And it was not for want of opportunity to go elsewhere. Aunt Jemima, as has been seen, did not lose an instant in offering the shelter of her house to her niece; and Mrs. Beverley wrote the longest, kindest, most incoherent letter begging her dear Lucilla to come to her immediately for a long visit, and adding, that though she had to go out a good deal into society, she needn’t mind, for that everything she could think of would be done to make her comfortable; to which Dr. Beverley himself, who was now a dean, added an equally kind postscript, begging Miss Marjoribanks to make her home at the Deanery “until she saw how things were to be.” “He would have found me a place, perhaps,” Lucilla said, when she folded up the letter—and this was a terrible mode of expression to the genteel ears of Mrs. John.
“I wish you would not use such words, my dear,” said Aunt Jemima; “even if you had been as poor as you thought, my house would always have been a home for you. Thank Heaven I have enough for both; you never needed to have thought, under any circumstances, of taking a—a situation. It is a thing I could never have consented to,”—which was a very handsome thing of Aunt Jemima to say.
“Thank you, aunt,” said Lucilla, but she sighed; for, though it was very kind, what was Miss Marjoribanks to have done with herself in such a dowager establishment? And then Colonel Chiley came in, who had also his proposal to make.
“She sent me,” the Colonel said; “it’s been a sad business for us all, Lucilla; I don’t know when I have felt anything more; and as for her, you know, she has never held up her head since—”
“Dear Mrs. Chiley!” Miss Marjoribanks said, unable to resist the old affection; “and yet I heard she had sent for Dr. Rider directly,” Lucilla added. She knew it was quite natural, and perhaps quite necessary, but then it did seem hard that his own friends should be the first to replace her dear papa.
“It was I did that,” said the Colonel. “What was a man to do? I was horribly cut up, but I could not stand and see her making herself worse; and I said you had too much sense to mind—”
“So I ought,” said Lucilla, with penitence, “but when I remembered where he was last, the very last place—”
It was hard upon the Colonel to stand by and see a woman cry. It was a thing he could never stand, as he had always said to his wife. He took the poker, which was his favourite resource, and made one of his tremendous dashes at the fire, to give Lucilla time to recover herself, and then he turned to Aunt Jemima, who sat pensively by:
“She sent me,” said the Colonel, who did not think his wife needed any other name—“not that I would not have come of my own accord; we want Lucilla to go to us, you see. I don’t know what plans she may have been making, but we’re both very fond of her—she knows that. I think, if you have not settled upon anything, the best that Lucilla can do is to come to us. She’ll be the same as at home, and always somebody to look after her—”
The old Colonel was standing before the fire, wavering a little on his long unsteady old legs, and looking wonderfully well preserved, and old and feeble; and Lucilla, though she was in mourning, was so full of life and force in her way. It was a curious sort of protection to offer her, and yet it was real protection, and love and succour, though, Heaven knows! it might not perhaps last out the year.
“I am sure, Colonel Chiley, it is a very kind offer,” said Aunt Jemima, “and I would have been thankful if she could have made up her mind to go with me. But I must say she has taken a very queer notion into her head—a thing I should never have expected from Lucilla—she says she will stay here.”
“Here?—ah—eh—what does she mean by here?” said the Colonel.
“Here, Colonel Chiley, in this great big melancholy house. I have been thinking about it, and talking about it till my head goes round and round. Unless she were to take Inmates,” said Aunt Jemima, in a resigned and doleful voice. As for the Colonel, he was petrified, and for a long time had not a word to say.
“Here!—By Jove, I think she must have lost her senses,” said the old soldier. “Why, Lucilla, I—I thought—wasn’t there something about the money being lost? You couldn’t keep up this house under a—fifteen hundred a year at least; the Doctor spent a mint of money;—you must be going out of your senses. And to have all the sick people coming, and the bell ringing of nights. Bless my soul! it would kill anybody,” said Colonel Chiley. “Put on your bonnet, and come out with me; shutting her up here, and letting her cry, and so forth—I don’t say it ain’t natural—I’m terribly cut up myself whenever I think of it; but it’s been too much for her head,” said the Colonel, with anxiety and consternation mingling in his face.
“Unless she were to take Inmates, you know,” said Aunt Jemima, in a sepulchral voice. There was something in the word that seemed to carry out to a point of reality much beyond anything he had dreamt of, the suggestion Colonel Chiley had just made.
“Inmates! Lord bless my soul! what do you
