“No, Mr. Walrond; why should there be anything wrong there?”
“I don’t know, I am sure, only as a rule people don’t wait for the parson unless there is something amiss, and there seems to be so much misfortune in this parish just now. Well, what is it, my boy?”
“I want to know about Barbara, Mr. Walrond. They tell me she is very bad, but I can’t get anything definite from the others, I mean from her sisters. They don’t seem to be sure, and the doctor wouldn’t say when I asked him.”
The Reverend Septimus looked at Anthony and Anthony looked at the Reverend Septimus, and in that look they learned to understand each other. The agony that was eating out this poor father’s heart was not peculiar to him; another shared it. In what he would have called his “wicked selfishness” the Reverend Septimus felt almost grateful for this sudden revelation. If it is a comfort to share our joys, it is a still greater comfort to share our torments.
“Walk on with me, Anthony,” he said. “I must hurry, I have every reason to hurry. Had it not been a matter of duty I would not have left the house, but, so to speak, a clergyman has many children; he cannot prefer one before the other.”
“Yes, yes,” said Anthony, “but what about Barbara? Oh! please tell me at once.”
“I can’t tell you, Anthony, because I don’t know. From here to the crest of Gunter’s Hill,” and he pointed to an eminence in front of them, “is a mile and a quarter. When we get to the crest of Gunter’s Hill perhaps we shall know. I left home two hours ago, and then Barbara lay almost at the point of death; insensible.”
“Insensible,” muttered Anthony. “Oh! my God, insensible.”
“Yes,” went on the clergyman in a voice of patient resignation. “I don’t understand much about such things, but the inflammation appears to have culminated that way. Now either she will never wake again, or if she wakes she may live. At least that is what they tell me, but they may be wrong. I have so often known doctors to be wrong.”
They walked on together in silence twenty yards or more. Then he added as though speaking to himself: