Miss Marjoribanks · Chapter 25 (1/2)

XXV

The fruit of Lucilla’s long and mature reflection was that next morning being fine and all the clouds dispersed, she went out with her usual firm step and self-possession, and, what was rather unusual with her, except on necessary occasions of ceremony, knocked at Mrs. Woodburn’s door.

Mrs. Woodburn and Miss Marjoribanks had never, as people say, taken to each other. They were as different in their ways as it is possible to imagine. The mimic was a little indolent, and would not take the trouble to make any exertions for the good of the community, except in the exercise of her peculiar talent, though she had been known, when excited, to go through real fatigue for that; but she had none of the steady force, the persevering energy⁠—or, to sum up all in one word, the genius⁠—of Miss Marjoribanks, who, for her part, recognised the use of such an instrument of entertainment as Mrs. Woodburn possessed without appreciating it in her own person; for Lucilla had no sense of humour, as she candidly admitted, with that consciousness of her own faults, and slight disposition to consider them virtues, which is common to persons of great endowments. It was accordingly with a slight sense of effort on both sides that they met thus in the familiarity of an early visit, at a moment when people doing their duty to each other in a ceremonial way would not have thought of calling. She was aware that Mrs. Woodburn regarded her, even when she kissed her in the most neighbourly and affectionate manner, with a look which seemed to say, “What can she want, coming here so early?” As for Lucilla, she was too wise to pretend that it was a mere visit of regard. She was too wise, and her interlocutor was too clever, and prone to catch every touch of expression, though Miss Marjoribanks flattered herself she had sufficient experience to enable her to dismiss, when there was occasion for it, all expression from her face. But such was not her policy at this moment. When the two faces had touched each other in that loving and sisterly salutation, their owners immediately separated, and regarded each other from two opposite chairs, without decided hostility, it is true, but with the watchful air of two people whom the fates may range on different sides, and whom it behoves to be mutually watchful. And Lucilla thought it the most expedient course, under the circumstances, to begin her investigations at once.

“I have come to make an inquisition,” she said; “I may as well confess it at once, for you would find me out if I didn’t. Mrs. Woodburn, where is Mr. Cavendish? I am not going to put up with it any longer. He must be written to, and had back again. The only man that was to be depended upon in Carlingford!” said Lucilla; “and to think he should disappear like this and never say a word!”

Mrs. Woodburn fairly gasped in her companion’s face. She could no more tell what this meant, than if she had been a person utterly unacquainted with human motives and ways of working; and, indeed, it was only the tricks of the surface for which she had any real insight. “My brother!” she exclaimed, with something between an impulse of defence and denial, and a quite opposite instinct of confidence. Had he proposed, after all, without telling his sister? Had Lucilla a right to ask the question she uttered so frankly? Had he been prudent for once in his life, and secured this sensible alliance and prop to his position? All these questions rushed at lightning-speed through Mrs. Woodburn’s mind; but she was not so prompt as Miss Marjoribanks would have been under the circumstances, and all she did was to open her eyes wide, and give a start on her chair, and say, “My brother?” with a voice which trembled, and was half extinguished by surprise.

“Yes; Mr. Cavendish,” said Lucilla. “Do tell me his address. There is not a man in Carlingford who is good for anything, now that he is gone. You must see that as well as I do. As for flirting, I have always said he was the only man that knew anything about it. Do tell me where he is, and I will write to him; or, please, send him word for me, that absolutely he must come back. We are all dying for him, you may say.”

Mrs. Woodburn had recovered a little, and found a moment to think, but her faculties were not so handy, except in her own particular way, as might have been expected from such a clever woman. She could even at that moment have taken off Miss Marjoribanks to the life, but she was in the most profound bewilderment as to what Lucilla could mean; whether she was really laying herself out to “catch” Mr. Cavendish, or whether she was merely talking nonsense without any particular meaning; or whether she was feigning indifference by way of getting information; and the stupidest person in Carlingford would have acquitted herself as well as Mrs. Woodburn felt able to do in the emergency. “I should think he would rather hear that some of you were willing to live for him,” she said, in a tremulous way; finding nothing better come to her lips than the echo of an old compliment, which went against her nature, but yet with an instinct of serving her brother so far as it might be in her power.

“Not me,” said Lucilla frankly. “Some people once thought so, you know; but I can’t say I ever thought so. There never will be anything about living or dying between him and me. I hope we know better,” said Miss Marjoribanks; “besides, if I were so much as to think of that sort of thing I should feel I was swindling papa. Oh, no; I assure you I am quite disinterested. I want him for my Thursdays. Do write, and say he must come home.”

“I don’t like people to be too disinterested,” said Mrs. Woodburn; “and I don’t think Harry would be at all glad to hear it. I wish he would come back, I am sure. I am always bullying him about it. I thought perhaps some of you young ladies had been unkind to him,” said the anxious sister, who had recovered her head, and thought it might be possible to get at the secret, if there was a secret, by means like this.

“No,” said Miss Marjoribanks; “I have not been unkind to him; and there is nobody else I know of,” said the candid Lucilla, “unless poor Barbara; and she will never be unkind, you know. I will write him a letter if you will give me his address. Is it true that somebody has left him a great deal of money, and he is going to change his name?”

“His name!” said Mrs. Woodburn, with a little cry, like an imprudent woman; and then she recovered herself. “I have not heard of anything of the kind,” she said, “and he would be sure to tell me of it; but in Carlingford people know things before they happen. I should be very glad to know that somebody was going to leave him a great deal of money; but I don’t know about the name⁠—”

“Oh, I heard it only in a confused sort of way,” said Lucilla, “or that he had changed his name. I am sure I don’t know if it was past or present. Did he ever make any change to be somebody’s heir? Oh, I beg your pardon; but you know people do it every day.”

Mrs. Woodburn had grown quite pale⁠—perhaps because she began to see that there was some method in these questions, perhaps with simple and unreasonable fright at the suggestion. She could not say a word for a moment, so startling was the question; and then there was something in Lucilla’s early visit, and in her instant onslaught upon Mr. Cavendish, which was alarming. She was so frightened and driven into a corner that she could not tell how to answer. It occurred to her all at once that perhaps Mr. Cavendish had opened his heart to Miss Marjoribanks and given her an inkling of his secret; and what would Lucilla think if she contradicted her brother? Never was a poor woman in a greater difficulty. All her fun and her mimicry collapsed. She no more noticed the peculiarities of Lucilla’s look and manner than if she had been an ordinary inhabitant of Grange Lane. “Changed his name?” she faltered, in a blank sort of interrogative way; and in spite of herself faltered and shook, and conveyed to Lucilla the most perfect assurance that what she supposed was true.

“When it is for a great deal of money there is some sense in it; when it is only for a prettier name it is dreadfully stupid. Don’t you think so? As if we all could have pretty names!” said Lucilla. “I should like so much to have a talk with Mr. Cavendish. I picked up some very, very old friends of his the other day⁠—people who used to know him long ago. I am sure he would be interested if he were to know.”

“I don’t think it could be him,” said Mrs. Woodburn, with something like the instinct of despair; “I don’t remember any very old friends he has; it is so long a time ago⁠—” and then the poor lady stopped short, as if she had something choking her in her throat. “I don’t think it could be he.”

“Not such a very long time,” said Lucilla, in her easy way. “It is dreadful to give him a character for being old. Do write him, please, and tell him about those people. He is sure to be interested if you say it is a lady, and a pretty woman, and a widow,” continued Miss Marjoribanks. “She says he was once very kind to her when her poor husband was alive.”

Mrs. Woodburn recovered herself a little as Lucilla spoke. “It must have been some other Mr. Cavendish,” she said. “Harry was⁠—so much abroad⁠—so long away from home⁠—” At that moment there was a sound in the house of a heavy step, and Mr. Woodburn’s whistle became audible in the distance. Then the poor woman, who had a secret, fixed haggard eyes upon Miss Marjoribanks. She dared not say, “Don’t speak of this before my husband.” She dared not utter a word to awaken suspicion on one side or the other. She knew very well that if Mr. Woodburn heard of the existence of any old friends of his brother-in-law, he would insist upon having them produced, and “paying them some attention”; and at the same time Mrs. Woodburn could not so far confide in Lucilla as to beg her to keep silent. This was what her brother’s poltroonery brought upon the unfortunate woman. And when the emergency came she was not as equal to it as she expected to be. Her talents were not of a nature to do her any good in such a strait. She collapsed entirely, and looked round her in a flutter of fright and despair, as if to find some means of escape.

But this terror all arose from the fact that she did not know Miss Marjoribanks, who was generous as she was strong, and had no intention of going to extremities. Lucilla got up from her chair when she heard Mr. Woodburn’s whistle coming nearer. “I hear somebody coming,” she said, “and I must not stay, for I have quantities of things to do. Only mind you tell Mr. Cavendish I have something quite serious to say to him from his old friend; and from me, please to tell him, that it is impossible to get on without him,” continued Lucilla, as Mr. Woodburn entered the room. “There is not a soul that can flirt or do anything. I should write to him myself if I knew his address.”

And then, as was natural, Woodburn, with his usual absurdity, as his wife explained afterwards, struck in with some boisterous badinage. As for Mrs. Woodburn, in her mingled terror and relief, she was too much excited to know what he said. But when Lucilla, serenely smiling, was gone, the mimic, with her nerves strung to desperation, burst into the wildest comic travesty of Miss Marjoribanks’s looks and manners, and her inquiries about Harry, and sent her unsuspicious husband into convulsions of laughter. He laughed until the tears ran down his cheeks⁠—the unconscious simpleton; and all the time his wife could have liked to throw him down and trample on him, or put pins into him, or scratch his beaming, jovial countenance. Perhaps she would have gone into hysterics instead if she had not possessed that other safety-valve, for Mrs. Woodburn had not that supreme composure and self-command which belonged to Lucilla’s higher organisation. She wrote a long letter that afternoon, and had a dreadful headache all the evening after it, which, considering all things, was to be expected under the circumstances, and was a weak-minded woman’s last resource.

No headache, however, disturbed Miss Marjoribanks’s beneficent progress. She went home conscious that, if she had not acquired any distinct information, she had at least gained a moral certainty. And besides, she had measured the forces of Mr. Cavendish’s bodyguard, and had found them utterly unequal to any prolonged resistance. All that was wanted was prudence and care, and that good luck which was as much an endowment in its way as the other qualities by which Lucilla might be said to have secured it. She went home meditating her next step, and with a certain enjoyment in the sense of difficulty and the consciousness of how much skill and power would be required to carry on three different threads of innocent intrigue with the three different persons in the drama, without ever letting the general web get confused, or confounding one strand with another. She had to frighten the Archdeacon with the idea that Mrs. Mortimer might marry the impostor, and she had to keep the widow in the profoundest ignorance of this suggestion, and she had to manage and guide the impostor himself, to save his position, and deliver him from his enemies, and make his would-be persecutor forever harmless. If by chance she should forget herself for a moment, and say to Mr. Beverley what she meant for Mr. Cavendish, or betray her mode of dealing with either to the third person interested, then farewell to all her hopes. But when all that was required was skill and self-possession and courage, Miss Marjoribanks knew herself too well to be afraid.

She came in with that sense of having done her duty which is so sweet to a well-regulated mind. But it was not to that internal satisfaction alone that Providence limited Lucilla’s reward. There are exceptional cases to be found here and there even in this world, in which virtue finds its just acknowledgment, and disinterested well-doing is recompensed as it deserves. While Miss Marjoribanks was still occupied with the arrangement of her plans she was interrupted by a visitor, who entered with a brow clouded by care, and yet exalted by the sense of a charge and dignity which is not afforded to every woman. It was Mrs. Centum who thus came to unfold to Lucilla the new event which was about to happen in Carlingford. She had a great deal to say first, as was natural, of the dreadful vexation of such a thing happening in holiday-time when the boys were all at home, and when she did not know what to do.

“But you know, Lucilla, it will be delightful for all you young ladies to have the officers,” said Mrs. Centum; “it keeps a place lively; though, for my part, I always say in six months there will not be a servant in the house that one can depend upon. It is dreadful for servants⁠—especially young ones, and if they are nice-looking, you know; but it is very nice for the young ladies, and for all the picnics and dances and everything⁠—”

“What officers?” said Lucilla, pricking up her ears⁠—for to tell the truth, the very name of officers in a place like Carlingford, where nobody could flirt but Mr. Cavendish, was as water in the desert to Miss Marjoribanks’s soul.