late seemed, disturbingly, to be directed at him) toward the start, at least, of resignation.
He was sitting at his desk one dark, wintry Friday morning, when his nurse came in with a small envelope. He opened the holiday card in front of her, read it quickly, then stood up. Stuffing the card into the front left pocket of his suit jacket, he tried to simultaneously retrieve a small parcel from his desk drawer as nonchalantly as possible under Harriet’s eager gaze.
“I’m going to go out on my rounds a little early this morning, Miss Peckham.”
She stared at him curiously. He had never cared for her, even though she was a thorough and diligent enough nurse. But at moments such as this he could see the small eyes of the town upon him. He suspected she was a big source of the gossiping behind his back.
So he did not tell her where he was going and hoped she had not recognized the handwriting on the envelope—he couldn’t imagine how.
He picked up his coat and hat from the hallway stand and was gone before Harriet Peckham could say—or intimate—another word.
A light sprinkling of snow covered the rooftops and the surrounding fields as he headed out, just enough whiteness to make it finally feel like Christmas—the first one since the war had ended. Dr. Gray knew that for many in the village, with the constant loss of life and increasing rationing, recent holidays had been much more muted than was good for the soul. At least they still had Christmas Eve service in the little parish church of St. Nicholas, which would be beautifully decorated with boughs of fir and ivy from the estate’s woodland, and he hoped that Frances Knight would once again invite everyone to the Great House afterwards for roasted chestnuts and mulled wine. This had been a Chawton village tradition for generations. For a second he wondered if it was how Jane Austen had celebrated Christmas with the Knight family, too, and he realized that Adam Berwick’s surprising plan must be getting to him.
He opened the small wooden gate to the Grover garden and, noticing the top hinge was loose, made a mental note to arrange to have that fixed. As he walked up the frosted pathway, he saw the empty stakes from the tomato plants and the delphiniums, and the willow cloches for the sweet pea, everything looking just a little desolate and forgotten. He gave the red-painted door a firm knock or two, then waited as a light turned on in the centre hall against the dark December morning, and the door opened.
“Dr. Gray,” Beatrix Lewis stated, then kept standing there as if waiting for him to say something. She had been staying with Adeline in her little cottage for months now, given her daughter’s low spirits and the lack of a man about the house to help her out.
“Mrs. Lewis, hello, I came to pay a call on Adeline. Is she—is she up?” Something about the woman’s hard stare was making him uncomfortable.
“Yes, but I wasn’t aware that she had called for you.”
He unconsciously felt for the Christmas card now packed against his left chest, inside his jacket pocket. “Not precisely, but she had written, and with the holidays so soon upon us, I thought I would quickly check in on her, if that is alright.”
Given that he had once carried her daughter’s near-lifeless body out of this same doorway and into an arriving ambulance, she was acting in a fairly cool way towards him. “Yes, well, your nurse telephoned just now to let us know you might be coming by today, so it’s not a total surprise.”
“Look, if this isn’t a good time, I can really—”
He heard Adeline’s footsteps coming down the stairs—such a rickety, narrow staircase it was—and the strangest feeling shot through him, a pang of inexplicable anxiety such as he had never before known.
“Dr. Gray, hello. Mother, I’ll see Dr. Gray into the drawing room.”
He followed her thin figure into the room on the right, then waited to sit down while she shut the double doors.
“Please, have a seat.” She motioned to the larger settee a few feet in front of the bay window, behind which he noticed a makeshift window seat over an old water radiator. Several needlepoint cushions were piled high across the deep window ledge, along with an impressive stack of books and a little kitten curled up asleep. He gave it a tender pat, then looked back at