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 parlance, 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 murmur of tongues began—a low, distinctly female murmur, and occasionally a laugh—a little low laugh. there was a good deal of talk to-day, as everybody had come up[pg 54] 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[pg 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 distributed 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[pg 56] little weep. everything was so different to what she had expected; all her castles had been 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[pg 57] sure, after all, if this was not the summum bonum 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 moorland 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-year 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[pg 58] are usually made after ten p.m., when work is supposed 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 roundness 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[pg 59] science tripos. classics are a thing of the past. they are quite worn out. they will be 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[pg 60] not of very much account, 'and you 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 ready to offer the other. now she had plucked up sufficient spirit to defend her choice of a tripos.
[pg 61]
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, when 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.
[pg 62]
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 revolutionize 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[pg 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 worshipped the very ground that pamela gwatkin walked upon.
she hadn't even the excuse of a nodding acquaintance with her after that unlucky call—she only 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[pg 64] 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,[pg 65] philosophy—nothing came amiss to her. when women are admitted into parliament she will probably 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 the other girl, who came frou-frouing 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 spinning 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[pg 66] way when her partner broke down or fell out of the ring. she never broke down or fell out herself, and when she had tired out one girl she took up another. lucy remarked that she always chose small girls—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 royal highness had asked her to dance she could not have been more flattered. of course, she would take 'gentleman'! she told the most outrageous fibs, and said she preferred being 'gentleman;' 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,[pg 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 experience 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 gwatkin 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 newnham 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 accepted it in her superior way, and flopped down[pg 68] into it as if it were in the order of things for everyone 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 royal 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 objectionable 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[pg 69] the buttercups on the back. in the second place, the legs hadn't been stuck in 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.'
'really!' 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[pg 70]—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[pg 71]terous; it has had its day, like other beliefs, and now a new day is dawning. oh, it was ridiculous 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.
