“Well, Lucilla, it is a great change,” said Mrs. Chiley, who could not reconcile herself to the new condition of affairs. “I don’t mean to pretend that I can make up my mind to it all at once. It seems so strange that you should have been setting your heart on someone all these ten years, and never saying a word; I wonder how you could do it. And when people were always in the hopes that you would marry at home, as it were, and settle in Carlingford. I am sure your poor dear papa would be as much astonished as anybody. And I suppose now he will take you away to Devonshire, where his mother lives, and we shall never see you any more.” And once more Mrs. Chiley gave a little sob. “The Firs would almost have been as good as Grange Lane,” she said, “and the Member for Carlingford, Lucilla!”
As for Miss Marjoribanks, she knelt down by the side of the sofa and took her old friend, as well as the blankets and pillows would permit, into her arms.
“Dear Mrs. Chiley, we are going to buy Marchbank and settle,” said Lucilla, weeping a little for company. “You could not think I would ever go far away from you. And as for being Member for Carlingford, there are Members for counties too,” Miss Marjoribanks said in her excitement. It was a revelation which came out unawares, and which she never intended to utter; but it threw a gleam of light over the new world of ambition and progress which was opened to Lucilla’s farseeing vision; and Mrs. Chiley could not but yield to the spell of mingled awe and sympathy which thrilled through her as she listened. It was not to be supposed that what Lucilla did was done upon mere unthinking impulse; and when she thought of Marchbank, there arose in Mrs. Chiley’s mind “the slow beginnings of content.”
“But, Lucilla,” the old lady said with solemnity, as she gave her a last kiss of reconciliation and peace, “if all Grange Lane had taken their oaths to it, I never could have believed, had you not told me, that, after all, it was to be Tom!”
Chapter the Last
This was the hardest personal encounter which Miss Marjoribanks was subjected to; but when the news circulated in Grange Lane there was first a dead pause of incredulity and amazement, and then such a commotion as could be compared to nothing except a sudden squall at sea. People who had been going peaceably on their way at one moment, thinking of nothing, were to be seen the next buffeted by the wind of Rumour and tossed about on the waves of Astonishment. To speak less metaphorically (but there are moments of emotion so overwhelming and unprecedented that they can be dealt with only in the language of metaphor), every household in Grange Lane, and at least half of the humbler houses in Grove Street, and a large proportion of the other dwellings in Carlingford, were nearly as much agitated about Lucilla’s marriage as if it had been a daughter of their own. Now that he was recalled to their minds in such a startling way, people began to recollect with greater and greater distinctness that “there was once a cousin, you know,” and to remember him in his youth, and even in his boyhood, when he had been much in Carlingford. And by degrees the Grange Lane people came to see that they knew a great deal about Tom, and to remind each other of the abrupt end of his last visit, and of his going to India immediately after, and of many a little circumstance in Lucilla’s looks and general demeanour which this dénouement seemed to make plain.
Lady Richmond, though she was a little annoyed about Mr. Ashburton’s disappointment, decided at once that it was best to ignore that altogether, and was quite glad to think that she had always said there must be somebody. “She bore up a great deal too well against all her little disappointments,” she said, when discussing the matter. “When a girl does that one may be always sure there is somebody behind—and you know I always said, when she was not just talking or busy, that there was a preoccupation in Lucilla’s eye.” This was a speech which Mrs. Woodburn, as might have been expected, made a great deal of—but, notwithstanding, it had its effect in Grange Lane. Going back upon their recollections, most people were able to verify the fact that Miss Marjoribanks had borne her little disappointments very well, and that there was sometimes a preoccupation in her eye. The first was beyond dispute; and as for the second, it was a thing which did not require a very great stretch of imagination to suppose—and the unexpected sensation of finding at last a distinct bit of romance to round off Lucilla’s history, was pleasant to most people. If she had married Mr. Ashburton, it would have been (so far as anything connected with Miss Marjoribanks could be) a commonplace conclusion. But now she had upset everybody’s theories, and made an altogether original and unlooked-for ending for herself, which was a thing to have been expected from Lucilla, though nobody could have foreseen the special turn which her originality would take.
And nothing could have come in more appropriately after the election, when people felt the blank of ordinary existence just beginning to settle down upon them again. It kept all Carlingford in conversation for a longer time than might be supposed in these busy days; for there was not only the fact itself, but what they
