Chapter XXV: The Stall in the Butter-Market

The Senior Tutor took all the trouble of the funeral--or the funerals, rather--off the Master's nieces. He came over directly he heard that the Master was dead, and arranged everything. He knew his last wishes, expressed long ago when he was in health and the end seemed a long way off.

His wishes had been so clearly expressed that there could be no doubt about them. He had provided for every contingency. He was to lie beside his wife. If she preceded him, he was to be laid by her side wherever she was laid. If he should happen to die before her, he was to be carried back to the old place, to the old churchyard where all his humble forefathers lay, to go back to where he had started, and find his last resting-place where his life had begun. In no case was he to be buried in the college chapel. They might put up a brass for him on the old walls, among the carven tombs and tablets of the old Masters and Fellows, but the dust of his bones should not mix with theirs.

The Senior Tutor carried out his wishes faithfully. He arranged everything. There was nothing for the Master's nieces to do but to see to their own humble mourning. He came over directly he heard of the Master's death, and he was coming backwards and forwards to the lodge all the day. He wanted to get a sight of Lucy; he only wanted to see her for a few minutes; he would have preferred to see her alone. He had arranged exactly what he should say, and the time had come for saying it.

Whatever it was he had to say he had to put it off, for Lucy did not make her appearance all through that sad day.

She was so nervous and overwrought when all was over that Nurse Brannan had to put her to bed; and when she came in in the night, finding that the girl was awake and weeping, she came into her bed and lay down beside her.

Lucy could not go to sleep until she had poured out all her trouble into her sympathetic ear. She wouldn't have told Cousin Mary for the world.

Perhaps Nurse Brannan knew all about it without being told. She knew more about Lucy's lover than Lucy herself knew.

'Do you think I could do otherwise?' Lucy asked, weeping, when she had told her all her sad little story.

'Not unless you loved him very much,' Nurse Brannan said promptly. She could understand a girl doing a great deal for a man she loved.

'No--o--o,' Lucy said hesitatingly. 'I don't think I ought to marry him even then. One never knows what he may do. I should never feel safe.'

If the room had not been quite dark, Lucy would have seen that Nurse Brannan was smiling with a contemptuous sort of pity; but, whatever she felt, she only soothed and petted the weeping girl as if she had been a little child.

'You are quite right, dear,' she said; 'one never knows what such a man will do when there is no influence strong enough to restrain him. I don't think you would be strong enough to hold him back. He ought to marry a woman with a large nature, who loved him devotedly--and I think he would tax her devotion to the uttermost.'

Lucy turned to her pillow with a sigh.

'Ah!' she murmured, 'it is the old story. I am a poor thing with a small soul!' Still, she was helped and comforted.

Eric Gwatkin came over to the lodge the next morning and asked for Lucy. He was charged with a message of condolence from her lover. She saw him in the long gallery among the pictures of the old Masters. It was such a grave and stately place, there was no room for sentiment here. She knew the trial had come, but Nurse Brannan had helped her to meet it.

She looked such a white, weeping little Lucy as she came down the long gallery to meet him. She seemed to have grown so small, to have shrunk into herself with this sorrow that had fallen upon her, that Eric Gwatkin hesitated to deliver the message that had been committed to him. She had been so sorely tried within the last two days, how could he add to her pain? He would much rather have taken her in his arms and comforted her, and offered her their safe, sure shelter from all the storms of life. He would have given the world to have the right to take her in his arms, but he had to deliver his message.

Perhaps Lucy would have preferred it if he had. She wanted to be loved and comforted, and, above all things, to be safe.

But Eric Gwatkin had not come courting on his own account. He was only the bearer of a message of sympathy from her lover. It sounded cold and formal as it fell from Eric's faltering lips. If he had come himself and taken her in his arms, if she had felt the warmth of their strong pressure and his breath upon her cheek, it might have been different--it might have been quite different.

After all, it is the occasion that makes the heroine.

Eric delivered his message of sympathy, and Lucy stood white and downcast, with wet eyelashes and trembling lips, waiting for that other message that she knew was coming. He looked at her standing there--he was only a man--and he hadn't the heart to deliver it. He was so sorry for her. He was conscious of another feeling besides which he would not have owned for the world, but he couldn't keep it out of his eyes.

His eyes were full of tenderness, but his lips were faltering in a most absurd way while Lucy waited.

'You have another message for me,' she said presently, seeing he faltered and hesitated to speak.

'Yes,' he said, 'I have another message.' But he didn't attempt to deliver it.

If he had had no tenderness for the girl he would still have hesitated. How could he, looking at the white, shrinking little figure, lay this heavy load upon her?

'What has Mr. Edgell asked you to say to me?' she said in a thin, reedy little voice that she couldn't keep from shaking.

'You have heard,' he said huskily, and with a voice low and ashamed in his throat; 'everybody has heard what has happened. Knowing this, he has sent me to ask you if you will give him another trial. It is never likely to happen again--God helping him, it _will_ never happen again--but, knowing this, and what has gone before, he has bid me to ask you if you will give him another chance.'

He paused and looked above Lucy's head; he could not look her in the face.

'His fate is in your hands,' he went on, without looking at her. 'It depends upon you whether a happy and useful life is before him. If you are true to him he will have the strongest motive to lead an honourable and honoured life that a man can have; but if you refuse to give him a chance, he will abandon all hope--he will have no inducement to make a stand.'

He said nothing about risking her happiness. It might not have occurred to him that he was asking her to risk the ruin of her young life on the chance of saving his friend. Still, he did not look her in the face.

'How can I answer him?' Lucy said, wringing her hands.

'You can only answer him as your heart dictates,' he said huskily. 'Remember, in refusing him this last chance, you are snatching away a rope from the grasp of a drowning man.'

Oh, what a coward he was: he could not look the girl in the face!

'Oh, this is horrible!' Lucy said, with a moan, and then she sat down on one of the high-backed chairs against the wall and began to cry. Her nerves were so shaken that tears came readily now.

If there was one thing more than another that Eric Gwatkin hated, it was to see a woman cry. Pamela never cried. Perhaps these foolish tears showed him more than anything else the girl's weakness. He was dreadfully sorry for her; he was sorry and ashamed of his errand. How could he press this sacrifice upon such a little weak creature?

'I am such a poor thing!' Lucy moaned, wringing her hands. 'I should never be able to influence him. Oh, you don't know how weak I am!'

Eric smiled sadly, and sighed. He knew exactly how weak she was; he would not have had a woman stronger.

'I am not like Pamela,' Lucy went on, with her little feeble moan.

'No,' he interrupted her hastily, 'thank God! You are not like Pamela.'

Lucy looked at him with wonder, through her tears, not unmixed with reproof.

'If I were Pamela,' she said, with some dignity--'if I had a great soul, and were made on larger lines, like Pamela, I should give you a different answer.'

'I must tell you,' he said hastily, interrupting her--'I must tell you, before you give your answer--your final answer--that Edgell releases you from your engagement; that he reproaches himself for having ever asked you to risk your happiness in his keeping. He begs me to say that if you have any fears or misgivings, if you have no confidence in his resolution--if you doubt him or yourself--it would be better for you to give him up.'

Lucy sighed.

'But if you can be so generous as to give him another chance, he will never, never, God helping him, betray your trust!'

Lucy looked at him with a break in the dull misery in her face. Why hadn't he delivered this part of his message first? Why had he talked about snatching away a rope from a drowning man?

'I am very grateful to him,' Lucy said, in a small shaky voice; 'tell him I am very grateful to him. I do not deserve so much love. Ask him to forgive me if he can; I am such a poor thing. I have no courage--I cannot even be generous!'

She broke quite down. She could not trust herself to say any more. She took her lover at his word. Eric Gwatkin gave her one more chance before he went away.

'Remember,' he said, 'it is his last hope of reform.'

But Lucy only moaned, 'I am such a poor thing--I have no courage!'

He went away, and left her weeping in the gallery, under the picture of the Old Master. Surely he would have approved her decision.

* * * * *

It was a dreadful time at St. Benedict's all through that sad week. The boat that was going to do such great things--that was going to make a bump every night of the races--did not row during the three succeeding nights.

Perhaps it was quite as well that it did not; the bumps might not have come off, and, at any rate, it had the credit of them. Most of the crew had gone down; there was nothing to stay up for. All the men, indeed, who were not staying for their degrees, or who had not people up, went down at once. There was nothing to keep them here: the college concert had been put off, and the boat ball, and the supper that was to celebrate the bumps. There was not a single festivity to celebrate; there was nothing but a funeral to stay up for.

A few men stayed up for it, and all the Tutors and Fellows. There was quite a large muster in the college chapel at the early service, when the coffins of the old Master and his wife were brought in and placed in the clear space in the body of the chapel, between the long rows of benches. There were no flowers to hide the dreary outline of the coffins--nothing to cover up their nakedness; there were no flowers heaped up in the Master's empty stall beneath the organ-loft, but someone had laid on the seat of the adjoining stall, which was draped with black, like the Master's, a wreath of immortelles. Someone--no one seemed to know who--placed the little solitary wreath on the coffin of the Master's wife, and it travelled with her down to its last resting-place.

Not a few of the Fellows of other colleges, and all the 'Heads,' followed the little sad procession to the railway-station. There were but two mourners to follow: Cousin Mary and Dick's little daughter. There were no other relatives left. The Old Master had outlived all his kin.

The Senior Tutor went down with the women to Northwold. He had made all the preparations. And as the sun was sinking at the close of the sweet June day he stood bareheaded beside the open grave, where the Master of St. Benedict's and his wife lay side by side.

They buried him in the old churchyard where his humble forefathers slept. Their stones, aslant now, and overgrown with moss and lichens, were all around him. Lucy could not help reading their rudely-carven names and homely epitaphs, as she stood listening to the solemn words that were being read over the Master's grave.

There was a Richard Rae among them who had 'died in sure and certain hope of a joyful resurrection.' What could he have done more if he had been Master of a college?

She lingered among the graves with the Tutor, and read the simple records of her humble race. She could trace her family back to the seventh generation; it was quite a long line of descent: Davids and Nathaniels and Marthas and Marys, but there was only one Lucy, the high-spirited ancestress who had kept the stall in the butter-market, and met her lover at a dancing-booth at the fair.

They left the old Master sleeping among his kinsfolk, in the old churchyard that his memory had gone back to, close to the Vicarage gate. The setting sun was shining on the church tower and on the old vane that had lingered so long in his memory, and the rooks were cawing in the old elm-trees overhead, as they turned away and left him to his rest. He would sleep more peacefully here under the daisies and beneath the dewy heavens than amid the scenes of his learned labours, under the stones of his college chapel.

The mourners returned to Cambridge the next day; there was nothing to keep them here. Before they went Lucy asked the Tutor to take her to the butter-market. Everything had changed, but the old market still stood where it had stood for centuries, with the quaint stalls and the old brown awnings, and the rude boards spread on trestles where the country folk displayed their homely wares.

There was an old woman sitting behind that corner stall now, lean and brown and wrinkled as an autumn pear. Lucy bought some flowers of her before she went away; it might have been her namesake.

It was among these homely surroundings, in this morning walk, that the Senior Tutor asked Lucy to be his wife. He knew all about her birth, and those old stories of the Master's--he had heard them dozens of times--and he had just taken her to the stall which that other Lucy Rae had once kept.

He couldn't have chosen a happier moment to press his suit. Lucy's heart had quite failed her. It had been failing her ever since that morning when she met Eric Gwatkin in the cloisters, and at the sight of that stall in the butter-market it was at its lowest ebb. She had no spirit left in her; she had no one to cling to. She wanted to be loved and comforted and petted, and Cousin Mary was not good at petting. The Senior Tutor's offer came at the right moment; he couldn't have chosen a more auspicious time.

Lucy didn't exactly jump at him. She was too bewildered and broken down and upset generally to jump, but she asked him to give her time--to give her a week to think about it.

When a girl asks a man to give her time, he generally knows beforehand what her answer will be.