“Ay, but your A’nt’s been with him. He’s for going up the hill.”
“Up the hill?”
“Ay, he’s one that will walk while he can. But the next time, I’m thinking,” shaking his head again, “it won’t be his feet he’ll go out on.”
“Mrs. Bourdillon has gone?”
“Ay, miss, she’s gone—as we’re all going,” despondently, “sooner or later. She brought some paper, for I heard her reading to him. It would be his will, I expect.”
Josina thought the supposition most unlikely, for if her father was close with his money he was at least as close with his affairs. As long as she could remember he had held himself in a crabbed reserve, he had moved a silent master in a dependent world, even his rare outbursts of anger had rather emphasized than broken his reticence.
And since the attack which had consigned him to darkness he had grown even more taciturn. He had not repelled sympathy; he had rendered it impossible by ignoring the existence of a cause for it. While all about him had feared for his sight and, as hope faded, had dreaded the question which they believed to be trembling on his lips, he had either never hoped, or, drawing his own conclusions, had abandoned hope. At any rate, he had never asked. Instead he sat—when Arthur was not there to enliven him or Fewtrell to report to him—wrapped in his own thoughts, too proud to complain or too insensible to feel, and silent. Whatever he thought, whatever he feared, he hid all behind an impenetrable mask; and whether pride or patience or resignation were behind that mark, none knew. Complaint, pity, sympathy, these, he seemed to say, were for the herd. He had ruled; darkness and helplessness had come upon him, but he was still the master.
Arthur might think that he failed, but those who were always about him saw few signs of it. To-day, when Josina entered his room she found him on his feet, one hand resting on the table, the other on his cane. “Get your hat and cloak,” he said. “I am going up the hill.”
So far his longest excursion had been to the mill, and Josina thought that she ought to remonstrate. “Won’t it be too far, sir?” she said.
“Do as I say, girl. And tell Calamy to bring my hat and coat.”