Wives and Daughters

by Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

"So you always say, papa. But in this case I think you'll find I'm right. I judge from her letters; but I think I'm right."

"So you always say, daughter. Time will show. So the child is a boy? Mrs. Gibson told me particularly to ask. It will go far to reconciling her to Cynthia's dismissal of Roger. But indeed it is quite as well for both of them, though of course he will be a long time before he thinks so. They were not suited to each other. Poor Roger! It was hard work writing to him yesterday; and who knows what may have become of him! Well, well! one has to get through the world somehow. I'm glad, however, this little lad has turned up to be the heir. I shouldn't have liked the property to go to the Irish Hamleys, who are the next heirs, as Osborne once told me. Now write that letter, Molly, to the poor little Frenchwoman out yonder. It will prepare her for it; and we must think a bit how to spare her the shock, for Osborne's sake."

The writing this letter was rather difficult work for Molly, and she tore up two or three copies before she could manage it to her satisfaction; and at last, in despair of ever doing it better, she sent it off without re-reading it. The next day was easier; the fact of Osborne's death was told briefly and tenderly. But when this second letter was sent off, Molly's heart began to bleed for the poor creature, bereft of her husband, in a foreign land, and he at a distance from her, dead and buried without her ever having had the chance of printing his dear features on her memory by one last long lingering look. With her thoughts full of the unknown Aimée, Molly talked much about her that day to the Squire. He would listen for ever to any conjecture, however wild, about the grandchild, but perpetually winced away from all discourse about "the Frenchwoman," as he called her; not unkindly, but to his mind she was simply the Frenchwoman—chattering, dark-eyed, demonstrative, and possibly even rouged. He would treat her with respect as his son's widow, and would try even not to think upon the female inveiglement in which he believed. He would make her an allowance to the extent of his duty: but he hoped and trusted he might never be called upon to see her. His solicitor, Gibson, anybody and everybody, should be called upon to form a phalanx of defence against that danger.

And all this time a little young grey-eyed woman was making her way,—not towards him, but towards the dead son, whom as yet she believed to be her living husband. She knew she was acting in defiance of his expressed wish; but he had never dismayed her with any expression of his own fears about his health; and she, bright with life, had never contemplated death coming to fetch away one so beloved. He was ill—very ill, the letter from the strange girl said that; but Aimée had nursed her parents, and knew what illness was. The French doctor had praised her skill and neat-handedness as a nurse, and even if she had been the clumsiest of women, was he not her husband—her all? And was she not his wife, whose place was by his pillow? So, without even as much reasoning as has been here given, Aimée made her preparations, swallowing down the tears that would overflow her eyes, and drop into the little trunk she was packing so neatly. And by her side, on the ground, sate the child, now nearly two years old; and for him Aimée had always a smile and a cheerful word. Her servant loved her and trusted her; and the woman was of an age to have had experience of humankind. Aimée had told her that her husband was ill, and the servant had known enough of the household history to be aware that as yet Aimée was not his acknowledged wife. But she sympathized with the prompt decision of her mistress to go to him directly, wherever he was. Caution comes from education of one kind or another, and Aimée was not dismayed by warnings; only the woman pleaded hard for the child to be left. "He was such company," she said; "and he would so tire his mother in her journeyings; and maybe his father would be too ill to see him." To which Aimée replied, "Good company for you, but better for me. A woman is never tired with carrying her own child" (which was not true; but there was sufficient truth in it to make it believed by both mistress and servant), "and if Monsieur could care for anything, he would rejoice to hear the babble of his little son." So Aimée caught the evening coach to London at the nearest cross-road, Martha standing by as chaperon and friend to see her off, and handing her in the large lusty child, already crowing with delight at the sight of the horses. There was a "lingerie" shop, kept by a Frenchwoman, whose acquaintance Aimée had made in the days when she was a London nursemaid, and thither she betook herself, rather than to an hotel, to spend the few night-hours that intervened before the Birmingham coach started at early morning. She slept or watched on a sofa in the parlour, for spare-bed there was none; but Madame Pauline came in betimes with a good cup of coffee for the mother, and of "soupe blanche" for the boy; and they went off again into the wide world, only thinking of, only seeking the "him," who was everything human to both. Aimée remembered the sound of the name of the village where Osborne had often told her that he alighted from the coach to walk home; and though she could never have spelt the strange uncouth word, yet she spoke it with pretty slow distinctness to the guard, asking him in her broken English when they should arrive there? Not till four o'clock. Alas! and what might happen before then! Once with him she would have no fear; she was sure that she could bring him round; but what might not happen before he was in her tender care? She was a very capable person in many ways, though so childish and innocent in others. She made up her mind to the course she should pursue when the coach set her down at Feversham. She asked for a man to carry her trunk, and show her the way to Hamley Hall.

"Hamley Hall!" said the innkeeper. "Eh! there's a deal o' trouble there just now."

"I know, I know," said she, hastening off after the wheelbarrow in which her trunk was going, and breathlessly struggling to keep up with it, her heavy child asleep in her arms. Her pulses beat all over her body; she could hardly see out of her eyes. To her, a foreigner, the drawn blinds of the house, when she came in sight of it, had no significance; she hurried, stumbled on.

"Back door or front, missus?" asked the boots from the inn.

"The most nearest," said she. And the front door was "the most nearest." Molly was sitting with the Squire in the darkened drawing-room, reading out her translations of Aimée's letters to her husband. The Squire was never weary of hearing them; the very sound of Molly's voice soothed and comforted him, it was so sweet and low. And he pulled her up, much as a child does, if on a second reading of the same letter she substituted one word for another. The house was very still this afternoon,—still as it had been now for several days; every servant in it, however needlessly, moving about on tiptoe, speaking below the breath, and shutting doors as softly as might be. The nearest noise or stir of active life was that of the rooks in the trees, who were beginning their spring chatter of business. Suddenly, through this quiet, there came a ring at the front-door bell that sounded, and went on sounding, through the house, pulled by an ignorant vigorous hand. Molly stopped reading; she and the Squire looked at each other in surprised dismay. Perhaps a thought of Roger's sudden (and impossible) return was in the mind of each; but neither spoke. They heard Robinson hurrying to answer the unwonted summons. They listened; but they heard no more. There was little more to hear. When the old servant opened the door, a lady with a child in her arms stood there. She gasped out her ready-prepared English sentence,—

"Can I see Mr. Osborne Hamley? He is ill, I know; but I am his wife."

Robinson had been aware that there was some mystery, long suspected by the servants, and come to light at last to the master,—he had guessed that there was a young woman in the case; but when she stood there before him, asking for her dead husband as if he were living, any presence of mind Robinson might have had forsook him; he could not tell her the truth,—he could only leave the door open, and say to her, "Wait awhile, I'll come back," and betake himself to the drawing-room where Molly was, he knew. He went up to her in a flutter and a hurry, and whispered something to her which turned her white with dismay.