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.