Wives and Daughters. Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

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СКАЧАТЬ let me say it—I couldn't go on when I saw your distress. Has anything happened?—anything in which I can help you, I mean; for, of course, I've no right to make the inquiry, if it is any private sorrow, in which I can be of no use."

      She had exhausted herself so much with crying, that she felt as if she could neither stand nor walk just yet. She sate down on the seat, and sighed, and turned so pale, he thought she was going to faint.

      "Wait a moment," said he—quite unnecessarily, for she could not have stirred—and he was off like a shot to some spring of water that he knew of in the wood, and in a minute or two he returned with careful steps, bringing a little in a broad green leaf, turned into an impromptu cup. Little as it was, it did her good.

      "Thank you!" she said: "I can walk back now, in a short time. Don't stop."

      "You must let me," said he: "my mother wouldn't like me to leave you to come home alone, while you are so faint."

      So they remained in silence for a little while; he, breaking off and examining one or two abnormal leaves of the ash-tree, partly from the custom of his nature, partly to give her time to recover.

      "Papa is going to be married again," said she, at length.

      She could not have said why she told him this; an instant before she spoke, she had no intention of doing so. He dropped the leaf he held in his hand, turned round, and looked at her. Her poor wistful eyes were filling with tears as they met his, with a dumb appeal for sympathy. Her look was much more eloquent than her words. There was a momentary pause before he replied, and then it was more because he felt that he must say something than that he was in any doubt as to the answer to the question he asked.

      "You are sorry for it?"

      She did not take her eyes away from his, as her quivering lips formed the word "Yes," though her voice made no sound. He was silent again now; looking on the ground, kicking softly at a loose pebble with his foot. His thoughts did not come readily to the surface in the shape of words; nor was he apt at giving comfort till he saw his way clear to the real source from which consolation must come. At last he spoke—almost as if he was reasoning out the matter with himself.

      "It seems as if there might be cases where—setting the question of love entirely on one side—it must be almost a duty to find some one to be a substitute for the mother … I can believe," said he, in a different tone of voice, and looking at Molly afresh, "that this step may be greatly for your father's happiness—it may relieve him from many cares, and may give him a pleasant companion."

      "He had me. You don't know what we were to each other—at least, what he was to me," she added, humbly.

      "Still he must have thought it for the best, or he wouldn't have done it. He may have thought it the best for your sake even more than for his own."

      "That is what he tried to convince me of."

      Roger began kicking the pebble again. He had not got hold of the right end of the clue. Suddenly he looked up.

      "I want to tell you of a girl I know. Her mother died when she was about sixteen—the eldest of a large family. From that time—all through the bloom of her youth—she gave herself up to her father, first as his comforter, afterwards as his companion, friend, secretary—anything you like. He was a man with a great deal of business on hand, and often came home only to set to afresh to preparations for the next day's work. Harriet was always there, ready to help, to talk, or to be silent. It went on for eight or ten years in this way; and then her father married again—a woman not many years older than Harriet herself. Well—they are just the happiest set of people I know—you wouldn't have thought it likely, would you?"

      She was listening, but she had no heart to say anything. Yet she was interested in this little story of Harriet—a girl who had been so much to her father, more than Molly in this early youth of hers could have been to Mr. Gibson. "How was it?" she sighed out at last.

      "Harriet thought of her father's happiness before she thought of her own," Roger answered, with something of severe brevity. Molly needed the bracing. She began to cry again a little.

      "If it were for papa's happiness—"

      "He must believe that it is. Whatever you fancy, give him a chance. He cannot have much comfort, I should think, if he sees you fretting or pining—you who have been so much to him, as you say. The lady herself, too—if Harriet's stepmother had been a selfish woman, and been always clutching after the gratification of her own wishes; but she was not: she was as anxious for Harriet to be happy as Harriet was for her father—and your father's future wife may be another of the same kind, though such people are rare."

      "I don't think she is, though," murmured Molly, a waft of recollection bringing to her mind the details of her day at the Towers long ago.

      Roger did not want to hear Molly's reasons for this doubting speech. He felt as if he had no right to hear more of Mr. Gibson's family life, past, present, or to come, than was absolutely necessary for him, in order that he might comfort and help the crying girl, whom he had come upon so unexpectedly. And besides, he wanted to go home, and be with his mother at lunch-time. Yet he could not leave her alone.

      "It is right to hope for the best about everybody, and not to expect the worst. This sounds like a truism, but it has comforted me before now, and some day you'll find it useful. One has always to try to think more of others than of oneself, and it is best not to prejudge people on the bad side. My sermons aren't long, are they? Have they given you an appetite for lunch? Sermons always make me hungry, I know."

      He appeared to be waiting for her to get up and come along with him, as indeed he was. But he meant her to perceive that he should not leave her; so she rose up languidly, too languid to say how much she should prefer being left alone, if he would only go away without her. She was very weak, and stumbled over the straggling root of a tree that projected across the path. He, watchful though silent, saw this stumble, and putting out his hand held her up from falling. He still held her hand when the occasion was past; this little physical failure impressed on his heart how young and helpless she was, and he yearned to her, remembering the passion of sorrow in which he had found her, and longing to be of some little tender bit of comfort to her, before they parted—before their tête-à-tête walk was merged in the general familiarity of the household life. Yet he did not know what to say.

      "You will have thought me hard," he burst out at length, as they were nearing the drawing-room windows and the garden-door. "I never can manage to express what I feel—somehow I always fall to philosophizing—but I am sorry for you. Yes, I am; it's beyond my power to help you, as far as altering facts goes, but I can feel for you, in a way which it's best not to talk about, for it can do no good. Remember how sorry I am for you! I shall often be thinking of you, though I daresay it's best not to talk about it again."

      She said, "I know you are sorry," under her breath, and then she broke away, and ran indoors, and upstairs to the solitude of her own room. He went straight to his mother, who was sitting before the untasted luncheon, as much annoyed by the mysterious unpunctuality of her visitor as she was capable of being with anything; for she had heard that Mr. Gibson had been, and was gone, and she could not discover if he had left any message for her; and her anxiety about her own health, which some people esteemed hypochondriacal, always made her particularly craving for the wisdom which might fall from her doctor's lips.

      "Where have you been, Roger? Where is Molly?—Miss Gibson, I mean," for she was careful to keep up a barrier of forms between the young man and young woman who were thrown together in the same household.

      "I've СКАЧАТЬ