“It is not so pleasant as I thought walking over this snow,” he said; “I can’t give that up, that I can see. And there’s more snow in the air if I’m any judge of the weather. There—go in—go in; don’t wait for me;—but mind you make haste and dress, for I want my dinner. I may have to go down to Mrs. Chiley again tonight.”
It was an odd way of talking, and it was odd to break off like this; but then, to be sure, there was no occasion for any more conversation, since they had just arrived at their own door. It made Lucilla uneasy for the moment, but while she was dressing she managed to explain it to herself, and to think, after all, it was only natural that her papa should have seen a little into the movement and commotion of her thoughts; and then poor dear old Mrs. Chiley being so ill, who was one of his own set, so to speak. He was quite cheerful later in the evening, and enjoyed his dinner, and was even more civil than usual to Mrs. John. And though he did not come up to tea, he made his appearance afterwards with a flake of new-fallen snow still upon his rusty gray whiskers. He had gone to see his patient again, notwithstanding the silent storm outside. And his countenance was a little overcast this time, no doubt by the late walk, and the serious state Mrs. Chiley was in, and his encounter with the snow.
“Oh, yes, she is better,” he said. “I knew she would do this time. People at our time of life don’t go off in that accidental kind of way. When a woman has been so long used to living, it takes her a time to get into the way of dying. She might be a long time thinking about it yet, if all goes well—”
“Papa, don’t speak like that!” said Lucilla. “Dying! I can’t bear to think of such a thing. She is not so very old.”
“Such things will happen whether you can bear to think of them or not,” said the Doctor. “I said you would go down and see her tomorrow. We’ve all held out a long time—the lot of us. I don’t like to think of the first gap myself, but somebody must make a beginning, you know.”
“The Chileys were always older than you,” said Mrs. John. “I remember in poor Mrs. Marjoribanks’s time:—they were quite elderly then, and you were just beginning. When my Tom was a baby—”
“We were always of the same set,” said the Doctor, interrupting her without hesitation. “Lucilla, they say Cavendish has got hold of the Rector. He has made believe to be penitent, you know. That is cleverer than anything you could have done. And if he can’t be won back again it will be serious, the Colonel says. You are to try if you can suggest anything. It seems,” said the Doctor, with mingled amusement and satire, and a kind of gratification “that Ashburton has great confidence in you.”
“It must have been the agent,” said Lucilla. “I don’t think any of the rest of them are equal to that. I don’t see, if that is the case, how we are to win him back. If Mr. Ashburton had ever done anything very wicked, perhaps—”
“You are safe to say he is not penitent anyhow,” said Dr. Marjoribanks, and he took his candle and went away with a smile. But either Mr. Ashburton’s good opinion of Lucilla, or some other notion, had touched the Doctor. He was not a man who said much at any time, but when he bade her good night, his hand drooped upon Lucilla’s shoulder, and he patted it softly, as he might have patted the head of a child. It was not much, but still it was a good deal from him. To feel the lingering touch of her father’s hand caressing her, even in so mild a way, was something quite surprising and strange to Miss Marjoribanks. She looked up at him almost with alarm, but he was just then turning away with his candle in his hand. And he seemed to have laid aside his gloom, and even smiled to himself as he went upstairs. “If she had been the boy instead of that young ass,” he said to himself. He could not have explained why he was more than ordinarily hard just then upon the innocent, far-distant Tom, who was unlucky, it is true, but not exactly an ass, after all. But somehow it struck the Doctor more than ever how great a loss it was to society and to herself that Lucilla was not “the boy.” She could have continued, and perhaps extended, the practice, whereas just now it was quite possible that she might drop down into worsted-work and tea-parties like any other single woman—while Tom, who had carried off the family honours, and was “the boy” in this limited and unfruitful generation, was never likely to do anything to speak of, and would be a poor man if he were to live for a hundred years. Perhaps there was something else behind that made the Doctor’s brow contract a little as he crossed the threshold of his chamber, into which, no more than into the recesses of his heart, no one ever penetrated; but it was the lighter idea of that comparison, which had no actual pain in it, but only a kind of humorous discontent, which was the last articulate thought in his mind as he went to his room and closed his door with a little sharpness, as he always did, upon the outside world.
Aunt Jemima, for her part, lingered a little with Lucilla downstairs. “My dear, I don’t think my brother-in-law looks well tonight. I
