Miss Marjoribanks

passed on, Barbara stood aghast, not able to believe her senses. Had he really passed and left her, she who had done so much for him? Had he actually gone over to her adversary before her very eyes? She stood stock-still when he left her, gazing after him, blazing with rage and despite, and scarcely able to keep herself from shrieking out the torrent of reproaches and vituperations that were in her mind. She made no attempt whatever to hide her wrath or jealous curiosity from any eyes that might be there to see; but to be sure she had, as her sister said, no proper pride. If Mr. Cavendish had carried out his intentions, the chances are that Barbara, driven desperate, would have rushed after him, and found some means of breaking in upon his interview with Lucilla; but after all this badgering, he had not the courage to carry out his intentions. He looked down the long sunshiny line of Grange Lane with a sickening sense that any of these doors might open at any moment, and his fate rush out upon him. There was not a soul to be seen, but that only made it all the more likely to poor Mr. Cavendish’s distempered fancy that somebody was coming. He had not even a single thought at leisure to give to Barbara, and never asked himself whether or not she was standing watching him. All his senses and faculties were engaged forecasting what might happen to him before he could reach Dr. Marjoribanks’s house. He was approaching it from the lower end of Grange Lane, and consequently had everything to risk; and when Mr. Centum’s door opened, and all the nurses and all the children poured out, the unfortunate man felt his heart jump, and drop again, if possible, lower than ever. It was this that drove him, instead of going on to Lucilla, to take refuge in his sister’s house, where the door happened to be open. He rushed in there, and took breath, and was safe for the instant. But Barbara, for her part, watching him, divined none of Mr. Cavendish’s reasons. Her heart too gave a jump, and her wrath cooled down miraculously. No doubt it was a little impatience at being questioned which had made him answer as he did. He had not gone to Lucilla⁠—he had not deserted her standard, who had always met him halfway, and done so much for him. Barbara calmed down as she saw him enter at Mrs. Woodburn’s door. After having thus witnessed his safe exit, she felt at liberty to go back and return to her own affairs, and prepare her toilette for the evening; for it moved her very little less than Mr. Cavendish to know that it was Thursday, and that there was no telling what might happen that night.

As for the hero of all this commotion, he went and buried himself in Mrs. Woodburn’s back drawing-room, and threw himself on the sofa in the dark corner, and wiped his forehead like the Archdeacon. It was not his fault if events had overwhelmed him. If he had not met in succession Dr. Marjoribanks and Mrs. Chiley and Barbara, he would have gone right to Lucilla without stopping to question himself further⁠—but he could not bear all this accumulation. Panic had seized upon him, and this panic wrought more effectually than all argument. It was so terrible to live under such a shadow, that he felt it must be put an end to. If only he were left at rest for this moment, he felt that he could make up his mind to take the perilous leap at night, and dare everything. “It can’t be worse than ruin,” he said to himself, and tried not to think that for his sister it might be something even worse than ruin. But the first thing of all was to get a little rest in the meantime, and hide himself, and forget the nightmare that was seated on his shoulders. When Mrs. Woodburn came to him in haste, and saw his careful dress and pale looks, she was frightened for the moment. She thought it possible for one second that despair had driven him out of his wits, and that there might be, for anything she could tell, a little bottle of prussic acid in his waistcoat pocket. That was her first idea, and her second was that he was going to carry out at last his most wise and laudable resolution of proposing to Miss Marjoribanks, and that it was this⁠—naturally a serious and hazardous enterprise⁠—which made him look so pale.

“Harry, if you are going to Lucilla⁠—!” said Mrs. Woodburn; “wait and rest yourself a little, and I will get you a glass of wine. Keep still; there’s some Tokay,” said the anxious sister. “Don’t you go and worry yourself. You shall see nobody. I’ll bring it you with my own hand.”

“Oh, confound the Tokay!” said Mr. Cavendish. “I know what Woodburn’s Tokay is⁠—if that mattered. Look here, I want to speak to you. I was going to Lucilla, but I’m not up to it. Oh, not in the way you think! Don’t be a fool like everybody. I tell you she wouldn’t have me, and I won’t ask her. Read this, which is much more to the purpose,” Mr. Cavendish added, taking out Miss Marjoribanks’s letter. He watched her, while she read it, with that sense of contempt and superiority which a man naturally feels who has advanced much beyond the point in any special matter at which his interlocutor is still stationary. He even smiled at her cry of horror and amazement, and found the agitation she showed ridiculous. “Don’t make a row about it,” he said, regaining his colour as his sister lost hers. “It’s all right. I can’t ask Lucilla Marjoribanks to have me after that, but I mean to put my trust in her, as she says. I was going to ask