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 canbe 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! whocouldmarry 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.
Theold 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 thegrass 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 andthe 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 toknow 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 havestood 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 tooterrible. 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 CousinMary, 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 inhers, 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. Sheslept 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, andthe 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.
TheSenior 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 backto 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 itoff, 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 neverknows 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 sawhim 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, itwillnever 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 himanother 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 andFellows. 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 forcenturies, 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.
Lucycouldn'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 firsttime 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, andwear 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 hadseen 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 hechecked 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. Ithad 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 drawersand 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 thanto 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 adrowning 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.
Octoberhad 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. Shewouldn'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 hadleft 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 oldcupboards 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 theheads 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'sroom 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 thekind. 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 werered, 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 hatdown 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, shethought 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 itdown 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 convalescencethe 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 itwas 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!'