Chapter XVII: In the Picture-Gallery

The term wore on, and there was nothing talked of in Cambridge but examinations. How could one talk about anything else when it was the subject uppermost in everybody's mind? There were the boat-races, and the college balls, and the concerts, but exciting as these were to the sisters and cousins of the men, they were of secondary importance to the exams.

The nearer the day approaches for the dreaded trial the more dreadful seems the finality of the approaching result. Nobody questions the finality of the sentence at the time, and when it happens to be adverse men go away and hide their heads and think that all things are at an end for them. By-and-by the gates of Hope are opened afresh and things don't look quite so bad, and in nine cases out of ten nobody knows out of Cambridge whether a man has taken a high degree or not.

Perhaps it is different with women, the cases being more exceptional; a girl who has done well usually goes through life with an affix to her name, spoken with awe by her admiring friends--'Fifth Wrangler,' 'First Class Moral Science,' 'Senior Op,' and so on.

There would be a good many girls do well at Newnham this term. There would be several first-classes, and some good seconds, and a few, very few thirds. Women never take Poll degrees, so that all, every one, would go out in Honours.

There was a great fuss made with the girls who were going up for the exams. They were fed and petted and looked after just as if they were in training. There were special dishes for them at the High, and they were taken out for exercise, or driven out for airings, and put to bed at given hours. It was not the fault of the authorities if they did not reflect honour on their college.

The men were not the objects of such tender solicitude to their Tutors and Deans. They were left pretty much to themselves, and went to bed when they liked, and got up when they liked, and took their food or left it. Those who liked took exercise, and those who didn't sported their oak and worked until they were deaf and blind, and their brains were so addled that they could hardly find their way into the examination-room.

Wyatt Edgell sported his oak from morning till night during those few days preceding the Tripos examination, but he didn't addle his brains. They were not brains easy to addle by work. The men remarked that this close application, which would have made most men seedy and stale, seemed to agree with him. His eyes were brighter, and his step was lighter, and more assured than heretofore, and he held his head like a man who was going to win, and he hummed snatches of songs--love-songs mostly--as he crossed the courts or climbed his staircase, taking two and three steps at a time, as a man of his youth and strength should do.

A change had come over him since that morning when Lucy had told him to go back to work. He had not seen her in the lane since, though he had gone up to Newnham every morning, and stood staring at the gate until the bell rang for prayers, and then he had gone up the narrow little path between the hedges, and visited again the spot where he had taken her in his arms.

If she had been there when he made these matutinal pilgrimages to the spot, he would surely have taken her in his arms again, and great would have been the scandal at Newnham.

Lucy didn't go out in the lane again alone after that morning. She was quite frightened at what she had done. She couldn't very well have done otherwise. What woman would? She had saved him--at least, she told herself she had saved him. He would go back to his work now, and he would take his degree, probably a very good degree. She didn't dare to speculate any farther; she stopped at his degree. She never said a word about what she had done to Cousin Mary; she wouldn't have told her for the world. Mary had only pointed Wyatt Edgell out to her on the steps of the chapel a month ago. She didn't know him from Eric Gwatkin a month ago, and now she was engaged to marry him!

No wonder Lucy was frightened, and wouldn't have run the risk of meeting him alone for the world. She developed suddenly a violent affection for Miss Stubbs, and used to implore her with tears in her eyes to accompany her in her visits to the lodge. She was such a dreadful little coward, she didn't dare to go alone.

The Master was no worse; his memory had gone, and his physical powers were weakened, since his accident in the garden, but there was no immediate danger. He might go on babbling in his second childhood for weeks or months.

Lucy met the Senior Tutor at the lodge sometimes when she paid her afternoon visits, but she never went to his rooms again. She wouldn't have risked meeting Wyatt Edgell on the stairs for all the coaching in the world. She would rather have been ploughed.

The Tutor couldn't say any more to Lucy about Cousin Mary and the Master's wife making the lodge their home when he met her at these times, as Maria Stubbs was always with her. It seemed likely that the Master's wife would have a home elsewhere before long, and the arrangement would fall through.

Maria had fallen in love with the long gallery of the lodge, as everybody does who goes to St. Benedict's, and she used to wait for Lucy there while she paid her visits to the invalids. Miss Stubbs never did things by halves, and she made herself acquainted during these visits with all the old portraits on the walls. She knew every one of them, from the pale foundress in her sober pre-Raphaelitish dress, to the old Master in his scarlet gown. She had established quite a nodding acquaintance with all of them, and she had got up most of the facts of their history. She knew more about them than Lucy, though she had lived among them for months.

One day while she was poring over the old portraits in the gallery a man came in. He had come up the stairs two at a time, and he had looked eagerly round when he got into the gallery.

There was nobody there but a red-haired girl in spectacles, and the old dead and gone Masters. Yes, there was the foundress, but he didn't care a button for the foundress. He was looking for a real flesh-and-blood woman; his pulses were leaping, and his heart was thumping against his side, and his eyes were shining--he had just finished the first part of the exam.--and just at this moment the fairest creation of the finest master on canvas wouldn't have satisfied him.

He walked to the end of the gallery looking for Lucy--she might be hiding away in any of the little oriel windows--and Miss Stubbs watched him.

She was so glad to see his countenance fall when he couldn't find her. A woman would not have shown her disappointment in that transparent way. She would have made the best of it, and talked to the man who was there, but Edgell glared at Maria savagely, and didn't seem inclined to talk.

'Lucy Rae is with the Master,' she said sweetly; she knew instinctively that he was looking for Lucy. 'She will be here presently.'

Edgell tried to look as if it didn't matter, and he wasn't particular whether she came now or at midnight, but he didn't take Miss Stubbs in.

He fidgeted up and down the gallery, stopping every now and then before a picture, but never looking at it, or staring out into the court below from the old latticed oriel window. He was standing in the recess of the window idly tattooing on the pane when Lucy came in.

She didn't see him until she reached the window, and she came running down the gallery in that energetic way peculiar to the students of colleges for women.

'I'm afraid I've kept you a long time, M'ria; I hope you don't mind----' and then she paused, and Edgell came towards her with his hands outstretched.

He would have taken her in his arms, but there was that hateful Maria at the end of the gallery. He came to Lucy as a lover should come to his mistress, with the love-light in his eyes, and his whole being quivering with passion.

'My darling!' he said, and he took her hands.

Lucy had no idea of being kissed like a milkmaid with Miss Stubbs looking on, and she drew her hands quickly away.

'You here?' she said.

'Yes,' he answered, looking down upon her with that warm light in his eyes and his lips smiling; 'where else should I look for you? I have waited in the lane every morning in the week, and you have never come since--since that morning----'

'The Master is better,' she said, dropping her eyes; they were such sweet, shy eyes they could not meet the hot flame in his.

'And was it only to hear about the Master you came?' he said in a low voice that thrilled her and brought the colour into her cheeks.

'It was to tell me about him you came.' Her voice trembled in spite of herself, and her heart was beating tumultuously.

'It was because I loved you I came, Lucy--darling! I could not live without a sight of your dear face. I have lived a whole week without you, and it has seemed a year. You must not leave me alone again so long, darling!'

There was more in the tone than in his words, and Lucy looked up anxiously into his face.

He read the question in her eyes and he smiled gravely, almost sadly.

'No,' he said, 'thank God, not that!' and he stooped and kissed her forehead reverently between the bright brown ripples of her hair.

Her face grew warm under his touch, and she trembled and drew back. Suppose that girl in the gallery had seen him? It would be all over Newnham. And the servants might come in at any time, or Cousin Mary; and Mr. Colville might walk into the gallery unannounced, as he was accustomed to do. Oh, it would be dreadful to be caught kissing like a housemaid!

'And you have been working hard all this time?' she said, when she had got the little oak table that stood in the window well between them.

'Yes, I have been working pretty well. I shouldn't have done a stroke if you hadn't given me something to work for. I should have thrown it all up, and gone down.'

'Oh, it would never have done for you to have gone down--you who are expected to bring so much credit to the college! It would have disappointed everybody, and your own people most. What would your people have said?'

'They would have been disappointed--and--and I think my mother would have been sorry. She is such a tender, indulgent mother; she has never refused me anything. She has always stood between me and my father, and covered up all my shortcomings, but she couldn't have covered up this, and--and there would have been a row. Yes, I think it would have disappointed her.'

His eyes were tender and softened as he spoke of his mother, and Lucy thought as she stood there of that dreadful scene when she found Eric on his knees beside the couch, and she wondered how his mother would have covered up that.

She looked up at the warm, tender face of the man bending over her--he had got round the table--and with a sudden terror she saw the mark on his throat--he had not covered it; he wore no scarf to-day, and his collar was open, and the purple mark was visible on the white skin.

He saw her eyes travel to--not to his face; they stopped short at his throat, and a white look of terror came into them.

'Yes,' he said, reading her thoughts--her transparent thoughts--'she would have covered up this, but it would have broken her heart.'

He drew his collar up round his throat as he spoke and Lucy's eyes filled with tears.

'It is all over and past,' she said bravely; 'there will be no need to "break her heart" now. You will fulfil all her expectations; you will make her happy and proud--oh, so proud! If men who are tempted to do silly, selfish things would only pause and think of the people who love them!'

Edgell drew her nearer to him.

Maria Stubbs was not looking that way; she really was a most sensible girl, she was entirely absorbed in the pictures.

'I will think of you, then,' he said in a low voice that vibrated with passion, 'when--when I am tempted; but I must be sure of your love, Lucy, or it will be no good; there must be no mistake about it. It must be the real thing; a make-believe, a sham, would never save a man! Tell me if--if at such a time, darling, I may think of you?'

He put the question solemnly, though his lips were smiling, but his eyes were looking down into hers as if they would read her soul.

Lucy's face grew pale and troubled; she knew exactly what his question meant; she felt limp and frightened, dreadfully frightened. Anyone might come into the gallery at any moment, and he was holding her in a grasp of iron and reading her little transparent soul through and through. She could not escape from him.

She had no alternative.

'Yes,' she murmured almost inaudibly; 'you may think of me if--if it will help you.'

He took her in his arms for one brief moment--he forgot all about Maria Stubbs--and kissed her lips and her eyes.

'My darling!' he murmured--'my darling!'

Lovers have such a limited vocabulary, they are obliged to have recourse to unmeaning repetitions.

Miss Stubbs had behaved beautifully till now--no Newnham girl could have behaved better; but there is a limit to all human endurance, and the limit of Maria's endurance had been reached.

'I hope you are nearly ready,' she said in a most unpleasant voice; 'because if not I must go.'

'I am quite ready, dear,' said Lucy, nearly crying. 'I have been ready a long time.'

She could have blessed Miss Stubbs for taking her away. She was dreadfully frightened, but it was with a strange, delicious terror that stirred her pulses like a tumult of joy.