The master of St. Benedict's, Vol. 1 (of 2) — John Shaqi
The master of St. Benedict's, Vol. 1 (of 2)St. Aubyn, Alan
General
The master of St. Benedict's, Vol. 1 (of 2)
St. Aubyn, Alan
Cambridge (England) -- Fiction; School principals -- Fiction; Students -- Fiction
An overpowering desire to see the speaker--perhaps to get her
release--seized her, and she opened the door of the room.
There was no man there praying; there was only a girl sitting reading
by the light of a shaded lamp, and she was reading aloud. It was
Pamela Gwatkin, and she was reading a Greek play.
Lucy went a few paces into the room and stood there as if spellbound,
listening to the girlish voice, in low solemn accents, mouthing the
rhythmic Greek. She didn't read it as if it were Wordsworth, or Cowper,
or Keats, or even Tennyson; she mouthed it; and the noble words,
falling in noble cadence, brought back the voice of the man wrestling
with God for his friend.
Pamela heard the door open, and she looked up. She didn't divide the
shuddering night with a shrill-edged shriek, and bring all Newnham
about her, as she might have done at the sight of the white-robed
figure standing in the doorway. She thought it was a girl walking in
her sleep, and she got up softly and went towards her.
For a moment, as she came forward, she saw the figure swaying in
the doorway, and as she came nearer Lucy tottered forward with her
arms out-stretched like one walking in a dream, and fell upon her
bosom--literally fell, with her clinging arms around her, and her head
pillowed on Pamela's bosom.
'Oh, it is Eric Gwatkin!' she sobbed, 'it is Eric Gwatkin!'
Pamela got her over to the couch--it was a bed now, not a couch; the
serge rug had been removed, and a snowy coverlet was in its place,
and a real pillow, not a sham roundabout bolster covered with an
embroidered dragon.
Pamela Gwatkin laid the girl down on her own bed and covered her up.
She was shaking dreadfully, and her hands and feet were like ice, and
she was sobbing hysterically.
When Pamela had covered her up, she shut the door of the room; it
was no good making a scene and arousing everybody, because a girl--a
little weak-minded fresher--had broken down under the strain and got
hysterical. All girls get hysterical at times, only the stronger ones
lock the door and wrestle with the enemy in secret.
'Oh, Eric Gwatkin!' moaned the girl on the bed. 'I can't keep it any
longer; I must tell!'
'What have you got to do with Eric Gwatkin?' Pamela asked severely.
'I am sure he is nothing to you; he is never likely to be anything to
anybody.'
'Oh yes, he is! He is everything to--to Wyatt Edgell. He has saved his
life. Oh, you don't know what he is to him!'
'Saved his life? What are you talking about? What has Wyatt Edgell got
to do with you, and with Eric?'
'_He sewed it up_--the wound--the dreadful gaping wound!'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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