Miss Marjoribanks · Chapter 20 (1/2)

XX

Mr. Woodburn’s house, everybody admitted, was one of the nicest in Carlingford; but that was not so visible out of doors as in. He was a great amateur of flowers and fruit, and had his garden lined on each side with greenhouses, which were no doubt very fine in their way, but somewhat spoiled the garden, which had not in the least the homely, luxuriant, old-fashioned look of the other gardens, where, for the most part, the flowers and shrubs grew as if they liked it and were at home⁠—whereas Mr. Woodburn’s flowerbeds were occupied only by tenants-at-will; but at one corner near the house there was a little arbour, so covered up and heaped over with clematis that even the Scotch gardener had not the heart to touch it. The mass was so perfect and yet so light that it was the most perfect hiding-place imaginable; and nobody who had not been in it could have suspected that there was a possibility of getting inside. Here Mrs. Woodburn and Mr. Cavendish were seated on this particular afternoon; she very eager, animated, and in earnest, he silent and leaning his head on his two hands in a sort of downcast, fallen way. Mrs. Woodburn had one of her lively eyes on the garden that nobody might enter unseen, and for this once was “taking off” no one, but was most emphatically and unquestionably herself.

“So you did not do it,” she said. “Why didn’t you do it? when you knew so much depended upon it! You know I did not wish for it myself, at first. But now since this man has come, and you have got into such a panic, and never will have the courage to face it out⁠—”

“How can I have the courage to face it out?” said Mr. Cavendish, with a groan. “It is all very easy for a woman to speak who has only to criticise other people. If you had to do it yourself⁠—”

“Ah, if I only had!” cried the sister. “You may be sure I would not make so much fuss. After all, what is there to do? Take your place in society, which you have worked for and won as honestly as anybody ever won it, and look another man in the face who is not half so clever nor so sensible as you are. Why, what can he say? If I only could do it, you may be sure I should not lose any time.”

“Yes,” said Mr. Cavendish, lifting his head. “To be sure, you’re a mimic⁠—you can assume any part you like; but I am not so clever. I tell you again, the only thing I can do is to go away⁠—”

“Run away, you mean,” said Mrs. Woodburn. “I should be foolish, indeed, if I were trusting to your cleverness to assume a part. My dear good brother, you would find it impossible to put yourself sufficiently in sympathy with another,” cried the mimic, in the Archdeacon’s very tone, with a laugh, and at the same time a little snarl of bitter contempt.

“Oh, for Heaven’s sake, Nelly, no foolery just now,” said Mr. Cavendish. “I don’t understand how you can be so heartless. To mimic a man who has my position, my reputation, my very existence in his hands!”

“Have you murdered anybody?” said Mrs. Woodburn, with intense scorn. “Have you robbed anybody? If you have, I can understand all this stuff. He is the very man to mimic, on the contrary. I’d like to let you see him as he was on that famous occasion when he delivered his opinions on art in Lucilla’s drawing-room. Look here,” said the mimic, putting one hand behind an imaginary coat tail, and with the other holding up a visionary drawing to the light; but this was more than her audience could bear.

“I think you must have vowed to drive me crazy,” cried the exasperated brother. “Put aside for once that confounded vanity of yours⁠—as if a man had always leisure to look at your playing the fool.” While he spoke in this unusual way, he got up, as was natural, and took one or two steps across the narrow space which was shut in by those luxuriant heaps of clematis; and Mrs. Woodburn, for her part, withdrew her chair out of his way in equal heat and indignation.

“You have always the leisure to play the fool yourselves, you men,” she said. “Vanity, indeed! as if it were not simply to show you that one can laugh at him without being stricken with thunder. But leave that if you like. You know quite well if you married Lucilla Marjoribanks that there would be no more about it. There could be no more about it. Why, all Grange Lane would be in a sort of way pledged to you. I don’t mean to say I am attached to Lucilla, but you used to be, or to give yourself out for being. You flirted with her dreadfully in the winter, I remember, when those terrible Woodburns were here,” she continued, with a shiver. “If you married Lucilla and got into Parliament, you might laugh at all the archdeacons in the world.”

“It is very easy for a woman to talk,” said the reluctant wooer again.

“I can tell you something it is not easy to do,” cried his sister. “It is frightfully hard for a woman to stand by and see a set of men making a mess of things, and not to dare to say a word till all is spoiled. What is this Archdeacon, I would like to know, or what could he say? If you only would have the least courage, and look him in the face, he would be disabled. As if no one had ever heard of mistaken identity before? And in the meantime go and see Lucilla, and get her consent. I can’t do that for you; but I could do a great deal of the rest, if you would only have a little pluck and not give in like this.”

“A little pluck, by George!” cried the unfortunate man, and he threw himself down again upon his chair. “I am not in love with Lucilla Marjoribanks, and I don’t want to marry her,” he added doggedly, and sat beating a tune with his fingers on the table, with but a poorly-assumed air of indifference. As for Mrs. Woodburn, she regarded him with a look of contempt.

“Perhaps you will tell me who you are in love with,” she said disdainfully; “but I did not ask to be taken into your confidence in such an interesting way. What I wish to know is, whether you want a wife who will keep your position for you. I am not in the least fond of her, but she is very clever. Whether you want the support of all the best people in Carlingford, and connections that would put all that to silence, and a real position of your own which nobody could interfere with⁠—that is what I want to know, Harry; as for the sentimental part, I am not so much interested about that,” said Mrs. Woodburn, with a contemptuous smile. She was young still, and she was handsome in her way (for people who liked that style), and it jarred a little on the natural feelings to hear a young wife express herself so disdainfully; but, to be sure, her brother was not unaccustomed to that.

“You said once that Woodburn was necessary to your happiness,” he said, with a mixture of scorn and appeal, “though I can’t say I saw it, for my part.”

“Did I?” she said, with a slight shrug of her shoulders; “I saw what was necessary on another score, as you don’t seem to do. When a man has nobody belonging to him, it is connections he ought to try for: and Lucilla has very good connections; and it would be as good as securing the support of Grange Lane. Do it for my sake, Harry, if you won’t do it for your own,” said Mrs. Woodburn, with a change of tone. “If you were to let things be said, and give people an advantage, think what would become of me. Woodburn would not mind so much if somebody else were involved; but oh, Harry! if he should find out he had been cheated, and he only⁠—”

“He was not cheated! You were always a great deal too good for him, Nelly,” said Mr. Cavendish, touched at last at an effectual point; “and as for his friends and family, and all that⁠—”

“Oh, please, don’t speak of them,” said Mrs. Woodburn, with a shudder; “but there are only two of us in the world; and, Harry, for my sake⁠—”

At this appeal Mr. Cavendish got up again, and began to pace the little arbour, two steps to the wall, and two steps back again. “I told you I had almost done it, when that confounded old woman came in,” he said: “that could not be called my fault?”

“And she said she was both your grandmothers,” said the mimic, with a slightly hysterical laugh, in Mrs. Chiley’s voice. “I know how she did it. She can’t be there still, you know⁠—go now and try.”

“Let alone a little; don’t hurry a fellow,” said her brother, somewhat sullenly; “a man can’t move himself up to the point of proposing twice in one day.”

“Then promise that you will do it tomorrow,” said Mrs. Woodburn. “I shall have to go in, for there is somebody coming. Harry, before I go, promise that you will do it tomorrow, for my sake.”

“Oh, bother!” said Mr. Cavendish; and it was all the answer he deigned to give before Mrs. Woodburn was called away, notwithstanding the adjuration she addressed to him. It was then getting late, too late, even had he been disposed for such an exertion, to try his fortunes again that day, and Lucilla’s allusion had given him a great longing to see Barbara once more before his sacrifice was accomplished. Not that it was such a great sacrifice, after all. For Mr. Cavendish was quite aware that Miss Marjoribanks was a far more suitable match for him than Barbara Lake, and he was not even disposed to offer himself and his name and fortune, such as they were, to the drawing-master’s daughter. But, to tell the truth, he was not a person of fixed and settled sentiments, as he ought to have been in order to triumph, as his sister desired, over the difficulties of his position. Perhaps Mrs. Woodburn herself would have done just the same, had it been she from whom action was demanded. But she was capable of much more spirited and determined conduct in theory, as was natural, and thought she could have done a great deal better, as so many women do.

Mr. Cavendish lounged about the garden a little, with his hands in his pockets, and then strayed out quite accidentally, and in the same unpremeditating mood made his way to Grove Street. He meant nothing by it, and did not even inquire of himself where he was going, but only strolled out to take the air a little. And it was better to go up to the higher parts of the town than to linger here about Grange Lane, where all the people he knew might pass, and stop to talk and ask him where he had been, and worry his life out. And surely he had had enough of bother for one day. By this time it was getting dark, and it was very pleasant in Grove Street, where most of the good people had just watered their little gardens, and brought out the sweetness of the mignonette. Mr. Cavendish was not sentimental, but still the hour was not without its influence; and when he looked at the lights that began to appear in the parlour windows, and breathed in the odours from the little gardens, it is not to be denied that he asked himself for a moment what was the good of going through all this bother and vexation, and whether love in a cottage, with a little garden full of mignonette and a tolerable amount of comfort within, was not, after all, a great deal more reasonable than it looked at first sight? This, however, it must be allowed, was no conclusion arrived at on sufficient premises, and with the calmness that befitted such an important argument, but the mere suggestion, by the way, of an impatient, undecided mind, that did always what at the moment it found most agreeable to do, and reflected afterwards, when the moment of repentance, not of reflection, had arrived.

He had paused by instinct under a lamp not yet lighted, which was almost opposite Mr. Lake’s house; and it was not his fault if he saw at the upper window a figure looking out, like Mariana, and sighing, “He cometh not.” Naturally the figure was concerned to find out who he was, and he was anxious to find out who was the figure. And, on the whole, it was in a very innocent manner that this entirely natural curiosity was satisfied. First the window was opened a little⁠—a very little, just enough to change the air⁠—and Mr. Cavendish down below heard the voice of Barbara singing softly up above, which settled the matter as to her identity. As to his, Barbara had never, from the first moment she perceived him, any doubt of that. Her heart leaped back, as she thought, to its right place when she first caught sight of that blessed apparition; and with her heart came the orange-flowers, and the wedding breakfast, and the veil of real Brussels for which Barbara had so much wept. She tried to sing something that would convey hope and assurance to her timid lover, according to romantic precedent; but her mind was far from being a prompt one, as has been said. Thus it was all in the most natural way that it came about. When Mr. Cavendish felt quite sure who it was, he took off his hat, which was only civil, and made a step or two forward; and then Barbara took the extreme step of going down to the door. No doubt it was an extreme step. Nothing but a great public aim, like that of Miss Marjoribanks, could have justified such a measure; but then Barbara, if she had not a great public, had at least a decided personal, purpose, and obeyed the impulse of that mingled inclination towards another and determination to have her own way, which in such a mind calls itself passion, and which sometimes, by sheer force of will, succeeds better than either genius or calculation. She went down to the door, all palpitating with renewed hope, and, at the same time, with the dread that he might escape her in the moment which was necessary for her passage downstairs. But when she opened the door and appeared with her cheeks glowing, and her eyes blazing, and her heart thumping in her breast, in the midst of that quiet twilight, the object of her hopes was still there. He had even advanced a little, with an instinctive sense of her approach; and thus they met, the street being comparatively quiet just then, and the mignonette perfuming the air. To be sure, the poetry of the situation was of a homely order, for it was under a lamppost instead of a tree that the lover had placed himself; and it was not the dew, but the watering, that had brought out the odour of the mignonette; but then neither of the two were very poetical personages, and the accessories did perfectly well for them.

“Is it you, Mr. Cavendish? Goodness! I could not think who it was,” cried Barbara, out of breath.

“Yes, it is I. I thought, if I had an opportunity, I would ask how you were⁠—before I go away again,” said the imprudent man. He did not want to commit himself, but at the same time he was disposed to take the benefit of his position as a hero on the eve of departure. “I heard you had been ill.”

“Oh, no⁠—not ill,” said Barbara; and then she added, taking breath, “I am quite well now. Won’t you come in?”