Mr. Gibson smiled a little sadly as he re-read his words. “Poor
Jeanie,” he said aloud. And then he chose out an envelope, enclosed the
fervid love-letter, and the above prescription; sealed it with his own
sharply-cut seal-ring, R. G., in old English letters, and then paused
over the address.
“He’ll not like _Master_ Coxe outside; no need to put him to unnecessary
shame.” So the direction on the envelope was:
_Edward Coxe, Esq._
Then Mr. Gibson applied himself to the professional business which had
brought him home so opportunely and unexpectedly, and afterwards he went
back through the garden to the stables; and just as he had mounted his
horse, he said to the stable-man—“Oh! by the way, here’s a letter for
Mr. Coxe. Don’t send it through the women; take it round yourself to the
surgery door, and do it at once.”
The slight smile upon his face, as he rode out of the gates, died away
as soon as he found himself in the solitude of the lanes. He slackened
his speed, and began to think. It was very awkward, he considered, to
have a motherless girl growing up into womanhood in the same house
with two young men, even if she only met them at meal-times, and all
the intercourse they had with each other was merely the utterance of
such words as, “May I help you to potatoes?” or, as Mr. Wynne would
persevere in saying, “May I assist you to potatoes?”—a form of speech
which grated daily more and more upon Mr. Gibson’s ears. Yet Mr. Coxe,
the offender in this affair which had just occurred, had to remain for
three years more as a pupil in Mr. Gibson’s family. He should be the
very last of the race. Still there were three years to be got over; and
if this stupid passionate calf-love of his lasted, what was to be done?
Sooner or later Molly would become aware of it. The contingencies of
the affair were so excessively disagreeable to contemplate, that Mr.
Gibson determined to dismiss the subject from his mind by a good strong
effort. He put his horse to a gallop, and found that the violent shaking
over the lanes—paved as they were with round stones, which had been
dislocated by the wear and tear of a hundred years—was the very best
thing for the spirits, if not for the bones. He made a long round that
afternoon, and came back to his home imagining that the worse was over,
and that Mr. Coxe would have taken the hint conveyed in the prescription.
All that would be needed was to find a safe place for the unfortunate
Bethia, who had displayed such a daring aptitude for intrigue. But Mr.
Gibson reckoned without his host. It was the habit of the young men to
come in to tea with the family in the dining-room, to swallow two cups,
munch their bread and toast, and then disappear. This night Mr. Gibson
watched their countenances furtively from under his long eyelashes,
while he tried against his wont to keep up a _dégagé_ manner, and a
brisk conversation on general subjects. He saw that Mr. Wynne was on the
point of breaking out into laughter, and that red-haired, red-faced Mr.
Coxe was redder and fiercer than ever, while his whole aspect and ways
betrayed indignation and anger.
“He will have it, will he?” thought Mr. Gibson to himself; and he girded
up his loins for the battle. He did not follow Molly and Miss Eyre into
the drawing-room as he usually did. He remained where he was, pretending
to read the newspaper, while Bethia, her face swelled up with crying, and
with an aggrieved and offended aspect, removed the tea-things. Not five
minutes after the room was cleared, came the expected tap at the door.
“May I speak to you, sir?’ said the invisible Mr. Coxe, from outside.
“To be sure. Come in, Mr. Coxe. I was rather wanting to talk to you about
that bill of Corbyn’s. Pray sit down.”
“It is about nothing of that kind, sir, that I wanted—that I wished—No,
thank you—I would rather not sit down.” He, accordingly, stood in
offended dignity. “It is about that letter, sir—that letter with the
insulting prescription, sir.”
“Insulting prescription! I am surprised at such a word being applied
to any prescription of mine—though, to be sure, patients are sometimes
offended at being told the nature of their illnesses; and, I daresay,
they may take offence at the medicines which their cases require.”
“I did not ask you to prescribe for me.”
“Oh, no! Then you are the Master Coxe who sent the note through Bethia!
Let me tell you it has cost her her place, and was a very silly letter
into the bargain.”
“It was not the conduct of a gentleman, sir, to intercept it, and to open
it, and to read words never addressed to you, sir.”
“No!” said Mr. Gibson, with a slight twinkle in his eye and a curl on
his lips, not unnoticed by the indignant Mr. Coxe. “I believe I was once
considered tolerably good-looking, and I daresay I was as great a coxcomb
as anyone at twenty; but I don’t think that even then I should quite have
believed that all those pretty compliments were addressed to myself.”
“It was not the conduct of a gentleman, sir,” repeated Mr. Coxe,
stammering over his words—he was going on to say something more, when Mr.
Gibson broke in.
“And let me tell you, young man,” replied Mr. Gibson, with a sudden
sternness in his voice, “that what you have done is only excusable in
consideration of your youth and extreme ignorance of what are considered
the laws of domestic honour. I receive you into my house as a member of
the family—you induce one of my servants—corrupting her with a bribe, I
have no doubt——”
“Indeed, sir! I never gave her a penny.”
“Then you ought to have done. You should always pay those who do your
dirty work.”
“Just now, sir, you called it corrupting with a bribe,” muttered Mr. Coxe.
Mr. Gibson took no notice of this speech, but went on—“Inducing one
of my servants to risk her place, without offering her the slightest
equivalent, by begging her to convey a letter clandestinely to my
daughter—a mere child.”
“Miss Gibson, sir, is nearly seventeen! I heard you say so only the
other day,” said Mr. Coxe, aged twenty. Again Mr. Gibson ignored the
remark.
“A letter which you were unwilling to have seen by her father, who had
tacitly trusted to your honour, by receiving you as an inmate of this
house. Your father’s son—I know Major Coxe well—ought to have come to me,
and have said out openly, ‘Mr. Gibson, I love—or I fancy that I love—your
daughter; I do not think it right to conceal this from you, although
unable to earn a penny; and with no prospect of an unassisted livelihood,
even for myself, for several years, I shall not say a word about my
feelings—or fancied feelings—to the very young lady herself.’ That is
what your father’s son ought to have said; if, indeed, a couple of grains
of reticent silence would not have been better still.”
“And if I had said it, sir—perhaps I ought to have said it,” said Mr.
Coxe, in a hurry of anxiety, “what would have been your answer? Would you
have sanctioned my passion, sir?”
“I would have said, most probably—I will not be certain of my exact
words in a supposititious case—that you were a young fool, but not a
dishonourable young fool, and I should have told you not to let your
thoughts run upon a calf-love until you had magnified it into a passion.
And I daresay, to make up for the mortification I should have given you,
I should have prescribed your joining the Hollingford Cricket Club, and
set you at liberty as often as I could, on the Saturday afternoons. As it
is, I must write to your father’s agent in London, and ask him to remove
you out of my household, repaying the premium, of course, which will
enable you to start afresh in some other doctor’s surgery.”
“It will so grieve my father,” said Mr. Coxe, startled into dismay, if
not repentance.
“I see no other course open. It will give Major Coxe some trouble (I
shall take care that he is at no extra expense), but what I think will
grieve him the most is the betrayal of confidence; for I trusted you,
Edward, like a son of my own!” There was something in Mr. Gibson’s voice
when he spoke seriously, especially when he referred to any feeling of
his own—he who so rarely betrayed what was passing in his heart—that was
irresistible to most people: the change from joking and sarcasm to tender
gravity.
Mr. Coxe hung his head a little, and meditated.
“I do love Miss Gibson,” said he, at length. “Who could help it?”
“Mr. Wynne, I hope!” said Mr. Gibson.
“His heart is pre-engaged,” replied Mr. Coxe. “Mine was free as air till
I saw her.”
“Would it tend to cure your—well! passion, we’ll say—if she wore blue
spectacles at meal-times? I observe you dwell much on the beauty of her
eyes.”
“You are ridiculing my feelings, Mr. Gibson. Do you forget that you
yourself were young once?”
“Poor Jeanie” rose before Mr. Gibson’s eyes; and he felt a little rebuked.
“Come, Mr. Coxe, let us see if we can’t make a bargain,” said he, after a
minute or so of silence. “You have done a really wrong thing, and I hope
you are convinced of it in your heart, or that you will be when the heat
of this discussion is over, and you come to think a little about it. But
I won’t lose all respect for your father’s son. If you will give me your
word that, as long as you remain a member of my family—pupil, apprentice,
what you will—you won’t again try to disclose your passion—you see I am
careful to take your view of what I should call a mere fancy—by word or
writing, looks or acts, in any manner whatever, to my daughter, or to
talk about your feelings to anyone else, you shall remain here. If you
cannot give me your word, I must follow out the course I named, and write
to your father’s agent.”
Mr. Coxe stood irresolute.
“Mr. Wynne knows all I feel for Miss Gibson, sir. He and I have no
secrets from each other.”
“Well, I suppose he must represent the reeds. You know the story of
King Midas’s barber, who found out that his royal master had the ears
of an ass beneath his hyacinthine curls. So the barber, in default of a
Mr. Wynne, went to the reeds that grew on the shores of a neighbouring
lake and whispered to them, ‘King Midas has the ears of an ass.’ But he
repeated it so often that the reeds learnt the words, and kept on saying
them all day long, till at last the secret was no secret at all. If you
keep on telling your tale to Mr. Wynne, are you sure he won’t repeat it
in his turn?”
“If I pledge my word as a gentleman, sir, I pledge it for Mr. Wynne as
well.”
“I suppose I must run the risk. But remember how soon a young girl’s name
may be breathed upon, and sullied. Molly has no mother, and for that very
reason she ought to move among you all as unharmed as Una herself.”
“Mr. Gibson, if you wish it, I’ll swear it on the Bible,” cried the
excitable young man.
“Nonsense. As if your word, if it’s worth anything, was not enough! We’ll
shake hands upon it, if you like.”
Mr. Coxe came forward eagerly, and almost squeezed Mr. Gibson’s ring into
his finger.
As he was leaving the room, he said, a little uneasily, “May I give
Bethia a crown-piece?”
“No, indeed! Leave Bethia to me. I hope you won’t say another word to
her while she is here. I shall see that she gets a respectable place when
she goes away.”