Alan St. Aubyn

“ Tush, man! you know nothing about love if you do not know that love delights in sacrifice. It must have its altar—the rites could not be celebrated without an altar—and it must have its offering—its free-will offering—its victim. It withholds not its dearest—how should it? Love has no self.'
Eric groaned. He knew nothing about a woman's love. He didn't believe that little Lucy could ever love a man like that. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Lucy ran her fingers through the sweet pale-purple buds as she stood beside the table. She was not fond of picking things to pieces like the Science girls, who can never see a flower without tearing its heart out. She was content to bury her face in a posy and drink in its sweetness and beauty. She buried her face in the bunch of lilac as she stood beside the Master's chair, and the old man watched her with his dim eyes. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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! ”

“ It quite took Lucy's breath away to hear that little bit of a nurse explaining the parables to the Master of St. Benedict's. He had preached hundreds of sermons in the college chapel from that very chapter; it had always been a favourite subject with him. It had always had a fitting application to those fresh young minds in the benches beneath him that were perennially engaged in wasting their substance in riotous living. He had read it in every ancient tongue in which it had ever been written. And now a little nurse-girl, who couldn't even keep her hair tidy, was explaining it to him. ”

“ She couldn't run away; she was obliged to stop in the face of all those men at the college gate and shake hands with him. She wasn't at all sure he would not take her in his arms before them all. There was no saying what he would do. He never did anything like other men; he did not measure the world and its customs with the impulse of the moment. Was not the world made for him?
Wyatt Edgell didn't take her in his arms, and he didn't kiss her in the face of all the men assembled at the college gate, but he walked back by her side to Newnham. ”

“ It was unreasonable of Pamela Gwatkin and Maria to blame her. No one in their senses would blame her.
Lucy could not help repeating to herself, as she sat there thinking over the events of the miserable day, Pamela's question, 'Not if you had loved him?' 'No,' she told herself impatiently, 'she would not be justified in making such a sacrifice, however much she loved him. Nothing could justify it. Girls were not expected to make such sacrifices for their lovers. No girl in her senses would think of it.'
Lucy's meditation was disturbed by the Master's rambling monologue. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If there were tears no one saw them—only a hard break in the voice when Wyatt Edgell's mother thanked the Tutor for his interest in her son. She didn't even look at Lucy as she passed. Something in the rustle of her rich trailing skirts as they swept over the stones of the court brought to the mind of the Master's niece those old stories the Master was so fond of telling—of the stall in the butter-market, and the meeting of her grandfather with her high-spirited ancestress in the dancing-booth at the fair. ”

“ Nothing daunted, Capability Stubbs tried the handle of the door, but Lucy had locked it on the inside; no doubt she was taking her wet things off. One doesn't take the occasion to hold a levee when one is wet to the skin.
Lucy did not appear at breakfast. Nobody missed her but Maria Stubbs; everybody else was too much occupied with her own affairs.
The very air of the place was full of examinations, and the loss, the total disappearance, of half a dozen girls, more or less—freshers—wouldn't have been noticed at this exciting moment. ”

“ The smile had faded from his face, and his eyes were cold and hard, and his lips were pressed tight [Pg 57] together. It was not the same face that had smiled upon Eric when he came into the room.
Eric was ashamed of himself, and hung his head. He ought not to have questioned Lucy's love. Nobody had ever loved him, nobody but Pamela, and she was always bullying him. He ought to have been silent until he had found out for himself what a woman will do for the man she loves. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is astonishing how girls' lips tighten after six months in a women's college. Perhaps this is due to their difficulties with mathematics, and to the anxiety that ethics and Latin prose give them, to say nothing of modern languages and natural science.
She had certainly grown more womanly since she had been at Newnham: that added seriousness supplied just the charm that was lacking. Perhaps it was quite as well that brown-haired girl had not waited.
'Do you think you could love anyone so long, Lucy?' he said presently. ”

“ Perhaps the old associations had something to do with it; they have with most of the things men value in Cambridge. A great past seems to meet one at every college gate. Every inch of ground has its own sacred memories, and the path beneath the trees had echoed to the tread of generations of poets, sages, and scholars since the old philosopher walked there. ”

“ Lucy couldn't finish the picture, it was too [Pg 146] terrible. She could only throw herself sobbing on the floor beside the Master's bed and grovel on the ground with her face in her hands in a paroxysm of humiliation and despair too deep for words.
Oh, why had she such a small soul? 'I am made on such small lines,' she moaned in her self-abasement. 'I am such a mean, pitiful creature. I want to be happy, and safe, and prosperous, and everything to go smooth. I cannot rise to great occasions like other women. ”

“ Lucy did not wait to hear any more. She ran away as fast as she could, and left Cousin Mary and the Tutor talking by the Master's bedside.
They took no notice of her. They did not even look at her. Oh, if they had only known!
Wyatt Edgell's people came at noon. Lucy saw them crossing the old court when she came back from her examination—an elderly man with a striking resemblance to her lover, and a tall stately woman with a pale beautiful patrician face.
They ought to have been proud and happy people. ”

“ Miss Stubbs did not say she wouldn't, but she blushed beneath her freckles, and her eyes softened beneath the red lashes. There were depths in her eyes that Lucy had never seen in them before, and she was looking at Maria sharply—unfathomed depths, for nobody had tested the depths and height [Pg 48] of Maria's love. Perhaps a brave man, who does not look on the outward appearance, or who prefers red hair, may some day, and he will have no cause for regret. ”

“ He believes that nothing but the love of a woman can save him; and he has implored her—that poor thing—to be a tower of strength to him.'
'Her!' Pamela murmured with her scornful lips, and the rising colour in her face.
'Yes, dear, he has asked her. He has made the mistake that men always do make: he has asked the wrong woman. ”

“ 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. ”

“ She could hardly trust herself to read to Mrs. Rae. She made a dreadful mess of her favourite sermon. Whatever other talents she had developed at Newnham, she had not developed a talent for reading sermons. It brought the tears into the dear woman's eyes to hear her; she thought of the [Pg 88] kind voice that was so sweet to her ears, that she had last heard breathing those well-remembered words, and she turned her worn white face to the pillow to hide her tears.
'You are sure the Master is no worse to-day?' she said to Lucy as she came away. ”

“ After all, Pamela had not seen much; she had only seen Wyatt Edgell talking to her at the gate. Other girls talked to men at the gate—brothers, cousins, even coaches sometimes—when they had anything particular to say that couldn't wait for the proper opportunity, but lovers never.
It had gone so far that Lucy was obliged to admit that he was a lover. She admitted with a sigh what other girls—what Pamela Gwatkin, what Maria Stubbs—would have given anything—every [Pg 94] thing, even renounced the higher culture—to have been able to admit. ”

“ It is not her fault that she has not a large soul. Let the poor little thing alone. She can only act according to her lights. Let her alone.'
[Pg 138]
They let her alone—at least, they said good-bye to her in a strained, unemotional way. They didn't shed a single tear in that parting. Maria Stubbs kissed her on both cheeks, and told her to write to her and say how the Master of St. Benedict's was. She didn't say a word about her lover. Pamela kissed her on one cheek—at least, she made a peck at her, and said some cold, formal words of farewell, and went wearily back to tearing up her papers. ”

“ 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.
[Pg 41]
Maria Stubbs was not looking that way; she really was a most sensible girl, she was entirely absorbed in the pictures. ”