All this was sufficiently unintelligible to Miss Marjoribanks, who was not the least in anxiety about Barbara’s breaking heart. “Tell me what is the matter, and perhaps we can do something,” said Lucilla, forgetting how little her past exertions had been appreciated; and Rose, with equal inconsistency, dried her tears at the sound of Miss Marjoribanks’s reassuring voice.
“I know I am a wretch to be thinking of myself,” she said. “She cannot be expected to stay and sacrifice herself for us, after all she has suffered. She has made up her mind and advertised in the Times, and nothing can change it now. She is going out for a governess, Lucilla.”
“Going for a—what?” said Miss Marjoribanks, who could not believe her ears.
“For a governess,” said Rose calmly; for though she had been partly brought up at Mount Pleasant, she had not the elevated idea of an instructress of youth which might have been expected from a pupil of that establishment. “She has advertised in the Times,” Rose added, with quiet despair, “with no objections to travel. I would do anything in the world for Barbara, but one can’t help thinking of oneself sometimes, and there is an end of my Career.” When she had said this she brushed the last tear off her eyelashes, and sat straight up, a little martyr and heroic victim to duty. “Her eye, though fixed on empty space, beamed keen with honour”; but still there was a certain desperation in the composure with which Rose regarded, after the first outburst, the abandonment of all her hopes.
“She is a selfish thing,” said Lucilla indignantly; “she always was a selfish thing. I should like to know what she can teach anybody? If I were you and your papa, I certainly would not let her go away. I don’t see any reason in the world why you should give in to her and let her stop your—your Career, you know; why should you? I would not give in to her for one moment, if I were your papa and you.”
“Why should I?” said Rose; “because there is nobody else to do anything, Lucilla. Fleda and Dreda are such two little things; and there are all the boys to think of, and poor papa. It is of no use asking why. If I don’t do it, there will be nobody to do it,” said Rose, with big tears coming to her eyes. Her Career was dear to her heart, and those two tears welled up from the depths; but then there would be nobody else to do it—a consideration which continually filters out the people who are good for anything out of the muddy current of the ordinary world.
“And your pretty drawings, and the veil, and the School of Design!” cried Lucilla. “You dear little Rose, don’t cry. It never can be permitted, you know. She cannot teach anything, and nobody will have her. She is a selfish thing, though she is your sister; and if I were your papa and you—”
“It would be no good,” said Rose. “She will go, whatever anybody may say. She does not care,” said the little martyr, and the two big tears fell, making two big round blotches upon the strings of that bonnet which Lucilla had difficulty in keeping her hands off. But when she had thus expressed her feelings, Rose relented over her sister. “She has suffered so much here; how can anyone ask her to sacrifice herself to us?” said the young artist mournfully. “And I am quite happy,” said Rose—“quite happy; it makes all the difference. It is her heart, you know, Lucilla; and it is only my Career.”
And this time the tears were dashed away by an indignant little hand. Barbara’s heart, if she had such an organ, had never in its existence cost such bitter drops. But as for Lucilla, what could she do? She could only repeat, “If I was your papa and you,” with a melancholy sense that she was here balked and could do no more. For even the aid of Miss Marjoribanks was as nothing against dead selfishness and folly, the two most invincible forces in the world. Instead of taking the business into her own hands, and carrying it through triumphantly as she had hitherto been in the habit of doing, Lucilla could only minister to the sufferer, and keep up her courage, and mourn over the Career thus put in danger. Barbara’s advertisement was in the newspapers, and her foolish mind was made up; and the hope that nobody would have her was a forlorn hope, for somebody always does have the incapable people, as Miss Marjoribanks was well aware. And the contralto had been of some use in Grange Lane and a little in Grove Street, and it would be difficult, either in the one sphere or the other, to find anyone to fill her place. It was thus amid universal demolition that Christmas approached, and Miss Marjoribanks ended the first portion of her eventful career.
XXXVI
One fytte of Lucilla’s history is here ended, and another is to be told. We have recorded her beginning in all the fullness of youthful confidence and undaunted trust in her own resources; and have done our best to show that in the course of organising society Miss Marjoribanks, like all other benefactors of their kind, had many sacrifices to make, and had to undergo the mortification of finding out that many of her most able efforts turned to other people’s profit and went directly against herself. She began the second period of her career with, to some certain extent, that sense of failure which is inevitable to every high intelligence after a little intercourse with the world. She had succeeded in a great many things, but yet she had not succeeded in all; and she had found out that the
