Chapter L
Mr Ashburton went away from Lucilla's side, thinking to come back again, and clear everything up: but he did not come back. Though he heard nothing, and saw nothing, that could throw any distinct light on the state of her mind, yet instinct came to his aid, it is to be supposed, in the matter. He did not return: and Lucilla sat on her sofa with her hands clasped together to support her, and her heart leaping in her very mouth. She was in a perfect frenzy of suspense, listening with her whole heart and soul; but that did not prevent the same crowd of thoughts which had been persecuting her for twenty-four hours from keeping up their wild career as before. What reason had she to suppose that "any one" had arrived? Who could arrive in that accidental way, without a word of warning? And what possible excuse had she to offer to herself for sending the new member for Carlingford – a man so excellent and honourable and eligible – away? The minutes, or rather the seconds, passed over Miss Marjoribanks like hours, as she sat thus waiting, not daring to stir lest the slightest movement might keep from her ears some sound from below, till at last the interval seemed so long that her heart began to sink, and her excitement to fail. It could not be any one – if it had been any one, something more must have come of it before now. It must have been Lydia Richmond coming to see her sister next door, or somebody connected with the election, or —
When she got as far as this, Lucilla's heart suddenly mounted up again with a spring into her ears. She heard neither words nor voice, but she heard something which had as great an effect upon her as either could have had. On the landing half-way up the stairs, there had stood in Dr Marjoribanks's house from time immemorial a little old-fashioned table, with a large china bowl upon it, in which the cards of visitors were placed. It was a great bowl, and it was always full, and anybody rushing upstairs in a reckless way might easily upset table and cards and all in their progress. This was what happened while Lucilla sat listening. There was a rumble, a crash, and a sound as of falling leaves, and it made her heart, as we have said, jump into her ears. "It is the table and all the cards," said Lucilla – and in that moment her composure came back to her as by a miracle. She unclasped her hands, which she had been holding pressed painfully together by way of supporting herself, and she gave a long sigh of unutterable relief, and her whirl of thought stopped and cleared up with an instantaneous rapidity. Everything seemed to be explained by that sound; and there never was a greater change upon the looks and feelings of any one in this world than that which passed upon the looks and feelings of Lucilla, in the interval between the drawing up of that cab and the rush of Tom Marjoribanks at the drawing-room door.
For after the commotion on the staircase Lucilla had no further doubt on the subject. She even had the strength to get up to meet him, and hold out her hands to him by way of welcome – but found herself, before she knew how, in the arms of a man with a beard, who was so much changed in his own person that he ventured to kiss her, which was a thing Tom Marjoribanks, though her cousin, had never dared to do before. He kissed her – such was his audacity; and then he held her at arm's length to have a good look at her; and then, according to all appearance, would have repeated his first salutation, but that Lucilla had come to herself, and took the reins at once into her hand.
"Tom!" she said, "of course it is you; nobody else would have been so impertinent. When did you come? Where did you come from? Who could ever have thought of your appearing like this, in such an altogether unexpected – ?"
"Unexpected!" said Tom, with an astonished air. "But I suppose you had other things to think of. Ah, Lucilla, I could not write to you. I felt I ought to be beside you, trying if there was not something I could do. My mother told you, of course; but I could not trust myself to write to
you
."
Then Lucilla saw it all, and that Aunt Jemima had meant to do Mr Ashburton a good turn. And she was not grateful to her aunt, however kind her intentions might have been. But Tom was holding her hand, and looking into her face while this thought passed through her mind, and Miss Marjoribanks was not the woman, under any circumstances, to make dispeace.
"I am sure I am very glad," said Lucilla. "I would say you were changed, but only of course that would make you think how I am changed; and though one knows one has gone off – "
"I never saw you look so nice all your life," cried Tom energetically; and he took hold of both her hands, and looked into her face more and more. To be sure he had a kind of right, being a cousin, and newly returned after so long an absence; but it was embarrassing all the same.
"Oh, Tom, don't say so," cried Lucilla; "if you but knew how different the house is, and everything so altered – and dear papa!"
It was natural, and indeed it was only proper, that Miss Marjoribanks should cry – which she did abundantly, partly for grief, and partly because of the flutter of agitation, and something like joy, in which she was, and which, considering that she had always frankly owned that she was fond of Tom, was quite natural too. She cried with honest abandonment, and did not take much notice what her cousin was doing to comfort her, though indeed he applied himself to that benevolent office in the most anxious way.
"Don't cry, Lucilla," he said, "I can't bear it. It don't look natural to see you cry. My poor uncle was an old man, and you were always the best daughter in the world – "
"Oh, Tom! sometimes I don't think so," sobbed Lucilla; "sometimes I think if I had sat up that last night – And you don't know how good he was. It was me he was thinking of, and never himself. When he heard the money was lost, all that he said was, Poor Lucilla! You rang his bell though it is the night-bell, and nobody ever touches it now; I knew it could be nobody but you; and to see you again brings up everything so distinctly. Oh, Tom! he was always very fond of you."
"Lucilla," said Tom Marjoribanks, "you know I always had a great regard for my uncle. But it was not for him I came back. He was never half so fond of me as I am of you. You know that as well as I do. There never was a time that I would not have gone to the other end of the world if you had told me; and I have done it as near as possible. I went to India because you sent me away. And I have come back – "
"You have not come back only for an hour, I hope?" said Miss Marjoribanks, with momentary impatience; "you are not obliged to talk of everything all in a moment – and when one has not even got over one's surprise at seeing you. When
did
you come back? When did you have anything to eat? You want your breakfast or your lunch or something; and, Tom! the idea of sitting here talking to me, and talking nonsense, when you have not seen your mother. She is in her own room, you unnatural boy – the blue room, next to what used to be yours. To think Aunt Jemima should be in the house, and you should sit here talking nonsense to me!"
"This minute," said Tom apologetically; but he drew his chair in front of Miss Marjoribanks, so that she could not get away. "I have come back to stay as long as you will let me," he said; "don't go away yet. Look here, Lucilla – if you had married, I would have tried to bear it; but as long as you are not married, I can't help feeling as if there might be a chance for me yet. And that is why I have come home. I met somebody coming downstairs."
"Tom," said Miss Marjoribanks, "it is dreadful to see that you have come back just as tiresome as ever. I always said I would not marry for ten years. If you mean to think I have never had any opportunities – "
"Lucilla," said Tom, and there was decision in his eye, "somebody came downstairs as I came in. I want to know whether it is to be him or me!"
"Him – or you!" said Lucilla, in dismay. Blunderer as he was, he had gone direct to the very heart of the question, and it was impossible not to tremble a little in the presence of such straightforward clear-sightedness. Miss Marjoribanks had risen up to make her escape as soon as it should be possible, but she was so much struck by Tom's unlooked-for perspicuity, that she sat down again in her consternation. "I think you are going out of your mind," she said. "What do you know about the gentleman who went downstairs? I am not such a wonderful beauty, nor such a witch, that everybody who sees me should want to – to marry me. Don't talk any more nonsense, but let me go and get you something to eat."
"They would if they were of my way of thinking," said the persistent Tom. "Lucilla, you shan't go. This is what I have come home for. You may as well know at once, and then there can be no mistake about it. My poor uncle is gone, and you can't be left by yourself in the world. Will you have him or me?"
"I am not going to be tyrannised over like this," said Lucilla, with indignation, again rising, though he still held her hands. "You talk as if you had just come for a call, and had everything to say in a moment. When a man comes off a long journey it is his breakfast he wants, and not a – not anything else that I know of. Go up to your mother, and let me go."
"Will you have him or me?" repeated Tom. It was not wisdom, is was instinct, that made him thus hold fast by his text; and as for Lucilla, nothing but the softened state in which she was, nothing but the fact that it was Tom Marjoribanks who had been ten years away, and was always ridiculous, could have kept her from putting down at once such an attempt to coerce her. But the truth was, that Miss Marjoribanks did not feel her own mistress at that moment, and perhaps that was why he had the audacity to repeat, "Will you have him or me?"
Then Lucilla found herself fairly driven to bay. "Tom!" she said, with a solemnity that overwhelmed him for the moment, for he thought at first, with natural panic, that it was himself who was being rejected, "I would not have
him
if he were to go down on his knees. I know he is very nice and very agreeable, and the best man – And I am sure I ought to do it," said Miss Marjoribanks, with a mournful sense of her own weakness; "and everybody will expect it of me; but I am not going to have him, and I never meant it, whatever you or anybody may say."
When Lucilla had made this decisive utterance she turned away with a certain melancholy majesty to go and see after lunch – for he had loosed her hand and fallen back in consternation, thinking for the moment that it was all over. Miss Marjoribanks sighed, and turned round, not thinking of Tom, who was safe enough, but with a natural regret for the member for Carlingford, who now, poor man, was as much out of the question as if he had been dead and buried. But before she reached the door Tom had recovered himself. He went up to her in his ridiculous way without the slightest regard either for the repast she was so anxious to prepare for him, or for his mother's feelings, or indeed for anything else in the world, except the one thing which had brought him, as he said, home.
"Then, Lucilla, after all, it is to be me," he said, taking her to him, and arresting her progress as if she had been a baby; and though he had such a beard, and was twice as big and strong as he used to be, there were big tears in the great fellow's eyes. "It is to be me after all," said Tom, looking at her in a way that startled Lucilla. "Say it is to be me!"
Miss Marjoribanks had come through many a social crisis with dignity and composure. She had never yet been known to fail in an emergency. She had managed Mr Cavendish, and, up to the last moment, Mr Ashburton, and all the intervening candidates for her favour, with perfect self-control and command of the situation. Perhaps it was because, as she had herself said, her feelings had never been engaged. But now, when it was only Tom – he whom, once upon a time, she had dismissed with affectionate composure, and given such excellent advice to, and regarded in so motherly a way – all Lucilla's powers seemed to fail her. It is hard to have to wind up with such a confession after having so long entertained a confidence in Lucilla which nothing seemed likely to impair. She broke down just at the moment when she had most need to have all her wits about her. Perhaps it was her past agitation which had been too much for her. Perhaps it was the tears in Tom Marjoribanks's eyes. But the fact was that Lucilla relinquished her superior position for the time being, and suffered him to make any assertion he pleased, and was so weak as to cry, for the second time, too – which, of all things in the world, was surely the last thing to have been expected of Miss Marjoribanks at the moment which decided her fate.
Lucilla cried, and acquiesced, and thought of her father and of the Member for Carlingford, and gave to each a tear and a regret; and she did not even take the trouble to answer any question, or to think who it was she was leaning on. It was to be Tom after all – after all the archdeacons, doctors, generals, members of Parliament – after the ten years and more in which she had not gone off – after the poor old Doctor's grudge against the nephew whom he did not wish to inherit his wealth, and Aunt Jemima's quiet wiles, and attempt to disappoint her boy. Fate and honest love had been waiting all the time till their moment came; and now it was not even necessary to say anything about it. The fact was so clear that it did not require stating. It was to be Tom after all.
To do him justice, Tom behaved at this moment, in which affairs were left in his hands, as if he had been training for it all his life. Perhaps it was the first time in which he had done anything absolutely without a blunder. He had wasted no time, and no words, and left no room for consideration, or for that natural relenting towards his rival which was inevitable as soon as Mr Ashburton was off the field. He had insisted, and he had perceived that there was but one alternative for Lucilla. Now that all was over, he took her back to her seat, and comforted her, and made no offensive demonstrations of triumph. "It is to be me after all!" he repeated; and it was utterly impossible to add anything to the eloquent brevity of this succinct statement of the case.
"Tom," said Miss Marjoribanks, when she had a little recovered, "if it is to be you, that is no reason why you should be so unnatural. Go up directly and see your mother. What will Aunt Jemima think of me if she knows I have let you stay talking nonsense here?"
"Yes, Lucilla – this moment," said Tom; but all the same he showed not the slightest inclination to go away. He did not quite believe in it as yet, and could not help feeling as if, should he venture to leave her, the whole fabric of his incredible good fortune must dissolve and melt away. As for Lucilla, her self-possession gradually came back to her when the crisis was over, and she felt that her involuntary abdication had lasted long enough, and that it was full time to take the management of affairs back into her own hands.
"You shall go
now
," she said, drying her eyes, "or else you cannot stay here. I thought of letting you stay in the house, as Aunt Jemima is with me; but if you do not mean to go and tell your mother, I will tell Nancy to send your things up to the Blue Boar. Ring the bell, please; if you will not ring the bell, I will do it myself, Tom. You may say what you like, but I know you are famishing; and Aunt Jemima is in the blue room, next door to – Oh, here is Nancy. It is Mr Tom, who has come home," said Lucilla hastily, not without a rising colour; for it was hard to explain why, when his mother was in the blue room all this time, he should have stayed here.
"Yes, Miss Lucilla – so I heard," said Nancy, dropping a doubtful curtsey. And then only Tom was persuaded, and bethought himself of his natural duty, and rushed upstairs. He seized Nancy's hand, and shook it violently, as he passed her, to her great consternation. The moment of his supremacy was over. It was to be Tom after all; but Lucilla had recovered her self-possession, and taken the helm in her hand again, and Tom was master of the situation no more.
"Yes, it is Mr Tom," said Lucilla, shaking her head with something between a smile and a sigh. "It could be nobody but him that would ring
that
bell, and upset all the cards. I hope he has not broken dear papa's punch-bowl that he used to be so fond of. He must have something to eat, Nancy, though he is such an awkward boy."
"I don't see nothing like a boy in him," said Nancy; "he's big and stout, and one o' them awful beards. There's been a deal of changes since he went away; but if he's new comed off that terrible long journey, it is but natural, as you say, Miss Lucilla, that he should want something to eat."
And then Miss Marjoribanks made various suggestions, which were received still doubtfully by her prime minister. Nancy, to tell the truth, did not like the turn things were taking. Lucilla's maiden household had been on the whole getting along very comfortably, and there was no telling how long it might have lasted without any new revolution. To be sure, Mr Ashburton had looked dangerous, but Nancy had seen a great many dangers of that kind blow over, and was not easily alarmed. Mr Tom, however, was a very different person; and Nancy was sufficiently penetrating to see that something had happened. Therefore, she received very coldly Lucilla's suggestions about lunch. "It ain't like the old times," she said at last, "when there was always something as one could put to the fire in a hurry;" and Nancy stood turning round the handle of the door in her hand, and contemplating the changed state of affairs with a sigh.
"That would be all very true if you were like anybody else," said Lucilla; "but I hope you would not like to send Mr Tom off to the Blue Boar. After all, perhaps it is better to have a – a gentleman in the house. I know you always used to think so. They are a great deal of trouble; but – for some things, you know – " said Lucilla; "and then Mr Tom is not just like other people; and whatever happens, Nancy, you are an old dear, and it shall never make any difference between you and me."
When she had said these words, Lucilla gave her faithful servant a hug, and sent her off to look after Tom Marjoribanks's meal; and then she herself went half-way downstairs and picked up the cards that were still scattered about the landing, and found with satisfaction that the Doctor's old punch-bowl was not broken. All Tom's things were lying below in the hall – heaps of queer Indian-looking baggage – tossed down anyhow in a corner, as if the owner had been in much too great a hurry to think of any secondary circumstances. "And it was there he met poor Mr Ashburton," said Lucilla to herself, with a certain pathos. There it was indeed that the encounter had taken place. They had seen each other but for a moment, but that moment had been enough to send the Member for Carlingford away dejected, and to impress upon Tom's mind the alternative that it was either to be "him or me." Miss Marjoribanks contemplated the spot with a certain tender sentimental interest, as any gentle moralist might look at a field of battle. What feelings must have been in the minds of the two as they met and looked at each other! What a dread sense of