The Vicar was suffering acutely. He knew he’d miss his daughter. And he
thought he should not see her again after to-morrow’s parting. So he
went into the breakfast-room, where he knew she’d be waiting for him as
she always was, wearing his brightest face. No shadow of his making
should dim the child’s last day at home with her father. There would be
time enough—all the rest of his life—to miss her in, and he did not
intend to do it to-day, in the least, or to anticipate it. This should
be a day of great and unbroken joy. And he didn’t intend to mope after
she’d gone. Not he! He had the churchyard, his people to shepherd, the
flowers in his garden, and good-fellow books on his shelves, and his one
great Friendship. And he was brave.
It was hard to let the child go—that of course—but the way of her
going contented him well. From the hour of her birth he had prayed that
Lucilla might marry. The new dispensation that made life so much more
interesting and varied for unmarried women had his cordial endorsement,
because it did, as he judged, make the world a pleasanter place for an
unmarried woman; but he was profoundly and acutely sure that marriage
was for every woman “the better part,” and in the increasing
preponderance of women to-day, making marriage a mathematical
impossibility for so awkwardly many, his prayer that his girl should
marry took on an unplacid quality of anxiety, almost a certain
feverishness that he owned to himself was less than becoming to so
spiritual an act as prayer.
He was glad when love found Lucilla out, and marriage beckoned and
claimed her. He liked and approved Antony Crespin. And he rejoiced that
her marriage was to take so far afield the daughter whose actual
presence he could so ill spare, and would, he knew, so sorely miss. He
knew that she—for all her sweet and unaffected happiness in it—had
begun to find the quiet, beaten Surrey path a trifle tame, a little same
and narrow. Because she was going so far, he thought that he should not
see her again; but he was glad that she was. India would fascinate her,
he thought; and the army life would amuse her. And of her happiness and
welfare he had no doubt; for Crespin was good all through, a sterling,
capable fellow, and Lucilla herself was as sane and sensible as she was
true and sweet. Antony had beyond his Captain’s beggarly pay, though a
bit less beggarly in an Indian regiment, of course, a decent private
income; not too much, but just enough. The prayer of Agar would be
answered for the husband and wife, and Philip Reynolds was sure that
“Grant me neither poverty nor riches” was one of the most sensible
petitions ever lifted up to God by man. Yes—it was a good match in
every sense. And, if to-morrow would be one of his sharp sorrow-days, it
too would be one of his gladdest.
Lucilla stood quietly radiant waiting for him at the breakfast table.
“Well, Daddy?” she said.
“Well, dear?”
“Sleep well?”
“Capitally! Capitally!”
It was their usual morning greeting. Then he kissed her, and she kissed
him, as kindly and gently as he had in that same room, on that same spot
every morning for years—but no more warmly, no more lingeringly than
they always had; with no added significance. Each had resolved that
to-day should be just like other days of theirs, to be cherished in
memory all the more tenderly because it had been just one of their days
of ordinary intimacy. And, though nothing had been said between them,
each knew that they shared the wish and the intention.
Her boxes were packed and locked—all packed, all locked, but the one
into which her wedding white would be laid when she came back from
church to-morrow. All that he had to say to her, advice, careful words
about marriage and about India, some of it said for himself, some said
in her mother’s stead, assurances that he would do capitally, capitally
without her, promises to neglect neither her collie nor her
carnations—all this had been said. None of it need be said again.
Nothing should be allowed to mark this day from the many other good days
they had shared together—except that each had told the parlor-maid
privately that they would be at home to no one to-day—if any one had
the ill tact to call; and as for the villagers, well, if any
parishioners were in sudden trouble or sickness they must shift with the
curate for once.
Not even Antony Crespin was to have admittance to-day, Lucilla had told
him, and Crespin had laughed, and understood, with a tender look in his
pleasant eyes, and had promised obedience with a cheerful “Right-o!”
The girl gave her father his coffee, and he gave her her kidneys.
She teased him a little when his cup came back the second time, and he
retorted with a reminder of what it probably had cost when she helped
herself to a second peach.
For more than an hour they strolled in the garden, as they always did
when it was fine, and often, though more briskly and briefly, when it
rained. They studied the roses and appraised the peas, counted the
chickens just hatched—one perking about with a white bubble of shell
still on its soft yellow back—praised the red wealth of the strawberry
beds, shook their heads at a pear tree’s blight; but nothing was said of
that they would not do it together again. All over the garden they
wandered, her hand on his sleeve, or his on hers; but they did this
almost every day.
When they went in he read his paper and she read hers.
After lunch they went back into the garden, he with a book, she with
some sewing, and under the big cedar just outside the drawing-room’s
open French window he sat in the big garden chair and read aloud, while
she sat on the big bench and worked.
She played to him after tea. Then he read her the sermon he’d finished
the night before while she and Antony had roamed the garden, and Lucilla
made a suggestion or two—as she often did, more because she knew he
liked her to than for anymore critical reason—and one suggestion he
liked and incorporated, and one he disdained and rejected.
They had a fire in the hall that night, as they always did when its heat
possibly could be borne. He won the game of cribbage; he usually did.
Then she sat on the wide hearth-curb, leaning back against the
ingle-nook’s paneling, her palms behind her head, and he lounged in his
great cushioned chair, and their lazy talk moved back and forth from
grave to gay.
The grandfather’s clock struck eleven. The Vicar got up and wound it,
she standing beside him. Then without a word he kissed her goodnight,
and patted her shoulder, and she kissed him, and said, “Till breakfast,
Daddy. Remember to put this light out,” and went up the broad, old
stairs, her pale dinner-gown trailing softly behind her. And her father
stood and watched her—not moving until he had heard her bedroom door
close.
Lucilla Reynolds closed her door—alone with the thoughts that such
girls think on such nights.
And the man sat alone by the fire till it died.