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 to lucy all the afternoon about the old time. his memory was wonderfully clear about the things that had happened, 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.
[pg 164]
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 explained, 'and your father left off work early; he was very fond of fairs, and junketings, and wrestling 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[pg 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 would 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[pg 166] god. i don't know that women do more in these days when they learn so many things.'
lucy couldn't help thinking 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 were 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 surprising 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[pg 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 like 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 showman 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[pg 168] when she went for her lesson to the tutor's rooms the next day she could do nothing 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 was 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[pg 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[pg 170] 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 sunshine 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 something 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.
[pg 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. riches 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 wouldn't shake that off when he shook off everything 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[pg 172] 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 greenhouse. 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[pg 173] the old greenhouse and fill it with flowers when it was not likely she would be there another spring to see it.
in the long path they met cousin mary 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 worn it.
the tutor had never noticed before how gray her hair had grown, and that there were 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 rae, but he was very glad that lucy had come in time—just in time—to save him from throwing himself away.
[pg 174]
'mr. colville is going to have the old greenhouse done up, mary,' lucy shouted to her when she was quite a dozen paces away. 'he's going to have camellias 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.'
[pg 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[pg 176] 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 disadvantage—the ingredients hadn't been properly 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.'
[pg 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 rae, 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[pg 178] 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.
[pg 179]
'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 were looking at him and admiring him, and making up all sorts 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.
