Part 32 (1/2)
And when Tom came in, they had what Aunt Jemima called ”one of their discussions” about their future life, although the only thing in it worthy consideration, so far as Tom was concerned, seemed to be the time when they should be married, which occupied at present all that hero's faculties. ”Everything else will arrange itself after, you know,” he said, with calm confidence. ”Time enough for all the rest. The thing is, Lucilla, to decide when you will leave off those formalities, and let It be. Why shouldn't it be now? Do you think my uncle would wish to keep us unhappy all for an idea?”
”My dear Tom, I am not in the least unhappy,” said Lucilla, interrupting him sweetly, ”nor you either, unless you tell dreadful stories; and as for poor dear papa,” Miss Marjoribanks added, with a sigh, ”if we were to do exactly as _he_ wished, I don't think It would ever be. If you were not so foolish, you would not oblige me to say such things. Tom, let us leave off talking nonsense--the thing that we both want is something to do.”
”That is what _I_ want,” said Tom quickly, ”but as for you, Lucilla, you shall do nothing but enjoy yourself and take care of yourself. The idea of _you_ wanting something to do!”
Miss Marjoribanks regarded her betrothed with mild and affectionate contempt as he thus delivered himself of his foolish sentiments. ”It is of no use trying to make him understand,” she said, with an air of resignation. ”Do you know that I have always been doing something, and responsible for something, all my life?”
”Yes, my poor darling,” said Tom, ”I know; but now you are in my hands I mean to take care of you, Lucilla; you shall have no more anxiety or trouble. What is the good of a man if he can't save the woman he is fond of from all that?” cried the honest fellow--and Lucilla could not but cast a despairing glance round her, as if appealing to heaven and earth.
What was to be done with a man who had so little understanding of her, and of himself, and of the eternal fitness of things?
”My dear Tom,” she said once more, mildly, ”we may have lost some money, but we are very well off, and Providence has been very kind to us. And there are a great many poor people in the world who are not so well off.
I have always tried to be of some use to my fellow-creatures,” said Lucilla, ”and I don't mean, whatever you may say, to give it up now.”
”My dearest Lucilla, if it was the poor you were thinking of----! I might have known it was something different from my stupid notions,”
cried Tom. This kind of adoration was new to Lucilla, notwithstanding her many experiences. And he thought it so good of her to condescend to be good, that she could not help thinking a little better of herself than ordinary, though that, perhaps, was not absolutely needful; and then she proceeded with the elucidation of her views.
”I have been of some use to my fellow-creatures in my way,” said Miss Marjoribanks modestly, ”but it has been hard work, and people are not always grateful, you know. And then things are a good deal changed in Carlingford. A woman may devote herself to putting some life into society, and give up years of her time, and--and even her opportunities and all that, and do a great deal of good; but yet if she is put aside for a moment, there is an end of it. I have been doing the best I could for Carlingford for ten years,” said Lucilla, with a little natural sadness, ”and if any one were to examine into it, where is it all now?
They have only got into the way of looking to me; and I do believe if you were to go up and down from Elsworthy's to St Roque's, though you might find people at dinner here and there, you would not find a shadow of what could really be called society in all Grange Lane!”
Lucilla paused, for naturally her feelings were moved, and while Tom bent over her with tender and respectful devotion, it was not to be wondered at if Miss Marjoribanks, in the emotion of her heart, should wipe away a tear.
”After working at it for ten years!” said Lucilla; ”and now, since poor papa died, who was always full of discrimination----This is what will come of it, Tom,” she added solemnly--”they will go back to their old ridiculous parties, as if they had never seen anything better; and they will all break up into little cliques, and make their awful morning calls and freeze one another to death. That will be the end of it all, after one has slaved like a--like a woman in a mill,” said the disappointed reformer, ”and given up ten years.”
”My poor darling!” cried Tom, who would have liked to go and challenge Carlingford for being so insensible to his Lucilla's devotion and cheris.h.i.+ng maternal care.
”But if it had been the poor,” said Miss Marjoribanks, recovering her spirits a little, ”they could not help being the better for what one did for them. They might continue to be as stupid as ever, and ungrateful, and all that; but if they were warm and comfortable, instead of cold and hungry, it would always make a difference. Tom, I will tell you what you will do if you want to please me. You will take all our money and realise it, you know, whatever that means, and go off directly, as fast as the train can carry you, and buy an Estate.”
”An estate!” cried Tom, in consternation; and the magnitude of the word was such, and Lucilla was so entirely in earnest, that he jumped from his chair and gazed at her as if constrained, notwithstanding his amazement, to rush off instantly and obey.
”I did not mean just this moment,” said Lucilla; ”sit down and we can talk it all over, Tom. You know it would be something for you to do; you cannot just go living on like this at your age; you could improve the land, you know, and do all that sort of thing, and the people you could leave to me.”
”But Lucilla,” said Tom, recovering a little from his consternation, ”it is not so easy buying an estate. I mean all that I have to be settled upon you, in case of anything happening. Land may be a safe enough investment; but you know, very often, Lucilla--the fact is, it doesn't pay.”
”_We_ could make it pay,” said Miss Marjoribanks, with a benevolent smile, ”and besides there are estates and estates. I don't want you to go and throw away your money. It was in the _Carlingford Gazette_ this morning, and I can't help feeling it was a special providence. Of course you never looked at it in the paper, though I marked it for you. Tom, it is Marchbank that I want you to buy. You know how papa used to talk of it. He used to say it was just a nice little property that a gentleman could manage. If he had been spared,” said Lucilla, putting her handkerchief to her eyes, ”and these wicked dreadful people had not failed, nor nothing happened, I know he would have bought it himself.
Dear papa! and he would have given it to me; and most likely, so far as one can tell, it would have come to you at the last, and you would have been Marjoribanks of Marchbank, like our great-great-grandpapa; and that is what I want you to do.”
Lucilla's proposition, as it thus unfolded itself, took away Tom Marjoribanks's breath, for notwithstanding that it came from a (young) lady, and was confused by some slightly unintelligible conditions about doing good to one's fellow-creatures, it was not a trifling or romantic suggestion. Tom, too, could remember Marchbank, and his uncle's interest in it, and the careful way in which he explained to the ignorant that this was the correct p.r.o.nunciation of his own name. While Lucilla made her concluding address, Tom seemed to see himself a little fellow, with his eyes and his ears very wide open, trotting about with small steps after the Doctor, as he went over the red-brick house and neglected gardens at Marchbank: it was only to be let then, and had pa.s.sed through many hands, and was in miserable case, both lands and house. But neither the lands nor the house were bad of themselves, and Tom was, like Lucilla, perfectly well aware that something might be made of them.
This idea gave a new direction to his thoughts. Though he had been brought up to the bar, he had never been a lover of town, and was in reality, like so many young Englishmen, better qualified to be something in the shape of a country gentleman than for any other profession in the world; and he had left his profession behind, and was in most urgent want of something to do. He did not give in at once with a lover's abject submission, but thought it over for twenty-four hours at all his spare moments,--when he was smoking his evening cigar in the garden, and studying the light in his lady's window, and when he ought to have been asleep, and again in the morning when he sallied forth, before Miss Marjoribanks's blinds were drawn up or the house had fairly awoke. He was not a man of brilliant ability, but he had that sure and steady eye for the real secret of a position which must have been revealed to every competent critic by the wonderful clear-sightedness with which he saw, and the wise persistence with which he held to the necessity of an immediate choice between himself and Mr Ashburton. He had seen that there was but one alternative, and he had suffered no delay nor divergence from the question in hand. And it was this same quality which had helped him to the very pretty addition to his small patrimony which he had meant to settle on Lucilla, and which would now make the acquisition of Marchbank an easy thing enough. And though Tom had looked wise on the subject of investment in land, it was a kind of investment in every way agreeable to him. Thus Lucilla's arrow went straight to the mark--straighter even than she had expected; for besides all the other and more substantial considerations, there was to Tom's mind a sweet sense of poetic justice in the thought that, after his poor uncle's failure, who had never thought him good enough for Lucilla, it should be he and no other who would give this coveted possession to his cousin.
Had Marchbank been in the market in Dr Marjoribanks's time, it was, as Lucilla herself said, his money that would have bought it; but in such a case, so far as the Doctor was concerned, there would have been little chance for Tom. Now all that was changed, and it was in Tom's hands that the wealth of the family lay. It was he who was the head, and could alone carry out what Lucilla's more original genius suggested. If the Doctor could but have seen it, he who had formed plans so very different--but perhaps by that time Dr Marjoribanks had found out that Providence after all had not been so ill-advised as he once thought in committing to his care such a creative intelligence as that of Lucilla, and withholding from him ”the boy.”
As for Miss Marjoribanks, after she had made up her mind and stated her conviction, she gave herself no further trouble on the subject, but took it for granted, with that true wisdom which is unfortunately so rare among women. She did not talk about it overmuch, or display any feverish anxiety about Marchbank, but left her suggestion to work, and had faith in Tom. At the same time, the tranquillising sense of now knowing, to a certain extent, what lay before her came into Lucilla's mind. It would be a new sphere, but a sphere in which she would find herself at home.
Still near enough to Carlingford to keep a watchful eye upon society and give it the benefit of her experience, and yet at the same time translated into a new world, where her influence might be of untold advantage, as Lucilla modestly said, to her fellow-creatures. There was a village not far from the gates at Marchbank, where every kind of village nuisance was to be found. There are people who are very tragical about village nuisances, and there are other people who a.s.sail them with loathing, as a duty forced upon their consciences; but Lucilla was neither of the one way of thinking nor of the other. It gave her the liveliest satisfaction to think of all the disorder and disarray of the Marchbank village. Her fingers itched to be at it--to set all the crooked things straight, and clean away the rubbish, and set everything, as she said, on a sound foundation. If it had been a model village, with prize flower-gardens and clean as Arcadia, the thought of it would not have given Miss Marjoribanks half so much pleasure. The recollection of all the wretched hovels and miserable cottages exhilarated her heart.
”They may be as stupid and ungrateful as they like,” she said to herself, ”but to be warm and comfortable instead of cold and hungry always makes a difference.” Perhaps it was not the highest motive possible, and it might be more satisfactory to some people to think of Lucilla as actuated by lofty sentiments of philanthropy; but to persons acquainted with Miss Marjoribanks's character, her biographer would scorn to make any pretence. What would be the good of a spirit full of boundless activity and benevolent impulses if there was n.o.body to help?--what would be the use of self-devotion if the race in general stood in no need of charitable ministrations? Lucilla had been of use to her fellow-creatures all her life; and though she was about to relinquish one branch of usefulness, that was not to say that she should be prevented from entering into another. The state of the Marchbank village did her good to the very bottom of her soul. It justified her to herself for her choice of Tom, which, but for this chance of doing good, might perhaps have had the air of a merely selfish personal preference.
Now she could regard it in a loftier light, and the thought was sweet to Lucilla; for such a beautiful way of helping her neighbour would no doubt have been to a certain extent impracticable amid the many occupations of the Member's wife.
Perhaps the most difficult thing in Miss Marjoribanks's way at this otherwise satisfactory moment was the difficulty she found in persuading society, first of the reality, and then of the justice, of the step she had taken. Most of them, to tell the truth, had forgotten all about Tom Marjoribanks. It is true that when Lucilla's intentions and prospects were discussed in Grange Lane, as they had been so often, it was not uncommon for people to say, ”There was once a cousin, you know”; but n.o.body had ever given very much heed to the suggestion. When Lucilla went to tell Mrs Chiley of what had happened, she was but inadequately prepared for the surprise with which her intelligence was received. For it all seemed natural enough to Miss Marjoribanks. She had gone on very steadily for a long time, without thinking particularly about anybody, and disposed to accept the most eligible and satisfactory person who happened to present himself; but all the time there had been a warm corner in her heart for Tom. And then the eligible person had not come, and she had been worried and wearied, and had had her losses, like most other people. And it had always been pleasant to remember that there was one man in the world who, if she but held out a finger to him----But then the people in Grange Lane were not capable of discrimination on such a delicate subject, and had never, as was to be expected, had the smallest insight into Lucilla's heart.