Part 25 (1/2)
”Brilliant!” said Mr Cavendish, ”I should think not. It is Lucilla Marjoribanks who is putting him up to it. You know she had an old grudge at me.”
”Oh, nonsense about Lucilla,” said Mr Centum. ”I can tell you Ashburton is not at all a contemptible adversary. He is going to work in the cunningest way--not a woman's sort of thing, and he's not a ladies' man like you,” the banker added, with a laugh.
”But I am afraid you can't go in for that sort of thing as you used to do, Cavendish. You should marry, and settle, and become a steady member of society, now you've grown so stout.” This was the kind of way in which he was addressed even by his own supporter, who uttered another great laugh as he went off upon his busy way. It was a sort of thing Mr Cavendish was not used to, and he felt it accordingly. To be sure he knew that he was ten years older, and that there were several things which he could not do with the same facility as in his youth. But he had saved up Carlingford in his imagination as a spot in which he would always be young, and where n.o.body should find out the difference; and instead of that, it was precisely in Carlingford that he was fated to hear how changed he was, with a frankness which only old friends would have been justified in using. As for Lucilla Marjoribanks, she was rather better looking than otherwise, and absolutely had not gone off.
It did not occur to Mr Cavendish that this might be because Lucilla at present was not still so old as he had been ten years ago, in the period which he now considered his youth. He was rather disposed, on the contrary, to take a moral view, and to consider that it was her feminine incapacity for going too far, which had kept years and amus.e.m.e.nts from having their due effect upon Miss Marjoribanks. And, poor fellow, he _had_ gone too far. He had not been as careful in his life as he might have been had he stayed at Carlingford; and now he was paying the penalty. Such was the edifying state of mind which he had come to when he reached the top of Grove Street. And there a waft of soft recollections came across his mind. In the absence of all sympathy he could not help turning back to the thought of the enchantress of old who used to sing to him, and listen to him, and storm at him. Probably he would have ended by strolling along the familiar street, and canva.s.sing for Mr Lake's vote, which would have done him no good in Carlingford, but just then Dr Marjoribanks stopped in his brougham. The Doctor was looking very strange that morning, though n.o.body had particularly remarked it--perhaps because he smoothed his countenance when he was out of the brougham, which was his refuge when he had anything to think about. But he stopped suddenly to speak to Mr Cavendish, and perhaps he had not time to perform that ceremony. He looked dark and cloudy, and constrained, and as if he forced himself to speak; which, to be sure, under the circ.u.mstances, was not so very strange.
”I am very glad to see you,” the Doctor said, ”though you were a day too late, you know. Why didn't you give us warning before we all went and committed ourselves? If we had known that you were coming----”
”Ah, that's what old Brown said,” said Mr Cavendish, with a slight shrug of his shoulders; which was imprudent, for the Major was not so old as the Doctor, and besides was a much less important man in Grange Lane.
”So you have been to see old Brown,” said Dr Marjoribanks, in his dry way. ”He always was a great admirer of yours. I can't wish you luck, you know, for if you win we lose----”
”Oh, I don't want you to wish me luck. I don't suppose there can be much comparison between my chance and that of a new man whom n.o.body ever heard of in my time,” said the candidate for Carlingford. ”I thought you Scotchmen, Doctor, always liked to be on the winning side.”
”We've a way of making our side the winning side,” said Dr Marjoribanks grimly, for he was touchy where his nationality was concerned. ”Health all right, I hope?” he added, looking at Mr Cavendish with that critical medical glance which shows that a verbal response is quite unnecessary.
This time there was in the look a certain insinuation of doubt on the subject, which was not pleasant. ”You are getting stout, I see,” Dr Marjoribanks added--not laughing, but as if that too was poor Mr Cavendish's fault.
”Yes, I'm very well,” he answered curtly; but the truth was that he did not feel sure that he was quite well after he had seen the critical look in Dr Marjoribanks's eye.
”You young men always go too fast,” said the Doctor, with a strange little smile; but the term at least was consolatory; and after that Doctor Marjoribanks quite changed his tone. ”Have you heard Woodburn talking of that great crash in town?” he said--”that India house, you know--I suppose it's quite true?”
”Quite true,” said Mr Cavendish, promptly, and somehow he felt a pleasure in saying it. ”I got all the particulars to-day in one of my letters--and lots of private people involved, which is always the way with these old houses,” he added, with a mixture of curiosity and malice--”widows, and all sorts of superannuated folks.”
”It's a great pity,” said the Doctor: ”I knew old Lichfield once, the chief partner--I am very sorry to hear it's true;” and then the two shook hands, and the brougham drove on. As for Mr Cavendish, he made up his mind at once that the Doctor was involved, and was not sorry, and felt that it was a sort of judicial recompense for his desertion of his friends. And he went home to tell his sister of it, who shared in his sentiments. And then it was not worth while going out any more that day--for the electioneering agent, who knew all about it, was not coming till the last train. ”I suppose I shall have to work when he is here,”
Mr Cavendish said. And in the meantime he threw himself into an easy chair. Perhaps that was why he was getting so stout.
And in the meantime the Doctor went on visiting his patients. When he came back to his brougham between his visits, and went bowling along in that comfortable way, along the familiar roads, there was a certain glumness upon his face. He was not a demonstrative man, but when he was alone you could tell by certain lines about the well-worn cordage of his countenance whether all was right with the Doctor; and it was easy to see just at this moment that all was not right with him. But he did not say anything about it when he got home; on the contrary, he was just as usual, and told his daughter all about his encounter with Mr Cavendish.
”A man at his time of life has no right to get fat--it's a sort of thing I don't like to see. And he'll never be a ladies' man no more, Lucilla,”
said the Doctor, with a gleam of humour in his eye.
”He is exactly like George the Fourth, papa,” said Miss Marjoribanks; and the Doctor laughed as he sat down to dinner. If he had anything on his mind he bore it like a hero, and gave no sign; but then, as Mrs John very truly remarked, when a man does not disclose his annoyances they always tell more upon him in the end.
_Chapter XLII_
There were a great many reasons why this should be a critical period in Miss Marjoribanks's life. For one thing, it was the limit she had always proposed to herself for her term of young-ladyhood; and naturally, as she outgrew the age for them, she felt disposed to put away childish things. To have the control of society in her hands was a great thing; but still the mere means, without any end, was not worth Lucilla's while--and her Thursdays were almost a bore to her in her present stage of development. They occurred every week, to be sure, as usual; but the machinery was all perfect, and went on by itself, and it was not in the nature of things that such a light adjunct of existence should satisfy Lucilla, as she opened out into the ripeness of her thirtieth year. It was this that made Mr Ashburton so interesting to her, and his election a matter into which she entered so warmly, for she had come to an age at which she might have gone into Parliament herself had there been no disqualification of s.e.x, and when it was almost a necessity for her to make some use of her social influence. Miss Marjoribanks had her own ideas in respect to charity, and never went upon ladies' committees, nor took any further share than what was proper and necessary in parish work; and when a woman has an active mind, and still does not care for parish work, it is a little hard for her to find a ”sphere.” And Lucilla, though she said nothing about a sphere, was still more or less in that condition of mind which has been so often and so fully described to the British public--when the ripe female intelligence, not having the natural resource of a nursery and a husband to manage, turns inwards, and begins to ”make a protest” against the existing order of society, and to call the world to account for giving it no due occupation--and to consume itself. She was not the woman to make protests, nor claim for herself the doubtful honours of a false position; but she felt all the same that at her age she had outlived the occupations that were sufficient for her youth. To be sure, there were still the dinners to attend to, a branch of human affairs worthy of the weightiest consideration, and she had a house of her own, as much as if she had been half a dozen times married; but still there are instincts which go even beyond dinners, and Lucilla had become conscious that her capabilities were greater than her work. She was a Power in Carlingford, and she knew it; but still there is little good in the existence of a Power unless it can be made use of for some worthy end.
She was coming up Grange Lane rather late one evening, pondering upon these things--thinking within herself compa.s.sionately of poor Mr Cavendish, a little in the same way as he had been thinking of her, but from the opposite point of view. For Lucilla could not but see the ant.i.thesis of their position, and how he was the foolish apprentice who had chosen his own way and was coming to a bad end, while she was the steady one about to ride by in her Lord Mayor's coach. And Miss Marjoribanks was thinking at the same time of the other candidate, whose canva.s.s was going on so successfully; and that, after the election and all the excitement was over, she would feel a blank--and Lucilla did not see how the blank was to be filled up as she looked into the future; for, as has been said, parish work was not much in her way, and for a woman who feels that she is a Power, there are so few other outlets. She was a little disheartened as she thought it all over. Gleams of possibility, it is true, crossed her mind, such as that of marrying the member for Carlingford, for instance, and thus beginning a new and more important career; but she was too experienced a woman not to be aware by this time, that possibilities which did not depend upon herself alone had better not be calculated upon. And there did occur to her, among other things, the idea of making a great Experiment which could be carried out only by a woman of genius--of marrying a poor man, and affording to Carlingford and England an example which might influence unborn generations. Such were the thoughts that were pa.s.sing through her mind when, to her great surprise, she came up to her father, walking up Grange Lane over the dirty remains of the snow--for there was a great deal of snow that year. It was so strange a sight to see Dr Marjoribanks walking that at the first glance Lucilla was startled, and thought something was the matter; but, of course, it all arose from a perfectly natural and explainable cause.
”I have been down to see Mrs Chiley,” said the Doctor; ”she has her rheumatism very bad again; and the horse has been so long out that I thought I would walk home. I think the old lady is a little upset about Cavendish, Lucilla. He was always a pet of hers.”
”Dear Mrs Chiley! she is not very bad, I hope?” said Miss Marjoribanks.
”Oh, no, she is not very bad,” said the Doctor, in a dreary tone. ”The poor old machine is just about breaking up, that is all. We can cobble it this once, but next time perhaps----”
”Don't talk in such a disheartening way, papa,” said Lucilla. ”I am sure she is not so very old.”
”We're all pretty old, for that matter,” said the Doctor; ”we can't run on for ever, you know. If you had been a boy like that stupid fellow Tom, you might have carried on my practice, Lucilla--and even extended it, I shouldn't wonder,” Dr Marjoribanks added, with a little grunt, as who should say _that_ is the way of the world.