Osborne made his appearance a considerable time before luncheon the next morning; and no one objected to the earliness of his call. He was feeling better. There were few signs of the invalid about him; and what few there were disappeared under the bright pleasant influence of such a welcome as he received from all. Molly and Cynthia had much to tell him of the small proceedings since he went away, or to relate the conclusion of half-accomplished projects. Cynthia was often on the point of some gay, careless inquiry as to where he had been, and what be had been doing; but Molly, who conjectured the truth, as often interfered to spare him the pain of equivocation—a pain that her tender conscience would have felt for him, much more than he would have felt it for himself.
Mrs. Gibson’s talk was desultory, complimentary, and sentimental, after her usual fashion; but still, on the whole, though Osborne smiled to himself at much that she said, it was soothing and agreeable. Presently Dr. Nicholls and Mr. Gibson came in; the former had had some conference with the latter on the subject of Osborne’s health; and, from time to time, the skilful old physician’s sharp and observant eyes gave a comprehensive look at Osborne.
Then there was lunch, when every one was merry and hungry, excepting the hostess, who was trying to train her midday appetite into the genteelest of all ways, and thought (falsely enough) that Dr. Nicholls was a good person to practise the semblance of ill-health upon, and that he would give her the proper civil amount of commiseration for her ailments, which every guest ought to bestow upon a hostess who complains of her delicacy of health. The old doctor was too cunning a man to fall into this trap. He would keep recommending her to try the coarsest viands on the table; and, at last, he told her if she could not fancy the cold beef to try a little with pickled onions. There was a twinkle in his eye as he said this, that would have betrayed his humour to any observer; but Mr. Gibson, Cynthia, and Molly were all attacking Osborne on the subject of some literary preference he had expressed, and Dr. Nicholls had Mrs. Gibson quite at his mercy. She was not sorry when luncheon was over to leave the room to the three gentlemen; and ever afterwards she spoke of Dr. Nicholls as ‘that bear.’
Presently, Osborne came upstairs, and, after his old fashion began to take up new books, and to question the girls as to their music. Mr. Gibson had to go out and pay some calls, so he left the three together; and after a while they adjourned into the garden, Osborne lounging on a chair, while Molly employed herself busily in tying up carnations, and Cynthia gathered flowers in her careless, graceful way.
‘I hope you notice the difference in our occupations, Mr. Hamley. Molly, you see, devotes herself to the useful, and I to the ornamental. Please, under what head do you class what you are doing? I think you might help one of us, instead of looking on like the Grand Seigneur.’
‘I don’t know what I can do,’ said he, rather plaintively. ‘I should like to be useful, but I don’t know how; and my day is past for purely ornamental work. You must let me be, I’m afraid. Besides, I’m really rather exhausted by being questioned and pulled about by those good doctors.’
‘Why, you don’t mean to say they have been attacking you since lunch!’ exclaimed Molly.
‘Yes; indeed, they have; and they might have gone on till now if Mrs. Gibson had not come in opportunely.’
‘I thought mamma had gone out some time ago!’ said Cynthia, catching wafts of the conversation as she flitted hither and thither among the flowers.
‘She came into the dining-room not five minutes ago. Do you want her, for I see her crossing the hall at this very moment?’ and Osborne half rose.
‘Oh, not at all!’ said Cynthia. ‘Only she seemed to be in such a hurry to go out, I fancied she had set off long ago. She had some errand to do for Lady Cumnor, and she thought she could manage to catch the housekeeper, who is always in the town on Thursday.’
‘Are the family coming to the Towers this autumn?’
‘I believe so. But I don’t know, and I don’t much care. They don’t take kindly to me,’ continued Cynthia, ‘and so I suppose I’m not generous enough to take kindly to them.’
‘I should have thought that such a very unusual blot in their discrimination would have interested you in them as extraordinary people,’ said Osborne, with a little air of conscious gallantry.
‘Isn’t that a compliment?’ said Cynthia, after a pause of mock meditation. ‘If any one pays me a compliment, please let it be short and clear. I’m very stupid at finding out hidden meanings.’
‘Then such speeches as “you are very pretty,” or “you have charming manners,” are what you prefer. Now, I pique myself on wrapping up my sugar-plums delicately.’
‘Then would you please to write them down, and at my leisure I’ll parse them.’
‘No! It would be too much trouble. I’ll meet you half way, and study clearness next time.’
‘What are you two talking about?’ said Molly, resting on her light spade.
‘It’s only a discussion on the best way of administering compliments,’ said Cynthia, taking up her flower-basket again, but not going out of the reach of the conversation.
‘I don’t like them at all in any way,’ said Molly. ‘But perhaps, it’s rather sour grapes with me,’ she added.
‘Nonsense!’ said Osborne. ‘Shall I tell you what I heard of you at the ball?’
‘Or shall I provoke Mr. Preston,’ said Cynthia, ‘to begin upon you? It’s like turning a tap, such a stream of pretty speeches flows out at the moment.’ Her lip curled with scorn.
‘For you, perhaps,’ said Molly; ‘but not for me.’
‘For any woman. It is his notion of making himself agreeable. If you dare me, Molly, I’ll try the experiment, and you’ll see with what success.
‘No, don’t, pray!’ said Molly, in a hurry. ‘I do so dislike him!’
‘Why?’ said Osborne, roused to a little curiosity by her vehemence.
‘Oh! I don’t know. He never seems to know what one is feeling.’
‘He wouldn’t care if he did know,’ said Cynthia. ‘And he might know he is not wanted.’
‘If he chooses to stay, he cares little whether he is wanted or not.’
‘Come, this is very interesting,’ said Osborne. ‘It is like the strophe and anti-strophe in a Greek chorus. Pray, go on.’
‘Don’t you know him?’ asked Molly.
‘Yes, by sight, and I think we were once introduced. But, you know, we are much farther from Ashcombe, at Hamley, than you are here, at Hollingford.’
‘Oh! but he’s coming to take Mr. Sheepshanks’ place, and then he will live here altogether,’ said Molly.
‘Molly! who told you that?’ said Cynthia, in quite a different tone of voice to that in which she had been speaking hitherto.
‘Papa,—didn’t you hear him? Oh, no! it was before you were down this morning. Papa met Mr. Sheepshanks yesterday, and he told him it was all settled: you know we heard a rumour about it in the spring!’
Cynthia was very silent after this. Presently, she said that she had gathered all the flowers she wanted, and that the heat was so great she would go indoors. And then Osborne went away. But Molly had set herself a task to dig up such roots as had already flowered, and to put down some bedding-out plants in their stead. Tired and heated as she was she finished it, and then went upstairs to rest, and change her dress. According to her wont, she sought for Cynthia; there was no reply to her soft knock at the bedroom-door opposite to her own, and, thinking that Cynthia might have fallen asleep, and be lying uncovered in the draught of the open window, she went in softly. Cynthia was lying upon the bed as if she had thrown herself down on it without caring for the ease or comfort of her position. She was very still; and Molly took a shawl, and was going to place it over her, when she opened her eyes, and spoke—
‘Is that you, dear? Don’t go. I like to know that you are there.’
She shut her eyes again, and remained quite quiet for a few minutes longer. Then she started up into a sitting posture, pushed her hair away from her forehead and burning eyes, and gazed intently at Molly.
‘Do you know what I’ve been thinking, dear?’ said she. ‘I think I’ve been long enough here, and that I had better go out as a governess.’
‘Cynthia! what do you mean?’ asked Molly, aghast. ‘You’ve been asleep—you’ve been dreaming. You’re over-tired,’ continued she, sitting down on the bed, and taking Cynthia’s passive hand, and stroking it softly—a mode of caressing that had come down to her from her mother—whether as an hereditary instinct, or as a lingering remembrance of the tender ways of the dead woman, Mr. Gibson often wondered within himself when he observed it.
‘Oh, how good you are, Molly! I wonder, if I had been brought up like you, whether I should have been as good. But I’ve been tossed about so.’
‘Then, don’t go and be tossed about any more,’ said Molly, softly.
‘Oh, dear! I had better go. But, you see, no one ever loved me like you, and, I think, your father—doesn’t he, Molly? And it’s hard to be driven out.’
‘Cynthia, I am sure you’re not well, or else you’re not half awake.’
Cynthia sat with her arms encircling her knees, and looking at vacancy.
‘Well!’ said she, at last, heaving a great sigh; but, then, smiling as she caught Molly’s anxious face, ‘I suppose there’s no escaping one’s doom; and anywhere else I should be much more forlorn and unprotected.’
‘What do you mean by your doom?’
‘Ah, that’s telling, little one,’ said Cynthia, who seemed now to have recovered her usual manner. ‘I don’t mean to have one, though. I think that, though I am an arrant coward at heart, I can show fight.’
‘With whom?’ asked Molly, really anxious to probe the mystery—if, indeed, there was one—to the bottom, in the hope of some remedy being found for the distress Cynthia was in when first Molly entered.
Again Cynthia was lost in thought; then, catching the echo of Molly’s last words in her mind, she said—
“‘With whom?”—oh! show fight with whom?—why, my doom, to be sure. Am not I a grand young lady to have a doom? Why, Molly, child, how pale and grave you look!’ said she, kissing her all of a sudden. ‘You ought not to care so much for me; I’m not good enough for you to worry yourself about me. I’ve given myself up a long time ago as a heartless baggage!’
‘Nonsense! I wish you wouldn’t talk so, Cynthia!’
‘And I wish you wouldn’t always take me “at the foot of the letter,”
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as an English girl at school used to translate it. Oh, how hot it is! Is it never going to get cool again? My child! what dirty hands you’ve got, and face too; and I’ve been kissing you—I dare say I’m dirty with it, too. Now, isn’t that like one of mamma’s speeches? But, for all that, you look more like a delving Adam than a spinning Eve.’ This had the effect that Cynthia intended; the daintily clean Molly became conscious of her soiled condition, which she had forgotten while she had been attending to Cynthia, and she hastily withdrew to her own room. When she had gone, Cynthia noiselessly locked the door; and, taking her purse out of her desk, she began to count over her money. She counted it once—she counted it twice, as if desirous of finding out some mistake which should prove it to be more than it was; but the end of it all was a sigh.
‘What a fool!—what a fool I was!’ said she, at length. ‘But even if I don’t go out as a governess, I shall make it up in time.’
Some weeks after the time he had anticipated when he spoke of his departure to the Gibsons, Roger returned back to the Hall. One morning when he called, Osborne told them that his brother had been at home for two or three days.
‘And why has he not come here, then?’ said Mrs. Gibson. ‘It is not kind of him not to come and see us as soon as he can. Tell him I say so—pray do.’
Osborne had gained one or two ideas as to her treatment of Roger the last time he had called. Roger had not complained of it, or even mentioned it till, that very morning, when Osborne was on the point of starting, and had urged Roger to accompany him, the latter had told him something of what Mrs. Gibson had said. He spoke rather as if he was more amused than annoyed; but Osborne could read that he was chagrined at those restrictions placed upon calls which were the greatest pleasure of his life. Neither of them let out the suspicion which had entered both their minds—the well-grounded suspicion arising from the fact that Osborne’s visits, be they paid early or late, had never yet been met with a repulse.
Osborne now reproached himself with having done Mrs. Gibson injustice. She was evidently a weak, but probably a disinterested, woman; and it was only a little bit of ill-temper on her part which had caused her to speak to Roger as she had done.
‘I dare say it was rather impertinent of me to call at such an untimely hour,’ said Roger.
‘Not at all; I call at all hours, and nothing is ever said about it. It was just because she was put out that morning. I’ll answer for it she’s sorry now, and I’m sure you may go there at any time you like in future.’
Still, Roger did not choose to go again for two or three weeks, and the consequence was that the next time he called the ladies were out. Once again he had the same ill-luck, and then he received a little pretty three-cornered note
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from Mrs. Gibson:—
‘MY DEAR SIR,
‘How is it that you are become so formal all on a sudden, leaving cards, instead of awaiting our return? Fie for shame! If you had seen the faces of disappointment that I did when the horrid little bits of pasteboard were displayed to our view, you would not have borne malice against me so long; for it is really punishing others as well as my naughty self. If you will come to-morrow-as early as you like—and lunch with us, I’ll own I was cross, and acknowledge myself a penitent.—Yours ever,
‘HYACINTH C. F. GIBSON.’
There was no resisting this, even if there had not been strong inclination to back up the pretty words. Roger went, and Mrs. Gibson caressed and petted him in her sweetest, silkiest manner. Cynthia looked lovelier than ever to him for the slight restriction that had been laid for a time on their intercourse. She might be gay and sparkling with Osborne; with Roger she was soft and grave. Instinctively she knew her men. She saw that Osborne was only interested in her because of her position in a family with whom he was intimate; that his friendship was without the least touch of sentiment; and that his admiration was only the warm criticism of an artist for unusual beauty. But she felt how different Roger’s relation was to her. To him she was the one, alone, peerless. If his love was prohibited, it would be long years before he could sink down into tepid friendship; and to him her personal loveliness was only one of the many charms that made him tremble into passion. Cynthia was not capable of returning such feelings; she had had too little true love in her life, and perhaps too much admiration, to do so; but she appreciated this honest ardour, this loyal worship that was new to her experience. Such appreciation, and such respect for his true and affectionate nature, gave a serious tenderness to her manner to Roger, which allured him with a fresh and separate grace. Molly sat by, and wondered how it would all end, or, rather, how soon it would all end, for she thought that no girl could resist such reverent passion; and on Roger’s side there could be no doubt—alas! there could be no doubt. An older spectator might have looked far ahead, and thought of the question of pounds, shillings, and pence. Where was the necessary income for a marriage to come from?