Miss Marjoribanks

"How convenient it is to have the lamp so near," said Lucilla. "Oh, don't light any candles, please; it is so nice to sit in the dark. Where is Barbara, I wonder? Let us have some music, and put down that dreadful organ. I hope she has not gone out. And where are you, you sulky little Rose?"

"She has gone upstairs," said Rose, who began to feel all the enormity of her conduct in thus betraying her sister. "I hate sitting in the dark. I hate being a spy; come in from the window, Lucilla, now you are here – "

"My dear Rose," said Miss Marjoribanks, "I think you forget a little. For my part I do not understand what being a spy means. Barbara knows very well I am here. I should scorn to take an advantage of anybody, for my part. If she does not bring him past the very window, and under my eyes – Ah, yes, that is just what I thought," said Lucilla, with gentle satisfaction. But by this time poor little Rose had roused herself into an innocent fury.

"What is just as you thought?" said Rose, laying an impatient grasp on Miss Marjoribanks's arm. "Come in from the window, Lucilla, this moment – this moment! Oh, me, to think it should be my doing! Oh, Lucilla, don't be so mean and shabby and wretched. I tell you to come in – come in directly! If you do not shut the window, and come and sit here in the corner, I will never, never speak to you again!"

Miss Marjoribanks, as was natural, took no notice of this childish fury. She was sitting just where she had been sitting all the evening, within sight of the street lamp and the organ-grinder, and Miss Jane Hemmings at the staircase window; – just where Barbara had placed her, and where that young woman calculated on finding her, when she made a promenade of triumph up the partially lighted street by the side of her clandestine suitor. Perhaps Barbara had seen Miss Jane as well, and knew that public opinion was thus watching over her; but at all events she was not at all ashamed of herself, or indignant at being spied upon. On the contrary, it was a kind of apotheosis for Barbara, only second to the grand and crowning triumph which would be accomplished in Carlingford Church under the shadow of that veil of real Brussels, which grew more and more real every day. Thus neither the actors in the drama, nor the principal spectator, were in the smallest degree disturbed by horror or shame or sense of guilt, excepting always the fanciful little Rose, who suffered for everybody; who could have wished that the earth would open and swallow up Barbara and her lover; who could have slaughtered Lucilla on the spot, and given herself over to any kind of torture for her treachery. Naturally nobody paid any sort of attention to Rose. Barbara, for her part, took her admirer's arm in the twilight with a swelling of exultation, which the gaining of the very highest prize in the department of ornamental art could scarcely have conveyed to the bosom of the little artist; and Lucilla put back her small assailant softly with her hand, and smoothed down her ruffled plumes.

"My dear, it is Miss Hemmings that is spying," said Lucilla; "and poor Barbara would be so disappointed if I were to go away from the window. Have patience just a little longer – there's a dear. It is all exactly as I thought."

And then there followed a pause, which was a terrible pause for Rose. The organ-grinder stopped his doleful ditty, and there was scarcely any sound to be heard in the street except the footsteps approaching and retiring, the measured tread of two people occupied with each other, going now more slowly, now more quickly, as the humour seized them, or as their conversation grew in interest; even the sound of their voices came by times to the auditors – Barbara's with an occasional laugh or tone of triumph, and the other deeper, with which Rose had but little acquaintance, but which was perfectly known to Lucilla. All this time, while her companion sat panting in the dark corner, Miss Marjoribanks was looking to the joints of her harness, and feeling the edge of her weapons. For, after all, it was no small enterprise upon which she was going forth. She was going to denounce the faithless knight to his face, and take him out of the hands of the enchantress; but then she herself meant to take him in hand, and show him his true dangers, and vindicate his honour. A more disinterested enterprise was never undertaken by any knight-errant. Yet, at the same time, Lucilla could not help entertaining a certain involuntary contempt for the man who had deserted her own standard to put himself under that of Barbara Lake, and who was being paraded up and down here without knowing it, to gratify the vanity of his new sovereign, and make an exhibition of his weakness. Lucilla would have been more than mortal if she had not felt the difference between her own rule, which would have been all to his good, and the purely egotistical sway of Barbara; and even in her magnanimous mind, it was impossible that pity itself should not be mingled with a certain disdain.

She sat quite still for so long that Barbara grew intoxicated with her triumph. "It is perhaps the last time," Lucilla said to herself, with a movement of compassion; and the breadth of her human sympathy was such that she waited till the very latest moment, and let the deluded young woman have the full enjoyment of her imaginary victory. Then Miss Marjoribanks rose with a certain solemnity, and put on her hat, and gave an unappreciated kiss to Rose, who kept in her corner. "Good-night; I am going," said Lucilla. The words were simple enough, but yet they rang in Rose's ears like the signal of a conspiracy. When the calm leader of the expedition went forth, sensible of the importance of her mission, but tranquil as great minds always are in a moment of danger, Rose got up too and followed, trembling in every limb. She was capable of having thrown herself upon the spears in her own person in a sudden élan of indignation and passion; but she was not capable of waiting till the right moment, and meeting her antagonists in reasonable combat. Miss Marjoribanks went out deliberately, without any unnecessary haste, sweeping into the dusky twilight with her virginal white draperies. It was a very ordinary scene, and yet, even in the midst of her excitement, Rose could not help observing involuntarily its pictorial qualities – if only any painter could have transferred to his canvas the subdued musical hum of surrounding life, the fragrance of the mignonette, and the peaceful stillness of the summer night. The sky shone out green-blue, lambent and wistful, from the vacant space between Miss Hemmings's and Mr Wrangle's, and there were the dusky twilight shadows below, and the yellow gleam of the lamp, and Barbara's exulting, triumphant figure, and the white robes of the avenging angel. Rose could not have observed all this if she had not been stilled into a kind of breathless awe by the solemn character of the situation, which struck her as being somehow like one of Millais's pictures. As for the lovers, they had just turned at the moment that Miss Marjoribanks came out, and consequently met her straight in the face, as she stood suave and smiling at the little garden door.

"It is Mr Cavendish," said Lucilla; "I am so glad; I have been hoping and trying to see you for ever so long; and as soon as ever I heard you talking I felt sure it was your voice."

This was the greeting she addressed to Barbara Lake's lover. For his part he stood before her, growing red and growing pale, struck dumb by the unlooked-for meeting, and with such a sense of being ashamed of himself as never before had entered his mind, though, no doubt, he had done worse actions in his day. Even Barbara had not calculated upon this open encounter; and instead of giving him any assistance, as was a woman's duty in such a case, she only tossed her head, and giggled with an embarrassment which was more pride than shame. As for Mr Cavendish, he would have liked to disappear under the pavement, if it had been possible. For once he and Rose were agreed. If a gulf had opened before him, he would have jumped into it without ever pausing to ask himself why. And yet all the time Miss Marjoribanks was looking as placid as if she had been in her own drawing-room, and expecting his reply to her friendly observations. When he realised that he ought to say something, Mr Cavendish felt that he had as much need to wipe his forehead as ever the Archdeacon had. He turned hot and cold, and felt his mind and his tongue frozen, and could not find a word to say. With a sudden horror he woke up, like one of Comus's revellers, and found himself changed into the likeness of the creature he consorted with. If he had found an ass's head on his shoulders, he could not have felt more startled and horrified than when he heard himself, in the imbecility of the moment, giggle like Barbara, and answer to Lucilla's remark, "Oh! yes, it was my voice."

"I am very sorry to separate you from Barbara," said Miss Marjoribanks; "but she is at home, you know, and I want so much to talk to you. Barbara, good-night; I want Mr Cavendish to walk home with me. Rose, don't stand in the garden and catch cold; thank you, dear, for such a pleasant evening," said Lucilla, pressing another kiss upon her little friend's unwilling cheek. When she had done this, she put out her hand to Barbara, and passed her, sweeping her white garments through the narrow gateway. She took Mr Cavendish's arm as if he had been a young brother come to fetch her. "Let us go round by the chapel," said Miss Marjoribanks, "I have so much to say to you. Be sure to practise for Thursday, Barbara, and bid your papa good-night for me." This was how she carried off Mr Cavendish finally out of Barbara's very fingers, and under her very eyes.

When the two sisters were left standing together at the door, they could do nothing but stare at each other in the extremity of their amazement. Rose, for her part, remained but a moment, and then, feeling by far the guiltiest and most miserable of the whole party, ran upstairs to her own room and cried as if her heart would break. Barbara, on the contrary, who was past crying, stood still at the door, and watched Lucilla's white dress disappearing on the way to Grange Lane with indescribable emotions. A young woman cannot call the police, or appeal to the crier, when it is her lover whom she has lost: but to see him carried off by the strong hand – to watch him gradually going away and disappearing from her eyes – to hear his steps withdrawing into the distance – was such a trial as few are called upon to bear. She stood and looked after him, and could not believe her eyes. And then it was all so sudden – an affair of a moment. Barbara could not realise how the world had turned round, and this revolution had been effected; – one minute she had been leaning on his arm triumphant, making a show and exhibition of him in the pride of her heart, though he did not know it; and the next was not she standing here watching him with a blank countenance and a despairing heart, while Lucilla had pounced upon him and carried him off in her cruel grasp? The blow was so sudden, that Barbara stood speechless and motionless till the two departing figures had vanished in the darkness. Would he come back again to-morrow, or was he gone for ever and ever? Such were the thoughts of the forsaken maiden, as she stood paralysed under this sudden change of fortune, at her father's door. If some cruel spectator had thrown into the fire that Brussels veil with which her imagination had so long played, and Barbara had stood heart-struck, watching the filmy tissue dissolve into ashes before her eyes, her sense of sudden anguish could not have been more acute. Yet, after all, Barbara's pangs were nothing to those of Mr Cavendish, as he felt Miss Marjoribanks's light touch on his arm, and felt his doomed feet turn in spite of himself in the most dangerous direction, and became conscious that he was being led beyond all possibility of resistance, back to Grange Lane and to his fate.

To be sure it was dark, which was one consolation; but it was not dark enough to conceal Lucilla's white dress, nor the well-known form and lineaments of the young monarch of Grange Lane, in whose company nobody could pass unobserved. Mr Cavendish could have faced danger by sea and land with the average amount of courage; but the danger of the walk down the little street, which afterwards led to St Roque's, and up the embowered stillness of Grange Lane, was more than he was equal to. He could not be sure of making a single step by these garden-walls without meeting somebody who knew him – somebody whose curiosity might ruin him in Carlingford; or even without the risk of encountering in the face of that arch-enemy, who would not go away, and whose presence had banished him from the place. It may be supposed that, under these terrible circumstances, Mr Cavendish's thoughts of Barbara, who had got him into this scrape, were far from lover-like. He was a man universally popular among ladies, and who owed a great deal of the social consideration which he prized so highly to this fact; and yet the most gentle sentiment in his mind at that moment, was a "Confound these women!" which he breathed to himself, all low and deep, as he went slowly along by Lucilla's side. As for Miss Marjoribanks, her thoughts were of a very much more serious description than anything her unlucky escort was thinking of, and a minute or two passed in silence before she could make up her mind to speak.

"I have been thinking a great deal about you lately, and wishing very much to see you," said Lucilla. "Did not Mrs Woodburn tell you? – I think I should have written to you had I known your address."

"And I am sure you would have made me the happiest of men," said the victim, with rueful politeness. "What had I done to deserve such a privilege? But my sister did not tell me; she left me to hear it from your own – "

"Yes," said Miss Marjoribanks, with a certain solemnity, interrupting him; "I have been thinking a great deal – and hearing a great deal about you, Mr Cavendish." When she had said this Lucilla sighed, and her sigh found a terrible echo in her hearer's bosom. She knew that he turned green in the darkness as he gave an anxious look at her. But he was too much alarmed to give her an opportunity of studying his face.

"Hearing of me," he said, and tried to laugh; "what have my kind friends been saying?" and for one moment the sufferer tried to delude himself that it was some innocent gossip about Barbara which might be circulating in Grange Lane.

"Hush," said Lucilla, "don't laugh, please; for I want to have a very serious talk. I have been hearing about you from some very, very old friends, Mr Cavendish – not anything about this, you know," Miss Marjoribanks added, waving her hand in the direction of Grove Street. And then Barbara Lake and everything connected with her vanished like a shadow from the unfortunate man's mind. It was horribly ungrateful on his part, but it was, as Miss Marjoribanks would have said, just what might have been expected, and how They always behave. He had no longer any time or patience for the object which had been giving occupation and interest to his solitude. He woke up in a moment, and gave a passing curse to his folly, and faced the real danger as he best could.

"You must be making a mistake, Miss Marjoribanks," he said, with some bitterness; "it should have been, very, very old enemy. I know who it is. It is that Archdeacon you ladies make such a fuss about. It is he who has been telling lies about me," said Mr Cavendish. He breathed a deep hard breath as he spoke, and the blood came back to his face. Perhaps for the first moment he felt satisfied, and breathed freer after it was over; but at the same time it was very dreadful to him to feel that he was found out, and that henceforth Grange Lane would shut its doors and avert its countenance. "If you take his word for it, I may give in at once," he continued, bitterly. "A parson will say anything; they are as bad as – as women." This the poor man said in his despair, because he did not know what he was saying; for in reality he knew that women had been his best friends, and that he had still a chance, if the judgment was to rest with them.

"You are very ungrateful to say so," said Miss Marjoribanks, "but it is only because you are excited, I suppose. No, Mr Cavendish, it was not the Archdeacon; on the contrary, it was a lady, and she said nothing but good of you," said Lucilla; and then there was a pause. As for Mr Cavendish, it would be altogether impossible to describe the state of his mind. He was like a man suddenly reprieved, but giddy with the shock, and feeling the halter still round his neck, and knowing that he had himself undermined the ground on which he was standing. It was Lucilla who supported him in the shock of the moment, for all his self-command could not keep him from a momentary shiver and stagger when he found that things were not so bad as he thought.

"A lady, and she said nothing but good!" he muttered, under his breath; and then he made an effort to recover himself. "Pardon me, I cannot guess who my unknown friend may be. It is very soothing to one's feelings to be spoken well of by a lady," said Mr Cavendish, and he laughed again in a discordant unsteady way. Lucilla regarded him through all these fluctuations with natural pity, and at the same time with the calmness of a knowledge which was aware of all and had nothing more to discover; and at the end Mr Cavendish perceived her calm, and the absence of wonder and curiosity in her face, and began to perceive that he had something very serious to deal with – more serious even than he had at first supposed.

"I am going to tell you all about it," said Miss Marjoribanks, "but in the meantime wait a minute and let me speak to you. I have something very serious to say."

It was for this they stopped short at the foot of Grange Lane just where the land was already parcelled out for St Roque's. What Lucilla was going to say was too important to be spoken while walking, and she withdrew her hand from Mr Cavendish's arm. They were both so much absorbed that they did not see anybody coming, nor indeed had any attention to spare for external affairs. The blood had deserted Mr Cavendish's face, and he was once more green with anxiety and inquietude. He stood facing her, feeling that the crisis of his fate had come, and not knowing whether it was absolute despair or a faint dawning of hope that possessed him. If he had been the most passionate of lovers, and if she had held in her hands the dreadful alternative between rapture and misery, there could not have been a more rapt and absorbing attention in Mr Cavendish's face.

"I want to tell you, first of all, that you must have confidence in me," said Lucilla; "you – must – have confidence in me. We can do nothing without that. I know everything, Mr Cavendish," Miss Marjoribanks added compassionately – "everything; but nobody else knows it. I hope I can arrange everything if it is left in my hands. This is what I wanted to tell you first of all. Before everything, you must have confidence in me."

What Mr Cavendish might have answered to this solemn appeal it would be vain to imagine; for the truth was, he was stopped before he could utter a word. He was stopped and seized by the hand, and greeted with a frankness which was, perhaps, all the more loud and cordial from what appeared to the new-comer the comic character of the situation. "It is Cavendish, by Jove!" the intruder exclaimed, waving his hand to some people who were coming on behind him. "I beg a thousand pardons for disturbing you, my dear fellow; but they all talk about you so, that I was determined to make sure it was you. Good heavens, Miss Marjoribanks!" General Travers added, taking off his hat. It was Mr and Mrs Centum who were coming down behind him – she with a light shawl thrown over her head, tempted out by the beauty of the evening; and Lucilla saw in a moment the consequences of this encounter, and how it would be over all Carlingford before to-morrow morning that she and Mr Cavendish were betrothed at the very least. Miss Marjoribanks had all her wits about her, as ever, fortunately for both.

"Yes, it is me," she said calmly; "I have been taking tea with the Lakes, and I made Mr Cavendish give me his arm home. He did not like being found out, to be sure, but he could not help himself; and we all know about that," Lucilla added, with a smile, taking once more the unfortunate man's arm. "Oh, yes, we all know," said Mrs Centum, with a laugh; but yet, notwithstanding, everybody felt sure that it was all Lucilla's cleverness, and that Barbara Lake was a myth and fiction. And it was thus, with Miss Marjoribanks leaning on his arm, and General Travers, in all the warmth of renewed friendship, guarding him on the other side, that Mr Cavendish, whose head was in a whirl of excitement, and who did not know what he was doing, was led back in triumph past Colonel Chiley's very door, where the Archdeacon was lying in wait to crunch his bones, back from all his aberrations into the very heart of Grange Lane.

Chapter XXIX

Mr Cavendish was led back to his own house that evening by General Travers, whose claim of acquaintance was too decided to be rejected. He never knew very well what passed between the moment when Miss Marjoribanks began to expound to him the urgent necessity that he should confide in her, and the moment in which he found himself in his own house, admitted eagerly by the surprised and anxious servants, and conducted by the energetic soldier. That he had taken leave of Lucilla at her own door, that he had watched her white dress sweep away into the dark garden with a faint sense that it was his only remaining protector who thus left him, and that after that he had smoked a horrible cigar with Mr Centum, and been accompanied home by the old acquaintance, who had turned up at so unlucky a moment, – was all that the poor man was aware of. And yet it is to be supposed that on the whole he behaved himself very much like other people, since General Travers had no distinct idea that his company was undesirable, or that his cordial recognition was anything but welcome. The General, indeed, took it as quite natural, under the circumstances, that Cavendish should be a little confused. A man who is no longer a very young man, and has a character to support, does not care to be found mooning with the object of his affections on a summer evening, like a boy of twenty; and General Travers was perfectly aware that he had thus a very good joke against Cavendish. "It is worth a man's while to set up a bachelor establishment in the country," the General said. "By Jove! I wish I could do it. It makes a fellow feel Arcadian, and ready for anything;" and for his own part he was very ready to seize upon his former acquaintance, a man who belonged to his club, and had a chance to know what he was talking about. "As for Charlie Centum," the soldier said, "what between business and matrimony, he has grown the greatest guy imaginable; and I can't go off directly, you know; and then there's always this business about the depot. It's immense luck to find you here, Cavendish," General Travers added, with flattering cordiality; and if poor Mr Cavendish was not grateful, it certainly was not his friend's fault. He led the way into his house with a glum countenance and a sinking heart, though fortunately the latter was not visible. It was a very nice house, fitted up with all that luxury of comfort which a man who has, as Mrs Centum said, "only himself to look to," can afford to collect around him. Mr Cavendish had only himself, and he had made his habitation perfect, though, on the whole, he did not pass a very great deal of his time at home. He had some nice pictures and a good library, though he was not particularly given to the arts; and he had an admirable cellar, as all the gentlemen owned in Carlingford, though, for his own part, he was very moderate in that point, and did not give himself any airs on the subject. Mr Centum, on the contrary, was one of the men who talk about vintages, and raise expectations never to be carried out. And General Travers could not but feel the force of the contrast as he sat deep into the night, and "talked over everything," with the man who by that time he felt convinced was one of his best friends.

As for Mr Cavendish, it would be very difficult to describe his feelings. He had been knocking about in all sorts of poor places, making clandestine visits to his sister, and hovering round the more than suburban simplicity of Grove Street, and the sense of being once more enveloped and surrounded by all that was pleasant to the eye and comfortable to the outer man was wonderfully consolatory and agreeable. But his mind was in a dreadfully harassed condition all the same. He was preoccupied to the last degree, wondering what Miss Marjoribanks really knew, and how far he had betrayed himself, and to what extent it would be safe, as she herself said, to confide in Lucilla; and at the same time he was obliged to listen to and show a certain interest in the General's stories, and to make now and then a painful effort of mind to recall some of the mutual friends referred to, whose names and persons had in the meantime slipped out of his memory. All the babble of the club, which General Travers felt must be so refreshing to the ears of a rusticated member, fell as flat upon Mr Cavendish, whose mind was full of other matters, as if it had been the merest old woman's gossip, which, to be sure, it slightly resembled in some points. The gallant General made himself so agreeable that he nearly drove the unfortunate man out of his senses, and, when he had exhausted all other means of aggravation, returned with fresh zest to the sentimental circumstances in which, as he supposed, he had found his companion out.