“Oh, my dear, it is because you don’t understand,” said Mrs. Woodburn. “She is kept up, you know, by a sense of duty. It is all because she has set her heart on being a comfort to her dear papa!”
Such, it is true, were the comments that were made upon the public-spirited young woman who was doing so much for Carlingford; but then Lucilla only shared the fate of all the great benefactors of the world. An hour later the glories of the furniture were veiled and hidden by the robes of a radiant flood of society, embracing all that was most fair and all that was most distinguished in Carlingford. No doubt there was a world of heterogeneous elements; but then if there had not been difficulties where would have been the use of Miss Marjoribanks’s genius? Mr. Bury and his sister, who had been unconsciously mollified by the admirable dinner provided for them downstairs, found some stray lambs in the assembly who were in need of them, and thus had the double satisfaction of combining pleasure with duty; and though there were several people in the room whose lives were a burden to them in consequence of Mrs. Woodburn’s remarkable gift, even they found it impossible not to be amused by an occasional representation of an absent individual, or by the dashing sketch of Lucilla, which she gave at intervals in her corner, amid the smothered laughter of the audience, who were half ashamed of themselves. “She is never ill-tempered, you know,” the persons who felt themselves threatened in their turn said to each other with a certain piteous resignation; and oddly enough it was in general the most insignificant people about who were afraid of Mrs. Woodburn. It is needless to say that such a dread never entered the serene intelligence of Miss Marjoribanks, who believed in herself with a reasonable and steady faith. As for old Mrs. Chiley, who had so many funny little ways, and whom the mimic executed to perfection, she also was quite calm on the subject. “You know there is nothing to take off in me,” the old lady would say; “I always was a simple body: and then I am old enough to be all your grandmothers, my dear;” which was a saying calculated, as Miss Marjoribanks justly observed, to melt a heart of stone.
Then the Miss Browns had brought their photographs, in which most people in Grange Lane were caricatured hideously, but with such a charming equality that the most exigeant forgave the wrong to himself in laughing at his neighbours. Miss Brown had brought her music too, and sang her feeble little strain to the applause of her immediate neighbours, and to the delight of those who were at a distance, and who could talk louder and flirt more openly under cover of the music; and there were other young ladies who had also come prepared with a little roll of songs or “pieces.” Lucilla, with her finger as it were upon the pulse of the company, let them all exhibit their powers with that enlightened impartiality which we have already remarked in her. When Mr. Cavendish came to her in his ingratiating way, and asked her how she could possibly let all the sparrows chirp like that when the nightingale was present, Miss Marjoribanks proved herself proof to the flattery. She said, “Do go away, like a good man, and make yourself agreeable. There are so few men, you know, who can flirt in Carlingford. I have always reckoned upon you as such a valuable assistant. It is always an advantage to have a man who flirts,” said Miss Marjoribanks. This was a sentiment perhaps too large and enlightened, in the truest sense of the word, to meet, as it ought to have done, with the applause of her audience. Most of the persons immediately surrounding her thought, indeed, that it was a mere bon-mot to which Lucilla had given utterance, and laughed accordingly; but it is needless to explain that these were persons quite unable to understand her genius.
All this time she was keeping her eyes upon a figure in the corner of a sofa, which looked as if it was glued there, and kept staring defiance at the world in general from under black and level brows. Lucilla, it is true, had introduced Barbara Lake in the most flattering way to Mrs. Chiley, and to some of the young ladies present; but then she was a stranger, and an intruder into those regions of the blest, and she could not help feeling so. If her present companions had not whispered among themselves, “Miss Lake! what Miss Lake? Good gracious! Lake the drawing-master’s daughter!” she herself would still have reminded herself of her humble paternity. Barbara sat as if she could not move from that corner, looking out upon everybody with scared eyes, which expressed nothing but defiance, and in her own mind making the reflections of bitter poverty upon the airy pretty figures round her, in all the variations of that costume which Miss Marjoribanks had announced as the standard of dress for the evening. Barbara’s muslin, six times washed, was not more different from the spotless lightness of all the draperies round her, than was her air of fright, and at the same time of defiance,
