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Alan St. Aubyn
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Title: The master of St. Benedict's vol. 2 of 2
Author: Alan St. Aubyn
Release Date: February 23, 2019 [EBook #58945]
Language: English
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THE MASTER OF ST. BENEDICT'S
THE
MASTER OF ST. BENEDICT'S
BY
ALAN St. AUBYN
AUTHOR OF
'A FELLOW OF TRINITY,' 'THE JUNIOR DEAN,' 'THE OLD MAID'S SWEETHEART,'
'MODEST LITTLE SARA,' ETC.
[Illustration]
IN TWO VOLUMES
VOL. II.
London
CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY
1893
CONTENTS OF VOL. II.
CHAPTER PAGE
XV. IN THE LANE 1
XVI. THE OLD, OLD STORY 18
XVII. IN THE PICTURE-GALLERY 29
XVIII. CAPABILITY STUBBS 43
XIX. A STRONG TOWER 59
XX. NO FOLLOWERS ALLOWED 75
XXI. A BLOW TO NEWNHAM 93
XXII. READING THE LISTS 108
XXIII. 'GOING DOWN' 123
XXIV. THE VICARAGE GATE 139
XXV. THE STALL IN THE BUTTER-MARKET 153
XXVI. COUSIN MARY 171
XXVII. OCTOBER TERM 186
XXVIII. A COLLEGE 'PERPENDICULAR' 206
THE
MASTER OF ST. BENEDICT'S
CHAPTER XV.
IN THE LANE.
'The rain was raining cheerfully,
As if it had been May.'
Lucy was five minutes late the next morning in keeping her
appointment--at least, her understood appointment--in the lane. There
was a reasonable excuse for it. It was not a morning fit for a dog to
go out in. It was a shivering, blowy, rainy morning. There are not
many trees at Newnham, and what few there are tossed their arms wildly
in the air, and sighed and moaned as the wind whistled through the
leaves. They had not shed many tears as yet; they were fresh young
leaves with the tender green of the year upon them, but they were
shedding a great many to-day.
After this night of weeping they would never be the same leaves again;
they would have grown darker and sadder; they would have begun to
shiver by night and whisper by day. They were whispering overhead as
Lucy stood beneath them, with her umbrella turning inside out, looking
up and down the lane.
The man she was looking for was not there. His bed-maker, who was
certainly a seer or a sibyl, had found him an hour before under the
table of his room, with his lamp still burning, and the liqueur-case in
his cellaret--at least, it was on the table--empty, quite empty.
She had fetched Eric, who was up betimes reading for his 'special,' and
between them they had put him to bed, and Eric had come out in the wind
and the rain to keep his appointment.
Lucy wasn't looking for Eric. She took no notice of the little fellow
in a covert-coat who was sheltering behind the hedge. She was looking
for a splendid manly form, clad in a big Inverness coat, perhaps, and
indifferent to the wind and the rain.
Eric joined her directly she got outside the gate.
'I have just come from the lodge,' he said. 'The Master has passed a
better night. He has had several hours' sleep.'
Lucy looked at him with a question in her eyes that had nothing to do
with the Master.
'Why didn't Mr. Edgell come?' she said almost sharply. 'Why did he send
you?'
Eric couldn't look into her eyes and tell her a fib. They were such
clear, straightforward eyes, they seemed to look quite through him.
'Edgell is working for his Tripos,' he said evasively. 'He has only a
few days longer before him.'
'He isn't working at this time in the morning?' said Lucy, looking
straight at him.
He couldn't meet her eyes. He looked up admiringly at the red-brick
front of Newnham as if he had never seen it before.
'No,' he said; 'he is not working now--he is----'
'I know what he is, without your trying to shield him,' Lucy
interrupted with fine scorn. 'He is lying most likely drunk and
incapable on the floor, or he is raving on his bed, and seeing hideous
things. Oh, Mr. Gwatkin, what is the good of your friendship if you
cannot keep him from this?'
Eric hung his head.
'He is beyond my keeping,' he said sadly. 'He is beyond the reach of my
poor prayers. God knows I pray for him night and day!'
Lucy didn't say that she had been praying for him that very morning,
that she had only just got off her knees, and come out in the rain to
meet him.
'Will nothing save him?' she said, wringing her hands.
'Yes,' Eric said slowly, looking at her with troubled eyes; 'there is
one thing that would save him.'
She looked up at him, and their eyes met, and her heart gave a great
bound, and something seemed to surge up in her ears, and swim before
her eyes, and choke in her throat. She wasn't quite sure for a minute
if anything had happened to her; and when her heart beat again, and
the wave went back, and the trees and the college ceased to go round,
Eric was looking down at her with his troubled eyes, and his weak lips
quivering as he spoke.
'The one thing that would save him would entail sacrifice--the
sacrifice of a life--and only a noble woman could make it----'
'You mean,' she said, speaking hoarsely--that lump in her throat hadn't
gone yet--'you mean that a woman could save him?'
'Yes,' he said, almost with a groan; 'but it would be at her own cost.'
'Not if she loved him?'
'Yes; all the more if she loved him.'
Lucy turned away, and the wind got under her umbrella and turned it
inside out, and made a diversion.
'There is no other way?' she said, when Eric had brought it back into
something like shape, and returned it to her.
'No,' he said, 'there is no other way.'
Lucy put down her umbrella--she would battle no more with the
storm--and the rain came down in a sheet and wetted her through and
through as she walked slowly back to the college.
There was a crowd of girls round the table in the hall when she came
in. The postman had just been, and the letters were lying on the hall
table, and the girls were crowding round. Among the girls standing by
the table was Pamela Gwatkin. She looked up when Lucy came in wet and
draggled, and a dull red flush crept up under her skin, and her lips
tightened.
'Wherever has she been such a morning as this?' said one of the girls
aloud as Lucy passed them.
She didn't pause at the table and look for her letters like the rest.
She didn't expect letters by every post like other girls; the coming of
the postman never stirred her pulse the least. She had no one to write
to her.
Pamela didn't vouchsafe Lucy another look, but went back to her room
with her head lifted high, and her letters--she had quite a sheaf of
them, letters and papers--clutched to her bosom. She didn't attempt
to open them when she got back to her room. She went straight to the
window and looked out at the blinding rain.
'She has been to meet him again,' she murmured; 'and such a morning
as this! She must be very far gone. Oh, it is outrageous! It is quite
indecent!'
Another girl who had seen her come in followed Lucy back to her room,
and just as she had reached it Lucy shut the door in her face.
Nothing daunted, Capability Stubbs tried the handle of the door, but
Lucy had locked it on the inside; no doubt she was taking her wet
things off. One doesn't take the occasion to hold a levee when one is
wet to the skin.
Lucy did not appear at breakfast. Nobody missed her but Maria Stubbs;
everybody else was too much occupied with her own affairs.
The very air of the place was full of examinations, and the
loss, the total disappearance, of half a dozen girls, more or
less--freshers--wouldn't have been noticed at this exciting moment.
Before she went to her morning's work Miss Stubbs tried Lucy's door
again. It was open this time; the housemaid had just come out, and
there was that silly little Lucy sitting at her table with her wet
things still on. There was a strained look on her white face, as if she
had been working at a problem all night, and it hadn't come out right
yet.
'Oh, good gracious!' Miss Stubbs exclaimed, when she came over to the
girl and put her hand on her wet shoulder. 'Whatever _are_ you sitting
here for?'
Lucy looked up with a faint look of wonder in her eyes, and then,
finding she had forgotten to take off her wet things, she began slowly
to peel them off one by one.
Maria Stubbs had no patience with her. She pulled and dragged at her
clinging wet garments, and tore off her shoes, and wrapped her up in a
warm dressing-gown of her own that she ran across the passage to fetch.
When she had got her out of her wet rags, she fetched her a cup of hot
tea from the hall, where the tea-urn was still steaming, and then she
began to bully her.
'A fine cold you will catch,' she grumbled, 'and give no end of
trouble. I dare say you'll expect us to stay up of nights to nurse you.
I give you notice, it's no use to expect me to nurse you; I've got my
own work to do.'
Lucy feebly protested that she didn't expect Miss Stubbs to make a
martyr of herself, and that she had no intention of being ill, but
Maria was not so easily appeased.
'It isn't as if it were an examination,' she said in an aggrieved tone;
'then we could understand it. There'd be an excuse for a girl making
an idiot of herself if she had been ploughed in an exam. I've known a
girl refuse to eat anything for a week, because she failed twice in her
additionals; and another girl--but this was a more serious case; her
mind gave way quite on the last day of the exam., and she had to be
sent to an asylum. I shouldn't be at all surprised if they were to send
you to----'
'Not to the asylum!' said Lucy, in a sudden fright.
She was so bewildered she felt very much like going there already.
'I didn't mean that, silly!' Miss Stubbs said scornfully. 'I was going
to say the infirmary. If you will go and get influenza, you can't
expect to stay among people who are going in for examinations. Suppose
I were to catch it--or Assurance! I'm not sure that Assurance hasn't
caught something already. She begins her Tripos on Monday, and she's
about as amiable as a bear.'
Maria Stubbs went back to her work--she was going to be shut up four
hours in a laboratory among delightful smells--but before she went she
made Lucy promise that she would ask the housekeeper to give her some
breakfast.
Later in the day Lucy went over to the lodge to see the Master. The
wind had gone down, but a gray mist hung over everything, and the
trees were no longer rustling their leaves overhead. The branches were
drooping with their own weight, and the leaves were limp, and dropping
slow tears upon her as she passed beneath.
The Master was better to-day, decidedly better. He had slept several
hours during the night, and he looked quite himself, Lucy thought, when
she went into the room and saw him propped up in his chair. He was
up and dressed; he had insisted on being dressed; they could not keep
him in bed; and his chair was wheeled over to the window, where he sat
looking out on to the river, and the path beneath the trees where an
old, old philosopher used to walk long ago.
He had always loved that path by the river-side. It had been his
favourite walk once. Perhaps the old associations had something to do
with it; they have with most of the things men value in Cambridge.
A great past seems to meet one at every college gate. Every inch of
ground has its own sacred memories, and the path beneath the trees had
echoed to the tread of generations of poets, sages, and scholars since
the old philosopher walked there.
But it was not of the philosopher that the Master dreamed, as he sat
looking out on the gray path and the blurred river. It was no longer
the Cam he saw; it was the babbling trout-stream that ran by his
father's farm--the gray shallow river that skirted the meadows, and
swept beneath the arches of the old bridge, and roared in a torrent
over the weirs.
'You are better to-day, uncle,' Lucy said, as she stood beside his
chair and looked down at the worn old face, and the white hair on the
pillow.
'Better? I am quite well, my dear. I have just come in from fishing,
and I am tired. I have caught quite a large basket, and I have walked
a long way beside the river. Dick wouldn't wait for me. He went home
early. Perhaps it was as well.'
Lucy looked anxiously at the nurse.
'He is better in himself,' Nurse Brannan said softly. 'He has had a
good night, and has awoke much refreshed, but his memory is gone. I
don't think it will ever be better.'
Nurse Brannan had made a great change in the sick-room; it didn't look
like a sick-room. It was as light and bright as it well could be on
such a dull day, and there was a small fire burning in the grate, and
a big bowl of lilac on the table--the Master was very fond of lilac.
Lucy ran her fingers through the sweet pale-purple buds as she stood
beside the table. She was not fond of picking things to pieces like
the Science girls, who can never see a flower without tearing its
heart out. She was content to bury her face in a posy and drink in its
sweetness and beauty. She buried her face in the bunch of lilac as she
stood beside the Master's chair, and the old man watched her with his
dim eyes.
They suddenly brightened as he watched her; they were dim no longer;
they were bright and shining. Something in her attitude, or in the
smell of the flowers, had brought back to him the old time: the old
lane that skirted the farm with the blossoming hawthorn-trees on either
side, and the orchard with the smell of the apple-blossom, and the
lilac hanging over the garden-wall.
'Ah,' he said, 'you picked this from the old tree by the gate. I
noticed it was coming into bloom this morning when I passed, and the
pink thorn is in bud, and the orchard is a sight to see.
The fragrance of the old days was about him, and its colours were
unfaded. Lucy left him babbling to the nurse about the flowers that
used to grow in the old garden of his childhood. His heart, like that
of a little child, had gone back at the close of the journey to the
place from which he had first set out.
Cousin Mary was with Mrs. Rae; she had been up with her all night.
There was as much need for nursing here as in the Master's room. Lucy
was quite shocked at the change that a few hours had wrought in the
Master's wife. She looked years older to-day, and her face had changed.
All the cheerful brightness that had given an air of youthfulness to it
into extreme old age was gone now. It was placid and resigned, but it
was youthful and bright no longer.
There was nothing the matter with her, Cousin Mary said, but the shock
had been too much for her. A few days' rest and quiet, the doctor
thought, might bring her round.
'You have seen the Master?' she asked Lucy eagerly when she came into
the room.
Lucy noticed that the voice, like the face, had changed, and grown
feeble and old.
'Yes; I have seen the Master. He is so much better to-day. He is
sitting up by the window. He is quite himself.'
She didn't say anything about that fishing excursion of his, nor how
tired he felt now the day's work was done.
'He is really better?'
She asked this with a strange eagerness, and laid her thin hand on
Lucy's.
'Yes, dear, really better. He will soon be quite well. It is you who
are the invalid now. You must make haste and get well, too.'
'Thank God!' said the feeble voice, and the thin hand relaxed its
hold, and she fell back on the pillow. 'Someone told me he was
wandering,' she said--'that he did not know anyone. But perhaps I am
mistaken. It may be in me. I may have dreamed it.'
'Yes, dear,' Lucy said reassuringly, 'it is in you. You have certainly
dreamed it.'
She left the old woman quite happy, but tears were dropping from her
own eyes as she went slowly down the stairs of the lodge. She was not
quite sure in this tender casuistry if she was not giving the Master's
wife the sentence of death.
CHAPTER XVI.
THE OLD, OLD STORY.
What on earth possessed Lucy to go out into the lane again the next
morning at that ridiculously early hour, before seven o'clock, she
could never tell. She was not anxious about the Master. She had left
him in good hands, sitting beside the window babbling about the
lilac-bushes in the old garden.
Perhaps it was because it was such a lovely May morning that Lucy went
out into the lane; it was a shame to stay indoors a minute longer.
A change had come over the scene since yesterday. The clouds had all
passed away like magic, and the sun was shining, and the sky was blue
above, and the earth was green beneath, and, oh, how the birds were
singing! There was no excuse for Lucy being in bed. Most of the girls
had been up working hours ago, and some had not been in bed since
daybreak.
She didn't expect to meet anyone in the lane; she only went out, and
looked round, quite by the way, and--and she saw Wyatt Edgell coming
to her, up between the green hedgerows, where the hawthorn was in
bloom, and beneath the blue sky, where a lark--where a dozen larks were
singing, and she had never seen so delightful a picture before in her
life.
Like the storm of yesterday, all traces of that midnight debauch had
passed away. His face ought to have been pale and soddened, and his
eyes dull and heavy, with great bags beneath them, but they were not
the least changed. The fine intellectual beauty of the face was finer
than ever, and the mere physical beauty, which no girl could look upon
untouched, was seen to its best advantage on this sweet May morning.
Wyatt Edgell wore a straw hat with the ribbon of his college around it.
He had just come from the river, fresh from his bath, and the sun had
dried his hair as he had come along, and it curled all over his head in
short crisp curls like a god. His face was glowing and his eyes were
shining; he looked a picture of perfect health and manly beauty.
We have had so many studies of Venus rising fresh from her bath, but
the artists have not been so keen on Adonis.
A sweet thing in oils, not 'The Bather,' but 'The Bathed,' would be a
novelty on the walls of the Academy.
There are no baths at Newnham, only six feet of zinc to splash about
in, and that one has to take in turn at the end of a lane of girls
waiting in the passage. Lucy wouldn't have had her turn for another
hour this morning, so she had dressed without it, and had come out
into the lane to take a bath of sunshine instead.
She looked paler than if she had had her turn of splashing in eighteen
inches of water, but her hair wasn't limp and wet and untidy.
Her heart couldn't help beating a little faster as Wyatt Edgell came
towards her, and her face burnt hotly. She could feel that she was
blushing like a milkmaid.
'Oh, you here!' she said in quite a tone of surprise. 'I didn't expect
you this morning.'
He didn't believe her. He couldn't look down into her glowing face and
believe she had put on all those blushes to meet the burning gaze of
Apollo, unless, indeed, she expected Wattles.
'No?' he said with a smile, and he imprisoned her hand; 'but I couldn't
keep away. I had something to tell you this morning.'
'About the Master?' she said, turning pale.
'No; it has nothing to do with the Master. I asked for him at the lodge
as I came out, and they told me he had had a good night. Phyllis
Brannan is with him, and she is a host in herself.'
Lucy tossed her head.
'Oh, you know Nurse Brannan?' she said coldly.
'Yes,' he said gravely; 'I have reason to know Phyllis, best and
kindest of nurses. If ever there was a woman true as steel, it is
Phyllis Brannan.'
Lucy sniffed impatiently. She hadn't come out without her bath at
seven o'clock in the morning to hear the praises of Nurse Brannan. She
was quite sure she would be quite as good a nurse after a reasonable
probation, and she wouldn't keep her hair so untidy.
'What had you got to tell me?' she said shortly.
It was not exactly encouraging; but Edgell smiled and drew her away
from the gate and up the lane, and then she discovered that he still
held her hand.
She drew it away sharply and stopped. She really didn't care to walk
any farther with him if he were only going to talk about Nurse
Brannan. She had been fighting a dreadfully hard battle with herself
all night, all the previous day--ever since that conversation with
Eric--and she had worked herself up, like the martyrs of old, for a big
sacrifice, for the stake, if need be; and now, after all that struggle,
there wasn't going to be any stake at all.
Nurse Brannan was going to the stake, perhaps. She was ready at any
time to do all sorts of disagreeable things without making any fuss
about them.
'Would you mind walking this way?' he said, and he led Lucy unresisting
up the lane into that narrow part, past the posts, between the high
hedges, that shut them out from all curious eyes.
'I have come to ask you a question,' he said, speaking low, with a
little catch in his voice, 'and I want an answer before I go back to
work. The Tripos begins on Monday. Will it be worth while to go in for
it?'
'What do you mean?' she said; but she knew very well what he meant.
'I think you know what I mean, Miss Rae--Lucy. I think you know more
about me than any other woman. If you will tell me I have anything to
work for, I will go back and work, and--and some day I will come to you
again; but if--if there is nothing to work for, I shall go down to-day.'
'You would not throw up your chance?' she said. She was quite pale, and
she was trembling all over.
'I should certainly throw it up. What would be the use of a degree
to me with _that_ before me? There is only one thing, Lucy, to stand
between me and it. My sentence must come from your lips. Am I to go
back and work?'
No one looking at him standing there in the sunshine, with that smile
on his face, would have dreamed the issue that hung on the girl's lips.
She couldn't realize it herself; she could only gasp and tremble. He
had quite taken her breath away. She would have given the world to run
away without giving that fateful answer, but the lane was narrow, and
he stood before her.
'Well,' he said, watching with his eager, questioning eyes the changes
on her face, 'am I to go back to work?'
What could she say? Her lips faltered, and the words would not come;
again she tried, but his sentence lingered.
There was a merle singing in the elm-tree above, and a thrush was
calling for its mate, and the wood-pigeons were cooing softly in the
orchard over the hedge; everything was so glad and happy and full of
life and love on this May morning; every voice in nature was pleading
for him.
Her face was dreadfully pale, and her lips were quivering, and her
heart was beating like a hammer. She looked up into his face with a
strange white terror in her eyes, and she saw the scarf round his
throat. It was the coloured striped scarf of his college, and he wore
it twisted on that balmy morning round his throat. The sight of that
scarf decided her.
'I think you must go back to work,' she said softly, with just a little
wan smile.
He caught her in his arms, to his heart, and kissed her on the forehead.
'God bless you, Lucy!' he said--'God bless you, darling!'
The pressure of his arms, the strange, sweet pressure of his warm lips
on her forehead, brought the blood back to her heart, to her cheeks,
and she drew herself away, flushing scarlet.
A Newnham girl came in at one end of the lane, and a Selwyn man came
in at the other, and they went back to their respective colleges and
told the tale. It was all over Newnham at breakfast-time that Lucy had
been seen kissing a man in broad daylight just outside the walls of the
college.
The old, old story has been told a great many times, in a great many
ways, but it had never been told at Newnham before or at Girton in such
a barefaced way. It will be told in the public streets next, or perhaps
in the Senate House.
CHAPTER XVII.
IN THE PICTURE-GALLERY.
The term wore on, and there was nothing talked of in Cambridge but
examinations. How could one talk about anything else when it was the
subject uppermost in everybody's mind? There were the boat-races, and
the college balls, and the concerts, but exciting as these were to the
sisters and cousins of the men, they were of secondary importance to
the exams.
The nearer the day approaches for the dreaded trial the more dreadful
seems the finality of the approaching result. Nobody questions the
finality of the sentence at the time, and when it happens to be
adverse men go away and hide their heads and think that all things are
at an end for them. By-and-by the gates of Hope are opened afresh and
things don't look quite so bad, and in nine cases out of ten nobody
knows out of Cambridge whether a man has taken a high degree or not.
Perhaps it is different with women, the cases being more exceptional; a
girl who has done well usually goes through life with an affix to her
name, spoken with awe by her admiring friends--'Fifth Wrangler,' 'First
Class Moral Science,' 'Senior Op,' and so on.
There would be a good many girls do well at Newnham this term. There
would be several first-classes, and some good seconds, and a few, very
few thirds. Women never take Poll degrees, so that all, every one,
would go out in Honours.
There was a great fuss made with the girls who were going up for the
exams. They were fed and petted and looked after just as if they were
in training. There were special dishes for them at the High, and they
were taken out for exercise, or driven out for airings, and put to bed
at given hours. It was not the fault of the authorities if they did not
reflect honour on their college.
The men were not the objects of such tender solicitude to their
Tutors and Deans. They were left pretty much to themselves, and went
to bed when they liked, and got up when they liked, and took their
food or left it. Those who liked took exercise, and those who didn't
sported their oak and worked until they were deaf and blind, and their
brains were so addled that they could hardly find their way into the
examination-room.
Wyatt Edgell sported his oak from morning till night during those few
days preceding the Tripos examination, but he didn't addle his brains.
They were not brains easy to addle by work. The men remarked that this
close application, which would have made most men seedy and stale,
seemed to agree with him. His eyes were brighter, and his step was
lighter, and more assured than heretofore, and he held his head like a
man who was going to win, and he hummed snatches of songs--love-songs
mostly--as he crossed the courts or climbed his staircase, taking two
and three steps at a time, as a man of his youth and strength should do.
A change had come over him since that morning when Lucy had told him to
go back to work. He had not seen her in the lane since, though he had
gone up to Newnham every morning, and stood staring at the gate until
the bell rang for prayers, and then he had gone up the narrow little
path between the hedges, and visited again the spot where he had taken
her in his arms.
If she had been there when he made these matutinal pilgrimages to the
spot, he would surely have taken her in his arms again, and great would
have been the scandal at Newnham.
Lucy didn't go out in the lane again alone after that morning. She was
quite frightened at what she had done. She couldn't very well have
done otherwise. What woman would? She had saved him--at least, she
told herself she had saved him. He would go back to his work now, and
he would take his degree, probably a very good degree. She didn't dare
to speculate any farther; she stopped at his degree. She never said a
word about what she had done to Cousin Mary; she wouldn't have told her
for the world. Mary had only pointed Wyatt Edgell out to her on the
steps of the chapel a month ago. She didn't know him from Eric Gwatkin
a month ago, and now she was engaged to marry him!
No wonder Lucy was frightened, and wouldn't have run the risk of
meeting him alone for the world. She developed suddenly a violent
affection for Miss Stubbs, and used to implore her with tears in her
eyes to accompany her in her visits to the lodge. She was such a
dreadful little coward, she didn't dare to go alone.
The Master was no worse; his memory had gone, and his physical powers
were weakened, since his accident in the garden, but there was no
immediate danger. He might go on babbling in his second childhood for
weeks or months.
Lucy met the Senior Tutor at the lodge sometimes when she paid her
afternoon visits, but she never went to his rooms again. She wouldn't
have risked meeting Wyatt Edgell on the stairs for all the coaching in
the world. She would rather have been ploughed.
The Tutor couldn't say any more to Lucy about Cousin Mary and the
Master's wife making the lodge their home when he met her at these
times, as Maria Stubbs was always with her. It seemed likely that
the Master's wife would have a home elsewhere before long, and the
arrangement would fall through.
Maria had fallen in love with the long gallery of the lodge, as
everybody does who goes to St. Benedict's, and she used to wait for
Lucy there while she paid her visits to the invalids. Miss Stubbs never
did things by halves, and she made herself acquainted during these
visits with all the old portraits on the walls. She knew every one of
them, from the pale foundress in her sober pre-Raphaelitish dress, to
the old Master in his scarlet gown. She had established quite a nodding
acquaintance with all of them, and she had got up most of the facts of
their history. She knew more about them than Lucy, though she had lived
among them for months.
One day while she was poring over the old portraits in the gallery a
man came in. He had come up the stairs two at a time, and he had looked
eagerly round when he got into the gallery.
There was nobody there but a red-haired girl in spectacles, and the old
dead and gone Masters. Yes, there was the foundress, but he didn't care
a button for the foundress. He was looking for a real flesh-and-blood
woman; his pulses were leaping, and his heart was thumping against
his side, and his eyes were shining--he had just finished the first
part of the exam.--and just at this moment the fairest creation of the
finest master on canvas wouldn't have satisfied him.
He walked to the end of the gallery looking for Lucy--she might be
hiding away in any of the little oriel windows--and Miss Stubbs watched
him.
She was so glad to see his countenance fall when he couldn't find her.
A woman would not have shown her disappointment in that transparent
way. She would have made the best of it, and talked to the man who was
there, but Edgell glared at Maria savagely, and didn't seem inclined to
talk.
'Lucy Rae is with the Master,' she said sweetly; she knew instinctively
that he was looking for Lucy. 'She will be here presently.'
Edgell tried to look as if it didn't matter, and he wasn't particular
whether she came now or at midnight, but he didn't take Miss Stubbs in.
He fidgeted up and down the gallery, stopping every now and then before
a picture, but never looking at it, or staring out into the court
below from the old latticed oriel window. He was standing in the recess
of the window idly tattooing on the pane when Lucy came in.
She didn't see him until she reached the window, and she came running
down the gallery in that energetic way peculiar to the students of
colleges for women.
'I'm afraid I've kept you a long time, M'ria; I hope you don't
mind----' and then she paused, and Edgell came towards her with his
hands outstretched.
He would have taken her in his arms, but there was that hateful Maria
at the end of the gallery. He came to Lucy as a lover should come to
his mistress, with the love-light in his eyes, and his whole being
quivering with passion.
'My darling!' he said, and he took her hands.
Lucy had no idea of being kissed like a milkmaid with Miss Stubbs
looking on, and she drew her hands quickly away.
'You here?' she said.
'Yes,' he answered, looking down upon her with that warm light in his
eyes and his lips smiling; 'where else should I look for you? I have
waited in the lane every morning in the week, and you have never come
since--since that morning----'
'The Master is better,' she said, dropping her eyes; they were such
sweet, shy eyes they could not meet the hot flame in his.
'And was it only to hear about the Master you came?' he said in a low
voice that thrilled her and brought the colour into her cheeks.
'It was to tell me about him you came.' Her voice trembled in spite of
herself, and her heart was beating tumultuously.
'It was because I loved you I came, Lucy--darling! I could not live
without a sight of your dear face. I have lived a whole week without
you, and it has seemed a year. You must not leave me alone again so
long, darling!'
There was more in the tone than in his words, and Lucy looked up
anxiously into his face.
He read the question in her eyes and he smiled gravely, almost sadly.
'No,' he said, 'thank God, not that!' and he stooped and kissed her
forehead reverently between the bright brown ripples of her hair.
Her face grew warm under his touch, and she trembled and drew back.
Suppose that girl in the gallery had seen him? It would be all over
Newnham. And the servants might come in at any time, or Cousin Mary;
and Mr. Colville might walk into the gallery unannounced, as he was
accustomed to do. Oh, it would be dreadful to be caught kissing like a
housemaid!
'And you have been working hard all this time?' she said, when she had
got the little oak table that stood in the window well between them.
'Yes, I have been working pretty well. I shouldn't have done a stroke
if you hadn't given me something to work for. I should have thrown it
all up, and gone down.'
'Oh, it would never have done for you to have gone down--you who
are expected to bring so much credit to the college! It would have
disappointed everybody, and your own people most. What would your
people have said?'
'They would have been disappointed--and--and I think my mother would
have been sorry. She is such a tender, indulgent mother; she has never
refused me anything. She has always stood between me and my father,
and covered up all my shortcomings, but she couldn't have covered up
this, and--and there would have been a row. Yes, I think it would have
disappointed her.'
His eyes were tender and softened as he spoke of his mother, and Lucy
thought as she stood there of that dreadful scene when she found Eric
on his knees beside the couch, and she wondered how his mother would
have covered up that.
She looked up at the warm, tender face of the man bending over her--he
had got round the table--and with a sudden terror she saw the mark on
his throat--he had not covered it; he wore no scarf to-day, and his
collar was open, and the purple mark was visible on the white skin.
He saw her eyes travel to--not to his face; they stopped short at his
throat, and a white look of terror came into them.
'Yes,' he said, reading her thoughts--her transparent thoughts--'she
would have covered up this, but it would have broken her heart.'
He drew his collar up round his throat as he spoke and Lucy's eyes
filled with tears.
'It is all over and past,' she said bravely; 'there will be no need to
"break her heart" now. You will fulfil all her expectations; you will
make her happy and proud--oh, so proud! If men who are tempted to do
silly, selfish things would only pause and think of the people who love
them!'
Edgell drew her nearer to him.
Maria Stubbs was not looking that way; she really was a most sensible
girl, she was entirely absorbed in the pictures.
'I will think of you, then,' he said in a low voice that vibrated with
passion, 'when--when I am tempted; but I must be sure of your love,
Lucy, or it will be no good; there must be no mistake about it. It must
be the real thing; a make-believe, a sham, would never save a man! Tell
me if--if at such a time, darling, I may think of you?'
He put the question solemnly, though his lips were smiling, but his
eyes were looking down into hers as if they would read her soul.
Lucy's face grew pale and troubled; she knew exactly what his question
meant; she felt limp and frightened, dreadfully frightened. Anyone
might come into the gallery at any moment, and he was holding her in
a grasp of iron and reading her little transparent soul through and
through. She could not escape from him.
She had no alternative.
'Yes,' she murmured almost inaudibly; 'you may think of me if--if it
will help you.'
He took her in his arms for one brief moment--he forgot all about Maria
Stubbs--and kissed her lips and her eyes.
'My darling!' he murmured--'my darling!'
Lovers have such a limited vocabulary, they are obliged to have
recourse to unmeaning repetitions.
Miss Stubbs had behaved beautifully till now--no Newnham girl could
have behaved better; but there is a limit to all human endurance, and
the limit of Maria's endurance had been reached.
'I hope you are nearly ready,' she said in a most unpleasant voice;
'because if not I must go.'
'I am quite ready, dear,' said Lucy, nearly crying. 'I have been ready
a long time.'
She could have blessed Miss Stubbs for taking her away. She was
dreadfully frightened, but it was with a strange, delicious terror that
stirred her pulses like a tumult of joy.
CHAPTER XVIII.
CAPABILITY STUBBS.
It was clearly Lucy's duty not to go back to Newnham, whatever Maria
Stubbs' hurry might be, until she had told her Cousin Mary what had
passed between her and Wyatt Edgell in the gallery.
It is not usual, even at Cambridge, where there have been so many
social revolutions of late, for young women to receive the visits of
gentlemen, and exchange the privileged amenities of engaged persons,
without acquainting the elders of their household.
There was no one to acquaint at the lodge but Cousin Mary. It was no
use telling the Master, he would confuse it with Dick's courtship that
had been over sixty years ago, and he would be telling Nurse Brannan
that Lucy's mother first met her lover in a dancing-booth at a fair.
The Master's wife was almost past telling; she had been growing weaker
day by day ever since that accident; the world had been slipping away
from her ever since. She had ceased to take any interest in anything
that was going on around her. She seldom spoke now; sight and strength
and speech were all failing. When she did speak, she had only one
question to ask: 'How is the Master?'
But Lucy would not admit that she had any engagement yet to tell
anybody about. She had only told Wyatt Edgell that he might go back
to work, and she had further told him that he might think of her at
certain times.
This was all; no promise, no real engagement. Of course he ought not to
have taken her into his arms until he was properly engaged. He had been
premature, but Lucy had no one but herself to blame for it.
This is how Lucy reasoned as she walked back to Newnham with Miss
Stubbs. She went straight back without seeing the Master's wife or
Cousin Mary; she positively crept out of the lodge as if she had done
some shameful thing, and was afraid of being found out. She was very
nice to Maria on the way. She called her dear, which is quite an
unheard-of thing among the Stoics of Newnham, but Miss Stubbs was not
to be taken in.
'It's pretty far gone,' she observed with a sniff, when Lucy made a
timid little allusion to Edgell's visit to the gallery.
'Oh dear no, not at all!' Lucy said sweetly.
Miss Stubbs raised her red eyebrows. It was those dreadful red eyebrows
and red eyelashes that made her so--so unlovely.
'Oh,' she remarked in her unpleasant way, 'I thought I
heard--ahem!--some--some kissing. I may have been mistaken; perhaps it
was the wind.'
'The wind was very rough this afternoon, dear; it was rattling the
shaky old lattice dreadfully.'
Miss Stubbs smiled scornfully. There hadn't been a breath of air all
the day.
'I suppose it's a settled thing?' she said presently.
'Settled? Oh no; not at all!'
'Then it ought to be!' Maria said sharply. 'You've given him
encouragement enough. He's been hanging about the lane every morning
this week. It's known all over the place that he's waiting for you.'
'But I haven't met him!' Lucy said stoutly. She wasn't going to be sat
upon by Maria.
'No; oh no! you haven't met him this week; we should all have known
it if you had, because we've all been on the look-out since that day
when you were caught kissing in the lane. I shouldn't have mentioned
it--though it's not good form in a woman's college--if it hadn't
occurred again to-day. It's all right, I suppose, if you are engaged.'
'But I am not engaged!' said Lucy impatiently.
She was not going to be lectured by Maria. Nobody would ever think of
kissing Maria in the lane.
'Then I don't understand it,' Miss Stubbs said stiffly.
'Oh, you poor creature!' Lucy said with a weak attempt at a laugh, and
her cheeks scarlet. 'I am only encouraging him for his own good. I have
only told him he may work; he is sure to take a high place, but he
would not do anything if I did not encourage him. Think: all his life
depends upon it. You would do the same if you were in my place.'
Miss Stubbs did not say she wouldn't, but she blushed beneath her
freckles, and her eyes softened beneath the red lashes. There were
depths in her eyes that Lucy had never seen in them before, and she was
looking at Maria sharply--unfathomed depths, for nobody had tested the
depths and height of Maria's love. Perhaps a brave man, who does not
look on the outward appearance, or who prefers red hair, may some day,
and he will have no cause for regret.
'And what will happen when--when the work is done, and he has won the
high place?' Maria asked softly.
She was thinking how she would love above all things to fire a man
who loved her with ambitions. She would fill him with the noblest
ambitions, and when he had climbed the ladder, when he had realized all
his dreams, she would not cheat him of his reward.
'And what then?' she repeated, when she found Lucy did not answer.
'Oh, I don't know. I have not made up my mind. Whatever happened, it
would be a great thing for him to have done the work--to have taken
his degree, that could never be recalled. I am sure I have done
right--in--in encouraging him, as you term it.'
'I think it would be base--and mean--and unworthy--an unwomanly thing
to throw him over in the end!' Maria said, with a little catch in her
voice. She couldn't find adjectives strong enough, and she had to pause
between each.
Wyatt Edgell went back to his rooms across the court with great
swinging strides, and he climbed the stairs three at a time. He met
the Senior Tutor coming out of his rooms at the top of the stairs,
and the little snatch of a love-song he was singing died on his lips.
Still, his lips were smiling, and his eyes were shining, and his face
was earnest and set. It was the face of a man who was going to do
something--who was going to win.
'How have you done?' the Tutor asked, stopping him. He asked it with a
smile; he hadn't any doubt about how he had done.
'Not so well as I could have wished, sir. I shall do better in the next
part.'
There are two 'parts' in the Mathematical Tripos. If a man gets through
Part I. he is allowed to proceed farther; he is allowed to go in for
Honours. There could be no doubt about Wyatt Edgell being 'through' in
the 'first part.' He was quite safe in going back to work for Honours.
There is a week between the end of one examination and the beginning of
another. There is time to pick one's self up and prepare afresh for the
fight--the real fight this time.
Wyatt Edgell went back to his room and 'sported' his oak. It was open
just for a minute after Hall, and Eric Gwatkin came in.
Eric had been working at his Special--he took theology, about as stiff
a Special as a man can take--all the week, and he had just come to the
end of his exam. There would be Hebrew on the Monday, about which he
knew very little; if he should make a stray shot it would count, but
the real work of the exam. was over. He was looking limp, and used up,
and dejected. His eyes were dull, and his cheeks were flabby, and his
hair, which he wore long, hung down in a spiritless way. He was the
greatest possible contrast to Edgell.
'Well, Wattles,' he said, looking up when Eric came into the
room--'well, have you floored the examiners?'
Eric didn't exactly turn green, but his flabby cheeks turned a shade
paler.
'It's all over, dear fellow,' he said with a gulp--he hadn't got
anything to swallow. He had just come in from Hall, but he gulped
down something. 'The examiners have floored me. I'm ploughed, to a
certainty.'
He sat down as he spoke on the couch where Edgell had lain on that day,
and tried to look cheerful.
'Nonsense, old man! it isn't so bad as that. You are through, for
certain.'
'No; I don't think I am through.'
'Well, suppose the worst, if it gives you much pleasure to anticipate
it; you can come up again in October.'
'No; I shall not come up again. I shall go down and try something
else. Remember, I have already tried two professions. I shall take it,
if I fail, that--that the Church is closed to me. I have an offer of
something in the City, and I should have to go abroad for a time, and
then settle down to work. Perhaps it's the right thing for me, after
all.'
'Nonsense, Wattles! What would you do stuck on a high stool in the
City? You'd be getting off it half a dozen times a day to go on your
knees. It's no use your choosing a profession that isn't very near the
ground, where you could be on your knees all day long. That's the only
profession you've got any chance in, Wattles.'
Eric smiled, and if Edgell hadn't been looking straight before him in
that way he had of not seeing anything within a hundred miles he might
have seen that his eyes were red, and that there was something very
suspiciously like a tear in the corner of one of them.
'You are working in earnest,' he said presently, nodding towards the
table where Edgell was seated, which was covered with books and papers.
'Ye--es,' said the other with a smile, still looking out of the
window at the patch of sunset sky over the gray battlements of the
college--'ye--es; I've got something to work for. I didn't do half well
in the first part; I wasn't sure--quite sure--but it's all right now,
and I shall go in and do my best. You have never seen me do my best,
Wattles; you will see me do it now--for--for Lucy's sake.'
His face was very noble and tender. It was an ideal man's face--strong,
and self-reliant, and masterful, and inexpressibly tender. It moved
Eric watching him from that couch, and knowing so much about him.
'It is settled, then?' he said presently, again swallowing something
unsatisfactory that seemed to stick.
'Yes; it is settled. She has given me an antidote, a charm, against
that accursed thing. She has told me to think of her.'
He was thinking of her now as he lay back in his chair watching the
sunlight steal along the roof, and up, up, up the spire of the college
chapel. He was thinking of Lucy's sweet eyes, and her blushing cheeks,
and the golden ripples of her hair, and he was telling himself that the
thought of her would be a tower of strength to him in the future, that
he would never, never fall again. When the old temptation came, let it
take what form it would, he should be able to meet it. He would only
have to think of Lucy.
Eric watched him as he sat on the couch opposite. He guessed what was
passing in his mind. His own mind travelled over the ground with him,
and presently he paused and sighed. He had come to a _cul-de-sac_.
'Well,' Edgell said, looking round like one aroused from a day-dream,
'what are you croaking at, Wattles?'
Eric made a feeble attempt to smile; it was a very poor attempt, and it
only made his poor tired face look more ghastly.
'I only hope, dear fellow, it will answer,' he said huskily.
'Of course it will answer. It is the only thing in the world for me,
and for such as me. There is nothing but the love of a woman that can
hold a fellow back when--when he has gone so far as I have; there is
nothing but a woman's love that could reach down, down--God only knows
how deep--and pick a fellow up who has fallen into the pit, that can
drag a man out, wounded and maimed, from under the very wheels of
Juggernaut at the risk of her own life and reason. There is only one
kind of love that can do this.'
Eric looked at him with a strange pity in his eyes.
'You think it is right to put her to such a test?' he said.
'I do not think anything about it. If she loves me, she will not think
any trial too hard. Tush, man! you know nothing about love if you do
not know that love delights in sacrifice. It must have its altar--the
rites could not be celebrated without an altar--and it must have its
offering--its free-will offering--its victim. It withholds not its
dearest--how should it? Love has no self.'
Eric groaned. He knew nothing about a woman's love. He didn't believe
that little Lucy could ever love a man like that.
'My dear fellow,' he said, 'you judge a woman's nature by your own. All
women would not rise to such heights.'
'The woman that I loved would,' said the other confidently. 'You will
have a chance of putting it to the test before long. If--if I am kept,
it will be Lucy's love that will keep me; but if--if it happens again,
it will be as you say--I shall have judged a woman's nature by my own.'
The smile had faded from his face, and his eyes were cold and hard, and
his lips were pressed tight together. It was not the same face that
had smiled upon Eric when he came into the room.
Eric was ashamed of himself, and hung his head. He ought not to have
questioned Lucy's love. Nobody had ever loved him, nobody but Pamela,
and she was always bullying him. He ought to have been silent until he
had found out for himself what a woman will do for the man she loves.
'It must never happen again, dear old man,' he said, laying his hand
affectionately on Edgell's shoulder. 'Remember, you have vowed----'
'I know all that,' Edgell interrupted impatiently. 'Do you think all
the vows in the world would hold me back, when--when that accursed
thing came upon me? You have never been tried yourself----'
'No, no, no, thank God!'
'You may well thank God. I tell you, if the breaking the oath I have
sworn--the oaths I have sworn--I have sworn dozens--hundreds--would
lose heaven itself, I should still break it--I should not be able to
resist when the temptation came upon me.'
'You are right to mistrust yourself,' Eric said sadly. 'Oh, my dear
fellow, if you would only trust Him who is the unfailing Strength of
all them that put their trust in Him, and who would be a Strong Tower
to you in the face of the enemy!'
'Dear old Wattles!' Edgell said good-humouredly. 'I knew you only
wanted an excuse for going on your knees. I'm awfully busy now, old
man. I'm going to work till daylight--and--and if the Enemy, as you are
pleased to call him, should come--I'll think of Lucy!'
He looked past Gwatkin to the blue sky over the roof of the chapel. The
sun had all but set, and the vane at the top of the spire had caught
the last remnant of fleeting sunshine and rent it in twain.
CHAPTER XIX.
A STRONG TOWER.
'Weakness to be wroth with weakness.'
It was a dreadful time of heartburnings at Newnham through all the next
week; not at Newnham only, but all over Cambridge. So many Triposes
were on, and the week's interval between the first and second parts of
the examination for the Mathematical Tripos was being made the most of
by the coming Wranglers and Senior Ops.
There were half a dozen girls at Newnham going in for Honours in
mathematics, but there was only one that was expected to take a high
place--a very high place--among the Wranglers of the year. There would
be several Senior and Junior Optimes, but there would be only one
Wrangler this year.
The hopes of Newnham were set on Pamela Gwatkin, who was expected to
do such great things, to win such honour for the women's college. A
dark rumour had reached St. John's and Trinity--who like to divide the
honours between them--that they were likely to be left behind in the
race--far behind. They were uneasy and anxious, though they wouldn't
have owned it for the world, for--
'At times the high gods, who o'er papers preside,
Send a lady from Newnham to chasten their pride.'
The rumour caused a great deal of midnight oil to be burnt in Cambridge
during the first week in June. Wyatt Edgell never went to bed till
daylight; not that the rumour disturbed him, he only laughed gaily when
he heard that 'the lady from Newnham' was Wattles' sister. Perhaps,
being twins, he measured them by the same standard.
He never saw Lucy all through that week, though he went every morning
at the usual hour up the lane. He didn't linger at the gate now--he
had no time for lingering at gates; but he looked up at her window.
He had found out which was Lucy's window, and he paid his accustomed
pilgrimage to that sacred spot in the narrowed lane between the
hedgerows, that were all white with May now, and then he would hurry
back to his work. He would take back with him from Newnham, as a
memento of his visit, a bit of sweet-briar from the hedge, and he would
lay it on his table before him, that something of the fragrance of his
love might be about him while he worked.
He wrote to her during the week a little letter that would have set any
other woman's pulses on fire, but it only frightened Lucy. She couldn't
understand the vehemence of a man's love. She didn't answer it--she
couldn't without compromising herself completely; but she sent him a
message by Eric.
It was not often that Eric Gwatkin visited his sister at Newnham. She
did not encourage his visits, and she was always too busy to talk to
him. He came up one day in the middle of the week; his examination was
over, and he had nothing particular to do, and he came up to see his
sister. He had been slumming all the afternoon in that odorous district
round Magdalen Bridge, and he had come up to Newnham to see if Pamela
would give him some tea.
Pamela was not in her room, and Eric had leisure to look round and see
how his sister amused herself. One can tell so much from a room in
daily use what people's occupations are.
Pamela did not amuse herself much, unless she found recreation in the
higher mathematics.
Her table--it was an eight-legged affair in old oak--groaned beneath
the weight of the books on mathematics that were piled upon it. It was
as much as the eight legs could do to support it.
Eric quite shivered when he saw those books and the problem papers
that were scattered about; the ink was still wet on some of them. He
couldn't have worked out one of those problems to have saved his life.
Oh, Nature had made a great mistake! She ought to have made Pamela the
man. What was the use of giving all that brain to a woman?
Perhaps Eric thought so; not for the first time, indeed; he may have
got used to the thought as he moved uneasily about Pamela's books.
There were shelves and shelves of books in this girl's room, and there
were not a dozen in Eric's: a Bible and a few theological books, and
some Church histories, and nothing more; no poetry, or travels, or
philosophy, or fiction--oh no, no fiction!
There were books on Pamela's shelves that made his hair stand on end.
He groaned as he read the titles, and he had cold shivers down his back.
To think they should be twins! Oh, Nature had made a great mistake!
He was still reading the titles on the backs of Pamela's naughty black
books, and cold shivers were running down his spine, when the door
opened and a girl came in.
He looked up, with mild reproof in his eyes, expecting to see Pamela;
but it was not his sister, it was Lucy.
Lucy had not come into Pamela Gwatkin's room by choice. She had been
sent with a message from one of the Dons, and she had come under
protest.
She forgot all about the message when she saw Eric.
'You here?' she said.
There was no reason why he shouldn't be here, in his sister's room. She
had just received that letter from Wyatt Edgell, and she was wondering
how she should answer it, and the sight of Eric seemed to bring a
feeling of relief to her mind.
'Oh, I have been wanting to see you so much!' she said eagerly; she
was so afraid Pamela would come in and interrupt them. 'I want to
know--how--how Mr. Edgell is going on--if--if anything has happened
since----'
Eric understood what she meant, though she spoke incoherently; and he
understood her agitation and reluctance.
'No,' he said slowly, looking at her with a strange pity in his eyes,
'nothing has happened in that way, thank God! He is working hard; I am
afraid too hard.'
'Oh, I don't think work will hurt him!' she said scornfully. She
remembered how the girls worked here. What the men called 'work' was
only play to them. She wasn't at all afraid that her lover would work
as hard as Pamela, for instance.
'I don't mean that,' he said; 'I'm not afraid of his breaking down. I'm
only afraid that when the strain is over--he--he will feel it--he----'
He was a very awkward young man; he could only stand there stammering
and stuttering, while the girl looked at him with dilating eyes.
'You mean,' she said with a shiver, 'that when the strain is over he
will go back to his old way--that he will not be able to withstand----'
She could not finish the sentence; there was a strange sinking at her
heart--a dreadful unutterable loathing and sickness that she could not
overcome--and she sank down white and trembling in a chair and covered
her face with her hands. The sight of Eric had brought back that awful
scene, and she was thinking of that gap in his throat; she could never
get it out of her mind.
'No, no, by heaven! not that!' he said almost fiercely. 'He will never,
never fall away again in that way, please God; but it is you alone that
can keep him. His salvation--heaven forgive me for saying it!--is in
your hands.'
'My hands?' Lucy repeated feebly.
'Yes,' he said gravely, almost sternly, 'in your hands. Your love can
hold him when nothing else can; it is to him a strong tower against the
face of this enemy. You must not fail him in his need.'
'A strong tower!' Lucy moaned. 'Oh, you don't know what you say! I am
such a poor little thing--you don't know how weak I am. Oh, why did he
choose me?'
She sat with dilated eyes and white stricken face, moaning and wringing
her hands. He was very sorry for the girl, but he couldn't spare her.
He was thinking of that look on Edgell's face when he had said what a
woman's love could do for him.
'Why do men choose women?' he said almost harshly; 'perhaps it is fate,
who can say? He loved you, or he would not have chosen you. Oh, you
don't know what it is to win the love of such a man!'
'No--o!' said Lucy meekly, with her little smile--her tiny white
smile--'I'm afraid I don't. I'm such a little thing! I could not have a
large soul like--like Pamela. Oh, why didn't he choose Pamela?'
'It is too late to ask that question now; he has chosen you. Are you
going to be true, and loyal, and put yourself aside, as some women do,
or are you going to fail him at the last moment?'
It was a hard question to answer; Lucy could not have answered it if
she would. How could she tell--she who had never been tried--to what
great occasion she might rise? She might be a heroine yet, though she
didn't look like one, sitting there weeping and wringing her hands.
'You will not fail him now; remember his future is in your hands. He
will do great things with a woman by his side to encourage him to noble
aims, to fire him with noble ambitions. Oh, you do not know what your
love will do for him! He will have a great future with you by his side.'
Still Lucy moaned and wrung her hands.
'I shall be always afraid,' she said; 'I shall never feel safe. I shall
always be thinking day and night of--of what may happen.'
'It will be your own fault if it happens. It is only your love that
will keep him; if that should fail, God help him!'
'I am such a poor little thing!' she moaned.
While she was sitting weeping there, Pamela came in, and Lucy jumped
up and brushed the tears from her eyes, and puckered her little level
brows, and tried to look as if she hadn't been crying. She forgot all
about the message she had to give Pamela, and when the sister and
brother were talking she slipped out of the room.
'What's she crying about?' Pamela asked him as Lucy closed the door
behind her. 'Has anything happened to that--that Mr. Edgell? or is the
Master worse?'
'The Master is no worse; but Mrs. Rae is ill, very ill,' Eric answered.
He was not at all disposed to talk of Wyatt Edgell's love for Lucy to
his agnostic sister.
'And Mr. Edgell, has he been having another attack? Has he been
attempting suicide again?'
'Hush, Pamela!' Eric Gwatkin exclaimed almost harshly. He could not
bear to hear his sister speak of Edgell in that way. 'You don't know
what you are saying. That was an accident, and he had been ill. If you
only knew Edgell, you would not say such things. He is the best and
noblest fellow in the world, and he is the dearest friend I have.'
'They say he is to head the list this year; that he is to be Senior
Wrangler,' Pamela said in her cool, contemptuous way.
'Yes, he is sure to head the list. There is no one to touch him in the
'Varsity.'
Pamela smiled.
Eric had forgotten what rumour was saying about her--that it would be a
neck-and-neck race.
'He is working hard, then?' she said indifferently.
What could it matter to her if he were reading hard or raving on his
couch with delirium tremens?
'Yes; he's working like a horse--like a giant, rather. He can do six
days' work in one every day. No one can have any chance with him.'
Pamela didn't ask Eric to have any tea, and he went away as he came.
She didn't even go to the front door with him. She said good-bye, and
sat down to the eight-legged table among her books, and left him to
find his way out by himself.
He knew his way pretty well. It was not the first time he had been
there. When he was nearly at the end of the first passage a door opened
and a girl came out and stopped him. It was Lucy.
'I have been thinking of what you said,' she whispered, with a little
break in her voice, 'and I will do what I can. Tell him from me not to
work too hard; to--to take care of himself--for my sake.'
Her voice broke down entirely, and she went into the room and shut the
door.
He hadn't got to the end of the passage before another door opened, and
another girl's head was put out--the head of a girl with red hair. It
was Maria Stubbs. She watched him to the end of the passage, and then
she sniffed in her unpleasant way and went into Lucy's room.
She went in without knocking, and found Lucy on her knees. She had
flung herself on her knees beside her couch, and was wildly imploring
Heaven to make her love strong enough and tender enough to keep this
man safe who trusted in her.
She looked up when Maria came in, and stumbled up from her knees,
pretending she had been looking for something under the couch, as she
had been pretending just now she hadn't been crying; but she didn't
take in Miss Stubbs.
'Who was that man you were talking to in the passage?' Maria said
bluntly. 'It didn't look like Mr. Edgell.'
'No,' Lucy said meekly; 'it wasn't Mr. Edgell. It was Pamela's brother.'
'And he brought you a message from your lover? Of course he is your
lover. I like to call things by their right names. I prefer to call a
spade a spade.'
'No, he didn't bring me a message,' Lucy said, with some spirit.
She wasn't always going to be trampled upon by Maria.
'But you sent a message by him. I heard you give him a message. Oh,
it's no use trying to deceive me!'
'I couldn't help it--indeed I couldn't help it!' Lucy moaned; and then
she sat down upon the couch beside which she had been kneeling, and
began to cry.
She was feeling so dreadfully in need of sympathy and advice that she
was bound to tell somebody. She couldn't bear all the burden of this
terrible secret on her little weak shoulders. The great terror that
haunted her would not be so dreadful to face if she could share it with
another.
She told Maria Stubbs the whole story from the beginning; she kept
nothing back.
Maria listened in silence to the end. Once or twice she was surprised
into an exclamation, and her face grew pale beneath the freckles, and
if Lucy had been looking at her she would have seen the tears gather
in her eyes and Maria furtively brush them aside with the back of her
hand. She would not have let Lucy see that she was crying for the
world.
'What would you do if it were you, dear?' Lucy said with a little sob,
when she had finished her tale.
'Do?' said Maria, and then she paused, and recalled the face of the man
who had been waiting for Lucy in the long gallery of the lodge.
She had seen a good deal of him in those few minutes. She had seen
quite enough of him to make up her mind what she should do if he were
her lover instead of Lucy's.
'Do, dear?' she repeated, and her eyes beneath their pale lashes grew
inexpressibly warm and tender, and her whole face softened and changed.
It was plain and freckled no longer; at least, the freckles were there,
but one did not notice them in that new wonderful beauty and exaltation
that had come into her plain face that was plain no longer. 'I would be
a strong tower to him against the face of his enemy!' And she meant it.
CHAPTER XX.
NO FOLLOWERS ALLOWED.
Lucy neglected those dear old people at the lodge shamefully. She was
afraid to go to St. Benedict's lest she should meet Wyatt Edgell in the
courts, or in the cloisters, or even in the gallery of the lodge itself.
They were well looked after in spite of her neglect. They would have
been very badly off indeed if they had been dependent upon her. There
was Cousin Mary, who was a tower of strength to everyone who trusted in
her. Not a showy, pretentious tower with a flagstaff on the top, but a
plain solid structure, against whose granite girth the storm of time
and disaster would beat in vain.
Cousin Mary was the presiding genius at the lodge through all this sad
time. She ruled the household, received the visitors--and there are
always a good many callers at a college lodge in May term--and went
from one sick-room to the other all day long, and often all night.
Nurse Brannan was still in attendance on the Master; it had been hard
work to get the authorities of Addenbroke's to give her up so long, but
the 'Heads' have a special claim upon the hospital staff.
The Master was gradually growing weaker day by day--weaker and more
childish. He had forgotten already, in this short time, all that store
of learning that had taken him years to collect. He had disencumbered
his mind of a useless load of lumber--dry, musty old languages, Hebrew
and Sanscrit and Syriac--which would be of no use where he was going.
It had taken him a lifetime, a longer lifetime than most men, to
accumulate it, and now, in a moment, it had been shot out in a load
like useless rubbish. It had answered its purpose--it had advanced
him in the world, it had won him repute and distinction, and it had
made some money; and now, when its end was served, when it was only an
encumbrance, it had all been shot down.
Perhaps other minds would pick it up, would select from the heap the
things that were best worth preserving, and so the lamp of learning
would be handed on to another generation.
Lucy came upon the Master once in one of her rare visits to the
lodge--it was during the hours set apart for the Tripos Examination,
when Wyatt Edgell would be away--and found Nurse Brannan reading to him.
She had opened the door softly and come in unobserved, and the curtains
of the big, old-fashioned four-post bedstead concealed her from view.
Nurse Brannan was reading the Bible to him. She was reading a parable;
the words and the imagery took hold of him more than precept and
promise; he had been expounding them all his life, and they had dropped
from him with those other things.
She was reading the parables of the Lost Piece of Silver and the
Prodigal Son, and every now and then she would stop and explain. She
had a good deal to say about them, and the old Master listened meekly.
It quite took Lucy's breath away to hear that little bit of a nurse
explaining the parables to the Master of St. Benedict's. He had
preached hundreds of sermons in the college chapel from that very
chapter; it had always been a favourite subject with him. It had always
had a fitting application to those fresh young minds in the benches
beneath him that were perennially engaged in wasting their substance in
riotous living. He had read it in every ancient tongue in which it had
ever been written. And now a little nurse-girl, who couldn't even keep
her hair tidy, was explaining it to him.
'Yes,' he was saying in his slow, quavering voice; it was weaker now
than when Lucy last heard it faltering over those closing words in the
Litany in the college chapel--'yes, I mind it quite well. I heard it
when I was a boy standing at my mother's knee. She was a poor woman;
she would have searched for it all night if she had lost a piece of
silver, she would not have rested till she had found it. I was the
youngest of all her sons, and when she read that chapter to me as a
boy standing there, I used to think that I was the Prodigal, and that
by-and-by, when I had wasted all my substance in a far country, I
should come back like the Prodigal to my father's house, and ask to
be taken in. I've been wanting to go back a long time, my dear; I'm
getting tired and old, and I should like to go back. Do you think he
would take me in?'
'We will see what the Prodigal's father did when he went back,' said
the nurse; and then she read in her soft, slow, earnest voice the
concluding words of the old, sweet story.
Nurse Brannan had a wonderful power in reading God's Word, giving by
tone and accent a new bearing to the familiar words of Scripture. Lucy
had heard the words hundreds of times before, and had hurried over
them in her scrambling way of reading her morning portion; but to-day
they seemed to convey a special message. She stood there, behind the
curtain, while Nurse Brannan read and the old Master listened.
'It seems very clear,' he said, when she had finished. 'It seems just
as my mother said. I will arise and go to my Father--I have nowhere
else to go--I have changed a good deal in all these years, but--but He
would not be likely to change----'
'No,' said Nurse Brannan; 'He has not changed!'
Lucy's tears were dropping fast; she could not trust herself to go in.
She crept softly out of the room and shut the door, and went across the
landing to Mrs. Rae's room.
The Master's wife was always glad to see Lucy; she gave her better
accounts of the Master than anyone else in the household. She looked
up when Lucy came in, and noted with her failing eyes, instinctively
sharpened by love, that Lucy had been crying.
'Have you seen the Master?' she asked, with a little catch in her voice.
'Yes, oh yes! he is better to-day, and giving the nurse quite a
discourse upon the parables. You remember what lovely sermons he used
to preach upon the parables?'
The Master's wife smiled; she remembered every word of them. They were
her comfort and stay now, those old sermons of the Master's; they made
the way quite clear before her; they removed all the difficulties.
She would have been shocked if she had known that that nurse from
Addenbroke's had been so presumptuous as to attempt to explain the
parables he knew so much about to the Master.
'You must get me a volume of his sermons, my dear--his first sermons;
I may have forgotten some of them; and Mary shall read them. It will
not be like hearing his voice, but--it--it will bring back something of
the old time.'
Lucy stayed longer than she had intended at the lodge. She had only
reckoned to look in and pay a short visit to each sick-room, and have a
chat with Cousin Mary, and go away; but she had to go to the Master's
library and fetch that volume of sermons before she went.
The Senior Tutor was sitting down in the Master's place at the Master's
writing-table, answering the Master's letters, when Lucy went into
the library. It would be his own place soon. He usually came over to
the lodge for an hour in the afternoon now, and attended to whatever
college business there might be to attend to, and look through the
Master's college correspondence. He used to go through it with Mary
once, when she opened the Master's letters; now he went through it
alone.
He rose when Lucy came in, and made her sit down in her old seat by the
window. He wanted her to talk about herself. He was sure she missed his
help; she would never be able to pass the Little-go without some more
lessons.
They taught beautifully at Newnham. They teach conscientiously at
women's colleges: they don't believe in tips and short-cuts, and mere
getting up of likely passages; they plod industriously through the
dull, dreary round. The Senior Tutor didn't believe in Lucy's plodding;
he would have liked to give her a tip or two.
Lucy declined to talk about herself; she was full of the dear old
people upstairs, and the affecting scene she had witnessed in the
Master's room.
'He is getting weaker every day, in body as well as mind,' the Tutor
said thoughtfully. 'He has not had nearly such good nights lately.'
Unconsciously he was keeping a barometric measure of the Master's
increasing weakness. It is not an ennobling thing to wait for dead
men's shoes.
'No-o,' said Lucy, 'but I hope she will go first;' and then she burst
into tears. 'Oh, I don't know how we shall tell her that he is gone!'
'Do you think at her age she would feel it so keenly? The separation
could not be long.'
'Oh, you don't know what her love is. It seems only to have grown with
the years.'
The Tutor sighed, and looked out of the window into the garden beneath,
and his thoughts wandered away to a time long past, when such a love
might have been his. Perhaps his fancy had gone back to a brown-haired
girl, who had waited for him until her face had grown wan and her eyes
sad with waiting, and who had not had Mrs. Rae's patience. Well, she
would have been old and florid and stout now, and her sweet face--it
was sweet once--would have been seamed and wrinkled with the cares of,
oh, so many children!
Well, it was just as well as it was. The Tutor recalled his wandering
thoughts, and looked at Lucy.
She was quite worth looking at as she sat in the window-seat. Her face
was graver and sadder, and her eyes were steadier, and her lips were
not so loose as they once were. It is astonishing how girls' lips
tighten after six months in a women's college. Perhaps this is due to
their difficulties with mathematics, and to the anxiety that ethics and
Latin prose give them, to say nothing of modern languages and natural
science.
She had certainly grown more womanly since she had been at Newnham:
that added seriousness supplied just the charm that was lacking.
Perhaps it was quite as well that brown-haired girl had not waited.
'Do you think you could love anyone so long, Lucy?' he said presently.
It was not the words, but the voice in which he said them, that
made Lucy look up and her face grow warm beneath his eyes. She was
dreadfully angry with herself for blushing. It was quite idiotic for a
girl to turn as red as a poppy when a man old enough to be her father
addressed her.
She shook her head.
'Not a man you loved very much, Lucy? Mrs. Rae must have loved the
Master dearly for her love to have lasted so long. I'm afraid to say
how many years she waited for him.' And again the Tutor sighed: that
brown-haired girl had soon grown sick of waiting.
Again Lucy shook her head.
'I am not like the Master's wife,' she said.
She was thinking of Wyatt Edgell. Why would men make such large demands
upon a woman? All women were not made on such large lines. Why would
they not be content with a little reasonable love--the calm, steady
flame that would burn very well if nothing happened to put it out? What
more could they want?
'I think you would make quite as good a Master's wife,' he said,
bending over her with that warm light in his eyes that had brought the
poppy-colour to her cheeks; and he had taken her hand. 'I think your
love will be quite as well worth winning. I hope yours will be as happy
a life, dear Lucy, as hers, and that it will be crowned with a fuller
and more perfect joy----'
There is no knowing what would have happened if Lucy had not at that
moment suddenly remembered that Mrs. Rae was waiting for the book of
sermons she had sent her to fetch. She snatched her hand away from the
Senior Tutor's just in time, and made a hurried excuse that Mrs. Rae
was waiting for her to read to her; and she took the first volume of
the Master's sermons she found on the shelf, and ran out of the room.
She could hardly trust herself to read to Mrs. Rae. She made a dreadful
mess of her favourite sermon. Whatever other talents she had developed
at Newnham, she had not developed a talent for reading sermons. It
brought the tears into the dear woman's eyes to hear her; she thought
of the kind voice that was so sweet to her ears, that she had last
heard breathing those well-remembered words, and she turned her worn
white face to the pillow to hide her tears.
'You are sure the Master is no worse to-day?' she said to Lucy as she
came away.
'Oh yes, quite sure. He was preaching quite a sermon to nurse on the
Prodigal's return.'
Lucy was just in time as she hurried out of the college gate to meet
the men coming in from the examination.
They were looking worn and tired, and some were looking glum, and
others had assumed an air of cheerfulness that sat ill on their anxious
faces. One or two had the examination papers in their hands, and were
adding up with their friends the questions they had scored off. The
process did not seem to give them unmixed satisfaction.
Lucy thought that her lover must already have passed through the court,
as he was not among the crowd at the gate, and she was congratulating
herself on having escaped him, when she saw him coming across the road.
She couldn't run away; she was obliged to stop in the face of all those
men at the college gate and shake hands with him. She wasn't at all
sure he would not take her in his arms before them all. There was no
saying what he would do. He never did anything like other men; he did
not measure the world and its customs with the impulse of the moment.
Was not the world made for him?
Wyatt Edgell didn't take her in his arms, and he didn't kiss her in the
face of all the men assembled at the college gate, but he walked back
by her side to Newnham.
'Well,' she said eagerly, 'and how have you done?'
He was glad to see she was flushed and eager; he didn't know it was the
fear of what he was going to do that had moved her and heightened her
colour.
'I have been thinking about you every day,' he said. 'If I have not
done well it will be your fault, not mine.'
She would much rather he had been thinking about his work, but she did
not say so.
'It is nearly over,' she said, with a little catch in her voice; 'only
one day more. What will you do when it is over, when you have nothing
more to work for?'
'I shall come to you for my reward.' His eyes were blazing down upon
her with a sudden heat of passion that made her tremble. 'I shall come
to-morrow night, after the exam. is finished. I shall come to the old
place in the lane.'
He did not tell her that he had been there every morning of the week.
'It is so hard to get out of nights,' she said. 'We are not expected to
go out after Hall.'
He stopped in the middle of the path and laughed.
'Ah!' he said. 'No lovers allowed, and all that sort of thing; no
whispering beneath the moon. Never mind, my dear; if they won't let
you whisper beneath the moon, I've no objection to lamplight. If you
must not meet me in the lane, Lucy, I shall come up to the front-door.'
'Oh, I'm sure that will never do!' she said, almost tearfully; she was
dreadfully afraid he would keep his word. 'They wouldn't let you come
in, I'm sure. You are not a brother--or--or a cousin----'
'No, my dear, thank God! I am neither of these undesirable things. I am
a lover--my darling's own true lover!'
'Then I'm quite sure they won't admit you!' Lucy said very decidedly.
'Lovers are not even mentioned in the rules.'
'Well,' he said, shrugging his shoulders. They were such handsome,
manly shoulders. They didn't stoop, or droop, they were not round or
misshapen, or one an inch higher than the other, like so many scholars'
shoulders. They were broad, and square, and manly, and they had the
strength of a giant. He rowed five in his college boat, and was the
best 'forward' in the 'Varsity football team. 'Well,' he said, looking
down at the girl's dainty profile, and the curve of her soft cheek,
and the dimple in her chin--he had looked at them afar off across the
benches in the college chapel every Sunday since Lucy had first come
up--'well, my dear, if they won't admit me at the front-door, I must
find some other way. "Love laughs at locksmiths."'
He was still looking down at her profile--it was not very far off
now, it was very near his shoulder--and he had possessed himself of
her hand, when three girls came slowly up to the gate where they were
standing.
Lucy saw Pamela's face a long way off, and her heart sank within her.
She remembered suddenly that she was late for tea, and she snatched her
hand away, and ran hurriedly down the path, and left him standing there
to meet Pamela, and Maria Stubbs, and one of the younger Dons who had a
deeply-rooted prejudice against lovers.
CHAPTER XXI.
A BLOW TO NEWNHAM.
Lucy saw no more of Pamela until after Hall. She thought she had
escaped--quite escaped. After all, Pamela had not seen much; she had
only seen Wyatt Edgell talking to her at the gate. Other girls talked
to men at the gate--brothers, cousins, even coaches sometimes--when
they had anything particular to say that couldn't wait for the proper
opportunity, but lovers never.
It had gone so far that Lucy was obliged to admit that he was a lover.
She admitted with a sigh what other girls--what Pamela Gwatkin, what
Maria Stubbs--would have given anything--everything, even renounced
the higher culture--to have been able to admit.
Capability Stubbs was walking with Pamela when they came across the
lovers at the gate of Newnham. Capability took in the whole scene in a
moment: perhaps she took in rather more. She coloured it with her own
vivid imagination; she surrounded it with an atmosphere entirely her
own. There was not a detail in the picture that was not brought out
distinctly by this mental process and stamped upon her memory.
She was thinking about it all the time she was at Hall. She had no
appetite for her dinner. She couldn't get the picture of the lovers
parting at the gate out of her eyes. She sat staring across the soup,
and the entrée, and the gooseberry-tart, at the white wall opposite.
Perhaps it was all photographed there: the manly figure with the great
square shoulders; they were stooping now, and the head was bent--it was
almost touching Lucy's hair--and his eyes were looking into hers, and
his lips were smiling----Pah! what is the use of describing the lips of
another girl's lover?
Miss Stubbs broke off abruptly, and began to press the gooseberry-tart
upon her neighbour. She had quite forgotten until now that it was her
duty to look after Pamela. All the girls who go in for a Tripos are
under special surveillance during the time of their examination, and
a keeper is deputed to watch over them and see that they take their
food properly and go to bed at ten o'clock. It was Maria Stubbs' duty
to look after Pamela. The soup had gone by and the meat, and she had
never once thought about her charge. Perhaps she hadn't eaten a morsel.
She was looking white and hollow-eyed, and had that starved appearance
peculiar to scholars whose brains absorb all the material intended
for the body. She did not look as if she had eaten a good dinner, as
if she had gone conscientiously through the _menu_. In point of fact,
Pamela had only trifled with her plate, and finding that her keeper
was not watching, had not eaten a morsel, and now there was only the
gooseberry-pie left.
Maria Stubbs pressed the pie upon her with tears in her eyes. She
entreated her, if she valued her place in the Tripos, if the honour of
Newnham was dear to her, to partake of that pie; but Pamela was not to
be persuaded.
Conscience-stricken, Maria got up from the table and retired to her
room. Half an hour later she emerged from it with a tray, and hurried
down the corridor to Pamela's door. She didn't find her working as
she expected--it was the very last night for work; to-morrow the
examination would be over. She found her sitting at the window looking
out at the sunset.
Pamela was not generally fond of sunsets, and she never sat at the
window like other girls. She had no time to spare for sunsets, and she
preferred the Windsor chair at her writing-table to any other chair in
the room. It was empty now, and her books were closed, and her papers
were all put tidily away. She had quite done with them, and she was
looking out of the window.
Maria put down the cup of cocoa and the cake she had brought on a
little table by Pamela's side, and watched her while she took it. She
took it obediently. It was less trouble to take it than refuse it, but
she didn't put any heart in it.
'It will all be over soon, dear,' Maria said by way of encouragement.
'Yes,' Pamela said wearily, and she looked out at the white gate which
someone had left open. Perhaps she was thinking that she would soon
pass through it, and her life here would be ended.
Maria looked in the same direction; but the gate brought something else
to her mind, and she forgot all about Pamela and the cocoa.
'Oh, the pity of it!' she murmured; and her eyes lingered on the spot
where Wyatt Edgell had last stood.
'The pity of what?' Pamela said impatiently. She was nervous,
irritable, over-strung, and everything jarred upon her.
'Nothing, dear, nothing,' Maria said soothingly. 'I was only thinking
of the man that girl is fooling. Oh, what idiots men are! Fancy
a man--a real man, not a fool--throwing himself away upon that
pink-and-white baby!'
Pamela was listening with an abstracted air, but the colour crept up
under her skin, and her lip curled.
'You mean the St. Benedict's man?' she said, smiling with a sort of
contempt.
'Yes; the man that was talking to her at the gate. Oh, Pamela, did you
see his face?'
'Ye--e--s; I saw his face. I have often seen him before. He is Eric's
friend. I have known him ever since he has been up.'
'He has known you--you, Pamela--for years, and yet he has chosen her?'
'There is no accounting for taste--at least, for men's taste,' Pamela
said scornfully; but she did not look at the girl she was speaking to;
she looked out at the sunset.
'I tell you what it is,' Miss Stubbs said with an air of conviction.
'He has been dreaming all his life about the ideal woman, and what his
fancy has painted her; and with this myth, this creation of his own
heated imagination in his mind, he has met this--this baby, and he has
invested her with all the attributes of his ideal. It isn't Lucy Rae
he's in love with; it's the ideal woman that he has been all his life
imagining.'
Pamela smiled in a dreary way, but she still watched the sunset.
'Perhaps the circumstances--the very unusual circumstances--under which
he first met her had something to do with it,' Maria went on in a lower
voice. She was thinking of that scene in St. Benedict's that Lucy had
described to her. 'Oh, you don't know what a meeting it was, Pam!'
'Yes,' said Pamela, with a little break in her voice, 'I know what it
must have been to her; but no one can tell what it was to him.'
'You have heard, then! How did you hear?' Maria asked breathlessly.
'She told me. She told me the first night; she could not sleep, and I
found her wandering about the corridor in a panic of fear.'
'Did she tell you all--quite all?'
'She told me everything,' Pamela said; and again her lips quivered.
'Has she told you she has promised to marry him?'
'No, she has not told me that,' Pamela said with that rising tell-tale
colour in her cheeks, and a hard steely light in her gray-blue eyes,
which were no longer watching the sunset; 'but I don't think she will
marry him.'
'I am sure she will not marry him,' said Maria hotly; 'she will fool
him and ruin his life. She is too great a coward to marry him!'
'She would be a brave woman to marry him, knowing what she knows,'
Pamela said with the hot blood in her face again; 'but I don't think
she will spoil his life.'
'Oh, you don't know! How should you know, you who are made on such
large lines? He has placed the keeping of his life--think of it: of
his life, body and soul!--in her hands. He believes that nothing but
the love of a woman can save him; and he has implored her--that poor
thing--to be a tower of strength to him.'
'Her!' Pamela murmured with her scornful lips, and the rising colour in
her face.
'Yes, dear, he has asked _her_. He has made the mistake that men always
do make: he has asked the wrong woman. He ought to have asked you or
me. I don't think we should have failed him, Pam. We should not stop at
the tower; we should have gone down--down into the mud and the mire.
There is no depth so deep where our love would not have followed him,
and we should have lifted him up. I am quite sure we should have lifted
him up; we should have dragged him out of the very jaws of death and
hell itself, if we had perished in doing it. Oh, I am sure that our
love would have saved him! We should not have stopped at the tower.'
Maria stopped, not at the tower, but for want of breath. The red sunset
light had quite faded out of the sky, and the gray night was closing
in, and already the shadows were filling the silent room.
Pamela drew back from the window into the shadow.
'No,' she said hoarsely, 'we should not have stopped at the tower.'
The next day was the last, the very last, day of the examination for
the Mathematical Tripos. It was the last, the very last, opportunity of
making up for all the failures and mistakes of the past week. The front
place of the year was to be won or lost on that last day. Its result
would be final, quite final.
No wonder Maria Stubbs' conscience smote her when she remembered how
she had neglected Pamela at Hall the previous day. She tried to make
up for it at breakfast. She plied her with eggs and ham and porridge,
but Pamela had no appetite for these dainties; she implored her with
tears in her eyes to consume at least a spoonful of porridge, but
Pamela was not to be moved. She went fasting to the exam., and Maria
went with her so far as the door. She went quite early--girls always
do go earlier than the men; they are always in their places, calm and
collected, five minutes before the time, when the men generally arrive
breathless at the door just as the hour is striking.
As Pamela walked up King's Parade in the sweet June sunshine, Wyatt
Edgell passed her on the way from St. Benedict's to the Senate House.
He was swinging along at a great pace, with the bearing of a man who
was assured of an easy victory. His eyes were shining and his lips were
smiling as they had smiled at Lucy. He had no eyes for any other woman;
he passed the Newnham girls without seeing them. His mind was full of
the ideal woman who had promised to meet him in the lane when the exam.
was over.
Maria Stubbs remembered the tower, and flushed scarlet; but Pamela
shivered. She was looking dreadfully pale when Maria left her at the
door. She would have liked to have gone in with her and sat by her side
and held her pens, or picked up the blotting-paper, or collected her
papers; but the examiners were inexorable, and Maria came sadly away.
Pamela pulled off her gloves and glanced over her paper; it was about
as nice a paper as the last day's paper of the Mathematical Tripos
usually is. There were several questions that Pamela had got at her
fingers' ends; they would have puzzled the men, doubtless, but to
a Newnham girl, who had worked for her Tripos as conscientiously
as Pamela had worked, they were a mere bagatelle. She pulled off
her gloves and glanced over her paper, and began work in the quiet,
methodical way in which the students of women's colleges take their
examinations. There was no heat, no excitement, no hurry whatever,
nothing to disturb or bewilder.
She ought to have done uncommonly well with those nicely fitting
questions; but instead of working she sat staring at her paper. The
examiner, walking up and down the room, between the tables, noticed
her abstraction. Once he paused and asked her if she was not feeling
well; and then suddenly it dawned upon her that the time was going on,
and that she had not yet begun. She had never felt it so hard to begin
before; she had never felt that strange reluctance, like a clog upon
her memory, that made the wheels of that fine bit of machinery drag
heavily.
The reluctance--it was nothing more--grew and grew upon her. The
questions were quite easy; she could have answered them with the
smallest effort, but her mind refused to grapple with them.
It was like bringing a horse to the water; the water was cool and
delightful, and it had only to stoop and drink; but it would not
stoop. Pamela could do nothing as she sat there with the time slipping
by but think of the man she had met in King's Parade, and wonder how he
was getting on at the Senate House over the way with the paper that lay
before her. She followed his progress question by question, and when
she had come to the end of the paper she gave a sigh of relief--a big
sigh, for the examiner who was at the other end of the room heard it,
and the girls sitting opposite heard it and looked up.
They saw a very common sight in an examination-room--a girl with a gray
dead face slipping off a chair to the floor. Pamela had fainted.
They brought her to, somehow, though everybody was begrudging the time
she spent upon her; and then somebody took her back in a fly to Newnham.
It was an awful blow to Newnham. Everybody reproached Maria Stubbs.
She hadn't half looked after her. Nothing that anybody said hurt poor
Maria like the prickings of her own conscience. She was guilty in the
matter of that last Hall. She had forgotten all about her charge until
the gooseberry-pie!
She nursed Pamela tenderly all through that wretched day. She did
what she could to atone for her past neglect. She brought her little
messes of Liebig and arrowroot every hour; she watched beside her
with the patient fidelity of a dog, while Pamela would have given
worlds to be left alone in her darkened room. She locked the door
against her officious nurse once, when she had gone out to fetch the
everlasting beef-tea, and Maria made such a ridiculous noise outside,
that threatened to bring all the Dons upon her, that she was obliged to
get up and open it again. There was nothing to be done but to turn her
face to the wall, and let the faithful creature potter about her to her
heart's content.
CHAPTER XXII.
READING THE LISTS.
It was the oddest state of things that can be imagined at Newnham all
through that next week. The order of everything was reversed. It had
been all work--real, desperate work--now it was all play.
It was hard work enough to get through the days. The exams. were all
over. There was nothing for the girls to do but to wait with what
patience Heaven had given them for the lists to be out. Some of them
were already quite indifferent to the lists, and when the strain was
over had gone to bed, like Pamela, and turned their faces to the wall.
Others had locked their doors and gone through their papers over and
over again, and had made up their minds exactly where they should be
placed when the lists came out. Some, more wise than the rest, had put
their papers in the fire, and relieved their overburdened minds with
large doses of fiction.
There was not a book opened in Newnham through all that week but
yellow-backs. Annabel Crewe declared that she had read eleven before
the week was half out, and a Natural Science girl had discovered that
an infallible method for distracting one's thoughts from 'ologies' was
to keep three sensational novels going at once.
One by one the Tripos lists came out, and the girls who had gone to
bed for good thought better of it, and got up again, and came down to
be congratulated, and admired, and made much of. The foolish virgins
who had burnt their papers, and behaved with corresponding frivolity
through all their University career, received the due reward of their
folly, and were snubbed and condoled with in the most approved
fashion. If one is down one must expect to be sat upon, or what would
be the advantage of success?
The women's colleges had nothing to complain of. They had more than
one first-class in every Tripos. They had beaten the men on their own
ground; they had not only kept their place, but they were coming more
and more to the front every year. They will win their degrees soon.
Already the opinion of the Senate is equally divided; very soon the
balance will be in their favour, and then all things will be possible.
The list of the Mathematical Tripos is read out last of all. It is not
read until May Week has well begun, when the boat-races are half over,
and the college concerts are in full swing, and picnics on the river
and luncheons in college rooms are the order of the day.
The list is read out inside the Senate House, as befits the dignity of
the occasion; but this particular year it was rumoured that the lists
would be read out from the steps. Some distinguished visitors were
expected at noon, and the Senate, in their zeal for the encouragement
of learning and other virtues, were about to confer upon them Degrees
of Honour, and the Senate House was full of carpenters preparing for
the auspicious occasion.
Half an hour before the appointed time for reading the list the girls
of Girton and Newnham and the men from every college in Cambridge
assembled on the clean-shaven lawn before the south door of the Senate
House. It was a glorious June morning, and the crowd could afford to
wait. Having waited so long, they could wait a few minutes longer. To
some those few minutes were a boon; the delay enabled them to pull
themselves together, and bear with what courage and resignation they
could call to their aid the fateful verdict they would presently hear
read out.
The girls were more impatient than the men. They had reached the spot
a quarter of an hour earlier, and had secured all the front places.
They crowded the steps of the Senate House to the very doors, and they
filled the broad path beneath the windows. A cool, compact, delightful
crowd--a bevy, one might almost say--a bit of bright refreshing colour
amid the rusty gowns and limp, disreputable caps of the undergraduates.
But the lists were not read out from the steps, and the girls crowded
round the Senate House doors in vain. When it wanted a few minutes
to the hour a window was opened just above the heads of the girls on
the path, and a man looked out. He wore an M.A. hood, and there was a
Proctor hiding away behind him in a white tie. The men sent up a shout
and a howl--a shout for the examiner and a howl for the Proctor, who
happened to be unpopular. The faces of the girls who had crowded up the
steps and round the doors fell. They had expected to be in the very
best place, and they were quite out of it. They could look on the eager
faces of the men below them and the girls in the crowd, if this was any
compensation. They could see how vainly the men strove to hide their
anxiety beneath a veil of indifference or careless hilarity, and how
the girls made no pretence at all of concealing their feelings, but
looked as if they would like to tear that bland little examiner at the
window limb from limb.
Among the girls who thirsted for his blood was Maria Stubbs. She had
come quite early--one of the first--and she had settled herself on
the top step just outside the Senate House door, and she awaited with
devouring anxiety the reading of the list. It was not her list; it was
Pamela Gwatkin's list. She had left her at Newnham in bed, with the
curtains drawn to keep out the daylight, and she had taken away her
watch, that the dreaded hour should not disturb her, and she had gone
in at the last moment, and found her broad awake, with her weary eyes
watching the door. She need not have troubled herself to take away the
watch. Pamela knew the time to a second. She had been counting the
hours all the night, and now she was counting the minutes.
'You are going to the Senate House?' she said, looking up. 'You needn't
hurry back. I know exactly where I am.'
'We all know where you ought to be,' Maria said, hanging her head. 'The
men would have been nowhere if it hadn't been for my wicked neglect!'
She was so angry with Lucy for being the innocent cause of her
preoccupation that she wouldn't let her walk with her to the Senate
House. She would hardly let her stand on the steps beside her, but Lucy
wasn't to be pushed aside. She had as much interest in the list that
was about to be read as Miss Stubbs.
There were a great many mothers and fathers and sisters and cousins
there of the men whose names would presently be read out, and there
might have been some sweethearts present; but there was not a single
girl in all that crowd of sweet young English womanhood that did not
envy Lucy.
'Time, sir, time!' the men shouted, and the examiner smiled benignly
down on the crowd beneath.
'Time! time!'
How eager the men were! They couldn't all be Senior Wranglers!
Perhaps there were not many expectant Senior Wranglers there. It is not
often that a man whose name is on every lip has the courage to face the
ordeal. There is always a chance of disappointment. Wyatt Edgell was
not among the crowd. Lucy must have seen him from her elevated place on
the steps as she looked down at the upturned faces of the men, had he
been there. Eric Gwatkin was close beneath the window among a crowd of
St. Benedict's men, but Edgell was not among them.
'Time! time!' the men shouted, but the examiner only smiled and looked
at his watch.
The minute-hand of the clock of great St. Mary's had travelled round
to within a few seconds of the hour. A Proctor who was standing near
the examiner, with the list in his hand, looked down at the crowd of
undergraduates beneath with an eye to business, and took down the names
of the men who were making a row.
It was the unpopular Proctor, and at the sight of his unwelcome face at
the window the crowd beneath set up a groan, and in the midst of the
groan the clock of the University church struck nine.
'Time!'
It was time indeed. The examiner opened the list, and held up his hand
for silence. The men were still groaning as he read out the first name
on the list:
'Senior Wrangler--Wyatt Edgell, St. Benedict's.'
The St. Benedict's men set up a great shout, and Eric Gwatkin waved his
cap in a ridiculous manner. Lucy would have liked to wave her hat, too,
she was so absurdly elated. She hadn't thought what a great thing it
was to be Senior Wrangler until she saw how the crowd applauded. She
quite flushed with triumph; it was her victory--hers! If it had not
been for her, her lover would not have thought the prize worth winning.
He had won it for her sake!
She was so proud and happy she did not hear another name in the list.
What did the disappointment of others matter to her? Her cheeks were
flushed, and her eyes were dancing with triumph. Oh, it was a proud
thing to have a lover a Senior Wrangler!
Pamela Gwatkin was only equal to fifth--fifth Wrangler--and when Maria
Stubbs went down the steps of the Senate House Lucy saw she had tears
in her eyes. Of course, she was crying for Pamela's defeat. As if
Pamela could have had any chance against her lover!
Lucy ran nearly all the way back to St. Benedict's. She wanted to be
the first to congratulate her lover. Fast as she ran, Eric Gwatkin was
there before her.
There was a strange hush in the outer court as she entered the college
gate. There was no shouting like she had heard in the street and in
the Senate House yard. There was a strange, ominous silence. The men
were standing about the court in knots, and the porter was talking to a
little group of men at the gate.
Lucy's heart sank within her. Had anything happened to the Master or
Mrs. Rae? She thought the men looked at her with a strange kind of pity
as she passed through the court, and they took off their caps as she
passed. It was quite an ovation. Her lover was Senior Wrangler. She
was quite in a flutter of pride and expectation; still, her heart sank
within her.
Eric Gwatkin met her in the cloister; he was hurrying across to the
lodge. She thought he was coming to tell her. What else should he come
to the lodge for? The Master was past telling.
'Oh!' she cried, running to meet him, 'how does he bear it? You have
told him----'
She paused, and her voice faltered with the question on her lips.
Eric's face was white and anxious, and he was not smiling. He was not
the least like the man who was waving his cap under the window of the
Senate House.
'You have not heard----' he said.
'Heard what?' she cried impatiently. 'Is the Master----'
'No--no,' he interrupted; 'it is not that--it is not the Master.'
'It is Mrs. Rae?' she said, with a chill feeling at her heart. She was
sure something had happened.
'No, it is not Mrs. Rae. Oh, Miss Lucy! how can I tell you?'
'It is _he_!' she said in a stricken voice, and with that dreadful
feeling at her heart. 'Oh! what has he done?'
She was standing wringing her hands in the middle of the cloisters,
and the men were passing through, and everyone could see her.
'Hush!' Eric said almost harshly; 'he has not done anything--at least,
he has only done what others do at this time. There was a bump supper
last night, and--and Wyatt was there; and when Mr. Colville went in
this morning to tell him of his great success, he was on the floor in
one of his old attacks. It is all over the college, and everybody is
dreadfully shocked--that is all!'
'All!' Lucy said bitterly. 'You speak as if the shame and exposure were
nothing. Oh, I shall never be able to face it!' She only thought of
herself.
Eric Gwatkin was very sorry for her. He would have spared her if he
could. It was better for her to hear it from his lips than from others.
'He has done great things,' he said. 'It was enough to turn anybody's
head. He will go down in a day or two, and the temptation will
not occur again. You do not know--how should you?--how great the
temptation is--what a supreme moment this is in a man's life!'
'No,' Lucy said, with a shiver, 'I do not know.'
They had reached the door of the lodge while they were talking
together, and Eric had rung the bell.
'Why do you ring?' she said sharply.
He hung his head.
'I came over to see if Nurse Brannan can be spared for a few minutes,'
he said guiltily.
'Is he so bad as that?' Lucy asked; but she did not offer to go to him.
'Ye--es; he is very bad. Mr. Colville is with him, and he thought that
the nurse ought to be with him until the doctor comes.'
'You have sent for a doctor?'
'Yes; the Tutor has sent for a doctor, and--and he has noticed that
scar.'
'And you have told him?'
'Yes; I have told him. How could I help it?'
Lucy went into the lodge covered with shame and humiliation. She was
so proud and happy when she entered the college gate. She had made up
her mind to tell Cousin Mary all about her engagement. She was going to
her to be congratulated--to be envied and congratulated by everybody in
Cambridge. Now she wouldn't have owned it for the world. How lucky she
hadn't told Mary!
CHAPTER XXIII.
'GOING DOWN.'
It was rather hard to spare Nurse Brannan on this particular morning;
harder than usual. The Master had passed a bad night; he had not slept
at all, and he was decidedly weaker. He had been wandering all through
the night, and he was still wandering feebly when Lucy came into his
room in the morning. He had been going over the old scenes of his
youth; he had been travelling back to the sweet green fields and the
hills and valleys of his earliest recollections.
When Lucy came into the room he was propped up in bed, babbling about
the old scenes and the old places. The blind was drawn up, and the
June sunshine poured into the room. Nurse Brannan never denied her
patients sunshine. 'Let them have it while they may,' she used to say;
'they will have no need of it by-and-by.' The sun was shining into the
room now, and on to the bed, and on to the face of the old Master.
Lucy had not seen him for several days; she had been busy with her
examinations, and she was struck with the change in him--an indefinable
change that sharpened his rugged features as if a chisel had been
passed over them. They were rugged still, but with an added nobleness,
and there was a light upon them that Lucy had not seen there before.
His dim blue eyes were looking up at the window, and he did not see her
come in the room. They were looking with that shining light in them
above the gray battlements of the old court to the bright bit of blue
sky beyond.
'I think he can be safely left,' Lucy said; 'he is very quiet. I will
stay with him till you come back. You must not be long; I have an
examination at ten o'clock. You must not stay more than half an hour.'
Nurse Brannan promised to come back within the half-hour, and Lucy
took her place beside the bed. She had a dim idea that she ought to
have gone herself to Wyatt Edgell in his humiliation, not have sent a
hired nurse, but she put the thought away from her. It was not a real
engagement, she told herself. She had only consented to it to give him
a motive for work. He could not hold her to it now; no one could expect
her to be bound by a promise given under such conditions. How lucky it
was that no one at St. Benedict's knew of her engagement!
The Master would not let her thoughts wander long. His hands were
feebly groping about the coverlet of the bed, and Lucy saw that he was
making an effort to get up.
'No, dear Master,' she said; 'no, I wouldn't get up yet. I would wait
till nurse comes back; she will be here soon.'
'I was going to meet her, my dear,' he said; 'I have been travelling
all night. I came by the coach to the cross-roads; it is a long journey
from Cambridge, and I am very tired. I thought it would never end, and
the morning was slow in breaking. It broke at last; I never saw a finer
sunrise, a higher dawn. The coach put me down at the cross-roads; I had
nothing to carry--I had left everything behind--and I have been walking
over the hills since daybreak. It's wonderful how little they have
changed: I knew every field and hedge on the way; and the old trees
and the mile-stones in the road, I knew them every one; and the broken
cross in the churchyard, and the old gray tower. The tower looks taller
now than it used to, and the vane was shining in the sunlight as I came
along; I could see it a long way off, gleaming like gold, and pointing
the way.'
The old Master paused for want of breath; he had worn himself quite
out. He lay back on the pillow, with the sunshine streaming on his worn
face. Lucy could not help noticing how shining it was--shining like the
old vane.
'Strange,' he went on presently, talking to himself in a lower
tone--'strange! the cross was there, and the church, and the tower, and
the old elms in the yard, and the rooks cawing in the branches--I knew
the cawing of those old rooks again--but I could not find the Vicarage
gate.'
Lucy was beginning to get impatient. Nurse Brannan ought to be back by
this time. Her examination would begin in a quarter of an hour. She
didn't care anything about that Vicarage gate; there was nobody waiting
for her at the gate.
The Senior Tutor came in while she was fuming and fretting about the
time.
'I thought you would want to get away,' he said to Lucy, 'so I came
over to sit with the Master. We can't spare Nurse Brannan just yet.'
Cousin Mary came in, too, just after him; she generally came into the
room a minute or two after the Senior Tutor. She had not been able to
come in before, she was in such close attendance on the Master's wife.
Mrs. Rae had had a restless night, but had just fallen asleep, so Mary
had stolen away.
'This is a dreadful thing about Mr. Edgell,' she said. 'The college was
so proud of him; it will be a terrible blow.'
'Yes,' said the Tutor; 'it will be a great blow. It is unfortunate it
should have happened just now; it will get so talked about.'
He was thinking of the credit of the college, not of Wyatt Edgell.
'What will he do?'
'Oh, he will go down with his friends. I have telegraphed for them;
they will be here by noon; and when he can be moved they will take him
away. It appears this is not the first time. He attempted suicide the
other day; I saw the mark on his throat----'
Lucy did not wait to hear any more. She ran away as fast as she could,
and left Cousin Mary and the Tutor talking by the Master's bedside.
They took no notice of her. They did not even look at her. Oh, if they
had only known!
Wyatt Edgell's people came at noon. Lucy saw them crossing the old
court when she came back from her examination--an elderly man with a
striking resemblance to her lover, and a tall stately woman with a pale
beautiful patrician face.
They ought to have been proud and happy people. This should have
been a red-letter day in their lives--a day of thankfulness and
congratulations and unutterable joy; a day when the tears come with the
smiles, and the glad words falter on the lip, and there is a strange
catch in the voice, and a dimness before the eyes, when the most
eloquent speech begins and ends with a 'God bless you, my boy!' uttered
in a very shaky voice.
There were no congratulations to-day and no smiles. If there were
tears no one saw them--only a hard break in the voice when Wyatt
Edgell's mother thanked the Tutor for his interest in her son. She
didn't even look at Lucy as she passed. Something in the rustle of her
rich trailing skirts as they swept over the stones of the court brought
to the mind of the Master's niece those old stories the Master was so
fond of telling--of the stall in the butter-market, and the meeting of
her grandfather with her high-spirited ancestress in the dancing-booth
at the fair.
It was quite as well that nobody knew about that engagement.
Lucy had another examination in the afternoon--her last. She hastily
swallowed some cold luncheon that was laid for her at the end of the
long dining-table at the lodge. There was no one present but herself.
Mrs. Rae was not so well, and Cousin Mary had a tray carried up into
her room, and Nurse Brannan could not leave the Master.
Lucy had no appetite for the solitary meal. Something was choking in
her throat all the time she sat at the table, and she could not swallow
anything.
She looked in at the Master's room before she went off to her exam.
He was still searching for the Vicarage gate. Mrs. Rae was asleep or
dozing; she did not appear to notice her when Lucy opened the door of
her room. Cousin Mary was still with her--she seldom left her now--and
she was looking tired and worn out for want of rest. It did not occur
to Lucy to offer to take her place; besides, she had to go to her exam.
'I can "go down" to-night, dear, if you like,' she said to Mary, before
she went away, 'if I can be of any use here. A lot of the girls have
"gone down" to-day. Term is quite over. I can either come home to-day
or Monday, which you think best.'
'Nurse Brannan has not been to bed for a week,' Cousin Mary said
wearily, 'and--and I'm afraid I am getting worn out; but you must do
as you like.'
Lucy went off to her exam.; but for all the good she did she might just
as well have stayed away. She was very sorry for those old people at
the lodge, but what else could be expected at their age? She was more
distressed about her lover. Nurse Brannan had stayed with him until the
paroxysm had abated, and he had sunk into a deep sleep.
He would probably awake from it, the doctor who had been called in
said, not very much the worse for the carouse, and unconscious--quite
unconscious--of what had happened.
What would he do when he awoke? Lucy was pondering this question in
her mind all the time she was in for her exam., when she ought to have
been occupied with the questions on the paper before her. She hadn't
answered it when she got back to Newnham. She had only gone back to
pick up some things she needed and to get her _exeat_, or go through
the ceremony that takes the place of an _exeat_ at a college for women.
She had to say good-bye to two or three of the girls who were going
down; some were going down altogether, and their paths were never
likely to cross again. Among these last was Pamela Gwatkin. She was
going down, broken in health and spirit, and she had no present
intention of coming up to Newnham again.
She was up and dressed when Lucy went into her room to say good-bye.
She was sitting at her old place at the table, tearing up some papers.
She had torn up a lot already, and they were lying in a heap by her
side, and Maria Stubbs was on the floor packing her books.
Pamela looked up when Lucy came into the room.
'Well?' she said, with a large look of scorn in her eyes that made
Lucy's cowardly little heart sink into her shoes. 'Well?'
It wasn't very much to say, but a great deal can be got into a word of
such varied meaning. Lucy saw in a moment that Pamela knew all.
'I don't know what you mean,' Lucy said with some spirit.
'No,' said Pamela scornfully; 'I suppose not. You have not seen him
then?'
'Seen him?' Lucy exclaimed, flushing scarlet, and her eyes smarting
with tears of anger and humiliation. 'I never intend to see him again!
His own people are here.'
'What has that got to do with it?' said Maria, sitting down on the
floor in the middle of a heap of books.
'Everything. He doesn't want me if he has got his people.'
Lucy was thinking of Wyatt Edgell's mother. She had been haunted by her
pale patrician face all through the exam.
'I don't see that,' Maria said hotly. 'He will want you more. You ought
to stand between him and them, and see they are not too hard upon him.
I think you ought to have gone to his mother at once, and told her
everything.'
'I?' Lucy gasped--'I?'
'Yes, you. Who else should take his part at a time like this? Oh, you
are a poor coward! You are not half good enough for him!'
The tears were in her eyes as she spoke; she had to put up her hand and
dash them off her hideous pale lashes. She looked as if she would have
liked to have taken Lucy in her strong arms and shaken her.
'I'm afraid I am a coward,' Lucy said humbly; and then she began to cry.
She wasn't content with crying, she began to sob hysterically. She had
gone through a great deal that day, and her nerves were shaken. Maria
got up from the floor and came over to her. She put her on the couch,
and took off her hat, and stroked her hair back, and soothed her, but
Pamela took no notice of her; she only sat tearing up her papers.
'You would do the same if you were in my place,' Lucy sobbed; 'you
would be afraid to venture. What girl in her senses wouldn't?'
Miss Stubbs smiled.
'I know some girls who wouldn't,' she said.
She was very angry with Lucy--angry and impatient; but that did not
account for the hard break in her voice.
'Hush!' Pamela exclaimed harshly; 'it is not her fault she has so small
a soul.'
'I am sure you would not do otherwise,' Lucy sobbed, not heeding the
interruption. 'You would be afraid to--to marry him. Oh! who _could_
marry him?'
Maria's eyes were shining, and the hand that was stroking Lucy's hair
trembled; but Pamela's face was hard and stony as she sat tearing up
her papers, and her thin lips were pressed tight together.
'You would never be safe,' Lucy went on, defending herself. 'You would
never know what he would do. He might break out at any time--he might
kill himself, he might kill you!' The picture was too appalling, and
Lucy subsided into a fresh passion of tears. 'Oh, I could never run the
risk!' she said with a shiver; 'I should never be safe!'
'Not if you loved him?'
Pamela asked the question in a low voice--low and vibrating with
passion. She had not intended to give a voice to her thoughts. She
would have given the world to have recalled the words after she had
spoken.
'No,' Lucy exclaimed passionately; 'not even if I loved him!'
'Oh, you poor thing!' said Maria Stubbs, with her eyes flashing, and
her freckled face all aglow with a strange fire.
'Let her alone,' Pamela said wearily--'let her alone. How should she do
otherwise? It is not her fault that she has not a large soul. Let the
poor little thing alone. She can only act according to her lights. Let
her alone.'
They let her alone--at least, they said good-bye to her in a strained,
unemotional way. They didn't shed a single tear in that parting. Maria
Stubbs kissed her on both cheeks, and told her to write to her and say
how the Master of St. Benedict's was. She didn't say a word about her
lover. Pamela kissed her on one cheek--at least, she made a peck at
her, and said some cold, formal words of farewell, and went wearily
back to tearing up her papers.
When the good-byes were said, the poor thing with a small soul crept
humbly down the stairs. Everybody cannot be made on such large lines as
Pamela Gwatkin.
CHAPTER XXIV.
THE VICARAGE GATE.
The old Master of St. Benedict's had not found the Vicarage gate when
Lucy got back to the lodge. He had been searching for it all through
the long June day, and he had not found it yet. He was lying back
propped up with pillows when Lucy went into his room, and the sunset
light was falling on his face. All the hard lines had been smoothed out
of it; the furrows that years of work and thought had stamped upon it
were all smoothed out, and it was like the face of a little child.
His eyes were open, and Lucy thought he was watching the sunset. It had
already slipped off the grass in the court below, and it had climbed
the chapel wall and reached the gray battlements at the top, where the
bits of blue sky could be seen between. She went to the window and drew
up the blind that he could follow it still higher, and he watched it
with a strange wistfulness as it slid off the chapel roof, and lingered
for a few moments on the spire.
Everything had slipped out of his life like the sunset light, and now
that, too, was fast slipping away. He watched it until it had faded
quite away, and then he closed his eyes with a sigh. Lucy watched
beside him through the early part of the night; she was to call Nurse
Brannan at daylight. He lay very quiet, wanting no watching, until past
midnight, and Lucy thought he was sleeping. She was conscious of no
overwhelming sorrow. Perhaps she could not feel things deeply like some
people. He had lived his life--his useful, honourable life--and now he
would pass away full of days and honour.
She wondered vaguely as she sat beside the bed in the silent room--so
silent that she could hear the ticking of the Master's watch on the
dressing-table--what would become of her. Things might have been
different--so different; but she did not dare to think of that now. It
was unreasonable of Pamela Gwatkin and Maria to blame her. No one in
their senses would blame her.
Lucy could not help repeating to herself, as she sat there thinking
over the events of the miserable day, Pamela's question, 'Not if
you had loved him?' 'No,' she told herself impatiently, 'she would
not be justified in making such a sacrifice, however much she loved
him. Nothing could justify it. Girls were not expected to make such
sacrifices for their lovers. No girl in her senses would think of it.'
Lucy's meditation was disturbed by the Master's rambling monologue.
He had been dozing through all the early part of the night, and about
midnight he awoke and began talking to himself in low, disconnected
sentences, his mind wandering off in strange fancies and old
recollections, which escaped from his lips in broken sentences. He had
forgotten the Vicarage gate now, where Rachel used to wait for him in
those far-off days when he came back term after term from college. He
had gone back in memory to an earlier time. He was a boy again in his
father's fields; the old faces of his infancy and childhood were about
him. He was a boy again in the old humble home, among the old humble
folk.
He babbled in his rambling, disconnected way about things and people
that Lucy had never heard of, only now and then she caught a familiar
name that his memory had gone far back to seek. She didn't shrink now
from the mention of her humble progenitors: the dear old rustic with
a hayband round his legs, the dairywoman who kept the stall in the
butter-market. At this solemn time these distinctions seemed but a
small matter. The years had rolled back, and the rustic in his furrow
and the Master of St. Benedict's were again boys together in their
father's field. There were no distinctions now to separate them; there
would be no distinctions ever again. They had all slipped away with the
labour and the learning of the intervening years; with the well-earned
honours--the scarlet gown and the doctor's hood; they were all among
the things that had been. There was nothing left but love and tender
trust--the heart of a little child.
The hours dragged wearily on; it seemed to Lucy as if the sweet June
night would never end. There was not a light in a single window in the
college court, and there were no stars in the sky, only the clouds
hurrying on their noiseless way. The silence of the darkened room
seemed to the frightened watcher to grow more oppressive as the night
wore on. She could hear the rapid tick, tick of the Master's watch on
the dressing-table; it could not beat the moments out fast enough.
Oh, it was dreadful to hear it hurrying on, and to know that it was
ticking off at every beat the few remaining moments of a human life!
Lucy listened to it until she could bear it no longer. Should she
call Cousin Mary, who was with the Master's wife in the room across
the passage? She had got as far as the door to call her, and then she
recollected that Mrs. Rae was always listening for any sound from the
Master's room, and that she would be disturbed.
The thought of the watchfulness of the Master's wife, and the love--the
faithful love that had stood the shocks of more than sixty years, and
had only grown truer, and deeper, and tenderer with the years--smote
upon Lucy like a blow. Oh, she had never known what love was, if this
was a woman's love!
She asked herself, as she sat beside the Master's bed watching the
feeble, groping hand straying over the coverlet, as if it were
searching for something, what the Master's wife would have done if
she had been in her place. Would her love have stood the test? It
had been all fair sailing with her--a long, long sequence of success,
distinction, and honour. There had never been a cloud upon the horizon
of her love; there had been no harder test than the test of years of
patient waiting, and the happy fulfilment of all her dearest hopes.
There had not been a single disappointment. Her love had never been
tried like Lucy's.
Oh, it was too cruel that this blow should have fallen upon her!
Lucy was quite sure that if her lines had fallen in such fair, still
places as Mrs. Rae's, she would have made quite as devoted a wife. She
would have been the tenderest and most loving wife to a successful
man--to a man without any moral or mental taint, to a man of stainless
reputation; but to a poor, miserable wretch, who had no control over
himself, who wanted to be watched, and guarded, and restrained, who
might at any moment do some dreadful thing----Oh, no, no, no!
Lucy couldn't finish the picture, it was too terrible. She could only
throw herself sobbing on the floor beside the Master's bed and grovel
on the ground with her face in her hands in a paroxysm of humiliation
and despair too deep for words.
Oh, why had she such a small soul? 'I am made on such small lines,'
she moaned in her self-abasement. 'I am such a mean, pitiful creature.
I want to be happy, and safe, and prosperous, and everything to go
smooth. I cannot rise to great occasions like other women. I cannot
make sacrifices that other women would love to make. I am not Pamela--I
am not even Maria Stubbs!'
Nurse Brannan came in while Lucy was on the floor beside the bed. She
pretended that she was kneeling--Lucy was always pretending things.
There was quite sufficient reason to account for her tears and for her
kneeling beside the Master's bed. All who loved him in life should have
been there, where Lucy was, kneeling and weeping. There was no one else
left to kneel and weep but Cousin Mary, and Nurse Brannan fetched her
presently, when she saw how near the end was.
They watched beside him until the dawn, and then the nurse drew the
curtain up and let in the faint gray light of the new day. Lucy sat
sobbing miserably beside the bed, and Cousin Mary held the feeble hand
in hers--it was too feeble to grope any more; and the rapid beat of the
Master's watch on the table beat out like a swift shuttle the solemn
closing moments of the Master's life.
The sky above the chapel roof turned from gray to rose, and rose to
gold. The vane on the spire caught the first gleam of the rising sun,
and at the same moment the Master opened his eyes. He looked round on
the group by the bedside with a glad, dazed expectation in them that
had caught the brightness of another morning. He was looking round for
someone; perhaps if she who he was looking for had been there he would
not have seen her. His lips were moving, and Lucy bent down to hear
what he was saying.
'I shall meet her at the gate,' he said. 'She is sure to be waiting at
the gate.'
The sweet June morning broke, and the sun rose over the gray
battlements of the old court and the roof of the college chapel; but to
the old Master there was a newer day and another morning.
When Lucy came in to see the Master's wife later in the day she found
her still dozing. She had not taken notice of anything or anyone all
through the night. She had not missed Mary from her side; but when she
heard Lucy's voice in the room--she was only speaking in a whisper--she
opened her eyes, and Lucy thought she knew her.
'It is I, dear,' she said in a shaky voice. She could not keep her
voice steady or the tears out of her eyes. 'It is Dick's little
daughter.'
The patient face on the pillow smiled, and she moved her hand towards
her--a little thin, shadowy hand, that was feebly groping about the
coverlet, oh, so like the Master! Lucy took it in hers, and smoothed
it between her own soft, warm palms.
Her lips were moving, and the girl bent over her to catch the words. It
was the old question; she had never anything else to ask.
'How is the Master?'
Lucy ought to have been prepared for it; but she wasn't. She was so
broken down and unstrung and worn out with that night of watching that
she was not prepared for anything.
'Oh, you poor dear!' she said. 'Don't you know that the Master is well?
He is quite--quite well!'
'Quite well?'
'Yes, quite well.'
Then Lucy began to cry. She could not keep her tears back any longer,
and Cousin Mary turned her out of the sick-room. Nurse Brannan found
her sobbing in the window-seat, and ordered her to bed, where she soon
cried herself to sleep.
With the unimpaired appetite of youth for sleep, Lucy slept through all
the long June day. She slept until the sunset light again touched the
roof of the college chapel.
It would be slipping off it presently, like it had slipped off the day
before, when the Master was here to watch it.
Perhaps he was watching it now.
Lucy would not have awakened even then, if Nurse Brannan had not
aroused her.
'Come,' she said, shaking her; 'get up at once. Mrs. Rae is asking for
you. Come at once, or you will be too late!'
Lucy did not stay to dress. She hurried across the passage with her
hair falling over her shoulders and her dressing-gown, which she did
not stay to put on properly, trailing on the ground behind her. Her
nerves were so over-strung that it seemed to her that its rustle on the
floor sent a whisper after her the whole length of the passage. It was
like the Master's voice.
The face on the pillow had changed since she had seen it last. It
was sharper and grayer, and the breath came shorter and at longer
intervals.
The shadows were already closing around her when Lucy came into the
room. She no longer opened her eyes when the girl spoke to her--she
would never open them again here--but her lips were moving.
Lucy bent over her with her ear to the failing lips, but she could not
catch the faint, broken words.
'I cannot hear you, dear,' she said, while her tears fell on the meekly
folded hands that were groping no longer. 'I cannot catch what you say.
Is it about the Master?'
She had touched the right chord--the only chord that stretched across
the gulf--and the feeble lips moved. They only framed a single word:
'_Where?_'
'Where is the Master?' Lucy said eagerly. 'Oh, he is waiting for you at
the gate. His last--last message was: "I shall see her at the gate!"'
The face on the pillow changed. It changed as Lucy bent over it.
The great, solemn change! Over all the weakness and the weariness came,
not a shadow, but a light--the wondrous light of the full fruition of
her changeless love.
CHAPTER XXV.
THE STALL IN THE BUTTER-MARKET.
The Senior Tutor took all the trouble of the funeral--or the funerals,
rather--off the Master's nieces. He came over directly he heard that
the Master was dead, and arranged everything. He knew his last wishes,
expressed long ago when he was in health and the end seemed a long way
off.
His wishes had been so clearly expressed that there could be no doubt
about them. He had provided for every contingency. He was to lie beside
his wife. If she preceded him, he was to be laid by her side wherever
she was laid. If he should happen to die before her, he was to be
carried back to the old place, to the old churchyard where all his
humble forefathers lay, to go back to where he had started, and find
his last resting-place where his life had begun. In no case was he to
be buried in the college chapel. They might put up a brass for him on
the old walls, among the carven tombs and tablets of the old Masters
and Fellows, but the dust of his bones should not mix with theirs.
The Senior Tutor carried out his wishes faithfully. He arranged
everything. There was nothing for the Master's nieces to do but to see
to their own humble mourning. He came over directly he heard of the
Master's death, and he was coming backwards and forwards to the lodge
all the day. He wanted to get a sight of Lucy; he only wanted to see
her for a few minutes; he would have preferred to see her alone. He had
arranged exactly what he should say, and the time had come for saying
it.
Whatever it was he had to say he had to put it off, for Lucy did not
make her appearance all through that sad day.
She was so nervous and overwrought when all was over that Nurse Brannan
had to put her to bed; and when she came in in the night, finding that
the girl was awake and weeping, she came into her bed and lay down
beside her.
Lucy could not go to sleep until she had poured out all her trouble
into her sympathetic ear. She wouldn't have told Cousin Mary for the
world.
Perhaps Nurse Brannan knew all about it without being told. She knew
more about Lucy's lover than Lucy herself knew.
'Do you think I could do otherwise?' Lucy asked, weeping, when she had
told her all her sad little story.
'Not unless you loved him very much,' Nurse Brannan said promptly. She
could understand a girl doing a great deal for a man she loved.
'No--o--o,' Lucy said hesitatingly. 'I don't think I ought to marry him
even then. One never knows what he may do. I should never feel safe.'
If the room had not been quite dark, Lucy would have seen that Nurse
Brannan was smiling with a contemptuous sort of pity; but, whatever she
felt, she only soothed and petted the weeping girl as if she had been a
little child.
'You are quite right, dear,' she said; 'one never knows what such a
man will do when there is no influence strong enough to restrain him.
I don't think you would be strong enough to hold him back. He ought to
marry a woman with a large nature, who loved him devotedly--and I think
he would tax her devotion to the uttermost.'
Lucy turned to her pillow with a sigh.
'Ah!' she murmured, 'it is the old story. I am a poor thing with a
small soul!' Still, she was helped and comforted.
Eric Gwatkin came over to the lodge the next morning and asked for
Lucy. He was charged with a message of condolence from her lover. She
saw him in the long gallery among the pictures of the old Masters. It
was such a grave and stately place, there was no room for sentiment
here. She knew the trial had come, but Nurse Brannan had helped her to
meet it.
She looked such a white, weeping little Lucy as she came down the long
gallery to meet him. She seemed to have grown so small, to have shrunk
into herself with this sorrow that had fallen upon her, that Eric
Gwatkin hesitated to deliver the message that had been committed to
him. She had been so sorely tried within the last two days, how could
he add to her pain? He would much rather have taken her in his arms and
comforted her, and offered her their safe, sure shelter from all the
storms of life. He would have given the world to have the right to take
her in his arms, but he had to deliver his message.
Perhaps Lucy would have preferred it if he had. She wanted to be loved
and comforted, and, above all things, to be safe.
But Eric Gwatkin had not come courting on his own account. He was
only the bearer of a message of sympathy from her lover. It sounded
cold and formal as it fell from Eric's faltering lips. If he had come
himself and taken her in his arms, if she had felt the warmth of their
strong pressure and his breath upon her cheek, it might have been
different--it might have been quite different.
After all, it is the occasion that makes the heroine.
Eric delivered his message of sympathy, and Lucy stood white and
downcast, with wet eyelashes and trembling lips, waiting for that other
message that she knew was coming. He looked at her standing there--he
was only a man--and he hadn't the heart to deliver it. He was so sorry
for her. He was conscious of another feeling besides which he would not
have owned for the world, but he couldn't keep it out of his eyes.
His eyes were full of tenderness, but his lips were faltering in a most
absurd way while Lucy waited.
'You have another message for me,' she said presently, seeing he
faltered and hesitated to speak.
'Yes,' he said, 'I have another message.' But he didn't attempt to
deliver it.
If he had had no tenderness for the girl he would still have hesitated.
How could he, looking at the white, shrinking little figure, lay this
heavy load upon her?
'What has Mr. Edgell asked you to say to me?' she said in a thin, reedy
little voice that she couldn't keep from shaking.
'You have heard,' he said huskily, and with a voice low and ashamed
in his throat; 'everybody has heard what has happened. Knowing this,
he has sent me to ask you if you will give him another trial. It is
never likely to happen again--God helping him, it _will_ never happen
again--but, knowing this, and what has gone before, he has bid me to
ask you if you will give him another chance.'
He paused and looked above Lucy's head; he could not look her in the
face.
'His fate is in your hands,' he went on, without looking at her. 'It
depends upon you whether a happy and useful life is before him. If you
are true to him he will have the strongest motive to lead an honourable
and honoured life that a man can have; but if you refuse to give him a
chance, he will abandon all hope--he will have no inducement to make a
stand.'
He said nothing about risking her happiness. It might not have occurred
to him that he was asking her to risk the ruin of her young life on the
chance of saving his friend. Still, he did not look her in the face.
'How can I answer him?' Lucy said, wringing her hands.
'You can only answer him as your heart dictates,' he said huskily.
'Remember, in refusing him this last chance, you are snatching away a
rope from the grasp of a drowning man.'
Oh, what a coward he was: he could not look the girl in the face!
'Oh, this is horrible!' Lucy said, with a moan, and then she sat down
on one of the high-backed chairs against the wall and began to cry. Her
nerves were so shaken that tears came readily now.
If there was one thing more than another that Eric Gwatkin hated, it
was to see a woman cry. Pamela never cried. Perhaps these foolish
tears showed him more than anything else the girl's weakness. He was
dreadfully sorry for her; he was sorry and ashamed of his errand. How
could he press this sacrifice upon such a little weak creature?
'I am such a poor thing!' Lucy moaned, wringing her hands. 'I should
never be able to influence him. Oh, you don't know how weak I am!'
Eric smiled sadly, and sighed. He knew exactly how weak she was; he
would not have had a woman stronger.
'I am not like Pamela,' Lucy went on, with her little feeble moan.
'No,' he interrupted her hastily, 'thank God! You are not like Pamela.'
Lucy looked at him with wonder, through her tears, not unmixed with
reproof.
'If I were Pamela,' she said, with some dignity--'if I had a great
soul, and were made on larger lines, like Pamela, I should give you a
different answer.'
'I must tell you,' he said hastily, interrupting her--'I must tell you,
before you give your answer--your final answer--that Edgell releases
you from your engagement; that he reproaches himself for having ever
asked you to risk your happiness in his keeping. He begs me to say that
if you have any fears or misgivings, if you have no confidence in his
resolution--if you doubt him or yourself--it would be better for you to
give him up.'
Lucy sighed.
'But if you can be so generous as to give him another chance, he will
never, never, God helping him, betray your trust!'
Lucy looked at him with a break in the dull misery in her face. Why
hadn't he delivered this part of his message first? Why had he talked
about snatching away a rope from a drowning man?
'I am very grateful to him,' Lucy said, in a small shaky voice; 'tell
him I am very grateful to him. I do not deserve so much love. Ask him
to forgive me if he can; I am such a poor thing. I have no courage--I
cannot even be generous!'
She broke quite down. She could not trust herself to say any more.
She took her lover at his word. Eric Gwatkin gave her one more chance
before he went away.
'Remember,' he said, 'it is his last hope of reform.'
But Lucy only moaned, 'I am such a poor thing--I have no courage!'
He went away, and left her weeping in the gallery, under the picture of
the Old Master. Surely he would have approved her decision.
* * * * *
It was a dreadful time at St. Benedict's all through that sad week. The
boat that was going to do such great things--that was going to make a
bump every night of the races--did not row during the three succeeding
nights.
Perhaps it was quite as well that it did not; the bumps might not have
come off, and, at any rate, it had the credit of them. Most of the
crew had gone down; there was nothing to stay up for. All the men,
indeed, who were not staying for their degrees, or who had not people
up, went down at once. There was nothing to keep them here: the college
concert had been put off, and the boat ball, and the supper that was
to celebrate the bumps. There was not a single festivity to celebrate;
there was nothing but a funeral to stay up for.
A few men stayed up for it, and all the Tutors and Fellows. There was
quite a large muster in the college chapel at the early service, when
the coffins of the old Master and his wife were brought in and placed
in the clear space in the body of the chapel, between the long rows
of benches. There were no flowers to hide the dreary outline of the
coffins--nothing to cover up their nakedness; there were no flowers
heaped up in the Master's empty stall beneath the organ-loft, but
someone had laid on the seat of the adjoining stall, which was draped
with black, like the Master's, a wreath of immortelles. Someone--no one
seemed to know who--placed the little solitary wreath on the coffin
of the Master's wife, and it travelled with her down to its last
resting-place.
Not a few of the Fellows of other colleges, and all the 'Heads,'
followed the little sad procession to the railway-station. There were
but two mourners to follow: Cousin Mary and Dick's little daughter.
There were no other relatives left. The Old Master had outlived all his
kin.
The Senior Tutor went down with the women to Northwold. He had made all
the preparations. And as the sun was sinking at the close of the sweet
June day he stood bareheaded beside the open grave, where the Master of
St. Benedict's and his wife lay side by side.
They buried him in the old churchyard where his humble forefathers
slept. Their stones, aslant now, and overgrown with moss and lichens,
were all around him. Lucy could not help reading their rudely-carven
names and homely epitaphs, as she stood listening to the solemn words
that were being read over the Master's grave.
There was a Richard Rae among them who had 'died in sure and certain
hope of a joyful resurrection.' What could he have done more if he had
been Master of a college?
She lingered among the graves with the Tutor, and read the simple
records of her humble race. She could trace her family back to the
seventh generation; it was quite a long line of descent: Davids and
Nathaniels and Marthas and Marys, but there was only one Lucy, the
high-spirited ancestress who had kept the stall in the butter-market,
and met her lover at a dancing-booth at the fair.
They left the old Master sleeping among his kinsfolk, in the old
churchyard that his memory had gone back to, close to the Vicarage
gate. The setting sun was shining on the church tower and on the old
vane that had lingered so long in his memory, and the rooks were cawing
in the old elm-trees overhead, as they turned away and left him to his
rest. He would sleep more peacefully here under the daisies and beneath
the dewy heavens than amid the scenes of his learned labours, under the
stones of his college chapel.
The mourners returned to Cambridge the next day; there was nothing to
keep them here. Before they went Lucy asked the Tutor to take her to
the butter-market. Everything had changed, but the old market still
stood where it had stood for centuries, with the quaint stalls and the
old brown awnings, and the rude boards spread on trestles where the
country folk displayed their homely wares.
There was an old woman sitting behind that corner stall now, lean and
brown and wrinkled as an autumn pear. Lucy bought some flowers of her
before she went away; it might have been her namesake.
It was among these homely surroundings, in this morning walk, that the
Senior Tutor asked Lucy to be his wife. He knew all about her birth,
and those old stories of the Master's--he had heard them dozens of
times--and he had just taken her to the stall which that other Lucy Rae
had once kept.
He couldn't have chosen a happier moment to press his suit. Lucy's
heart had quite failed her. It had been failing her ever since that
morning when she met Eric Gwatkin in the cloisters, and at the sight of
that stall in the butter-market it was at its lowest ebb. She had no
spirit left in her; she had no one to cling to. She wanted to be loved
and comforted and petted, and Cousin Mary was not good at petting. The
Senior Tutor's offer came at the right moment; he couldn't have chosen
a more auspicious time.
Lucy didn't exactly jump at him. She was too bewildered and broken down
and upset generally to jump, but she asked him to give her time--to
give her a week to think about it.
When a girl asks a man to give her time, he generally knows beforehand
what her answer will be.
CHAPTER XXVI.
COUSIN MARY.
Lucy couldn't do things like other girls. She couldn't go straight
to Cousin Mary and tell her that the Senior Tutor, the new Master of
St. Benedict's, had asked her to be his wife. There was no reason why
she shouldn't have told Cousin Mary. She had no one else to tell. She
wouldn't have dared to have told Pamela Gwatkin or Maria Stubbs.
They had gone down now; everybody had gone down. Wyatt Edgell had gone
down the day that Lucy sent back that answer to his message. He had
gone without taking his degree.
Everybody was crying out at his folly, and a great many people--wise
people--thought they knew the reason why, but no one guessed the real
cause of his hasty departure from Cambridge.
Lucy was not sorry that he was gone. She could not have met him again
in the court in the cloisters. She would not have been sure that he
would not have taken her in his arms, and that all her fine resolutions
would not have melted away. But he was gone down. She had nothing more
to fear from him. She had an ugly dream about him the night he left
Cambridge, a dream that haunted her still.
She dreamt that Wyatt Edgell was falling over the edge of a precipice,
and that he held out his arms to her, but she would not reach out a
hand to save him.
There was a great deal to be done in these lonely days of the Long
Vacation. There was a good deal to be done, and now it could be done
quietly, with no lynx-eyed undergraduates looking on.
Of course, they would have to turn out of the lodge--at least, so
Cousin Mary said, when they were talking things over a few days after
the Master's funeral.
The Master had behaved very generously to his niece; he had left her
all the furniture of the lodge and what little money he died possessed
of. He had made no mention whatever in his will of his nephew Dick's
little daughter. The will had been made years ago, when Lucy's father
was living, and she was not dependent on his bounty.
It was really very lucky for Lucy that the Senior Tutor had made her an
offer at such a time.
'We shall continue to live together, of course, dear, if you have no
other plans,' Mary said, and she paused to see if Lucy had any plans
about her future, but Lucy was silent.
'I suppose you will give up Newnham now?' she continued presently, and
Lucy thought there was just a shade of derision in her voice; but this
was only fancy.
She might be excused for fancying it, for she had been plucked in both
her examinations. She had failed in both parts of the Little-go. There
was quite reason enough to account for her failing at such a time that
she need not have fancied that Cousin Mary underrated her powers.
'No, I shall certainly not give up Newnham,' Lucy said with some
spirit. 'I shall go in for the examination again in October. I shall
continue at Newnham until--until----'
She couldn't finish the sentence, but stopped short in the middle, and
blushed delightfully.
'Until what?' Cousin Mary said bluntly. She hated to see girls
blushing; she never blushed herself.
'Until I am married,' Lucy said softly, and her eyes fell and her
colour rose.
It was a great pity that the new Master of St. Benedict's was not there
to see her.
'Married?' Mary repeated, with a little break in her voice. 'Whoever
are you going to marry, child?'
She had a vision of Eric Gwatkin; she had often seen him looking at
Lucy in the college chapel, and she remembered that he had called to
see her several times lately. Why hadn't Lucy told her of it before?
'Mr. Colville has asked me to marry him,' Lucy said humbly.
The room didn't turn exactly upside down; if it had, all the books
would have tumbled out of the shelves, and the old Worcester vases on
the mantelpiece would have been broken to pieces, which would have
been a thousand pities, and the furniture of the room would have been
generally disarranged.
Something happened--Mary Rae never exactly knew what; she was only
conscious of a band tightening round her heart, and that when she tried
to speak her voice sounded a long way off.
'Mr. Colville?' she repeated in her distant, faint voice.
'Yes,' Lucy said bashfully, as if it were the first time any man had
asked her to marry him; 'but I have not given him an answer yet. What
answer do you think I ought to give him?'
Cousin Mary was not going to advise Lucy on this point. She knew what
answer she had been prepared to give him the last twenty years.
The Master of St. Benedict's came over to the lodge for his answer the
next day. He hadn't been formally elected Master yet, but the matter
was practically settled. He and Mary had been doing the Master's work
together for years past.
But it was not to see Mary he came to the lodge now; he asked to see
Lucy, and she came to him in the gallery.
Lucy knew exactly what he had come for, and she had his answer ready
for him--quite ready. It had cost her something to make up her mind.
She couldn't marry a man with gray hair--only iron-gray as yet--and
with a bald spot on the crown, and with a big red throat, and bushy
eyebrows, and a crop of wrinkles round his eyes, without a pang. She
was only twenty--sweet and twenty--and her life was before her. Yes, it
cost her a pang to accept the Senior Tutor.
Perhaps it would have cost her more to reject him. He had a good
deal to offer. Lucy did not lose sight of that in making up her
mind. If she refused him she would have to toil through life as a
governess--possibly a nursery governess. One cannot teach what one
doesn't know, and a term's residence at Newnham had taught Lucy one
thing: that she knew very little, and that that little was not worth
much.
Perhaps if she had passed her examinations with honour--had come out
in the first class--she might have given the Senior Tutor a different
answer. Immense possibilities would have opened before her. She might
be Senior Wrangler, Senior Classic, Senior Theologian--oh no, women are
never theologians; she might have been a first class in any Tripos, and
by-and-by, when the way was made clear, she might take a high degree,
and wear a scarlet hood, and--there will be such things--she might be
a female Vice-Chancellor!
Now all these dreams were over. That Little-go examination had nipped
her hopes in the bud. There was no other way of enjoying the highest
dignity the University has to bestow than by marrying the Master of St.
Benedict's. He would be Vice-Chancellor some day, and she would rule by
proxy.
Lucy lay awake all one night thinking over these things. She would have
preferred to marry Wyatt Edgell, all things being equal, and she shed a
few small tears at giving him up. In fact, her pillow was quite wet in
the morning.
She accepted the Senior Tutor the next day. She told herself that she
had no more love to give away to any man: that her heart was dead
within her, and that the tender dream of her youth was over, and
that henceforth her life would be a dreary round of duties--perhaps
dignities--but there would be no pleasure in it.
Nevertheless, when she had accepted Mr. Colville, and he had kissed
her in a paternal way, and she had gone through the gallery with him,
and the big drawing-room--that had been so little used during the life
of the late Master--and had discussed the alterations and improvements
he was going to make, she felt quite interested in life--interested,
if not animated. There is nothing like furnishing for giving one an
interest in life.
Mary came upon the lovers while they were discussing these details.
Lucy's eyes were shining, and there were two pink spots on her cheeks
which Mary had not seen there for many days, when she came across them
in the big drawing-room. Mary quite understood the girl being moved,
she would have been moved herself; but she did not know that the
burning question that had moved Lucy so deeply was the upholstery of
the drawing-room.
The new Master of the lodge had set his heart on yellow--yellow satin
and dark oak. He had seen a yellow room somewhere. Lucy loved pinks
and blues, and delicate creamy tints that would match her complexion;
she would not have had a yellow drawing-room for the world.
Mary came upon them when they were discussing this burning question.
And then Mary had to be told.
The new Master told her in as few words as he could, and about as
awkwardly as a man dealing with a new subject and addressing an
unsympathetic audience. He got over it as quickly as he could. He
was sure Mary would have no sympathy with him. He was sure that she
despised him for his ridiculous infatuation for this little bit of a
girl. He was rather ashamed of himself.
'I hope you will continue to make the lodge your home,' he said to
Mary, with an awkwardness that was quite new to him; 'there is no
reason why you should leave it. There is plenty of room in it for all.
You will keep your old room'--'and your old place,' he was going to
say; but he checked himself in time, and said: 'I am sure your advice
will be everything to Lucy.'
Mary Rae smiled; not scornfully, not even proudly, but with a sort of
pity in her eyes, and her face was grave, and her voice was steady.
'No,' she said coldly; 'I could not continue to make my home here.
My plans are all settled--quite settled. Lucy will stay with
me--until--until she marries'--she could not help a little break in her
voice--'and then I am leaving Cambridge altogether. I am going back to
my old place, to my own people.'
The Senior Tutor had heard nothing about Mary Rae's people until that
day; he never knew she had any people; he had forgotten all about her
mother's relatives.
Cousin Mary began to make her preparations for leaving the lodge at
once. She was only taking with her to the little house she had engaged
at Newnham a few necessary things. She was leaving a great deal of the
old furniture behind. It had been at the lodge for over a century. It
was heavy and clumsy, and some of it was worm-eaten; it was ill suited
for a modern residence. It had been taken off by one Master after
another, and now, unless the new Master turned it out into the court,
or threw it out of the windows into the Cam, it would remain where it
had so long stood.
Lucy consented to its staying almost unwillingly. She had no idea how
valuable those precious old relics of carved oak, and Chippendale, and
old Sheraton furniture would have been in the eyes of a connoisseur.
She didn't mind the old blue Worcester vases remaining on the
mantelpiece, where they had stood so many years; but she would have
preferred some modern gimcrackery for the drawing-room. Her heart
yearned for little satiny chairs with gilt backs, and plush five
o'clock tea-tables, and all the latest abominations of the modern
upholsterer.
It was very sad work turning out all the old Master's papers, going
through all his drawers and turning out all the private records of his
life.
Mary never knew until she went through his papers how generous he had
been to all those poor relations she had left sleeping beside him in
the churchyard at Northwold. Some of these old letters she turned
out from their hiding-places, yellow with age, written by hands long
folded, touched her deeply. Some were from her own kin, and some, most
of all, from Lucy's father, grandfather, great-grandfather, three
generations, all telling the same story of benefits received, of the
unfailing liberality of that generous hand.
Mary did not know what to do with the papers. The Master had left
little else--an old scholar's wardrobe, a rusty gown and hood, an
old-fashioned silver watch; no rings or jewellery or knick-knacks;
nothing but books and papers, everlasting papers.
Lucy would have burnt them all unread--nothing would have given her
greater pleasure than to have put all the musty old lumber in the
flames; but Mary would not destroy a single line.
She gathered the old family letters together and took them away with
her to the little house at Newnham; but she left all the old scholar's
papers, his Semitic manuscripts and pamphlets in crabbed characters
that she could not understand a line of, behind her. The labours of his
long useful life she left behind to the college that had enabled him to
pursue these studies. Perhaps a younger scholar coming by some day may
look over the heap, and pick out from it what is worth preserving.
Mary was in a great hurry to get out of the lodge. She need not have
got out until the end of the Long Vacation, but she chose to clear
out at once. Lucy was a little angry at all this haste. She would
much rather have stayed at the lodge than have gone into a small,
uncomfortable little house at Newnham.
She wrote bewailing her lot to Maria Stubbs, but she didn't say a word
about her engagement to the Senior Tutor.
Maria answered her letter by the next post. She was staying up in town
in a small lodging in Bloomsbury, in order to be near the reading-room
of the British Museum, and she wrote and begged Lucy to come up and
share her poor rooms. Her letter touched Lucy, and brought the tears
to her eyes. She remembered how she used to hate Maria, and wouldn't
notice her in the street. Her letter contained some information that
interested Lucy, and may have had something to do with her tears.
Pamela's brother had gone abroad with Wyatt Edgell; he had been engaged
by his family to travel with him and look after him. Pamela had only
heard from Eric once since he had been away, and he had not written
hopefully of his charge; but Maria did not give any particulars.
Lucy would have given the world to have seen that letter of Pamela's.
She remembered what Eric had said about taking away a rope from a
drowning man, and she recollected that dreadful dream.
Oh, if she could only have seen that letter! Perhaps even now it might
not be too late.
The Master--he was really Master now--came in while her eyes were yet
wet with tears. He had brought with him some patterns that had just
arrived for the hangings of the new rooms. It was really a serious
question. The effect of everything would depend upon the colour of
the hangings. In deciding this important point Lucy forgot all about
Pamela's letter.
CHAPTER XXVII.
OCTOBER TERM.
October had come, and term had begun again, and Cambridge was full of
new faces--fresh young faces that would soon lose their smoothness
and roundness, and that delightful ingenuousness that distinguishes
successive generations of Cambridge freshmen.
There were a great many girl freshers at Newnham this term, and several
of the old familiar faces were no longer seen. Pamela Gwatkin had come
up for another year. A scholarship, the Grace-Hardy Scholarship, which
is only given to girls in their fourth year, who have done well in a
Tripos, had been awarded her to enable her to proceed to the second
part of the Mathematical Tripos. When women year after year stand first
on the list of the Smith's prizemen, it will be necessary to create a
third part, when probably the majority of the candidates will be women.
Pamela Gwatkin had been working hard all through the Long Vacation, and
she had come back pale and hollow-eyed, and oh! so lean. She will be
like a deal board by the end of the year, and her beautiful, serious
eyes will have nothing but mathematics in them.
Lucy had come back to work, too, but there were no mathematics in her
eyes. She had just been plucked again in that horrid Part II. of the
'Previous,' which takes in Mathematics and Paley; but she had passed
the classical part. She had only come up for one term. She was to be
married in the spring, and she was quite, quite determined to get
through the Little-go before she took her place as the wife of a Master
of a college. She wouldn't be pointed at by everybody in Cambridge as
a Failure!
She had got her old room next to Maria Stubbs, and she told Maria all
about her engagement the first night after Hall.
Maria didn't bully her as she expected she would, perhaps she would
have done the same thing herself had she been in her place.
She thought Lucy a very lucky girl; nobody had ever fallen in love with
her, and asked her to preside over a college lodge, though she was
twice--a dozen times, at least--as clever as Lucy. She couldn't, for
her part, think what men saw in Lucy. Cousin Mary often--indeed, she
had always--wondered what the Master of St. Benedict's saw in Lucy.
Mary had quite given up the lodge long ago. The shabby, old-fashioned
bits of furniture that she had taken away with her had all been
carried over the college bridge to the little house at Newnham. She
had only taken the oldest and the shabbiest things away; she had left
everything that was worth leaving at the lodge.
People who had known her well remarked when they came up in October how
much she had aged during the Long Vacation. She was not only looking,
but she was feeling old and changed. Something had gone out of her life.
The Master of St. Benedict's noticed the change with a little twinge
of conscience, but his hands were too full just now to think very much
about any other woman than the woman he was going to marry.
The lodge was full of workpeople; the old place was being turned upside
down. The plaster and the paint and the whitewash had been scraped
off the old oak, and, oh, what a lot of beeswaxing it took to make it
brown and mellow with that delightful old dull polish upon it that
antiquaries love! There were all sorts of discoveries made during this
pulling down and building up of old panelling. Rooms were unearthed,
and musty old cupboards and passages laid open, and no end of old
windows that had been blocked up for centuries brought to light. Lucy
had to come over to see all these discoveries, but Mary never came to
the lodge again after the day she left it. That chapter of her life was
closed.
Not many people congratulated Lucy on her engagement. Very few people
in Cambridge knew of it. Everyone had been expecting the Senior Tutor
for years to marry the Master's niece; and when, after the Long
Vacation, the engagement was spoken of, nobody ever dreamed it was Lucy.
Mary had very properly gone away from the lodge until she could return
as its mistress; and Lucy--well, Lucy had gone back to Newnham to fit
herself for her work as a governess. Under these circumstances she got
very few congratulations.
Everybody would congratulate her fast enough when the time came. She
was not doing a thing that there was no precedent for. Nearly all the
heads of the Colleges in Cambridge had married young wives. It was
quite the fashion.
It was not so long ago that Fellows of colleges could not marry at all,
but now the order had been reversed, and the first use the dear old
things made of their new liberty was to marry wives out of the nursery.
As the Poet of the University touchingly put it:
'It hath been decreede, that ye Fellowes may wed,
And settle in College walls;
And wake ye echoes of cloistered life,
With their lyttel chyldren's squalls.'
There had been no children's 'squalls' heard in the lodge of St.
Benedict's within the memory of the oldest Fellow in the college; no
pattering footsteps on the stairs, no children's voices in the long dim
galleries, had disturbed its monastic quietness. The Fellows who in
their turn had been Masters of St. Benedict's had been old, old Fellows
when their turn came, and one only of all their number that anyone
living could remember had taken to him a wife.
Perhaps other women were not so patient and faithful as the old
Master's wife.
Lucy would not have been so patient; she was getting impatient already,
now the novelty had worn off. She was not sure that she was doing the
best, the very best thing she could with her life; that she was making
the most of it, that she was 'arranging' it aright, as they put it at
Newnham.
Her heart misgave her as she pictured her future, her prosperous
future, as the wife of the Master of St. Benedict's. The quiet, stately
life of a college lodge oppressed her. She was sure she should soon
weary of its stateliness and its loneliness. She pictured herself
sometimes standing at the old oriel window and looking down at the
lusty young life in the court below and longing to be in the midst of
it. She was longing already. The sight of young lovers in the college
Backs filled her heart with a strange tumult, and the sound of a fiddle
coming from the open window of a man's room as she passed through the
court set her feet twinkling. There is a great deal in heredity.
The Master met her at the lodge one day when she was in this mood. She
had been working at mathematics all the morning, and she was nervous
and overwrought; she had been feeling a strange depression for several
days, and had come over to see the alterations at the lodge in order to
shake it off.
The Master took her out into the Fellows' garden to see the new
greenhouse. It had been rebuilt, and, late as it was in the season, it
was ablaze with Lucy's favourite geraniums. He had considered her taste
entirely, and filled it with the flowers of her choice. She ought to
have been grateful, at the least, and expressed her gratitude in any of
the little pleasant ways that engaged people are wont to express their
feelings.
She ought to have gone round sniffing the flowers, and picked the
choicest red geranium and stuck it in the Master's coat; but she did
nothing of the kind. She sat down on a bench and began to cry. She
couldn't keep the tears back.
Perhaps the sight of the new greenhouse had brought to her mind that
scene when the old Master had fallen in the garden, and Wyatt Edgell
had carried him back to the house.
Lucy couldn't account for her tears. She said it was the air of the
greenhouse had made her faint, and her lover walked back with her to
Newnham.
'You are sure there is nothing the matter?' the Master said before he
left her; he didn't leave her at the gate, he went straight up to the
door of Newe Hall with her. 'You are sure that the faintness is quite
gone?'
'Yes,' she said, 'it is quite gone. It was only the heat and the smell
of those horrid geraniums.'
This was rather hard on the Master, as he had gathered them together
for her benefit.
There were still traces of tears on her cheeks when she got back to
Newnham, and her eyes were red, and everybody could see she had been
crying. Maria Stubbs saw her coming up the path with the Master, and
she saw in a moment, directly she came into the hall, that there was
something amiss. Nothing escaped Maria.
She followed Lucy into her room and shut the door behind her.
'You have heard, then?' she said.
Lucy noticed that she spoke in a more subdued tone than was usual to
her, and there was a catch in her voice that jarred upon her ear.
'Heard what?' she said wearily. 'I have only just come back from the
lodge. I have heard nothing.'
She was not very anxious to hear Maria's news. She thought it was one
of the old things that was always happening: someone had passed an
exam., or someone had been plucked, or someone had broken down. She was
so used to these things that she did not care a straw which it was, and
she began drawing off her gloves, and threw her hat down on a chair.
When she had done this she became aware that Maria was looking at her
with a strange pity in her eyes.
'And you have not heard?' she said with a little hard break in her
voice.
'I have heard nothing,' Lucy said impatiently.
'Oh, you poor dear! How can I tell you?'
Lucy looked at her startled and amazed, with a sudden terror in her
eyes.
'It is about--about----'
Her lips grew suddenly white, and refused to pronounce the name of the
man who for so short a time had been her lover.
'Yes,' Maria said softly, 'it is about Wyatt Edgell.'
'He--he--oh, don't say he is dead!'
Lucy fell on her knees beside the couch and clutched Maria's gown. She
was white as a sheet, and her lips were quivering.
Maria Stubbs threw her arms around her, she thought she would have
fallen, but Lucy pushed her aside.
'Oh, don't tell me he is dead!' she moaned. 'Don't tell me I have
killed him!'
'Hush!' Maria said almost fiercely, but her own eyes were full of
tears, and her voice faltered as she spoke. 'It isn't your fault that
he is dead. He would have died just the same whether you had given him
up or not.'
She spoke to unheeding ears, for Lucy had fallen with a little cry to
the floor.
She tried in vain to rouse her. Her face was perfectly colourless, and
her lips were white, and she lay like a log where she had fallen.
Maria undid her dress and loosened the things about her throat, and
threw some water over her face and hands, and then, finding she didn't
revive at all, she got frightened and ran to get assistance. Pamela
Gwatkin was the only girl who was in her room at that hour, and Maria
implored her to come at once.
Pamela was sitting with her hands clasped before her and an open letter
in her lap. She looked up when Maria came in with a bewildered look in
her eyes, which were heavy with weeping.
'You must not ask me,' she said harshly; 'I would not put my hand out
to save her. You must ask someone else. I can never, never forgive her!'
If Pamela could not find it in her heart to forgive the girl who had
ruined Wyatt Edgell's life, it was harder for Lucy to forgive herself.
As she lay tossing with fever in her little darkened room for weeks
after that miserable day, she reproached herself a thousand times for
having murdered her lover. The shock of Wyatt Edgell's death had told
on her already overwrought nervous system, and it had given way, and
she had been struck down with brain-fever.
It was not an unusual thing in a women's college.
No one but Pamela Gwatkin and Maria knew the real cause; everyone else,
doctors and all, put it down to overwork--to the mathematics she was
getting up for the Little-go.
Nobody attached any meaning to her wandering, not even when in her
delirium she called herself a murderess; she didn't mince matters, she
shocked Cousin Mary by declaring that she was a murderess. She was for
ever raving about that dreadful scene, when she had found Eric Gwatkin
on his knees beside the couch, and in her dreams she was ever helping
him to sew up that awful wound. She couldn't get that gaping wound out
of her eyes.
Nurse Brannan came over from Addenbroke's to Newnham to nurse Lucy.
Perhaps she could have thrown some light on the girl's wanderings,
but she was silent. She nursed her back to life, and soothed her and
comforted her in the first wild abandonment of her grief and remorse,
as she had comforted the old Master. She had only one kind of medicine
for all the diseases of the mind. She had only one set of old-fashioned
remedies. She read Lucy in those first weak days of convalescence the
same, the self-same, words from the same old Book that she had come
upon her reading to the Master at the lodge. She had only one story to
tell to all her patients--an old, old story. It seemed quite new to
Lucy as she sat listening to it in those weak tired days; it seemed to
her that she had never heard it before.
When she was well enough to talk about anything, Lucy insisted upon
talking about the subject that was uppermost in her mind. Nurse Brannan
let her have her way; she could not have stopped her if she would.
'You have nothing to reproach yourself with, my dear,' she said to her
when she found there was nothing to be gained by silence; 'it would
have happened in any case. With that tendency and that awful heritage,
you could not have prevented it.'
Then Lucy learned, what she had only surmised before, that Wyatt Edgell
had died by his own hand.
'You must tell me how it happened,' she said, 'and who was with him;
you must not conceal anything.'
'There is very little to tell, dear. Eric Gwatkin was with him. He
could not have had a truer or more devoted friend.'
'No,' said Lucy with a sigh; 'he loved him more than I loved him; he
would have laid down his life for him.'
'Yes, I think he would. They were away alone together in Scotland, on
some shootings that Mr. Edgell had taken, when it happened. He had
been moody and out of sorts for several days, and had stayed indoors
wrestling with his disease. Eric did not leave him day or night during
this dreadful time, and on the fourth day the temptation seemed to
have passed, and he went out on the moors. Eric was with him alone
when it happened; there was no keeper near. It was all over, and--and
he was quite dead when the keeper came up. There was only Eric to
witness that it was not an accident. Oh, he behaved splendidly! He did
everything. He brought the dear fellow back to his people; he covered
up all the dreadful part of the story; and no one--no one belonging to
him--will ever know that it was not an accident. It would have broken
his mother's heart; it would have killed his old father, who was so
proud of him; it would have been a crushing blow. Oh, Eric was quite
justified--it must have cost him a great deal to cover it up, but he
was quite justified; he behaved splendidly!'
When Lucy got well enough to see anyone, the first person she saw was
the Master of St. Benedict's. He had inquired for her every day during
her illness, and he had sent daily messages by Mary. He reproached
himself for letting her walk back on that last day he had seen her. He
ought to have known that she had broken down when she fainted in the
greenhouse.
He was not at all prepared for the change in her. She had not only
grown thin and white, but her eyes had changed; they were graver and
steadier, and something that used to be there, he didn't know what, had
gone out of them.
'The lodge is quite finished,' the Master said cheerfully, as he took
his seat by her side; 'your home is quite ready for you, my dear.'
Then Lucy had to say to him what she had sent for him to say. It was
rather difficult to say, and she said it in her little weak, faltering
voice.
'I have found out,' she said, 'while I have been lying here, that I
have made a mistake. It is not the first mistake I have made--and--and
thank God I have found it out in time!'
Her voice broke, and her lips quivered, and a faint flush of colour
came into her cheeks.
'We have all made mistakes, my darling,' the Master said, stroking
her little thin hand that lay on the coverlet. 'Don't let this little
mistake you have made, or fancy you have made, trouble you; you have
all your life to set it right. You have only to get well as fast as
you can; your new home is ready, quite ready, for you.'
Lucy shivered.
'That is it,' she said eagerly; 'I want you to help me to set it right.
I have ruined one man's life; I will not ruin another. I--I want you to
give me up.'
She did not tell him she was not worthy, she knew that would be of no
avail; she only asked him to give her up.
'You do not love me, Lucy?' he said reproachfully, when he found that
all other arguments failed to move her.
'No,' she said sadly, 'I do not love you enough. I never, never could
love you enough to marry you for yourself. I should have married you
for--for the sake of your position--it is a great thing to be mistress
of a college lodge--and, and I wanted a home, and to be taken care
of--and loved--and I had nothing to give in return.'
It took a long time to convince the Master of St. Benedict's that Lucy
hadn't accepted him for himself. He hadn't looked in the glass lately,
or his eyes had grown dim--he hadn't seen that the brown locks of his
youth were turning gray, and that he was getting bald, and fat, and
florid. There were plenty of women in the world who would have loved
him for himself still; there was a dear woman in the adjoining room who
had loved him for twenty years, and who would go on loving him in spite
of his baldness--who rather preferred it, indeed.
The Master couldn't conceal from himself that the girl really desired
to be free. Her words, her eyes, her manner, all showed him that she
desired to break off her engagement. He had no alternative but to give
her the release she sought.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
A COLLEGE 'PERPENDICULAR.'
A whole year had passed. There was quite time enough in a year for
things to straighten themselves--for things that had gone wrong to get
right again.
One thing that had once threatened to go wrong--very wrong--had righted
itself. The new mistress of the lodge of St. Benedict's was in her
right place.
The lodge had taken months to restore and refurnish, and the work
had been carried out quite regardless of expense. It only wanted one
thing when it was finished--a mistress to preside over its stately
hospitality.
The Master had not far to go to find one. He did not go so far as
Newnham College; he found what he sought at an unpretentious little
house in the village, furnished with very shabby old furniture.
He ought to have been ashamed of himself to have gone back to Mary.
No doubt he was ashamed, dreadfully ashamed; but he went back,
nevertheless. He did what is always the wisest and the noblest thing to
do; he went back and confessed his folly, and asked to be forgiven. He
did not ask in vain.
Mary is now the most popular mistress of a college lodge in Cambridge,
and the handsomest. She has grown quite young again; the ordeal she
has passed through has only added a tender, pathetic nobleness to her
beautiful grave face. The hope of her youth, of her mature womanhood,
is fulfilled. She cannot help looking prosperous and handsome.
And Lucy? Well, Lucy went back to Newnham when she was well
enough--when she had quite recovered--and passed the Little-go with
distinction. She worked at her Tripos all through the next year, and
Pamela Gwatkin was her coach. She was about as unhappy as a girl with a
'small soul,' as she still described herself, would be, after what she
had gone through; but her mathematics diverted her thoughts, and the
prospect of her coming Tripos sustained her.
At the end of the year an event happened which affected Lucy's
views on the subject of her Tripos; that cut short, in a not wholly
unprecedented way, her University career.
At the close of the October term, the Master of St. Benedict's gave
what is known in undergraduate parlance as a 'Perpendicular.'
At this particular 'Perpendicular' all the Dons and Donesses in
Cambridge were present to do honour to the new mistress of the lodge,
and the whole suite of reception-rooms, that had been the subject of
such heartburnings to Lucy, were thrown open.
It was the first time that she had ever seen them lit up and filled
with such a goodly company. She was there with Maria Stubbs and Pamela
Gwatkin, as her cousin's guests. She had not altered much during the
year; only her eyes were steadier, and she did not blush so readily.
She ought to have been blushing now, for she had just met an old friend
who had taken her hand when they met and had forgotten to give it up
again.
It was Pamela Gwatkin's brother.
He was in Orders now; he had been ordained nearly a year, and held a
curacy in a village in the West-country, with the magnificent stipend
of one hundred and fifty pounds a year.
He had gone through all the familiar rooms of the old lodge with Lucy,
but he had hardly recognised them again. Only in the long gallery the
faces of the old Masters looked down on him as of old, with a stately
welcome in their grave eyes.
He had no idea that the dark, musty old place could have been so
changed. He passed through room after room, with Lucy's arm in his; and
presently, when she was tired, he sat down in the deep-recessed window
of the oak-panelled saloon, where the Masters hold their annual feasts
and eat their state dinners.
Full-length portraits of old Masters and Fellows hung on the walls,
and above their massive gilded frames--they had been regilt lately--a
rich carved frieze of oak went round the room; and above the great open
fireplace was a quaint carven mantelpiece that was a sight to see. It
was a room to delight the soul of an antiquary.
Lucy watched Pamela's brother as his eyes travelled round the room and
took in all these things. He was such a simple, transparent fellow that
she could not help reading his thoughts.
'What are you thinking of, Eric?' she asked him presently. She called
him Eric.
'I--I?' he said, with a blush. 'I was wondering why you gave up
this--how you _could_ give up this!'
'Did you wonder?' she said softly, and her eyes, he saw, were very
sweet and tender. He thought she lingered on the 'you,' and he looked
at her with a strange trouble in his eyes.
'Yes,' he said with a sigh, 'I don't think many women would have--have
given this up lightly. You must have had a reason?'
'Yes,' she said in her low voice, with a quiver in it, and that droop
of her pretty mouth that he remembered so well; 'I had a reason.'
Something in her manner more than in her voice struck him, and the
trouble in his eyes deepened.
'May I know--will you tell me the reason, Lucy?' he said hoarsely.
'I could tell anyone but you,' she said passionately, and then she
turned away her face from him, but not before he had seen that her eyes
were full of tears.
Then a strange light came suddenly into his eyes as he looked at her as
she sat there in her soft white clinging gown, with her bosom heaving,
and the rich colour sweeping over her neck and face.
'You do not mean----Oh, Lucy!' he said, and his voice shook, and the
trouble in his eyes gave place to the light of a sudden wild hope.
Whatever she meant, it was whispered so low that it reached no other
ear than his.
Before Lucy went back to Newnham that night with her friends she had a
little interview with her beautiful hostess. Cousin Mary looked like a
queen with her gleaming jewels and her rich dress.
It was not a dress intended to be crushed; it was intended to be
put away carefully, and to be worn at no end of grand University
receptions and dinner-parties; but Lucy threw herself upon it in the
most unfeeling way, and let her foolish tears--they always flowed very
copiously--stream down the beautiful satin bosom and over the lovely
real lace.
'Oh Mary, congratulate me,' she murmured; 'I am going to marry Eric
Gwatkin!'
She was going to marry a curate with one hundred and fifty pounds a
year. She had thrown over the Master of a college, and she was asking
Cousin Mary to congratulate her!
* * * * *
What can be expected of the children of such a union? They will neither
be beautiful nor clever. Probably in a generation or two they will go
back to the low estate from which they sprang, and another Lucy may
keep the old family stall in the butter-market. Heredity has so many
vagaries it is not safe to predict.
The success of the old Master may repeat itself in the male line, and
another Anthony--Lucy's boy is called Anthony--may occupy with equal
distinction as a Church dignitary another stall elsewhere.
Who can tell?
Meanwhile Lucy is famous for her poultry, and, like her distant
progenitor, prides herself on the excellence of her dairy.
THE END.
BILLING AND SONS, PRINTERS, GUILDFORD.
NEW LIBRARY NOVELS.
THE IVORY GATE. By Walter Besant, Author of 'All Sorts and
Conditions of Men,' etc. 3 vols.
THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. By Aaron Watson and Lillias
Wassermann. 3 vols.
TRUST-MONEY. By William Westall. 3 vols.
A FAMILY LIKENESS. By Mrs. B.M. Croker. 3 vols.
THE MASTER OF ST. BENEDICT'S. By Alan St. Aubyn. 2 vols.
MRS. JULIET. By Mrs. Alfred Hunt. 3 vols.
BARBARA DERING. By Amélie Rives. 2 vols.
GEOFFORY HAMILTON. By Edward H. Cooper. 2 vols.
TREASON-FELONY. By John Hill. 2 vols.
London: CHATTO & WINDUS, 214, Piccadilly, W.
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