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.