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,[pg 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 women.
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[pg 74] sure which; but she could not mistake 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 undergraduates 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[pg 75] time to see if among them there was that one face that was to be her beacon through life; 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-coloured 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 gwatkin?'
'eric gwatkin!' mary repeated impatiently; she objected to being kept standing in the court[pg 76] 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 spread 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.
[pg 77]
she couldn't help pitying mary for being interested 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[pg 78] the corner stall in the old butter market, my dear. i mind 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.
[pg 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[pg 80] 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 newnham. she has already taken a first in one tripos, and now she is working 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.'
[pg 81]
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. benedict'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[pg 82] 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 particularly well lighted, as the diamond panes were darkened with painted arms of founders and benefactors, 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—flat, 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.
[pg 83]
lucy paused on her way to the study, and looked round with quite a new feeling 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,[pg 84] 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 rae 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[pg 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 parsonages, 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 want the mathematics she was getting up with such labour for the little-go; she would 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,[pg 86] 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 additionals, 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!'
[pg 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 wrayburne 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.
