Chapter XIX: A Strong Tower

'Weakness to be wroth with weakness.'

It was a dreadful time of heartburnings at Newnham through all the next week; not at Newnham only, but all over Cambridge. So many Triposes were on, and the week's interval between the first and second parts of the examination for the Mathematical Tripos was being made the most of by the coming Wranglers and Senior Ops.

There were half a dozen girls at Newnham going in for Honours in mathematics, but there was only one that was expected to take a high place--a very high place--among the Wranglers of the year. There would be several Senior and Junior Optimes, but there would be only one Wrangler this year.

The hopes of Newnham were set on Pamela Gwatkin, who was expected to do such great things, to win such honour for the women's college. A dark rumour had reached St. John's and Trinity--who like to divide the honours between them--that they were likely to be left behind in the race--far behind. They were uneasy and anxious, though they wouldn't have owned it for the world, for--

'At times the high gods, who o'er papers preside, Send a lady from Newnham to chasten their pride.'

The rumour caused a great deal of midnight oil to be burnt in Cambridge during the first week in June. Wyatt Edgell never went to bed till daylight; not that the rumour disturbed him, he only laughed gaily when he heard that 'the lady from Newnham' was Wattles' sister. Perhaps, being twins, he measured them by the same standard.

He never saw Lucy all through that week, though he went every morning at the usual hour up the lane. He didn't linger at the gate now--he had no time for lingering at gates; but he looked up at her window. He had found out which was Lucy's window, and he paid his accustomed pilgrimage to that sacred spot in the narrowed lane between the hedgerows, that were all white with May now, and then he would hurry back to his work. He would take back with him from Newnham, as a memento of his visit, a bit of sweet-briar from the hedge, and he would lay it on his table before him, that something of the fragrance of his love might be about him while he worked.

He wrote to her during the week a little letter that would have set any other woman's pulses on fire, but it only frightened Lucy. She couldn't understand the vehemence of a man's love. She didn't answer it--she couldn't without compromising herself completely; but she sent him a message by Eric.

It was not often that Eric Gwatkin visited his sister at Newnham. She did not encourage his visits, and she was always too busy to talk to him. He came up one day in the middle of the week; his examination was over, and he had nothing particular to do, and he came up to see his sister. He had been slumming all the afternoon in that odorous district round Magdalen Bridge, and he had come up to Newnham to see if Pamela would give him some tea.

Pamela was not in her room, and Eric had leisure to look round and see how his sister amused herself. One can tell so much from a room in daily use what people's occupations are.

Pamela did not amuse herself much, unless she found recreation in the higher mathematics.

Her table--it was an eight-legged affair in old oak--groaned beneath the weight of the books on mathematics that were piled upon it. It was as much as the eight legs could do to support it.

Eric quite shivered when he saw those books and the problem papers that were scattered about; the ink was still wet on some of them. He couldn't have worked out one of those problems to have saved his life. Oh, Nature had made a great mistake! She ought to have made Pamela the man. What was the use of giving all that brain to a woman?

Perhaps Eric thought so; not for the first time, indeed; he may have got used to the thought as he moved uneasily about Pamela's books. There were shelves and shelves of books in this girl's room, and there were not a dozen in Eric's: a Bible and a few theological books, and some Church histories, and nothing more; no poetry, or travels, or philosophy, or fiction--oh no, no fiction!

There were books on Pamela's shelves that made his hair stand on end. He groaned as he read the titles, and he had cold shivers down his back.

To think they should be twins! Oh, Nature had made a great mistake!

He was still reading the titles on the backs of Pamela's naughty black books, and cold shivers were running down his spine, when the door opened and a girl came in.

He looked up, with mild reproof in his eyes, expecting to see Pamela; but it was not his sister, it was Lucy.

Lucy had not come into Pamela Gwatkin's room by choice. She had been sent with a message from one of the Dons, and she had come under protest.

She forgot all about the message when she saw Eric.

'You here?' she said.

There was no reason why he shouldn't be here, in his sister's room. She had just received that letter from Wyatt Edgell, and she was wondering how she should answer it, and the sight of Eric seemed to bring a feeling of relief to her mind.

'Oh, I have been wanting to see you so much!' she said eagerly; she was so afraid Pamela would come in and interrupt them. 'I want to know--how--how Mr. Edgell is going on--if--if anything has happened since----'

Eric understood what she meant, though she spoke incoherently; and he understood her agitation and reluctance.

'No,' he said slowly, looking at her with a strange pity in his eyes, 'nothing has happened in that way, thank God! He is working hard; I am afraid too hard.'

'Oh, I don't think work will hurt him!' she said scornfully. She remembered how the girls worked here. What the men called 'work' was only play to them. She wasn't at all afraid that her lover would work as hard as Pamela, for instance.

'I don't mean that,' he said; 'I'm not afraid of his breaking down. I'm only afraid that when the strain is over--he--he will feel it--he----'

He was a very awkward young man; he could only stand there stammering and stuttering, while the girl looked at him with dilating eyes.

'You mean,' she said with a shiver, 'that when the strain is over he will go back to his old way--that he will not be able to withstand----'

She could not finish the sentence; there was a strange sinking at her heart--a dreadful unutterable loathing and sickness that she could not overcome--and she sank down white and trembling in a chair and covered her face with her hands. The sight of Eric had brought back that awful scene, and she was thinking of that gap in his throat; she could never get it out of her mind.

'No, no, by heaven! not that!' he said almost fiercely. 'He will never, never fall away again in that way, please God; but it is you alone that can keep him. His salvation--heaven forgive me for saying it!--is in your hands.'

'My hands?' Lucy repeated feebly.

'Yes,' he said gravely, almost sternly, 'in your hands. Your love can hold him when nothing else can; it is to him a strong tower against the face of this enemy. You must not fail him in his need.'

'A strong tower!' Lucy moaned. 'Oh, you don't know what you say! I am such a poor little thing--you don't know how weak I am. Oh, why did he choose me?'

She sat with dilated eyes and white stricken face, moaning and wringing her hands. He was very sorry for the girl, but he couldn't spare her. He was thinking of that look on Edgell's face when he had said what a woman's love could do for him.

'Why do men choose women?' he said almost harshly; 'perhaps it is fate, who can say? He loved you, or he would not have chosen you. Oh, you don't know what it is to win the love of such a man!'

'No--o!' said Lucy meekly, with her little smile--her tiny white smile--'I'm afraid I don't. I'm such a little thing! I could not have a large soul like--like Pamela. Oh, why didn't he choose Pamela?'

'It is too late to ask that question now; he has chosen you. Are you going to be true, and loyal, and put yourself aside, as some women do, or are you going to fail him at the last moment?'

It was a hard question to answer; Lucy could not have answered it if she would. How could she tell--she who had never been tried--to what great occasion she might rise? She might be a heroine yet, though she didn't look like one, sitting there weeping and wringing her hands.

'You will not fail him now; remember his future is in your hands. He will do great things with a woman by his side to encourage him to noble aims, to fire him with noble ambitions. Oh, you do not know what your love will do for him! He will have a great future with you by his side.'

Still Lucy moaned and wrung her hands.

'I shall be always afraid,' she said; 'I shall never feel safe. I shall always be thinking day and night of--of what may happen.'

'It will be your own fault if it happens. It is only your love that will keep him; if that should fail, God help him!'

'I am such a poor little thing!' she moaned.

While she was sitting weeping there, Pamela came in, and Lucy jumped up and brushed the tears from her eyes, and puckered her little level brows, and tried to look as if she hadn't been crying. She forgot all about the message she had to give Pamela, and when the sister and brother were talking she slipped out of the room.

'What's she crying about?' Pamela asked him as Lucy closed the door behind her. 'Has anything happened to that--that Mr. Edgell? or is the Master worse?'

'The Master is no worse; but Mrs. Rae is ill, very ill,' Eric answered. He was not at all disposed to talk of Wyatt Edgell's love for Lucy to his agnostic sister.

'And Mr. Edgell, has he been having another attack? Has he been attempting suicide again?'

'Hush, Pamela!' Eric Gwatkin exclaimed almost harshly. He could not bear to hear his sister speak of Edgell in that way. 'You don't know what you are saying. That was an accident, and he had been ill. If you only knew Edgell, you would not say such things. He is the best and noblest fellow in the world, and he is the dearest friend I have.'

'They say he is to head the list this year; that he is to be Senior Wrangler,' Pamela said in her cool, contemptuous way.

'Yes, he is sure to head the list. There is no one to touch him in the 'Varsity.'

Pamela smiled.

Eric had forgotten what rumour was saying about her--that it would be a neck-and-neck race.

'He is working hard, then?' she said indifferently.

What could it matter to her if he were reading hard or raving on his couch with delirium tremens?

'Yes; he's working like a horse--like a giant, rather. He can do six days' work in one every day. No one can have any chance with him.'

Pamela didn't ask Eric to have any tea, and he went away as he came. She didn't even go to the front door with him. She said good-bye, and sat down to the eight-legged table among her books, and left him to find his way out by himself.

He knew his way pretty well. It was not the first time he had been there. When he was nearly at the end of the first passage a door opened and a girl came out and stopped him. It was Lucy.

'I have been thinking of what you said,' she whispered, with a little break in her voice, 'and I will do what I can. Tell him from me not to work too hard; to--to take care of himself--for my sake.'

Her voice broke down entirely, and she went into the room and shut the door.

He hadn't got to the end of the passage before another door opened, and another girl's head was put out--the head of a girl with red hair. It was Maria Stubbs. She watched him to the end of the passage, and then she sniffed in her unpleasant way and went into Lucy's room.

She went in without knocking, and found Lucy on her knees. She had flung herself on her knees beside her couch, and was wildly imploring Heaven to make her love strong enough and tender enough to keep this man safe who trusted in her.

She looked up when Maria came in, and stumbled up from her knees, pretending she had been looking for something under the couch, as she had been pretending just now she hadn't been crying; but she didn't take in Miss Stubbs.

'Who was that man you were talking to in the passage?' Maria said bluntly. 'It didn't look like Mr. Edgell.'

'No,' Lucy said meekly; 'it wasn't Mr. Edgell. It was Pamela's brother.'

'And he brought you a message from your lover? Of course he is your lover. I like to call things by their right names. I prefer to call a spade a spade.'

'No, he didn't bring me a message,' Lucy said, with some spirit.

She wasn't always going to be trampled upon by Maria.

'But you sent a message by him. I heard you give him a message. Oh, it's no use trying to deceive me!'

'I couldn't help it--indeed I couldn't help it!' Lucy moaned; and then she sat down upon the couch beside which she had been kneeling, and began to cry.

She was feeling so dreadfully in need of sympathy and advice that she was bound to tell somebody. She couldn't bear all the burden of this terrible secret on her little weak shoulders. The great terror that haunted her would not be so dreadful to face if she could share it with another.

She told Maria Stubbs the whole story from the beginning; she kept nothing back.

Maria listened in silence to the end. Once or twice she was surprised into an exclamation, and her face grew pale beneath the freckles, and if Lucy had been looking at her she would have seen the tears gather in her eyes and Maria furtively brush them aside with the back of her hand. She would not have let Lucy see that she was crying for the world.

'What would you do if it were you, dear?' Lucy said with a little sob, when she had finished her tale.

'Do?' said Maria, and then she paused, and recalled the face of the man who had been waiting for Lucy in the long gallery of the lodge.

She had seen a good deal of him in those few minutes. She had seen quite enough of him to make up her mind what she should do if he were her lover instead of Lucy's.

'Do, dear?' she repeated, and her eyes beneath their pale lashes grew inexpressibly warm and tender, and her whole face softened and changed. It was plain and freckled no longer; at least, the freckles were there, but one did not notice them in that new wonderful beauty and exaltation that had come into her plain face that was plain no longer. 'I would be a strong tower to him against the face of his enemy!' And she meant it.