Chapter XVI: The Old, Old Story

What on earth possessed Lucy to go out into the lane again the next morning at that ridiculously early hour, before seven o'clock, she could never tell. She was not anxious about the Master. She had left him in good hands, sitting beside the window babbling about the lilac-bushes in the old garden.

Perhaps it was because it was such a lovely May morning that Lucy went out into the lane; it was a shame to stay indoors a minute longer.

A change had come over the scene since yesterday. The clouds had all passed away like magic, and the sun was shining, and the sky was blue above, and the earth was green beneath, and, oh, how the birds were singing! There was no excuse for Lucy being in bed. Most of the girls had been up working hours ago, and some had not been in bed since daybreak.

She didn't expect to meet anyone in the lane; she only went out, and looked round, quite by the way, and--and she saw Wyatt Edgell coming to her, up between the green hedgerows, where the hawthorn was in bloom, and beneath the blue sky, where a lark--where a dozen larks were singing, and she had never seen so delightful a picture before in her life.

Like the storm of yesterday, all traces of that midnight debauch had passed away. His face ought to have been pale and soddened, and his eyes dull and heavy, with great bags beneath them, but they were not the least changed. The fine intellectual beauty of the face was finer than ever, and the mere physical beauty, which no girl could look upon untouched, was seen to its best advantage on this sweet May morning.

Wyatt Edgell wore a straw hat with the ribbon of his college around it. He had just come from the river, fresh from his bath, and the sun had dried his hair as he had come along, and it curled all over his head in short crisp curls like a god. His face was glowing and his eyes were shining; he looked a picture of perfect health and manly beauty.

We have had so many studies of Venus rising fresh from her bath, but the artists have not been so keen on Adonis.

A sweet thing in oils, not 'The Bather,' but 'The Bathed,' would be a novelty on the walls of the Academy.

There are no baths at Newnham, only six feet of zinc to splash about in, and that one has to take in turn at the end of a lane of girls waiting in the passage. Lucy wouldn't have had her turn for another hour this morning, so she had dressed without it, and had come out into the lane to take a bath of sunshine instead.

She looked paler than if she had had her turn of splashing in eighteen inches of water, but her hair wasn't limp and wet and untidy.

Her heart couldn't help beating a little faster as Wyatt Edgell came towards her, and her face burnt hotly. She could feel that she was blushing like a milkmaid.

'Oh, you here!' she said in quite a tone of surprise. 'I didn't expect you this morning.'

He didn't believe her. He couldn't look down into her glowing face and believe she had put on all those blushes to meet the burning gaze of Apollo, unless, indeed, she expected Wattles.

'No?' he said with a smile, and he imprisoned her hand; 'but I couldn't keep away. I had something to tell you this morning.'

'About the Master?' she said, turning pale.

'No; it has nothing to do with the Master. I asked for him at the lodge as I came out, and they told me he had had a good night. Phyllis Brannan is with him, and she is a host in herself.'

Lucy tossed her head.

'Oh, you know Nurse Brannan?' she said coldly.

'Yes,' he said gravely; 'I have reason to know Phyllis, best and kindest of nurses. If ever there was a woman true as steel, it is Phyllis Brannan.'

Lucy sniffed impatiently. She hadn't come out without her bath at seven o'clock in the morning to hear the praises of Nurse Brannan. She was quite sure she would be quite as good a nurse after a reasonable probation, and she wouldn't keep her hair so untidy.

'What had you got to tell me?' she said shortly.

It was not exactly encouraging; but Edgell smiled and drew her away from the gate and up the lane, and then she discovered that he still held her hand.

She drew it away sharply and stopped. She really didn't care to walk any farther with him if he were only going to talk about Nurse Brannan. She had been fighting a dreadfully hard battle with herself all night, all the previous day--ever since that conversation with Eric--and she had worked herself up, like the martyrs of old, for a big sacrifice, for the stake, if need be; and now, after all that struggle, there wasn't going to be any stake at all.

Nurse Brannan was going to the stake, perhaps. She was ready at any time to do all sorts of disagreeable things without making any fuss about them.

'Would you mind walking this way?' he said, and he led Lucy unresisting up the lane into that narrow part, past the posts, between the high hedges, that shut them out from all curious eyes.

'I have come to ask you a question,' he said, speaking low, with a little catch in his voice, 'and I want an answer before I go back to work. The Tripos begins on Monday. Will it be worth while to go in for it?'

'What do you mean?' she said; but she knew very well what he meant.

'I think you know what I mean, Miss Rae--Lucy. I think you know more about me than any other woman. If you will tell me I have anything to work for, I will go back and work, and--and some day I will come to you again; but if--if there is nothing to work for, I shall go down to-day.'

'You would not throw up your chance?' she said. She was quite pale, and she was trembling all over.

'I should certainly throw it up. What would be the use of a degree to me with _that_ before me? There is only one thing, Lucy, to stand between me and it. My sentence must come from your lips. Am I to go back and work?'

No one looking at him standing there in the sunshine, with that smile on his face, would have dreamed the issue that hung on the girl's lips. She couldn't realize it herself; she could only gasp and tremble. He had quite taken her breath away. She would have given the world to run away without giving that fateful answer, but the lane was narrow, and he stood before her.

'Well,' he said, watching with his eager, questioning eyes the changes on her face, 'am I to go back to work?'

What could she say? Her lips faltered, and the words would not come; again she tried, but his sentence lingered.

There was a merle singing in the elm-tree above, and a thrush was calling for its mate, and the wood-pigeons were cooing softly in the orchard over the hedge; everything was so glad and happy and full of life and love on this May morning; every voice in nature was pleading for him.

Her face was dreadfully pale, and her lips were quivering, and her heart was beating like a hammer. She looked up into his face with a strange white terror in her eyes, and she saw the scarf round his throat. It was the coloured striped scarf of his college, and he wore it twisted on that balmy morning round his throat. The sight of that scarf decided her.

'I think you must go back to work,' she said softly, with just a little wan smile.

He caught her in his arms, to his heart, and kissed her on the forehead.

'God bless you, Lucy!' he said--'God bless you, darling!'

The pressure of his arms, the strange, sweet pressure of his warm lips on her forehead, brought the blood back to her heart, to her cheeks, and she drew herself away, flushing scarlet.

A Newnham girl came in at one end of the lane, and a Selwyn man came in at the other, and they went back to their respective colleges and told the tale. It was all over Newnham at breakfast-time that Lucy had been seen kissing a man in broad daylight just outside the walls of the college.

The old, old story has been told a great many times, in a great many ways, but it had never been told at Newnham before or at Girton in such a barefaced way. It will be told in the public streets next, or perhaps in the Senate House.