When Miss Marjoribanks had time to consider the prospect which had thus so suddenly opened before her, it also had its difficulties, like everything else in the world. Her marriage now could not be the straightforward business it might have been had it been Mr Ashburton instead of Tom. In that case she would have gone to an established house and life—to take her place in the one and her share in the other, and to find the greater part of her surroundings and duties already fixed for her, which was a thing that would have very greatly simplified the matter. But Tom, who had dashed home from India at full speed as soon as he heard of his uncle's death, had left his profession behind him at Calcutta, and had nothing to do in England, and was probably too old to resume his (non) practice at the bar, even if he had been in the least disposed to do so; while, at the same time, an idle man—a man to be found everlastingly at home—would have been insupportable to Lucilla. Miss Marjoribanks might feel disposed (for everybody's good) to assume the sovereign authority in her own house, but to marry anybody that would be merely an appendage to her was a thing not to be thought of; and as soon as the first preliminaries were arranged her active mind sprang up with redoubled vigour from the maze in which it had been. Her intelligence had suspended, so to speak, all its ordinary operations for twenty-four hours at least, while it was busy investigating the purely personal question: from the moment when the Member for Carlingford was finally elected until Tom Marjoribanks rang the night-bell at the old Doctor's door, Lucilla's thoughts had been in that state of over-stimulation and absorption which is almost as bad as having no power of thought at all. But as soon as the pressure was removed—as soon as it was all over, and the decision made, and no further question was possible—then Miss Marjoribanks's active mind sprang up with renewed energy. For it was not only a new beginning, but everything had to be settled and arranged.
Her mind was full of it while her hands were busy putting away all the Indian presents which Tom had brought—presents which were chronological in their character, and which he had begun to accumulate from the very beginning of his exile. It could not but be touching to Lucilla to see how he had thought of her for all these years; but her mind being, as everybody is aware, of a nobly practical kind, her thoughts, instead of dallying with these tokens of the past, went forward with serious solicitude into the future. The marriage could not take place until the year was out; and there was, accordingly, time to arrange everything, and to settle all the necessary preliminaries to a point as near perfection as is possible to merely human details. Tom, no doubt, was very urgent and pressing, and would have precipitated everything, and had the whole business concluded to-morrow, if he could have had his way. But the fact was that, having once given in to him in the memorable way which we have already recorded, Lucilla did not now, so far as the final arrangements were concerned, make much account of Tom's wishes. Heaven be praised, there was one of the two who knew what was right and proper, and was not to be moved from the correct path by any absurd representations. Miss Marjoribanks was revolving all these important questions when she laid her hand by chance, as people say, upon the Carlingford Gazette, all damp and inky, which had just been laid upon the library table. It contained, of course, all the news of the election, but Lucilla was too well acquainted with that beforehand to think of condescending to derive her information from a newspaper. She looked at the advertisements with an eye which saw all that was there without pausing upon anything in particular. She saw the usual notice about marmalade oranges, and the announcement that young Mr Vincent, who after that made himself so well known in Carlingford, was to preach the next Sunday in Salem Chapel, and all the other important novelties in the place; but naturally she took but a moderate amount of interest in such details as these.
Suddenly, however, Lucilla's eye, which, if it could ever be said to be vacant, had been regarding vacantly the list of advertisements, kindled up, and all its usual energy and intelligence came back to it. Her thoughtful face woke up as from a dream. Her head, which had been drooping in pensive meditation, grew erect—her whole figure expanded. She clasped her hands together, as if in the fervour of the moment, nobody else being present, she could not refrain from shaking hands with herself, and giving vent to a self-congratulation. "It is a special providence," said Lucilla to herself, with her usual piety; and then she folded up the paper in a little square, with the announcement in the middle which had struck her so much, and placed it where Tom could not fail to see it when he came in, and went upstairs with a new and definite direction given to her thoughts. That was how it must be! Lucilla, for her part, felt no difficulty in discerning the leadings of Providence, and she could not but appreciate the readiness with which her desires were attended to, and the prompt clearing-up of her difficulties. There are people whose inclinations Providence does not seem to superintend with such painstaking watchfulness; but then, no doubt, that must be their own fault.
And when Tom came in, they had what Aunt Jemima called "one of their discussions" about their future life, although the only thing in it worthy consideration, so far as Tom was concerned, seemed to be the time when they should be married, which occupied at present all that hero's faculties. "Everything else will arrange itself after, you know," he said, with calm confidence. "Time enough for all the rest. The thing is, Lucilla, to decide when you will leave off those formalities, and let It be. Why shouldn't it be now? Do you think my uncle would wish to keep us unhappy all for an idea?"
"My dear Tom, I am not in the least unhappy," said Lucilla, interrupting him sweetly, "nor you either, unless you tell dreadful stories; and as for poor dear papa," Miss Marjoribanks added, with a sigh, "if we were to do exactly as he wished, I don't think It would ever be. If you were not so foolish, you would not oblige me to say such things. Tom, let us leave off talking nonsense—the thing that we both want is something to do."
"That is what I want," said Tom quickly, "but as for you, Lucilla, you shall do nothing but enjoy yourself and take care of yourself. The idea of you wanting something to do!"
Miss Marjoribanks regarded her betrothed with mild and affectionate contempt as he thus delivered himself of his foolish sentiments. "It is of no use trying to make him understand," she said, with an air of resignation. "Do you know that I have always been doing something, and responsible for something, all my life?"
"Yes, my poor darling," said Tom, "I know; but now you are in my hands I mean to take care of you, Lucilla; you shall have no more anxiety or trouble. What is the good of a man if he can't save the woman he is fond of from all that?" cried the honest fellow—and Lucilla could not but cast a despairing glance round her, as if appealing to heaven and earth. What was to be done with a man who had so little understanding of her, and of himself, and of the eternal fitness of things?
"My dear Tom," she said once more, mildly, "we may have lost some money, but we are very well off, and Providence has been very kind to us. And there are a great many poor people in the world who are not so well off. I have always tried to be of some use to my fellow-creatures," said Lucilla, "and I don't mean, whatever you may say, to give it up now."
"My dearest Lucilla, if it was the poor you were thinking of——! I might have known it was something different from my stupid notions," cried Tom. This kind of adoration was new to Lucilla, notwithstanding her many experiences. And he thought it so good of her to condescend to be good, that she could not help thinking a little better of herself than ordinary, though that, perhaps, was not absolutely needful; and then she proceeded with the elucidation of her views.
"I have been of some use to my fellow-creatures in my way," said Miss Marjoribanks modestly, "but it has been hard work, and people are not always grateful, you know. And then things are a good deal changed in Carlingford. A woman may devote herself to putting some life into society, and give up years of her time, and—and even her opportunities and all that, and do a great deal of good; but yet if she is put aside for a moment, there is an end of it. I have been doing the best I could for Carlingford for ten years," said Lucilla, with a little natural sadness, "and if any one were to examine into it, where is it all now? They have only got into the way of looking to me; and I do believe if you were to go up and down from Elsworthy's to St Roque's, though you might find people at dinner here and there, you would not find a shadow of what could really be called society in all Grange Lane!"
Lucilla paused, for naturally her feelings were moved, and while Tom bent over her with tender and respectful devotion, it was not to be wondered at if Miss Marjoribanks, in the emotion of her heart, should wipe away a tear.
"After working at it for ten years!" said Lucilla; "and now, since poor papa died, who was always full of discrimination——This is what will come of it, Tom," she added solemnly—"they will go back to their old ridiculous parties, as if they had never seen anything better; and they will all break up into little cliques, and make their awful morning calls and freeze one another to death. That will be the end of it all, after one has slaved like a—like a woman in a mill," said the disappointed reformer, "and given up ten years."
"My poor darling!" cried Tom, who would have liked to go and challenge Carlingford for being so insensible to his Lucilla's devotion and cherishing maternal care.
"But if it had been the poor," said Miss Marjoribanks, recovering her spirits a little, "they could not help being the better for what one did for them. They might continue to be as stupid as ever, and ungrateful, and all that; but if they were warm and comfortable, instead of cold and hungry, it would always make a difference. Tom, I will tell you what you will do if you want to please me. You will take all our money and realise it, you know, whatever that means, and go off directly, as fast as the train can carry you, and buy an Estate."
"An estate!" cried Tom, in consternation; and the magnitude of the word was such, and Lucilla was so entirely in earnest, that he jumped from his chair and gazed at her as if constrained, notwithstanding his amazement, to rush off instantly and obey.
"I did not mean just this moment," said Lucilla; "sit down and we can talk it all over, Tom. You know it would be something for you to do; you cannot just go living on like this at your age; you could improve the land, you know, and do all that sort of thing, and the people you could leave to me."
"But Lucilla," said Tom, recovering a little from his consternation, "it is not so easy buying an estate. I mean all that I have to be settled upon you, in case of anything happening. Land may be a safe enough investment; but you know, very often, Lucilla—the fact is, it doesn't pay."
"We could make it pay," said Miss Marjoribanks, with a benevolent smile, "and besides there are estates and estates. I don't want you to go and throw away your money. It was in the Carlingford Gazette this morning, and I can't help feeling it was a special providence. Of course you never looked at it in the paper, though I marked it for you. Tom, it is Marchbank that I want you to buy. You know how papa used to talk of it. He used to say it was just a nice little property that a gentleman could manage. If he had been spared," said Lucilla, putting her handkerchief to her eyes, "and these wicked dreadful people had not failed, nor nothing happened, I know he would have bought it himself. Dear papa! and he would have given it to me; and most likely, so far as one can tell, it would have come to you at the last, and you would have been Marjoribanks of Marchbank, like our great-great-grandpapa; and that is what I want you to do."
Lucilla's proposition, as it thus unfolded itself, took away Tom Marjoribanks's breath, for notwithstanding that it came from a (young) lady, and was confused by some slightly unintelligible conditions about doing good to one's fellow-creatures, it was not a trifling or romantic suggestion. Tom, too, could remember Marchbank, and his uncle's interest in it, and the careful way in which he explained to the ignorant that this was the correct pronunciation of his own name. While Lucilla made her concluding address, Tom seemed to see himself a little fellow, with his eyes and his ears very wide open, trotting about with small steps after the Doctor, as he went over the red-brick house and neglected gardens at Marchbank: it was only to be let then, and had passed through many hands, and was in miserable case, both lands and house. But neither the lands nor the house were bad of themselves, and Tom was, like Lucilla, perfectly well aware that something might be made of them.
This idea gave a new direction to his thoughts. Though he had been brought up to the bar, he had never been a lover of town, and was in reality, like so many young Englishmen, better qualified to be something in the shape of a country gentleman than for any other profession in the world; and he had left his profession behind, and was in most urgent want of something to do. He did not give in at once with a lover's abject submission, but thought it over for twenty-four hours at all his spare moments,—when he was smoking his evening cigar in the garden, and studying the light in his lady's window, and when he ought to have been asleep, and again in the morning when he sallied forth, before Miss Marjoribanks's blinds were drawn up or the house had fairly awoke. He was not a man of brilliant ability, but he had that sure and steady eye for the real secret of a position which must have been revealed to every competent critic by the wonderful clear-sightedness with which he saw, and the wise persistence with which he held to the necessity of an immediate choice between himself and Mr Ashburton. He had seen that there was but one alternative, and he had suffered no delay nor divergence from the question in hand. And it was this same quality which had helped him to the very pretty addition to his small patrimony which he had meant to settle on Lucilla, and which would now make the acquisition of Marchbank an easy thing enough. And though Tom had looked wise on the subject of investment in land, it was a kind of investment in every way agreeable to him. Thus Lucilla's arrow went straight to the mark—straighter even than she had expected; for besides all the other and more substantial considerations, there was to Tom's mind a sweet sense of poetic justice in the thought that, after his poor uncle's failure, who had never thought him good enough for Lucilla, it should be he and no other who would give this coveted possession to his cousin. Had Marchbank been in the market in Dr Marjoribanks's time, it was, as Lucilla herself said, his money that would have bought it; but in such a case, so far as the Doctor was concerned, there would have been little chance for Tom. Now all that was changed, and it was in Tom's hands that the wealth of the family lay. It was he who was the head, and could alone carry out what Lucilla's more original genius suggested. If the Doctor could but have seen it, he who had formed plans so very different—but perhaps by that time Dr Marjoribanks had found out that Providence after all had not been so ill-advised as he once thought in committing to his care such a creative intelligence as that of Lucilla, and withholding from him "the boy."
As for Miss Marjoribanks, after she had made up her mind and stated her conviction, she gave herself no further trouble on the subject, but took it for granted, with that true wisdom which is unfortunately so rare among women. She did not talk about it overmuch, or display any feverish anxiety about Marchbank, but left her suggestion to work, and had faith in Tom. At the same time, the tranquillising sense of now knowing, to a certain extent, what lay before her came into Lucilla's mind. It would be a new sphere, but a sphere in which she would find herself at home. Still near enough to Carlingford to keep a watchful eye upon society and give it the benefit of her experience, and yet at the same time translated into a new world, where her influence might be of untold advantage, as Lucilla modestly said, to her fellow-creatures. There was a village not far from the gates at Marchbank, where every kind of village nuisance was to be found. There are people who are very tragical about village nuisances, and there are other people who assail them with loathing, as a duty forced upon their consciences; but Lucilla was neither of the one way of thinking nor of the other. It gave her the liveliest satisfaction to think of all the disorder and disarray of the Marchbank village. Her fingers itched to be at it—to set all the crooked things straight, and clean away the rubbish, and set everything, as she said, on a sound foundation. If it had been a model village, with prize flower-gardens and clean as Arcadia, the thought of it would not have given Miss Marjoribanks half so much pleasure. The recollection of all the wretched hovels and miserable cottages exhilarated her heart.
"They may be as stupid and ungrateful as they like," she said to herself, "but to be warm and comfortable instead of cold and hungry always makes a difference." Perhaps it was not the highest motive possible, and it might be more satisfactory to some people to think of Lucilla as actuated by lofty sentiments of philanthropy; but to persons acquainted with Miss Marjoribanks's character, her biographer would scorn to make any pretence. What would be the good of a spirit full of boundless activity and benevolent impulses if there was nobody to help?—what would be the use of self-devotion if the race in general stood in no need of charitable ministrations? Lucilla had been of use to her fellow-creatures all her life; and though she was about to relinquish one branch of usefulness, that was not to say that she should be prevented from entering into another. The state of the Marchbank village did her good to the very bottom of her soul. It justified her to herself for her choice of Tom, which, but for this chance of doing good, might perhaps have had the air of a merely selfish personal preference. Now she could regard it in a loftier light, and the thought was sweet to Lucilla; for such a beautiful way of helping her neighbour would no doubt have been to a certain extent impracticable amid the many occupations of the Member's wife.
Perhaps the most difficult thing in Miss Marjoribanks's way at this otherwise satisfactory moment was the difficulty she found in persuading society, first of the reality, and then of the justice, of the step she had taken. Most of them, to tell the truth, had forgotten all about Tom Marjoribanks. It is true that when Lucilla's intentions and prospects were discussed in Grange Lane, as they had been so often, it was not uncommon for people to say, "There was once a cousin, you know"; but nobody had ever given very much heed to the suggestion. When Lucilla went to tell Mrs Chiley of what had happened, she was but inadequately prepared for the surprise with which her intelligence was received. For it all seemed natural enough to Miss Marjoribanks. She had gone on very steadily for a long time, without thinking particularly about anybody, and disposed to accept the most eligible and satisfactory person who happened to present himself; but all the time there had been a warm corner in her heart for Tom. And then the eligible person had not come, and she had been worried and wearied, and had had her losses, like most other people. And it had always been pleasant to remember that there was one man in the world who, if she but held out a finger to him——But then the people in Grange Lane were not capable of discrimination on such a delicate subject, and had never, as was to be expected, had the smallest insight into Lucilla's heart.
"You have something to tell me, Lucilla?" said old Mrs Chiley. "You need not say no, for I can see it in your eyes. And how lucky it is the Colonel is out, and we can have it all to ourselves! Come here and sit by me, and tell me all—every word."
"Dear Mrs Chiley," said Lucilla, "you can always see what one means before one says a word. And it has all happened so suddenly; but the very first thing I thought of doing was to come and tell you."
Mrs Chiley gave her young friend, who was leaning over her, a hug, which was the only answer which could be made to so touching a speech, and drew Lucilla down upon a low chair that had been placed by the side of her sofa. She kept Miss Marjoribanks's hand in her own, and caressed it, and looked at her with satisfaction in every line of her face. After waiting so long, and having so many disappointments, everything was going to turn out so entirely as it ought to do at last.
"I think I know what you are going to tell me, my dear," said Mrs Chiley; "and I am so pleased, Lucilla. I only wonder you did not give me a hint from the very first. You remember I asked you when you came here that snowy evening. I was a hard-hearted old woman, and I dare say you were very vexed; but I am so glad to think that the Colonel never stood out against him, but gave his consent that very day."
This was the moment, if there ever was such a moment, when Lucilla lost courage. Mrs Chiley was so entirely confident as to what was coming, and it was something so different that was really coming; and it was hard upon Miss Marjoribanks to feel that she was about to disappoint everybody's expectations. She had to clear her throat before she spoke—she who was generally so ready for every emergency; and she could not help feeling for the moment as if she was a young girl who had run away with somebody, and deceived all her anxious friends.
"Dear Mrs Chiley, I am afraid I am not going to say what you expected," said Lucilla. "I am very comfortable and happy, and I think it's for the best; and I am so anxious that you should like him; but it is not the person you are thinking of. It is——"
Here the old lady, to Lucilla's surprise, rose up upon her pillows and threw her arms round her, and kissed her over again, and fell a-crying. "I always said how generous you were, Lucilla," cried Mrs Chiley. "I knew it from the first. I was always fond of him, you know; and now that he has been beaten, poor dear, and disappointed, you've gone and made it up to him! Lucilla, other people may say what they like, but it is just what I always expected of you!"
This unlooked-for burst of enthusiasm took Lucilla entirely by surprise. She could not say in reply that Mr Cavendish did not want her to make it up to him; but the fact that this was the only alternative which occurred to Mrs Chiley filled Miss Marjoribanks with a sense of something like positive guilt. She had deceived everybody, and raised false expectations, and how was she to explain herself? It was with humility and embarrassment that she spoke.
"I don't know what you will say when you hear who it really is," she said. "He has been fond of me all this time, though he has been so far away. He went to India because I sent him, and he came back as soon as ever he heard about—what had happened. And what could I do? I could not be so ungrateful or so hard-hearted again, as to send him away?"
"Lucilla, who is it?" said Mrs Chiley, growing pale—for she generally had a little wintry bloom on her cheek like the China roses she was so fond of. "Don't keep me like this in suspense."
"Dear Mrs Chiley," said Lucilla, with the brevity of excitement, "I don't see what other person in the world it could be but my cousin Tom."
Poor Mrs Chiley started, so that the sofa and Lucilla's chair and the very room shook. She said herself afterwards that she felt as if somebody had discharged a pistol into her breast. She was so shocked and startled that she threw off all her coverings and the Afghanistan blanket Mrs Beverley had sent, and put her tottering old feet to the floor; and then she took her young friend solemnly by both her hands.
"Oh, Lucilla, my poor dear!" she cried, "you have gone and done it without thinking what you were doing. You have taken it into your head that it was all over, and that there was nothing more to look for. And you are only nine-and-twenty, Lucilla; and many a girl marries very well—better than common—long after she's nine-and-twenty; and I know for a fact—oh! my poor dear child, I know for a certain fact!—that Mr Ashburton was coming forward. He as good as said it to Lady Richmond, Lucilla. He as good as said, as soon as the election was over—and now you have gone and got impatient, and thrown yourself away!"
Miss Marjoribanks was quite carried away for the moment by this flood of sorrowful eloquence. She was silenced, and had nothing to answer, and accepted it as in some respect the just penalty for the disappointment she was causing everybody. She let Mrs Chiley say out her say, and then she restored the old lady to her sofa, and made her comfortable, and covered her up with all her wraps and blankets. Though she ran on in a feeble strain all the time weeping and lamenting, Lucilla took no notice. She wrapped her old friend up, and put her pillows just as she liked them, and sat down again on the low chair; and by that time the poor old lady had sunk into a faint sob of vexation and disappointment, and had given her remonstrances up.
"Now, I will tell you all about it," said Miss Marjoribanks. "I knew you would be surprised; and if it would be any comfort to you, dear Mrs Chiley, to know that Mr Ashburton did——"
"And you refused him, Lucilla?" Mrs Chiley asked, with horror in her face.
"Ought I to have accepted him when there was somebody I liked better?" said Lucilla, with the force of conscious virtue, "and you used always to say just the contrary. One great thing that supported me was, that you would be sure to understand. I did not know it at the time," said Miss Marjoribanks, with sweet confidence and simplicity, "but I see it all now. Why it never came to anything before, you know, was that I never could in my heart have accepted anybody but Tom."
Mrs Chiley turned round with unaffected surprise, which was not unmingled with awe. Up to this moment she had been under the impression that it was the blindness, and folly, and stupidity of the gentlemen which had kept it from ever coming to anything. It was altogether a new light that broke upon her now, confusing, though on the whole satisfactory; but for the moment she was struck dumb, and had no answer to make.
"I never knew it myself until—quite lately," said Miss Marjoribanks, with confidential tenderness, "and I don't think I could tell it to any one but you. Dear Mrs Chiley, you have always taken such an interest in me! I sent him away, you know, and thought I was only fond of him because he was my cousin. And then there were all the others, and some of them were very nice; but always when it came to the point—And it never came into my head that Tom was at the bottom of it all—never till the other day."
Mrs Chiley was still so much confounded by this unexpected revelation that it was some time before she could find her voice; and even now the light penetrated slowly into her mind, and it was only by degrees that she accepted the new fact thus presented to her faith—that it was not the gentlemen who were to blame—that it was all Lucilla's or rather Tom Marjoribanks's fault.
"And Mr Ashburton, Lucilla?" she asked faintly.
"I am very sorry," said Miss Marjoribanks, "very, very sorry; but I don't think I can blame myself that I gave him encouragement, you know. I may have been foolish at other times, but I am sure I was very careful with him. It was all the election that was to blame. I spoke very frankly to him," Lucilla added, "for I knew he was a man to do me justice; and it will always be a comfort to me to think that we had our—our explanation, you know, before I knew it was Tom."
"Well, Lucilla, it is a great change," said Mrs Chiley, who could not reconcile herself to the new condition of affairs. "I don't mean to pretend that I can make up my mind to it all at once. It seems so strange that you should have been setting your heart on some one all these ten years, and never saying a word; I wonder how you could do it. And when people were always in the hopes that you would marry at home, as it were, and settle in Carlingford. I am sure your poor dear papa would be as much astonished as anybody. And I suppose now he will take you away to Devonshire, where his mother lives, and we shall never see you any more." And once more Mrs Chiley gave a little sob. "The Firs would almost have been as good as Grange Lane," she said, "and the Member for Carlingford, Lucilla!"
As for Miss Marjoribanks, she knelt down by the side of the sofa and took her old friend, as well as the blankets and pillows would permit, into her arms.
"Dear Mrs Chiley, we are going to buy Marchbank and settle," said Lucilla, weeping a little for company. "You could not think I would ever go far away from you. And as for being Member for Carlingford, there are Members for counties too," Miss Marjoribanks said in her excitement. It was a revelation which came out unawares, and which she never intended to utter; but it threw a gleam of light over the new world of ambition and progress which was opened to Lucilla's far-seeing vision; and Mrs Chiley could not but yield to the spell of mingled awe and sympathy which thrilled through her as she listened. It was not to be supposed that what Lucilla did was done upon mere unthinking impulse; and when she thought of Marchbank, there arose in Mrs Chiley's mind "the slow beginnings of content."
"But, Lucilla," the old lady said with solemnity, as she gave her a last kiss of reconciliation and peace, "if all Grange Lane had taken their oaths to it, I never could have believed, had you not told me, that, after all, it was to be Tom!”