Miss Marjoribanks

by Mrs. Oliphant

  _Chapter III_

  It may be well to seize the opportunity of Miss Marjoribanks's travels,through which it is unnecessary to follow her, as they have nothingparticular to do with the legitimate history of her great undertaking,to explain a little the state of affairs in Carlingford before thisdistinguished revolutionary began her labours. It is something likegoing back into the prehistoric period--those ages of the flint, whichonly ingenious quarrymen and learned geologists can elucidate--to recallthe social condition of the town before Miss Marjoribanks began herThursday evenings, before St Roque's Chapel was built or thought of,while Mr Bury, the Evangelical Rector, was still in full activity, andbefore old Mr Tufton, at Salem Chapel (who sometimes drank tea at theRectory, and thus had a kind of clandestine entrance into the dimoutskirts of that chaos which was then called society), had his first"stroke." From this latter circumstance alone the entirely disorganisedcondition of affairs will be visible at a glance. It is true, MrVincent, who succeeded Mr Tufton, was received by Lady Western, in dayswhen public opinion had made great advances; but then Lady Western wasthe most good-natured creature in the world, and gave an invitation,when it happened to come into her head, without the least regard for theconsequences; and, after all, Mr Vincent was very nice-looking andclever, and quite presentable. Fortunately, however, the period to whichwe allude was prior to the entrance of Lady Western into Grange Lane.She was a very pretty woman, and knew how to look like a lady offashion, which is always of importance; but she was terriblyinconsequent, as Miss Marjoribanks said, and her introductions were notin the least to be depended upon. She was indeed quite capable ofinviting a family of retired drapers to meet the best people in GrangeLane, for no better reason than to gratify her proteges, which, ofcourse, was a proceeding calculated to strike at the roots of allsociety. Fortunately for Carlingford, its reorganisation was in ablerhands. Affairs were in an utterly chaotic state at the period when thisrecord commences. There was nothing which could be properly called acentre in the entire town. To be sure, Grange Lane was inhabited, as atpresent, by the best families in Carlingford; but then, withoutorganisation, what good does it do to have a number of people together?For example, Mr Bury was utterly unqualified to take any lead. Mrs Buryhad been dead a long time, and the daughters were married, and theRector's maiden sister, who lived with him, was entirely of his own wayof thinking, and asked people to tea-parties, which were likeMethodists' class-meetings, and where Mr Tufton was to be met with, andsometimes other Dissenters, to whom the Rector gave what he called theright hand of fellowship. But he never gave anything else to society,except weak tea and thin bread-and-butter, which was fare, the ladiessaid, which the gentlemen did not relish. "I never can induce Charles togo out to tea," said young Mrs Woodburn piteously; "he won't, and thereis an end of it. After dinner he thinks of nothing but an easy-chair andthe papers; and, my dear Miss Bury, what can I do?" "It is a great pity,my dear, that your husband's carelessness should deprive you of thebenefit of Christian conversation; but, to be sure, it is your duty tostay with him, and I hope it will be made up to you at home," Miss Burywould say. As for the Rector, his favourites were devoted to him; and ashe always saw enough of familiar faces at his sister's tea-parties, hetook no account of the defaulters. Then there was Dr Marjoribanks, whogave only dinners, to which naturally, as there was no lady in thehouse, ladies could not be invited, and who, besides, was rather adrawback than a benefit to society, since he made the men quiteintolerable, and filled them with such expectations, in the way ofcookery, that they never were properly content with a good family dinnerafter. Then the ladies, from whom something might justly have beenexpected in the way of making society pleasant--such as Mrs Centum andMrs Woodburn, for example, who had everything they could desire, and themost liberal housekeeping allowances--were either incapacitated bycircumstances (which was a polite term in use at Carlingford, and meantbabies) or by character. Mrs Woodburn liked nothing so well as to sit bythe fire and read novels, and "take off" her neighbours, when any onecalled on her; and, of course, the lady who was her audience on oneoccasion, left with the comfortable conviction that next time she wouldbe the victim; a circumstance which, indeed, did not make the offenderunpopular--for there were very few people in Carlingford who could beamusing, even at the expense of their neighbours--but made it quiteimpossible that she should ever do anything in the way of knittingpeople together, and making a harmonious whole out of the scraps andfragments of society. As for Mrs Chiley, she was old, and had not energyenough for such an undertaking; and, besides, she had no children, anddisliked bustle and trouble, and was of opinion that the Colonel neverenjoyed his dinner if he had more than four people to help him to eatit; and, in short, you might have gone over Grange Lane, house by house,finding a great deal of capital material, but without encountering asingle individual capable of making anything out of it. Such was thelamentable condition, at the moment this history commences, of societyin Carlingford.

  And yet nobody could say that there were not very good elements to makesociety with. When you add to a man capable of giving excellent dinners,like Dr Marjoribanks, another man like young Mr Cavendish, MrsWoodburn's brother, who was a wit and a man of fashion, and belonged toone of the best clubs in town, and brought down gossip with the bloom onit to Grange Lane; and when you join to Mrs Centum, who was always sogood and so much out of temper that it was safe to calculate onsomething amusing from her, the languid but trenchant humour of MrsWoodburn--not to speak of their husbands, who were perfectly availablefor the background, and all the nephews and cousins and grand-children,who constantly paid visits to old Mr Western and Colonel Chiley; and theBrowns, when they were at home, with their floating suite of admirers;and the young ladies who sang, and the young ladies who sketched, andthe men who went out with the hounds, when business permitted them; andthe people who came about the town when there was an election; and thebarristers who made the circuit; and the gay people who came to theraces; not to speak of the varying chances of curates, who could talk orplay the piano, with which Mr Bury favoured his parishioners--for hechanged his curates very often; and the occasional visits of the lessercounty people, and the country clergymen;--it will be plainly apparentthat all that was wanting to Carlingford was a master-hand to blendthese different elements. There had even been a few feeble preliminaryattempts at this great work, which had failed, as such attempts alwaysfail when they are premature, and when the real agent of the change isalready on the way; but preparations and presentiments had taken vaguepossession of the mind of the town, as has always been observed to bethe case before a great revolution, or when a man destined to put hismark on his generation, as the newspapers say, is about to appear. To besure, it was not a man this time, but Miss Marjoribanks; but theatmosphere thrilled and trembled to the advent of the new luminary allthe same.

  Yet, at the same time, the world of Carlingford had not the least ideaof the real quarter from which the sovereign intelligence which was todevelop it from chaos into order and harmony was, _effectivement_, tocome. Some people had hoped in Mrs Woodburn before she fell into herpresent languor of appearance and expression; and a great many peoplehoped in Mr Cavendish's wife, if he married, as he was said to intend todo; for this gentleman, who was in the habit of describing himself, nodoubt, very truthfully, as one of the Cavendishes, was a person of greatconsideration in Grange Lane; and some hoped in a new Rector, for it wasapparent that Mr Bury could not last very long. Thus, with the ordinaryshort-sightedness of the human species, Carlingford blinded itself, andturned its eyes in every direction in the world rather than in that ofthe Swiss mountains, which were being climbed at that moment by a largeand blooming young woman, with tawny short curls and alert decidedmovements; so little do we know what momentous issues may hang upon themost possible accident! Had that energetic traveller slipped but an inchfarther upon the _mer de glace_--had she taken that other step which shewas with difficulty persuaded not to take on the Wengern Alp--therewould have been an end of all the hopes o
f social importance forCarlingford. But the good fairies took care of Lucilla and her mission,and saved her from the precipice and the crevasses; and instinctivelythe air at home got note of what was coming, and whispered the newsmysteriously through the keyholes. "Miss Marjoribanks is coming home,"the unsuspecting male public said to itself as it returned from DrMarjoribanks's dinners, with a certain distressing, but mistakenpresentiment, that these delights were to come to an end; and the ladiesrepeated the same piece of news, conjoining with it benevolentintimations of their intention to call upon her, and make the poor thingfeel herself at home. "Perhaps she may be amusing," Mrs Woodburn wasgood enough to add; but these words meant only that perhaps Lucilla, whowas coming to set them all right, was worthy of being placed in thesatirist's collection along with Mrs Centum and Mrs Chiley. Thus, whilethe town ripened more and more for her great mission, and the ignoranthuman creatures, who were to be her subjects, showed their usualblindness and ignorance, the time drew nearer and nearer for MissMarjoribanks's return.