Wives and Daughters(妻子与女儿)

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WIVES AND

DAUGHTERS

Elizabeth Gaskell

ELECBOOK CLASSICS

WIVES AND

DAUGHTERS

Elizabeth Gaskell

Wives and Daughters
Elizabeth Gaskell                                                                                                         ElecBook Classics
4
Contents
Click on number to go to page
Chapter I.  THE DAWN OF A GALA DAY ........................................7
Chapter II.  A NOVICE AMONGST THE GREAT
FOLK......................................................................................................19
Chapter III.  MOLLY GIBSON’S CHILDHOOD............................41
Chapter IV.  MR GIBSON’S NEIGHBOURS..................................51
Chapter V.  CALF-LOVE ....................................................................67
Chapter VI.  A VISIT TO THE HAMLEYS .....................................84
Chapter VII.  FORESHADOWS OF LOVE PERILS ...................103
Chapter VIII.  DRIFTING INTO DANGER ..................................113
Chapter IX.  THE WIDOWER AND THE WIDOW......................132
Chapter X.  A CRISIS........................................................................144
Chapter XI.  MAKING FRIENDSHIP............................................168
Chapter XII.  PREPARING FOR THE WEDDING .....................189
Chapter XIII.  MOLLY GIBSON’S NEW FRIENDS...................201
Chapter XIV.  MOLLY FINDS HERSELF
PATRONISED ....................................................................................216
Chapter XV.  THE NEW MAMMA..................................................235
Chapter XVI.  THE BRIDE AT HOME..........................................246
Chapter XVII.  TROUBLE AT HAMLEY HALL .........................259
Chapter XVIII.  MR OSBORNE’S SECRET.................................275
Chapter XIX.  CYNTHIA’S ARRIVAL...........................................292

Wives and Daughters
Elizabeth Gaskell                                                                                                         ElecBook Classics
5
Chapter XX.  MRS GIBSON’S VISITORS....................................307
Chapter XXI.  THE HALF-SISTERS.............................................319
Chapter XXII.  THE OLD SQUIRE’S TROUBLES.....................338
Chapter XXIII.  OSBORNE HAMLEY REVIEWS HIS
POSITION ...........................................................................................353
Chapter XXIV.  MRS GIBSON’S LITTLE DINNER ..................365
Chapter XXV.  HOLLINGFORD IN A BUSTLE..........................374
Chapter XXVI.  A CHARITY BALL...............................................386
Chapter XXVII.  FATHER AND SONS.........................................411
Chapter XXVIII.  RIVALRY............................................................422
Chapter XXIX.  BUSH-FIGHTING................................................439
Chapter XXX.  OLD WAYS AND NEW WAYS ............................458
Chapter XXXI.  A PASSIVE COQUETTE ....................................469
Chapter XXXII.  COMING EVENTS.............................................481
Chapter XXXIII.  BRIGHTENING PROSPECTS.......................500
Chapter XXXIV.  A LOVER’S MISTAKE.....................................510
Chapter XXXV.  THE MOTHER’S MANOEUVRE .....................522
Chapter XXXVI.  DOMESTIC DIPLOMACY...............................542
Chapter XXXVII.  A FLUKE, AND WHAT CAME OF
IT ...........................................................................................................551
Chapter XXXVIII.  MR KIRKPATRICK, Q.C..............................570
Chapter XXXIX.  SECRET THOUGHTS OOZE OUT ...............585
Chapter XL.  MOLLY GIBSON BREATHES FREELY..............602
Chapter XLI.  GATHERING CLOUDS..........................................613

Wives and Daughters
Elizabeth Gaskell                                                                                                         ElecBook Classics
6
Chapter XLII.  THE STORM BURSTS.........................................629
Chapter XLIII.  CYNTHIA’S CONFESSION...............................641
Chapter XLIV.  MOLLY GIBSON TO THE RESCUE ................654
Chapter XLV.  CONFIDENCES......................................................668
Chapter XLVI.  HOLLINGFORD GOSSIPS.................................681
Chapter XLVII.  SCANDAL AND ITS VICTIMS ........................694
Chapter XLVIII.  AN INNOCENT CULPRIT ..............................710
Chapter XLIX.  MOLLY GIBSON FINDS A
CHAMPION.........................................................................................723
Chapter L.  CYNTHIA AT BAY.......................................................736
Chapter LI.  ‘TROUBLES NEVER COME ALONE’....................753
Chapter LII.  SQUIRE HAMLEY’S SORROW .............................765
Chapter LIII.  UNLOOKED-FOR ARRIVALS .............................781
Chapter LIV.  MOLLY GIBSON’S WORTH IS
DISCOVERED ....................................................................................795
Chapter LV.  AN ABSENT LOVER RETURNS...........................810
Chapter LVI.  ‘OFF WITH THE OLD LOVE, AND  ON
WITH THE NEW.’..............................................................................823
Chapter LVII.  BRIDAL VISITS AND ADIEUX..........................835
Chapter LVIII.  REVIVING HOPES AND
BRIGHTENING PROSPECTS ........................................................849
Chapter LIX.  MOLLY GIBSON AT HAMLEY HALL ...............863
Chapter LX.  ROGER HAMLEY’S CONFESSION......................876
CONCLUDING REMARKS ………………………………..………..894

Wives and Daughters

Elizabeth Gaskell ElecBook Classics

CHAPTER I

THE DAWN OF A GALA DAY

o 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

‘scromfished’ (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

Wives and Daughters

Elizabeth Gaskell ElecBook Classics

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

Wives and Daughters

Elizabeth Gaskell ElecBook Classics

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

landowners 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

Wives and Daughters

Elizabeth Gaskell ElecBook Classics

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

workpeople 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.

Wives and Daughters

Elizabeth Gaskell ElecBook Classics

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

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WIVESANDDAUGHTERSElizabethGaskellELECBOOKCLASSICSWIVESANDDAUGHTERSElizabethGaskellWivesandDaughtersElizabethGaskellElecBookClassics4ContentsClickonnumbertogotopageChapterI.THEDAWNOFAGALADAY........................................7ChapterII.ANOVICEAMONGSTTHEGREATFOLK.....................................

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