the senior tutor need have been under no apprehension 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 susceptible hearts, whether they wore them skewered on to their sleeves or out of sight in their accustomed places.
lucy rae 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[pg 18] 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 recovered 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 independent. 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[pg 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[pg 20] 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[pg 21] 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 useless 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 first 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[pg 22] 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 was 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[pg 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.
'really,' she said gravely, 'most girls like these things! they are over now, and done with, and you will begin afresh. tell me what you would like to do.'
'like!' lucy held her breath as she spoke,[pg 24] and her cheeks grew crimson. 'oh, i should like 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 likely 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[pg 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, speaking 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[pg 26] 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[pg 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 what 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 manuscripts in semitic languages. the girl tossed them over as she sat there with a gesture of impatience. they were sealed books to her.
[pg 28]
'what were you discussing with your cousin ma—ry when i came in?'
he lingered 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 something—a little. i might learn enough to pass the—the—little——'
[pg 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 have 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 my mother, and—and he was in love. she got between him and his mathematics; 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[pg 30] at poor richard rae 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—o,' 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 matrimony.'
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[pg 31]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. rae 'the master' yet. it came easier to say 'uncle.'
'there will be 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[pg 32] 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 go to newnham.
[pg 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.'
