Chapter XXVI: Cousin Mary

Lucy couldn't do things like other girls. She couldn't go straight to Cousin Mary and tell her that the Senior Tutor, the new Master of St. Benedict's, had asked her to be his wife. There was no reason why she shouldn't have told Cousin Mary. She had no one else to tell. She wouldn't have dared to have told Pamela Gwatkin or Maria Stubbs.

They had gone down now; everybody had gone down. Wyatt Edgell had gone down the day that Lucy sent back that answer to his message. He had gone without taking his degree.

Everybody was crying out at his folly, and a great many people--wise people--thought they knew the reason why, but no one guessed the real cause of his hasty departure from Cambridge.

Lucy was not sorry that he was gone. She could not have met him again in the court in the cloisters. She would not have been sure that he would not have taken her in his arms, and that all her fine resolutions would not have melted away. But he was gone down. She had nothing more to fear from him. She had an ugly dream about him the night he left Cambridge, a dream that haunted her still.

She dreamt that Wyatt Edgell was falling over the edge of a precipice, and that he held out his arms to her, but she would not reach out a hand to save him.

There was a great deal to be done in these lonely days of the Long Vacation. There was a good deal to be done, and now it could be done quietly, with no lynx-eyed undergraduates looking on.

Of course, they would have to turn out of the lodge--at least, so Cousin Mary said, when they were talking things over a few days after the Master's funeral.

The Master had behaved very generously to his niece; he had left her all the furniture of the lodge and what little money he died possessed of. He had made no mention whatever in his will of his nephew Dick's little daughter. The will had been made years ago, when Lucy's father was living, and she was not dependent on his bounty.

It was really very lucky for Lucy that the Senior Tutor had made her an offer at such a time.

'We shall continue to live together, of course, dear, if you have no other plans,' Mary said, and she paused to see if Lucy had any plans about her future, but Lucy was silent.

'I suppose you will give up Newnham now?' she continued presently, and Lucy thought there was just a shade of derision in her voice; but this was only fancy.

She might be excused for fancying it, for she had been plucked in both her examinations. She had failed in both parts of the Little-go. There was quite reason enough to account for her failing at such a time that she need not have fancied that Cousin Mary underrated her powers.

'No, I shall certainly not give up Newnham,' Lucy said with some spirit. 'I shall go in for the examination again in October. I shall continue at Newnham until--until----'

She couldn't finish the sentence, but stopped short in the middle, and blushed delightfully.

'Until what?' Cousin Mary said bluntly. She hated to see girls blushing; she never blushed herself.

'Until I am married,' Lucy said softly, and her eyes fell and her colour rose.

It was a great pity that the new Master of St. Benedict's was not there to see her.

'Married?' Mary repeated, with a little break in her voice. 'Whoever are you going to marry, child?'

She had a vision of Eric Gwatkin; she had often seen him looking at Lucy in the college chapel, and she remembered that he had called to see her several times lately. Why hadn't Lucy told her of it before?

'Mr. Colville has asked me to marry him,' Lucy said humbly.

The room didn't turn exactly upside down; if it had, all the books would have tumbled out of the shelves, and the old Worcester vases on the mantelpiece would have been broken to pieces, which would have been a thousand pities, and the furniture of the room would have been generally disarranged.

Something happened--Mary Rae never exactly knew what; she was only conscious of a band tightening round her heart, and that when she tried to speak her voice sounded a long way off.

'Mr. Colville?' she repeated in her distant, faint voice.

'Yes,' Lucy said bashfully, as if it were the first time any man had asked her to marry him; 'but I have not given him an answer yet. What answer do you think I ought to give him?'

Cousin Mary was not going to advise Lucy on this point. She knew what answer she had been prepared to give him the last twenty years.

The Master of St. Benedict's came over to the lodge for his answer the next day. He hadn't been formally elected Master yet, but the matter was practically settled. He and Mary had been doing the Master's work together for years past.

But it was not to see Mary he came to the lodge now; he asked to see Lucy, and she came to him in the gallery.

Lucy knew exactly what he had come for, and she had his answer ready for him--quite ready. It had cost her something to make up her mind. She couldn't marry a man with gray hair--only iron-gray as yet--and with a bald spot on the crown, and with a big red throat, and bushy eyebrows, and a crop of wrinkles round his eyes, without a pang. She was only twenty--sweet and twenty--and her life was before her. Yes, it cost her a pang to accept the Senior Tutor.

Perhaps it would have cost her more to reject him. He had a good deal to offer. Lucy did not lose sight of that in making up her mind. If she refused him she would have to toil through life as a governess--possibly a nursery governess. One cannot teach what one doesn't know, and a term's residence at Newnham had taught Lucy one thing: that she knew very little, and that that little was not worth much.

Perhaps if she had passed her examinations with honour--had come out in the first class--she might have given the Senior Tutor a different answer. Immense possibilities would have opened before her. She might be Senior Wrangler, Senior Classic, Senior Theologian--oh no, women are never theologians; she might have been a first class in any Tripos, and by-and-by, when the way was made clear, she might take a high degree, and wear a scarlet hood, and--there will be such things--she might be a female Vice-Chancellor!

Now all these dreams were over. That Little-go examination had nipped her hopes in the bud. There was no other way of enjoying the highest dignity the University has to bestow than by marrying the Master of St. Benedict's. He would be Vice-Chancellor some day, and she would rule by proxy.

Lucy lay awake all one night thinking over these things. She would have preferred to marry Wyatt Edgell, all things being equal, and she shed a few small tears at giving him up. In fact, her pillow was quite wet in the morning.

She accepted the Senior Tutor the next day. She told herself that she had no more love to give away to any man: that her heart was dead within her, and that the tender dream of her youth was over, and that henceforth her life would be a dreary round of duties--perhaps dignities--but there would be no pleasure in it.

Nevertheless, when she had accepted Mr. Colville, and he had kissed her in a paternal way, and she had gone through the gallery with him, and the big drawing-room--that had been so little used during the life of the late Master--and had discussed the alterations and improvements he was going to make, she felt quite interested in life--interested, if not animated. There is nothing like furnishing for giving one an interest in life.

Mary came upon the lovers while they were discussing these details. Lucy's eyes were shining, and there were two pink spots on her cheeks which Mary had not seen there for many days, when she came across them in the big drawing-room. Mary quite understood the girl being moved, she would have been moved herself; but she did not know that the burning question that had moved Lucy so deeply was the upholstery of the drawing-room.

The new Master of the lodge had set his heart on yellow--yellow satin and dark oak. He had seen a yellow room somewhere. Lucy loved pinks and blues, and delicate creamy tints that would match her complexion; she would not have had a yellow drawing-room for the world.

Mary came upon them when they were discussing this burning question. And then Mary had to be told.

The new Master told her in as few words as he could, and about as awkwardly as a man dealing with a new subject and addressing an unsympathetic audience. He got over it as quickly as he could. He was sure Mary would have no sympathy with him. He was sure that she despised him for his ridiculous infatuation for this little bit of a girl. He was rather ashamed of himself.

'I hope you will continue to make the lodge your home,' he said to Mary, with an awkwardness that was quite new to him; 'there is no reason why you should leave it. There is plenty of room in it for all. You will keep your old room'--'and your old place,' he was going to say; but he checked himself in time, and said: 'I am sure your advice will be everything to Lucy.'

Mary Rae smiled; not scornfully, not even proudly, but with a sort of pity in her eyes, and her face was grave, and her voice was steady.

'No,' she said coldly; 'I could not continue to make my home here. My plans are all settled--quite settled. Lucy will stay with me--until--until she marries'--she could not help a little break in her voice--'and then I am leaving Cambridge altogether. I am going back to my old place, to my own people.'

The Senior Tutor had heard nothing about Mary Rae's people until that day; he never knew she had any people; he had forgotten all about her mother's relatives.

Cousin Mary began to make her preparations for leaving the lodge at once. She was only taking with her to the little house she had engaged at Newnham a few necessary things. She was leaving a great deal of the old furniture behind. It had been at the lodge for over a century. It was heavy and clumsy, and some of it was worm-eaten; it was ill suited for a modern residence. It had been taken off by one Master after another, and now, unless the new Master turned it out into the court, or threw it out of the windows into the Cam, it would remain where it had so long stood.

Lucy consented to its staying almost unwillingly. She had no idea how valuable those precious old relics of carved oak, and Chippendale, and old Sheraton furniture would have been in the eyes of a connoisseur.

She didn't mind the old blue Worcester vases remaining on the mantelpiece, where they had stood so many years; but she would have preferred some modern gimcrackery for the drawing-room. Her heart yearned for little satiny chairs with gilt backs, and plush five o'clock tea-tables, and all the latest abominations of the modern upholsterer.

It was very sad work turning out all the old Master's papers, going through all his drawers and turning out all the private records of his life.

Mary never knew until she went through his papers how generous he had been to all those poor relations she had left sleeping beside him in the churchyard at Northwold. Some of these old letters she turned out from their hiding-places, yellow with age, written by hands long folded, touched her deeply. Some were from her own kin, and some, most of all, from Lucy's father, grandfather, great-grandfather, three generations, all telling the same story of benefits received, of the unfailing liberality of that generous hand.

Mary did not know what to do with the papers. The Master had left little else--an old scholar's wardrobe, a rusty gown and hood, an old-fashioned silver watch; no rings or jewellery or knick-knacks; nothing but books and papers, everlasting papers.

Lucy would have burnt them all unread--nothing would have given her greater pleasure than to have put all the musty old lumber in the flames; but Mary would not destroy a single line.

She gathered the old family letters together and took them away with her to the little house at Newnham; but she left all the old scholar's papers, his Semitic manuscripts and pamphlets in crabbed characters that she could not understand a line of, behind her. The labours of his long useful life she left behind to the college that had enabled him to pursue these studies. Perhaps a younger scholar coming by some day may look over the heap, and pick out from it what is worth preserving.

Mary was in a great hurry to get out of the lodge. She need not have got out until the end of the Long Vacation, but she chose to clear out at once. Lucy was a little angry at all this haste. She would much rather have stayed at the lodge than have gone into a small, uncomfortable little house at Newnham.

She wrote bewailing her lot to Maria Stubbs, but she didn't say a word about her engagement to the Senior Tutor.

Maria answered her letter by the next post. She was staying up in town in a small lodging in Bloomsbury, in order to be near the reading-room of the British Museum, and she wrote and begged Lucy to come up and share her poor rooms. Her letter touched Lucy, and brought the tears to her eyes. She remembered how she used to hate Maria, and wouldn't notice her in the street. Her letter contained some information that interested Lucy, and may have had something to do with her tears.

Pamela's brother had gone abroad with Wyatt Edgell; he had been engaged by his family to travel with him and look after him. Pamela had only heard from Eric once since he had been away, and he had not written hopefully of his charge; but Maria did not give any particulars.

Lucy would have given the world to have seen that letter of Pamela's. She remembered what Eric had said about taking away a rope from a drowning man, and she recollected that dreadful dream.

Oh, if she could only have seen that letter! Perhaps even now it might not be too late.

The Master--he was really Master now--came in while her eyes were yet wet with tears. He had brought with him some patterns that had just arrived for the hangings of the new rooms. It was really a serious question. The effect of everything would depend upon the colour of the hangings. In deciding this important point Lucy forgot all about Pamela's letter.