Miss Marjoribanks · Chapter 38 (2/2)

“Thank you all the same, papa, for bringing me the paper,” said Lucilla. “It would have been a great deal worse if I had not known of it before I saw him. I am sure I am very glad for one thing. He can’t be married or dead, as people used to say. I am quite ashamed to keep you so long downstairs, Aunt Jemima, when I know you must be longing for a cup of tea⁠—but it is somebody come back whom nobody expected. Tell him I shall be so glad to see him, papa; though I have no reason to be glad, for he was one of my young friends, you know, and he is sure to think I have gone off.” As she spoke, Lucilla turned Aunt Jemima, to whom she had given her arm, quite round, that she might look into the great glass over the mantelpiece: “I don’t think I am quite so much gone off as I expected to be,” said Miss Marjoribanks, with candid impartiality; “though of course he will think me stouter⁠—but it does not make any difference about Mr. Ashburton being the right man for Carlingford.” She said the words with a certain solemnity, and turned Mrs. John, who was so much surprised as to be speechless, round again, and led her upstairs. It was as if they were walking in a procession of those martyrs and renouncers of self, who build up the foundations of society; and it would not be too much to say that under her present circumstances, and in the excitement of this singular and unexpected event, such was the painful but sublime consciousness which animated Lucilla’s breast.

As for Dr. Marjoribanks, his triumph was taken out of him by that spectacle. He closed the door after the ladies had gone, and came back to his easy-chair by the side of the fire, and could not but feel that he had had the worst of it. It was actually Mr. Cavendish who had come home, and whose address to the electors of Carlingford, dated from Dover on his return to England, the Doctor had just put into his daughter’s hand. But wonderful and unlooked-for as was the event, Lucilla, though taken unawares, had not given in, nor shown any signs of weakness. And the effect upon her father of her last utterance and confession was such that he took up the paper again and read both addresses, which were printed side by side. In other days Mr. Cavendish had been the chosen candidate of Grange Lane; and the views which he expressed (and he expressed his views very freely) were precisely those of Dr. Marjoribanks. Yet when the Doctor turned to Mr. Ashburton’s expression of his conviction that he was the right man for Carlingford, it cannot be denied that the force of that simple statement had a wonderful effect upon his mind⁠—an effect all the greater, perhaps, in comparison with the political exposition made by the other unexpected candidate. The Doctor’s meditations possibly took a slumbrous tone from the place and the moment at which he pursued them; for the fact was that the words he had just been hearing ran in his head all through the reading of the two addresses. Mr. Cavendish would think Lucilla had gone off; but yet she had not gone off so much as might have been expected, and Mr. Ashburton was the man for Carlingford. Dr. Marjoribanks laughed quietly by himself in his easy-chair, and then went back to Mr. Cavendish’s opinions; and ended again, without knowing it, in a kind of odd incipient agreement with Lucilla. The new candidate was right in politics; but, after all, Mr. Ashburton was a more satisfactory sort of person. He was a man whom people knew everything about, and a descendant of old Penrhyn, and had the Firs, and lived in it, and spent about so much money every year honestly in the face of the world. When a man conducts himself in this way, his neighbours can afford to be less exacting as to his political opinions. This comparison went on in the Doctor’s thoughts until the distinction between the two grew confused and faint in that ruddy and genial glow of firelight and lamplight and personal well-being which is apt to engross a man’s mind after he has come in out of the air, as people say, and has eaten a good dinner, and feels himself comfortable; and at last all that remained in Dr. Marjoribanks’s mind was that Mr. Cavendish would think Lucilla had gone off, though she had not gone off nearly so much as might have been expected; at which he laughed with an odd sound, which roused him, and might have induced some people to think he had been sleeping⁠—if, indeed, anybody had been near to hear.

But this news was naturally much more serious to Miss Marjoribanks when she got upstairs, and had time to think of it. She would not have been human if she had heard without emotion of the return of the man whom she had once dreamed of as member for Carlingford, with the addition of other dreams which had not been altogether without their sweetness. He had returned now and then for a few days, but Lucilla knew that he had never held up his head in Grange Lane since the day when she advised him to marry Barbara Lake. And now when he had bethought himself of his old ambition, had he possibly bethought himself of other hopes as well? And the horrible thing was, that she had pledged herself to another, and put her seal upon it that Mr. Ashburton was the man for Carlingford! It may be supposed that, with such a complication in her mind, Miss Marjoribanks was very little capable of supporting Aunt Jemima’s questions as to what it was about, and who was Mr. Cavendish, and why was his return of consequence to Lucilla? Mrs. John was considerably alarmed and startled, and began to think in earnest that Tom was fond of his cousin, and would never forgive his mother for letting Lucilla perhaps marry someone else, and settle down before her very eyes.

“If it is a very particular friend, I can understand it,” Mrs. John said, with a little asperity; but that was after she had made a great many attempts, which were only partially successful, to find it all out.

“Dear Aunt Jemima,” said Lucilla, “we are all particular friends in Carlingford⁠—society is so limited, you know;⁠—and Mr. Cavendish has been a very long time away. He used to be of such use to me, and I am so fond of him,” Miss Marjoribanks said, with a sigh; and it may be supposed that Mrs. John’s curiosity was not lessened by such a response.

“If you are engaged to anyone, Lucilla, I must say I think I ought to have been told,” said Tom’s mother, with natural indignation. “Though I ought not to blame you for it, perhaps. It is a sad thing when a girl is deprived of a mother’s care; but still I am your nearest relation⁠—”

“My dear aunt, it is something about the election,” said Miss Marjoribanks. “How could I be engaged to a man who has been away ten years?”

“Tom has been away ten years,” said Mrs. John impetuously; and then she blushed, though she was past the age of blushing, and made haste to cover her imprudence. “I don’t see what you can have to do with the election,” she said, with suspicion, but some justice; “and I don’t feel, Lucilla, as if you were telling me all.”

“I have the favours to make, Aunt Jemima,” said Lucilla⁠—“green and violet. You used to be so clever at making bows, and I hope you will help me;⁠—papa, you know, will have to be on Mr. Ashburton’s committee,” Miss Marjoribanks added; and then, in spite of herself, a sigh of doubt and anxiety escaped her bosom. It was easy to say that “papa would be on Mr. Ashburton’s committee, you know,” but nobody had known that Mr. Cavendish was coming to drive everything topsy-turvy; and Lucilla, though she professed to know only who was the man for Carlingford, had at the same time sufficient political information to be aware that the sentiments propounded in Mr. Cavendish’s address were also Dr. Marjoribanks’s sentiments; and she did not know the tricks which some green-and-violet spirit in the dining-room was playing with the Doctor’s fancy. Perhaps it might turn out to be Mr. Cavendish’s committee which her father would be on; and after she had pledged herself that the other man was the man for Carlingford! Lucilla felt that she could not be disloyal and go back from her word, neither could she forget the intimation which had so plainly indicated to her that Mr. Ashburton was the man; and yet, at the same time, she could not but sigh as she thought of Mr. Cavendish. Perhaps he had grown coarse, as men do at that age, just as Lucilla herself was conscious that he would find her stouter. Perhaps he had ceased to flirt, or be of any particular use of an evening; possibly even he might have forgotten Miss Marjoribanks⁠—but naturally that was a thing that seemed unlikely to Lucilla. And oh! if he had but come a little earlier, or forever stayed away!

But while all these thoughts were going through her mind, her fingers were still busy with the violet-and-green cockades which Aunt Jemima, after making sure that Mr. Ashburton was not a Radical, had begun to help her with. And they sat and talked about Mrs. John’s breathing, which was so bad, and about her headaches, while Lucilla by snatches discussed the situation in her mind. Perhaps, on the whole, embarrassment and perplexity are a kind of natural accompaniment to life and movement; and it is better to be driven out of your senses with thinking which of two things you ought to do than to do nothing whatever, and be utterly uninteresting to all the world. This at least was how Lucilla reasoned to herself in her dilemma; and while she reasoned she used up yard upon yard of her green ribbon (for naturally the violet bore but a small proportion to the green). Whatever she might have to do or to suffer⁠—however her thoughts might be disturbed or her heart distracted⁠—it is unnecessary to add that it was impossible to Lucilla either to betray or to yield.