SLIPPING AWAY.
When Lucy went out into the road outside the gates of the college,
before seven o'clock the next morning, Wyatt Edgell was already there
waiting for her. It is a short, narrow road, or lane, and it leads to
nowhere, unless Selwyn College be considered anywhere. It has been the
privilege of the students of Selwyn to use this road as a shortcut to
their college, but it will not be their privilege much longer.
The road is now the private property of the authorities of Newnham,
and a new wing connecting the old and the new halls will be built
across the road, and the jealous walls that shut out the grounds from
masculine eyes will be thrown down, and the old dusty lane will be
covered with smooth, green turf, and it will be a thoroughfare no
longer for the foot of man to pass over.
Perhaps they will restore again the old fortifications. There was
a Roman camp here once, and a battle ditch running all the way to
Grantchester. Every inch of ground here is classic, and strewn with
remains of those old Romans who brought us all the gentler arts.
Perhaps they brought the Muses with them and planted them at Newnham?
There was an old Roman dug up the other day, four feet beneath the
surface, a noble skeleton, six feet six in length. The whole earth
teems with ancient coins and pottery and Roman relics. They will have
to build a museum in the new wing to preserve the 'finds' that are
unearthed in digging its foundations.
Lucy was quite indifferent to the Romans. She would rather, if she had
had the choice, have met one of their old ghosts in the lane than one
of the Dons of Newnham taking her morning walk. She looked fearfully up
and down the road when she got outside the gate, but there were only
some Selwyn men going down to the bathing sheds; there was not a girl
in sight.
Wyatt Edgell was walking up and down the path flicking at the
sweetbriar hedge as he passed, and his eyes were looking down on the
ground. He was so lost in thought that he did not see Lucy till he
heard her little cry, and she ran to meet him.
'Oh!' she cried, a little pale and breathless, 'how is the Master? Is
he worse this morning?'
She augured badly from Edgell's downcast look.
'Not worse,' he said; 'at least, I hope not worse, but I fear not
better. When I inquired at the lodge when the gates were opened at six
o'clock, they told me the Master had had a very disturbed night, that
he had not slept at all, but that he did not appear to be in any pain.
Your cousin has been up with him all night, and Mrs. Rae.'
'I was sure she would not leave him,' said the girl, the tears filling
her eyes. She was thinking of the anguish in that kind old face when
the Master slipped through her feeble arms. 'I think I ought to go
over at once and relieve her; she must be worn out.'
Lucy didn't stay to think. She walked back to St. Benedict's with the
undergraduate who had brought her the news; she didn't even stay to
fetch her gloves. She walked down by his side in the morning sunshine,
just as she had hurried out of her room, with a ridiculous little
tennis-cap on her head and her ungloved hands. Two Newnham girls who
were returning from an early--a very early--walk looked shocked, as
well they might be, and some rude Selwyn men whistled as they passed.
They were only jealous that she was not taking a morning walk with them.
Lucy found the watchers still up when they reached the lodge. Mrs. Rae
would not be persuaded to lie down, and she was looking dreadfully
tired and worn out. She looked ten years older, Lucy thought, this
morning, and her poor face was as white as her hair. Mary looked pale,
too. Perhaps it was the air of that close room that was still darkened;
and there was a shade of anxiety under her eyes, but she would not own
to being tired. She could stay up a week, if necessary.
The Master had fallen into a doze; but Lucy's light footstep or the
whisper of their voices reached him, and he woke up when she came in.
Lucy went over to him and laid her warm, moist hand on his, and the
touch seemed to revive him.
'Is the milking over?' he asked, turning upon her his pale-blue eyes
with that strange brightness in them that is peculiar to the very old.
'I have heard the cows lowing all night for the calves. You have taken
the calves away?'
'It is Lucy, uncle,' she said, stroking his hand softly--'little Lucy,
not Lucy's mother----' She was going to say 'grandmother,' but she
thought 'mother' would humour his fancy best.
'Yes, yes: I know you, my dear. I have been watching for you all the
night. You must not go away again for so long; they don't understand me
here as you do. Where's Dick?'
'He is gone, uncle,' she said softly. She did not like to say that he
was dead.
'Gone? Where is he gone? He was here just now. Is he in the field or in
the barn? Send him to me when he comes in, my dear.'
Lucy turned away pale and trembling. She could not bear it; he did not
recognise her in the least.
The Tutor came in while she was there, and went over to the bed; but
the Master took him for Dick--the brother who had died fifty years ago.
His eyes lighted up when the Tutor came in, and with a strange, eager
interest he asked him questions about the crops and the farm. All the
later associations of his life had quite faded from his memory, and he
had gone back to the scenes and faces of his youth.
The Tutor turned away from the bed with a sigh. He had waited for this
half his life. He had looked forward so long as he could remember to
being Master of St. Benedict's, and now, when it seemed within his
grasp, he turned from it with a sigh. What was it, after all, this
shadow he was grasping? Wealth, honour, position, it would all slip
through his hands by-and-by, as it had slipped through the hands of the
old scholar on the bed: all, everything, that had taken a lifetime--a
long lifetime--to gain, would slip away, and there would be nothing
left but old memories. Everything would fail; and he would go back to
the old humble time, and the dear faces--if happily he had dear faces
to go back to. There would be nothing left--nothing that he could carry
away with him--but those old tender memories.
The Tutor turned away from the bed and went out of the room. On the
landing outside he saw Lucy sitting in the window-seat weeping. The
tears were in his own eyes, and he could not trust himself to speak. He
went over, and took Lucy's hand, and drew her towards him.
'Oh,' she murmured through her tears, 'he does not know me the least
bit. He thinks I am his brother Dick's wife.'
'And he takes me for Dick,' said the Tutor, with an involuntary smile,
pressing the little warm hand he held. 'We shall all come to it, my
dear, some day--to the vanishing-point, where everything slips away
from us but the memories of our youth. Well for us at that time if we
have nothing but innocent memories of kindly deeds and loving faces--if
we have no regrets, no sorrow, no remorse! Perhaps it is the happiest
lot to have the slate wiped clean of all the storms and passions of
later years, and to go back at the last, and to take away with us only
the memory of the old innocent early days.'
He was a good deal moved. He might have committed dreadful crimes
since the days of his innocent youth, instead of being a grave, sober,
reverend Tutor of a college.
'You don't think he will ever be better?' Lucy sobbed.
'I don't think, even if his life is prolonged, that his mind will ever
be clear again. I fear it has gone, quite gone. Perhaps it is better
so: he will pass away happier; he will have no regrets; he will leave
nothing behind.'
Lucy sat sobbing in the window-seat. If she had been older she would
not have wept so freely: the young have so many tears to spare.
'There is nothing to regret,' he said tenderly, bending over the hand
he still held. 'The dear Master has lived his life--a good life, and, I
think, a happy one--and he will exchange it for a better and a happier.
We have only to concern ourselves about those who are left--Mrs. Rae
and your cousin. They must stay with us, Lucy; they must make the lodge
their home. You must let them understand, dear'--here the Senior Tutor
really pressed Lucy's hand, that he had held all the time he had been
talking to her, and she had never once thought of drawing it away: he
would have taken her in his arms, but the servants were coming up and
down stairs--'you must let them quite understand,' he went on, 'that
their home is here with us. I am sure we shall do everything to make
them happy.'
Lucy hadn't the least idea what he meant.
She would have stayed at the lodge and taken her share of the nursing
night and day, but the Tutor would not hear of it.
'You have got your work to do, my dear,' he said. He called her 'my
dear' now quite naturally. 'You have all your work cut out before you
to be ready for the examinations in June. You can't afford to risk
breaking down for the sake of doing work that any woman can do. A
trained nurse from Addenbroke's will do all, and more than all, you
three dear anxious women together.'
He sent in a nurse from Addenbroke's during the morning, and Cousin
Mary and the Master's wife were turned out of the room. It was quite
time the Master's wife was turned out of the room, or there would have
been two to nurse instead of one.
The nurse who had been sent from Addenbroke's Hospital to nurse the
Master was the little fluffy nurse that had been brought by her brother
to Wyatt Edgell's rooms after that miserable folly, and had kept his
secret.
If Lucy didn't like trusting a foolish young man she knew nothing
about to this flighty nurse, she was much more unwilling to trust
this valuable life in her hands. She watched with mistrust, and a
certain dull glow of impatience, this little bit of a creature turn the
Master's wife out of the room, and reverse everything that had been
done under Cousin Mary's directions.
The nurse from Addenbroke's pulled up the blinds and threw open the
windows, and let in the balmy air of the sweet May morning, that
everybody had been so anxious to keep out; and she threw off the heavy
quilts, and took away the pillows, and did everything according to the
latest fashion in nursing. If people do not choose to get well when all
this is done for them, it is their own fault, and not the fault of the
system.
Before Lucy went back to Newnham she went into the little room--her own
room till she had left it for Newnham--where the Master's wife had gone
to lie down to rest. She had chosen this room because it was near the
Master's, and she would be within call.
Lucy insisted on undressing her and putting her to bed, and perjuring
herself with fibs of the deepest dye to set her mind at rest.
'I never thought he would go before me,' the dear old soul murmured,
when Lucy was undressing her. 'I always thought I should go first; and
it has been such a comfort to me to think that Mary could fill my place
so well. And now to think that he should be called away first!'
'Who said he would go first?' Lucy said in her reassuring manner. 'He
is not at all likely to go before you, you poor dear! If you had been
yourself, he would not have fallen. You had no strength left, so he
slipped through your poor arms. You hadn't the strength of a baby.
Anyone can see how you have been failing lately, and you think it is
the Master.'
'And you think it was my fault he fell--that the weakness was not in
him?' the poor trembling old creature asked eagerly. She was so anxious
to believe Lucy, and the faint colour flushed up under her white skin.
'Of course it was. The doctor will not tell you it was, because he
doesn't want to frighten you. Anyone can see that you are much weaker
than the Master.'
There really seemed some truth in what Lucy said. The Master's wife was
trembling all over like a leaf--she couldn't have got into bed without
Lucy's help; but she was trembling with joy.
'God bless you, my dear!' she said, when the girl went away. 'You have
made me so happy!'
Lucy went back to Newnham with a heavy heart. It seemed as if
everything were slipping away from her. It is so hard for the young to
realize the great change. She felt dimly that it was not far off--that
this was, indeed, the beginning of the end. Anyone could have seen that.
But it was not the personal sorrow of it that moved her; there was a
deeper pathos than death in the fidelity of the dear woman who clung
to the old Master with a love stronger than death itself. She could
not but think of the look of relief on the old tired face as she walked
back to Newnham.
The girls remarked that Lucy looked pale at Hall--that is, those who
took any interest in her. Pamela Gwatkin never looked her way. She sat
at the 'High,' among the Dons; she never condescended to look down the
hall to the table where the freshers sat.
Capability Stubbs came into her room after Hall, as she sat trying
to work, and brought her in a cup of tea. The tea was very grateful
to Lucy's overwrought nerves: it was the only thing that was nice
about Miss Stubbs. Pamela Gwatkin had given her a cup of tea once or
twice, but it tasted of tooth-powder. She had packed the tea and the
tooth-powder in a biscuit-tin when she came up, and the lid had got off
the tooth-powder box, and it had got mixed up with the tea. It would
not have been political economy to have thrown it away.
'Nice scandal you've been making in the college!' observed Miss Stubbs
cheerfully, as she handed Lucy the teacup. She had only brought a
teacup; she considered saucers superfluous, unless one happened to be
a kitten.
'Scandal!' said Lucy, aghast. 'What scandal have I been making?'
'Oh! it was rumoured you had eloped with a Selwyn man. Somebody saw you
going off.'
'With a Selwyn man!' said Lucy with fine scorn. 'As if I should elope
with a Selwyn man! If it had been St. Benedict's it would have been
different.'
'Or Hall?' suggested Miss Stubbs, who was rumoured to have a cousin at
Trinity Hall, or to know a girl who had.
'Ye--es; even Hall would have been better. Who set the ball
rolling--Newnham Assurance?'
Lucy was much too angry with Pamela to call her by her name.
'No, it wasn't Assurance. She took the other side. She said if you were
going to run away with--with a man, you would have had the self-respect
to stop and put your gloves on first.'