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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. I.
London CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY 1893
CONTENTS OF VOL. I.
CHAPTER PAGE
I. FULL OF DAYS, RICHES, AND HONOUR 1
II. DICK'S LITTLE DAUGHTER 17
III. ONLY A FRESHER 34
IV. PAMELA GWATKIN 53
V. AFTER CHAPEL 72
VI. BEHIND THE SCREEN 88
VII. LUCY'S SECRET 102
VIII. WATTLES 113
IX. A WOMAN'S PARLIAMENT 136
X. 'THAT CONFOUNDED CUCUMBER!' 148
XI. IN THE FELLOWS' GARDEN 163
XII. AN UGLY FALL 180
XIII. SLIPPING AWAY 192
XIV. WYATT EDGELL 207
THE
MASTER OF ST. BENEDICT'S
CHAPTER I.
FULL OF DAYS, RICHES, AND HONOUR.
The Master of St. Benedict's had got as much out of life as most
men. His had been a longer life than is allotted to many men--it had
exceeded four score.
There had been room in these eight decades for all the things that
men desire: for ambition, for wealth, for the world's favour, for
success--well-earned success--and for love. There had also been
distinction, and the soft, delightful voice of praise had not been
silent.
The success and the distinction had come early in life, and the love
had come late. In the nature of things it could not have come earlier.
It came in time to crown the rest of the good gifts that Providence had
poured into the lap of the Master of St. Benedict's. It had been his
already for twenty years, and it was his still. Surely we are right in
saying that he had got as much out of life as most men?
He had begun life on a bleak Yorkshire moor, following the plough over
his father's fields. A kindly North Riding vicar, noting the boy's
taste for reading, and his inaptitude for the drudgery of the farm, had
placed him at his own cost at the grammar school of the adjoining town.
With a small scholarship the Yorkshire ploughboy came up to Cambridge.
He came up with a very few loose coins in the pocket of his homely-cut
clothes, and with a broad North-country dialect as barbarous as the cut
of his coat.
He was the butt of all the witty men of St. Benedict's during his
freshman's year. He was the subject of all the rough practical jokes
which undergraduates in old days were wont to play upon impecunious
youths who had the audacity to elbow them out of the highest places in
the examinations.
He had survived the practical jokes, and he had stayed 'up' when
the witty men had gone 'down.' He had won the highest honours of
his year, and in due course he had been promoted to a college
Fellowship. Everything had come in delightful sequence: honour, riches,
distinction, love. It had all fallen out exactly as he would have had
it to fall out. He might have liked the love to have come earlier--he
had waited for it forty years: it came at sixty, and he had enjoyed it
for over twenty years!
When Anthony Rae had come up to Cambridge, a poor scholar from a
country grammar school, he had set before himself two things that
seemed at the time equally impossible. He had set before himself the
winning of a high place, perhaps the highest, among the great scholars
of his great University, and he had also set before himself--in his
secret heart--the hope of winning, to share this distinction with him,
the daughter of the kind friend who had paved the way to distinction
and honour.
He had achieved both these things--the dearest wishes of his heart--but
he had to serve a longer apprenticeship than most men. He had to wait
forty years.
Rachel Thorne was worth waiting for. She was a child when he went away
to college; she had run down to the Vicarage gate after him on that
memorable morning to wish him 'good luck,' and she had stood watching
him until a turn of the road hid him from her eyes.
She had watched for him turning that corner many times since. She had
met him at the gate of the dear old Yorkshire Vicarage when he came
back, term after term, a modest undergraduate blushing beneath his
well-earned honours, with the eager question on her lips: 'What great
things, have you done this term, Anthony?'
She always expected him to do great things, and he justified her faith
in him. Perhaps her girlish faith had more to do with his success than
he dreamed of. It was his beacon through all his lonely hours, and it
had led him onward to distinction and honour.
She was brown-haired and fresh-cheeked when he went away; she was a
middle-aged woman, with silver streaks in her brown hair, when he came
back and asked her to share with him the honours he had won.
She waited for him through all the long years of his Fellowship--sad
years when fortune had left her and sorrow had baptized her--sad
friendless years, growing older, and grayer, and sick with waiting. But
the reward had come at last, and her tranquil face had regained its
cheerfulness, and was 'no longer wan and dree.'
It was a fitting crown to a scholarly life, this mellow, mature
love--this gracious presence pervading the closing decades of his
brilliant career.
Rachel Rae had been mistress of St. Benedict's over twenty years when
our story opens. She had presided over the graceful hospitalities of
the Master's lodge in her kindly, gracious way for twenty years. She
had no daughter to share this delightful duty with her--she had married
too late in life--but a niece of the Master's had been an inmate of the
lodge for fifteen years or more, and filled a daughter's place.
Mary Rae was a daughter of a younger brother of Dr. Rae's, and had been
educated above the station in which she had been born by her uncle's
liberality. Anthony Rae in his prosperity had not neglected his humble
kinsfolk. He had done as much for them as lay in his power. He had
educated the younger branches, and provided for the declining years
of the elders. He had kept his two maiden sisters, one an invalid, in
comfort and affluence. He had paid the mortgage off the farm and passed
it over unembarrassed by debt to his elder brother. He had taken that
brother's grandson and given him an education at his own University,
and in due time had arranged for him to be presented with a college
living. It was not a rich living: it was the only one that fell vacant
when Richard Rae most wanted it, and he had accepted it gladly. He had
married upon it, and brought up a family, six children, of whom one
only was now living, a girl child, with whom this story has to do.
The old Master of St. Benedict's had aged perceptibly within the
last few years. He was already in his second childhood. His strength
had become enfeebled and his memory impaired. He could not walk
down the long gallery of the lodge now or across the grass in the
Fellows' garden without assistance; he could not remember the things
of yesterday or of last week, but the crabbed characters of his old
Semitic manuscripts were still as familiar to him as ever. He had lost
a great deal since that stroke of paralysis five years ago, but he had
not lost all. He remembered his old friends, and he could pore over his
old books, but he was dependent upon his womankind for many things--for
most things.
Mary Rae opened his letters and conducted his correspondence. She
had conducted it so long that she knew more about the college than
the Master. She transacted all the college business that had to be
transacted in the lodge, and when any public function required the
Master's presence in the Senate House Mary Rae took him up to the
door on her arm and brought him back. It was also rumoured that she
instructed him how to vote.
She was assisted in her responsible duties by the Senior Tutor of St.
Benedict's, who would in the natural course of things succeed to the
office of Master when it should fall vacant.
Mary Rae was a handsome woman well on in the thirties. She was a woman
who could not help looking handsome at any age, and the few gray hairs
that had put in an appearance in the smooth brown bands drawn back
from her broad forehead only added a new dignity to her mature beauty.
Perhaps the Senior Tutor thought that they supplied the only touch
lacking to make Mary Rae a perfect and ideal mistress of a college
lodge.
It was whispered in the combination room, where the old Fellows met
after their Hall dinner, and discussed the affairs of the college over
their walnuts and their wine, that when the Master received his last
preferment she would not have to pack up her small belongings and leave
the lodge.
It was one morning early in the Lent term that Mary Rae sat at
breakfast in the cheerful bow-windowed room of the lodge. The Doctor's
wife still presided over the breakfast table. She was younger than
the Doctor, and had worn better. She was still active and cheerful--a
bright, gentle, patient old soul, ever watchful and considerate for his
comfort, and anticipating his every want.
While Mrs. Rae poured out the Master's tea, Mary Rae buttered the
Master's toast and read his letters. There were not many letters this
morning, but there was one with a black seal that lay uppermost. The
writing was unfamiliar, and before opening it Mary glanced at the
postmark.
'A letter from Dick, uncle,' she said across the table. She had to
speak in rather a high key, as the Doctor was a little deaf, and some
days he was deafer than usual.
'What does Dick say, my dear?' he said, smiling at her across the toast
she had buttered for him. His voice was not very strong, but there was
no North-country burr in it now--a kind, mellow old voice, courteous
and gentle in tone, with a quaver in it now and then. 'I have not heard
from your uncle Dick for a long time. I am very glad he has written
now. I cannot remember when I last heard from him.'
'It is not from Uncle Dick,' said Mary, opening the letter; 'it is from
his son--at least, his grandson--Cousin Dick, of Thorpe Regis. Don't
you remember, uncle?'
'Ye--es, my dear; and what does Dick say?'
Mary read the letter in silence, and looked across the table with a
shade of anxiety on her face.
'It is not Cousin Dick who writes; the letter is from his daughter; he
had only one daughter--Lucy, little Lucy. You remember her, uncle?'
Mary Rae was evidently speaking to gain time, and the shade of anxiety
deepened on her face as she spoke.
'Ye--es, I remember, my dear. Lucy was her mother's name; she was
called after her mother. What has Lucy got to say about Dick?'
'She has not much to say, uncle; she is writing in great distress. Her
father has died, almost suddenly. He was preaching a week ago, and now
he is dead. The poor child is writing in great trouble.'
'Dick dead!' the old man repeated with a bewildered air, and putting
down his cup with a shaking hand. 'Dick dead, did you say? He was not
so many years older than I, and always hale and strong. I ought to have
gone first. There were only three of us, and Dick was the eldest.'
'It isn't your brother, Anthony, that is dead; he died long ago, dear.
It is his grandson, little Dick--Dickie you used to call him. You
had him up here, and he took his degree, and you gave him a college
living. You remember little Dickie, Anthony?'
His wife's voice recalled his wandering thoughts.
'Yes, yes, my dear; certainly, I remember little Dick very well. He
took a second class; he ought to have done better. He disappointed me.
I had no son of my own to come after me, and I should have liked my
brother Dick's son--grandson, to be sure--to have done well. He did his
best, no doubt; but he disappointed me. If he had done better, he might
have got a Fellowship. So Dickie is dead, you say, my dear?'
'Yes, uncle; and he has left poor little Lucy unprovided for. She has
written to ask you what she ought to do. She wants to go out as a
governess--a nursery governess.'
'A nursery governess? Dick's little girl a nursery governess! No, my
dear, that will never do. Tell her to come here; there's plenty of
room in the lodge for Dick's little girl. Write to her at once, Mary,
and tell her as soon--as soon as the funeral is over--her father's
funeral--poor little girl!--to come to the lodge. What do you say,
Rachel?'
'I wish we could spare Mary to go to her,' the Master's wife said,
wiping her eyes. 'Someone ought to fetch her away at once, as soon--as
soon as it is all over. I think Mary ought to go to her.'
The Senior Tutor met the Master's niece in the court as he was coming
away from a lecture during the morning, and she told him all about the
letter her uncle had received and the death of his nephew, or, rather,
his grand-nephew.
'You remember my cousin Dick?' she said; 'he was my second cousin. I am
a generation older than he,' and she smiled at the admission. She was
not the least ashamed of her age.
The Senior Tutor smiled too; he was thinking how well she wore her
years, how her age, or the signs of it, her gray hairs and the lines on
her face, became her. She would grow handsomer with the years, he told
himself as he stood talking to her in the spring sunshine, and her face
would grow finer as time went by: it was a fine face already; it could
never by any chance grow plain. He had watched a great many faces grow
old in his time--old, and lined, and soured--but he had never seen any
face grow finer with the years like this woman's face had grown.
'Yes,' he said, 'I remember your cousin, Richard Rae, very well; he was
one of my pupils. He disappointed me, and he disappointed your uncle;
he ought to have taken a first class. He went into the Church, and we
gave him a college living, I remember--a very small living--and he
married, I believe, directly after.'
'He married, and he had a large family and a sickly wife, and very
small means. It must have been a hard struggle for him, poor Dick! He
lost his wife, and his children died one after the other; there is only
one left. And now he is dead, and the girl is left quite alone.'
'Oh, it is a girl,' said the Tutor in a tone of disappointment; 'if it
had been a boy we could have done something with him here.'
'Yes,' said Mary, with a sigh; 'pity it's a girl; it would have been
so much easier if it had been a boy. She must come here, of course;
there is nowhere else for her to go.'
'What will you do with her when she comes?'
The Senior Tutor looked grave; the question had come into his head as
he stood speaking to Mary, what should he do with this girl of Cousin
Dick's when he occupied the Master's place? Of course Mary would stay,
and Mrs. Rae--he could not separate the old woman from her niece during
her few declining years; she would certainly remain an inmate of the
lodge; but this girl? he could not make the college lodge an asylum for
all the female members of the Rae family.
It was an idiotic question to arise; he was ashamed of it the next
moment.
'I think you ought to go to Thorpe Regis,' he said, 'and be with your
poor young cousin at this trying time. I will look after the Master
while you are away, if that will make the going easier.'
'Ye--es,' said Mary slowly, 'it will make it easier. You really think I
ought to go?'
There was a hesitation in her tone he could not but note; he put it
down at once to her reluctance to leave the old Master.
'Most certainly you ought to go,' he said promptly. 'I will come over
to the lodge every day. I will fill your place as far as I can. You are
not afraid to leave the Master with me?'
'Oh, no, no! I am sure you will do all, more than all, that I do for
him. I was not thinking about him. You are quite sure it is right to
bring this girl back here? She is very young, not twenty, and--and she
may be----'
'She may be attractive,' said the Senior Tutor with a laugh, 'and turn
all our heads. I think, in spite of her attractions, her place is here
with you and under her uncle's roof. We must protect ourselves against
the wiles of this siren. We must not wear our hearts on our sleeves for
Cousin Dick's little daughter to peck at.'