Wives and Daughters Part 86

"Gone out. What's the matter?"

"Where?"

"How should I know? I was asleep; Jenny came upstairs on her way to the bedrooms; she's a girl who never keeps to her work and Maria takes advantage of her."

"Jenny, Jenny!" cried Molly, frantic at the delay.

"Don't shout, dear,--ring the bell. What can be the matter?"

"Oh, Jenny!" said Molly, half-way up the stairs to meet her, "who wanted papa?"

Cynthia came to join the group; she too had been looking for traces or tidings of Mr. Gibson.

"What is the matter?" said Mrs. Gibson. "Can n.o.body speak and answer a question?"

"Osborne Hamley is dead!" said Cynthia, gravely.

"Dead! Osborne! Poor fellow! I knew it would be so, though,--I was sure of it. But Mr. Gibson can do nothing if he's dead. Poor young man! I wonder where Roger is now? He ought to come home."

Jenny had been blamed for coming into the drawing-room instead of Maria, whose place it was, and so had lost the few wits she had. To Molly's hurried questions her replies had been entirely unsatisfactory. A man had come to the back door--she could not see who it was--she had not asked his name: he wanted to speak to master,--master had seemed in a hurry, and only stopped to get his hat.

"He will not be long away," thought Molly, "or he would have left word where he was going. But oh! the poor father all alone!" And then a thought came into her head, which she acted upon straight. "Go to James, tell him to put the side-saddle I had in November on Nora Creina. Don't cry, Jenny. There's no time for that. No one is angry with you. Run!"

So down into the cl.u.s.ter of collected women Molly came, equipped in her jacket and skirt; quick determination in her eyes; controlled quivering about the corners of her mouth.

"Why, what in the world," said Mrs. Gibson--"Molly, what are you thinking about?" But Cynthia had understood it at a glance, and was arranging Molly's hastily a.s.sumed dress, as she pa.s.sed along.

"I am going. I must go. I cannot bear to think of him alone. When papa comes back he is sure to go to Hamley, and if I am not wanted, I can come back with him." She heard Mrs. Gibson's voice following her in remonstrance, but she did not stay for words. She had to wait in the stable-yard, and she wondered how the messenger could bear to eat and drink the food and beer brought out to him by the servants. Her coming out had evidently interrupted the eager talk,--the questions and answers pa.s.sing sharp to and fro; but she caught the words, "all amongst the tangled gra.s.s," and "the Squire would let none on us touch him: he took him up as if he was a baby; he had to rest many a time, and once he sate him down on the ground; but still he kept him in his arms; but we thought we should ne'er have gotten him up again--him and the body."

"The body!"

Molly had never felt that Osborne was really dead till she heard those words. They rode quick under the shadows of the hedgerow trees, but when they slackened speed, to go up a brow, or to give their horses breath, Molly heard those two little words again in her ears; and said them over again to herself, in hopes of forcing the sharp truth into her unwilling sense. But when they came in sight of the square stillness of the house, s.h.i.+ning in the moonlight--the moon had risen by this time--Molly caught at her breath, and for an instant she thought she never could go in, and face the presence in that dwelling. One yellow light burnt steadily, spotting the silver s.h.i.+ning with its earthly coa.r.s.eness. The man pointed it out: it was almost the first word he had spoken since they had left Hollingford.

"It's the old nursery. They carried him there. The Squire broke down at the stair-foot, and they took him to the readiest place. I'll be bound for it the Squire is there hisself, and old Robin too. They fetched him, as a knowledgable man among dumb beasts, till th'

regular doctor came."

Molly dropped down from her seat before the man could dismount to help her. She gathered up her skirts and did not stay again to think of what was before her. She ran along the once familiar turns, and swiftly up the stairs, and through the doors, till she came to the last; then she stopped and listened. It was a deathly silence. She opened the door:--the Squire was sitting alone at the side of the bed, holding the dead man's hand, and looking straight before him at vacancy. He did not stir or move, even so much as an eyelid, at Molly's entrance. The truth had entered his soul before this, and he knew that no doctor, be he ever so cunning, could, with all his striving, put the breath into that body again. Molly came up to him with the softest steps, the most hushed breath that ever she could.

She did not speak, for she did not know what to say. She felt that he had no more hope from earthly skill, so what was the use of speaking of her father and the delay in his coming? After a moment's pause, standing by the old man's side, she slipped down to the floor, and sat at his feet. Possibly her presence might have some balm in it; but uttering of words was as a vain thing. He must have been aware of her being there, but he took no apparent notice. There they sate, silent and still, he in his chair, she on the floor; the dead man, beneath the sheet, for a third. She fancied that she must have disturbed the father in his contemplation of the quiet face, now more than half, but not fully, covered up out of sight. Time had never seemed so without measure, silence had never seemed so noiseless as it did to Molly, sitting there. In the acuteness of her senses she heard a step mounting a distant staircase, coming slowly, coming nearer. She knew it not to be her father's, and that was all she cared about. Nearer and nearer--close to the outside of the door--a pause, and a soft hesitating tap. The great gaunt figure sitting by her side quivered at the sound. Molly rose and went to the door: it was Robinson, the old butler, holding in his hand a covered basin of soup.

"G.o.d bless you, Miss," said he; "make him touch a drop o' this: he's gone since breakfast without food, and it's past one in the morning now."

He softly removed the cover, and Molly took the basin back with her to her place at the Squire's side. She did not speak, for she did not well know what to say, or how to present this homely want of nature before one so rapt in grief. But she put a spoonful to his lips, and touched them with the savoury food, as if he had been a sick child, and she the nurse; and instinctively he took down the first spoonful of the soup. But in a minute he said, with a sort of cry, and almost overturning the basin Molly held, by his pa.s.sionate gesture as he pointed to the bed,--

"He will never eat again--never."

Then he threw himself across the corpse, and wept in such a terrible manner that Molly trembled lest he also should die--should break his heart there and then. He took no more notice of her words, of her tears, of her presence, than he did of that of the moon, looking through the unclosed window, with pa.s.sionless stare. Her father stood by them both before either of them was aware.

"Go downstairs, Molly," said he gravely; but he stroked her head tenderly as she rose. "Go into the dining-room." Now she felt the reaction from all her self-control. She trembled with fear as she went along the moonlit pa.s.sages. It seemed to her as if she should meet Osborne, and hear it all explained; how he came to die,--what he now felt and thought and wished her to do. She did get down to the dining-room,--the last few steps with a rush of terror,--senseless terror of what might be behind her; and there she found supper laid out, and candles lit, and Robinson bustling about decanting some wine. She wanted to cry; to get into some quiet place, and weep away her over-excitement; but she could hardly do so there. She only felt very much tired, and to care for nothing in this world any more. But vividness of life came back when she found Robinson holding a gla.s.s to her lips as she sat in the great leather easy-chair, to which she had gone instinctively as to a place of rest.

"Drink, Miss. It's good old Madeira. Your papa said as how you was to eat a bit. Says he, 'My daughter may have to stay here, Mr. Robinson, and she's young for the work. Persuade her to eat something, or she'll break down utterly.' Those was his very words."

Molly did not say anything. She had not energy enough for resistance.

She drank and she ate at the old servant's bidding; and then she asked him to leave her alone, and went back to her easy-chair and let herself cry, and so ease her heart.

CHAPTER LII.

SQUIRE HAMLEY'S SORROW.

It seemed very long before Mr. Gibson came down. He went and stood with his back to the empty fireplace, and did not speak for a minute or two.

"He's gone to bed," said he at length. "Robinson and I have got him there. But just as I was leaving him he called me back and asked me to let you stop. I'm sure I don't know--but one doesn't like to refuse at such a time."

"I wish to stay," said Molly.

"Do you? There's a good girl. But how will you manage?"

"Oh, never mind that. I can manage. Papa,"--she paused--"what did Osborne die of?" She asked the question in a low, awe-stricken voice.

"Something wrong about the heart. You wouldn't understand if I told you. I apprehended it for some time; but it's better not to talk of such things at home. When I saw him on Thursday week, he seemed better than I've seen him for a long time. I told Dr. Nicholls so.

But one never can calculate in these complaints."

"You saw him on Thursday week? Why, you never mentioned it!" said Molly.

"No. I don't talk of my patients at home. Besides, I didn't want him to consider me as his doctor, but as a friend. Any alarm about his own health would only have hastened the catastrophe."

"Then didn't he know that he was ill--ill of a dangerous complaint, I mean: one that might end as it has done?"

"No; certainly not. He would only have been watching his symptoms--accelerating matters, in fact."

"Oh, papa!" said Molly, shocked.

"I've no time to go into the question," Mr. Gibson continued. "And until you know what has to be said on both sides and in every instance, you are not qualified to judge. We must keep our attention on the duties in hand now. You sleep here for the remainder of the night, which is more than half-gone already?"

"Yes."

"Promise me to go to bed just as usual. You may not think it, but most likely you'll go to sleep at once. People do at your age."

"Papa, I think I ought to tell you something. I know a great secret of Osborne's, which I promised solemnly not to tell; but the last time I saw him I think he must have been afraid of something like this." A fit of sobbing came upon her, which her father was afraid would end in hysterics. But suddenly she mastered herself, and looked up into his anxious face, and smiled to rea.s.sure him.

"I could not help it, papa!"

"No. I know. Go on with what you were saying. You ought to be in bed; but if you've a secret on your mind you won't sleep."

"Osborne was married," said she, fixing her eyes on her father. "That is the secret."