"Unexpected!" said Tom, with an astonished air. "But I suppose you had other things to think of. Ah, Lucilla, I could not write to you. I felt I ought to be beside you, trying if there was not something I could do.

My mother told you, of course; but I could not trust myself to write to _you_."

Then Lucilla saw it all, and that Aunt Jemima had meant to do Mr Ashburton a good turn. And she was not grateful to her aunt, however kind her intentions might have been. But Tom was holding her hand, and looking into her face while this thought pa.s.sed through her mind, and Miss Marjoribanks was not the woman, under any circ.u.mstances, to make dispeace.

"I am sure I am very glad," said Lucilla. "I would say you were changed, but only of course that would make you think how I am changed; and though one knows one has gone off----"

"I never saw you look so nice all your life," cried Tom energetically; and he took hold of both her hands, and looked into her face more and more. To be sure he had a kind of right, being a cousin, and newly returned after so long an absence; but it was embarra.s.sing all the same.

"Oh, Tom, don't say so," cried Lucilla; "if you but knew how different the house is, and everything so altered--and dear papa!"

It was natural, and indeed it was only proper, that Miss Marjoribanks should cry--which she did abundantly, partly for grief, and partly because of the flutter of agitation, and something like joy, in which she was, and which, considering that she had always frankly owned that she was fond of Tom, was quite natural too. She cried with honest abandonment, and did not take much notice what her cousin was doing to comfort her, though indeed he applied himself to that benevolent office in the most anxious way.

"Don't cry, Lucilla," he said, "I can't bear it. It don't look natural to see you cry. My poor uncle was an old man, and you were always the best daughter in the world----"

"Oh, Tom! sometimes I don't think so," sobbed Lucilla; "sometimes I think if I had sat up that last night----And you don't know how good he was. It was me he was thinking of, and never himself. When he heard the money was lost, all that he said was, Poor Lucilla! You rang his bell though it is the night-bell, and n.o.body ever touches it now; I knew it could be n.o.body but you; and to see you again brings up everything so distinctly. Oh, Tom! he was always very fond of you."

"Lucilla," said Tom Marjoribanks, "you know I always had a great regard for my uncle. But it was not for him I came back. He was never half so fond of me as I am of you. You know that as well as I do. There never was a time that I would not have gone to the other end of the world if you had told me; and I have done it as near as possible. I went to India because you sent me away. And I have come back----"

"You have not come back only for an hour, I hope?" said Miss Marjoribanks, with momentary impatience; "you are not obliged to talk of everything all in a moment--and when one has not even got over one's surprise at seeing you. When _did_ you come back? When did you have anything to eat? You want your breakfast or your lunch or something; and, Tom! the idea of sitting here talking to me, and talking nonsense, when you have not seen your mother. She is in her own room, you unnatural boy--the blue room, next to what used to be yours. To think Aunt Jemima should be in the house, and you should sit here talking nonsense to me!"

"This minute," said Tom apologetically; but he drew his chair in front of Miss Marjoribanks, so that she could not get away. "I have come back to stay as long as you will let me," he said; "don't go away yet. Look here, Lucilla--if you had married, I would have tried to bear it; but as long as you are not married, I can't help feeling as if there might be a chance for me yet. And that is why I have come home. I met somebody coming downstairs."

"Tom," said Miss Marjoribanks, "it is dreadful to see that you have come back just as tiresome as ever. I always said I would not marry for ten years. If you mean to think I have never had any opportunities----"

"Lucilla," said Tom, and there was decision in his eye, "somebody came downstairs as I came in. I want to know whether it is to be him or me!"

"Him--or you!" said Lucilla, in dismay. Blunderer as he was, he had gone direct to the very heart of the question, and it was impossible not to tremble a little in the presence of such straightforward clear-sightedness. Miss Marjoribanks had risen up to make her escape as soon as it should be possible, but she was so much struck by Tom's unlooked-for perspicuity, that she sat down again in her consternation.

"I think you are going out of your mind," she said. "What do you know about the gentleman who went downstairs? I am not such a wonderful beauty, nor such a witch, that everybody who sees me should want to--to marry me. Don't talk any more nonsense, but let me go and get you something to eat."

"They would if they were of my way of thinking," said the persistent Tom. "Lucilla, you shan't go. This is what I have come home for. You may as well know at once, and then there can be no mistake about it. My poor uncle is gone, and you can't be left by yourself in the world. Will you have him or me?"

"I am not going to be tyrannised over like this," said Lucilla, with indignation, again rising, though he still held her hands. "You talk as if you had just come for a call, and had everything to say in a moment.

When a man comes off a long journey it is his breakfast he wants, and not a--not anything else that I know of. Go up to your mother, and let me go."

"Will you have him or me?" repeated Tom. It was not wisdom, is was instinct, that made him thus hold fast by his text; and as for Lucilla, nothing but the softened state in which she was, nothing but the fact that it was Tom Marjoribanks who had been ten years away, and was always ridiculous, could have kept her from putting down at once such an attempt to coerce her. But the truth was, that Miss Marjoribanks did not feel her own mistress at that moment, and perhaps that was why he had the audacity to repeat, "Will you have him or me?"

Then Lucilla found herself fairly driven to bay. "Tom!" she said, with a solemnity that overwhelmed him for the moment, for he thought at first, with natural panic, that it was himself who was being rejected, "I would not have _him_ if he were to go down on his knees. I know he is very nice and very agreeable, and the best man----And I am sure I ought to do it," said Miss Marjoribanks, with a mournful sense of her own weakness; "and everybody will expect it of me; but I am not going to have him, and I never meant it, whatever you or anybody may say."

When Lucilla had made this decisive utterance she turned away with a certain melancholy majesty to go and see after lunch--for he had loosed her hand and fallen back in consternation, thinking for the moment that it was all over. Miss Marjoribanks sighed, and turned round, not thinking of Tom, who was safe enough, but with a natural regret for the member for Carlingford, who now, poor man, was as much out of the question as if he had been dead and buried. But before she reached the door Tom had recovered himself. He went up to her in his ridiculous way without the slightest regard either for the repast she was so anxious to prepare for him, or for his mother's feelings, or indeed for anything else in the world, except the one thing which had brought him, as he said, home.

"Then, Lucilla, after all, it is to be me," he said, taking her to him, and arresting her progress as if she had been a baby; and though he had such a beard, and was twice as big and strong as he used to be, there were big tears in the great fellow's eyes. "It is to be me after all,"

said Tom, looking at her in a way that startled Lucilla. "Say it is to be me!"

Miss Marjoribanks had come through many a social crisis with dignity and composure. She had never yet been known to fail in an emergency. She had managed Mr Cavendish, and, up to the last moment, Mr Ashburton, and all the intervening candidates for her favour, with perfect self-control and command of the situation. Perhaps it was because, as she had herself said, her feelings had never been engaged. But now, when it was only Tom--he whom, once upon a time, she had dismissed with affectionate composure, and given such excellent advice to, and regarded in so motherly a way--all Lucilla's powers seemed to fail her. It is hard to have to wind up with such a confession after having so long entertained a confidence in Lucilla which nothing seemed likely to impair. She broke down just at the moment when she had most need to have all her wits about her. Perhaps it was her past agitation which had been too much for her. Perhaps it was the tears in Tom Marjoribanks's eyes. But the fact was that Lucilla relinquished her superior position for the time being, and suffered him to make any a.s.sertion he pleased, and was so weak as to cry, for the second time, too--which, of all things in the world, was surely the last thing to have been expected of Miss Marjoribanks at the moment which decided her fate.

Lucilla cried, and acquiesced, and thought of her father and of the Member for Carlingford, and gave to each a tear and a regret; and she did not even take the trouble to answer any question, or to think who it was she was leaning on. It was to be Tom after all--after all the archdeacons, doctors, generals, members of Parliament--after the ten years and more in which she had not gone off--after the poor old Doctor's grudge against the nephew whom he did not wish to inherit his wealth, and Aunt Jemima's quiet wiles, and attempt to disappoint her boy. Fate and honest love had been waiting all the time till their moment came; and now it was not even necessary to say anything about it.

The fact was so clear that it did not require stating. It was to be Tom after all.

To do him justice, Tom behaved at this moment, in which affairs were left in his hands, as if he had been training for it all his life.

Perhaps it was the first time in which he had done anything absolutely without a blunder. He had wasted no time, and no words, and left no room for consideration, or for that natural relenting towards his rival which was inevitable as soon as Mr Ashburton was off the field. He had insisted, and he had perceived that there was but one alternative for Lucilla. Now that all was over, he took her back to her seat, and comforted her, and made no offensive demonstrations of triumph. "It is to be me after all!" he repeated; and it was utterly impossible to add anything to the eloquent brevity of this succinct statement of the case.

"Tom," said Miss Marjoribanks, when she had a little recovered, "if it is to be you, that is no reason why you should be so unnatural. Go up directly and see your mother. What will Aunt Jemima think of me if she knows I have let you stay talking nonsense here?"

"Yes, Lucilla--this moment," said Tom; but all the same he showed not the slightest inclination to go away. He did not quite believe in it as yet, and could not help feeling as if, should he venture to leave her, the whole fabric of his incredible good fortune must dissolve and melt away. As for Lucilla, her self-possession gradually came back to her when the crisis was over, and she felt that her involuntary abdication had lasted long enough, and that it was full time to take the management of affairs back into her own hands.

"You shall go _now_," she said, drying her eyes, "or else you cannot stay here. I thought of letting you stay in the house, as Aunt Jemima is with me; but if you do not mean to go and tell your mother, I will tell Nancy to send your things up to the Blue Boar. Ring the bell, please; if you will not ring the bell, I will do it myself, Tom. You may say what you like, but I know you are famishing; and Aunt Jemima is in the blue room, next door to----Oh, here is Nancy. It is Mr Tom, who has come home," said Lucilla hastily, not without a rising colour; for it was hard to explain why, when his mother was in the blue room all this time, he should have stayed here.

"Yes, Miss Lucilla--so I heard," said Nancy, dropping a doubtful curtsey. And then only Tom was persuaded, and bethought himself of his natural duty, and rushed upstairs. He seized Nancy's hand, and shook it violently, as he pa.s.sed her, to her great consternation. The moment of his supremacy was over. It was to be Tom after all; but Lucilla had recovered her self-possession, and taken the helm in her hand again, and Tom was master of the situation no more.

"Yes, it is Mr Tom," said Lucilla, shaking her head with something between a smile and a sigh. "It could be n.o.body but him that would ring _that_ bell, and upset all the cards. I hope he has not broken dear papa's punch-bowl that he used to be so fond of. He must have something to eat, Nancy, though he is such an awkward boy."

"I don't see nothing like a boy in him," said Nancy; "he's big and stout, and one o' them awful beards. There's been a deal of changes since he went away; but if he's new comed off that terrible long journey, it is but natural, as you say, Miss Lucilla, that he should want something to eat."

And then Miss Marjoribanks made various suggestions, which were received still doubtfully by her prime minister. Nancy, to tell the truth, did not like the turn things were taking. Lucilla's maiden household had been on the whole getting along very comfortably, and there was no telling how long it might have lasted without any new revolution. To be sure, Mr Ashburton had looked dangerous, but Nancy had seen a great many dangers of that kind blow over, and was not easily alarmed. Mr Tom, however, was a very different person; and Nancy was sufficiently penetrating to see that something had happened. Therefore, she received very coldly Lucilla's suggestions about lunch. "It ain't like the old times," she said at last, "when there was always something as one could put to the fire in a hurry;" and Nancy stood turning round the handle of the door in her hand, and contemplating the changed state of affairs with a sigh.

"That would be all very true if you were like anybody else," said Lucilla; "but I hope you would not like to send Mr Tom off to the Blue Boar. After all, perhaps it is better to have a--a gentleman in the house. I know you always used to think so. They are a great deal of trouble; but--for some things, you know----" said Lucilla; "and then Mr Tom is not just like other people; and whatever happens, Nancy, you are an old dear, and it shall never make any difference between you and me."

When she had said these words, Lucilla gave her faithful servant a hug, and sent her off to look after Tom Marjoribanks's meal; and then she herself went half-way downstairs and picked up the cards that were still scattered about the landing, and found with satisfaction that the Doctor's old punch-bowl was not broken. All Tom's things were lying below in the hall--heaps of queer Indian-looking baggage--tossed down anyhow in a corner, as if the owner had been in much too great a hurry to think of any secondary circ.u.mstances. "And it was there he met poor Mr Ashburton," said Lucilla to herself, with a certain pathos. There it was indeed that the encounter had taken place. They had seen each other but for a moment, but that moment had been enough to send the Member for Carlingford away dejected, and to impress upon Tom's mind the alternative that it was either to be "him or me." Miss Marjoribanks contemplated the spot with a certain tender sentimental interest, as any gentle moralist might look at a field of battle. What feelings must have been in the minds of the two as they met and looked at each other! What a dread sense of disappointment on the one side; what sharp stimulation on the other! Thus Lucilla stood and looked down from her own landing upon the scene of that encounter, full of pensive interest. And now it was all over, and Mr Ashburton had pa.s.sed away as completely as Mr Chiltern, who was in his grave, poor man; or Mr Cavendish, who was going to marry Barbara Lake. The thought of so sudden a revolution made Lucilla giddy as she went thoughtfully upstairs. Poor Mr Ashburton! It hardly seemed real even to Miss Marjoribanks when she sat down again in the drawing-room, and confessed to herself that, after all, it was to be Tom.

But when he came downstairs again with his mother, Lucilla was quite herself, and had got over all her weakness. Aunt Jemima, for her part, was in a very agitated state of mind. Tom had come too soon or Mr Ashburton too late, and all the fruits of her little bit of treachery were accordingly lost, and at the same time, the treachery itself remained, revealed at least to one person in the very clearest light.

It did not seem possible to Aunt Jemima that Lucilla would not tell. If she had not done it now, in the excitement of the moment, at least it would come out some time when she was least expecting it, and her son's esteem and confidence would be lost. Therefore it was with a very blank countenance that Mrs John Marjoribanks came downstairs. She dared not say a word, and she had to kiss her niece, and take her to her maternal bosom, Tom looking on all the while; but she gave Lucilla a look that was pitiful to see. And when Tom finally was dismissed to his room, to open his trunks, and show the things he had brought home, Aunt Jemima drew near her future daughter with wistful guiltiness. There was no comfort to her in the thought of the India shawl, which her son had gone to find. Any day, any hour, Lucilla might tell; and if the unlucky mother were put on her defence, what could she say?

"Lucilla," said the guilty woman, under her breath, "I am sure you think it very strange. I don't attempt to deceive _you_. I can't tell you how thankful and glad I am that it has all ended so well; but you know, Lucilla, in the first place, I did not know what your feelings were; and I thought, perhaps, that if anything would tell, it would be a surprise, and then----"

"Did you, Aunt Jemima?" said Miss Marjoribanks, with gentle wonder. "I thought you had been thinking of Mr Ashburton, for my part."

"And so I was, Lucilla," said the poor lady, with great relief and eagerness. "I thought he was coming forward, and of course he would have been a far better match than my Tom. I had to think for you both, my dear. And then I never knew what your feelings were, nor if you would care; and then it was not as if there had been a day fixed----"

"Dear Aunt Jemima," said Miss Marjoribanks, "if you are pleased now, what does it matter? but I do hope you are pleased now?"

And Mrs John took her niece into her arms again this time with better will, and cried. "I am as happy as ever I can be," said the inconsistent mother. "I always knew you were fond of each other, Lucilla; before you knew it yourselves, I saw what would come of it. But my poor brother-in-law----And you will make my boy happy, and never turn him against his mother," cried the repentant sinner. Lucilla was not the woman to resist such an appeal. Mrs John had meant truly enough towards her in other ways, if not in this way; and Miss Marjoribanks was fond of her aunt, and it ended in a kiss of peace freely bestowed, and a vow of protection and guidance from the strong to the weak, though the last was only uttered in the protectress's liberal heart.

_Chapter LI_

When Miss Marjoribanks had time to consider the prospect which had thus so suddenly opened before her, it also had its difficulties, like everything else in the world. Her marriage now could not be the straightforward business it might have been had it been Mr Ashburton instead of Tom. In that case she would have gone to an established house and life--to take her place in the one and her share in the other, and to find the greater part of her surroundings and duties already fixed for her, which was a thing that would have very greatly simplified the matter. But Tom, who had dashed home from India at full speed as soon as he heard of his uncle's death, had left his profession behind him at Calcutta, and had nothing to do in England, and was probably too old to resume his (non) practice at the bar, even if he had been in the least disposed to do so; while, at the same time, an idle man--a man to be found everlastingly at home--would have been insupportable to Lucilla.

Miss Marjoribanks might feel disposed (for everybody's good) to a.s.sume the sovereign authority in her own house, but to marry anybody that would be merely an appendage to her was a thing not to be thought of; and as soon as the first preliminaries were arranged her active mind sprang up with redoubled vigour from the maze in which it had been. Her intelligence had suspended, so to speak, all its ordinary operations for twenty-four hours at least, while it was busy investigating the purely personal question: from the moment when the Member for Carlingford was finally elected until Tom Marjoribanks rang the night-bell at the old Doctor's door, Lucilla's thoughts had been in that state of over-stimulation and absorption which is almost as bad as having no power of thought at all. But as soon as the pressure was removed--as soon as it was all over, and the decision made, and no further question was possible--then Miss Marjoribanks's active mind sprang up with renewed energy. For it was not only a new beginning, but everything had to be settled and arranged.

Her mind was full of it while her hands were busy putting away all the Indian presents which Tom had brought--presents which were chronological in their character, and which he had begun to acc.u.mulate from the very beginning of his exile. It could not but be touching to Lucilla to see how he had thought of her for all these years; but her mind being, as everybody is aware, of a n.o.bly practical kind, her thoughts, instead of dallying with these tokens of the past, went forward with serious solicitude into the future. The marriage could not take place until the year was out; and there was, accordingly, time to arrange everything, and to settle all the necessary preliminaries to a point as near perfection as is possible to merely human details. Tom, no doubt, was very urgent and pressing, and would have precipitated everything, and had the whole business concluded to-morrow, if he could have had his way. But the fact was that, having once given in to him in the memorable way which we have already recorded, Lucilla did not now, so far as the final arrangements were concerned, make much account of Tom's wishes.

Heaven be praised, there was one of the two who knew what was right and proper, and was not to be moved from the correct path by any absurd representations. Miss Marjoribanks was revolving all these important questions when she laid her hand by chance, as people say, upon the _Carlingford Gazette_, all damp and inky, which had just been laid upon the library table. It contained, of course, all the news of the election, but Lucilla was too well acquainted with that beforehand to think of condescending to derive her information from a newspaper. She looked at the advertis.e.m.e.nts with an eye which saw all that was there without pausing upon anything in particular. She saw the usual notice about marmalade oranges, and the announcement that young Mr Vincent, who after that made himself so well known in Carlingford, was to preach the next Sunday in Salem Chapel, and all the other important novelties in the place; but naturally she took but a moderate amount of interest in such details as these.

Suddenly, however, Lucilla's eye, which, if it could ever be said to be vacant, had been regarding vacantly the list of advertis.e.m.e.nts, kindled up, and all its usual energy and intelligence came back to it. Her thoughtful face woke up as from a dream. Her head, which had been drooping in pensive meditation, grew erect--her whole figure expanded.

She clasped her hands together, as if in the fervour of the moment, n.o.body else being present, she could not refrain from shaking hands with herself, and giving vent to a self-congratulation. "It is a special providence," said Lucilla to herself, with her usual piety; and then she folded up the paper in a little square, with the announcement in the middle which had struck her so much, and placed it where Tom could not fail to see it when he came in, and went upstairs with a new and definite direction given to her thoughts. That was how it must be!

Lucilla, for her part, felt no difficulty in discerning the leadings of Providence, and she could not but appreciate the readiness with which her desires were attended to, and the prompt clearing-up of her difficulties. There are people whose inclinations Providence does not seem to superintend with such painstaking watchfulness; but then, no doubt, that must be their own fault.