Wives and Daughters Page #9

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.

• Novel

								


MOLLY GIBSON'S CHILDHOOD.


Sixteen years before this time, all Hollingford had been disturbed
to its foundations by the intelligence that Mr. Hall, the skilful
doctor, who had attended them all their days, was going to take
a partner. It was no use reasoning to them on the subject; so Mr.
Browning the vicar, Mr. Sheepshanks (Lord Cumnor's agent), and Mr.
Hall himself, the masculine reasoners of the little society, left
off the attempt, feeling that the Che sarà sarà would prove more
silencing to the murmurs than many arguments. Mr. Hall had told his
faithful patients that, even with the strongest spectacles, his
sight was not to be depended upon; and they might have found out for
themselves that his hearing was very defective, although, on this
point, he obstinately adhered to his own opinion, and was frequently
heard to regret the carelessness of people's communication nowadays,
"like writing on blotting-paper, all the words running into each
other," he would say. And more than once Mr. Hall had had attacks
of a suspicious nature,--"rheumatism" he used to call them, but he
prescribed for himself as if they had been gout--which had prevented
his immediate attention to imperative summonses. But, blind and deaf,
and rheumatic as he might be, he was still Mr. Hall the doctor who
could heal all their ailments--unless they died meanwhile--and he had
no right to speak of growing old, and taking a partner.

He went very steadily to work all the same; advertising in medical
journals, reading testimonials, sifting character and qualifications;
and just when the elderly maiden ladies of Hollingford thought that
they had convinced their contemporary that he was as young as ever,
he startled them by bringing his new partner, Mr. Gibson, to call
upon them, and began "slyly," as these ladies said, to introduce him
into practice. And "who was this Mr. Gibson?" they asked, and echo
might answer the question, if she liked, for no one else did. No
one ever in all his life knew anything more of his antecedents than
the Hollingford people might have found out the first day they saw
him: that he was tall, grave, rather handsome than otherwise; thin
enough to be called "a very genteel figure," in those days, before
muscular Christianity had come into vogue; speaking with a slight
Scotch accent; and, as one good lady observed, "so very trite in
his conversation," by which she meant sarcastic. As to his birth,
parentage, and education,--the favourite conjecture of Hollingford
society was, that he was the illegitimate son of a Scotch duke, by
a Frenchwoman; and the grounds for this conjecture were these:--He
spoke with a Scotch accent; therefore, he must be Scotch. He had
a very genteel appearance, an elegant figure, and was apt--so his
ill-wishers said--to give himself airs; therefore, his father must
have been some person of quality; and, that granted, nothing was
easier than to run this supposition up all the notes of the scale of
the peerage,--baronet, baron, viscount, earl, marquis, duke. Higher
they dared not go, though one old lady, acquainted with English
history, hazarded the remark, that "she believed that one or two
of the Stuarts--hem--had not always been,--ahem--quite correct in
their--conduct; and she fancied such--ahem--things ran in families."
But, in popular opinion, Mr. Gibson's father always remained a duke;
nothing more.

Then his mother must have been a Frenchwoman, because his hair was
so black; and he was so sallow; and because he had been in Paris.
All this might be true, or might not; nobody ever knew, or found out
anything more about him than what Mr. Hall told them, namely, that
his professional qualifications were as high as his moral character,
and that both were far above the average, as Mr. Hall had taken pains
to ascertain before introducing him to his patients. The popularity
of this world is as transient as its glory, as Mr. Hall found out
before the first year of his partnership was over. He had plenty of
leisure left to him now to nurse his gout and cherish his eyesight.
The younger doctor had carried the day; nearly every one sent for
Mr. Gibson. Even at the great houses--even at the Towers, that
greatest of all, where Mr. Hall had introduced his new partner with
fear and trembling, with untold anxiety as to his behaviour, and
the impression he might make on my lord the Earl, and my lady the
Countess, Mr. Gibson was received at the end of a twelvemonth with as
much welcome respect for his professional skill as Mr. Hall himself
had ever been. Nay--and this was a little too much for even the kind
old doctor's good temper--Mr. Gibson had even been invited once to
dinner at the Towers, to dine with the great Sir Astley, the head of
the profession! To be sure, Mr. Hall had been asked as well; but he
was laid up just then with his gout (since he had had a partner the
rheumatism had been allowed to develope itself), and he had not been
able to go. Poor Mr. Hall never quite got over this mortification;
after it he allowed himself to become dim of sight and hard of
hearing, and kept pretty closely to the house during the two winters
that remained of his life. He sent for an orphan grand-niece to keep
him company in his old age; he, the woman-contemning old bachelor,
became thankful for the cheerful presence of the pretty, bonny Mary
Pearson, who was good and sensible, and nothing more. She formed
a close friendship with the daughters of the vicar, Mr. Browning,
and Mr. Gibson found time to become very intimate with all three.
Hollingford speculated much on which young lady would become Mrs.
Gibson, and was rather sorry when the talk about possibilities, and
the gossip about probabilities, with regard to the handsome young
surgeon's marriage, ended in the most natural manner in the world, by
his marrying his predecessor's niece. The two Miss Brownings showed
no signs of going into a consumption on the occasion, although
their looks and manners were carefully watched. On the contrary,
they were rather boisterously merry at the wedding, and poor Mrs.
Gibson it was that died of consumption, four or five years after her
marriage--three years after the death of her great-uncle, and when
her only child, Molly, was just three years old.

Mr. Gibson did not speak much about the grief at the loss of his
wife, which it was supposed that he felt. Indeed, he avoided all
demonstrations of sympathy, and got up hastily and left the room
when Miss Phoebe Browning first saw him after his loss, and burst
into an uncontrollable flood of tears, which threatened to end in
hysterics. Miss Browning declared she never could forgive him for his
hard-heartedness on that occasion; but a fortnight afterwards she
came to very high words with old Mrs. Goodenough, for gasping out her
doubts whether Mr. Gibson was a man of deep feeling; judging by the
narrowness of his crape hat-band, which ought to have covered his
hat, whereas there was at least three inches of beaver to be seen.
And, in spite of it all, Miss Browning and Miss Phoebe considered
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