As for Mr Cavendish, it would be very difficult to describe his feelings. He had been knocking about in all sorts of poor places, making clandestine visits to his sister, and hovering round the more than suburban simplicity of Grove Street, and the sense of being once more enveloped and surrounded by all that was pleasant to the eye and comfortable to the outer man was wonderfully consolatory and agreeable. But his mind was in a dreadfully harassed condition all the same. He was preoccupied to the last degree, wondering what Miss Marjoribanks really knew, and how far he had betrayed himself, and to what extent it would be safe, as she herself said, to confide in Lucilla; and at the same time he was obliged to listen to and show a certain interest in the General's stories, and to make now and then a painful effort of mind to recall some of the mutual friends referred to, whose names and persons had in the meantime slipped out of his memory. All the babble of the club, which General Travers felt must be so refreshing to the ears of a rusticated member, fell as flat upon Mr Cavendish, whose mind was full of other matters, as if it had been the merest old woman's gossip, which, to be sure, it slightly resembled in some points. The gallant General made himself so agreeable that he nearly drove the unfortunate man out of his senses, and, when he had exhausted all other means of aggravation, returned with fresh zest to the sentimental circumstances in which, as he supposed, he had found his companion out.
"Very sensible I call it," said General Travers. "To be candid, I don't call her strictly handsome, you know; she's too big for that—and I don't suppose she's of any family to speak of; though perhaps you don't mind that trifling circumstance; but a woman that will dress well and light up well, and knows how to give a man a capital dinner, by Jove! and no doubt has a pretty little bit of money into the bargain—I respect your taste, Cavendish," said the friendly critic, with effusion; and somehow this applause irritated its recipient more than all that had gone before.
"I am sure I am much obliged to you," said Mr Cavendish, "though, unfortunately, I don't merit your approbation. Miss Marjoribanks is a great friend of mine, but she wouldn't have me, and I don't mean to ask her. At the same time, she has very good connections; and that is not the way to talk of a girl of twenty. She is worth a dozen of your fast young ladies," said the sufferer, with some heat. He was not in the least in love with Lucilla, and indeed had a certain dread of her at this present moment; but he could not forget that she had once stood by him in his need—and, besides, he was glad of any subject on which he could contradict his visitor. "I dare say her family is better than either yours or mine. Scotch, you know," said Mr Cavendish, trying to laugh. As for the General, he leaned back on his chair with an indulgent air, and stroked his mustache.
"Beg your pardon—meant no offence," he said. "For my part, I don't see that it matters, if a woman is good-looking and has something, you know. For instance, there was a pretty little thing—a charming little thing—Lake, or something like that——"
"Ah!" said Mr Cavendish. It was a frightful want of self-control; but he had been a long time at full strain, and he could not help it. It did not occur to him, for the moment, that nobody in his senses would have applied the term "little thing" to Barbara; and, after all the slow aggravation that he had been submitting to, the idea of this insolent soldier interfering in Grove Street was beyond his power of endurance. As for the General, the tone of this exclamation was such that he too turned round on his chair, and said, "Yes?" with equally unmistakable meaning, startled, but ready for the emergency, whatever it might be.
Thus the two looked at each other for a second, friends in the ordinary acceptation of the word, and yet, perhaps, on the eve of becoming enemies. Mr Cavendish had, up to that moment, pretty nearly forgotten Barbara Lake. It was a piquant sort of occupation when he had nothing else to do, and when the world, according to his morbid fancy, was on the eve of turning its back upon him—but from the moment when he had said between his teeth "Confound these women!" and had felt the excitement of the approaching crisis, Barbara, and her crimson cheeks, and her level eyebrows, and her contralto, had gone altogether out of his mind. At the same time, it is quite true that a man may feel himself at liberty to forget a woman when other matters of more immediate interest are absorbing his attention, and yet be driven furious by the idea suddenly presented to him that somebody else, who has nothing earthly to do with it, is about to interfere. Mr Cavendish, however, recovered himself while the General sat staring at him, and began to see how ridiculous his defiance was.
"Well?—go on. I did not say anything," he said, and lighted another cigar. Yet he did not face his companion as a friendly listener should, but began to beat measure to an irritating imaginary air on the table, with a certain savage energy by moments, as if he were beating time on the General's head.
"Then why do you stop a fellow short like that?" said General Travers; "I was going to tell you of some one I saw the other day in the house of your—your friend, you know. She was under Miss Marjoribanks's wing, that was how I saw her—and I hope you are not playing the gay deceiver, my friend;—a little thing, round-faced, hazel-eyed—a little soft rosebud sort of creature," said the General, growing eloquent. "By Jove! Cavendish, I hope you don't mean to make yourself disagreeable. These sort of looks, you know——"
"It was Rose, I suppose," said Mr Cavendish, relieved in a moment; and, to tell the truth, he could not help laughing. The more eloquent and angry the General grew, the more amused and contemptuous grew his entertainer. He was so tickled by the position of affairs, that he actually forgot his anxieties for the moment. "No doubt it was Rose," he repeated, and laughed; Rose! what anybody could see in that little dragon! And then the contrast between the soldier, who prided himself on his knowledge of the world, and liked to talk of his family and position, to the annoyance of those who had none, and the amusement of those who happen to possess these valuable qualifications—and the mistress of the Female School of Design, filled Mr Cavendish with amusement: perhaps all the more because he himself was in a similar scrape. As for General Travers, he was as much disposed to be angry as, a moment before, Mr Cavendish had been.
"It might be Rose," he said, "or Lily either, for anything I can tell; but there is nothing laughable in it that I can see. You seem to be perfectly au courant, at all events—which I hope is quite satisfactory to Miss Marjoribanks," said the soldier; and then he resumed, after a disagreeable little pause, "they tell me that everybody meets at the Doctor's on Thursdays. I suppose I shall see you there. Thursday, ain't it? to-morrow?" He looked as he spoke, with what seemed to his victim an insulting consciousness, in poor Cavendish's face. But, in reality, the General did not mean to be insulting, and knew nothing whatever of the horrible internal pang which rent his companion when it was thus recalled to him that it was to-morrow—a fact which, up to this moment, had not occurred to the unfortunate. To-morrow; and not even to-morrow—to-day—for by this time it was two o'clock in the morning, and the unwelcome intruder was wasting the little time he had for deciding what he should do. Once more his own personal anxieties, which he had put aside for a moment at the sudden dictate of jealousy, surged over everything, and swallowed up all lesser sensations. To-morrow!—and by this time everybody knew that he was in Carlingford, and he could not stay away from the weekly assembly without attracting general attention to himself, and throwing open the flood-gates of suspicion. What was he to do? should he turn his back on the enemy once for all, and run away and break off his connection with Carlingford? or should he dare everything and face the Archdeacon, and put his trust in Lucilla, as that high-minded young woman had invited him to do? With these thoughts in his mind, it may be supposed that Mr Cavendish gave but a very mingled attention to the babble of his visitor, who found the wine and the cigars so good, and perhaps had begun to be a little moved out of his ordinary lucidity by their effect.