Miss Marjoribanks · Chapter 47 (2/2)

This curious revival did not come to anything of deeper importance, for of course just then Rose came in from her household affairs, and Mr. Lake to tea; and the candidate recollected that it was time for dinner. But father and sister also gave him, in their different ways, a rather flattering reception. Mr. Lake had already pledged him his vote, and was full of interest as to how things were going on, and enthusiastic for his success; and Rose scowled upon him as of old, as on a dangerous character, whose comings and goings could not be seen without apprehension; which was an unexpected pleasure to a man who had been startled to find how very little commotion his presence made in Grange Lane. He pressed Barbara’s hand as he went away, and went to his dinner with a heart which certainly beat lighter, and a more pleasant sense of returning self-confidence, than he had felt for a long time. When he was coming out of the house, as a matter of course, he met with the chief of his Dissenting supporters, accompanied (for Mr. Bury, as has been said, was very Low-Church, and loved, wherever he could do it, to work in unison with his Dissenting brethren) by the Rector’s churchwarden, both of whom stopped with a curiously critical air to speak to the Candidate, who had to be every man’s friend for the time being. The look in their eyes sent an icy chill through him, but still the forbidden pleasure had been sweet. As he walked home, he could not help thinking it over, and going back ten years, and feeling a little doubtful about it, whether it was then or now. And as he mused Miss Marjoribanks, whom he could not help continually connecting and contrasting with the other, appeared to him as a kind of jealous Queen Eleanor, who had a right to him, and could take possession at any time, should she choose to make the effort; while Barbara was a Rosamond, dilapidated indeed, but always ready to receive and console him in her bower. This was the kind of unconscious sentiment he had in his mind, feeling sure, as he mused, that Lucilla would be very glad to marry him, and that it would be very wise on his part to ask her, and was a thing which might still probably come to pass. Of course he could not see into Miss Marjoribanks’s mind, which had travelled such a long way beyond him. He gave a glance up at the windows as he passed her door, and felt a kind of disagreeable satisfaction in seeing how diminished the lights were in the once radiant house. And Lucilla was so fond of a great deal of light! but she could not afford now to spend as much money upon wax as a Continental church might do. Mr. Cavendish had so odd a sense of Lucilla’s power over him, that it gave him a certain pleasure to think of the coming down of her pride and diminution of her lights.

But the fact was, that not more than ten minutes after he had passed her door with this reflection, Lucilla, sitting with her good book on the table and her work in her hand, in the room which was not so well lighted as it used to be, heard that Mr. Cavendish had been met with coming out of Mr. Lake’s, and that Barbara had been singing to him, and that there was no telling what might have happened. “A man ain’t the man for Carlingford as takes up with that sort,” Thomas said indignantly, who had come to pay his former mistress a visit, and to assure her of his brother-in-law’s vote. He was a little more free-spoken than of old, being now set up, and an independent householder, and calling no man master; and he was naturally indignant at an occurrence which, regarded in the light of past events, was an insult not only to Carlingford, but to Lucilla. Miss Marjoribanks was evidently startled by the news. She looked up quickly as if she had been about to speak, and then stopped herself and turned her back upon Thomas, and poked the fire in a most energetic way. She had even taken the hearth-brush in her hand to make all tidy after this onslaught, but that was a thing that went to Thomas’s heart.

“I couldn’t stand by and see it, Miss Lucilla,” said Thomas; “it don’t feel natural;” and there was actually a kind of moisture in his eye as he took that domestic implement out of her hand. Mr. Cavendish pitied Lucilla for having less light than of old, and Thomas for being reduced so low as to sweep her own hearth. But Lucilla was very far from pitying her own case. She had been making an effort over herself, and she had come out of it triumphant; after reading so many good books, it is not to be wondered at if she felt herself a changed and softened and elevated character. She had the means in her hands of doing her candidate’s rival a deadly mischief, and yet, for old friendship’s sake, Lucilla made up her mind to forbear.

“I will give it you, Thomas,” she said, with dignity, holding the hearth-brush, which was in such circumstances elevated into something sublime, “if you will promise, never, until after the election⁠—never to say a word about Mr. Cavendish and Miss Lake. It was quite right to tell me, and you are very kind about the hearth; but you must promise never to say a syllable about it, not even to Nancy, until the election is over; or I will never give it you, nor ask you to do a single thing for me again.”

Thomas was so much struck with this address that he said “Good Lord!” in sheer amazement; and then he made the necessary vow, and took the hearth-brush out of Lucilla’s hand.

“No doubt he was asking for Mr. Lake’s vote,” said Miss Marjoribanks. “They say everybody is making great exertions, and you know they are both my friends. I ought to be pleased whoever wins. But it is impressed on my mind that Mr. Ashburton will be the man,” Lucilla added, with a little solemnity, “and, Thomas, we must give them fair-play.”

It would be vain to assert that Thomas understood this romantic generosity, but he was taken by surprise, and had relinquished his own liberty in the matter, and had nothing further to say. Indeed he had so little to say downstairs, that Nancy, who was longing for a little gossip, insulted and reviled him, and declared that since he took up with that Betsy there never was a sensible word to be got out of him. And all the time the poor man was burning with this bit of news. Many a man has bartered his free will before under the influence of female wiles, or so at least history would have us believe; but few have done it for so poor a compensation as that hearth-brush. Thomas withdrew sore at heart, longing for the election to be over, and kept his word like an honest man; but notwithstanding, before the evening was over, the fatal news was spreading like fire to every house in Grange Lane.