, and it wasn't me. However, we'll pa.s.s that over.

Suppose you bring her, and this girl Cynthia (which is as outlandish a Christian name as I'd wish to hear), and little Molly out here to lunch some day,--I'm more at my ease in my own house,--and I'm more sure to be civil, too. We need say nothing about Roger,--neither the la.s.s nor me,--and you keep your wife's tongue quiet, if you can. It will only be like a compliment to you on your marriage, you know--and no one must take it for anything more. Mind, no allusion or mention of Roger, and this piece of folly. I shall see the girl then, and I can judge her for myself; for, as you say, that will be the best plan. Osborne will be here too; and he's always in his element talking to women. I sometimes think he's half a woman himself, he spends so much money and is so unreasonable."

The Squire was pleased with his own speech and his own thought, and smiled a little as he finished speaking. Mr. Gibson was both pleased and amused; and he smiled too, anxious as he was to be gone. The next Thursday was soon fixed upon as the day on which Mr. Gibson was to bring his womenkind out to the Hall. He thought that, on the whole, the interview had gone off a good deal better than he had expected, and felt rather proud of the invitation of which he was the bearer.

Therefore Mrs. Gibson's manner of receiving it was an annoyance to him. She, meanwhile, had been considering herself as an injured woman ever since the evening of the day of Roger's departure; what business had any one had to speak as if the chances of Osborne's life being prolonged were infinitely small, if in fact the matter was uncertain?

She liked Osborne extremely, much better than Roger; and would gladly have schemed to secure him for Cynthia, if she had not shrunk from the notion of her daughter's becoming a widow. For if Mrs. Gibson had ever felt anything acutely it was the death of Mr. Kirkpatrick; and, amiably callous as she was in most things, she recoiled from exposing her daughter wilfully to the same kind of suffering which she herself had experienced. But if she had only known Dr. Nicholls' opinion she would never have favoured Roger's suit; never. And then Mr. Gibson himself; why was he so cold and reserved in his treatment of her since that night of explanation? She had done nothing wrong; yet she was treated as though she were in disgrace. And everything about the house was flat just now. She even missed the little excitement of Roger's visits, and the watching of his attentions to Cynthia.

Cynthia too was silent enough; and as for Molly, she was absolutely dull and out of spirits, a state of mind so annoying to Mrs. Gibson just now, that she vented some of her discontent upon the poor girl, from whom she feared neither complaint nor repartee.

CHAPTER x.x.xVI.

DOMESTIC DIPLOMACY.