Goodbye to the Old House
It's a bit longer today. It got out of hand. It's all the story's fault.
Mrs. Macready stood by the front door.
The Professor noted she was, as ever, standing completely straight, with not a grey hair out of place in the twist on her head. But her frown—
Ah, that is where the difference was. The down-turned corners without the glare, the wrinkles on the forehead—she frowned from grief, and not from irritation.
Professor Digory knew he would normally say something—something light, something half-way to irritating, half to cajoling, to lift that frown into something more… more like her normal days had been.
But the words stuck in his throat. He nodded to her, gripped the book in his hand a little tighter, and reached for the doorknob.
"I am sorry, Professor."
He paused, turning his head. Mrs. Macready, for the first time in all the years they had known each other, was not looking him straight in the eye, but kept her eyes on the floor.
"Goodness gracious me, Mrs. Macready, it is not—" That tone did not come easily. He cleared his throat. "This did not come about through your bad management, but rather through, through," he cleared his throat again, "the changes in the markets between nation, which neither you nor I have any control over. It is, as the philosophers reassure us, but the turning of time and chance, or, as the priests would say, the hand of God working for our good."
"You were one of the best masters this house has had, and you will be missed." Her voice was crisp again, but he noticed she still did not trust herself to look up from the floor.
"And you have always been its most efficient and necessary person, and I am glad you get to stay." He cleared his throat one more time—the last time to do that here—and nodded. "I'll be going, then. Do take care, my good housekeeper, care of yourself as well as care of house and staff." He walked out, shutting the door behind him.
He paused on the porch. He turned, looking up at the massive house that had been a relative's, then his parents', then his. That had been the first good home he had known, after Narnia.
"Goodbye," he murmured quietly. "You have been a place of good memories, of magic, and I will miss—"
His fingers fiddled with the leather book cover.
"May your next chapter be as good," he said at last, and turned away. He walked towards the horse and cart waiting in the drive, filled with the two trunks and carpetbag he ended up taking.
"Might I offer you a hand up, sir?" a young, strong voice asked, and he looked up, startled, into the face of the driver—of Peter Pevensie.
"Peter! What are you doing here? I'm so delighted to see you," he said, reaching out to clasp his friend's hand.
"Aunt Polly told us all about it, and we thought we'd help you to your new home. Ed's waiting for us at the train station with tickets, and Lucy, Susan, and Aunt Polly are decorating your new home. I was sent to meet you here." Peter looked up, back to the house where they'd had all those adventures. "I wanted a last look at the old place," he admitted. "We all did, but we hadn't the money for a ticket for everyone."
Professor Digory Kirk looked back at the house as well. It had been a wonderful home, but many of the gifts he'd received in it—the friendship with the boy right next to him—would go with him. He heaved himself up into the cart.
"It is not a bad thing to say goodbye, nor to weep. But I am now quite looking forward to seeing what my new home looks like. Polly's sense of decorating always makes one feel that a space is to be worked in. The new house will be quite a sight." He smiled. "And if you all are there my first time, it will be quite a home."