“I don’t know if you can call it satisfactory,” said Lucilla, with a sudden rush of softer thoughts; “but it was a comfort to hear it. He told me something about dear papa, Aunt Jemima. After he had heard of that, you know—all that he said was, Poor Lucilla! And don’t you remember how he put his hand on my shoulder that last night? I am so—so—glad he did it,” sobbed Miss Marjoribanks. It may be supposed it was an abrupt transition from her calculations; but after all it was only a different branch of the same subject; and Lucilla in all her life had never before shed such poignant and tender tears.
“He might well say, Poor Lucilla!” said Mrs. John—“brought up as you have been, my dear; and did not you hear anything more important?—I mean, more important in a worldly point of view,” Aunt Jemima added, correcting herself, “of course, it must be the greatest comfort to hear something about your poor papa.”
And then Lucilla unfolded John Brown’s further particulars to her surprised hearer. Mrs. John lived upon a smallish income herself, and she was not so contemptuous of the two hundred a year. “And the house,” she said—“the house would bring you in another hundred, Lucilla. The Riders, I am sure, would take it directly, and perhaps a great part of the furniture too. Three hundred would not be so bad for a single woman. Did you say anything about the furniture, my dear?” Aunt Jemima added, half regretfully, for she did feel that she would be sorry to lose that chiffonier.
“I think I shall stay in the house,” said Lucilla; “you may think it silly, Aunt Jemima, but I was born in it, and—”
“Stay in the house!” Mrs. John said, with a gasp. She did not think it silly, but simple madness, and so she told her niece. If Lucilla could not make up her mind to Elsworthy’s, there was Brighton and Bath and Cheltenham, and a hundred other places where a single woman might be very comfortable on three hundred a year. And to lose a third part of her income for a piece of sentiment was so utterly unlike any conception Aunt Jemima had ever formed of her niece. It was unlike Miss Marjoribanks; but there are times of life when even the most reasonable people are inconsistent. Lucilla, though she felt it was open to grave criticism, felt only more confirmed in her resolution by her aunt’s remarks. She heard a voice Aunt Jemima could not hear, and that voice said, Stay!
XLV
It must be allowed that Lucilla’s decision caused very general surprise in Carlingford, where people had been disposed to think that she would be rather glad, now that things were so changed, to get away. To be sure it was not known for some time; but everybody’s idea was that, being thus left alone in the world, and in circumstances so reduced, Miss Marjoribanks naturally would go to live with somebody. Perhaps with her aunt, who had something, though she was not rich; perhaps, after a little, to visit about among her friends, of whom she had so many. Nobody doubted that Lucilla would abdicate at once, and a certain uneasy, yet delicious, sense of freedom had already stolen into the hearts of some of the ladies in Grange Lane. They lamented, it is true, the state of chaos into which everything would fall, and the dreadful loss Miss Marjoribanks would be to society; but still, freedom is a noble thing, and Lucilla’s subjects contemplated their emancipation with a certain guilty delight. It was, at the same time, a most fertile subject of discussion in Carlingford, and gave rise to all those lively speculations and consultations, and oft-renewed comparing of notes, which take the place of bets in the feminine community. The Carlingford ladies as good as betted upon Lucilla, whether she would go with her aunt, or pay Mrs. Beverley a visit at the Deanery, or retire to Mount Pleasant for a little, where those good old Miss Blounts were so fond of her. Each of these opinions had its backers, if it is not profane to say so; and the discussion which of them Miss Marjoribanks would choose waxed very warm. It almost put the election out of people’s heads; and indeed the election had been sadly damaged in interest and social importance by the sad and most unexpected event which had just happened in Grange Lane.
But when the fact was really known, it would be difficult to describe the sense of guilt and horror which filled many innocent bosoms. The bound of freedom had been premature—liberty and equality had not come yet, notwithstanding that too early unwise élan of republican satisfaction. It was true that she was in deep mourning, and that for a year, at least, society must be left to its own devices; and it was true, also, that she was poor—which might naturally be supposed a damper upon her energies—but, at the same time, Carlingford knew its Lucilla. As long as she remained in Grange Lane, even though retired and in crape, the constitutional monarch was still present among her subjects; and nobody could usurp her place or show that utter indifference to her regulations which some revolutionaries had dreamed of. Such an idea would have gone direct in the face of the British Constitution, and the sense of the community would have been dead against it. But everybody who had speculated upon her proceedings disapproved of Lucilla in her most unlooked-for resolution. Some could not think how she could bear it, staying on there when everything was so changed; and some said it was a weakness they could never have believed to exist in her; and some—for there are spiteful people everywhere—breathed the names of Cavendish and Ashburton, the rival candidates,
