And yet nobody could say that there were not very good elements to make society with. When you add to a man capable of giving excellent dinners, like Dr. Marjoribanks, another man like young Mr. Cavendish, Mrs. Woodburn’s brother, who was a wit and a man of fashion, and belonged to one of the best clubs in town, and brought down gossip with the bloom on it to Grange Lane; and when you join to Mrs. Centum, who was always so good and so much out of temper that it was safe to calculate on something amusing from her, the languid but trenchant humour of Mrs. Woodburn—not to speak of their husbands, who were perfectly available for the background, and all the nephews and cousins and grandchildren, who constantly paid visits to old Mr. Western and Colonel Chiley; and the Browns, when they were at home, with their floating suite of admirers; and the young ladies who sang, and the young ladies who sketched, and the men who went out with the hounds, when business permitted them; and the people who came about the town when there was an election; and the barristers who made the circuit; and the gay people who came to the races; not to speak of the varying chances of curates, who could talk or play the piano, with which Mr. Bury favoured his parishioners—for he changed his curates very often; and the occasional visits of the lesser county people, and the country clergymen;—it will be plainly apparent that all that was wanting to Carlingford was a master-hand to blend these different elements. There had even been a few feeble preliminary attempts at this great work, which had failed, as such attempts always fail when they are premature, and when the real agent of the change is already on the way; but preparations and presentiments had taken vague possession of the mind of the town, as has always been observed to be the case before a great revolution, or when a man destined to put his mark on his generation, as the newspapers say, is about to appear. To be sure, it was not a man this time, but Miss Marjoribanks; but the atmosphere thrilled and trembled to the advent of the new luminary all the same.
Yet, at the same time, the world of Carlingford had not the least idea of the real quarter from which the sovereign intelligence which was to develop it from chaos into order and harmony was, effectivement, to come. Some people had hoped in Mrs. Woodburn before she fell into her present languor of appearance and expression; and a great many people hoped in Mr. Cavendish’s wife, if he married, as he was said to intend to do; for this gentleman, who was in the habit of describing himself, no doubt, very truthfully, as one of the Cavendishes, was a person of great consideration in Grange Lane; and some hoped in a new Rector, for it was apparent that Mr. Bury could not last very long. Thus, with the ordinary shortsightedness of the human species, Carlingford blinded itself, and turned its eyes in every direction in the world rather than in that of the Swiss mountains, which were being climbed at that moment by a large and blooming young woman, with tawny short curls and alert decided movements; so little do we know what momentous issues may hang upon the most possible accident! Had that energetic traveller slipped but an inch farther upon the mer de glace—had she taken that other step which she was with difficulty persuaded not to take on the Wengern Alp—there would have been an end of all the hopes of social importance for Carlingford. But the good fairies took care of Lucilla and her mission, and saved her from the precipice and the crevasses; and instinctively the air at home got note of what was coming, and whispered the news mysteriously through the keyholes. “Miss Marjoribanks is coming home,” the unsuspecting male public said to itself as it returned from Dr. Marjoribanks’s dinners, with a certain distressing, but mistaken presentiment, that these delights were to come to an end; and the ladies repeated the same piece of news, conjoining with it benevolent intimations of their intention to call upon her, and make the poor thing feel herself at home. “Perhaps she may be amusing,” Mrs. Woodburn was good enough to add; but these words meant only that perhaps Lucilla, who was coming to set them all right, was worthy of being placed in the satirist’s collection along with Mrs. Centum and Mrs. Chiley. Thus, while the town ripened more and more for her great mission, and the ignorant human creatures, who were to be her subjects, showed their usual blindness and ignorance, the time drew nearer and nearer for Miss Marjoribanks’s return.
IV
“My daughter is coming home, Nancy,” said Dr. Marjoribanks. “You will have to make preparations for her immediately. So far as I can make out from this letter, she will arrive tomorrow by the half-past five train.”
“Well, sir,” said Nancy, with the tone of a woman who makes the best of a misfortune, “it ain’t every young lady as would have the sense to fix an hour like that. Ladies is terrible tiresome in that way; they’ll come in
