Wives and Daughters Page #2

The daughter of a country doctor copes with an unwanted stepmother, an impetuous stepsister, burdensome secrets, the town gossips, and the tug on her own heartstrings for a man who thinks of her only as a friend. Wives and Daughters was first published serially in the Cornhill Magazine from August, 1864, to January, 1866. Elizabeth Gaskell died suddenly in November, 1865. She had completed all but the last chapter, and in that sense the book, which many consider her masterpiece, is unfinished. The editor of the Cornhill Magazine Frederick Greenwood, appended his comments about Gaskell's intentions for the story's ending.

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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
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