Miss Marjoribanks

"Oh, I am sure it is a great pleasure," Mrs Chiley answered, not willing to let down the prestige of her guest. "He is very nice, and takes a great deal of interest in everything; and then, you know, he is a connection of ours. The Colonel's niece, Mary Chiley – "

"Yes, I know," said Miss Bury. "Poor thing! she looked suffering the last time I saw her. I hope she has found the true consolation to support her, now she has entered into the troubles of life."

"Well, yes, I hope so," said Mrs Chiley, a little doubtfully; "but you know one does not feel the troubles of life very severely at her age; and I don't think I should have called a baby a trouble when I was like her. I never had any, you know, and I used to fret over it a great deal; but the Colonel never liked the noise of children, and I suppose it is all for the best."

"One may always be sure of that," said Miss Bury, in her instructive way. "I suppose the Archdeacon is going soon," she added; "he has been here a long time now. I almost wonder he likes to be so long absent from his parish. Two months, is it not?"

"Oh, no – not quite six weeks," said Mrs Chiley briskly. "I hope he may be persuaded to stay some time longer. I look upon it as quite a compliment to Carlingford; for, to be sure, he would not stay if he had not some attraction," said the imprudent old woman. And this was precisely what Miss Bury wanted, as any one of acute perceptions might have seen from the first.

"It must be a great responsibility for you," said the Rector's sister, with a sigh, pressing Mrs Chiley's hand. "If it should turn out badly, you know – Of course, my brother and I don't agree with Mr Beverley on all points – though I am sure I hope he is quite conscientious; but I do feel for you with such a responsibility," said Miss Bury, with a look that made the old lady nervous in spite of herself. Thus, notwithstanding all her sense of the duties of hospitality, and her anxiety about Lucilla's interests, she could not but feel that it would be rather a relief to get so formidable a guest fairly out of the house. It is uncomfortable, it must be allowed, to entertain in your house anybody, particularly a clergyman of whom your Rector does not approve; and there could be no doubt that the Archdeacon was not like the clergymen that Mrs Chiley had been accustomed to. "And he could come back another time," she said to herself, by way of conciliating her own weariness with her visitor's advantage and the interests of Lucilla. But notwithstanding these reflections on Mrs Chiley's part and notwithstanding the Colonel's less amiable growl, uttered every morning – "Does that parson of yours never mean to go away?" – the Archdeacon showed no intention of budging. It was poor Mrs Chiley who had all the brunt to bear, to exhaust herself in civilities and to be upbraided with "that parson of yours" – whereas he was not in the least her parson, nor even the kind of man she approved of as a clergyman. All this, however, the brave old woman bore with fortitude for Lucilla's sake: certainly it must be Lucilla who kept him in Carlingford – if it were not something else.

Things were in this condition, Mr Cavendish having again disappeared into utter darkness, and Carlingford beginning to enter warmly into the question whether or not Mr Beverley was paying attention to Lucilla, when it happened to Miss Marjoribanks one morning to meet the Archdeacon in a little lane running between Grove Street and Grange Lane. Opening from this lane was a little door in the wall, which admitted to a little garden very bright with flowers of the simplest old-fashioned kinds, with a little house planted at its extremity, which had pretensions to be an old-fashioned and quasi-rural cottage, on the score of being very rickety, uncomfortable, and badly arranged. But it must be a very impracticable erection indeed which does not look tolerable under the bright sunshine on a summer noon, at the end of a pretty garden where children are playing and birds singing, and a woman or two about. Lucilla was standing at the door of this little closed-up hermitage, almost filling up the opening with her crisp summer draperies, and affording only a very partial and tempting glimpse of its flowers and shrubs and whitewashed walls inside; and when Mr Beverley came up to Miss Marjoribanks he felt his curiosity excited. "Is it Armida's garden, or the Elysian fields – " said the Archdeacon; and he made a dead stop before the door, not knowing any more than any other blind mortal what he was going to find inside.

"I don't know anything about Armida," said Miss Marjoribanks; "unfortunately they were all Cambridge in their ways of thinking at Mount Pleasant, and our classics got dreadfully neglected. But you may come in if you like – at least I think you may come in, if you will promise not to frighten the children. I am sure they never saw an Archdeacon in their lives."

"Are there children?" said Mr Beverley, with a doubtful air; for, to tell the truth, he had come to the age at which men think it best to avoid children, unless, indeed, they happen to have a personal interest in them; and he stretched his neck a little to see in over Miss Marjoribanks's head.

"There are a whole lot of children, and a pretty governess," said Lucilla. "It is a school, and I am so much interested in it. I may call it my school, for that matter. I came to know her in the funniest way; but I will tell you that another time. And it was just my luck, as usual. She is so nice, and quite a lady. If you will not say you are an Archdeacon, to frighten the children, I will let you come in."

"You shall call me whatever you like," said Mr Beverley; "when I am with the lady-patroness, what does it matter what I call myself? Let me see how you manage your educational department. I have already bowed before your genius in the other branches of government; but this ought to be more in my own way."

"I don't think you care for visiting schools," said Lucilla. "I know you think it is a bore; but she is so nice, and so nice-looking; I am sure you will be pleased with her. I am quite sure she is a lady, and has seen better days."

"Oh, those dreadful women that have seen better days!" said the Archdeacon; "I think Mrs Chiley has a regiment of them. It is hard to know how to get one's self into sympathy with those faded existences. They fill me with an infinite pity; but then what can one do? If one tries to recall them to the past, it sounds like mockery – and if one speaks of the present, it wounds their feelings. It is a great social difficulty," said Mr Beverley; and he fixed his eyes on the ground and entered meditatively, without looking where he was going, in his Broad-Church way.

"Dear Mrs Chiley is so kind," said Lucilla, who was a little puzzled for the moment, and did not know what to say.

"Mrs Chiley is a good, pure, gentle woman," said the Archdeacon. He spoke in a tone which settled the question, and from which there was no appeal; and no doubt what he said was perfectly true, though it was not a very distinct characterisation. Thus they went in together into the bright little garden, thinking of nothing in particular, and loitering as people do who do not know what is coming. There was something that morning in Mr Beverley's tone and manner which struck Lucilla as something more than usual. She was not a young woman to attach undue importance to looks and tones; but the Archdeacon's manner was so softened and mellowed, and his eyes had so much expression in them, and he looked at Lucilla with such marked regard, that it was impossible for her not to recognise that a crisis might be approaching. To be sure, it was not by any means so near as that crisis manqué which had so lately passed over her head in respect to Mr Cavendish. But still Miss Marjoribanks could not but remark the signs of a slowly approaching and most likely more important climax; and as she remarked it, Lucilla naturally by anticipation prepared herself for the coming event that thus threw a shadow upon her. She did not make up her mind to accept Mr Beverley any more than she had made up her mind to accept Mr Cavendish; but she thought it only her duty to him and to herself, and to society in general, to take his claims into full consideration. And no doubt, if these claims had seemed to her sufficiently strong to merit such a reward, Miss Marjoribanks had it in her to marry the Archdeacon, and make him an admirable wife, though she was not at the present moment, so far as she was aware, absolutely what foolish people call in love with him. At the same time, she made herself all the more agreeable to Mr Beverley from her sense of the dawn of tenderness with which he regarded her. And in this way they went up the broad central path which traversed the little garden, neither looking to the left nor the right, but presenting all that appearance of being occupied with each other, which, especially to a female observer, is so easy of interpretation. For, to be sure, the Archdeacon had not the remotest idea into whose house he was going, nor who it was whom he was about to see.

But as it happened, Lucilla's protégée, who had seen better days, had just finished one of her lessons, and sent her little pupils out into the garden. She was preparing for the next little class, when, raising her eyes accidentally, she saw Miss Marjoribanks coming through the garden with the Archdeacon by her side. She was the same person whom Mr Bury had brought to Lucilla with the idea of recommending her to Dr Marjoribanks as a companion and chaperone for his daughter; but since then Mrs Mortimer's appearance had considerably changed. She had grown younger by ten years during the period of comparative comfort and tranquillity which Lucilla's active help and championship had procured for her. Her house, and her garden, and her little scholars, and the bloom on her cheeks, and the filling-up of her worn frame, were all Miss Marjoribanks's doing. In the intervals of her legislative cares Lucilla had run about all over Carlingford searching for pupils, and at the same moment had cut and stitched and arranged, and papered walls, and planted flower-beds, for the feeble creature thus thrown upon her. This was a side of Lucilla's character which certainly she did nothing to hide from the public, but which, at the same time, she never made any fuss about; and it was an endless pleasure to her to find a protégée so perfectly content to be "done for," and do as she was told to do. It was thus that the poor faded widow, who was sensitive and had feelings, and forgot herself so far as to faint, or nearly to faint, just at the most unlucky moment possible, when the Rector's character and dignity demanded superior self-control on her part, had found her youth again and her good looks under Lucilla's shadow. When she looked up and saw the two approaching, Mrs Mortimer's first impulse was to smile at the conjunction; but the next moment she had dropped the books out of her hands, and was standing gazing out like a woman in a dream, with the colour all gone out of her cheeks, and even out of her lips, in the surprise of the moment. It was only surprise and a kind of dismay; it was not terror, like that which Mr Cavendish had exhibited at the same apparition. She dropped into her chair without knowing it, and probably would have fainted this time also, if something more urgent than mere "feelings" had not roused her up. As it was, it happened very happily for her that she had thus a little preparation. When she saw that her patroness was leading Mr Beverley up to the door, and that in a minute more he would inevitably be brought to her very side, Mrs Mortimer roused up all her strength. She gathered up her books in her hand without knowing very well what she was doing, and, taking virtue from necessity, went desperately out to meet them. It was Miss Marjoribanks who first saw her, white and tottering, leaning against the trellis of the little porch, and Lucilla could not but give a little cry of alarm and wonder. What kind of man could this be, who thus struck down another victim without even so much as a glance? It was just then that the Archdeacon raised his eyes, and saw standing before him, among the faded roses, the woman whom he had been approaching so indifferently – the faded existence that had seen better days. He saw her, and he stood stock-still, as if it was she who was the basilisk, and the look of pleased interest went out of his face in a moment. In that moment he had become as unconscious of the presence of Lucilla as if he had never in his life softened his voice to her ear, or talked nonsense to please her. His eyes did not seem big enough to take in the figure which stood shrinking and looking at him in the porch. Then he made one long step forward, and took hold of her sleeve – not her hand – as if to convince himself that it was something real he saw. He showed no joy, nor satisfaction, nor anything but sheer amaze and wonder, at this unexpected appearance, for he had not had time to prepare himself as she had. "Am I dreaming, or is it you?" he said, in a voice that sounded as different from the voice with which he had been speaking to Lucilla, as if years had elapsed between the two. And it would be vain to describe the amazement and singular sense that the earth had suddenly given way under her feet, with which Miss Marjoribanks stood by and looked on.

Chapter XXIII

Miss Marjoribanks was naturally the first to recover her senses in this emergency. Even she, self-possessed as she was, felt the natural giddiness inseparable from such a strange reversal of the position. But she did not lose her head like the others. She looked at the widow standing white and tremulous in the shadow of the little porch, and on the Archdeacon, whose manly countenance had paled to a corresponding colour. A man does not seize a woman by the sleeve and ask, "Is it you?" without some reason for an address so destitute of ordinary courtesy; and Lucilla was sufficiently versed in such matters to know that so rude and startling an accost could be only addressed to some one whose presence set the speaker's heart beating, and quickened the blood in his veins. It was odd, to say the least, after the way in which he had just been speaking to herself; but Miss Marjoribanks, as has been already said, was not the woman to lose her head. She recovered herself with the second breath she drew, and took her natural place. "I can see that you have something to say to each other," said Lucilla. "Mrs Mortimer, ask Mr Beverley to walk in. Never mind me. I want to speak to the little Lakes. I shall come back presently," Miss Marjoribanks added, nodding pleasantly to the Archdeacon – and she went away to the other end of the garden, calling to the children with that self-possession which is the gift only of great minds. But when Lucilla found herself at a safe distance, and saw the Archdeacon stoop to go in under the porch, it cannot be denied that her mind was moved by the sight. It was she who had seen after the putting-up of that trellis round that porch, and the arrangement of the wistaria, which had been sprawling all over the front of the house uncared for. If there was any place in the world where she should have been free from such a shock, it certainly should have been here, in this spot, which she had, so to speak, created. Naturally the unfitness of these surroundings to witness a revolution so unlooked-for and disagreeable struck Lucilla. If she had to be again humiliated, and to submit once more to see another preferred to herself, it certainly should have been under other circumstances. When we admit that such a thought did pass through the mind of Miss Marjoribanks, it will prove to all who know her that Lucilla found her position sufficiently aggravating. She had exerted herself for Mrs Mortimer as nobody else in Carlingford would have exerted themselves. She had not only found pupils and a means of living for the widow, which, perhaps, a committee of ladies might have done at the end of a year, had it been put into their hands; but Miss Marjoribanks had done it at once, and had taken charge of that timid and maladroit individual herself, and set her up, and done everything for her. It was Dr Marjoribanks's gardener, under Lucilla's orders, who had arranged and planted the garden, and trained the embowering foliage which had just brushed the Archdeacon's clerical hat as he went in; and in the act of refurnishing her drawing-room, Miss Marjoribanks had managed to procure, without costing anybody anything except a little trouble, as she herself said, many accessories, which gave an air of comfort to the little parlour, in which, no doubt, at that moment, Mr Beverley and Mrs Mortimer were explaining themselves. Lucilla had a great deal too much good sense to upbraid anybody with ingratitude, or even to make any claim upon that slippery quality; but she knew at the same time that the widow was the very last person from whom a new discomfiture should come, and that to enter in under that trellis when he left her was, on the Archdeacon's part, an aggravation of the change in his sentiments which it was difficult to bear.

She walked along the garden path very briskly under the influence of these thoughts, and it was not in nature to do otherwise than snub the children when she joined them. Lucilla was a woman of genius, but she was not faultless; and when she found Ethelinda and Ethelfreda Lake, the two twins, the one with her clean frock all muddy and stained, the other with the front breadth torn right up the middle, it is scarcely to be wondered at if she lost her patience. "You little nasty untidy things!" she said, "I should like to know who you expect is to go mending up and washing every day for you? It will not be Barbara, I am sure," Miss Marjoribanks added, with a fine intonation of scorn, of which the culprits were insensible; and she gave Ethelinda a shake, who was sitting on the wet ground, all muddy with recent watering, and who, besides, was the one who most resembled Barbara. When this temporary ebullition had taken place, Lucilla began gradually to right herself. It was a grand sight, if anybody had been there to witness it, or if anybody could have seen into Miss Marjoribanks's maiden bosom; but the spectacle of a great mind thus recovering its balance is one which can rarely be visible except in its results. While she set the children to rights, and represented to Mrs Mortimer's little servant, who was in the garden furtively on a pretence of cabbages, the extreme folly, and indeed idiocy, of letting them get to the water and make a mess of themselves, Lucilla was in reality coming to herself. Perhaps she spoke with a little more energy than usual; but the offenders were so well aware of their guilt, and so thoroughly satisfied of the justice of the reproof addressed to them, that no other explanation was necessary; and, little by little, Miss Marjoribanks felt herself restored to her natural calm.

"You know I don't like to scold you," she said; "but what would anybody say? – nice clean frocks, that I am sure were put on fresh this morning – and you, Mary Jane – "

"Please, Miss, it was only for a young cabbage. Missis is fond of a bit of vegetable," said the little maid. "I knew she'd not say nothing; – and just as I had told 'em all to have done and be good – and nobody knew as you was here," said Mary Jane. There was something even in that small and humble testimony to Lucilla's sovereignty which helped on the process which was operating in her mind. She regained bit by bit that serene self-consciousness which places the spirit above the passing vexations of the world. What did it matter what other people might be doing or saying? Was not she still Lucilla Marjoribanks? and when one had said that, one had said all.

"It is time you were all going home to your dinners," said Lucilla; "and I have asked Mrs Mortimer to give you a half-holiday. As for you, you little Linda, you are not fit to be seen; and I am sure if I were your sister I should send you off to bed. Now get all your hats and things and run away; and if you are not awfully good to-morrow, I shall never ask for another half-holiday again."

Saying which, Miss Marjoribanks herself saw the hats brought out, and the little scholars sent away. She took matters into her own hand with the confidence of a superior nature. "After all the long talk they are having she will not be able for her scholars to-day," Lucilla said magnanimously to herself; and she again made the tour of the garden, inspecting everything, to see that all was in order. With every step that she took, Miss Marjoribanks became more and more herself. As we have already said, it was a grand and inspiring sight; but then, to be sure, as in the former case, her affections, fortunately, were not engaged. She was not in love with the Archdeacon, any more than she had been in love with Mr Cavendish; – though it is true, love is not everything. And to think how he had been looking and talking not much more than half an hour ago, and to reflect that now he had most likely forgotten her very existence, and was explaining himself, and placing that position which would have just suited Lucilla at the feet of the object of her bounty, was enough to have driven a young woman of ordinary mind half out of her senses with disgust and indignation. But, fortunately, Lucilla's mind was not an ordinary one; and every step she took round the garden restored her more and more entirely to herself. Instead of conceiving any jealous dislike to Mrs Mortimer, she had already, as has been stated, exerted herself with her usual benevolence to leave the widow free for the rest of the day. "After all, it is not her fault if she knew him before, or if he was in love with her," Lucilla said to herself. And when she had arrived at this perfectly true and profoundly philosophical conclusion, it may be said that the crisis was at an end.

But then where personal offence and indignation (if the natural shock to Miss Marjoribanks's feelings could be called by such hard names) ended, bewilderment and curiosity began. Who could this Archdeacon be who had frightened the most popular man in Carlingford out of the place, and whose unlooked-for appearance had driven Mrs Mortimer back out of her recovered good looks and cheerfulness into pallor and trembling? It is true that Lucilla knew quite well who he was – the second son of Mr Beverley of Trent Valley, a family as well known as any family in England. Everybody knew all about the Archdeacon: his career from his youth up was as clearly traceable as if he had been killed in a railway accident and had had his memoir published in the Times. There was nothing in the smallest degree secret or mysterious about him; and yet how could it come about that the sight of him should frighten Mr Cavendish out of his senses, and make Mrs Mortimer, who was utterly unconnected with Mr Cavendish, all but faint, as she had done on a former occasion? Was it his mission to go about the world driving people into fits of terror or agitation? To be sure, he was a Broad-Churchman, and not the type of clergyman to which Lucilla in her heart inclined; but still a man may be Broad Church, and speak a little freely on religious matters, without being a basilisk. As these thoughts went through her mind, Miss Marjoribanks could not help observing that the branches of the pear-tree, which was all that the garden contained in the shape of fruit, had come loose from the wall, and were swaying about greatly to the damage of the half-grown pears, – not to say that it gave a very untidy look to that corner. "I must send Crawford down this evening to fasten it up," Lucilla said to herself, and then went on with what she was thinking; and she made one or two other remarks of the same description in a parenthesis as she made her tour. After all, it is astonishing how many little things go wrong when the man or woman with a hundred eyes is absent for a few days from the helm of affairs. It was nearly a week since Miss Marjoribanks had been round Mrs Mortimer's garden, and in that time the espalier had got detached, some of the verbenas were dead in the borders, and the half of the sticks that propped up the dahlias had fallen, leaving the plants in miserable confusion. Lucilla shook her head over this, as she asked herself what mysterious influence there could be in the Archdeacon. For her own part, she was not in the slightest degree afraid of him, nor could she confess to having felt agitated even when he walked with her into this fated garden; but there could be no doubt of the seriousness of the effect produced by his appearance on the two others. "They have broken half of the props, the little nuisances," Lucilla said to herself, as she pursued her musings. For her large mind was incapable, now that its perfect serenity was happily regained, of confining itself, unless with a very good reason, to one sole subject.