Miss Marjoribanks

by Mrs. Oliphant

"I—I don't know, I am sure," said poor Major Brown. "To tell the truth, I—though I can safely say my sympathies are always with you, Cavendish—I—have been so unfortunate as to commit myself, you know. It was quite involuntary, I am sure, for I never thought my casual expression of opinion likely to have any weight——"

"Papa never will perceive the weight that is attached to his opinion," said Miss Brown.

"I was not thinking of it in the least, Maria," said the modest Major; "but the fact is, it seems to have been that that decided Ashburton to stand; and after drawing a man in to such a thing, the least one can do is to back him out in it. Nobody had an idea then, you know, that you were coming back, my dear fellow. I assure you, if I had known——"

"But even if you had known, you know you never meant it, papa," said Maria. And Mr Cavendish sat on the arm of the sofa, and put his hands deep into his pockets, and dropped his upper lip, and knit his eyebrows a little, and listened to the anxious people excusing themselves. He did not make any answer one way or another. He was terribly mortified and disappointed, and it went against his pride to make further remonstrances. When they had done, he got down off his seat and took his right hand out of his pocket and offered it to Miss Brown, who, putting her own into it, poor soul! with the remembrance of her ancient allegiance, was like to cry.

"Well," he said, "if that is the case, I suppose I need not bother you any longer. You'll give me your good wishes all the same. I used to hear of Ashburton sometimes, but I never had the least idea he was so popular. And to tell the truth, I don't think he's any great things to brag of—though I suppose it's not to be expected I should appreciate his qualities," Mr Cavendish added, with a laugh. As for Miss Brown, it was all she could do to keep from crying as he went away. She said she could see, by the way he left the drawing-room, that he was a stricken deer; and yet, notwithstanding this sympathetic feeling, she could not but acknowledge, when Miss Marjoribanks mentioned it, that, to have been such a handsome man, he was inconceivably gone off.

Mr Cavendish went up Grange Lane with his hands in his pockets, and tried to think that he did not care; but he did care all the same, and was very bitter in his mind over the failure of friends and the vanity of expectations. The last time he had walked past those garden walls he had thought himself sure of the support of Carlingford, and the personal esteem of all the people in all the houses he was passing. It was after the Archdeacon had broken down in his case against the man whom he called an adventurer, and when Mr Cavendish felt all the sweetness of being a member of an oligarchy, and entitled to the sympathy and support of his order. Now he went along the same path with his hat over his ears and his hands in his pockets, and rage and pain in his heart. Whose fault was it that his friends had deserted him and Carlingford knew him no more? He might as well have asked whose fault it was that he was getting stout and red in the face, and had not the same grace of figure nor ease of mind as he used to have? He had come very near to settling down and becoming a man of domestic respectability in this quiet place, and he had just escaped in time, and had laughed over it since, and imagined himself, with much glee, an old fogy looking after a lot of children. But the fact is that men do become old fogies even when they have no children to look after, and lose their figure and their elasticity just as soon and perhaps a little sooner in the midst of what is called life than in any milder scene of enjoyment. And it would have been very handy just now to have been sure of his election without paying much for it. He had been living fast, and spending a great deal of money, and this, after all, was the only real ambition he had ever had; and he had thought within himself that if he won he would change his mode of life, and turn over a new leaf, and become all at once a different man. When a man has made such a resolution, and feels not only that a mere success but a moral reformation depends upon his victory, he may be permitted to consider that he has a right to win; and it may be divined what his state of mind was when he had made the discovery that even his old friends did not see his election to be of any such importance as he did, and could think of a miserable little bit of self-importance or gratified vanity more than of his interests—even the women who had once been so kind to him! He had just got so far in his thoughts when he met Mr Centum, who stared for a moment, and then burst into one of his great laughs as he greeted him. "Good Lord! Cavendish, is this you? I never expected to see you like that!" the banker said, in his coarse way. "You're stouter than I am, old fellow; and such an Adonis as you used to be!" Mr Cavendish had to bear all this without giving way to his feelings, or even showing them any more than he could help it. Nobody would spare him that imbecile suggestion as to how things used to be. To be growing stouter than Centum without Centum's excuse of being a well-to-do householder and father of a family, and respectable man from whom stoutness was expected, was very bitter to him: but he had to gulp it down, and recollect that Centum was as yet the only influential supporter, except his brother-in-law, whom he had in Carlingford.

"What have you been doing with yourself since you came that nobody has seen you?" said Mr Centum. "If you are to do any good here, you know, we shall have to look alive."

"I have been ill," said the unfortunate candidate, with a little natural loss of temper. "You would not have a man to trudge about at this time of year in all weathers when he is ill."

"I would not be ill again, if I were you, till it's all over," said Mr Centum. "We shall have to fight every inch of our ground; and I tell you that fellow Ashburton knows what he's about—he goes at everything in a steady sort of way. He's not brilliant, you know, but he's sure——"

"Brilliant!" said Mr Cavendish, "I should think not. It is Lucilla Marjoribanks who is putting him up to it. You know she had an old grudge at me."