Part 25 (2/2)

”But I am not a boy,” said Lucilla mildly; ”and even if I had been, you know, I might have chosen another profession. Tom never had any turn for medicine that I ever heard of----”

”I hope you know pretty well about all the turns he ever had with that old--woman,” said the Doctor, pulling himself up sharply, ”always at your ear. I suppose she never talks of anything else. But I hope you have too much sense for that sort of thing, Lucilla. Tom will never be anything but a poor man if he were to live a hundred years.”

”Perhaps not, papa,” said Lucilla, with a little sigh. The Doctor knew nothing about the great social experiment which it had entered into Miss Marjoribanks's mind to make for the regeneration of her contemporaries and the good of society, or possibly he might not have distinguished Tom by that particular t.i.tle. Was it he, perhaps, who was destined to be the hero of a domestic drama embodying the best principles of that Moral Philosophy which Lucilla had studied with such success at Mount Pleasant? She did not ask herself the question, for things had not as yet come to that point, but it gleamed upon her mind as by a side-light.

”I don't know how you would get on if you were poor,” said the Doctor.

”I don't think that would suit you. You would make somebody a capital wife, I can say that for you, Lucilla, that had plenty of money and a liberal disposition like yourself. But poverty is another sort of thing, I can tell you. Luckily you're old enough to have got over all the love-in-a-cottage ideas--if you ever had them,” Dr Marjoribanks added.

He was a worldly man himself, and he thought his daughter a worldly woman; and yet, though he thoroughly approved of it, he still despised Lucilla a little for her prudence, which is a paradoxical state of mind not very unusual in the world.

”I don't think I ever had them,” said Lucilla; ”not that kind of poverty. I know what a cottage means; it means a wretched man, always about the house with his feet in slippers, you know--what poor dear Mr Cavendish would come to if he was poor----”

The Doctor laughed, though he had not seemed up to this moment much disposed for laughing. ”So that is all your opinion of Cavendish,” he said; ”and I don't think you are far wrong either; and yet that was a young fellow that might have done better,” Dr Marjoribanks said reflectively, perhaps not without a slight p.r.i.c.k of conscience that he had forsaken an old friend.

”Yes,” said Lucilla, with a certain solemnity--”but you know, papa, if a man will not when he may----” And she sighed, though the Doctor, who had not been thinking of Mr Cavendish's prospects in that light, laughed once more; but it was a sharp sort of sudden laugh without much heart in it. He had most likely other things of more importance in his mind.

”Well, there have been a great many off and on since that time,” he said, smiling rather grimly. ”It is time you were thinking about it seriously, Lucilla. I am not so sure about some things as I once was, and I'd rather like to see you well settled before----It's a kind of prejudice a man has,” the Doctor said abruptly, which, whatever he might mean by it, was a dismal sort of speech to make.

”Before what, papa?” asked Lucilla, with a little alarm.

”Tut--before long, to be sure,” he said impatiently. ”Ashburton would not be at all amiss if he liked it and you liked it; but it's no use making any suggestions about those things. So long as you don't marry a fool----” Dr Marjoribanks said, with energy. ”I know--that is, of course, I've _seen_ what that is; you can't expect to get perfection, as you might have looked for perhaps at twenty; but I advise you to marry, Lucilla. I don't think you are cut out for a single woman, for my part.”

”I don't see the good of single women,” said Lucilla, ”unless they are awfully rich; and I don't suppose I shall ever be awfully rich. But, papa, so long as I can be a comfort to you----”

”Yes,” said the Doctor, with that tone which Lucilla could remember fifteen years ago, when she made the same magnanimous suggestion, ”but I can't live for ever, you know. It would be a pity to sacrifice yourself to me, and then perhaps next morning find that it was a useless sacrifice. It very often happens like that when self-devotion is carried too far. You've behaved very well, and shown a great deal of good sense, Lucilla--more than I gave you credit for when you commenced--I may say that; and if there was to be any change, for instance----”

”What change?” said Lucilla, not without some anxiety; for it was an odd way of talking, to say the least of it; but the Doctor had come to a pause, and did not seem disposed to resume.

”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 to-night.”

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 to-morrow. 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 amus.e.m.e.nt 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----”

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