Miss Marjoribanks

Miss Marjoribanks lost her mother when she was only fifteen, and when, to add to the misfortune, she was absent at school, and could not have it in her power to soothe her dear mamma’s last moments, as she herself said. Words are sometimes very poor exponents of such an event: but it happens now and then, on the other hand, that a plain intimation expresses too much, and suggests emotion and suffering which, in reality, have but little, if any, existence. Mrs. Marjoribanks, poor lady, had been an invalid for many years; she had grown a little peevish in her loneliness, not feeling herself of much account in this world. There are some rare natures that are content to acquiesce in the general neglect, and forget themselves when they find themselves forgotten; but it is unfortunately much more usual to take the plan adopted by Mrs. Marjoribanks, who devoted all her powers, during the last ten years of her life, to the solacement and care of that poor self which other people neglected. The consequence was, that when she disappeared from her sofa⁠—except for the mere physical fact that she was no longer there⁠—no one, except her maid, whose occupation was gone, could have found out much difference. Her husband, it is true, who had, somewhere, hidden deep in some secret corner of his physical organisation, the remains of a heart, experienced a certain sentiment of sadness when he reentered the house from which she had gone away forever. But Dr. Marjoribanks was too busy a man to waste his feelings on a mere sentiment. His daughter, however, was only fifteen, and had floods of tears at her command, as was natural at that age.

“My daughter is coming home, Nancy,” said Dr. Marjoribanks. “You will have to make preparations for her immediately. So far as I can make out from this letter, she will arrive tomorrow by the half-past five train.”

“Well, sir,” said Nancy, with the tone of a woman who makes the best of a misfortune, “it ain’t every young lady as would have the sense to fix an hour like that. Ladies is terrible tiresome in that way; they’ll come in the middle o’ the day, when a body don’t know in the world what to have for them; or they’ll come at night, when a body’s tired, and ain’t got the heart to go into a supper. There was always a deal of sense in Miss Lucilla, when she hadn’t got nothing in her head.”

“Just so,” said Dr. Marjoribanks, who was rather relieved to have got through the announcement so easily. “You will see that her room is ready, and everything comfortable; and, of course, tomorrow she and I will dine alone.”

“Yes, sir,” said Nancy; but this assent was not given in the decisive tone of a woman whose audience was over; and then she was seized with a desire to arrange in a more satisfactory manner the cold beef on the sideboard. When she had secured this little interval for thought, she returned again to the table, where her master ate his breakfast, with a presentiment. “If you please, sir,” said Nancy, “not to give you no vexation nor trouble, which everyone knows as it has been the aim o’ my life to spare you, as has so much on your mind.

Miss Marjoribanks did not leave the contralto any time to recover from her surprise; she went up to her direct where she stood, with her song arrested on her lips, as she had risen hastily from the piano. “Is it Rose?” said Lucilla, going forward with the most eager cordiality, and holding out both her hands; though, to be sure, she knew very well it was not Rose, who was about half the height of the singer, and was known to everybody in Mount Pleasant to be utterly innocent of a voice.

“No,” said Miss Lake, who was much astonished and startled and offended, as was unfortunately rather her custom. She was a young woman without any of those instincts of politeness, which make some people pleasant in spite of themselves; and she added nothing to soften this abrupt negative, but drew her hands away from the stranger and stood bolt upright, looking at her, with a burning blush, caused by temper much more than by embarrassment, on her face.

“Then,” said Lucilla, dropping lightly into the most comfortable chair she could get sight of in the bare little parlour, “it is Barbara⁠—and that is a great deal better; Rose is a good little thing, but⁠—she is different, you know. It is so odd you should not remember me; I thought everybody knew me in Carlingford. You know I have been a long time away, and now I have come home for good. Your voice is just the very thing to go with mine: was it not a lucky thing that I should have passed just at the right moment? I don’t know how it is, but somehow these lucky chances always happen to me.

“Lucilla,” cried the unlucky fellow, “is it possible that you really have misunderstood me all this time? Do you mean to say that you don’t know? Oh, Lucilla, listen just five minutes. It isn’t because I am your cousin. I wish to Heaven I was not your cousin, but someone you had never seen before. I mean I want you to consent to⁠—to⁠—to⁠—marry me, Lucilla. That is what I mean. I am called to the bar, and I can work for you, and make a reputation. Lucilla, listen to what I have to say.”

Miss Marjoribanks left her hands in his with a calmness which froze poor Tom’s heart in his breast. She did not even take the trouble to draw them away. “Have you gone out of your senses, Tom?” she asked, in her sensible way; and she lifted her eyes to the face of the poor young fellow who was in love, with an inquiring look, as if she felt a little anxious about him. “If you have any feeling as if fever was coming on,” said Lucilla, “I think you should go upstairs and lie down a little till papa comes in. I heard there had been some cases down about the canal. I hope it is not the assizes that have been too much for you.” When Miss Marjoribanks said this, she herself took fast hold of Tom’s hands with a motherly grasp to feel if they were hot, and looked into his eyes with a certain serious inspection, which, under the circumstances, poor fellow! was enough to drive him out of the little rationality he had left.

Everything was as calm and cheerful and agreeable as if Carlingford had been a social paradise, and Miss Marjoribanks’s drawing-room the seventh heaven of terrestrial harmony. The sky itself was not more peaceful, nor gave less indication of any tempest than did the tranquil atmosphere below, where all the people knew each other, and everybody was friendly. Lucilla had just risen from the piano, and there was a little pause, in which cheers were audible from the garden, and Colonel Chiley, in the midst of his conversation, patted his two hands together; and it was just at that moment that the drawing-room door opened, and Thomas came in, followed by a gentleman. The gentleman was a stranger, whom Miss Marjoribanks had never seen before, and she made a step forward, as was her duty as mistress of the house. But when she had made that one step, Lucilla suddenly stood still, arrested by something more urgent than the arrival of a stranger. Mr. Cavendish, too, had been standing with his face to the door, and had seen the new arrival. He was directly in front of Lucilla, so near her that he could not move without attracting her attention. When Miss Marjoribanks took that step in advance, Mr. Cavendish, as if by the same impulse, suddenly, and without saying a word, turned right round like a man who had seen something terrible, at which he dared not take a second look.