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<h4>CHAPTER III.</h4>
<h3>MOLLY GIBSON'S CHILDHOOD.<br/> </h3>
<p>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 <i>Che sarà sarà</i> 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 Phœbe 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 Phœbe considered
themselves as Mr. Gibson's most intimate friends, in right of their
regard for his dead wife, and would fain have taken a quasi-motherly
interest in his little girl, had she not been guarded by a watchful
dragon in the shape of Betty, her nurse, who was jealous of any
interference between her and her charge; and especially resentful and
disagreeable towards all those ladies who, by suitable age, rank, or
propinquity, she thought capable of "casting sheep's eyes at master."</p>
<p>Several years before the opening of this story, Mr. Gibson's position
seemed settled for life, both socially and professionally. He was a
widower, and likely to remain so; his domestic affections were
centred on little Molly, but even to her, in their most private
moments, he did not give way to much expression of his feelings; his
most caressing appellation for her was "Goosey," and he took a
pleasure in bewildering her infant mind with his badinage. He had
rather a contempt for demonstrative people, arising from his medical
insight into the consequences to health of uncontrolled feeling. He
deceived himself into believing that still his reason was lord of
all, because he had never fallen into the habit of expression on any
other than purely intellectual subjects. Molly, however, had her own
intuitions to guide her. Though her papa laughed at her, quizzed her,
joked at her, in a way which the Miss Brownings called "really cruel"
to each other when they were quite alone, Molly took her little
griefs and pleasures, and poured them into her papa's ears, sooner
even than into Betty's, that kind-hearted termagant. The child grew
to understand her father well, and the two had the most delightful
intercourse together—half banter, half seriousness, but altogether
confidential friendship. Mr. Gibson kept three servants; Betty, a
cook, and a girl who was supposed to be housemaid, but who was under
both the elder two, and had a pretty life of it in consequence. Three
servants would not have been required if it had not been Mr. Gibson's
habit, as it had been Mr. Hall's before him, to take two "pupils" as
they were called in the genteel language of Hollingford,
"apprentices" as they were in fact—being bound by indentures, and
paying a handsome premium to learn their business. They lived in the
house, and occupied an uncomfortable, ambiguous, or, as Miss Browning
called it with some truth, "amphibious" position. They had their
meals with Mr. Gibson and Molly, and were felt to be terribly in the
way; Mr. Gibson not being a man who could make conversation, and
hating the duty of talking under restraint. Yet something within him
made him wince, as if his duties were not rightly performed, when, as
the cloth was drawn, the two awkward lads rose up with joyful
alacrity, gave him a nod, which was to be interpreted as a bow,
knocked against each other in their endeavours to get out of the
dining-room quickly; and then might be heard dashing along a passage
which led to the surgery, choking with half-suppressed laughter. Yet
the annoyance he felt at this dull sense of imperfectly fulfilled
duties only made his sarcasms on their inefficiency, or stupidity, or
ill manners, more bitter than before.</p>
<p>Beyond direct professional instruction, he did not know what to do
with the succession of pairs of young men, whose mission seemed to
be, to be plagued by their master consciously, and to plague him
unconsciously. Once or twice Mr. Gibson had declined taking a fresh
pupil, in the hopes of shaking himself free from the incubus, but his
reputation as a clever surgeon had spread so rapidly that his fees
which he had thought prohibitory, were willingly paid, in order that
the young man might make a start in life, with the prestige of having
been a pupil of Gibson of Hollingford. But as Molly grew to be a
little girl instead of a child, when she was about eight years old,
her father perceived the awkwardness of her having her breakfasts and
dinners so often alone with the pupils, without his uncertain
presence. To do away with this evil, more than for the actual
instruction she could give, he engaged a respectable woman, the
daughter of a shopkeeper in the town, who had left a destitute
family, to come every morning before breakfast, and to stay with
Molly till he came home at night; or, if he was detained, until the
child's bed-time.</p>
<p>"Now, Miss Eyre," said he, summing up his instructions the day before
she entered upon her office, "remember this: you are to make good tea
for the young men, and see that they have their meals comfortably,
and—you are five-and-thirty, I think you said?—try and make them
talk,—rationally, I am afraid is beyond your or anybody's power; but
make them talk without stammering or giggling. Don't teach Molly too
much: she must sew, and read, and write, and do her sums; but I want
to keep her a child, and if I find more learning desirable for her,
I'll see about giving it to her myself. After all, I'm not sure that
reading or writing is necessary. Many a good woman gets married with
only a cross instead of her name; it's rather a diluting of
mother-wit, to my fancy; but, however, we must yield to the
prejudices of society, Miss Eyre, and so you may teach the child to
read."</p>
<p>Miss Eyre listened in silence, perplexed but determined to be
obedient to the directions of the doctor, whose kindness she and her
family had good cause to know. She made strong tea; she helped the
young men liberally in Mr. Gibson's absence, as well as in his
presence, and she found the way to unloosen their tongues, whenever
their master was away, by talking to them on trivial subjects in her
pleasant homely way. She taught Molly to read and write, but tried
honestly to keep her back in every other branch of education. It was
only by fighting and struggling hard, that bit by bit Molly persuaded
her father to let her have French and drawing lessons. He was always
afraid of her becoming too much educated, though he need not have
been alarmed; the masters who visited such small country towns as
Hollingford forty years ago, were no such great proficients in their
arts. Once a week she joined a dancing class in the assembly-room at
the principal inn in the town: the "George;" and, being daunted by
her father in every intellectual attempt, she read every book that
came in her way, almost with as much delight as if it had been
forbidden. For his station in life, Mr. Gibson had an unusually good
library; the medical portion of it was inaccessible to Molly, being
kept in the surgery, but every other book she had either read, or
tried to read. Her summer place of study was that seat in the
cherry-tree, where she got the green stains on her frock, that have
already been mentioned as likely to wear Betty's life out. In spite
of this "hidden worm i' th' bud," Betty was to all appearance strong,
alert, and flourishing. She was the one crook in Miss Eyre's lot, who
was otherwise so happy in having met with a suitable well-paid
employment just when she needed it most. But Betty, though agreeing
in theory with her master when he told her of the necessity of having
a governess for his little daughter, was vehemently opposed to any
division of her authority and influence over the child who had been
her charge, her plague, and her delight ever since Mrs. Gibson's
death. She took up her position as censor of all Miss Eyre's sayings
and doings from the very first, and did not for a moment condescend
to conceal her disapprobation. In her heart she could not help
respecting the patience and painstaking of the good lady,—for a
"lady" Miss Eyre was in the best sense of the word, though in
Hollingford she only took rank as a shopkeeper's daughter. Yet Betty
buzzed about her with the teasing pertinacity of a gnat, always ready
to find fault, if not to bite. Miss Eyre's only defence came from the
quarter whence it might least have been expected—from her pupil; on
whose fancied behalf, as an oppressed little personage, Betty always
based her attacks. But very early in the day Molly perceived their
injustice, and soon afterwards she began to respect Miss Eyre for her
silent endurance of what evidently gave her far more pain than Betty
imagined. Mr. Gibson had been a friend in need to her family, so Miss
Eyre restrained her complaints, sooner than annoy him. And she had
her reward. Betty would offer Molly all sorts of small temptations to
neglect Miss Eyre's wishes; Molly steadily resisted, and plodded away
at her task of sewing or her difficult sum. Betty made cumbrous jokes
at Miss Eyre's expense; Molly looked up with the utmost gravity, as
if requesting the explanation of an unintelligible speech; and there
is nothing so quenching to a wag as to be asked to translate his jest
into plain matter-of-fact English, and to show wherein the point
lies. Occasionally Betty lost her temper entirely, and spoke
impertinently to Miss Eyre; but when this had been done in Molly's
presence, the girl flew out into such a violent passion of words in
defence of her silent trembling governess, that even Betty herself
was daunted, though she chose to take the child's anger as a good
joke, and tried to persuade Miss Eyre herself to join in her
amusement.</p>
<p>"Bless the child! one 'ud think I was a hungry pussy-cat, and she a
hen-sparrow, with her wings all fluttering, and her little eyes
aflame, and her beak ready to peck me just because I happened to look
near her nest. Nay, child! if thou lik'st to be stifled in a nasty
close room, learning things as is of no earthly good when they is
learnt, instead o' riding on Job Donkin's hay-cart, it's thy
look-out, not mine. She's a little vixen, isn't she?" smiling at Miss
Eyre, as she finished her speech. But the poor governess saw no
humour in the affair; the comparison of Molly to a hen-sparrow was
lost upon her. She was sensitive and conscientious, and knew, from
home experience, the evils of an ungovernable temper. So she began to
reprove Molly for giving way to her passion, and the child thought it
hard to be blamed for what she considered her just anger against
Betty. But, after all, these were the small grievances of a very
happy childhood.</p>
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