L I E> RAR.Y 
 
 OF THL 
 
 UNIVLRSITY 
 
 Of ILLINOIS 
 
 823 
 
 M35Gin 
 v.l
 
 THE MASTER OF ST. BENEDICT'S
 
 JMEW LIBRARY JMOVELS. 
 
 THE IVORY GATE. By Walter Besant, Author of 'All 
 
 Sorts; and Condidons of Men,' etc. 3 vols. 
 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. By Aaron Watson and 
 
 LiLLiAs Wassermann. 3 vols. 
 
 TRUST-MONEY. By William Wsstall. 3 vols. 
 
 A FAMILY LIKENESS. By Mrs. B. M. Croker. 3 vols. 
 
 THE MASTER OF ST. BENEDICT'S. By Alan St. Aubyn. 
 2 vols. 
 
 MRS. JULIET. By .Mrs. Alfred Hunt. 3 vols. 
 
 BARBARA BERING. By Am^lie Rives. 2 vols. 
 
 GEOFFORY HAMILTON. By Edward H. Cooper. 2 vols. 
 
 TREASON-FELONY. By John Hill. 2 vols. 
 
 London : CHATTO & WINDUS, 214, Piccadilly, W.
 
 THE 
 
 MASTER OF ST. BENEDICT'S 
 
 ALAN St. AUBYN 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 
 A KKLLOW OK TKINIIY,' ' THE JUNIOR DEAN,' 'THE OLD MAID's SWEETHEART, 
 
 ' MODEST LITTLE SARA,' ETC. 
 
 ^^^^*? 
 
 IN TWO VOLUMES 
 VOL. I. 
 
 Uontion 
 
 CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY 
 
 1893
 
 
 CONTENTS OF VOL. I 
 
 -^- CHAPT 
 
 ER 
 
 P&OB 
 
 4 ^• 
 
 FULL OF DAYS, KICUES, AND HONOUR 
 
 1 
 
 t n. 
 
 DICKS LITTLE DAUGHTER . 
 
 . 17 
 
 : 11^- 
 
 ONLY A FRESHER 
 
 . 34 
 
 ^ IV. 
 
 PAMELA GWATKIN 
 
 . 53 
 
 ir V. 
 
 AFTER CHAPEL 
 
 . 72 
 
 <? VI. 
 
 BEHIND THE SCREEN 
 
 . 88 
 
 vn. 
 
 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 
 
 X[V. 
 
 WYATT EDGELL . . . . 
 
 . 207
 
 THE 
 
 MASTER OF ST. BENEDICTS 
 
 CHAPTEE 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. 
 
 VOL. I. 1
 
 2 THE MASTER OF ST. BENEDICT'S 
 
 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 Biding 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
 
 FULL OF DA YS^ RLCHFS, AND HONOUR 3 
 
 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 Kae 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
 
 4 THE MASTER OF ST. BENEDICT'S 
 
 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 
 honom'. 
 
 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. 
 
 Eachel 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 ?'
 
 FULL OF DA YS, RICHES, AND HONOUR 5 
 
 She always expected him to do great thmgs, and 
 he justified her faith in him. Perhaps her girHsh 
 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 distinc- 
 tion 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 friend- 
 less 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.
 
 6 THE MASTER OE ST. BENEDICT'S 
 
 Eachel Eae had been mistress of St. Benedict's 
 over twenty years when our story opens. She had 
 presided over the graceful hospitahties 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 Eae was a daughter of a younger brother 
 of Dr. Eae's, and had .been educated above the 
 station in which she had been born by her uncle's 
 liberality. Anthony Eae 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 grand- 
 son and oiven him an education at his own
 
 FULL OF DA YS, RICHES, AND HONOUR 7 
 
 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 
 Kichard Eae 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 per- 
 ceptibly within the last few years. He was already 
 in his second childhood. His strength had J^ecome 
 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 char- 
 acters 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.
 
 8 THE MASTER OF ST. BENEDICT'S 
 
 Maiy Eae opened his letters and conducted his 
 corresjDondence. 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 Eae 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 Eae 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 Eae 
 a perfect and ideal mistress of a college lodge.
 
 FULL OF DA YS, RICHES, AND HONOUR 9 
 
 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 re- 
 ceived 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 Eae 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. Eae poured out the Master's tea, 
 Mary Eae buttered the Master's toast and read his 
 letters. There were not many letters this morn- 
 ing, 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
 
 lo THE MASTER OF ST. BENEDICTS 
 
 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 grand- 
 son — Cousin Dick, of Thorpe Eegis. 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 ?'
 
 FULL OF DAYS, RICHES, AND HONOUR ii 
 
 Mary Eae 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 w^as 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
 
 12 THE MASTER OF ST. BENEDICTS 
 
 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 un- 
 provided 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
 
 FULL OF DAYS, RICHES^ AND HONOUR 13 
 
 girl ! — to come to the lodge. What do you say, 
 Eachel ?' 
 
 ' 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
 
 r4 THE MASTER OE ST BENEDICT'S 
 
 could never by any chance grow plain. He had 
 watched a great many faces grow old m 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, 
 Eichard 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 dis- 
 appointment ; ' 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 ;
 
 FULL OF DAYS, RICHES, AND HONOUR 15 
 
 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 T 
 
 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. Eae — 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 Eae family. 
 
 It was an idiotic question to arise ; he was 
 ashamed of it. the next moment. 
 
 'I think you ought to gO to Thorpe Eegis,' he 
 said, ' and be with your poor young cousm 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 ?'
 
 i6 THE MASTER OF ST. BENEDICTS 
 
 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 our- 
 selves against the wiles of this siren. We must 
 not wear our hearts on our sleeves for Cousin 
 Dick's little daughter to peck at.'
 
 CHAPTER 11. 
 
 DICK S LITTLE DAUGHTER. 
 
 The Senior Tutor need have been under no appre- 
 hension for the men of St. Benedict's. They had 
 no occasion to cover up their sleeves with their 
 academical gowns. Cousin Dick's little daughter 
 showed no inclination to peck at their too suscep- 
 tible hearts, whether they wore them skewered on 
 to their sleeves or out of sight in their accustomed 
 places. 
 
 Lucy Eae was too full of her recent loss, the 
 great sorrow that had fallen upon her and swept 
 away all her household gods, to have a thought 
 to spare for the undergraduates of St. Benedict's. 
 
 It had almost swept away all her moorings, too, 
 but not quite; she still clung tenaciously to one 
 
 VOL. I. 2
 
 i8 THE MASTER OF ST. BENEDICT'S 
 
 idea — it was all she had left of the old life to cling 
 to : she still desired to be a governess. 
 
 It was not a very ambitious idea. She wanted 
 to be independent, and earn her own living in the 
 only way that was open to her. She accepted the 
 shelter of the Master's lodge thankfully, but she 
 had no idea of settling down in the dependent 
 position of a poor relation. When she had re- 
 covered from this shock, and the horizon cleared, 
 she would find something to do, she told herself, 
 and go away. 
 
 She was a soft, shy little thing to be so inde- 
 pendent. She only looked like a girl to be kissed 
 and petted and comforted ; she didn't look at all 
 fit to stand in the front of the battle. 
 
 She talked over her prospects — her little, humble 
 prospects — with her cousin Mary a few days after 
 her arrival at the lodge. Mary was sitting at the 
 Master's writing-table in the library of the lodge — 
 she was writing some letters on college business — 
 and Lucy was sewing in the window. 
 
 It was a big gloomy room, and it was not at all
 
 DICK'S LITTLE DAUGHTER 19 
 
 a cheerful place for girls to sit in on a chilly spring 
 afternoon. There was a fire burning in the old- 
 fashioned grate behind the brass fire-guard — there 
 were wire guards to all the fires at the lodge since 
 that last seizure of the Master's — but it had burnt 
 low ; Mary, who was sitting near it, had been too 
 occupied to notice it, and Lucy's mind was full of 
 her prospects. 
 
 There had been no sound in the room for some 
 time but the scratching of Mary's pen as it 
 travelled over the paper, and Lucy sewed on in 
 silence. She didn't like sewing, and she put down 
 her work two or three times and yawned or looked 
 out of the window. The window looked out into 
 the Fellows' garden. The sun was shining on the 
 lawn beneath, which was already green with the 
 new green of the year, and the crocuses were 
 aflame in the borders, and the primroses were in 
 bloom. 
 
 An old Fellow was hobbling slowly and painfully 
 round the garden — a bent, drooping figure in a 
 particularly shabby coat and a tall silk hat of a
 
 20 THE MASTER OF ST. BENEDICTS 
 
 bygone date. He was lame, Lucy remarked, and 
 dragged one leg behind him. He had a long, lean, 
 sallow face with deep eye-sockets, and his hair was 
 long and gray — it didn't look as if it had been 
 cut for years. Lucy wondered vaguely at seeing 
 this shabby old cripple in the grounds of the 
 lodge ; if she had seen him anywhere else she 
 would have taken him for a tramp. He had been 
 a Senior Wrangler in his day, and had taken a 
 double-first ; perhaps he was paying the penalty. 
 
 ' I am very dull company, child,' Mary said, as 
 she blotted her last letter and pushed the writing 
 materials aside. * I have left you to your thoughts 
 for a whole hour, and we have sat the fire out. 
 What have you been thinking about, Lucy, all this 
 time ?' 
 
 ' Oh, the old thing,' said Lucy, looking up from 
 her work. ' I have been thinking what I can do.' 
 
 'Well, and what conclusion have you come to?' 
 
 ' There is but one conclusion — that — that I can 
 do nothing !' 
 
 The work dropped from the girl's fingers, and
 
 DICK ' 5 LITTLE DA UGHTER 2 1 
 
 her eyes overflowed. She had wanted an excuse 
 for weeping for the last hour, and now she had 
 got it. 
 
 ' Oh yes, you can,' Mary said cheerfully ; ' the 
 case is not quite so bad as that. You can sew, for 
 one thing. See how nicely you are sewing that 
 frill !' 
 
 ' I hate sewing ! And I shall never wear that 
 frill when I have hemmed it ! I can only do use- 
 less trumpery things !' 
 
 Lucy let the poor little bit of white frilling she 
 had been hemming fall to the ground, and she 
 got up and began to walk up and down the room. 
 
 Mary watched her in silence. It was not the 
 flrst time her young cousin had shown impatience, 
 but it was the first time she had shown temper — 
 just a little bit of temper. 
 
 Mary had praised her in the wrong place ; she 
 was hurt and angry at this learned, superior cousin 
 implying, with her misplaced praise, that she was 
 only fit to do work — mere woman's work ! 
 
 It was an unusual sound, that rapid pacing to
 
 22 THE MASTER OF ST. BENEDICT'S 
 
 and fro of impatient feet, in that scholarly room. 
 The Master tottered feebly across the floor ; the 
 Master's wife moved with slow dignity ; Mary 
 walked quietly, with soft, firm footsteps that awoke 
 no echoes. The floor creaked audibly beneath 
 Lucy's rapid, impatient steps ; the old boards that 
 had echoed to the slow tread of scholars for so many, 
 many years, shook and trembled — actually trembled 
 — beneath the light impatient footsteps of Cousin 
 Dick's little daughter. 
 
 The colour that that useless sewing had taken 
 out of Lucy's cheek had come back, and her gray 
 eyes were eager and shining beneath her tears. 
 
 Mary watched her pacing the room with a smile 
 half of pity, half amused, as she sat at the Master's 
 table. Perhaps she understood the mood. She 
 may have been impatient herself years ago ; she 
 had nothing to be impatient for now. Everything 
 w^as happening as it should do ; and when a change 
 came — well, her position would not be materially 
 altered. 
 
 *I am sure you can do a great many useful
 
 DICK'S LITTLE DAUGHTER 23 
 
 things, dear,' she said presently, when Lucy's 
 little bit of temper had had time to cool. 'You 
 could not have kept your father's house so long, 
 and done the work of the parish, without being 
 able to do more useful things than most girls.' 
 
 '■ I don't mean that kind of usefulness ; anyone ^ 
 can do housekeeping and potter about a parish. I 
 hated parish work ! I never took the least interest 
 in it ; no one could have done it worse than I did. 
 I hated — oh, no one knows how I hated — those 
 Bands of Hope, and Sunday-schools, and mothers' 
 meetings, and visiting dreadful old men and women 
 who would insist upon telling me all about their 
 unpleasant complaints !' 
 
 Mary looked grave. She was accustomed to hear 
 a great deal about old people's complaints, though 
 she did not do any district visiting. 
 
 'Eeally,' she said gravely, 'most girls like these 
 things ! They are over now, and done with, and 
 you will begin afresh. Tell me what you w^ould 
 like to do.' 
 
 'Like!' Lucy held her breath as she spoke,
 
 24 THE MASTER OF ST. BENEDICTS 
 
 and her cheeks grew crimson. 'Oh, I should Uke 
 to be a scholar, Cousin Mary!' 
 
 Mary looked at the girl with a kind of pity in 
 her eyes. She had seen a good many scholars in 
 her time, men and women ; some of them were as 
 eager once as this girl — eager and impatient with 
 feverish haste to climb the hill of learning ; they 
 were hollow-eyed now, and narrow-chested, and 
 their cheeks were sunken and sallow, and some 
 limped like the old scholar in the Fellows' garden 
 — that is, those who had lasted to the end ; but 
 some had turned back in time and regained their 
 youth : most hkely this girl would turn back. 
 
 ' You would like to go to a woman's college ?' 
 
 ' I should love to go ! I shouldn't mind whether 
 it were Newnham or Girton, whichever uncle 
 thought best. If I could only have three years at 
 a woman's college, I should be provided for for 
 life. I should want nothing further. I should be 
 able to make my own way. Oh, Mary, do you 
 think he will let me go ?' 
 
 She was very much "in earnest. She had stopped
 
 DICK'S LITTLE DA UGHTER 25 
 
 running up and down the room in that ridiculous 
 manner. She was standing beside the table with 
 both her hands pressed down upon it and her little 
 lithe figure bending eagerly forward. Her eyes 
 were shining, and her cheeks glowing, and her lips 
 parted. She looked exactly as if she were making 
 a speech. 
 
 The door opened as she was standing there, and 
 the Senior Tutor came in. He shook hands with 
 Mary, and he nodded across the table to Lucy. 
 He thought he had interrupted a scene. 
 
 ' I saw the Master as I came up,' he said, speak- 
 ing to Mary ; ' he had just finished his nap. He 
 asked me to tell you that he was quite ready to 
 take a turn in the garden, if you would put on your 
 hat. I think you should go at once to catch the 
 sunshine. You'll get it on the broad walk if you 
 go now.' 
 
 Mary rose at once. 
 
 ' It is lucky I have finished my work,' she said, 
 glancing down at the little pile of letters, sealed 
 and stamped ready for the post, that lay on the
 
 26 THE MASTER OF ST. BENEDICT'S 
 
 table. * Poor little Lucy here was telling me about 
 her plans. If you can spare time, Mr. Colville, 
 sit down and talk them over with her, and advise 
 her what she ought to do, while I am in the 
 garden.' 
 
 The Senior Tutor could spare time ; and after 
 he had opened the door for Mary, he came back 
 to the window that overlooked the garden and sat 
 down. 
 
 He did not belong to the old school of Cambridge 
 Dons. He belonged to that newer school that came 
 in a quarter of a century ago with athletics. He 
 was not lean and hollow-eyed, and wrinkled and 
 yellow, like a musty old parchment, and he hadn't 
 a stoop in his shoulders, and he didn't drag one of 
 his legs behind him. He had rowed ' five ' in his 
 college boat, and his shoulders were as square now as 
 ever. His shoulders were square, and his forehead 
 was square, and his iron-gray hair was closely cut — 
 it was only iron-gray still — and he had tremendous 
 bushy eyebrows that, Lucy thought, made him 
 look like an ogre, and that frightened the under-
 
 DICK'S LITTLE DAUGHTER 27 
 
 graduates dreadfully, and close-cut iron - gray 
 whiskers, and a big red throat like a bull. His 
 throat had not always been red ; he had been mild- 
 looking enough in his youth ; but he was now a 
 portly, pompous Don of middle age, with a florid 
 countenance and fierce aspect. 
 
 'Well,' he said in his easy, patronizing way, as 
 if he were speaking to a freshman who had just 
 come up, ' and w^hat do you propose to do. Miss 
 Lucy?' 
 
 The colour went out of the girl's cheeks, and the 
 long eyelashes drooped over her eager eyes, and 
 her pretty little slender figure grew limp, and she 
 didn't look the least like making a speech now. 
 
 'I am sure I don't know,' she said meekly, and 
 she went back and sat on her old seat in the 
 window on the opposite side to the Senior Tutor. 
 It was a big bay-window, and there was a table 
 between them littered with pamphlets and manu- 
 scripts in Semitic languages. The girl tossed them 
 over as she sat there with a gesture of impatience. 
 They were sealed books to her.
 
 28 THE MASTER OF ST. BENEDICTS 
 
 * What were yon discussing with your cousin 
 Ma — ry when I came in ?' 
 
 He hngered over the name, and prolonged the 
 last syllable. He seemed loath to let it go. 
 
 * I was telling her that I should like to go to a 
 woman's college— to Newnham or Girton.' 
 
 'Exactly.' 
 
 The Tutor nodded his head. He was listening 
 to the girl, but he was looking out of the window. 
 ■' ' No one is educated now — no woman — who does 
 not go to Newnham, or Girton, or Oxford. No one 
 has any chance of success in teaching who has not 
 taken a place in a Tripos or done something in a 
 University examination.' 
 
 The Senior Tutor was smiling, but he was only 
 giving her half his attention. 
 
 ' And what Tripos do you propose to take ?' he 
 asked in his bland, superior, lecture-room manner. 
 
 * I ? Oh, I don't think I shall ever be clever 
 enough to take a Tripos ; but I might learn some- 
 thing — a little. I might learn enough to pass the 
 —the— Little '
 
 DICK'S LITTLE DAUGHTER 29 
 
 * The Little-go ?' suggested the Tutor ; ' or, 
 more properly speaking, the " Previous." ' 
 
 ' Yes ; papa used to talk about the Little-go. 
 He had dreadful difficulty in passing it. I should 
 be quite satisfied if I could pass the Little-go.' 
 
 ' I don't think you will find any difficulty in 
 passing it,' he said. ' I do not remember that your 
 father had any special difficulty ; I was his tutor. 
 He disappointed me in the Tripos. With his great 
 gifts he ought to haye done better.' 
 
 It was Lucy's turn to smile now, and to sigh. 
 
 'Poor papa!' she said; ' there was a reason for 
 his failure. Perhaps you did not know.' 
 
 ' No ; I knew of no reason.' 
 
 ' He had just met m}^ mother, and — and he was 
 in love. She got between him and his mathe- 
 matics ; he could think of nothing but my mother. 
 Oh, if you had known her, you would not have 
 wondered.' 
 
 The Senior Tutor looked across the table with a 
 new interest in his eyes at the sweet downcast face. 
 If her mother had been like her, he didn't wonder
 
 30 THE MASTER OF ST. BENEDICTS 
 
 at poor Eichard Eae getting only a second class in 
 his Tripos. 
 
 * Are you quite sure that you will not fail from 
 the same cause? are you sure that at the 
 momentous time you will not do like your father — 
 that you will not fall in love ?' 
 
 ' No — 0,' said Lucy gravely ; * I don't think I 
 shall fall in love. I don't think Girton girls do 
 very often.' 
 
 ' They do sometimes. They generally end by 
 marrying their coaches.' 
 
 Lucy looked shocked. 
 
 * They can't all marry their coaches.' 
 
 ' No, not all — only the weak ones. The superior 
 minds never sink to the low level of matri- 
 mony.' 
 
 Lucy was quite sure he was laughing at her. 
 
 ' I am not likely to need a coach,' she said 
 stiffly ; ' I shall never be clever enough to take a 
 Tripos. I shall be content to pass the — the— -the 
 " Previous." ' 
 
 She was going to say 'Little-go,' but she re-
 
 DICK '5 LITTLE DA UGHTER 3 1 ^ 
 
 membered he had called it the ' Previous,' and she 
 checked herself in time. 
 
 * We shall see. You will have to begin with the 
 "■ Previous " in any case. You need not take it all 
 at once : there are three parts ; you can take them 
 at different times.' 
 
 ' I should prefer to take them all at once.' 
 
 ' But if you are going no farther, if you are going 
 to stop at the "Previous," why should you be in 
 such a hurry to get it over ?' 
 
 ' I don't know. It might be as well to get it 
 over ; but I have to get into Girton or Newnham 
 first ; I don't know that they will have me ; and I 
 have to get my uncle's consent.' 
 
 She hadn't fallen naturally into the custom of 
 the lodge of calling Dr. Piae ' the Master ' yet. It 
 came easier to say ' uncle.' 
 
 ' There will l)e an entrance examination,' the 
 Tutor said, looking out of window and watching 
 the Master walking in the garden below leaning on 
 Mary's arm. ' I believe it is nearly as stiff as the 
 '' Previous " and takes in the same subjects. You
 
 32 THE MASTER OF ST BENEDICT'S 
 
 will have to pass an examination before you can 
 become a student at either college.' 
 
 ' Do you know what the subjects are?' she asked 
 eagerly ; ' could you — could you get me the 
 papers ?' 
 
 He hardly heard her ; his heart was out in that 
 wet garden with Mary. How very indiscreet of the 
 Master at his age to walk over the damp grass ! 
 He was actually sitting down on the bench under 
 the walnut-tree. Lucy followed the direction of 
 the Tutor's eyes, but she only saw the Master 
 sitting in the sunshine. A tall, lean figure bent 
 with age, with white, silvery hair falling over the 
 velvet collar of his coat, and his rugged, worn old 
 face turned up to the sun. The figure of the old 
 scholar sitting on the old bench in the sunshine 
 beneath the branches of the old, old tree, where he 
 had sat in sunshine and in shade, oh, so many, 
 many years, had no poetry for her. She only 
 wondered, as she saw him sitting there, lifting his 
 dim eyes to the sinking sun, whether he would let 
 her eo to Newnham.
 
 DICK'S LITTLE DAUGHTER 33 
 
 The Senior Tutor didn't see any poetry in the 
 situation, either. He was sure the old Master was 
 catching a dreadful cold ; and he was wondering 
 whether Mary had changed her slippers. 
 
 ' Could you get me a copy of the papers set at 
 the last examination ?' Lucy asked meekly. 
 
 'Yes, oh yes,' he said absently; 'I'll try to 
 remember ; but I think I must go down now and 
 bring the Master in : I am sure he is taking cold.' 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 CHAPTEE III. 
 
 ONLY A FEESHER. 
 
 It was rather hard work to persuade the old Master 
 of St. Benedict's that Lucy ought to go to Newn- 
 ham. He belonged to the old school — he was 
 almost the last left of that school — that did not 
 believe very much in women. He believed in a 
 girl learning to sew, and to spell, and play a little 
 air on the piano — he was very fond of ' Annie 
 Laurie,' he could listen to it by the hour ; he went 
 so far, indeed, as the three K's in a woman's edu- 
 cation — and he stopped there. 
 
 He had no sympathy whatever in the movement 
 for the higher education of Women — spelt with a 
 big W. He had voted consistently all his life 
 against women being admitted to any of the
 
 ONLY A FRESHER 35 
 
 privileges of the University, against their being 
 allowed to take degrees ; he had even voted against 
 their being 'placed.' He regarded every conces- 
 sion made to the weaker sex as a step towards that 
 dreadful time when a female Yice-Chancellor will 
 confer degrees in the Senate House, and a lady 
 D.D. will occupy the University pulpit. 
 
 With these views, and with his prejudices grow- 
 ing stronger rather than weaker with the years, it 
 was no wonder that Mary Eae had great difficulty 
 in reconciling the Master to the idea of Lucy be- 
 coming a student of Newnham. 
 
 He had to look at the question all round, from 
 every point of view, and he had to talk it over a 
 great many times. Sometimes he talked it over 
 with himself after dinner, when he woke up from 
 his nap, or didn't quite wake up ; and sometimes he 
 talked it over with his nieces. 
 
 ' I don't think your father would approve of it, 
 my dear,' he said one day when he was talking ' it ' 
 over with Lucy. ' He was a plain man, he hadn't 
 the advantages of education that I had ; but he had
 
 36 THE MASTER OF ST. BENEDICTS 
 
 what served him just as well, he had common-sense. 
 He knew^ what was wanted m a woman. A woman, 
 he used to say, ought to be able to milk, and make 
 butter, and bring up a family. Dick's wife could 
 do all these, and her poultry was noted in all the 
 country round.' 
 
 Lucy sighed. She had no ambition to make 
 butter and bring up a family, and she had a dis- 
 tinct aversion to poultry. She hated cocks and 
 hens and broods of yellow downy chickens. She 
 remembered how they used always to be getting 
 into the Vicarage garden and digging up her flower- 
 seeds. 
 
 ' I am afraid I couldn't get my living by making 
 butter, uncle,' she said meekly, ' or milking cows.' 
 
 She never could remember to say ' Master,' like 
 everybody else. 
 
 ' No, my dear, no ; I suppose not. Some girls 
 have the knack of it, and some women, I've heard 
 my mother say, may churn for hours and the 
 butter wdll refuse to come. Dick's wife, your 
 mother, my dear '
 
 ONLY A FRESHER ^7 
 
 ' Great-grandmother,' murmured Lucy almost 
 inaudibly. The Master hated to be contradicted, 
 and he was always tellmg her that these far-off 
 ancestors were her father and mother, this humble 
 ploughman and his homely wife. There had been 
 two generations of culture between, and Lucy had 
 quite forgotten, until her uncle reminded her, that 
 her great-grandmother used to carry her eggs and 
 her butter to market. The worst of it was he used 
 to tell everybody it was her mother. 
 
 ' Yes, yes,' the Master repeated testily ; ' my 
 memory is not what it was. But it does not much 
 matter which. She was a good woman ; she did 
 her duty here ; she brought up a long family — nine 
 children— and she has gone to her reward. She 
 did not know a word of Greek or Latin, and she 
 only knew enough mathematics to reckon up the 
 price of eggs ; but if she had gone to Girton or 
 Newnham she could not have done more. She did 
 her duty here ; after all, that is the great thing, 
 my dear. There is nothing else that will bring 
 comfort at the last.'
 
 38 THE MASTER OF ST. BENEDICTS 
 
 It was a delightful reflection. It comforted the 
 old scholar who had done his duty in this place for 
 over sixty years, who had done it so well that by 
 common consent men called him Master ; but it 
 didn't comfort Lucy at all. She was quite pre- 
 pared to do her duty, only she wanted to do it in 
 her own way. 
 
 There were other difficulties in the way of Lucy 
 going to Newnham beside the Master's prejudices. 
 There was a dreadful ordeal to be gone through 
 before those sacred portals would be opened to 
 admit her. 
 
 There was the entrance examination. The 
 Senior Tutor was as good as his word ; he brought 
 Lucy over the very next day, not only the papers 
 set at the last ' Previous ' examination, but a copy of 
 the last Newnham entrance papers. The next 
 examination was to take place in March, and it 
 was now the middle of February, and there were 
 only a few weeks to prepare for it. 
 
 Lucy looked hurriedly through the papers while 
 the Tutor stood by, and he saw her face fall and
 
 ONLY A FRESHER 39 
 
 the pretty April colour, which was Lucy's especial 
 charm, go out of her cheeks. 
 
 ' They are stiffer than you thought,' he said. 
 
 He couldn't help putting a little feeling into his 
 voice ; he couldn't help being sorry for the girl. He 
 could see she was dreadfully disappointed. 
 
 ' I did not think they would be so hard,' she 
 said, with something like a sob, and striving to 
 keep back the tears ; ' I had no idea that so much 
 was required.' 
 
 Her voice was scarcely steady, and she finished 
 up with a little wail — she couldn't keep it out of 
 her voice — and she laid the papers down. 
 
 ' You don't think you can do them ?' 
 
 ' No, I am sure I can't.' 
 
 * Not if you work hard — very hard ? — you have 
 three weeks before you — not if I help you ?' 
 
 'You! Oh, Mr. Colville !' 
 
 The colour leaped back into her face, and her eyes 
 brightened. She was quite trembling with eagerness. 
 
 ' If you think with three weeks' hard work you 
 can get through, I will help you,' he said.
 
 40 777^ MASTER OF ST. BENEDICT'S 
 
 It was something new to the Senior Tutor to 
 have a pupil so eager and wilhng. The eyes of 
 the undergraduates of St. Benedict's were not 
 accustomed to brighten or their cheeks to flush 
 when he proposed to give them a few hours' extra 
 coaching. 
 
 ' I am sure I can !' she said eagerly ; ' and — and 
 you are sure, Mr. Colville, you will not mind the 
 trouble ? I am a very slow learner, but I will do 
 my best, my very best.' 
 
 'I am sure you will,' he said; and then he 
 noticed that little helpless quivering about her lips 
 that touched him with quite a new sensation. ITe 
 had never seen Mary's lips quiver. ' It will be no 
 trouble,' the Tutor said softly in quite a different 
 voice ; he even noticed the difference himself, with 
 a strange sense of wonder. ' I shall be very glad 
 to be of use to you.' 
 
 He had often been of use to Mary. She always 
 consulted him about the college business ; she made 
 use of him every day; but his voice had never 
 faltered nor his cheek grown warm when he had
 
 ONLY A FRESHER 41 
 
 offered to help her with the Master's correspond- 
 ence. 
 
 Lucy began her work the next day. She turned 
 out from the httle shabby box she had brought with 
 her to the lodge some well-thumbed old school-books. 
 Small as the box was, it contained all her personal be- 
 longings, and the books were at the bottom of the box. 
 
 Like Jacob, she had come into a strange land 
 with very little personal impedimenta. It could 
 all, everything, be stuffed into one small box, and 
 the books were at the bottom. The books were 
 shabby, like the box. They had belonged to her 
 father, and she had read them with him. 
 
 There were his old Virgil and Xenophon, and a 
 dilapidated Euclid with all the riders missing, and 
 an old-fashioned Algebra. There had been newer 
 editions since Eichard Eae had used these in his 
 college days more than twenty years ago. There 
 had been delightful editions full of notes, and 
 directing-posts along the royal road to a classical 
 education ; but Lucy had been plodding along the 
 old, rough, dusty way.
 
 42 THE MASTER OF ST. BENEDICrS 
 
 The Senior Tutor smiled as he turned over these 
 old books. They brought back to him the old days 
 twenty years ago, the hopes and dreams of those 
 early days, and the familiar faces. The dreams 
 had been realized — at least, some of them — but the 
 familiar faces had faded with the years, and the 
 hopes — what could a man hope for beyond being 
 Master of his college? Nevertheless, the Senior 
 Tutor sighed. The sight of these old books had 
 carried him a long way back. 
 
 ' I think we can find some newer editions than 
 these,' he said, smiling. 
 
 He not only found some newer, but he found the 
 very new^est. He found delightful books that 
 smoothed away all the difiticulties and made stony 
 places plain. There wdll be a royal road to learn- 
 ing by-and-by. The road is getting smoother 
 every day, and the w^ay is getting shorter — a short, 
 straight, macadamized road that one can travel 
 over without any jolting or sudden pulls-up. 
 
 Old scholars who remember the dear old rough 
 road, and the stony ways, and the hills of difficulty
 
 ONLY A FRESHER 43 
 
 they had to chmb, sigh when the}' look back. 
 There is no time now, in these hurrying days, to 
 toil over stones and climb unnecessary heights. 
 The new ways are so much better than the old; 
 but the old men, if they were to begin again, would 
 go the old way, the dear old way, with all its 
 difficulties. They will still tell you the old ways 
 are best. 
 
 Lucy Rae was not a scholar yet, though the 
 desire of her heart was to be one — a perfect 
 Hypatia — and the new royal road was exactly 
 what she wanted. 
 
 She made such rapid progress by means of these 
 short-cuts and easy paths the Senior Tutor led 
 her through that she was quite ready for that 
 dreaded entrance examination when it came. She 
 did as well in it as the girls who had been working 
 for it for years. 
 
 There was nothing now to prevent her becoming 
 a student of Newnham. Cousin Mary had talked 
 the old Master over and smoothed away all the 
 difficulties. She had wrung from him an unwilling
 
 44 THE MASTER OF ST BENEDICT'S 
 
 consent. The Senior Tutor had done his part, too, 
 in overcoming the Master's prejudices. He had 
 backed Mary up in the most loyal manner ; no 
 girl could have had better advocates. When the 
 Doctor had urged that there had been no precedent 
 in his family of girls construing Latin and Greek 
 when they ought to be making butter and carrying 
 their eggs to market, the Tutor had reminded him 
 that neither had there been a precedent in all the 
 generations of the Eaes of one of their number 
 being the Master of a college. 
 
 He, on his part, had set up a precedent, and 
 Dick's little daughter was going to set up another 
 — perhaps a more astonishing precedent. 
 
 Lucy Eae w^ent up to Newnham the next term. 
 She ought to have waited until October, when the 
 academical year commences, but she w^as much too 
 anxious to begin at once. She couldn't wait till 
 October. 
 
 She had taken a little draught of the divine 
 nectar, and she was thirsting to drink deeply, ever 
 so deeply — deeper than any woman had ever drunk
 
 ONLY A FRESHER 45 
 
 yet. She was going to do very big things, and she 
 couldn't afford to lose a minute. She would gain 
 a whole term's work if she went up now, she 
 would get in ten terms' work instead of nine, like 
 the men, for her Tripos. She would get a whole 
 term's start of them. 
 
 With this thirst upon her, and this emulation 
 stirring in her heart, Lucy packed her little box 
 and carried it up to Newnham. She did not 
 exactly carry it in her arms like a housemaid going 
 to a new place. It was not far to carry it, and for 
 the weight of it she might have carried it easily, 
 but girls do not generally go to Newnham carrying 
 a bandbox, or a bundle tied up in a coloured 
 pocket-handkerchief, and with two out-at-elbow 
 little brothers lagging behind carrying a shabby 
 box between them. Lucy, alas ! had not two out- 
 at-elbow little brothers, and she had respect for the 
 feelings of Newnham, so she drove up to the door 
 of Newe Hall in a hansom, with her modest little 
 box on the roof. 
 
 She thought it was the happiest, the proudest
 
 46 THE MASTER OF ST. BENEDICT'S 
 
 day of her life, this first clay at Newnham. She 
 had been looking forward to it for weeks. She had 
 lain awake all the night before picturing what it 
 would be like, and it was not the least like any- 
 thing she had pictured. 
 
 She had pictured sunshine and a blue sky, and 
 the lilacs in the hedge budding, and the daffodils 
 blowing beneath the windows. It was the middle 
 of April, and she had a right to expect these 
 things ; it was very little to expect. 
 
 It had been raining cheerfully all the morning, 
 and it w^as raining still when the hansom drew up 
 at the gate of St. Benedict's ; it couldn't draw up 
 at the door of the lodge, because college lodges are 
 cut off from the outside world by cloistered courts, 
 and even royalty, when it visits the master of a 
 college, has to leave its carriage at the gate and 
 perform the rest of the journey on foot. 
 
 Lucy met Mr. Colville in the cloisters as she was 
 hurrying through, and he put her into the hansom, 
 and he told the man where to drive, and quite a 
 crowd of undergraduates, who had come up early
 
 OKL Y A FRESHER 47 
 
 in the term, stood round the gate watchmg her 
 drive away. 
 
 It was quite a new thing, a girl going from 
 St. Benedict's to Newnham. It was the newest 
 thing under the sun. No daughter, niece or grand- 
 daughter of any Master of St. Benedict's had ever 
 driven from those gates before to Newnham. 
 
 Perhaps when there is a mixed University, and 
 a female president at the lodge, they will not have 
 to go so far ; they may find rooms beneath the same 
 roof. 
 
 Who shall say ? 
 
 Lucy couldn't have driven away with more 
 depressing surroundings. The sky couldn't have 
 been grayer, and the trees were shivering overhead, 
 and the hedges were dripping, and there was a 
 nasty mist settling down over everything. She 
 forgot all about the lilacs and the daffodils she had 
 been picturing as she stood, a forlorn little black 
 figure, in the big, cheerless vestibule of Newe Hall, 
 paying the driver of the hansom. There was no 
 one at Newnham to receive her, no one to show
 
 4S THE MASTER OF ST. BENEDICTS 
 
 her to her room, only a housemaid, who went away 
 dh'ectly she reached the door. She didn't even 
 open the door of the room ; she only pointed to it 
 and went away in another direction. 
 
 It was a little bare room, it couldn't have been 
 barer. There was a couch that served for a bed, 
 a bureau with some drawers beneath, a table, a 
 couple of chairs, and a thinly-disguised washstand 
 with imperfect crockery ; and that was all. Unless, 
 indeed, a chintz curtain drawn across a corner of 
 the room for hanging gowns behind could be 
 called a wardrobe. 
 
 There was no fire, and the barred windows were 
 steaming and blurred with the mist outside, and 
 the raw spring afternoon was closing in. 
 
 Lucy shivered and looked round the desolate 
 room. She didn't know what she was expected to 
 do next, or how she was to begin this new life. 
 She was a member of the University now, she told 
 herself with bated breath ; she was really a female 
 undergraduate, and she had got to begin as under- 
 graduates began.
 
 ONLY A FRESHER 49 
 
 Should she begin with Hghting the fire ? While 
 she was debating this point, and drawing off her 
 gloves, a girl came in. She had left the door open 
 so that anyone passing could look in and see her 
 standing there, and the girl passing by looked in 
 and saw her, and something in her attitude touched 
 her, and she came in. Perhaps it was her black 
 frock and her white face. 
 
 ' Can I do anything for you ?' she said. She 
 didn't throw any sympathy into her voice; they 
 never do at Newnham. ' I've got a kettle boil- 
 ing if you'd like some water, or ' — looking round 
 the bare room and seeing that Lucy's things were 
 not unpacked — ' perhaps you'd rather have some 
 tea.' 
 
 'Ye-es,' Lucy said quite thankfully; 'I would 
 rather have some tea, please.' 
 
 ' Then come into my room.' 
 
 Lucy followed the girl, a solid-looking girl with 
 no profile to speak of, and a turned-up nose and 
 violent red hair. She had not to follow her far, 
 •only across the passage. 
 
 VOL. I. 4
 
 50 THE MASTER OF ST. BENEDICT'S 
 
 There was a card slipped into a frame in the 
 door of the room, and the name of the occupant 
 was written on it — ' Stubbs.' 
 
 * That's my name,' said the girl, pointing to it ; 
 'Maria Stubbs— Capability Stubbs they call me. 
 I suppose you are a fresher ?' 
 
 'Yes,' said Lucy, ' I'm a fresher ; I've only just 
 come up. My name is Eae — Lucy Eae.' 
 
 * Not a bad name ; but you won't have any use 
 for it here. They'll call you Lucifer most likely ; 
 they don't call anybody by their right name here.' 
 
 Maria Stubbs' room was unlike most Newnham 
 rooms. It was distinctly utilitarian. There was 
 nothing aesthetic about it. The most prominent 
 thing in it was a bookshelf full of books, and there 
 was a cabinet in one corner with a lot of narrow 
 drawers, which Lucy found out after were crammed 
 with specimens. A bright fire was burning in the 
 little tiled grate, and a cloth was spread, and some 
 tea-things were laid on the flap of the bureau, 
 which was let down for the purpose, and there 
 were some cakes in one of the pigeon-holes.
 
 ONLY A FRESHER 51 
 
 ' Take off your hat and sit down,' said Maria, 
 drawing a low chair to the fire ; ' there's nothing 
 to hurry for, they won't bring in your things for a 
 long time ; they never hurry themselves at Newn- 
 ham.' 
 
 ' I don't think I ought to take off my things 
 until I've seen someone,' said Lucy. * There's 
 Miss Wrayburne I certainly ought to see. Per- 
 haps she doesn't know I'm here.' 
 
 The girl laughed — or cackled, rather; there 
 wasn't the least fun in her laugh. 
 
 ' Perhaps not,' she said, as she busied herself 
 about making the tea ; ' and I don't think it would 
 make any difference if she did. You don't think 
 the Dons are running about the college all day long 
 shaking hands with the girls ? You'll see Miss 
 Wrayburne at the " High " at dinner, and she'll say 
 " How d'ye do ?" and smile — she always smiles — 
 and that's all.' 
 
 ' I didn't know,' Lucy said humbly. ' I'm only 
 a fresher, you see; I shall know better soon. But 
 it struck me as a very chilling reception.'
 
 52 THE MASTER OF ST. BENEDICT'S 
 
 Miss Stubbs cackled in her unfeeling way. 
 
 ' Chilling ! that's lovely ! You've come to the 
 wrong place if you expect any warmth at Newn- 
 ham, or sympathy either. It would be nothing 
 better than a big girls' school if we were always 
 ** How-d'ye-doing " and shaking hands with each 
 other — we should get to kissing soon ! Thank 
 goodness there is no spooning here ! We are 
 barely civil to each other ; and we make a point of 
 ignoring everybody if we meet 'em out-of-doors. I 
 hope you won't, on the strength of this tea, nod to 
 me if you happen to run against me in the street, 
 because I shan't notice you.' 
 
 * No,' said Lucy, ' I certainly won't nod to you.' 
 She didn't say it at all humbly, but she drank Miss 
 Stubbs' tea. It was very good tea for Newnham.
 
 CHAPTEE lY. 
 
 PAMELA GWATKIN. 
 
 Lucy saw the Principal, as Miss Stubbs had said, 
 at dinner. She came into the hall rather late, and 
 took her seat at the High table. 
 
 It is necessary to spell it with a capital H, as it 
 is distinctly a proper noun, and in Newnham par- 
 lance, like the tables in men's colleges where the 
 Dons eat their dinners, it is known as the ' High.' 
 
 Miss Wrayburne came in rather late, after the 
 rest were seated, and took her place at the head of 
 the 'High,' and then followed a moment's interval 
 for grace, and then the mm-mur of tongues began — 
 a low, distinctly female murmm-, and occasionally 
 a laugh — a little low laugh. There was a good 
 deal of talk to-day, as everybod}^ had come up
 
 54 THE MASTER OF ST. BENEDICTS 
 
 fresh, and the atmosphere of the vacation was still 
 about them, and nobody had begun work yet. 
 They would unpack their books by-and-by, and 
 then everything would be changed. 
 
 Lucy did not know a soul in the place, except 
 Maria Stubbs, and she sat at another table. She 
 sat quite at the other end of the room, and never 
 once looked Lucy's way, and brushed by her in the 
 corridor as if she had never seen her before. 
 
 ' She needn't be afraid I shall notice her, the 
 horrid red-haired thing !' Lucy said to herself with 
 quite unnecessary warmth, when Maria looked the 
 other way. ' I wouldn't notice her for the world !' 
 There were quite half a dozen tables between her 
 and Maria, long narrow tables, with some half- 
 dozen girls at each — girls who ignored everybody 
 else except their own set, and talked across a 
 stranger as if she were a dummy. 
 
 They talked across Lucy, and she listened to 
 their talk with a red spot burning on her cheeks 
 and her heart beating. She had not much appetite 
 for the dinner, and she got up from the table with
 
 PAMELA GWATKIN 55 
 
 a strange choking sensation that brought the tears 
 smarting to her eyes. She took some comfort in the 
 thought that some day she would talk across a 
 fresher. Her turn would come some day ; and 
 while her mind was occupied with this agreeable 
 reflection Miss Wrayburne smiled at her, and 
 said : 
 
 ' How do you do ?' 
 
 ' How do you do ?' may mean a great deal, or it 
 may mean nothing. It didn't mean very much 
 from Miss Wrayburne' s lips, and the smile that 
 accompanied it meant less. If it had been a whole 
 smile, or a smile meant entirely for Lucy, there 
 might have been something in it ; but it was only 
 the fag-end of a smile that had already been dis- 
 tributed over half a dozen girls. 
 
 Lucy accepted it meekly ; and with those red 
 spots burning on her cheeks and a choky feeling 
 in her throat she went back to her room — her 
 little desolate, bare room. She felt so utterly 
 miserable and lonely on this wretched first night 
 that she sat down on the side of her bed and had a
 
 56 THE MASTER OF ST. BENEDICT'S 
 
 little weej). Everything was so different to what 
 she had expected; all her castles had heen so 
 rudely thrown down. 
 
 And then, while she was weeping these foolish 
 tears, she remembered a little curate — a weak- 
 minded young man with red hair ; perhaps Miss 
 Stubbs had recalled him — who had once asked her 
 to be his wife. She had refused him indignantly. 
 What girl in her senses would accept a curate with 
 red hair and one hundred and fifty pounds a year ? 
 She was not sure, if he had come to her now as she 
 sat in that dismal room, feeling so utterly lonely 
 and miserable, that she would have given him the 
 same answer. She wanted a little love so much ; 
 and he loved her in spite of his red hair. She was 
 not so certain, after all, that the higher education 
 of women is quite the best thing — the thing most 
 to be desired in the world. There are other things 
 — she had not thought of them till now, as she sat 
 weeping at the edge of the bed — that make up a 
 woman's life : love, religion, duty, ministering to the 
 wants of others ; but love chiefly. She was not
 
 PAMELA GWATKIN 57 
 
 sure, after all, if this was not the summum honum 
 of a woman's life. 
 
 Lucy was so utterly miserable as she sat there 
 weeping that, if the red-haired curate had come 
 to her at that weak moment, she would have thrown 
 over all her ambitions, she would have given up 
 the higher education altogether, and she would 
 have gone away with him to that poor little moor- 
 land cottage, and pinched, and pared, and slaved 
 for him, as dear women before her have pinched 
 and slaved for those they love ever since the world 
 began. 
 
 While she was still thinking of the curate, and 
 the tears were dropping into her lap, there was a 
 knock at the door, and someone came in. Lucy 
 started guiltily, and hurriedly wiped her eyes. It 
 was not the red-headed curate. It was a girl — to 
 be more correct, a woman. Everybody is a woman 
 at Newnham. A second-j^ear girl, who had called to 
 see if she could help her to unpack her things and 
 get her room in order. 
 
 It wasn't a formal ' call.' Calls at Newnham
 
 58 THE MASTER OF ST. BENEDICrS 
 
 are usually made after ten p.m., when work is sup- 
 posed to be over and one is yearning for bed. 
 The second-year girl was a little bit of a thing — 
 ' smaller than Lucy. A girl who looked as if she 
 had shrunk — as if she had once been round, and 
 plump, and bright-eyed, and soft-cheeked, and red- 
 lipped as a girl ought to be at twenty. She was 
 none of these things now. She was lean and 
 angular ; her eyes were dull, her lips were pale, 
 and her cheeks had lost all their youthful round- 
 ness and rosiness, if they had ever had any. The 
 roundness had gone into her figure, her back 
 was quite round, her shoulders were bent and 
 stooping, and her chest was narrow and flat like a 
 board. 
 
 She had been at Newnham two years, and she 
 was twenty now, and wore glasses, but, alas ! not 
 ' sweet and twenty.' She looked exactly like a girl 
 who had used up all her brains. 
 
 ' I think you have made a mistake,' she said, as 
 she knelt upon the ground unpacking Lucy's books, 
 * in taking Classics. You should take the Natural
 
 PAMELA GWATKIN 59 
 
 Science Tripos. Classics are a thing of the past. 
 They are quite worn out. They will te superseded 
 altogether shortly. Soon — very soon — Latin and 
 Greek will not be compulsory in the examinations ; 
 we shall have more useful subjects. Life is so 
 short — so very short ' (she was just twenty) — ' that 
 we have no time for learning things that will not 
 help us in the rush. Life is getting more of a 
 rush every day, and Science is the only thing that 
 can help us forward. There is no knowing where 
 Science will lead us !' 
 
 She clasped her hands, and gasped at the bare 
 thought of it. 
 
 ' No,' said Lucy, in a low-spirited way. 
 
 She hadn't the least interest where Science was 
 going to lead the girl on the floor— it wasn't likely 
 to lead her very far — but she did object to see her 
 pet Classics turned out of the box in that scornful 
 way. 
 
 'You will learn all this trash,' the girl continued, 
 opening the pages of Lucy's Euripides and letting 
 the leaves drop through her fingers as if they were
 
 6o THE MASTER OF ST. BENEDICT'S 
 
 not of very much account, ' and 3'ou will pore over 
 these rubbishy stories of a quite barbarous age — 
 stories and fables and metamorphoses that, if they 
 were written at the present time, would lay the 
 writer open to a prosecution for perverting the 
 public morals. You will soak your mind with all 
 this nonsense and impurity, and you will think 
 that you have attained culture. Oh, to think how 
 girls waste their lives !' 
 
 ' I'm sure Classics are ever so much nicer than 
 Natural Science,' Lucy said with some spirit. 
 ' Look at the dreadful subjects you have to study ! 
 and to sit side by side with men in lecture-rooms, 
 and listen to lectures on things most women would 
 blush to speak of ! Oh, I wouldn't be a Natural 
 Science student for the world !' 
 
 The atmosphere of Newnham was beginning to 
 tell. A few hours ago Lucy was as meek as a 
 mouse, and if anyone had slapped her on one 
 cheek she would have been quite read}^ to offer 
 the other. Now she had plucked up sufficient spirit 
 to defend her choice of a Tripos.
 
 PAMELA GWATKIN 6i 
 
 If Newnham doesn't do anything else for a girl, 
 it teaches her to take her own part. 
 
 Lucy didn't learn the lesson all at once. It 
 takes a long time to learn, ^Yhen one has been 
 brought up in the old-fashioned way, to consider 
 other people first and to think of self last. It 
 would never do to practise such a foolish doctrine 
 at a college for women. There is only one person 
 to consider — self, self, self ! 
 
 Lucy had a great deal to unlearn when she came 
 to Newnham, and a great deal to learn ; and she 
 did not learn it all at once. She had always had 
 somebody else to consider first, and now it was 
 ever Number One. Oh, that horrid Number 
 One! 
 
 Everybody called upon her in Newe Hall the 
 first week, and some of the girls from the other 
 Halls called later on. The girls at Newe called 
 generally after ten o'clock at night, when she was 
 too sleepy to talk to them, and they went away 
 and voted her ' stupid,' and took no further trouble 
 about her.
 
 62 THE MASTER OF ST. BENEDICT'S 
 
 Among the girls who called upon Lucy when she 
 was nearly asleep, and went away and voted her 
 stupid, was Pamela Gwatkin, a girl who was much 
 looked up to and worshipped at Newnham. It was 
 no wonder Pamela thought her stupid. She was 
 the leader of the most advanced set in the college, 
 and held opinions that would make one's hair stand 
 on end. 
 
 There will be a good many Pamela Gwatkins 
 by-and-by, when there are more Newnhams and 
 the world is ripe for them. They will quite revolu- 
 tionize society. 
 
 They will not be misunderstood like the Greek 
 women of old. Nobody will question their morals 
 because they seek to lead and teach men. Men 
 will be quite willing to be taught by them. It will 
 no longer be a shame for a woman to speak or 
 preach in public. There will be nothing to debar 
 them from taking orders. 
 
 Women have proved long ago that they can 
 reach beyond such heights of scholarship as are 
 demanded from a candidate for ordination. But
 
 PAMELA GWATKIN 63 
 
 women of Pamela Gwatkin's order will not go into 
 the pulpit — their demands will be even more 
 audacious. 
 
 Lucy hadn't any opinions in particular, she was 
 only a fresher ; but she was such a poor-spirited 
 creature that she went with the herd and wor- 
 shipped the very ground that Pamela Gwatkin 
 walked upon. 
 
 She hadn't even the excuse of a nodding ac- 
 quaintance with her after that unlucky call — she 
 onl}^ caught glimpses of her at a distant table at 
 Hall, or met her by chance in the library, or ran 
 against her in the streets, coming and going from 
 lectures, when Pamela looked over her head in her 
 superior way and ignored her completely. 
 
 She could very well look over Lucy's head, .for 
 she stood six feet in her shoes — they had rather 
 high heels. A tall, fair girl, not plump or round 
 by any means, nor rosy-cheeked — she was not a 
 milkmaid ; she was an advanced thinker — but 
 lithe, and elastic, and dignified — very dignified. 
 
 Lucy thought she had never seen anyone so
 
 64 THE MASTER OF ST. BENEDICrS 
 
 dignified in her life as Pamela on the night of the 
 first debate of the term at Newnham. 
 
 She opened the debate on this particular evening 
 — it happened to be some question of woman's 
 rights which she was always advocating — and she 
 spoke for half an hour without a single pause or 
 hitch. 
 
 Some people confess that they cannot bear to 
 hear a woman speak ; that when a woman stands 
 up to speak in public it always gives them the 
 sensation of cold water running down their backs. 
 No one who listened to Pamela Gwatkin would 
 have this uncomfortable sensation for a moment. 
 It seemed as if she had been made to stand up in 
 public ; as if Nature had intended her for a female 
 orator, and had given her the voice — the clear, 
 penetrating, resonant voice — the quiet, assured 
 manner, the full, free flow of words, without which no 
 woman may attempt to stand on a public platform. 
 
 Pamela Gwatkin had all these rare gifts, and she 
 had opinions — very advanced opinions — on every 
 subject under the sun — religion, morals, science,
 
 PAMELA GWATKIN 65 
 
 philosophy — nothing came amiss to her. When 
 women are admitted into Parliament she will prob- 
 ably represent an important constituency, perhaps 
 the University. 
 
 Lucy, looking down from the gallery above, 
 listened breathlessly, and when the debate was over 
 watched her sailing down the hall in her pale 
 violet gown, with the soft folds of her train gliding 
 noiselessly after her. They didn't rustle and sweep 
 like the frills and furbelows of tlie other girl, who 
 came fvoxi-frouincj down the room, pencil in hand, 
 counting the votes. She might have spared her 
 pains ; of course, every girl in her senses voted 
 with Pamela. 
 
 There was a dance as usual after the debate, and 
 the unique spectacle of fifty female couples spin- 
 ning round untainted by the arm of man. Pamela 
 Gwatkin danced as well as she spoke, but she 
 didn't put any enthusiasm into it. She took it as 
 the least troublesome way of taking exercise, but 
 she didn't put any spirit into it. She didn't smile 
 once all the evening, except in a weary, disdainful 
 
 VOL. I. 5
 
 66 THE MASTER OF ST. BENEDICTS 
 
 way when her partner broke down or fell out of 
 the ring. She never broke down or fell out her- 
 self, and when she had th'ed out one gh'l she took 
 up another. Lucy remarked that she always chose 
 small gh^ls — the smallest girls she could find — and 
 that they were invariably * gentlemen.' Lucy was 
 wondering how ever they could drag her round, 
 when, to her consternation, Pamela stopped in 
 front of her. 
 
 She had worn out all the other small girls in the 
 room, and she had to fall back upon Lucy. The 
 silly little thing stood up in quite a flutter. If a 
 Eoyal Highness had asked her to dance she could 
 not have been more flattered. Of course, she 
 would take 'gentleman'! She told the most out- 
 rageous fibs, and said she preferred being ' gentle- 
 man ;' she always chose it when she had the 
 chance. 
 
 After she had dragged Pamela round until she 
 was fit to faint, and had ascertained how hard her 
 whalebones were, and how regular her breathing, 
 and that her favourite perfume was heliotrope,
 
 PAMELA GWATKIN 67 
 
 and that dancing with a goddess whose chin was on 
 a level with the top of her head was not all pure 
 bliss, she had her reward. 
 
 Annabel Crewe, the Natural Science girl, asked 
 her to ' cocoa ' after the dancing was over, and 
 here she met Pamela. It was Lucy's first expe- 
 rience of a Newnham 'cocoa.' There was quite 
 a spread on Annabel Crewe's little writing-table — 
 sweets and cakes and fruit, and cups brimming 
 over with the nectar of Newnham. 
 
 Pamela Gwatkm came in last ; there was a 
 crowd of girls in the room when she came in, 
 filling it quite up, and occupying all the chairs and 
 the ottoman and both sides of the bed. There was 
 an art coverinG; thrown over the bed embroidered 
 with dragons, and a cushion with an impossible 
 monster with a flaming tail ; nobody but a Newn- 
 ham girl would have dreamed it was a bed. 
 
 Lucy was occupying a low cushiony-chair — the 
 nicest chair in the room — and she got up directly 
 Pamela came in and gave it up to her. She ac- 
 cepted it in her superior way, and flopped down
 
 68 THE MASTER OF ST. BENEDICT'S 
 
 into it as if it were in the order of things for every- 
 one to make place for her. Then that wretched 
 little sycophant, Lucy, waited upon her in her 
 servile way, as if she were nothing short of a Eoyal 
 Princess. She brought her her cocoa, and sweets, 
 and cakes, and fruit. She positively snatched them 
 from the other girls to offer them to Pamela, and 
 be snubbed for her pains. She hadn't the spirit of 
 a mouse. 
 
 Everybody was talking at once, and there was 
 such a clatter of tongues that Lucy couldn't have 
 heard the goddess speak if she had deigned to 
 speak to her. She did deign just before the party 
 broke up. 
 
 Lucy hadn't anywhere to sit, and she was tired 
 out with dragging Pamela round, and she had 
 found an idiotic three-legged milking-stool, and 
 she was trying to sit upon it. It was an objection- 
 able stool ; in the first place, it had been painted 
 with yellow buttercups, and varnished before the 
 paint was dry. It was not dry yet, and it stuck to 
 Lucy's black gown and left a proof impression of
 
 PAMELA GWATKIN 69 
 
 the buttercups on the back. In the second place, 
 the legs hadn't been stuck m firmly, and it wobbled 
 under her weight and threatened to collapse every 
 moment. Lucy sat in fear and trembling, trying 
 to look as if she were quite comfortable and used 
 to wobbling, and while she sat the goddess spoke : 
 
 ' I have a brother at St. Benedict's,' she said ; 
 * I dare say you know him ; he is in his third 
 year.' 
 
 Lucy murmured that she hadn't that pleasure ; 
 she didn't know any undergraduates. 
 
 'No, I suppose not,' Pamela said wearily — she 
 generally spoke wearily, as if commonplace subjects 
 were beneath her. ' They are an uninteresting 
 class ; only Eric is so quixotic ; he does such 
 absurd things that I should not have thought he 
 could have been anywhere long without being 
 known and laughed at.' 
 
 'Eeally !' said Lucy, in rather a shocked voice; 
 she didn't know what else to say. 
 
 * It was one of his absurdities to come up here as 
 an undergraduate. He had qualified — fully qualified
 
 70 THE MASTER OF ST. BENEDICTS 
 
 — for another profession. He was a doctor, and when 
 he had passed all his examinations, after seven 
 years' work, he threw it all up. He found out that 
 he had missed his right vocation. He had some 
 absurd notion that he was specially called for the 
 Church — that the Church couldn't do without him 
 — and so he has come up here.' 
 
 Pamela spoke scornfully, with her thin upper 
 lip curling, and just a suspicion of pink in her face 
 — her beautiful worn, weary face. 
 
 ' Perhaps he has done right,' said Lucy. 'A man 
 ought never to go into the Church unless he feels 
 that he is called. Papa might have been Senior 
 Wrangler, but he felt his vocation was the Church. 
 
 He gave up everything for it, and ' ' And 
 
 mamma ' she was going to say, but she looked at 
 Pamela and stopped short. 
 
 ' It would be all very well if the Church were 
 going to last,' she said wearily ; ' but it isn't. 
 Everybody knows that it isn't.' Nobody but 
 women and children believe in it now. Its 
 methods are all exploded ; its teaching is prepos-
 
 PAMELA GWATKIN 71 
 
 terous ; it has had its day, Hke other beliefs, and 
 now a new day is dawning. Oh, it was ridi- 
 culous of Eric to go into the Church just as it 
 was falling to pieces !' 
 
 Lucy was past expressing an opinion. The 
 milking- stool had collapsed. The three idiotic 
 legs had all gone different ways ; it had fallen 
 quite to pieces, like the Church was going to, and 
 Lucy was seated on the floor.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 A F TE K C HAPEL. 
 
 The day succeeding the debate was Sunday, and 
 Lucy went over to St. Benedict's to morning 
 chapel. 
 
 She was so glad to go. It was quite a relief 
 to get outside Newnham and shake from her skirts 
 the atmosphere of so much learning. It was a 
 distinct relief to take her place in the stalls of St. 
 Benedict's and look down upon the men who took 
 life so much more easily. 
 
 She was only just in time for the college chapel. 
 The bell was going as she crossed the court, and the 
 men were hurrying in in their white surplices. 
 They were all smiling and debonair. There 
 wasn't a single cloud on the brow of one of them,
 
 AFTER CHAPEL 73 
 
 except the cloud of last night's tobacco. They 
 were lusty and strong and fresh-coloured, and 
 some of them had frames like giants ; and they 
 came across the court with a swinging stride, and 
 health and life and vigour in every movement. 
 Men take things so much more easily than w^omen. 
 
 The choir and the Master came in directly after 
 Lucy had taken her seat. The Master looked 
 across his wife and Mary, who sat between them, 
 and nodded to Lucy. 
 
 * Very glad to see you, my dear,' he said in quite 
 an audible voice. 
 
 It was a longer service than usual at St. 
 Benedict's on Sunday mornings. The Master read 
 the Litany, and he took a long time in reading it, 
 and Lucy had plenty of opportunity of looking 
 among the men for Pamela Gwatkin's brother. 
 
 He was a twin brother, she had learned from 
 Annabel Crewe, who knew all about Pamela, and 
 therefore he ought to be exactly like her. Tall 
 and fair and thin-lipped, with clear, steady eyes — 
 blue ought to be the colour, or gray, she was not
 
 74 THE MASTER OF ST. BENEDICT'S 
 
 sure which ; but she could not laistake the profile. 
 There could be no doubt about that clear-cut face, 
 without an ounce of superfluous flesh upon it. 
 
 Lucy looked at the men eagerly one after the 
 other ; she looked at every man in the chapel. 
 The Senior Tutor from his stall on the other side 
 saw her looking down at the men. She didn't look 
 at him, and he wondered at the change in her. 
 Her eyes were not wont to rove over the faces of 
 the men sitting below in that eager way ; they 
 might have all been sticks and stones for the notice 
 Lucy had hitherto vouchsafed them. 
 
 Was this the outcome of a week at Newnham? 
 Had she seen so much — so very, very much — of 
 women in her new developments that she was 
 thirsting for the sight of man ? 
 
 Cousin Mary saw her looking down at the under- 
 graduates in the seat below, too, and sighed. She 
 remembered the time when she used to look across 
 the benches. She had seen so many generations 
 of undergraduates come and go in fifteen years. 
 She may have looked more than once in all that
 
 AFTER CHAPEL 75 
 
 time to see if among them there was that one face 
 that was to be her beacon through hfe ; she had 
 ceased to look for it now. 
 
 Lucy had decided before she left the chapel that 
 the man in the third row near the top was Pamela's 
 brother. A tall man with a thin, fair, fresh- 
 colom-ed face and firm lips — a capable face, a face 
 quite worthy of the brother of Pamela Gwatkin. 
 
 Lucy watched the men file out of chapel, and the 
 man in the last seat of the last row naturally came 
 out last. She refused to go into the lodge with 
 Mary. She let the old Master and his wife toddle 
 off down the cloisters together, and she stood 
 holding Mary back and begging her to wait ' just a 
 minute.' 
 
 The man in the back seat came out at last and 
 took off his cap to the Master's nieces as he 
 passed. 
 
 * There !' said Lucy breathlessly, ' this is the 
 man I waited for. Is he Eric Gwatkm ?' 
 
 'Eric Gwatkin!' Mary repeated impatiently; 
 she objected to being kept standing in the court
 
 76 THE MASTER OF ST. BENEDICT'S 
 
 watching the men come out of chapel ; she could 
 see them every day — twice a day if she liked — and 
 she had seen them for fifteen years. *Eric 
 Gwatkin?' she repeated. ' The man who has just 
 come out is Wyatt Edgell, the best man of the 
 year. He will take a very high place in the 
 Tripos — perhaps the highest — and Eric Gwatkin 
 is only a Poll man. He is taking the theological 
 Special, I believe, and I dare say he will be 
 plucked.' 
 
 ' Oh, I am sure there is some mistake !' Lucy 
 said hotly ; ' Pamela's brother never could be 
 plucked. She is awfully clever, and — and he is a 
 twin.' 
 
 Cousin Mary didn't take the least interest in 
 Pamela's brother ; even the fact of his being a 
 twin didn't move her. She went into the lodge 
 and looked after the table that was sj)read for 
 lunch. She altered the arrangement of the 
 flowers, and put some finishing touches to it, and 
 Lucy stood beside the window that overlooked the 
 court watching her.
 
 AFTER CHAPEL 77 
 
 She couldn't help pitying Mary for being in- 
 terested in such small things, for being taken up 
 with such petty cares. She had lived in the midst 
 of culture for fifteen years, and yet she could 
 potter about that dinner-table and be absorbed in 
 the arrangement of the flowers. 
 
 * I am very glad to see you, my dear,' the old 
 Master said to Lucy when she had dutifully kissed 
 him and whispered to her aunt how well he was 
 looking — the sure key to that dear, kind, simple 
 heart was to tell her how well the Master was 
 looking. It would be a sad day when those 
 welcome words could no longer be said. 
 
 ' And how is the Greek getting on, my dear ? 
 Who would have thought of my brother Dick's 
 daughter learning Greek ? She didn't get the 
 taste for it from her father, for he was no scholar. 
 He was good only for his own work, none better. 
 There was not a man in the parish who could drive 
 a straighter furrow than my brother Dick, and his 
 wife was famous for her poultry. I remember her 
 carrying her butter and eggs to market. She had
 
 78 THE MASTER OF ST. BENEDICTS 
 
 the corner stall in the old butter market, my dear. 
 I mmd the very spot.' 
 
 'It was my grandmother, or great- grandmother, 
 rather,' said Lucy, feebly trying to set him right. 
 ' Mamma never kept a stall in the butter market.' 
 
 ' Never mind which it was,' said the Senior 
 Tutor, who had just come in, and was shaking 
 hands with Lucy ; ' a generation or two doesn't 
 matter.' 
 
 It didn't matter to him, who knew all the homely 
 details of the Master's humble history ; but suppose 
 he were to go maundering about that stall in the 
 butter market to Pamela Gwatkin, it would be all 
 over Newnham that it was Lucy's mother, and that 
 Lucy herself used to milk the cows. With such a 
 pedigree there was no excuse for her tumbling off a 
 milking-stool. 
 
 If Lucy hadn't been so full of her own concerns 
 that she had no eyes for others, she would have 
 seen the reason for Cousin Mary's anxiety about 
 the dinner-table. The Senior Tutor was coming to 
 dinner.
 
 AFTER CHAPEL 79 
 
 The lunch, or rather the dinner — for it was a 
 real dinner ; except on state occasions, the old 
 Master dined in the middle of the day — was spread 
 in the dining-room of the lodge — an old, old room 
 panelled up to the ceiling with dark oak, with a 
 delightful carved frieze running round the top, 
 and a big oriel window with diamond panes and 
 stained glass coats-of-arms of the old Masters who 
 had occupied the lodge since it was first built, 
 centuries ago. 
 
 There were portraits of some of them in their 
 scarlet gowns on the walls, looking down upon 
 them as they sat at meat. It was a ghostly 
 company, so many old Masters, and soon there 
 would be another to hang among them. He was 
 painted already, and hanging in the gallery outside ; 
 he would come in here soon, and take his place, 
 not at the table, but on the walls with the rest. 
 
 Perhaps the Senior Tutor was thinking of that 
 not far-off time as he lay back in his chair glancing 
 up at the dingy old walls that wanted beeswaxing 
 dreadfully. There would be plenty for him to do
 
 8o THE MASTER OF ST. BENEDICTS 
 
 when his time came. There had been nothing 
 done here for years. He would have to go right 
 through the house ; he hardly knew where he 
 should begin. 
 
 And then Lucy broke in upon his pleasant 
 reverie, and asked him about Eric Gwatkin. 
 
 * Gwatkin ?' said the Tutor absently. He was 
 just considering whether he should have the oak 
 varnished or beeswaxed. ' Ye — e — s ; he's going in 
 for his Special, but I don't think he'll get through.' 
 
 'Only his Special!' Lucy hadn't got through 
 her Little-go yet, but she regarded the Special 
 from the Newnham standpoint. No woman has 
 ever yet descended so low as a Special. ' His sister 
 is one of the cleverest girls at Newaiham. She has 
 already taken a first in one Tripos, and now she 
 is w^orking for another. She is sure to take a 
 double-first. He is her twin brother, and I'm 
 sure she expects great things of him.' 
 
 ' Then I'm very sorry for Miss Gwatkin,' the 
 Tutor said with a laugh. ' If he gets through it's 
 as much as he will do.'
 
 AFTER CHAPEL 8i 
 
 He declined to have anything more to say about 
 Pamela's unpromising brother; and he talked to 
 Lucy until the ladies left the table about her life at 
 Newnham, and the progress she was making with 
 her work. 
 
 The old Master did not sit long over his wine ; 
 it had come to one glass now after dinner — one 
 glass of that old, old wine that had already lain a 
 dozen years in the darkness of the college cellar 
 when he had come up a raw scholar to St. Bene- 
 dict's. It did him quite as much good as a dozen 
 glasses of a less generous vintage. It brought a 
 warm flush into his wrinkled cheeks, and a light 
 into his dim eyes, and stirred the slow blood 
 circling round his heart, and it sent him to sleep 
 to dream again of the old time, and to win afresh 
 the laurels of his youth. While the Master sat 
 nodding in his big chair on one side of the wide 
 fireplace, where a fire was still burning, and his 
 faithful partner sat nodding on the other side, Lucy 
 slipped out of the room. 
 
 She was only going to the old study to find some 
 
 VOL. I. G
 
 82 THE MASTER OF ST. BENEDICT'S 
 
 books, but she had to pass through the picture- 
 gallery to reach it. The gallery of the lodge of St. 
 Benedict's was very much like the galleries of most 
 college lodges, only it was narrower — a long, low, 
 narrow old room extending the length of one side 
 of -the cloistered court. It had been built when 
 the cloisters beneath had been built, and it had 
 suffered few changes since. The walls were 
 panelled to the ceiling with oak, and it was lighted 
 with deep, old-fashioned bay-windows ; not parti- 
 cularly well lighted, as the diamond panes were 
 darkened with painted arms of founders and bene- 
 factors, and old, dead and forgotten Fellows. The 
 walls of the long gallery were hung with portraits 
 from end to end. They began in the right-hand 
 corner by the door in the fourteenth century— fiat, 
 angular, awful presentments of men and women 
 whose names are household words in Cambridge, 
 and they went on and on until it seemed that 
 they would never cease. The walls were so full 
 that it would be difficult to find room for another 
 Fellow.
 
 AFTER CHAPEL 83 
 
 Lucy paused on her way to the study, and 
 looked round with quite a new feeHng on these old 
 painted faces. They represented something to her 
 to-day that they had not represented before. 
 
 She began dimly to understand what had made 
 Cambridge the power it is in the land. It was 
 these still faces looking down from the walls who 
 had built up this great Cambridge. It was the 
 men, after all, the patient men of old, whose toil 
 had accomplished so much ; and now the women 
 were entering into their labours. 
 
 There were not many portraits at Newnham ; it 
 was only in its infancy. There would be plenty 
 by-and-by. Lucy ran over in her mind the women 
 whose portraits would hang upon those white walls 
 between the windows. She could not in that brief 
 retrospect think of any who were doing such great 
 work that they would earn that distinction, only 
 Pamela Gwatkin. She was sure Pamela would one 
 day hang on the walls. She would be an old 
 woman then, most likely, a lean, wrinkled, hard- 
 visaged old woman, with gray hair and spectacles,
 
 84 THE MASTER OF ST BENEDICTS 
 
 and she would have a big book beside her — a book 
 she had written or explained — and she would wear 
 — what would she wear ? 
 
 She would have gone quite bald by that time, 
 like the old Fellows on the walls ; her head would 
 be bald and shining. She would wear it covered, 
 of course, with — with a scholar's cap, with a long 
 tassel depending over her nose, or a velvet Doctor's 
 cap, which would be more becoming, and she would 
 wear a scarlet Doctor's gown and hood. The picture 
 would look lovely on the white walls of Newnham. 
 
 Lucy had just settled to her satisfaction how 
 Pamela Gwatkin was to be handed down by a 
 future Herkomer to another generation, when the 
 Senior Tutor entered the gallery. 
 
 He, too, had been thinking. He hadn't been 
 paying any attention to what Mary Eae had been 
 talking about while the Master took his after- 
 dinner nap ; his thoughts were with Lucy in the 
 gallery. He had watched her narrowly at dinner, 
 and he had detected a change in her. He was used 
 to watching men, and now he had begun to watch
 
 AFTER CHAPEL 85 
 
 women. He remarked that her eyes were no longer 
 soft ; they were hard and eager, and had a hunted 
 look in them. He knew the look ; he had seen it 
 in boys come up fresh from school — not brilliant 
 boys from the sixth form of big public schools, but 
 frank, fresh-faced fellows who had come up from 
 country parsonages. He had seen the look on 
 their faces when the work was new to them and 
 the strain had begun to tell upon them. They lost 
 it after a term or two when they bossed their 
 lectures, and drifted away with the stream, or 
 broke down, and went back to the country par- 
 sonages, and never came up again. 
 
 He had seen this hunted look on boys' faces, 
 but he had never seen it on a girl's face before. 
 He wasn't sure if it wouldn't be well to take Lucy 
 away before she broke down. She would never v 
 want the mathematics she w^as getting up with 
 such labour for the Little-go; she w^ould be able 
 to add up the butcher's book quite as well without. 
 As the future mistress of the lodge — it had really 
 come to that ; he had ceased to think about Mary,
 
 86 THE MASTER OF ST. BENEDICTS 
 
 and he had almost unconsciously put Lucy in her 
 place — he would have liked her to have the 
 prestige of Newnham, and, considering her humble 
 antecedents, it was quite as well that she should win 
 her spurs. She had pluck enough, if her strength 
 would only hold out. She was a brave little thing; 
 he had never seen a girl so brave. The Little-go 
 examinations would soon be over, and then, if the 
 result was satisfactory, he would speak. She 
 would have quite culture enough after the Little- 
 go— quite enough to condone even the stall in the 
 butter market. 
 
 'I think you had better let me coach you for 
 the exam.,' he said, as they talked about her 
 mathematics ; ' for the Additional, at any rate, 
 you'll find the dynamics and the statics rather stiff.' 
 
 ' Ye — es,' Lucy said with a sigh ; * they are 
 dreadfully stiff.' 
 
 ' When will you come to me ? Will you come 
 here, or shall I come up to Newnham ?' 
 
 ' Oh no, no ! It would never do to come to 
 Newnham !'
 
 AFTER CHAPEL 87 
 
 Lucy turned quite pale at the suggestion. 
 
 ' You have male lecturers,' said the college Don 
 with a laugh. * The difference would be that I 
 should only be lecturing one girl instead of six.' 
 
 ' I'm sure it wouldn't do ; I'm sure Miss Wray- 
 burne would object. I would rather, if you don't 
 mind, come to you,' Lucy said meekly. 
 
 ' Come, by all means. You had better come to 
 my rooms ; there will be less interruption than at 
 the lodge. I can give you four hours a week, but 
 it must be in the afternoon. When will you 
 begin ?' 
 
 Lucy was quite ready to begin at once. She 
 settled to go to the Tutor's rooms the very next 
 day. She didn't even think of consulting Cousin 
 Mary about the arrangement, or the Master, or the 
 Master's wife. She had already made a distinct 
 advance ; she had decided for herself ; she had 
 engaged a University coach, and arranged to spend 
 four hours a week alone with him in his college 
 rooms. The woman of the future could not do 
 more.
 
 CHAPTEE YL 
 
 BEHIND THE SCKEEN. 
 
 Lucy went to her coach the next day. She ought 
 to have known her way ahout a college stah^case by 
 this tmie, but she had never yet penetrated beyond 
 the outer courts. She had never ventured up 
 those mysterious stairways sacred to gyps, bed- 
 makers and gownsmen. 
 
 A great many gownsmen must have climbed the 
 stairs that led to Mr. Colville's rooms before her ; 
 they had left their marks here, if they had left them 
 nowhere else in the annals of the University. Mr. 
 Colville's rooms were in the oldest part of the 
 college, and his staircase was as narrow and steep 
 and dark as any lover of mediaeval architecture 
 could desire.
 
 BEHIND THE SCREEN ' 89 
 
 It was SO dark that when Lucy reached the first 
 landing she didn't see where to go ; there was a 
 passage in front of her and doors on either side. 
 Instead of looking at the names painted over the 
 doors, she went down the passage and knocked at 
 the door at the end. 
 
 There are several ways of knocking at a door, but 
 there is only one way of knocking at a college door 
 if one expects to be heard. A timid rap with the 
 knuckles is wasted effort ; the knob of an umbrella, 
 or the handle of a walking-stick, or any other form 
 of bludgeon one happens to have at hand, is more 
 effective; or a succession of well-delivered blows 
 with a fist, or the body falling heavily against the 
 door, have been known to attract the attention of 
 persons within the room ; but Lucy had recourse to 
 none of these devices. She knocked feebly with her 
 gloved hand on the door and waited. She was sure 
 it was the right landing. She had read the direc- 
 tions painted on the door-post at the foot of the 
 staircase :. 
 
 First Floor — Mr. Colville.
 
 90 THE MASTER OF ST. BENEDICT'S 
 
 She knocked again presently ; and then, as 
 nobody answered, she went in. The Senior Tutor 
 was expecting her ; it was surely right to go in. 
 She thought she heard voices as she opened the 
 door — at least a voice, a voice that had a familiar 
 ring in it ; she heard it clearer when she opened the 
 first door ; there was an outer oak, as usual to a 
 college room. Lucy opened both doors and went in. 
 She went quite into the room, and closed the door 
 — there was a screen before the door — before she 
 saw the occupants of the room. 
 
 What she saw didn't exactly make her hair stand 
 on end, but she gave a little cry. She couldn't help 
 crying out. On the couch behind the screen a man 
 was lying, with the blood flowing from a wound in 
 his throat, and on his knees beside him was a man 
 praying. 
 
 The man who was praying stopped and looked up 
 at the sound of that startled cry, and saw Lucy 
 standing in the middle of the floor. He got up 
 from his knees, and with a gesture of silence went 
 behind the screen and fastened the two doors.
 
 BEHIND THE SCREEN 91 
 
 * I am glad you are come,' he said, going back 
 to Lucy. * I did not know the doors were open. 
 You must be sure to keep them fastened. ' We don't 
 want the authorities to know of this, and the Senior 
 Tutor has the next rooms. You must be sure not to 
 let him suspect anything. If you can do what is 
 necessary for Edgell by day, I will sit up with him 
 at night. It is not a bad wound ; I don't think it is 
 at all serious.' 
 
 Lucy stood frightened and speechless. What did 
 the man mean ? Did he take her for a nurse ? 
 
 * I am afraid there is some mistake,' she said in a 
 low voice ; she couldn't keep from shaking. ' I — I 
 thought this was Mr. Colville's room.' 
 
 Then a hght seemed to break in upon the man, 
 and he looked at Lucy with a quick, startled 
 glance. 
 
 ' Oh !' he said, ' I thought you were the nurse. 
 I beg your pardon. There — there has been an 
 accident here ; our friend has not been quite him- 
 self — he has been over-working — and — and this 
 has happened. Thank God it is no worse ! It
 
 92 THE MASTER OF ST. BENEDICTS 
 
 might have been fatal ; a mere hah-'s breadth and 
 it would have been fatal. We are anxious to keep 
 it from the authorities. It would be very serious 
 for him if it were known. It would ruin him for 
 life. May we ask you to keep the chance know- 
 ledge of this most deplorable occurrence secret ?' 
 
 What could Lucy say ? Clearly it was her duty 
 as the Master's niece to go straight to the lodge 
 and acquaint him with the state of affairs. It was 
 her duty to summon Mr. Colville without a 
 moment's loss of time ; he was onl}^ separated 
 from the scene of this tragedy by a narrow passage. 
 
 Of course, the man lying bleeding there ought to 
 have a doctor and a nurse, and his friends should 
 be telegraphed for, and the whole college ought to 
 be thrown into a commotion. Suppose the man 
 were to die, what would her feelings be if she were 
 imrticej)s criminis in this dreadful secret ? 
 
 All these things flashed through Lucy's mind as 
 she stood there looking at the man on the couch. 
 She knew him now ; it was the man who had taken 
 his hat off to her as he came out of chapel.
 
 BEHIND THE SCREEN 93 
 
 It was the man that Cousin Mary said was going 
 to take a very high place in the Tripos, perhaps the 
 highest. It was Wyatt Eclgell. 
 
 She made up her mind in a moment. 
 
 'Yes,' she said, *I will keep your secret. But I 
 cannot go away from here and leave you like this. 
 There is something I can do. I am used to nursing 
 and sickness ; tell me what I can do.' 
 
 She had torn off her gloves and thrown down her 
 books, and was kneeling beside the couch where 
 the man lay, wiping away the blood that was 
 trickling beneath the bandage, and dropping down 
 over his chest. 
 
 There was so much she could do that a woman 
 could best do, and the man with his hand on the 
 wrist of the patient stood by and watched her while 
 she did it. 
 
 'You know something about medicine?' she 
 said. 
 
 ' I have been a doctor. I have spent seven years 
 in acquiring a knowledge of surgery — seven years 
 out of my life — but it has not been wasted if I
 
 94 THE MASTER OF ST. BENEDICT'S 
 
 have been the means of saving him ;' and he 
 nodded towards the bed. 
 
 ' And you think you have saved him ?' 
 
 Where had she heard this man's voice before, and 
 where had she seen his eyes ? She was asking 
 herself this question as she was speaking to 
 him. 
 
 ' Yes, I think he is saved. He will do very well 
 with careful nursing. One of the men has a sister 
 at Addenbroke's, and he has gone to fetch her. I 
 thought she had come when I saw you standing 
 there. She will certainly be here presently. I 
 don't think we need detain you.' 
 
 'I shall not go till she comes,' Lucy said with 
 such decision that she quite frightened herself. ' I 
 shall certainly stay here as long as I can be of any 
 use.' 
 
 She had been of a good deal of use already. She 
 had removed all traces of the dreadful deed ; she 
 had washed up every stain that could be washed 
 away, and she had covered up the rest. She had 
 fetched a pillow and some coverings from the ad-
 
 BEHIND THE SCREEN 95 
 
 joining room, and straightened the couch, and any- 
 one coming into the room and seeing the man lying 
 there with a white handkerchief over his throat, 
 and the quilt drawn up over his chest, would not 
 have dreamed of the ghastly sight beneath. 
 
 He looked as he lay there as if he had broken 
 down in the middle of his work, and had thrown 
 himself down there in a sudden attack of faintness. 
 His face was dreadfully white, as white as the 
 coverlet, and he was breathing hard, and there 
 was a strange faint odour Lucy noticed as she bent 
 over him. He was not sensible, but once he opened 
 his eyes and looked at her with a strange, far-away 
 look in them that haunted her for days. 
 
 They were beautiful eyes, tender and dreamy as 
 a woman's, with a depth in them Lucy had never 
 seen in any eyes before. But then she had not 
 been accustomed to look into young men's eyes. 
 She could not remember bending over a man before 
 and seeing herself reflected in his eyes. 
 
 Perhaps it was the novelty of the situation that 
 moved her. Having done all, everything she
 
 96 THE MASTER OF ST. BENEDICT'S 
 
 could do, she settled herself down m a chair by 
 the head of the bed and began to weep. 
 
 The man was nothing to her, she had never 
 heard his name till yesterday, and here she was 
 sitting by his side weeping for him as if she had 
 known him all her life. 
 
 The man who stood by let her tears fall un- 
 checked. 
 
 * I don't think you will disturb him,' he said 
 with a smile ; ' I have given him an anodyne. 
 Nobody could tell what he would do if he were left 
 to himself, so I have made things sure by quieting 
 him for a time. Pray have your cry out if it does 
 3'ou any good.' 
 
 He evidently knew something of girls. There is 
 nothing like a little weep for soothing the nerves. 
 
 "While Lucy was availing herself of her woman's 
 privilege, he turned down the coverlet and ex- 
 amined the bandages ; the blood was trickling 
 down beneath them, thick and black where it had 
 congealed, and a paler streak behind. 
 
 ' It's broken out again,' he said quietly. ' I
 
 BEHIND THE SCREEN 97 
 
 think there must be a stitch. Can you help 
 me ?' 
 
 If Lucy had been told an hour ago that she 
 could have stood by and assisted as the man sewed 
 up that gaping wound, and never by word or look 
 betrayed faintness or alarm, she would not have 
 believed it. 
 
 It was the little weep that did it. 
 
 ' I think it will do now,' said the man, drawing 
 up the coverlet over his work. ' There is only one 
 thing we can do more for the poor fellow, and that 
 is commit him to God. Will you kneel down 
 beside him while we ask His blessing on the 
 means that we have used ? Eemember, when 
 two or three are gathered together — we are 
 two, and — and I am sure his mother is here 
 with us.' 
 
 Lucy knelt down beside the couch while the man 
 prayed aloud. 
 
 He talked to God as he knelt there as one who 
 knew Him as a Friend of old. He made no pre- 
 amble in entering this solemn Presence Chamber, 
 
 VOL. I. 7
 
 98 THE MASTER OF ST. BENEDICrS 
 
 but went straight up to the throne with his petition, 
 and laid the poor, blind, suffering soul at the foot 
 of the Cross. 
 
 Lucy had been brought up in the bosom of the 
 Church ; she had heard prayers read every morning 
 and evening of her life, and she had never missed 
 being in her place on Sundays. She had heard 
 her father read the prayers hundreds of times, and 
 she had heard, oh, so many sermons, but she had 
 never heard a man pray like this. 
 
 It was heart speaking to heart ; it was the spirit 
 of man speaking to the Spirit of God. 
 
 While he was still speaking the door, or doors, 
 rather, opened, and someone came in. He did not 
 stop or get up from his knees, but went on wrestling 
 for the blessing that he sought. 
 
 Lucy felt dreadfully guilty kneeling there. She 
 heard the door open, and people— distinctly people 
 — come in ; and she had an awful overwhelming 
 sense of guiltiness, as if she had been consenting 
 to a murder. She was afraid to get up; she 
 expected to see the Senior Tutor standing there
 
 BEHIND THE SCREEN gg 
 
 and her cousin Mary. She didn't at all know why 
 she expected Mary. 
 
 She was almost afraid to look up when she rose 
 from her knees, and she felt herself shaking all 
 over. But it was not Mary, and it was not the 
 Tutor. It was a man that Lucy had often seen in 
 the courts below, and he had a girl in a nurse's 
 dress with him. 
 
 He looked over to Lucy in some alarm, and took 
 off his cap. 
 
 ' It's all right,' said the other. ' You didn't lock 
 the door after you, old man, when you went out, 
 and this lady found her way in — at least, God 
 showed her the way in. If she hadn't come at the 
 right moment it would have gone hard with our 
 friend here. I am glad you have brought your 
 sister. And now,' he said, turning to Lucy, ' we 
 need not detain you any longer. This lady will 
 stay with us, I hope, till late ; and I shall sit up 
 with him to-night. To-morrow, I hope, the worst 
 will be over.' 
 
 ' I hope so,' Lucy said with a sob she couldn't
 
 loo THE MASTER OF ST. BENEDICT'S 
 
 choke down — she hadn't the heart to say any 
 more. 
 
 ' I am sm-e you will respect our secret,' the man 
 said, as Lucy was drawing on her gloves. 
 
 She didn't answer him ; she only looked at him, 
 and she saw the blood flush up under his skin. 
 She remembered somebody else's cheeks she had 
 seen flush in the same way — not a man's. 
 
 'I beg your pardon,' he said humbly. 
 
 Lucy was so angry with him for doubting her 
 that she did not see his proffered hand ; she drew 
 her gloves on hurriedly, and picked up her books 
 and went out into the passage, but she beckoned 
 the nurse to follow her. 
 
 'I don't think the man's going to get better,' 
 she said in a hurried whisper. 'It's like consent- 
 ing to a murder to let him lie there and die ; but 
 / am not going to tell. I think his mother ought 
 to know. I think someone ought to write and tell 
 her that he is ill — dying !' 
 
 The nurse shook her head. 
 
 'It w^ould kill her!' she said. 'She has such
 
 BEHIND THE SCREEN loi 
 
 faith in her son — her beautiful son ! He is such 
 a noble, splendid fellow ! Oh, it is a dreadful 
 pity !' 
 
 ' Why did he do it ?' 
 
 * Why ? Oh, don't you know ?' 
 
 'No ' 
 
 The door of the room opened as they were 
 speaking, and the nurse's brother beckoned her to 
 come in. 
 
 ' Come to me to-morrow morning at Adden- 
 broke's,' she said. ' Ask for Nurse Brannan ;' and 
 then she went into the room and shut the door. 
 
 Lucy crept guiltily down the stairs. She quite 
 shivered as she passed the Tutor's door : she would 
 not have encountered him for the world. She 
 didn't feel safe until she had got outside the 
 college gate, and then she ran all the way back to 
 Newnham.
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Lucy's secret. 
 
 Lucy felt dreadfully guilty all through that wretched 
 evening. If she had assisted in a murder she 
 couldn't have felt worse. 
 
 She had no appetite for dinner, and when she 
 went back to her room, what was still more un- 
 usual, she had no appetite for her work. A Newn- 
 ham girl is a gourmand where work is concerned ; 
 she may leave her meals untasted, but that terrible 
 craving within creates an appetite that is akin to 
 ravenous where work is concerned. When that 
 craving ceases she goes down — or breaks down. 
 
 It ^had ceased quite suddenly with Lucy ; she 
 hated the very thought of work ; she loathed with 
 an unutterable loathing the sight of those mathe-
 
 LUCrS SECRET 103 
 
 matical books she had brought back from St. 
 Benedict's. She shrank from them with a dread- 
 ful sense of faintness and sickness when she at- 
 tempted to open them. They smelt of blood, or 
 else she fancied they did. 
 
 The air was full of fancies. It was a stormy 
 night, and the wdnd was wailing round her corner 
 of the building, and every now and then a sharp 
 blast of driving rain would strike upon her window. 
 She heard the rain distinctly dropping down the 
 pane like tears, and she fancied — oh, it was a 
 dreadful fancy ! — that it was drops of blood. 
 
 She bore it in that lonely room as long as she 
 could, and then she got up and went out into the pas- 
 sage. The lights were out, and the place was quite 
 still ; everybody had gone to bed. Dark and de- 
 serted as the corridor was, it was not so lonely as her 
 own room. There were girls sleeping behind every 
 one of those closed doors. She heard them — for the 
 ventilators of most were open — breathing audibly, 
 and some were moaning in their sleep. 
 
 Lucy walked up and down the long corridor ; her
 
 I04 THE MASTER OF ST. BENEDICTS 
 
 feet Avere bare, and she had thrown nothing over 
 her shoulders. Cousin Mary would have scolded 
 her dreadfully if she had seen her, with her white 
 garments trailing on the stone floor. 
 
 She never thought of the draughts or the cold 
 stones ; she only thought of getting away from that 
 everlasting drip, drip of the window-pane, that 
 brought the scene of the afternoon so vividly 
 before her. She was nervous and over-wrought, 
 and she was burdened with a secret she ought 
 never to have bound herself to keep. 
 
 "Wild horses shouldn't tear it from her, she told 
 herself, as she paced up and down that draughty 
 passage. "Whatever happened, she would be true 
 to her word. It would be hard if a girl couldn't be 
 trusted as well as a man. What was the use of 
 coming to Newnham if gossip and emptiness — the 
 habits of the slave — still had dominion over 
 her? 
 
 It w^as all very fine and high-sounding ; but she 
 would have given the world to have told some- 
 body, to have eased her overburdened mind and
 
 LUCY'S SECJ^ET 105 
 
 poured out the dreadful story on some soft feminine, 
 sympathetic bosom. • 
 
 And then, while she was telling herself all these 
 fine things, and repeating Lord Tennyson's nice 
 verses about that open fountain that was to wash 
 away all those silly human things and make woman 
 perfect — quite perfect — a strange thing happened. 
 
 She heard the voice of the man praying. He 
 was praying now ; she heard him quite distinctly, 
 but she could not catch the words. She was quite 
 sure it was the voice ; it had sunk down so deep 
 into her ears that she could never forget it. Lucy 
 paused in the darkness and listened. The voice 
 came from a room at the door of which she was 
 standmg. She had no idea, in the darkness, whose 
 room it was ; she was only sure — quite sure — of the 
 voice. 
 
 An overpowering desire to see the speaker — per- 
 haps to get her release — seized her, and she opened 
 the door of the room. 
 
 There was no man there praying ; there was only 
 a girl sitting reading by the light of a shaded lamp,
 
 io6 THE MASTER OF ST. BENEDICT'S 
 
 and she was reading aloud. It was Pamela Gwatkin, 
 and she was reading a Greek play. 
 
 Lucy went a few paces into the room and stood 
 there as if spellbound, listening to the girlish voice, 
 in lowsolemn accents, mouthing the rhythmic Greek. 
 She didn't read it as if it were Wordsworth, or 
 Cowper, or Keats, or even Tennyson ; she mouthed 
 it ; and the noble words, falling in noble cadence, 
 brought back the voice of the man wrestling with 
 God for his friend. 
 
 Pamela heard the door open, and she looked up. 
 She didn't divide the shuddering night with a 
 shrill-edged shriek, and bring all Newnham about 
 her, as she might have done at the sight of the 
 white-robed figure standing in the doorway. She 
 thought it was a girl walking in her sleep, and she 
 got up softly and went towards her. 
 
 For a moment, as she came forward, she saw the 
 figure swaying in the doorway, and as she came 
 nearer Lucy tottered forward with her arms out- 
 stretched like one walking in a dream, and fell 
 upon her bosom — literally fell, with her clinging
 
 LUCY'S SECRET 107 
 
 arms around her, and her head pillowed on 
 Pamela's bosom. 
 
 ' Oh, it is Eric Gwatkin !' she sobbed, ' it is Eric 
 Gwatkin !' 
 
 Pamela got her over to the couch — it ^Yas a bed 
 now, not a couch ; the serge rug had been removed, 
 and a snowy coverlet was in its place, and a real 
 pillow, not a sham roundabout bolster covered with 
 an embroidered dragon. 
 
 Pamela Gwatkin laid the girl down on her own 
 bed and covered her up. She was shaking dread- 
 fully, and her hands and feet were like ice, and she 
 was sobbing hysterically. 
 
 When Pamela had covered her up, she shut the 
 door of the room ; it was no good making a scene 
 and arousing everybody, because a girl — a little 
 weak-minded fresher — had broken down under the 
 strain and got hysterical. All girls get hysterical 
 at times, only the stronger ones lock the door and 
 wrestle with the enemy in secret. 
 
 *0h, Eric Gwatkin!' moaned the girl on the 
 bed. ' I can't keep it any longer ; I must tell !'
 
 io8 THE MASTER OF ST. BENEDICT'S 
 
 ' What have you got to do with Eric Gwatkin ?' 
 Pamela asked severely. ' I am sure he is nothing to 
 you; he is never likely to be anything to anybody.' 
 
 ' Oh yes, he is ! He is everything to — to Wyatt 
 Edgell. He has saved his life. Oh, you don't 
 know what he is to him !' 
 
 ' Saved his life ? What are you talking about ? 
 What has Wyatt Edgell got to do with you, and 
 with Eric ?' 
 
 ' He sewed it ivp — the wound — the dreadful 
 gaping wound !' 
 
 Lucy covered her eyes with her hands to shut out 
 the dreadful sight, and she was trembling so dread- 
 fully that the bed shook with her. Clearly the girl 
 was in a fever, and her mind was wandering. The 
 name of Wyatt Edgell was familiar to Pamela ; it 
 was familiar to everybody in Cambridge. He was 
 the coming Senior Wrangler. What could Eric 
 have to do with him — poor Eric, who was grinding 
 for his ' Special ' ? 
 
 ' What wound ?' said Pamela impatiently ; ' and 
 who sewed it up ?'
 
 LUCY'S SECRET 109 
 
 ' Eric sewed it up, and I helped him. I drew the 
 edges together, while he put the needle in the 
 quivering flesh. Oh, it was horrible !' 
 
 Lucy sank back on the couch, and her lips grew 
 pale, and her cheeks gra}^ and Pamela thought she 
 was going to faint. She hadn't got anything but 
 eau-de-Cologne to give her — not a nip of brandy for 
 the world ; not even a pocket flask is allowed at 
 Newnham. She went to the water- jug and poured 
 out some water in a basin, and dabbed it over the 
 girl's face and hands, and made her own bed 
 streaming. Perhaps there was something in the 
 girl's story, after all ! She couldn't have dreamed 
 these hideous details. 
 
 * Where was the wound ? how had he hurt him- 
 self ?' she asked presently. 
 
 ' He had cut his throat.' 
 
 Pamela let the basin of water she was holding 
 fall on the floor. She didn't scream as any less 
 well-regulated mind would have done, but she let the 
 basin slip out of her hands, and the water made a 
 dreadful mess on the floor.
 
 no THE MASTER OF ST. BENEDICTS 
 
 ' Cut his throat ?' she repeated faintly — she was 
 
 nearly as white as Lucy — ' and Eric ' 
 
 'Eric sewed it up.' 
 
 * Is — is he dead ?' 
 
 She asked the question hoarsely, in a voice Lucy 
 couldn't have recognised for Pamela's, but she was 
 past noticing voices. 
 
 * No — ; Eric has asked God to give him back 
 his life, that he may begin it afresh.' 
 
 ' What use is that ?' said Pamela bitterly. 
 
 * I am sure God heard him — we were praying for 
 him when the nurse came in. He was asking that 
 the nurse might be sent quickly, and she came while 
 the words were on his lips.' 
 
 * Of course the nurse w^ould be sent ; you can get 
 a nurse at any moment from Addenbroke's without 
 praying for one.' 
 
 * Oh, you don't understand !' Lucy moaned ; 
 'you don't know the worst. It had to be done 
 secretly : no one must know. It would ruin him 
 for life if it were known.' 
 
 * You don't mean that they haven't told anyone ?
 
 LUCY'S SECRET in 
 
 that they are trymg to hush it up, and not let the 
 tutors know ?' 
 
 Lucy moaned. 
 
 ' Oh, what folly is this ! I am sure Eric is at the 
 bottom of it.' 
 
 ' Yes ; it was Eric made me promise I wouldn't 
 tell, and I have told you,' Lucy murmured 
 helplessly. 
 
 ' Of course you have told me. Having told me 
 so much, you must tell me all — you must keep 
 nothing back.' 
 
 And so Lucy sat up in the bed with her arms 
 round Pamela — she couldn't have told her without 
 having something to cling to — and told her her 
 wretched little story, and how she had pledged her- 
 self to keep this young man's secret. 
 
 * What do you think I ought to do ?' she asked 
 weakly, when the recital was finished. 
 
 ' Do ?' said Pamela, but she didn't answer the 
 girl's question. She disengaged herself from her 
 clinging arms, and she paced up and down the 
 room, her feet dabbling in the water on the floor.
 
 112 THE MASTER OF ST. BENEDICT'S 
 
 She stopped presently in her walk, her chin up, and 
 her face set with the light of a high resolve upon it 
 towards the light that was breaking in at the east 
 window ; she might have been reciting that Greek 
 pla}'. 'Do?' she repeated, and her face was hard 
 and cold and tired. The old weary look had 
 come back to it — no wonder ; it was three o'clock 
 in the morning. ' Do ? Why, go to bed, of 
 course !' 
 
 She refused to say another word about Lucy's 
 secret. She helped her back to her room, and put 
 her to bed, and tucked her in, and drew back the 
 curtains, that the light of the new day might drive 
 away the ghosts of the night. 
 
 Pamela did all this without speaking a word ; 
 but when she got to the door of Lucy's room she 
 stopped and looked back. She could see from the 
 tremulous motion of the clothes that the girl was 
 weeping, and she went over to the bed and put her 
 cool lips to Lucy's forehead. 
 
 ' Good -night, dear !' she said softly. ' I think 
 you have behaved beautifully !'
 
 CHAPTEE VIII. 
 
 WATTLES. 
 
 As soon as she could get away from Newnliam the 
 next morning, Lucy went to Adclenbroke's to see 
 Nurse Brannan. She couldn't get away very 
 early ; there was a mathematical lecture at nine 
 o'clock that wasn't over till eleven, and she had to 
 plod, plod through those weary diagrams while her 
 mind was far away. Oh, how she hated those 
 problems and riders, and all the dreary, dreary 
 round I She made one or two futile little diagrams 
 on her paper, and then she rubbed them out again, 
 and sat staring at the blackboard, and watching the 
 perplexing white lines come and go while her mind 
 was far away. She was calculating what would 
 happen if the man had died in the night. 
 
 VOL. I. 8
 
 114 THE MASTER OF ST. BENEDICT S 
 
 ' What would they do with the body ? Would 
 Eric Gwatkin expect her to keep the secret, and 
 assist, perhaps, at some mysterious obsequies ?' It 
 was with a distinct feeling of relief she saw 
 the duster sweep over the blackboard and wipe all 
 those cabalistic characters away. It was like 
 wiping out the record of her guilt. 
 
 Lucy shook off the dust and gloom of the lecture- 
 room and ran off to Addenbroke's. She really 
 could run a good part of the way. She went 
 across the Fens, as less frequented, and giving her 
 space to breathe and think. It was such a blue 
 day, and the fresh green of the year was over 
 the low-lying fields, and the chestnut-tree by the 
 bridge was budding, and the pollard willows that 
 marked the winding course of the river were 
 sallow-gray in the sunshine, and the daisies were 
 in bloom. Lucy walked over quite a carpet of 
 flowers ; she crushed the little tender pink buds re- 
 morselessly under her feet in her hurry to get to 
 Addenbroke's. 
 
 She had never been to the hospital before, and
 
 WATTLES 115 
 
 she was rather afraid to go m when she got there. 
 There were a lot of people commg out with newly- 
 bandaged limbs and white faces, and some children 
 were carried in in their mothers' arms. There 
 were people of all ages, men and women, and little 
 children all with that sad patience on their faces 
 which is born of suffering. Lucy was so sorry for 
 the people. She had no idea her heart was still 
 tender ; she had rather prided herself on its growing 
 cold and hard like Maria Stubbs and the rest of the 
 Stoics of Newnham. There was a tired-looking 
 woman coming up the path with a puny little 
 creature in her arms, with, oh ! such a white, white 
 face. Its eyes were open, and it was smiling a 
 wan little smile up into the mother's face, and she 
 was crooning over it ; she was a poor, weakly thing, 
 and she carried it as if even its light weight were 
 too much for her. Lucy turned to look after the 
 sickly mother and the sickly child, and she noticed 
 the child's arm — a lean, puny little arm — had 
 escaped from the shawl in which it was wrapped, 
 and was feebly embracing the mother's waist.
 
 ii6 THE MASTER OF ST. BENEDICVS 
 
 The sight of that small clinging hand brought a 
 rush of tears to her eyes. There was compensation 
 even here ; there was something here between that 
 sickly mother and child — there wasn't much to 
 show for it, only a crooning voice and a wan smile 
 and a little wasted clinging hand — that would last 
 longer than the Stoics, that would last ' to and 
 through the Doomsday fire.' 
 
 Strangely softened by this every-day sight, Lucy 
 crept up the wide stone staircase to find Nurse 
 Brannan. She looked so lost that a man going 
 up, a. medical student, asked her where she was 
 going, and took her to the ward where Miss 
 Brannan was nurse. 
 
 ' I am afraid the doctors are going their rounds,* 
 he said, as he looked in at the door, ' but I will 
 take you into Miss Brannan's room, and you can 
 wait there.' 
 
 He led Lucy through the ward — a large, 
 dehghtful chamber, well lighted and cheerful, and 
 with quite a bank of tall palms and ferns on a
 
 WATTLES 117 
 
 table near the door, an oasis of verdure for tired 
 eyes to feast upon. 
 
 Lucy saw all this at a glance, and she saw also 
 a group of men round a bed, and the nurses stand- 
 ing near, and she crept softly into Nurse Brannan's 
 room. 
 
 She had time before the nurse came to her to 
 see what a nurse's room was like. It was a tiny 
 bit of a room partitioned off the ward, and it 
 seemed all w^alls and ceiling. There was a little 
 floor room, however, and a big window that went 
 nearly up to the ceiling. 
 
 It was not unlike a room in a woman's college, 
 only that there were texts on the walls, and there 
 are no texts on the walls of the Stoics. 
 
 The occupant of the room must have understood 
 Latin and Greek, for there were texts in both these 
 languages. There was one text only in our 
 common tongue, and that was over the mantel- 
 piece. It was not an illuminated text, and it had 
 no lovely floral border. It was written in plain, 
 bold characters in black and white : ' Inasmuch as
 
 n8 THE MASTER OF ST. BENEDICT'S 
 
 ye do it unto the least of these My brethren, ye do 
 it unto Me.' 
 
 Lucy couldn't keep her eyes off those familiar 
 words which she read now in a new light. There 
 wasn't much else in the room to look at. There 
 was a bed that was a couch by day ; it was a bed 
 still, though it was past eleven o'clock ; Nurse 
 Brannan had evidently not long risen from it. 
 The room was in the disorder of the early morning, 
 and the day arrangements did not yet prevail. It 
 was as untidy as a nurse's room well could be : the 
 breakfast things were still on the table, and the 
 demure little bonnet and cloak looked as if they 
 had hastily been taken oft' and thrown on the bed, 
 and a pair of outdoor shoes were lying in the 
 middle of the floor. 
 
 While Lucy was still noticing these details 
 Nurse Brannan came in. 
 
 She was a little bit of a nurse, with pink cheeks 
 and steady blue e5^es and flufty hair. She was not 
 at all a formidable person. 
 
 Lucy ran up to her when she came in, and took
 
 WATTLES 119 
 
 both her hands. She couldn't ask the question 
 that was on her hps, she was moved out of all sense 
 and reason. The anxieties of the night and the 
 mathematics of the morning, and the lean little 
 encircling arm had moved her strangely, and now 
 she was hardly master of herself. 
 
 Nurse Brannan shook her head. 
 
 *He is no better,' she said. 
 
 She didn't say it at all sadly. She was so used 
 to such things — to sickness and suffering and 
 death— it didn't move her in the least. 
 
 ' I have just come back from St. Benedict's, and 
 there is no improvement. He has had a dreadful 
 night. They thought at one time of calling up the 
 Tutor.' 
 
 ' And they have not told him yet ?' Lucy asked, 
 pale to the lips. 'Are they going to let him 
 die?' 
 
 ' They have not told him ; they have not told 
 anyone in the college ; but I don't know about 
 letting him die.' 
 
 ' You think he'll get over it ? Oh, do you really
 
 120 THE MASTER OF ST. BENEDICT'S 
 
 think it possible with that — that dreadful wound 
 he can get better ?' 
 
 Only talking about the wound made Lucy sick 
 and faint. She was made of very poor stuff. She 
 would have been no good at Addenbroke's. 
 
 Nurse Brannan smiled. 
 
 ' The wound is nothing,' she said : ' it is not at 
 all serious. He will get better if he is well 
 watched, and they protect him from himself. 
 When the attack passes off he will not be much 
 the worse — only it may occur again at any 
 time.' 
 
 ' The attack '?' Lucy said feebly ; she was quite 
 at sea as to Nurse Brannan's meaning. 
 
 ' Oh, you didn't know he did it in a fit of delirium 
 tremens. This is the second time he has had an 
 attack, and he has attempted his life both times. 
 His friends ought to take him away and put him 
 under restraint. 
 
 Lucy didn't know what delirium tremens meant ; 
 happily she had been spared all her life from such 
 miserable knowledge. She vaguely knew it was a
 
 WATTLES 121 
 
 ' possession ' of some kind, an awful ' possession ' 
 like that which used to seize the men of old. 
 
 ' You think the fit will pass ?' she said. 
 
 ' Oh yes ; there is no reason why it shouldn't 
 pass, and then the less they say to him about it 
 the better. It would be well if he never knew ; but 
 the scar will remain, they cannot cover up that. 
 There is no reason why he shouldn't be well enough 
 to take his Tripos and go " down." The best thing 
 that can happen to him will be to " go down." ' 
 
 ' Go down ' — he looked very much more like going 
 'up,' Lucy thought, as she recalled the white face 
 on the j)illow ; but she was immensely relieved by 
 the nurse's assurance. 
 
 ' And you have seen him this morning ?' she 
 said. 
 
 ' Yes ; I ran over for a minute directly I got up. 
 I was not up till late. A woman was dying in the 
 ward, and I stayed with her till she died. She did 
 not die till daylight, and then I lay down for a few 
 hours ; and I had just time to snatch some break- 
 fast and run over to St. Benedict's before the
 
 122 THE MASTER OF ST. BENEDICT'S 
 
 doctors came their rounds. I was only just back 
 in time. I had to throw my things down and put 
 on my sh^Dpers — I hadn't even time to put my cap 
 straight. They were waiting for me in the ward 
 when I came back. Oh dear ! what a mess I left 
 my room in !' 
 
 Her pretty plaited nurse's cap, that ought to be 
 worn in the most demure fashion, that ought to be 
 as straight as those lines of that detestable black- 
 board, was all awry, was positively jaunty, and her 
 fluffy hair was quite outrageous. She didn't look 
 the least like a real, staid nurse who is called upon 
 to face death at any moment, and is always doing 
 dreadful disagreeable things. She might have 
 been playing at nursing, only her eyes were steady, 
 and her lips had a great calm about them ; they 
 didn't quiver, and tremble, and curl, and ripple 
 with laughter, like other girls. 
 
 Lucy was almost angry with her for the cool, not 
 to say unfeeling, way in which she spoke of these 
 dread realities — death and suffering. ' She has no 
 heart !' she said to herself as she went back over
 
 WATTLES 123 
 
 the Fens to Newnham. ' Nurses are so used to 
 pain that they have no sympathy. I wouldn't be 
 a nurse for the world ! ' Then she remembered 
 
 the words over the mantelpiece : ' Inasmuch .' 
 
 Was this the secret of that little fluffy, girlish 
 nurse's hardness and endurance ? 
 
 They don't do very much for other people at 
 Newnham ; and they do nothing for each other. 
 They positively ignore each other. Perhaps this 
 is owing to culture — the higher culture — and it 
 hadn't reached Addenbroke's yet. 
 
 Lucy had written to the Tutor of St. Benedict's 
 when she got back the previous day, excusing her- 
 self, in an incoherent fashion, for not keeping her 
 appointment, and promising to come to his rooms 
 at the same hour the next day. 
 
 She knew her wa}^ quite well this time, and she 
 was five minutes before the hour she had appointed. 
 The Senior Tutor's door was closed, and the way 
 was quite clear. There was not a soul on the stair- 
 case ; there was not a soul in the passage. Lucy 
 could not resist the desire to knock at that closed
 
 124 THE MASTER OF ST. BENEDICTS 
 
 door at the end of the passage, and find out for 
 herself how the man was. She hadn't much faith 
 m that thick-skmned Httle nurse ; she would see 
 for herself. 
 
 She knocked at the door at the end of the 
 passage m her futile way, but of course nobody 
 answered. If she had wasted all her strength 
 upon it, it would have been the same thing, as the 
 inmates of that mysterious room only gave admit- 
 tance to privileged individuals upon preconcerted 
 signals. 
 
 Lucy hadn't got the secret of that ' Open 
 sesame,' and she was turning away. She hadn't 
 got to the end of the passage, when the door really 
 did open and someone came out. It was the bed- 
 maker with a tray. Somebody had been having a 
 meal, and she was carrying the debris away. Lucy 
 stopped her at the end of the passage, and the two 
 women stood looking at each other — the bed- 
 maker suspiciously, and Lucy eagerly. There was 
 no mistaking the anxious eagerness in Lucy's eyes. 
 
 ' How is he ?' she asked, more with her eyes
 
 WATTLES 125 
 
 than her Hps, and she laid her detaming hand on 
 the woman's arm. There must have been some 
 Freemasonry in the touch, for the bed-maker 
 softened, and the look of suspicion gave place to 
 one of pity. 
 
 ' He's quieter,' she said in a whisper, drawing 
 Lucy back into the passage, out of sight of the 
 Tutor's door ; ' but he's been orful bad all the 
 morning. As much as two of 'em could do to keep 
 him in bed. It's a sad pity, miss, and such a nice 
 gentleman — there isn't his fellow in the college !' 
 
 The bed-maker sniffed ; she would have wept, no 
 doubt, but she held a tray, and it would have been 
 inconvenient, so she sniffed instead, and regarded 
 Lucy with a watery eye. She evidently thought 
 Lucy was his sweetheart. 
 
 Lucy took a coin from her slender purse and 
 laid it on the tray. She didn't give it to anybody 
 in particular, she only laid it on the tray, and the 
 bed-maker curtsied. 
 
 ' Will you ask Mr. Gwatkin if I may come in ?' 
 she said — ' the lady who was with him yesterday.'
 
 126 THE MASTER OF ST. BENEDICT'S 
 
 She didn't give her name, but the woman knew 
 her quite well — every bed-maker in St. Benedict's 
 knew her. She wasn't the least suriDrised at the 
 Master's niece taking an interest in one of her 
 gentlemen — the nicest gentleman in the college. 
 She had a tender spot in her withered bosom, under 
 that rusty old shawl, and she was quite flustered 
 at an affaire de cctiir on her staircase. 
 
 She toddled back, tray and all, and by a pre- 
 concerted signal the door was opened, and she 
 said a few words to someone inside, and then Eric 
 Gwatkin came out into the passage and led Lucy 
 in and closed the doors behind her. 
 
 He was looking dreadfully tired, she thought, and 
 there were quite deep lines on his face ; he seemed 
 to have aged since yesterday. Perhaps it was with 
 want of sleep, but Lucy put it down at once to 
 his guilty conscience. She was feeling old herself, 
 years older than yesterday. 
 
 'He has had a very bad night,' Eric Gwatkin 
 said, speaking in a low voice and with his lips 
 twitching, * such a night as I pray God I may
 
 WATTLES 127 
 
 never witness again. You were not praying for us 
 last night. You did not pray for him — for me — 
 when you went away.' 
 
 Lucy bowed her head ; she remembered she had 
 not prayed for these men. What were they to her 
 that she should pray for them ? 
 
 She had been walking about the passages and 
 frightening Pamela out of her wits instead, when 
 she ought to have been on her knees. 
 
 The screen had been moved since yesterday ; it 
 had been drawn nearer the bed, so that the middle 
 of the room where they were standing was left 
 clear. 
 
 ' He does not like to see anyone whispering,' 
 Eric explained ; ' he is very suspicious, and the 
 least thing excites him.' 
 
 ' You were alone with him all night ?' Lucy 
 asked, with a perceptible quiver in her voice ; ' you 
 have been up two nights.' 
 
 ' That doesn't matter,' he said, ' I shall have all 
 the strength I need ; but last night he was very 
 violent, and — and I thought I should have to call
 
 128 THE MASTER OF ST. BENEDICTS 
 
 Mr. Colville. It was a great temptation — I could 
 hardly resist it.' 
 
 ' Oh, why didn't yon ?' said Lucy. ' Why do you 
 take all this responsibility upon yourself ?' 
 
 Eric Gwatkin smiled. His smile was not the 
 least like Pamela's. Lucy couldn't help thinking, 
 as she stood there, how it would change Pamela's 
 face and take the weariness out of it if she had 
 that smile. 
 
 * I don't mind the responsibility,' he said, ' or the 
 anxiety, if I can save him. It would be worse than 
 death to him to have it known. Oh, I think you 
 must go home and pray that he may be brought 
 through this, and may be kept for the future. He 
 will need all our prayers.' 
 
 * What on earth are you whispering about, 
 Wattles ? I wish you would speak so that a fellow 
 can hear what you are saying.' 
 
 The voice came from behind the screen — an 
 impatient voice, not weak by any means. 
 
 ' All right, old man ; Miss Kae has come to ask 
 how you are. He saw you yesterday,' he said,
 
 WATTLES 129 
 
 turning to Lucy and speaking in a lower voice ; ' he 
 remembered you quite well.' 
 
 'It's awfully good of you,' Wyatt Edgell said as 
 Lucy came from behind the screen ; ' I'm afraid we 
 don't look like receiving visitors. Old Wattles 
 here insists upon making a mess.' 
 
 He was lying back on the pillow with a wet 
 bandage round his head, and a basin of lotion and 
 some rags on a chair beside the bed. His shirt 
 was torn open as if in a struggle, and his chest was 
 bare. There was a scarf round his throat, a large 
 silk scarf striped with the colours of his college 
 thcit concealed wdiatever was beneath. Lying 
 there with his head thrown back and those wet 
 bandages, and his chest open — his splendid manly 
 chest with all the muscles exposed — he looked 
 like a man stricken down wdth fever, or some 
 head trouble ; no one would have guessed what 
 the scarf thrown so loosely around his neck con- 
 cealed. 
 
 ' I am so glad you are better,' said Lucy softly, 
 coming over to the bed and bending over him ; 
 
 VOL. I. 9
 
 I30 THE MASTER OF ST. BENEDICT'S 
 
 * you ought to get ^Yell soon, you have got such a 
 good nurse.' 
 
 ' Old AVattles, yes ; he's very well, only he persists 
 m keepmg me m such a mess.' 
 
 He took the bandages off his head as he spoke, 
 and rolled them up into a ball, and flung them to 
 the other end of the room, where they rolled under 
 a heavy piece of furniture, and Wattles, or Gwatkin 
 rather, had to go on his knees and fish them 
 out. 
 
 'There!' he said, 'that will give Wattles an 
 excuse for going on his knees. He has been going 
 on his knees all night. He would be a good fellow 
 if he weren't always preaching and praying.' 
 
 He rolled his head impatiently on one side, and 
 flung the pillow after the bandages, and Lucy, 
 looking down upon him, saw a dark light in his 
 eyes she had never seen in any e^^es before. It 
 wasn't exactly terror, but it was disgust and loath- 
 ing and impatience. 
 
 ' I beg your pardon,' he said, ' but there was a 
 creature on that — a toad. I hate toads !' He
 
 WATTLES 131 
 
 shuddered as he spoke, and his eves followed the 
 direction of the pillow. ' It's there now ! I wish 
 Wattles would put it outside. It's been here all 
 night.' 
 
 Gwatkin took up the pillow and shook it, and 
 appeared to take something off it, and opened the 
 window and made a gesture as if he had thrown 
 the thing into the court below. 
 
 ' There, old man,' he said reassuringly, ' it's gone 
 now. It can't trouble you any more.' 
 
 And then he brought back the pillow, and Lucy 
 put it under the poor fellow's head while he sup- 
 ported it, and she arranged it and smoothed it as 
 only a woman's hand can arrange a pillow. 
 
 When she had done this, she put on the wet 
 bandages afresh and bathed his head, and as she 
 bathed it the dark light seemed to fade out of his 
 eyes. 
 
 'You are very good,' he said with a sigh; 'you 
 have exorcised that hideous little beast. It is gone 
 now ' — and he looked round the room fearfully - 
 * quite gone.'
 
 132 THE MASTER OF ST BENEDICTS 
 
 'Thank God!' said Gwatkin. 'Your visit has 
 done some good, Miss Kae, if it has dispelled that 
 hideous nightmare that has been pursuing him all 
 night. I think he will sleep now.' 
 
 'I'm sure you ought to sleep yourself,' Lucy 
 said, as she suddenly remembered the time and 
 began dragging on her gloves. ' It is quite gone,' 
 she said to Edgell, bending down over the bed ; ' I 
 am going to pick it up as I go out and carry it 
 away.' 
 
 Having told this little fib, she went out, and 
 Gwatkin closed the two doors after her. 
 
 She had to tell another fib or two when she went 
 into the Tutor's room. He had been waiting for 
 her exactly fifteen minutes, and he had waited an 
 hour the day before. 
 
 She was absent and distrait all through the 
 lesson ; she was thinking about the man in the 
 next room, and the creature she had promised to 
 pick up in the court. 
 
 The Senior Tutor had never coached such an 
 unpromising pupil. She would never get through
 
 WATTLES 133 
 
 her Little-go, he told himself — never, never. She 
 would get plucked to a certainty. 
 
 Oh, it would never do for the future Mistress of 
 St. Benedict's to be plucked ! 
 
 He debated with himself while he was bending 
 over her, and remarking what a dainty little profile it 
 was, and how the little rings of chestnut hair 
 clustered on her forehead, and how clear, how 
 deliciously transparent, was the carnation tint of 
 her cheek, and the shapely curve of her throat — 
 such a little throat he could clasp it with his hand 
 — he debated with himself, as he remarked these 
 quite every- day things that no man in his senses 
 except an old bachelor Fellow of a college would 
 have noticed, whether it would not be better to 
 settle the thmg at once, and stop all this unprofit- 
 able work. 
 
 If Lucy knew what was before her, she would 
 have other opportunities of fitting herself for her 
 high position besides poring over mathematics, for 
 which she clearly had no vocation. 
 
 ' I'm afraid you find the work rather hard,' he
 
 134 THE MASTER OF ST. BENEDICT'S 
 
 said with a preliminary ' H'm ' and ' Ah ' to clear 
 his throat. He didn't know exactly how to begin. 
 What comes by nature at thirty is uncommonly 
 hard at sixty. It is like going in again for a hurdle- 
 race, or taking the high jump. He could have 
 done it easily years ago, but he couldn't do it now. 
 He stopped with that preliminary ' Ah.' 
 
 ' Yes,' said Lucy, ' it is not very easy, but I am 
 going to work eight hours a day. It is more than a 
 month to the exam. ; if I work very hard eight 
 hours every day, I think I may manage it.' 
 
 Eight hours a day for a whole month ! She was 
 so much in earnest ; and when she lifted her little 
 pale drooping face to his, with just a suspicion of a 
 tear on her eyelashes, he was really sorry for her. 
 He was very near taking her in his arms and kiss- 
 ing away that fugitive tear and settling the matter 
 — he was never nearer in his life. 
 
 Perhaps it was the best thing he could have 
 done, but he missed the chance, and Lucy picked 
 up her books and began to talk about the work she 
 was to prepare for the next lesson.
 
 WATTLES 135 
 
 ' I wouldn't work eight hours a day,' he said ; 
 *you ^Yill get through easier than that. I would 
 give an extra two hours to tennis.' 
 
 He had never given a man this advice — perhaps 
 it was not needed. He watched her, out of his 
 window, cross the court. She did not happen to 
 pick up the thing by the way as she had promised. 
 Her step was less elastic, he noticed, than it used 
 to be, and her face was paler — paler and thinner. 
 She would never, never be young again, and life 
 would never open afresh. There is only one 
 young life, one time of roses, one sweet blossoming 
 time, and it was just a question in the Tutor's 
 mind, as he watched Lucy cross the court, whether 
 the loss of this were worth all the mathematics 
 in the world.
 
 CHAPTEE IX. 
 
 A WOMAN S PAELIAMENT. 
 
 Lucy saw Pamela Gwatkin once only during the 
 day, and that was at dinner. She only caught 
 a far-off glimpse of her at the High table. Pamela 
 very often sat at the ' High ' among the Dons. 
 The younger Dons were very fond of her : her 
 opinions kept pace with theirs — they were very ad- 
 vanced opinions — and sometimes they outran them. 
 She would be a Don herself some day, and she 
 would be a pioneer in quite a new school of 
 thought. 
 
 Lucy watched her with a feeling of awe as she 
 sat among those great minds eating gooseberry pie — 
 Lucy wouldn't have sat there for the world. The
 
 A WOMAA^'S PARLIAMENT 137 
 
 presence of so much learning \Yonld have taken 
 away her appetite. The presence of the Master of 
 St. Benedict's at the dinner-table never took awa}^ 
 her appetite, but the dear old thing never talked 
 above her head. He was very fond of recalling 
 those old days, as he sat at meat, when Dick — not • 
 Lucy's father, but her great-grandfather — used to 
 drive a team afield, and his good wife kept the 
 stall in the butter market. 
 
 But the President and the Dons of ' Newe ' ^ 
 never discussed such commonplace topics. They 
 talked of literature, philosophy, science, wdth a 
 fine breadth of liEindling which is peculiar to a 
 woman's college. Pamela Gwatkin w^as in her right 
 place among them. 
 
 There was the weekly political meeting held after 
 Hall — a little miniature House of Commons — where 
 the affairs of the nation were discussed, a fore- 
 taste of what will be by-and-by, wdien things are 
 rearranged. 
 
 When the House took its seat at nine o'clock, 
 Lucy found herself in the Opposition, and a long
 
 way off from the benches occupied by the Govern- 
 ment of the country. 
 
 Lucy only represented an insignificant little 
 borough that nobody else would stoop to represent. 
 She had a little freehold in it — her only freehold — 
 six feet of earth beneath the east window of her 
 father's church at Thorpe Eegis. Most people 
 have a freehold of this sort, but it does not always 
 give them a voice in the affairs of the nation. Lucy 
 was returned unopposed on the strength of her little 
 freehold, and as her views, if she had any, were not 
 at all advanced, she found herself in the minority. 
 
 Pamela Gwatldn, or, as the girls called her, 
 Newnham Assurance, was the Leader of the House, 
 and Annabel Crewe Secretary for the Colonies, and 
 Capability Stubbs had been unanimously elected 
 Chancellor of the Exchequer ; every girl that was 
 worth anything had a place in the Cabinet. 
 
 Lucy hadn't much interest in the business that 
 was going on, and she took out her knitting and 
 turned the heel of a sock while the great affairs of 
 the State were being discussed.
 
 A WOMAN'S PARLIAMENT 139 
 
 It was quite clear from what she did gather 
 from the speeches on the Ministerial side that 
 the country had been misgoverned long enough 
 by the feeble race of men. It was quite time there 
 w^as a change. A great deal of time had been lost ; 
 ages had been lost in the history of the world. 
 Men had been first in the field ; women took a 
 longer time to ripen. They had ripened now ; 
 they were quite, quite ripe ; they were ready for 
 the change. 
 
 Oh, it was beautiful to hear the girls speak ! 
 There is an idea among narrow-minded people that 
 debating societies encourage volubility of speech. 
 Perhaps they do among men, and the practice of 
 public speaking is apt to make them too loquacious, 
 too apt to air their elementary knowledge and 
 crude information in senseless verbiage. But 
 garrulity is not the sin of the students of colleges 
 for women. They not only know a great deal 
 more than men know, but they have the delightful 
 gift of ready and accurate language. They do not 
 haggle and hesitate, and ' H'm ' and ' Ah,' and have
 
 I40 THE MASTER OF ST. BENEDICT'S 
 
 that dreadful difficulty in finding words that even 
 prevails in a real House of Commons. 
 
 It was remarkable t® see with what ease the 
 Newnham girls handled those topics which old- 
 fashioned legislators have been puzzling over 
 Session after Session. There was a certain fine 
 breadth in their way of handling them that would 
 have taken a Conservative Leader's (the Leader of a 
 real House of Commons) breath away. 
 
 It didn't take anybody's breath away in the 
 Ladies' Parliament. Everybody knitted and 
 listened unmoved, and when eleven o'clock came 
 two very important Bills that had been brought 
 forward from last Session were advanced a stage. 
 
 There was an exciting division before the House 
 separated, that resulted in an overwhelming 
 majority for the motion, ' That the Legal Pro- 
 fession and the Church be thrown open to women.' 
 
 That foolish little Lucy voted in the minority; 
 there were not a dozen girls in Newnham who 
 showed such a poor spirit, and of these five, it was 
 rumoured, were engaged to curates.
 
 A WOjMAN'S parliament 141 
 
 The girls ran off to their rooms ^Yhen the sitting 
 of the House was ended in the highest possible 
 spirits. Some of them gang snatches of songs, 
 and some caught each other round the waist and 
 waltzed madly down corridors. The thing was 
 practically settled. The Bar and the Church opened 
 vistas, immense vistas, for every sort of talent, 
 and especially for the kind of talent that Newnham 
 produced. 
 
 There would have to be more colleges for women 
 — Newnham and Girton could not turn out nearly 
 enough — there would have to be a great many 
 Xewnhams. Some girls, no doubt, sat down at 
 once and began to prepare a sermon, and others 
 took down Blackstone and began seriously to study 
 law. 
 
 Lucy went back to her room alone. The 
 Chancellor of the Exchequer, though she ' kept ' 
 next door, wouldn't take the slightest notice of her. 
 She had lighted her lamp, and was just thinking 
 what she would give for a cup of tea, when someone 
 knocked at her door. It wasn't a girl with a cup of
 
 142 THE MASTER OF ST. BENEDICTS 
 
 tea, as she hoped it might be — the Chancellor of the 
 Exchequer, with all her fine airs, generall}^ brought 
 her in a cup of tea before she went to bed, and some- 
 times she condescended to sit down for five minutes 
 and discuss the burning questions of the day. It 
 was not the Chancellor of the Exchequer — it 
 was a far greater person — it was the Leader of the 
 House. 
 
 ' Well ?' she said, when she came in and had 
 shut the door after her — ' well ?' 
 
 She had come in so suddenly,. and Lucy's mind 
 was so full of the motion of the evening — this 
 Parliamentary business was quite a new thing 
 to her, and she had taken it au serieux — that she 
 could not collect herself sufficiently to think what 
 Pamela meant. Her mind was so full of the lady 
 curates and the female barristers that she looked 
 up at the Leader of the House in bewilderment. 
 
 'Well,' said Pamela impatiently, 'how is he? I 
 saw by your face at Hall that he was not dead. Is 
 he going to get well ?' 
 
 Then Lucy remembered all about it.
 
 A WOJl/AN'S PARLIAMENT 143 
 
 'Oh dear!' she said, 'how could I have for- 
 gotten ! Yes, he is going to get well, I think. 
 He will owe his life if he does to Eric. Oh, 
 Eric has heen lovely !' 
 
 ' Eric has done no more than anyone else 
 would have done,' Pamela said coldly; 'no more 
 than a woman would have done if a woman had 
 been in his place.' 
 
 ' I don't think a woman could have done what 
 Eric has done,' Lucy said. 
 
 She was thinking of those stitches he had put in, 
 and how he had struggled with the poor fellow all 
 night, and how he had been watching and praying 
 beside him for two whole nights and days. 
 
 Nurse Brannan would have done as much as 
 most women, but she would not have done all 
 this. 
 
 = Oh, you don't know what women can do!' 
 Pamela said, with a little curl of her lip. Her 
 lips were so thin and so hard — such crisp lips that 
 they couldn't help curling. ' You are only a 
 fresher ; when you have been here three years
 
 144 THE MASTER OF ST. BENEDICT'S 
 
 you will have found out what a woman can do. 
 He would never have cut his throat if a woman had 
 been near him.' 
 
 'No,' said Lucy eagerly, ' I am sure he wouldn't 
 — not if a woman he loved had been near. Oh 
 dear ! you should have seen the wistfulness in his 
 poor eyes when I put the wet bandage on his head ! 
 It was enough to melt one's heart. Eric says he 
 will be sure to do it again — at least, that we must 
 never leave off praying for him. I am sure that 
 there is only one thing that can save him from 
 doing it again.' 
 
 ' Only one thing ?' Pamela repeated, with just an 
 inflection of scorn in her voice. ' And what is this 
 panacea for his wickedness and folly? What is 
 this fine thing that is to save him from himself '?' 
 
 ' Don't speak of it so lightly ; it is not a little 
 thing !' 
 
 There were tears in Lucy's voice as she spoke, 
 and in her eyes. She had the picture before her of 
 the strong man, with his beautiful bare chest, and 
 his splendid frame, and those wistful eyes, and the
 
 A WOMAN'S PARLIAMENT 145 
 
 loathing and the dread with ^Yhich he shrank from 
 the creature on his pillow. The pity of it was 
 strong upon her, and she was deeply moved. 
 
 'A great love would save him — the love of a 
 good woman. He would do a great thing for a 
 woman he loved ; he would make any sacrifice. I 
 don't think anything else w^ould save him.' 
 
 The Leader of the House of Commons turned 
 from white to pink. Lucy might have been talking 
 about her. She wore a very pretty white gown of 
 some soft silky stuff, and it was folded across the 
 bosom, and the folds heaved up and down as Lucy 
 spoke, as if she were breathing heavily. 
 
 ' Perhaps he has done this for a woman's sake,' 
 she said bitterly. ' Men are such fools ! they will do 
 anything for a woman's sake — not always a worthy 
 woman.' 
 
 ' I am sure he has not !' said Lucy hotly. ' He 
 has been working too hard, and he has broken 
 down. I heard at the lodge that he was working 
 ten hours a day ; that he was certain to come out 
 first. Oh, you don't know how they are building 
 
 VOL. T. 10
 
 146 THE MASTER OF ST BENEDICT'S 
 
 upon him at St. Benedict's ! It isn't a woman — it's 
 overwork.' 
 
 Pamela smiled. 
 
 ' You are a capital champion, my dear, only 
 don't suffer yourself to get too much interested in 
 this foolish young man ; it will interfere with your 
 work. You must not make a mistake and let pity 
 drift into — love.' 
 
 She made a little pause before the word, and 
 the colour came again into her cheeks. She looked 
 ever so much prettier talking about pity — and love 
 — than she did speaking on those troublesome 
 Bills that had already occupied the time of two 
 Sessions. 
 
 ' Oh, he is never likely to love me !' said Lucy. 
 * He could only love his equal ; no one else would 
 have any influence over him. He would only love 
 a queen among women.' 
 
 ' Perhaps he has found his queen already. Most 
 men have before they are twenty- three.' 
 
 The colour went out of the girl's face, and the 
 cold light came back into her eyes, and her lips,
 
 A WOMAN'S PARLIAMENT 147 
 
 that a moment before were tremulous and tender, 
 ^Yere hard and firm. 
 
 ' I wouldn't go too often to Mr. Edgell's rooms, if 
 I were you, dear,' she said when she went away. 
 * The authorities would make a fuss if they heard 
 of it. We are not supposed, you know, to visit a 
 man's room without a chaperon. I don't think it 
 would do to take a chaperon there. If you have 
 any more interest in him, I will find out for you 
 how he is going on from Eric' 
 
 ' Thank you,' said Lucy warmly ; ' I can find 
 out for myself. I can hear all about the St. 
 Benedict's men at the lodge.' 
 
 She was quite frightened at herself for speaking 
 in that way to the Prime Minister. She had got 
 into the way now, since she had been at Newnham, 
 of taking her own part ; she was beginning to have 
 no respect for dignities.
 
 CHAPTEK X. 
 
 'that confounded cucumbee !' 
 
 Lucy didn't go to Wyatt Edgell's room again. She 
 caught sight of the friendly bed-maker once or 
 twice on the staircase when she went to Mr. Col- 
 ville's room to be coached in mathematics, and she 
 held a little whispered conference with her on the 
 stairs. 
 
 Edgell was better : he was up again and at work — 
 working very hard, the woman said (and bed- 
 makers know something about work). He was 
 ' going on as quiet and as steady as any gentleman 
 on the staircase.' This verdict from such a quarter 
 was as good as a college testimonial. 
 
 When there is a mixed University, and a lady 
 President at the lodge, and a female Vice- Chan-
 
 ' THAT CONFOUNDED CUCUMBER!' 149 
 
 cellor, and the affairs of the Senate are conducted 
 by dowagers, bed-makers will no doubt be required 
 to sign college testimonials. 
 
 The first time Lucy saw Wyatt Edgell after that 
 day when she put the wet bandage round his head, 
 and promised to pick up the dreadful thing Eric 
 had thrown out of window, and carry it away with 
 her, was at the college chapel. 
 
 It was a fortnight after the day when she had 
 picked him out from among all the men of St. 
 Benedict's as Pamela Gwatkin's brother. He was 
 sitting in the same place, and he was very little 
 changed ; he was paler, Lucy thought, and he was 
 muffled up round the throat for that warm May 
 day. She couldn't help looking at him. Her 
 eyes would wander over to the bench where he sat, 
 do what she would to keep them fixed in quite an 
 opposite direction. 
 
 The Master took such a long time over the 
 Litany that morning. He had read it for so many 
 years in that college chapel, Sunday after Sunday, 
 but he had never read it so slowly as he was read-
 
 I50 THE MASTER OF ST. BENEDICrS 
 
 ing it to-day. The men yawned and fidgeted as 
 he read, and the old fellows m the stalls opposite 
 looked across with grave, questioning eyes— they 
 would have to elect another Master shortly — and 
 the women-folk kneeling by his side looked up 
 anxiously ; but Lucy's eyes had wandered again to 
 the end seat on the last bench, while her lips were 
 murmuring : 
 
 ' " That it may please Thee to raise up them 
 that fall, and finally to beat down Satan under 
 our feet."' 
 
 Wyatt Edgell looked up while she was praying 
 for him — she was distinctly praying for him, she 
 had prayed this very prayer for him every night 
 and morning since Eric had told her how he 
 needed her prayers — and their eyes met. 
 
 Lucy was covered with confusion. She was 
 quite sure in that swift momentary glance that he 
 had read her inmost thoughts. She was ashamed 
 that he should know that she had been praying all 
 this time that he should be strengthened and com- 
 forted and helped and picked up again when he
 
 ' THA T CONFO UNDED CUCUMBER / ' 151 
 
 fell, and that the enemy should be beaten down 
 under his feet. She never looked at that end 
 of the chapel again all the rest of the service. 
 
 It was over at last — the long, long Litany and 
 the slow, faltering prayers : the men need not have 
 been so restless, they would not hear them much 
 longer. The old walls would echo another voice 
 soon, and the feeble lips would be repeating another 
 Litany elsewhere. 
 
 The old college chapel was full of echoes and 
 shadows ; there would be another shadow shortly, 
 and the echo of a tremulous, quavering voice w^ould 
 join those other ancient echoes in the roof. It was 
 a dark, gloomy old chapel ; it had been built for 
 hundreds of years, and it was full of old memories. 
 Every bench and stall and desk had a memory of 
 its own, stretching back, far back, into quite early 
 ages — memories of old Masters and Fellows and 
 scholars and undergraduates who had worshipped 
 there through, oh ! so many generations. 
 
 There was a musty smell of old Masters rising up 
 from the vaults beneath and pervading the chapel,
 
 152 THE MASTER OF ST. BENEDICT'S 
 
 and in the ante- chapel beyond there were monu- 
 ments on the walls, and brasses — quite lovely old 
 brasses — on the pavement, and great hideous tombs 
 of long dead and gone Masters and Fellows. It 
 was touching to see how they were forgotten after 
 a generation or two ; how even their very tomb- 
 stones were hidden away in a corner, and covered 
 up with organ pipes. There was the marble effigy 
 of an old, old Master, whose learning and virtues 
 were recited in a long Latin epitaph on an elaborate 
 tablet hidden away behind the organ. 
 
 Everyone had forgotten him years ago, and his 
 old monument was in the way, and so they had 
 covered it up. Music is so much more delightful 
 than old memories. They will all be swept away 
 soon, and a new chapel will be built. There will 
 be no old memories and old ghosts and old storied 
 windows, no decaying woodwork or musty odour of 
 old Masters. It will all be fresh and bright and 
 sweet- smelling and shiny as new paint and varnish 
 can make it, and there will be a new organ with 
 electric stops. It will be dark and shadowy no
 
 ' THA T CONFOUNDED CUCUMBER P 1 53 
 
 longer ; the old echoes and the old ghosts will all be 
 scared away — they will vanish quite away in the 
 blaze of the new electric lamps with which the 
 chapel will be lighted. 
 
 Lucy vanished out of the college chapel almost 
 as rapidly as the ghosts will by-and-by. She did 
 not linger in the cloisters to-day. She hurried 
 back to the lodge, and left Cousin Mary and the 
 Master's wife to toddle back beside the Master. 
 
 * How do you think your uncle looks to-day, my 
 dear ?' the old lady asked Lucy when they had got 
 him safely back to the lodge, and had put him in 
 his great armchair, and given him some wine. 
 
 There was a shade of anxiety in her voice as she 
 asked the question. Lucy hadn't seen the Master 
 for a week, so she might have been expected to 
 notice any change in him. 
 
 ' Oh, I think he looks lovely, aunt ! He walked 
 back from chapel quite strong.' 
 
 Mrs. Eae shook her head ; she was not quite con- 
 vinced. 
 
 ' There were two of us supporting him, my dear,
 
 154 THE MASTER OF ST. BENEDICTS 
 
 one on either side, and I thought he leant rather 
 heavily.' 
 
 He had nearly crushed the poor little soul into 
 the ground ; she could not have supported his 
 weight a dozen steps more. 
 
 ' Perhaps you are not so strong yourself to-day, 
 auntie dear ; you are looking pale. Most likely 
 the weakness is yours, and you are not so well able 
 to bear his weight. He always leans heavily ; I 
 often wonder how you and Mary can keep him up !' 
 
 'Perhaps so, my dear. I hope it maybe so!' 
 But still the cloud on the dear old face did not 
 quite vanish. ' I fancied that his reading in 
 chapel was slower to-day than usual — that his 
 voice was weak. Did you notice it ?' 
 
 ' Oh yes ; I noticed that he read lovely ! I never 
 heard him read so well as he read to-day.' 
 
 ' You really think so ? I am very glad ! The 
 fault must be in me. I don't think I am quite so 
 strong to-day — I can't expect to be at my age ; but 
 I am very glad there is nothing unusual the matter 
 with the Master. You would have been quite sure
 
 ' THA T CONFO UNDED CUCUMBER P 155 
 
 to have noticed it, my dear, if there had been, as 
 you haven't seen him for a week.' 
 
 She kissed that mendacious Httle Lucy and 
 tottered out of the room. She was very feeble 
 to-day — perhaps the Master's weight had been too 
 much for her ; but there was quite a glad smile on 
 her patient face. She was so happy, the brave old 
 soul, to feel that the weakness was hers, not his. 
 
 AYyatt Edgell went back straight from chapel to 
 his own rooms. He met Eric coming out of 
 chapel, and they went back together. 
 
 ' Where have I seen that girl before ?' he asked 
 Eric when they got back to the room. 
 
 ' Oh, you've often seen her in chapel. She's the 
 Master's niece, or grand-niece, or something of the 
 kind,' said Eric evasively. 
 
 But the other was not so easily put off. 
 
 ' I have seen her somewhere else, besides in 
 chapel,' he said thoughtfully. ' I've seen her in 
 this room. I've seen her beside my bed. Good 
 heavens ! Wattles, you didn't let that girl in — 
 when — when '
 
 156 THE MASTER OF ST. BENEDICT'S 
 
 * When you weren't quite yourself, old man,' 
 said Eric cheerfully, filling up the gap. * What on 
 earth should the Master's niece come in here for ? 
 Be reasonable, and don't ask such foolish things !' 
 
 * Foolish or not, I'll be hanged if I didn't see her 
 in this room, standing where you stand now ! You 
 may as well tell the truth, Wattles. You may as 
 well say you called her in and showed her the 
 spectacle !' 
 
 He was a very determined-looking young man, 
 and he didn't look like one to be trifled with, as he 
 stood with his back to the empty fireplace, leaning 
 against the mantelpiece, and his great hands stuck 
 down well in his pockets. 
 
 * Dear old man, you may take my word for it : 
 I did not call her in ; I should as soon have 
 thought of calling the Master in !' 
 
 ' I wish to Heaven you had called the Master in 
 — I should have known the worst then ; but for 
 this girl to see me — in — in that state !' 
 
 He paused and groaned, and two upright lines 
 came out on his forehead.
 
 * THAT CONFOUNDED CUCUMBER r 157 
 
 * Yon take too much for granted, old man,' said 
 the other ; but he couldn't put any heartiness into 
 his voice. ' Haven't I told j^ou that not a soul in 
 the college but Brannan and myself came into the 
 room — while — while you were ill ?' 
 
 ' Yes,' said the other moodily — ' not a soul in the 
 college; but this girl from Newnham came in. 
 I'll swear it ! I saw it in her eyes.' 
 
 It was no use Eric pretending. Edgell was not 
 in a mood to be trifled with. He was a great big, 
 determined fellow. He could have taken Eric up 
 and flung him to the other end of the room with 
 the same ease with which he had flung the pillow. 
 
 'Go on,' he said moodily; 'go on, and tell me 
 all about it. Tell me why this girl came in, and 
 the spectacle she saw. Let me know exactly the 
 degradation to which I have sunk !' 
 
 There was no help for it. Eric had to tell him 
 all about Lucy's visit — Lucy's second visit ; he 
 didn't say anything about the first. How could he 
 tell the poor fellow that she had come in at that 
 dreadful time ; that it was her hands that had
 
 158 THE MASTER OF ST. BENEDICTS 
 
 wiped up all the traces of his crime ; that it was 
 she who had helped him when he had put those 
 stitches in that gaping wound in his throat ! 
 
 Eric told him quite enough. His head had 
 fallen forward on his breast, and he looked a pic- 
 ture of despondency. A despondent giant of six 
 feet, with a great broad chest, and big muscular 
 limbs, and a splendid head splendidly set on a 
 splendid full white throat — it was muffled up now, 
 but it was as white and shapely as a woman's 
 beneath the crisp, close-cut whisker curling down 
 below the cheek. His chin and his great square 
 jaw were close-shaven, but there was a thin, slight, 
 crisp moustache on his upper lip, and his short 
 hair curled crisply at the edges. He wore it parted 
 in the middle, not very neatly parted, and tossed 
 back off his forehead. Everything about him 
 denoted strength and courage — such a man could 
 not be despondent long. 
 
 'Then she knows the worst,' he said — 'the very 
 worst. There is nothing else she has got to learn 
 about me. There is only one thing to be done,
 
 'THAT CONFOUNDED CUCUMBER P 159 
 
 Wattles, with a girl who knows so much about me : 
 I must marry her. You must introduce me again, 
 old man, and I shall make her an offer, and — and 
 she will marr}^ me.' 
 
 His gloom and depression had quite gone, and 
 he was smiling again. He was a delightful fellow 
 when he smiled. Not a man in the college could 
 resist that delightful smi'e ; it disarmed the wrath 
 of all the Dons, and it won the hearts of bed- 
 makers. 
 
 * Marry her!' said Eric, turning quite pale. 
 * Dear old man, don't be in such a hurry. Think 
 it over. She isn't the sort of woman for you, Edgell.' 
 
 Wyatt Edgell laughed. His laugh was a full- 
 blown edition of his smile; but Gwatkin looked 
 serious. 
 
 ' Perhaps you'll tell me, Wattles, what is the 
 sort of woman for me.' 
 
 ' Oh, I wouldn't pretend to say ; only, old man, 
 don't trifle with this poor little thing. She's the 
 sort of girl to break her heart for a man. I 
 wouldn't break her heart if I were you.'
 
 i6o THE MASTER OF ST. BENEDICTS 
 
 'Perhaps she'll break mine,' said Edgell dryly; 
 and then he sat down and ate his lunch which 
 the bed-maker had already spread out on the 
 table. 
 
 It was a very nice college lunch. It was not 
 tinned beef, or brawn, or tongue, or any question- 
 able dainty that had been soldered up a year or 
 two in a metal case. It was a lovely head and 
 shoulders of salmon, and it had been judiciously 
 pickled, and there was cucumber cut up in a dish 
 — little delicate flakes of cucumber which Edgell 
 ate with the healthy returning appetite of a man 
 who had long been denied this delicacy. 
 
 The salmon was followed by a chicken and a 
 ham, to which he also applied himself with the 
 same zest. The edge was quite taken off his 
 appetite, when Eric pushed these things aside and 
 set a jelly just freshly turned out of a mould 
 before him. 
 
 'I don't want any of that stuff,' he said, and he 
 pushed over his glass in the direction of the claret. 
 
 ' I don't think I'd take any more, old man,'
 
 ' THA T CONFOUNDED CUCUMBER P i6i 
 
 said Eric ; ' you've already had four glasses. I 
 wouldn't have any more. Have a soda?' 
 
 'I'll be hanged if I do !' said the other doggedly, 
 * unless you put some brandy in it. I must have a 
 nip of brandy, Wattles. I'm sure that cucumber 
 has disagreed with me. I haven't had any cucum- 
 ber for an age, and it never did agree with me.' 
 
 Eric got up and unlocked a cupboard, and took 
 out a liqueur-bottle more than half full of brandy, 
 and poured a small — a very small — quantity into a 
 glass, and filled it up with seltzer-water. 
 
 He had put the bottle back into the cupboard 
 and the key into his pocket, and was putting on 
 bis gown to go out. He always took a service 
 somewhere in the country, or did some open-air 
 preaching on Sunday afternoons, and he was in a 
 hurry to get away. 
 
 ' I wish you'd leave that key behind you. Wattles,' 
 Edgell called out when he got to the door. ' That 
 confounded cucumber or the pickled salmon has 
 disagreed with me. I may want the key before 
 you come back.' 
 
 VOL. I. * 11
 
 i62 THE MASTER OF ST. BENEDICT'S 
 
 Eric took the key out of his pocket rekictantly 
 and laid it on the mantelpiece. 
 
 'You'll be careful, old man,' he said ; 'you'll be 
 sure to be careful. Eemember ' 
 
 'Shut up!' said the other angrily. 'Do you 
 think I'm such a fool ?' 
 
 Eric went out and shut the door. When he 
 came back two hours later the liqueur-bottle was 
 on the table empty, and Edgell was breathing 
 heavily on the floor. 
 
 It was all that confounded pickled salmon and 
 cucumber !
 
 CHAPTEK XI. 
 
 IN THE fellows' GARDEN. 
 
 That mendacious little Lucy, in spite of all her 
 assurances to the Master's wife, was a little anxious 
 about the Master. He had not taken his dinner 
 with his usual appetite ; he had scarcely eaten a 
 morsel, and he had not had his usual nap after. 
 
 He had left half the wine in his glass, and he 
 had got up from the table earlier than usual ; but 
 he had not fallen asleep in his chair after, as was 
 his wont. He had sat talking lo Lucy all the 
 afternoon about the old time. His memory was 
 wonderfully clear about the things that had hap- 
 pened, oh ! so long ago — more than half a century 
 before she was born — and he talked to her about 
 them as if they had happened yesterday.
 
 i64 THE MASTER OF ST. BENEDICTS 
 
 He was always so glad to see Cousin Dick's little 
 daughter ; she brought back the past to him, and 
 seemed a link between the old far-off time and the 
 present. He recalled to-day his very earliest years, 
 his first remembrances. He recalled the time 
 when his brother Dick carried him on his shoulders 
 to the fair. 
 
 ' It was Midsummer Fair, my dear,' he • ex- 
 plained, ' and your father left off work early ; he 
 was very fond of fairs, and junketings, and wrest- 
 ling matches. He liked bull-baiting, too. I mind 
 the bull-ring at the end of the village on a piece of 
 waste ground ; I dare say it is there now. I've 
 seen many a bull baited there in my day. There 
 was never a fair within ten miles but your father 
 was there in his best, with a flower in his button- 
 hole — he always wore a flower in the button-hole 
 of his plum-coloured coat. I remember that coat 
 well ; it had gilt buttons, and he wore a waistcoat 
 to match, with two rows of buttons on either side 
 — it was the fashion then, my dear. He carried 
 me on his shoulder all the way to the fair ; it was
 
 IN THE FELLOWS' GARDEN 165 
 
 held on the green ; there was a large green in 
 the middle of the village in those days, but 
 it is built over now ; things have altered since 
 then.' 
 
 The old Master shook his head and sighed. He 
 hated changes of any kind ; he w^ould have liked 
 the world to go on in the same old grooves for ever. 
 He was silent for some time, and his watchful 
 women- folk thought he was going to sleep — that 
 he would have his after-dinner nap, after all ; but 
 he was only thinking. Those old chambers of 
 memory were unlocked, and the old faces of his 
 youth were crowding around him. 
 
 'Yes,' he said presently, brightening up, * your 
 mother was there, too, my dear. Dick met her in 
 a dancing-booth. She wouldn't look at Dick at 
 first, she had so many sweethearts. She was a 
 proud little thing, with a spirit of her own ; she 
 nearly broke Dick's heart before he married her, 
 but she made him a good wife — a good wife and a 
 good mother, and always in her place in church, 
 and bringing her children up to work and to fear
 
 i66 *THE MASTER OF ST. BENEDICT'S 
 
 God. I don't know that women do more in these 
 daj^s when they learn so many thmgs." 
 
 Lucy couldn't help thinkmg of that motion in the 
 House of Commons, which was carried with such 
 an overwhelming majority, that was to admit 
 women to practise at the Bar and in the Church, 
 to say nothing of those other learned professions 
 that we-re already practically open. 
 
 The old Master's views were very, very old- 
 fashioned ; the world had made rapid strides 
 while he had been sitting in his armchair and 
 reading his Sunday Litanies in that musty old 
 college chapel. 
 
 * Your father had a spirit of his own, too, my 
 dear,' the old man babbled on with quite surpris- 
 ing vigour — these old memories made him quite 
 young again ; ' he wouldn't stay there to be 
 slighted, with all the neighbours looking on. He 
 left your mother going round with a young spark 
 who had come down from London, and with me on 
 his shoulder he went through the fair. I mind the 
 booths quite well, with the gilt gingerbread, and
 
 IN THE FELLOWS' GARDEN . 167 
 
 the toys, and the trumpets, and the drums, and 
 the merry-go-rounds. There was a show with a 
 fat woman — I have never forgotten that fat woman. 
 I have never seen anything Hke her since. There 
 was a dwarf there, too — the smallest dwarf that 
 was ever seen. I remember him strutting about 
 the stage with his little sword ; he wore a sword, 
 and a gold-laced coat, and a cocked hat. The fat 
 lady took his arm when the performance was over 
 — she had to stoop down to do it, and he had to 
 stretch up. I shall never forget seeing them go 
 off the stage, arm-in-arm — the funniest sight I 
 have ever seen — or how the people in the show 
 laughed and clapped their hands when the show- 
 man made a ridiculous speech as they went out. 
 " That's the way they go to church every Sunday 
 of their lives!" he said, pointing after them. I 
 believed him, if the crowd didn't, and for years 
 after I used to watch the church door to see 
 them coming in ; but I have never seen them 
 since.' 
 
 Lucy was so anxious about the old Master that
 
 1 68 THE MASTER OF ST. BENEDICT'S 
 
 when she went for her lesson to the Tutor's rooms 
 the next day she could do nothmg but talk about 
 him. 
 
 The Tutor was anxious too, perhaps, in another 
 way. He had noticed a change in the Master, and 
 he went over to the lodge with her as soon as the 
 lesson was over. 
 
 The Master w^as very feeble to-day, but he was 
 up, and downstairs, and he was talking about 
 going out into the garden. He was very fond of 
 the old Fellows' Garden, and the seat beneath the 
 walnut-tree — a sunny seat in the winter, a shady 
 seat in the summer. It was shady now, but the 
 garden was full of sunshine ; the lilacs were in 
 bloom, and the laburnums were a blaze of gold, 
 and the thorn-tree was white with may. It was 
 the blossoming time of the year, and everything 
 was at its prime. 
 
 The Tutor took him out on his arm and sat him 
 down on his old seat. He noticed how heavily he 
 leant upon him as he tottered feebly across the 
 grass. He would have crushed a woman with his
 
 IN THE FELLOWS' GARDEN 169 
 
 weight. The Master's wife came out too, and sat 
 by his side, with his hand in hers, and Lucy 
 walked with the Tutor in the shady, winding paths 
 beneath the trees. The trees were all old and 
 gnarled, and some had broken down with age, and 
 were propped up. The borders were full of old- 
 fashioned flowers — perennials that went down into 
 the earth every winter, and came up again every 
 spring. There was nothing new here. 
 
 The Senior Tutor, as he walked by Lucy's side, 
 was thinking how he should change all this by- 
 and-by. He would cut down those useless old 
 trees, and he would have the turf rolled and laid 
 out for tennis. Nothing could be better for Lucy 
 than tennis, and she could invite her Newnham 
 friends. Those old flower borders should be all 
 dug up, and some standard rose-trees planted. He 
 would have nothing but first-rate sorts, the very 
 latest. He would do away with that vulgar cabbage 
 rose in the corner, and that poor, shabby little 
 pale blush that hung in clusters on the wall. It 
 had hung there for so many years; it was quite
 
 I70 THE MASTER OF ST. BENEDICTS 
 
 time it should be cleared away. It seemed a pity 
 to lose time. There were so many improvements 
 to be made ; it seemed a pity not to begin now. 
 
 Looking across the grass and the smishine at the 
 old stooping figure under the walnut-tree — it was 
 bent more than usual to-day — he could not but 
 feel that the time was not far off when it would be 
 there no longer. There was nothing pathetic in 
 the sight to him. He had waited for the place— 
 the Master's place — so long. If he waited much 
 longer he would be feeble and old and white- 
 haired, too. 
 
 There is little pathos in the young. The sad 
 realities of life touch only those who know some- 
 thing about them. One must have suffered one's 
 self to have any sympathy with suffering. 
 
 Lucy, looking across the sunshine, was touched, 
 in spite of herself, at the group under the walnut- 
 tree. It didn't affect her as it affected the Tutor. 
 It would be no gain to her if the old Master were 
 to die ; it would mean loss and change and being 
 driven out again homeless into the wide world.
 
 IN THE FELLOWS' GARDEN 171 
 
 But it was not this consideration that moved 
 her. She was touched by the tender picture of the 
 two brave, patient old souls sitting hand-in-hand 
 in that calm closing evening of their life. 
 
 Here was a love that Lucy knew nothing about 
 — a love that had weathered all the storms of life, 
 and was burning brightly at its close. Eiches and 
 honour and learning were nothing to it. They 
 were the Master's still, but they were nothing 
 beside love. He would leave these behind him, 
 but love would cling to him out of time. He 
 w^ouldn't shake that off when he shook off every- 
 thing else. 
 
 Lucy didn't put the idea into words, but it 
 touched her ; and then, strangely enough, rose up 
 before her the face of the man who had sat on the 
 last seat in the chapel and had caught her looking 
 at him. It was quite ridiculous to think of Wyatt 
 Edgell at such a moment ; there was nothing here 
 to remind her of him. 
 
 There was an old disused greenhouse at the end 
 of the Fellows' garden. Nothing had grown in it
 
 172 THE MASTER OF ST. BENEDICT'S 
 
 for years. A neglected vine was dropping down 
 from the roof in one corner, and a great deal of the 
 glass was broken, and the woodwork was decayed 
 and rotting. The Tutor shook the door as he 
 passed, and it opened, and he paused and looked in. 
 
 'I think we must have this place rebuilt,' he 
 said, thinking aloud. ' You would like a green- 
 house. We must get some ferns and palms and 
 foliage plants. Do you like foliage plants ?' 
 
 'Not much,' Lucy said. She could not think 
 what he meant by appealing to her. ' I like flowers 
 best. I don't care for leaves. I'm afraid my taste 
 is very vulgar. I like geraniums, and mignonette, 
 and camellias ; I am very fond of camellias. We 
 used to have some in our greenhouse at home.' 
 
 ' You can keep as many as you like here,' he 
 said. ' We will get all the varieties there are, and 
 you can have geraniums in flower all the year 
 round.' 
 
 He shut the door, and they walked down the 
 path together, while Lucy wondered what he could 
 mean. It would be scarcely worth while to do up
 
 IN THE FELLOWS' GARDEN 173 
 
 the old greenhouse and fill it with flo^Ye^s when it 
 was not likely she would be there another spring to 
 see it. 
 
 In the long path they met Cousin Mar}- coming 
 towards them. She looked rather pale and worn 
 in the sunshine, and she had on a most unbecoming 
 garden-hat. It had been hanging up in the hall 
 all the winter ; it might have been hanging there 
 for years, and it was battered out of all shape. 
 There was not a bed-maker in the college that would 
 have w^orn it. 
 
 The Tutor had never noticed before how gray her 
 hair had grown, and that there w^ere crow's-feet 
 round her eyes, and that her cheeks were faded. 
 She had not changed lately. She had looked like 
 this for years, getting a little grayer every year, 
 and adding a line or two beneath her eyes, but he 
 had never noticed it before. He was very fond of 
 her still ; he had the highest opinion of Mary Eae, 
 but he was very glad that Lucy had come in time 
 — just in time — to save him from throwing himself 
 away.
 
 174 THE MASTER OF ST. BENEDICT'S 
 
 ' Mr. Colville is going to have the old green- 
 house done up, Mary,' Lucy shouted to her when 
 she was quite a dozen paces away. ' He's going to 
 have camelhas and geraniums all the year round ; 
 but perhaps you don't like camellias.' 
 
 The Senior Tutor for once in his life blushed. It 
 was not for Mary he was going to have those 
 geraniums in perennial bloom. 
 
 ' I don't think it's worth it,' said Mary bluntly — 
 
 at least, not for us. We shall soon be going 
 
 away.' And she looked in the direction of the 
 
 walnut-tree beneath which the old Master and his 
 
 wife were still sitting. 
 
 ' That should make no change,' the Tutor said 
 awkwardly ; ' the lodge would be still your home.' 
 
 He grew ridiculously red, and he did not dare to 
 look Mary in the face. 
 
 ' We need not talk about that yet,' she said with 
 a smile ; ' the dear Master is still with us. I came 
 to ask you to help him in ; he has sat there long 
 enough. He is not so strong to-day ; I can't 
 manage him alone.'
 
 IN THE FELLOWS' GARDEN 175 
 
 *I should think not!' said the Tutor, and he 
 hurried off across the grass and took the old 
 Master back to the lodge. 
 
 Lucy did not go in ; she slipped through the 
 garden- door into the court, and hurried back to 
 Newnham. She had promised to drink tea in 
 a girl's room, and she was already half an hour 
 late. 
 
 She went back by way of the Fens, and when 
 she was near the bridge she saw some figures she 
 thought she knew crossing it, and they stopped 
 while she came up, and looked down into the water. 
 
 It was Pamela Gwatkin and her brother, and 
 there was another man with him. She had never 
 seen Pamela with her brother before, and she 
 was struck as she came up to them with the 
 points of difference between them. 
 
 Being twins, they ought to have been exactly 
 alike. Eric was short, and Pamela was tall — tall 
 and graceful and slender, as a girl ought to be, 
 with a proud, self-reliant bearing that is peculiar to 
 the students of a college for women. Eric was
 
 176 THE MASTER OF ST BENEDICT'S 
 
 not only short, but he was stout, and not at all 
 graceful, and he had no bearing to speak of. He 
 was an awkward, well-meaning, commonplace 
 fellow. There was nothing remarkable about him 
 whatever, except that he was Pamela's twin 
 brother. This in his case was a decided dis- 
 advantage — the ingredients hadn't been properly 
 vi mixed. All the masculine characteristics had gone 
 to Pamela, and the tender, endearing qualities to 
 her brother. He saw Lucy come tearing along 
 across the Fen, and he took off his hat as she came 
 up to him. 
 
 'You have met Eric before,' said Pamela, by 
 way of introduction. 
 
 She was looking very pink and white and cool as 
 she stood there on the bridge looking down into 
 the dark shady water, and Lucy had run herself 
 into a fever, and was hot and flushed, and looking 
 ' hideous,' as she told herself. 
 
 ' Oh yes,' she panted — she was quite out of 
 breath with running in the hot sun — ' I have met 
 Mr. Gwatkin before.'
 
 IN THE FELLOWS' GARDEN 177 
 
 She didn't see, until Pamela's brother introduced 
 her, that the other man leaning over the bridge 
 was Wyatt Edgell. She was so flustered with 
 running, and so taken by surprise, that she blushed 
 like a peony. 
 
 She felt she was blushing furiously, and that 
 Pamela, cool and critical and self ■ possessed, was 
 watching her. Oh, how she hated herself for not 
 being cool and dignified and self-possessed like 
 other people ! 
 
 They walked back over the Fen and through the 
 lane to Newnham in couples, Lucy and Wyatt 
 Edgell in front, Pamela and her brother behind. 
 Lucy would have given the world to have reversed 
 the order, but the man took his place by her side, 
 and he wouldn't go away until he left her at the 
 gate of Newnham. 
 
 'You have met me before. Miss Eae, as well 
 as Gwatkin,' he said, as he walked by Lucy's 
 side. ' I believe he invited you in to see the 
 spectacle.' 
 
 'He didn't invite me in at all,' Lucy said 
 
 VOL. I. 12
 
 178 THE MASTER OF ST BENEDICTS 
 
 hotly ; ' I came in. You were very ill when I saw 
 you ; I did not expect you would get well so 
 soon.' 
 
 ' No ?' he said indifferently, ' I suppose not. 
 It did not much matter either way.' 
 
 *It mattered a great deal!' she said sharply. 
 She was very angry with him for speaking in that 
 absurd way — absurd and ungrateful — considering 
 what a trouble he had been to his friends. * It 
 mattered a great deal to Mr. Gwatkin. Oh, you 
 don't know how anxious he was about you ! He 
 saved your life.' 
 
 * Yes,' he said in his slow, indifferent way, 
 flicking with his cane at the nettles in the hedge ; 
 * I believe he did. It was rather a pity he should 
 have taken so much trouble, but I suppose he liked 
 it. I believe he didn't get off his knees all one 
 night. He's always glad of an excuse for getting 
 on his knees.' 
 
 And then he laughed. It was such a delightful 
 laugh that it ought to have been infectious, but 
 Lucy looked grave.
 
 IN THE FELLOWS' GARDEN ijc) 
 
 ' I suppose he was on his knees when you came 
 in ?' he said. 
 
 ' Yes,' said Lucy shortly, but she didn't tell him 
 that she had knelt down beside Eric and prayed 
 that the life he valued so little might be spared. 
 She was very angry with him ; she could only trust 
 herself to say ' Yes.' 
 
 ' Oh, he is a good fellow is Wattles, but he has 
 his little crazes.' 
 
 * He is a splendid fellow !' said Lucy warmly. 
 
 She was ashamed of her warmth the moment 
 after she had said it, but they had reached the 
 gate of Newnham by this time, and she was glad 
 to say ' Good-bye ' and run away. She left him 
 standing at the gate waiting for the others to come 
 up, while quite a dozen girls on the lawn w^ere look- 
 ing at him and admiring him, and making up all 
 worts of fine stories in their heads about him. 
 
 If they had only known what Lucy knew about 
 him they would have made up a great deal more.
 
 CHAPTEE XII. 
 
 AN UGLY FALL. 
 
 There was a row royal when Pamela got back to 
 Newnham. She told Lucy that her conduct was 
 disgraceful, and that if it came to the ears of the 
 Dons she would be ' hauled.' 
 
 There had been several girls ' hauled ' lately for 
 the same offence — walking with an undergraduate 
 to the very gate of the college. 
 
 Lucy mildly suggested that she was not exactly 
 alone, that Pamela and her brother were with her, 
 and that she herself, when she came up to her 
 on the bridge, was walking in the young man's 
 society. 
 
 'You forget that Eric was with me,' Pamela re- 
 plied sharply. ' It makes all the difference if you
 
 AiY UGLY FALL i8i 
 
 have a brother, or any male relative, with you ; but 
 to be ^Yalking• alone, tearing along at the rate you 
 ^Yere, and talking confidentially — anyone could see 
 that you were talking confidentially — dozens of 
 girls have been sent down for less than that !' 
 
 Lucy wasn't 'hauled,' and she wasn't 'sent 
 down '; but Pamela behaved like a bear to her for 
 the remainder of the term. 
 
 Lucy was so anxious about the Master that she 
 went over to the lodge the next day directly after 
 lunch. Cousin Mary was out ; she had left him 
 sitting in his chair taking his after-dinner nap 
 as usual, and she had gone out. He woke up 
 directly Lucy came in, and began to talk to her 
 about her father and the old time. She was very 
 glad that she had not brought Pamela in with her, 
 or any of the Newnham girls, as she sometimes 
 did. He would have told them that ridiculous 
 story that was running in his mind, how his 
 brother Dick had met her mother at a dancing- 
 booth at the fair. He would have dwelt on all the 
 homely details of their humble history. It would
 
 1 82 THE MASTER OF ST. BENEDICTS 
 
 have been all over Newnham the next day that her 
 father was a ploughman, and her mother kept a 
 stall m the butter-market. Annabel Crewe, who 
 had a fine taste for caricature, would have drawn 
 delightful pictures of Lucy's progenitors — a lovely 
 old man in a smock-frock with straw round his 
 legs, and a milkmaid with her pail ! 
 
 She couldn't divert the Master's attention from 
 this ridiculous topic. He had forgotten all about 
 the things that had happened in later years, and 
 had gone back in memory to the old familiar scenes 
 and faces of his youth. His eyes were brighter to- 
 day, and he was more restless than usual ; he 
 wanted to go out into the garden and sit in his 
 accustomed seat on the lawn. It was such a per- 
 fect May day that no wonder he wanted to get out 
 of that dark, gloomy old room, with the stuffy 
 moreen curtains over the windows, and the faded 
 carpets, and the worm-eaten, old-fashioned furni- 
 ture, and the musty old books, into the sweet 
 summer sunshine, where everything was fresh and 
 new.
 
 AN UGLY FALL 183 
 
 There was nothing dark and gloomy and oppres- 
 sive out there in that sweet leafy Fellows' garden. 
 The lilacs were in their prime, pale puce and 
 white and purple, every delightful indescribable 
 hue, and the laburnum was dropping gold upon 
 the grass. There was a cuckoo somewhere, call- 
 ing, and the thrushes were singing, and the black- 
 bird's note was still shrill and clear. It would 
 soon be hoarse as a raven's, and the thrush would 
 be silent, and the cuckoo would have altered his 
 tune, and the lilac would have faded, and the gold 
 of the gleaming, down-dropping laburnums would 
 have turned to gray — and — and he might not be 
 here to see it. If he wanted to enjoy the fleeting 
 sunshine and the flying blossoms of the year, there 
 was no time like the present. 
 
 The Master didn't exactly put it in this way, but 
 he was impatient to be out in the garden, in his 
 old seat, and he wouldn't wait a minute longer for 
 anybody. 
 
 If Mary wasn't there he would go without her. 
 
 There are none so impatient as the old. The
 
 1 84 THE MASTER OF ST. BENEDICrS 
 
 young have plenty of time to spare — they have 
 their Kfe before them ; but the old have not a 
 minute to lose. The Master ^Yent out as usual, 
 leaning on the arm that had supported him so 
 many years, that had never failed him yet. Mrs. 
 Eae and Lucy took him out between them. He 
 walked in his slow accustomed way, leaning rather 
 heavily on these two frail props until he reached 
 his seat beneath the walnut-tree, and here he ought 
 to have sat down. 
 
 But he didn't sit down. He insisted on going 
 farther ; he insisted on going down the path to the 
 greenhouse. Mary had been saying something 
 about it, repeating what the Tutor had said yester- 
 day about having it done up and turned to some 
 account, and the Master would not be satisfied until 
 he had seen it. He must be consulted about it ; 
 nothing should be done in the gardens without his 
 consent. He had been worrying about it all 
 night. 
 
 He had got half-way down the path, when Lucy 
 fancied he was beginning to lean heavily, more
 
 AN UGLY FALL 185 
 
 heavily than she could bear, though she put out 
 all her strength. There was not a seat near, but 
 she stopped and begged the Master to rest awhile. 
 He was so anxious to see the greenhouse that he 
 would not listen to her. He never thought of the 
 women who were being weighed down with his 
 great weight. He was as eager and determined as 
 a child. 
 
 ' I am sure, aunt, you are not strong enough to 
 keep him up,' Lucy said in despair ; she was getting 
 really frightened. ' We must get someone to help 
 him back. Oh, if someone would only come 
 
 in 
 
 !' 
 
 There was not a gardener in sight, and it was 
 not likely that anyone would come in. Nobody 
 but the Fellows ever walked in that garden. 
 
 The Master tottered on, feebler at every step ; 
 but he would not be kept back, and the two 
 frightened women held him up as well as they 
 could. He seemed to want more support every 
 step he took ; he was as feeble and helpless as 
 a child, but still he pressed on. Lucy was sure
 
 i86 THE MASTER OF ST. BENEDICrS 
 
 she couldn't bear the strain a minute longer, and 
 the dear old mistress was straining with all her 
 might to keep up with him. She was putting out 
 all her strength. It wasn't much to put out at the 
 best, but she didn't keep back a feather weight. 
 Oh, if someone would only come ! 
 
 They came in sight of that wretched greenhouse 
 at last, and here the Master stopped. He didn't 
 exactly stop, but he tottered forward, and Lucy 
 with a supreme effort kept him up, and with all 
 his weight upon her he swayed to and fro, and 
 before she knew what was happening he had slipped 
 through her arms to the ground. He lay on the 
 path, as he fell, all of a heap. He had no power 
 to help himself, and he lay panting and breathing 
 heavily as he had fallen, and the women stood 
 beside him wringing their hands. 
 
 Lucy didn't stand beside him long. There was 
 a door in the wall beside the greenhouse that led 
 out into one of the courts, and she flew over to it. 
 Fortunately the door was unlocked. Lucy looked 
 eagerly round the deserted court and raised her
 
 AN UGLY FALL 187 
 
 feeble cry for help. It was such a feeble, piteous 
 cry ; it was like a wail. A man sitting reading 
 at an open window looked out at that strange 
 sound, and Lucy called to him : ' Oh, come, come, 
 do come ! ' 
 
 The man didn't stay to ask what had happened ; 
 he was at Lucy's side in another moment, and she 
 took him in through the open door to where the 
 Master lay. It was Wyatt Edgell. A gyp coming 
 across the court had heard the cry for help, and 
 between them they bore the Master back to the 
 lodge. 
 
 When Mary Eae came in she found a little 
 anxious group gatliered round him, and Wyatt 
 Edgell was trying to reassure the frightened women. 
 Nothing very serious had happened. No bones 
 were broken, but the Master was very much 
 shaken, and he was not quite himself. Wyatt 
 
 Edgell stayed with him until the doctor had 
 come, and had ascertained that things were not 
 very bad — not so bad as they might have been — 
 and had calmed the fears of the women : and then
 
 i88 THE MASTER OF ST. BENEDICTS 
 
 Lucy was so shaken that he walked back with her 
 to Newnham, 
 
 Lucy certamly would have been ' hauled ' if the 
 Dons had seen her walking back leaning heavily on 
 an undergraduate's arm. She would have been 
 invited to an interview with the authorities in the 
 Principal's room, and she would have received a 
 caution, perhaps a reprimand, and she would have 
 been very lucky if nothing worse had happened. 
 Lucy forgot all about the Dons and Pamela's 
 warning. She only thought about that poor old 
 man at the lodge. 
 
 'I don't think he will ever get over this,' she 
 said, or rather sobbed. She was not herself at all. 
 She was such a tearful, frightened little Lucy. 
 She was not in the least like a Stoic. 
 
 'I am afraid not,' said Edgell. 'The Master 
 has been failing for some time. The men all re- 
 marked that he would never read the Litany again 
 in chapel.' 
 
 ' You think he is so bad as that ?' Lucy said 
 tearfully.
 
 AN UGLY FALL 189 
 
 ' Yes, quite. Think of his age. His time must 
 come some day, and he has Kved longer than most 
 men. You could not expect him, in any case, to 
 live for many months longer.' 
 
 *No,' said Lucy sadl}^ ; and then he saw the 
 tears dropping down her pale face. He could not 
 believe she was weeping for that old, old man 
 whose time had come, and who was a stranger to 
 hm- till yesterday. 
 
 ' What will you do when he is gone ?' he asked 
 abruptly. 
 
 ' Do •? I don't know — I have not thought. I 
 shall stay at Newnham, I suppose, two years ; I 
 shall not be able to afford three ; and then — and 
 then I shall go out as a governess.' 
 
 'You shall never go out as a governess!' said 
 Edgell with an oath. 
 
 Lucy looked at him, frightened and bewildered ; 
 she couldn't think what he meant, and then she 
 broke down and began to cry. 
 
 'Dear Miss Kae — Lucy!' he said, and then he
 
 iQO THE MASTER OF ST. BENEDICT'S 
 
 stopped and looked at the girl. He would have 
 liked to take her in his arms, but there were several 
 Newnham girls all hurrying down the road, and 
 they looked at him, and they looked at Lucy. Some 
 of them blushed, and some turned pale, and all 
 were shocked. It was a dreadful precedent. 
 
 The atmosphere of Newnham revived Lucy, and 
 she paused at the gate and looked up into his face 
 with a little white smile. 
 
 'I am very stupid,' she said, 'but the Master 
 frightened me so much, and I am not quite my- 
 self.' 
 
 He held her hand longer than he need have 
 done, and he looked down into the small white 
 face with a smile of ownership and protection that 
 was quite new to Lucy. Nobody had ever looked 
 in her eyes like that before, and, instead of draw- 
 ing her hand away, Lucy hung her head and 
 blushed like a poppy. 
 
 ' Shall I bring you word how the Master is the 
 first thing in the morning '?' he said, still holding
 
 AN UGLY FALL 191 
 
 her hand ; ' how early will you be out in the lane 
 
 if I come ?' 
 
 ' Oh, as early as you like ; seven o'clock !' 
 
 And so Lucy made her first appointment to meet 
 
 Wyatt Edgell.
 
 CHAPTEE XIII. 
 
 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 con- 
 sidered anywhere. It has been the privilege of 
 the students of Selwyn to use this road as a short- 
 cut 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 connect- 
 ing 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,
 
 SLIPPING A WA V 193 
 
 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 fortifica- 
 tions. There was a Koman 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 Komans who brought us all 
 the gentler arts. Perhaps they brought the Muses 
 with them and planted them at Newnham ? 
 
 There was an old Pioman 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 Koman 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 Eomans. 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 
 
 VOL. I. 13
 
 194 THE MASTER OF ST. BENEDICTS 
 
 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. Eae.' 
 : * 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
 
 SLIPPING AWAY 195 
 
 I ouoht 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 Newn- 
 ham 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. Eae would not be per- 
 suaded 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
 
 196 THE MASTER OF ST. BENEDICrS 
 
 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.
 
 SLIPPING A WA Y 197 
 
 'Gone? Where is he gone •? He was here jast 
 now. Is he in the field or in the barn ? Send him 
 to nie 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 w^hile 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. AATiat was it, after all, this shadow he was
 
 198 THE MASTER OF ST. BENEDICTS 
 
 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 aw^ay 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
 
 SLIPPING A WA Y 199 
 
 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.'
 
 200 THE MASTER OF ST. BENEDICrS 
 
 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 our- 
 selves about those who are left — Mrs. Eae 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
 
 SLIPPING A WA Y 201 
 
 her share of the nursing night and day, but the 
 Tutor would not hear of it. 
 
 ' You have got 3'Our 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 Adden- 
 broke'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 leen 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
 
 202 THE MASTER OF ST. BENEDICT'S 
 
 she knew nothing about to this flighty nurse, she 
 was much more unwilhng 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 aw^ay 
 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.
 
 SLIPPING A WA Y 203 
 
 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 your- 
 self, 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. Any- 
 one 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.
 
 204 777^ MASTER OF ST. BENEDICT'S 
 
 ' 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 with- 
 out 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.
 
 SLIPPING A WA Y 205 
 
 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 sab 
 at the 'High,' among the -Dons; she never con- 
 descended 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 ;
 
 2o6 THE MASTER OF ST. BENEDICrS 
 
 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 
 rumoared 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.'
 
 CHAPTEK XIV. 
 
 WYATT EDGELL. 
 
 Late on the evening of the day when Lucy was 
 supposed by the students of Newnham to have 
 eloped, the man she was said to have eloped with 
 sat working in his college-room. 
 
 It was not a Selwyn man. The crest on the 
 pocket of the blazer he was wearing was the crest 
 of St. Benedict's. It was nearly the eve of the 
 Mathematical Tripos ; there were only a few days 
 more, and, having lost all the early part of the 
 term, Wyatt Edgell was sitting down now at the 
 last minute to recover by a tremendous effort the 
 ground he had lost. He had always been sure of a 
 first ; he had never yet taken a second class in 
 any examination at school or college, and his
 
 2o8 THE MASTER OF ST BENEDICT'S 
 
 name had generally stood first in the lists. The 
 authorities of St. Benedict's had predicted that it 
 would stand first now in the coming Tripos. 
 
 There would have been no doubt about it but for 
 that ugly ' accident ' — he called it an ' accident ' — 
 in the beginning of the term. He had not been 
 himself since he came up this May term. He had 
 been moody and taciturn, and subject to fits of 
 depression. He had given up his wine-parties, and 
 his club suppers and breakfasts, and he had shut 
 himself up in his rooms and sported his oak. 
 Everybody, Tutors and all, said he was working 
 hard, and they ' let him alone '; but his bed-maker 
 knew better ! Bed-makers know so much more 
 about a man than anyone else. 
 
 She fetched Gwatkin to him one morning, when 
 she had come in and found him lying on the floor 
 in a fit of delirium tremens. They kept the matter 
 quiet between them and put him to bed, and the 
 bed-maker gave out to all the men on her staircase 
 that * he was a-readin' hisself to death.' 
 
 It was not a very bad attack — it was not the
 
 WVA TT EDGELL 209 
 
 tirst, but Gwatkin didn't know that at the time — 
 there were no violent ravings, only mutterings and 
 depression — dreadful depression. Gwatkin and the 
 bed-maker looked after him during the morning, and 
 towards noon he fell into a deep sleep. It didn't 
 seem at all likely that he would wake for hours. 
 The bed-maker had had some experience of such 
 cases, and she knew that the fever would take eight 
 or ten hours' sleep to spend itself, and then he 
 would awake with shaking hands and a splitting 
 headache, and have a fine time of it for a week. 
 
 Leaving him as she thought sleeping soundly, she 
 went about her work. She had to clear the tables 
 of the other men on the staircase, but before she 
 went she took the precaution to fasten his oak, and 
 to take the key to Gwatkin' s rooms. 
 
 Gwatkin ran over as fast as he could to Edgell's 
 rooms. He had given such strict injunctions that 
 he was not to be left alone on any pretence. Run 
 as fast as he could, he was only just in time. Had 
 he been a minute later he would have been too late. 
 
 VOL. I. 14
 
 2ro THE MASTER OF ST BENEDICTS 
 
 He took the razor from the poor fellow's hand, and 
 he bound up the wound he had made with it as 
 he best could without assistance. He had not the 
 heart to call for help, to reveal his miserable secret 
 to the whole college. He did for him as he would 
 have wished others to have done for himself if he 
 had been in his place. He kept his secret. 
 
 There was a man on his own staircase who had a 
 sister a nurse at Addenbroke's, and when he had 
 done all he could for Edgell, and fastened his arms 
 down to the bed, Gwatkin ran across the court and 
 brought Brannan over. He had to let him into the 
 secret ; there was no help for it. He saw exactly 
 how matters stood. He was in his third year, and 
 it was not the first time that he had helped to cover 
 up an act of undergraduate folly. Brannan went 
 away to fetch his sister. He could promise her 
 silence. Phyllis Brannan was as true as steel ; ])ut 
 in his haste and agitation he had left the outer oak 
 open, and Lucy came in. 
 
 Wyatt Edgell's secret had been faithfully kept
 
 WYATT EDGELL 211 
 
 by these men and women. Only one of them had 
 committed a breach of trust — Lucy had told 
 Pamela. She couldn't help it, she explained, if 
 she had had to die for it the next day ; but Pamela 
 had held her tongue. Not a soul in the college 
 guessed his secret — his dreadful secret. Everybody 
 looked up to him, and praised him, and expected 
 great things of him — everybody but his bed-maker. 
 
 She knew something about that last orgie. She 
 had helped to put him to bed, and she had cleared 
 away the small sodas the next morning. She 
 smiled when she saw him settling down to work on 
 the evening of the day when he had brought Lucy 
 to the lodge from Newnham. ' A lot of readin' 'e'll 
 get through,' she said, shaking her head as she 
 went down the stairs with her basket under her 
 shawl. ' 'E'll be under the table, 1 reckon, when I 
 come in in the mornin'.' 
 
 Eric Gwatkin was doubtful about him, too. He 
 was more anxious about Edgell's Tripos than he 
 was about his own Special. He couldn't rest before
 
 212 THE MASTER OF ST. BENEDICT'S 
 
 he went to bed without coming over and seeing if 
 he was all right. He found his oak sported, and he 
 had to knock a good many times before Edgell 
 would let him in. 
 
 * Confound it ' he began, and then he saw 
 
 Eric and stopped. ' Oh, it's you, Wattles !' 
 
 He didn't say it very graciously, and Eric was 
 sorry he had disturbed him. He really looked in 
 working trim. He had thrown off his coat, and he 
 was sitting in his shirt-sleeves. He wore a flannel 
 shirt, and the collar was open and showed his white 
 throat and chest, as it had showed it that day when 
 Lucy leaned over the bed and put on the wet 
 bandage. It showed, too, what it had not shown 
 on that day, when a scarf was thrown over the 
 throat — an ugly scar extending for some inches 
 beneath the left ear. It was still purple and red 
 and discoloured — a hideous livid mark on the 
 beautiful white skin. 
 
 Eric shuddered when he saw it. The sight of it 
 always made him shudder to think what a near
 
 WYATT EDGELL 213 
 
 thing it was — what mujht have been ! He could 
 not understand how Edgell could bear to see it in 
 the glass, could bear to uncover it, that others 
 coming in might see it. 
 
 *I am sorry to disturb you, old man,' he said, 
 looking round at the work on the table, and the 
 books lying open before Edgell. ' I only looked 
 round to see — if — if you were all right.' 
 
 * To see if I had cut my throat again,' said 
 Edgell calmly. 
 
 There was a shade of bitterness in his voice, and 
 his lips curled slightly with amusement or scorn, 
 or both. They were beautiful clear-cut lips, full 
 and tender as a woman's, and they had a way of 
 curving when he spoke. They never quivered, they 
 curved ; and his nostrils dilated. It was a strong 
 face, with a massive square jaw, but it had these 
 nervous tricks. 
 
 * Very kind of you. Wattles,' he went on with a 
 laugh ; ' but I'm not going to repeat that perform- 
 ance again — at least, not for the present. I'm
 
 214 THE MASTER OF ST. BENEDICT'S 
 
 going in for my Trip — and — and I'm going to 
 marry Miss Lucy.' 
 
 Gwatkin's face fell. 
 
 ' I don't think this is a time to talk of marrying,' 
 he said, with a certain hesitation in his voice, and 
 the cloud on his plain, homely face deepening. 
 * The poor old Master is dying.' 
 
 * So much the more reason to talk about it. Lucy 
 will want a home. She won't be able to stay up at 
 Newnham, she tells me ; she will have no one but 
 her cousin Mary when the Master is dead, and the 
 old lady. I think I shall ask her to-morrow. I 
 should like her to feel that she will not be left 
 friendless when the end comes.' 
 
 ' I should wait till after the exam., if I were you. 
 1 shouldn't let anything interfere with the exam. 
 You will have all your life to marry in.' 
 
 Edgell lay back in his chair and laughed good- 
 naturedly at his Mentor. 
 
 ' Anyone would think, Wattles, that you wanted 
 to marry her yourself.'
 
 WYATT EDGELL 215 
 
 There was no occasion for that very common- 
 place-looking young man to blush so dreadfully. 
 
 ' I only meant to advise you for your good,' he said 
 awkwardly, and then he went over to the door and 
 said good-night ; but when he reached the door, 
 and he had the handle in his hand, he paused 
 irresolutely, and looked across the room at the 
 man with the scar in his throat leaning back in the 
 chair. The scar was dreadfully visible in that 
 light. It seemed to have a charm for Gwatkin. 
 He couldn't keep his eyes off it. 
 
 'What's up?' said Edgell, seeing that he paused 
 by the door. 
 
 Eric came back to the table where Edgell was 
 seated, and laid his hand on his shoulder, a friendly, 
 unmistakable grip. 
 
 ' Dear old man,' he said in a broken voice, and 
 the other could see that his foolish weak lips 
 were quivering, *you won't mind my speaking 
 my mind to you ; you will forgive what I 
 sav?'
 
 2i6 THE MASTER OF ST. BENEDICT'S 
 
 * Fire away !' said Edgell ; but he didn't look at 
 Owatkin, he looked at the opposite wall. 
 
 ' Before you go any farther — before you ask Lucy 
 Rae to marry you — pause and consider ' 
 
 * I've already considered,' Edgell interrupted im- 
 patiently, and with his face still averted. 
 
 ' You have not considered everything. You have 
 thought only of yourself. You have not thought of 
 her.' 
 
 ' I have thought of her !' 
 
 ' No, no ; you have not thought of her in the way 
 1 mean. Bear with me, dear fellow. God knows I 
 am saying this for your sake and hers. You have 
 not thought of her as orphaned and friendless, 
 having no one but you in the world, being bound 
 up in you, having all her happiness dependent 
 upon you. A little, tender, delicate creature, with 
 no spirit of her own, who would suffer, and break 
 her heart, and never complain ' 
 
 * What would she have to complain of ?' Edgell 
 interrupted savagely.
 
 WYATT EDGELL 217 
 
 * God only knows !' 
 
 * You — you think I shall go over the old thmg 
 again — that ' 
 
 * Hush ! For heaven's sake don't let us even 
 suppose it ! You haven't got to consider yourself 
 in this matter, you have to consider her. Do you 
 think it fair to ask her — to — to — forgive me, dear 
 fellow — to ask her to risk it ?' 
 
 Wyatt Edgell bowled his head. 
 
 ' You have no faith in me,' he said moodily, witli 
 his head upon his breast and his brows knitted. 
 
 ' I have every faith in you, dear fellow ; but I 
 want you to think of her. It is the chivalrous 
 thing to do. Forgive me for saying it. Unless 
 you felt that you could make her happier than any 
 other man in the W'Orld — and — and ensure her 
 happiness, you have no right to ask her to marry 
 you !' 
 
 Eric Gwatkin was quite astonished at his own 
 temerity— astonished and frightened. He was a 
 weak, nervous, emotional fellow ; he couldn't trust
 
 2i8 THE MASTER OF ST BENEDICTS 
 
 himself to say another word. His voice broke, and 
 his eyes were clouded, and he was afraid he had 
 said too much, and with a grip of Edgell's great 
 muscular shoulder he went away and left him 
 sitting in his chair, with his head on his breast, 
 and that ugly scar gleaming like the dark blade of 
 a knife across his white throat. 
 
 END OF VOL. I. 
 
 BILLING AND 80KS, PBINTEBS, GUILDFORD.
 
 r:^^;
 
 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS-URBANA 
 
 3 0112 051353958