Part 31 (1/2)
”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 pa.s.sed through her mind, and Miss Marjoribanks was not the woman, under any circ.u.mstances, 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 embarra.s.sing 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 n.o.body ever touches it now; I knew it could be n.o.body 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 a.s.sertion 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.