Wives and Daughters

by Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

"I don't know. I hope he will never hear of it. I don't see why he should, for in a little while I shall be quite clear again. It all came about without my ever thinking I was doing wrong. I've a great mind to tell you all about it, Molly."

Molly did not like to urge it, though she longed to know, and to see if she could not offer help; but while Cynthia was hesitating, and perhaps, to say the truth, rather regretting that she had even made this slight advance towards bestowing her confidence, Mrs. Gibson came in, full of some manner of altering a gown of hers, so as to make it into the fashion of the day, as she had seen it during her visit to London. Cynthia seemed to forget her tears and her troubles, and to throw her whole soul into millinery.

Cynthia's correspondence went on pretty briskly with her London cousins, according to the usual rate of correspondence in those days. Indeed, Mrs. Gibson was occasionally inclined to complain of the frequency of Helen Kirkpatrick's letters; for before the penny post came in, the recipient had to pay the postage of letters; and eleven-pence-halfpenny three times a week came, according to Mrs. Gibson's mode of reckoning when annoyed, to a sum "between three and four shillings." But these complaints were only for the family; they saw the wrong side of the tapestry. Hollingford in general, Miss Brownings in particular, heard of "dear Helen's enthusiastic friendship for Cynthia," and of "the real pleasure it was to receive such constant news—relays of news indeed—from London. It was almost as good as living there!"

"A great deal better I should think," said Miss Browning with some severity. For she had got many of her notions of the metropolis from the British Essayists, where town is so often represented as the centre of dissipation, corrupting country wives and squires' daughters, and unfitting them for all their duties by the constant whirl of its not always innocent pleasures. London was a sort of moral pitch, which few could touch and not be defiled. Miss Browning had been on the watch for the signs of deterioration in Cynthia's character ever since her return home. But, except in a greater number of pretty and becoming articles of dress, there was no great change for the worse to be perceived. Cynthia had been "in the world," had "beheld the glare and glitter and dazzling display of London," yet had come back to Hollingford as ready as ever to place a chair for Miss Browning, or to gather flowers for a nosegay for Miss Phœbe, or to mend her own clothes. But all this was set down to the merits of Cynthia, not to the credit of London-town.

"As far as I can judge of London," said Miss Browning, sententiously continuing her tirade against the place, "it's no better than a pickpocket and a robber dressed up in the spoils of honest folk. I should like to know where my Lord Hollingford was bred, and Mr. Roger Hamley. Your good husband lent me that report of the meeting, Mrs. Gibson, where so much was said about them both, and he was as proud of their praises as if he had been akin to them, and Phœbe read it aloud to me, for the print was too small for my eyes; she was a good deal perplexed with all the new names of places, but I said she had better skip them all, for we had never heard of them before and probably should never hear of them again, but she read out the fine things they said of my lord, and Mr. Roger, and I put it to you, where were they born and bred? Why, within eight miles of Hollingford; it might have been Molly there or me; it's all a chance; and then they go and talk about the pleasures of intellectual society in London, and the distinguished people up there that it is such an advantage to know, and all the time I know it's only shops and the play that's the real attraction. But that's neither here nor there. We all put our best foot foremost, and if we have a reason to give that looks sensible we speak it out like men, and never say anything about the silliness we are hugging to our hearts. But I ask you again, where does this fine society come from, and these wise men, and these distinguished travellers? Why, out of country parishes like this! London picks 'em all up, and decks herself with them, and then calls out loud to the folks she's robbed, and says, 'Come and see how fine I am.' Fine, indeed! I've no patience with London: Cynthia is much better out of it; and I'm not sure, if I were you, Mrs. Gibson, if I wouldn't stop up those London letters: they'll only be unsettling her."

"But perhaps she may live in London some of these days, Miss Browning," simpered Mrs. Gibson.

"Time enough then to be thinking of London. I wish her an honest country husband with enough to live upon, and a little to lay by, and a good character to boot. Mind that, Molly," said she, firing round upon the startled Molly; "I wish Cynthia a husband with a good character; but she's got a mother to look after her; you've none, and when your mother was alive she was a dear friend of mine: so I'm not going to let you throw yourself away upon any one whose life isn't clear and above-board, you may depend upon it!"

This last speech fell like a bomb into the quiet little drawing-room, it was delivered with such vehemence. Miss Browning, in her secret heart, meant it as a warning against the intimacy she believed that Molly had formed with Mr. Preston; but as it happened that Molly had never dreamed of any such intimacy, the girl could not imagine why such severity of speech should be addressed to her. Mrs. Gibson, who always took up the points of every word or action where they touched her own self (and called it sensitiveness), broke the silence that followed Miss Browning's speech by saying, plaintively,—

"I'm sure, Miss Browning, you are very much mistaken if you think that any mother could take more care of Molly than I do. I don't—I can't think there is any need for any one to interfere to protect her, and I have not an idea why you have been talking in this way, just as if we were all wrong, and you were all right. It hurts my feelings, indeed it does; for Molly can tell you there is not a thing or a favour that Cynthia has, that she has not. And as for not taking care of her, why, if she were to go up to London to-morrow, I should make a point of going with her to see after her; and I never did it for Cynthia when she was at school in France; and her bedroom is furnished just like Cynthia's, and I let her wear my red shawl whenever she likes—she might have it oftener if she would. I can't think what you mean, Miss Browning."

"I did not mean to offend you, but I meant just to give Molly a hint. She understands what I mean."