CHAPTER I.

THE DAWN OF A GALA DAY.

[Illustration (untitled)]

To begin with the old rigmarole of childhood. In a country there was

a shire, and in that shire there was a town, and in that town there

was a house, and in that house there was a room, and in that room

there was a bed, and in that bed there lay a little girl; wide awake

and longing to get up, but not daring to do so for fear of the unseen

power in the next room--a certain Betty, whose slumbers must not

be disturbed until six o'clock struck, when she wakened of herself

"as sure as clockwork," and left the household very little peace

afterwards. It was a June morning, and early as it was, the room was

full of sunny warmth and light.

On the drawers opposite to the little white dimity bed in which Molly

Gibson lay, was a primitive kind of bonnet-stand on which was hung a

bonnet, carefully covered over from any chance of dust with a large

cotton handkerchief, of so heavy and serviceable a texture that if

the thing underneath it had been a flimsy fabric of gauze and lace

and flowers, it would have been altogether "scomfished" (again to

quote from Betty's vocabulary). But the bonnet was made of solid

straw, and its only trimming was a plain white ribbon put over the

crown, and forming the strings. Still, there was a neat little

quilling inside, every plait of which Molly knew, for had she not

made it herself the evening before, with infinite pains? and was

there not a little blue bow in this quilling, the very first bit of

such finery Molly had ever had the prospect of wearing?

Six o'clock now! the pleasant, brisk ringing of the church bells told

that; calling every one to their daily work, as they had done for

hundreds of years. Up jumped Molly, and ran with her bare little feet

across the room, and lifted off the handkerchief and saw once again

the bonnet; the pledge of the gay bright day to come. Then to the

window, and after some tugging she opened the casement, and let in

the sweet morning air. The dew was already off the flowers in the

garden below, but still rising from the long hay-grass in the meadows

directly beyond. At one side lay the little town of Hollingford,

into a street of which Mr. Gibson's front door opened; and delicate

columns, and little puffs of smoke were already beginning to rise

from many a cottage chimney where some housewife was already up, and

preparing breakfast for the bread-winner of the family.

Molly Gibson saw all this, but all she thought about it was, "Oh! it

will be a fine day! I was afraid it never, never would come; or that,

if it ever came, it would be a rainy day!" Five-and-forty years ago,

children's pleasures in a country town were very simple, and Molly

had lived for twelve long years without the occurrence of any event

so great as that which was now impending. Poor child! it is true

that she had lost her mother, which was a jar to the whole tenour of

her life; but that was hardly an event in the sense referred to; and

besides, she had been too young to be conscious of it at the time.

The pleasure she was looking forward to to-day was her first share in

a kind of annual festival in Hollingford.

The little straggling town faded away into country on one side close

to the entrance-lodge of a great park, where lived my Lord and Lady

Cumnor: "the earl" and "the countess," as they were always called by

the inhabitants of the town; where a very pretty amount of feudal

feeling still lingered, and showed itself in a number of simple ways,

droll enough to look back upon, but serious matters of importance

at the time. It was before the passing of the Reform Bill, but a

good deal of liberal talk took place occasionally between two or

three of the more enlightened freeholders living in Hollingford;

and there was a great Tory family in the county who, from time to

time, came forward and contested the election with the rival Whig

family of Cumnor. One would have thought that the above-mentioned

liberal-talking inhabitants would have, at least, admitted the

possibility of their voting for the Hely-Harrison, and thus trying to

vindicate their independence. But no such thing. "The earl" was lord

of the manor, and owner of much of the land on which Hollingford was

built; he and his household were fed, and doctored, and, to a certain

measure, clothed by the good people of the town; their fathers'

grandfathers had always voted for the eldest son of Cumnor Towers,

and following in the ancestral track, every man-jack in the place

gave his vote to the liege lord, totally irrespective of such

chimeras as political opinion.

This was no unusual instance of the influence of the great

land-owners over humbler neighbours in those days before railways,

and it was well for a place where the powerful family, who thus

overshadowed it, were of so respectable a character as the Cumnors.

They expected to be submitted to, and obeyed; the simple worship of

the townspeople was accepted by the earl and countess as a right; and

they would have stood still in amazement, and with a horrid memory

of the French sansculottes who were the bugbears of their youth, had

any inhabitant of Hollingford ventured to set his will or opinions

in opposition to those of the earl. But, yielded all that obeisance,

they did a good deal for the town, and were generally condescending,

and often thoughtful and kind in their treatment of their vassals.

Lord Cumnor was a forbearing landlord; putting his steward a little

on one side sometimes, and taking the reins into his own hands now

and then, much to the annoyance of the agent, who was, in fact, too

rich and independent to care greatly for preserving a post where his

decisions might any day be overturned by my lord's taking a fancy

to go "pottering" (as the agent irreverently expressed it in the

sanctuary of his own home), which, being interpreted, meant that

occasionally the earl asked his own questions of his own tenants,

and used his own eyes and ears in the management of the smaller

details of his property. But his tenants liked my lord all the better

for this habit of his. Lord Cumnor had certainly a little time for

gossip, which he contrived to combine with the failing of personal

intervention between the old land-steward and the tenantry. But,

then, the countess made up by her unapproachable dignity for this

weakness of the earl's. Once a year she was condescending. She and

the ladies, her daughters, had set up a school; not a school after

the manner of schools now-a-days, where far better intellectual

teaching is given to the boys and girls of labourers and work-people

than often falls to the lot of their betters in worldly estate; but

a school of the kind we should call "industrial," where girls are

taught to sew beautifully, to be capital housemaids, and pretty fair

cooks, and, above all, to dress neatly in a kind of charity uniform

devised by the ladies of Cumnor Towers;--white caps, white tippets,

check aprons, blue gowns, and ready curtseys, and "please, ma'ams,"

being _de rigueur_.

Now, as the countess was absent from the Towers for a considerable

part of the year, she was glad to enlist the sympathy of the

Hollingford ladies in this school, with a view to obtaining their aid

as visitors during the many months that she and her daughters were

away. And the various unoccupied gentlewomen of the town responded to

the call of their liege lady, and gave her their service as required;

and along with it, a great deal of whispered and fussy admiration.

"How good of the countess! So like the dear countess--always thinking

of others!" and so on; while it was always supposed that no strangers

had seen Hollingford properly, unless they had been taken to the

countess's school, and been duly impressed by the neat little pupils,

and the still neater needlework there to be inspected. In return,

there was a day of honour set apart every summer, when with much

gracious and stately hospitality, Lady Cumnor and her daughters

received all the school visitors at the Towers, the great family

mansion standing in aristocratic seclusion in the centre of the large

park, of which one of the lodges was close to the little town. The

order of this annual festivity was this. About ten o'clock one of the

Towers' carriages rolled through the lodge, and drove to different

houses, wherein dwelt a woman to be honoured; picking them up by ones

or twos, till the loaded carriage drove back again through the ready

portals, bowled along the smooth tree-shaded road, and deposited its

covey of smartly-dressed ladies on the great flight of steps leading

to the ponderous doors of Cumnor Towers. Back again to the town;

another picking up of womankind in their best clothes, and another

return, and so on till the whole party were assembled either in the

house or in the really beautiful gardens. After the proper amount of

exhibition on the one part, and admiration on the other, had been

done, there was a collation for the visitors, and some more display

and admiration of the treasures inside the house. Towards four

o'clock, coffee was brought round; and this was a signal of the

approaching carriage that was to take them back to their own homes;

whither they returned with the happy consciousness of a well-spent

day, but with some fatigue at the long-continued exertion of behaving

their best, and talking on stilts for so many hours. Nor were

Lady Cumnor and her daughters free from something of the same

self-approbation, and something, too, of the same fatigue; the

fatigue that always follows on conscious efforts to behave as will

best please the society you are in.

For the first time in her life, Molly Gibson was to be included among

the guests at the Towers. She was much too young to be a visitor at

the school, so it was not on that account that she was to go; but it

had so happened that one day when Lord Cumnor was on a "pottering"

expedition, he had met Mr. Gibson, _the_ doctor of the neighbourhood,

coming out of the farm-house my lord was entering; and having some

small question to ask the surgeon (Lord Cumnor seldom passed any

one of his acquaintance without asking a question of some sort--not

always attending to the answer; it was his mode of conversation), he

accompanied Mr. Gibson to the out-building, to a ring in the wall of

which the surgeon's horse was fastened. Molly was there too, sitting

square and quiet on her rough little pony, waiting for her father.

Her grave eyes opened large and wide at the close neighbourhood and

evident advance of "the earl;" for to her little imagination the

grey-haired, red-faced, somewhat clumsy man, was a cross between an

arch-angel and a king.

"Your daughter, eh, Gibson?--nice little girl, how old? Pony wants

grooming though," patting it as he talked. "What's your name,

my dear? He's sadly behindhand with his rent, as I was saying,

but if he's really ill, I must see after Sheepshanks, who is a

hardish man of business. What's his complaint? You'll come to our

school-scrimmage on Thursday, little girl--what's-your-name? Mind you

send her, or bring her, Gibson; and just give a word to your groom,

for I'm sure that pony wasn't singed last year, now, was he? Don't

forget Thursday, little girl--what's-your-name?--it's a promise

between us, is it not?" And off the earl trotted, attracted by the

sight of the farmer's eldest son on the other side of the yard.

Mr. Gibson mounted, and he and Molly rode off. They did not speak

for some time. Then she said, "May I go, papa?" in rather an anxious

little tone of voice.

"Where, my dear?" said he, wakening up out of his own professional

thoughts.

"To the Towers--on Thursday, you know. That gentleman" (she was shy

of calling him by his title), "asked me."

"Would you like it, my dear? It has always seemed to me rather a

tiresome piece of gaiety--rather a tiring day, I mean--beginning so

early--and the heat, and all that."

"Oh, papa!" said Molly, reproachfully.

"You'd like to go then, would you?"

"Yes; if I may!--He asked me, you know. Don't you think I may?--he

asked me twice over."

"Well! we'll see--yes! I think we can manage it, if you wish it so

much, Molly."

Then they were silent again. By-and-by, Molly said,--

"Please, papa--I do wish to go,--but I don't care about it."

"That's rather a puzzling speech. But I suppose you mean you don't

care to go, if it will be any trouble to get you there. I can easily

manage it, however, so you may consider it settled. You'll want a

white frock, remember; you'd better tell Betty you're going, and

she'll see after making you tidy."

Now, there were two or three things to be done by Mr. Gibson, before

he could feel quite comfortable about Molly's going to the festival

at the Towers, and each of them involved a little trouble on his

part. But he was very willing to gratify his little girl; so the

next day he rode over to the Towers, ostensibly to visit some sick

housemaid, but, in reality, to throw himself in my lady's way, and

get her to ratify Lord Cumnor's invitation to Molly. He chose his

time, with a little natural diplomacy; which, indeed, he had often

to exercise in his intercourse with the great family. He rode into

the stable-yard about twelve o'clock, a little before luncheon-time,

and yet after the worry of opening the post-bag and discussing its

contents was over. After he had put up his horse, he went in by the

back-way to the house; the "House" on this side, the "Towers" at the

front. He saw his patient, gave his directions to the housekeeper,

and then went out, with a rare wild-flower in his hand, to find one

of the ladies Tranmere in the garden, where, according to his hope

and calculation, he came upon Lady Cumnor too,--now talking to her

daughter about the contents of an open letter which she held in her

hand, now directing a gardener about certain bedding-out plants.

"I was calling to see Nanny, and I took the opportunity of bringing

Lady Agnes the plant I was telling her about as growing on Cumnor

Moss."

"Thank you, so much, Mr. Gibson. Mamma, look! this is the _Drosera

rotundifolia_ I have been wanting so long."

"Ah! yes; very pretty I daresay, only I am no botanist. Nanny is

better, I hope? We can't have any one laid up next week, for the

house will be quite full of people,--and here are the Danbys waiting

to offer themselves as well. One comes down for a fortnight of quiet,

at Whitsuntide, and leaves half one's establishment in town, and as

soon as people know of our being here, we get letters without end,

longing for a breath of country air, or saying how lovely the Towers

must look in spring; and I must own, Lord Cumnor is a great deal to

blame for it all, for as soon as ever we are down here, he rides

about to all the neighbours, and invites them to come over and spend

a few days."

"We shall go back to town on Friday the 18th," said Lady Agnes, in a

consolatory tone.

"Ah, yes! as soon as we have got over the school visitors' affair.

But it is a week to that happy day."

"By the way!" said Mr. Gibson, availing himself of the good opening

thus presented, "I met my lord at the Cross-trees Farm yesterday, and

he was kind enough to ask my little daughter, who was with me, to be

one of the party here on Thursday; it would give the lassie great

pleasure, I believe." He paused for Lady Cumnor to speak.

"Oh, well! if my lord asked her, I suppose she must come, but I wish

he was not so amazingly hospitable! Not but what the little girl will

be quite welcome; only, you see, he met a younger Miss Browning the

other day, of whose existence I had never heard."

"She visits at the school, mamma," said Lady Agnes.

"Well, perhaps she does; I never said she did not. I knew there was

one visitor of the name of Browning; I never knew there were two,

but, of course, as soon as Lord Cumnor heard there was another, he

must needs ask her; so the carriage will have to go backwards and

forwards four times now to fetch them all. So your daughter can come

quite easily, Mr. Gibson, and I shall be very glad to see her for

your sake. She can sit bodkin with the Brownings, I suppose? You'll

arrange it all with them; and mind you get Nanny well up to her work

next week."

Just as Mr. Gibson was going away, Lady Cumnor called after him, "Oh!

by-the-by, Clare is here; you remember Clare, don't you? She was a

patient of yours, long ago."

"Clare," he repeated, in a bewildered tone.

"Don't you recollect her? Miss Clare, our old governess," said Lady

Agnes. "About twelve or fourteen years ago, before Lady Cuxhaven was

married."

"Oh, yes!" said he. "Miss Clare, who had the scarlet fever here; a

very pretty delicate girl. But I thought she was married!"

"Yes!" said Lady Cumnor. "She was a silly little thing, and did

not know when she was well off; we were all very fond of her, I'm

sure. She went and married a poor curate, and became a stupid Mrs.

Kirkpatrick; but we always kept on calling her 'Clare.' And now

he's dead, and left her a widow, and she is staying here; and we

are racking our brains to find out some way of helping her to a

livelihood without parting her from her child. She's somewhere about

the grounds, if you like to renew your acquaintance with her."

"Thank you, my lady. I'm afraid I cannot stop to-day. I have a long

round to go; I've stayed here too long as it is, I'm afraid."

Long as his ride had been that day, he called on the Miss Brownings

in the evening, to arrange about Molly's accompanying them to the

Towers. They were tall handsome women, past their first youth, and

inclined to be extremely complaisant to the widowed doctor.

"Eh dear! Mr. Gibson, but we shall be delighted to have her with us.

You should never have thought of asking us such a thing," said Miss

Browning the elder.

"I'm sure I'm hardly sleeping at nights for thinking of it," said

Miss Phoebe. "You know I've never been there before. Sister has

many a time; but somehow, though my name has been down on the

visitors' list these three years, the countess has never named me in

her note; and you know I could not push myself into notice, and go to

such a grand place without being asked; how could I?"

"I told Phoebe last year," said her sister, "that I was sure it was

only inadvertence, as one may call it, on the part of the countess,

and that her ladyship would be as hurt as any one when she didn't

see Phoebe among the school visitors; but Phoebe has got a delicate

mind, you see, Mr. Gibson, and all I could say she wouldn't go, but

stopped here at home; and it spoilt all my pleasure all that day,

I do assure you, to think of Phoebe's face, as I saw it over the

window-blinds, as I rode away; her eyes were full of tears, if you'll

believe me."

"I had a good cry after you was gone, Dorothy," said Miss Phoebe;

"but for all that, I think I was right in stopping away from where

I was not asked. Don't you, Mr. Gibson?"

"Certainly," said he. "And you see you are going this year; and last

year it rained."

"Yes! I remember! I set myself to tidy my drawers, to string myself

up, as it were; and I was so taken up with what I was about that

I was quite startled when I heard the rain beating against the

window-panes. 'Goodness me!' said I to myself, 'whatever will become

of sister's white satin shoes, if she has to walk about on soppy

grass after such rain as this?' for, you see, I thought a deal about

her having a pair of smart shoes; and this year she has gone and got

me a white satin pair just as smart as hers, for a surprise."

"Molly will know she's to put on her best clothes," said Miss

Browning. "We could perhaps lend her a few beads, or artificials, if

she wants them."

"Molly must go in a clean white frock," said Mr. Gibson, rather

hastily; for he did not admire the Miss Brownings' taste in dress,

and was unwilling to have his child decked up according to their

fancy; he esteemed his old servant Betty's as the more correct,

because the more simple. Miss Browning had just a shade of annoyance

in her tone as she drew herself up, and said, "Oh! very well. It's

quite right, I'm sure." But Miss Phoebe said, "Molly will look very

nice in whatever she puts on, that's certain."