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.