Читать книгу The Green Goddess - Louise Jordan Miln - Страница 4

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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.