Part 24 (1/2)
”_I_ entertain such a profane idea!” said Mr Cavendish; but he was considerably embarra.s.sed, and he was a great deal stouter, and altogether different from what he used to be, and he had not the light hand of his youth for a compliment. And then he sat down on the chair Thomas had given him; and he looked uncomfortable, to say the least of it; and he was getting large in dimensions and a little red in the face, and had by no means the air of thinking that it didn't matter for a gentleman. As for Miss Marjoribanks, it would be impossible to say what mists of illusion dropped away from her mind at the sight of him. Even while she smiled upon the new-comer, she could not but ask herself, with momentary dismay--Had _she_ really gone off as much in the same time?
”I have been looking for you,” Miss Marjoribanks resumed; ”I waited in for you Tuesday and Wednesday, and it is so odd you should have come just at this minute. Aunt Jemima, this is Mr Cavendish, whom you have heard so much about--and don't go, please, Mr Ashburton--you two must know each other. You will be hearing of each other constantly; and I suppose you will have to shake hands or something on the hustings--so it will be much the best to begin it here.”
But the two candidates did not shake hands: they bowed to each other in an alarming way, which did not promise much for their future brotherliness, and then they both stood bolt upright and stared at Miss Marjoribanks, who had relapsed, in the pleasantest way in the world, into her easy-chair.
”Now, please sit down and talk a little,” said Lucilla; ”I am so proud of having you both together. There never has been anybody in the world that I have missed so much as _you_--you knew that when you went away, but you didn't mind. Mr Ashburton is very nice, but he is of no use to speak of in an evening,” said Miss Marjoribanks, turning a reflective glance upon her own candidate with a certain sadness; and then they both laughed as if it was a joke; but it was no joke, as one of them at least must have known.
”Lucilla,” said Mrs John, with consternation, ”I never heard anybody talk as you do; I am sure Mr Ashburton is the very best of society, and as for Mr Cavendish----”
”Dear Aunt Jemima,” said Lucilla, ”would you mind ringing the bell? I have been sitting to Maria Brown, and I am almost fainting. I wish you gentlemen would sit to her; it would please her, and it would not do _you_ much harm; and then for your const.i.tuents, you know----”
”I hope you don't wish me to look like one of Maria Brown's photographs to my const.i.tuents,” said Mr Cavendish; ”but then I am happy to say they all know me pretty well.” This was said with a slight touch of gentlemanly spite, if there is such a thing; for, after all, he _was_ an old power in Carlingford, though he had been so long away.
”Yes,” said Lucilla reflectively, ”but you are a little changed since then; a little perhaps--just a little--stouter, and----”
”Gone off?” said Mr Cavendish, with a laugh; but he felt horribly disconcerted all the same, and savage with Miss Marjoribanks, and could not think why ”that fellow” did not go away. What had _he_ to do in Lucilla's drawing-room? what did he mean by sitting down again and talking in that measured way to the old lady, as if all the ordinary rules of good breeding did not point out to him that he should have gone away and left the field clear?
”Oh, you know it does not matter for a gentleman,” said Lucilla; and then she turned to Mr Ashburton--”I am sure the Major wants to see you, and he thinks that it was he who put it into your head to stand. He was here that day at lunch, you know, and it was something he said----”
”Quite true,” said Mr Ashburton in his business way. ”I shall go to see him at once. Thank you for telling me of it, Miss Marjoribanks; I shall go as soon as I leave here.”
And then Mr Cavendish laughed. ”This is what I call interesting,” he said. ”I hope Mr Ashburton sees the fun; but it is trying to an old friend to hear of _that_ day at lunch, you know. I remember when these sort of allusions used to be pleasant enough; but when one has been banished for a thousand years----”
”Yes,” said Lucilla, ”one leaves all that behind, you know--one leaves ever so many things behind. I wish we could always be twenty, for my part. I always said, you know, that I should be gone off in ten years.”
”Was it the only fib you ever told that you repeat it so?” said Mr Cavendish; and it was with this pretty speech that he took her downstairs to the well-remembered luncheon. ”But you _have_ gone off in some things when you have to do with a prig like that,” he said in her ear, as they went down together, ”and cast off old friends. It was a thing a fellow did not expect of _you_.”
”I never cast off old friends,” said Miss Marjoribanks. ”We shall look for you on Thursday, you know, all the same. Must you go, Mr Ashburton, when lunch is on the table? But then, to be sure, you will be in time at the Browns',” said Lucilla sweetly, and she gave the one rival her hand while she held the arm of the other, at the door of the dining-room, in which Mr Ashburton had gallantly deposited Aunt Jemima before saying good-bye. They were both looking a little black, though the gloom was moderate in Mr Ashburton's case; but as for Lucilla, she stood between them a picture of angelic sweetness and goodness, giving a certain measure of her sympathy to both--Woman the Reconciler, by the side of those other characters of Inspirer and Consoler, of which the world has heard. The two inferior creatures scowled with politeness at each other, but Miss Marjoribanks smiled upon them both. Such was the way in which she overcame the difficulties of the meeting. Mr Ashburton went away a little annoyed, but still understanding his instructions, and ready to act upon them in that businesslike way he had, and Mr Cavendish remained, faintly rea.s.sured in the midst of his soreness and mortification, by at least having the field to himself and seeing the last (for the present) of his antagonist--which was a kind of victory in its way.
”I thought I knew you better than to think you ever would have anything to do with _that_ sort of thing,” said Mr Cavendish. ”There are people, you know, whom I could have imagined--but a prig like that.” He became indeed quite violent, as Aunt Jemima said afterwards, and met with that lady's decided disapproval, as may be supposed.
”Mr Ashburton is very well-bred and agreeable,” Mrs John said, with emphasis. ”I wish all the young men I see nowadays were as nice.”
”Young men!” said Mr Cavendish. ”Is that what people call young nowadays? And he must be insane, you know, or he would never dream of representing a town without saying a single word about his principles.
I dare say he thinks it is original,” said the unhappy man. He thought he was pointing out his rival's weakness to Lucilla, and he went on with energy--”I know you better than to think you can like that milk-and-water sort of thing.”
”Oh, I don't pretend to know anything about politics,” said Lucilla. ”I hear you gentlemen talk, but I never pretend to understand. If we were not to leave you _that_ all to yourselves, I don't know what you could find to do,” Miss Marjoribanks added compa.s.sionately; and as she spoke she looked so like the Lucilla of old, who had schemed and plotted for Mr Cavendish, that he could not believe in her desertion in his heart.
”That is a delusion like the going off,” he said. ”I can't believe you have gone over to the enemy. When I remember how I have been roving about all those ten years, and how different it might have been, and whose fault it all was----”
This Mr Cavendish said in a low voice, but it did not the less horrify Aunt Jemima, who felt prepared for any atrocity after it. She would have withdrawn, in justice to her own sense of propriety; but then she thought it was not impossible that he might propose to Lucilla on the spot, or take her hand or something, and for propriety's sake she stayed.
”Yes,” said Lucilla--and her heart did for one little moment give a faint thump against her breast. She could not help thinking what a difference it might have made to him, poor fellow, had he been under her lawful and righteous sway these ten years. But as she looked at him it became more and more apparent to Miss Marjoribanks that Mr Cavendish _had_ gone off, whatever she herself might have done. The outlines of his fine figure had changed considerably, and his face was a little red, and he had the look of a man whose circ.u.mstances, spiritual and temporal, would not quite bear a rigid examination. As she looked at him her pity became tinged by a certain shade of resentment to think that after all it was his own fault. She could not, notwithstanding her natural frankness of expression, say to him, ”You foolish soul, why didn't you marry me somehow, and make a man of yourself?” Lucilla carried honesty very far, but she could not go as far as that. ”Yes,”
she said, turning her eyes upon him with a sort of abstract sympathy, and then she added softly, ”Have you ever seen Her again?” with a lowering of her voice.
This interesting question, which utterly bewildered Aunt Jemima, drove Mr Cavendish wild with rage. Mrs John said afterwards that she felt a s.h.i.+ver go through her as he took up the carving-knife, though it was only to cut some cold beef. He grew white all at once, and pressed his lips tightly together, and fixed his eyes on the wall straight before him. ”I did not think, after what I once said to you, Miss Marjoribanks, that you would continue to insult my judgment in that way,” he said, with a chill which fell upon the whole table, and took the life out of everything, and dimmed the very fire in the chimney. And after that the conversation was of a sufficiently ordinary description until they went back again into the drawing-room, by which time Mr Cavendish seemed to have concluded that it was best to pocket the affront.
”I am going to begin my canva.s.s to-morrow,” he said. ”I have not seen anybody yet. I have n.o.body but my sister to take _me_ in hand, you know.
There was once a time when it might have been different”--and he gave Lucilla a look which she thought on the whole it was best to meet.