Chapter XXIII: 'going Down.'

It was rather hard to spare Nurse Brannan on this particular morning; harder than usual. The Master had passed a bad night; he had not slept at all, and he was decidedly weaker. He had been wandering all through the night, and he was still wandering feebly when Lucy came into his room in the morning. He had been going over the old scenes of his youth; he had been travelling back to the sweet green fields and the hills and valleys of his earliest recollections.

When Lucy came into the room he was propped up in bed, babbling about the old scenes and the old places. The blind was drawn up, and the June sunshine poured into the room. Nurse Brannan never denied her patients sunshine. 'Let them have it while they may,' she used to say; 'they will have no need of it by-and-by.' The sun was shining into the room now, and on to the bed, and on to the face of the old Master.

Lucy had not seen him for several days; she had been busy with her examinations, and she was struck with the change in him--an indefinable change that sharpened his rugged features as if a chisel had been passed over them. They were rugged still, but with an added nobleness, and there was a light upon them that Lucy had not seen there before. His dim blue eyes were looking up at the window, and he did not see her come in the room. They were looking with that shining light in them above the gray battlements of the old court to the bright bit of blue sky beyond.

'I think he can be safely left,' Lucy said; 'he is very quiet. I will stay with him till you come back. You must not be long; I have an examination at ten o'clock. You must not stay more than half an hour.'

Nurse Brannan promised to come back within the half-hour, and Lucy took her place beside the bed. She had a dim idea that she ought to have gone herself to Wyatt Edgell in his humiliation, not have sent a hired nurse, but she put the thought away from her. It was not a real engagement, she told herself. She had only consented to it to give him a motive for work. He could not hold her to it now; no one could expect her to be bound by a promise given under such conditions. How lucky it was that no one at St. Benedict's knew of her engagement!

The Master would not let her thoughts wander long. His hands were feebly groping about the coverlet of the bed, and Lucy saw that he was making an effort to get up.

'No, dear Master,' she said; 'no, I wouldn't get up yet. I would wait till nurse comes back; she will be here soon.'

'I was going to meet her, my dear,' he said; 'I have been travelling all night. I came by the coach to the cross-roads; it is a long journey from Cambridge, and I am very tired. I thought it would never end, and the morning was slow in breaking. It broke at last; I never saw a finer sunrise, a higher dawn. The coach put me down at the cross-roads; I had nothing to carry--I had left everything behind--and I have been walking over the hills since daybreak. It's wonderful how little they have changed: I knew every field and hedge on the way; and the old trees and the mile-stones in the road, I knew them every one; and the broken cross in the churchyard, and the old gray tower. The tower looks taller now than it used to, and the vane was shining in the sunlight as I came along; I could see it a long way off, gleaming like gold, and pointing the way.'

The old Master paused for want of breath; he had worn himself quite out. He lay back on the pillow, with the sunshine streaming on his worn face. Lucy could not help noticing how shining it was--shining like the old vane.

'Strange,' he went on presently, talking to himself in a lower tone--'strange! the cross was there, and the church, and the tower, and the old elms in the yard, and the rooks cawing in the branches--I knew the cawing of those old rooks again--but I could not find the Vicarage gate.'

Lucy was beginning to get impatient. Nurse Brannan ought to be back by this time. Her examination would begin in a quarter of an hour. She didn't care anything about that Vicarage gate; there was nobody waiting for her at the gate.

The Senior Tutor came in while she was fuming and fretting about the time.

'I thought you would want to get away,' he said to Lucy, 'so I came over to sit with the Master. We can't spare Nurse Brannan just yet.'

Cousin Mary came in, too, just after him; she generally came into the room a minute or two after the Senior Tutor. She had not been able to come in before, she was in such close attendance on the Master's wife. Mrs. Rae had had a restless night, but had just fallen asleep, so Mary had stolen away.

'This is a dreadful thing about Mr. Edgell,' she said. 'The college was so proud of him; it will be a terrible blow.'

'Yes,' said the Tutor; 'it will be a great blow. It is unfortunate it should have happened just now; it will get so talked about.'

He was thinking of the credit of the college, not of Wyatt Edgell.

'What will he do?'

'Oh, he will go down with his friends. I have telegraphed for them; they will be here by noon; and when he can be moved they will take him away. It appears this is not the first time. He attempted suicide the other day; I saw the mark on his throat----'

Lucy did not wait to hear any more. She ran away as fast as she could, and left Cousin Mary and the Tutor talking by the Master's bedside.

They took no notice of her. They did not even look at her. Oh, if they had only known!

Wyatt Edgell's people came at noon. Lucy saw them crossing the old court when she came back from her examination--an elderly man with a striking resemblance to her lover, and a tall stately woman with a pale beautiful patrician face.

They ought to have been proud and happy people. This should have been a red-letter day in their lives--a day of thankfulness and congratulations and unutterable joy; a day when the tears come with the smiles, and the glad words falter on the lip, and there is a strange catch in the voice, and a dimness before the eyes, when the most eloquent speech begins and ends with a 'God bless you, my boy!' uttered in a very shaky voice.

There were no congratulations to-day and no smiles. If there were tears no one saw them--only a hard break in the voice when Wyatt Edgell's mother thanked the Tutor for his interest in her son. She didn't even look at Lucy as she passed. Something in the rustle of her rich trailing skirts as they swept over the stones of the court brought to the mind of the Master's niece those old stories the Master was so fond of telling--of the stall in the butter-market, and the meeting of her grandfather with her high-spirited ancestress in the dancing-booth at the fair.

It was quite as well that nobody knew about that engagement.

Lucy had another examination in the afternoon--her last. She hastily swallowed some cold luncheon that was laid for her at the end of the long dining-table at the lodge. There was no one present but herself. Mrs. Rae was not so well, and Cousin Mary had a tray carried up into her room, and Nurse Brannan could not leave the Master.

Lucy had no appetite for the solitary meal. Something was choking in her throat all the time she sat at the table, and she could not swallow anything.

She looked in at the Master's room before she went off to her exam. He was still searching for the Vicarage gate. Mrs. Rae was asleep or dozing; she did not appear to notice her when Lucy opened the door of her room. Cousin Mary was still with her--she seldom left her now--and she was looking tired and worn out for want of rest. It did not occur to Lucy to offer to take her place; besides, she had to go to her exam.

'I can "go down" to-night, dear, if you like,' she said to Mary, before she went away, 'if I can be of any use here. A lot of the girls have "gone down" to-day. Term is quite over. I can either come home to-day or Monday, which you think best.'

'Nurse Brannan has not been to bed for a week,' Cousin Mary said wearily, 'and--and I'm afraid I am getting worn out; but you must do as you like.'

Lucy went off to her exam.; but for all the good she did she might just as well have stayed away. She was very sorry for those old people at the lodge, but what else could be expected at their age? She was more distressed about her lover. Nurse Brannan had stayed with him until the paroxysm had abated, and he had sunk into a deep sleep.

He would probably awake from it, the doctor who had been called in said, not very much the worse for the carouse, and unconscious--quite unconscious--of what had happened.

What would he do when he awoke? Lucy was pondering this question in her mind all the time she was in for her exam., when she ought to have been occupied with the questions on the paper before her. She hadn't answered it when she got back to Newnham. She had only gone back to pick up some things she needed and to get her _exeat_, or go through the ceremony that takes the place of an _exeat_ at a college for women.

She had to say good-bye to two or three of the girls who were going down; some were going down altogether, and their paths were never likely to cross again. Among these last was Pamela Gwatkin. She was going down, broken in health and spirit, and she had no present intention of coming up to Newnham again.

She was up and dressed when Lucy went into her room to say good-bye. She was sitting at her old place at the table, tearing up some papers. She had torn up a lot already, and they were lying in a heap by her side, and Maria Stubbs was on the floor packing her books.

Pamela looked up when Lucy came into the room.

'Well?' she said, with a large look of scorn in her eyes that made Lucy's cowardly little heart sink into her shoes. 'Well?'

It wasn't very much to say, but a great deal can be got into a word of such varied meaning. Lucy saw in a moment that Pamela knew all.

'I don't know what you mean,' Lucy said with some spirit.

'No,' said Pamela scornfully; 'I suppose not. You have not seen him then?'

'Seen him?' Lucy exclaimed, flushing scarlet, and her eyes smarting with tears of anger and humiliation. 'I never intend to see him again! His own people are here.'

'What has that got to do with it?' said Maria, sitting down on the floor in the middle of a heap of books.

'Everything. He doesn't want me if he has got his people.'

Lucy was thinking of Wyatt Edgell's mother. She had been haunted by her pale patrician face all through the exam.

'I don't see that,' Maria said hotly. 'He will want you more. You ought to stand between him and them, and see they are not too hard upon him. I think you ought to have gone to his mother at once, and told her everything.'

'I?' Lucy gasped--'I?'

'Yes, you. Who else should take his part at a time like this? Oh, you are a poor coward! You are not half good enough for him!'

The tears were in her eyes as she spoke; she had to put up her hand and dash them off her hideous pale lashes. She looked as if she would have liked to have taken Lucy in her strong arms and shaken her.

'I'm afraid I am a coward,' Lucy said humbly; and then she began to cry.

She wasn't content with crying, she began to sob hysterically. She had gone through a great deal that day, and her nerves were shaken. Maria got up from the floor and came over to her. She put her on the couch, and took off her hat, and stroked her hair back, and soothed her, but Pamela took no notice of her; she only sat tearing up her papers.

'You would do the same if you were in my place,' Lucy sobbed; 'you would be afraid to venture. What girl in her senses wouldn't?'

Miss Stubbs smiled.

'I know some girls who wouldn't,' she said.

She was very angry with Lucy--angry and impatient; but that did not account for the hard break in her voice.

'Hush!' Pamela exclaimed harshly; 'it is not her fault she has so small a soul.'

'I am sure you would not do otherwise,' Lucy sobbed, not heeding the interruption. 'You would be afraid to--to marry him. Oh! who _could_ marry him?'

Maria's eyes were shining, and the hand that was stroking Lucy's hair trembled; but Pamela's face was hard and stony as she sat tearing up her papers, and her thin lips were pressed tight together.

'You would never be safe,' Lucy went on, defending herself. 'You would never know what he would do. He might break out at any time--he might kill himself, he might kill you!' The picture was too appalling, and Lucy subsided into a fresh passion of tears. 'Oh, I could never run the risk!' she said with a shiver; 'I should never be safe!'

'Not if you loved him?'

Pamela asked the question in a low voice--low and vibrating with passion. She had not intended to give a voice to her thoughts. She would have given the world to have recalled the words after she had spoken.

'No,' Lucy exclaimed passionately; 'not even if I loved him!'

'Oh, you poor thing!' said Maria Stubbs, with her eyes flashing, and her freckled face all aglow with a strange fire.

'Let her alone,' Pamela said wearily--'let her alone. How should she do otherwise? It is not her fault that she has not a large soul. Let the poor little thing alone. She can only act according to her lights. Let her alone.'

They let her alone--at least, they said good-bye to her in a strained, unemotional way. They didn't shed a single tear in that parting. Maria Stubbs kissed her on both cheeks, and told her to write to her and say how the Master of St. Benedict's was. She didn't say a word about her lover. Pamela kissed her on one cheek--at least, she made a peck at her, and said some cold, formal words of farewell, and went wearily back to tearing up her papers.

When the good-byes were said, the poor thing with a small soul crept humbly down the stairs. Everybody cannot be made on such large lines as Pamela Gwatkin.