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
'Do?' said Pamela, but she didn't answer the girl's question. She
disengaged herself from her clinging arms, and she paced up and down
the room, her feet dabbling in the water on the floor. She stopped
presently in her walk, her chin up, and her face set with the light of
a high resolve upon it towards the light that was breaking in at the
east window; she might have been reciting that Greek play. 'Do?' she
repeated, and her face was hard and cold and tired. The old weary look
had come back to it--no wonder; it was three o'clock in the morning.
'Do? Why, go to bed, of course!'
She refused to say another word about Lucy's secret. She helped her
back to her room, and put her to bed, and tucked her in, and drew back
the curtains, that the light of the new day might drive away the ghosts
of the night.
Pamela did all this without speaking a word; but when she got to the
door of Lucy's room she stopped and looked back. She could see from the
tremulous motion of the clothes that the girl was weeping, and she went
over to the bed and put her cool lips to Lucy's forehead.
'Good-night, dear!' she said softly. 'I think you have behaved
beautifully!'
CHAPTER VIII.
WATTLES.
As soon as she could get away from Newnham the next morning, Lucy went
to Addenbroke's to see Nurse Brannan. She couldn't get away very early;
there was a mathematical lecture at nine o'clock that wasn't over till
eleven, and she had to plod, plod through those weary diagrams while
her mind was far away. Oh, how she hated those problems and riders,
and all the dreary, dreary round! She made one or two futile little
diagrams on her paper, and then she rubbed them out again, and sat
staring at the blackboard, and watching the perplexing white lines come
and go while her mind was far away. She was calculating what would
happen if the man had died in the night.
'What would they do with the body? Would Eric Gwatkin expect her to
keep the secret, and assist, perhaps, at some mysterious obsequies?' It
was with a distinct feeling of relief she saw the duster sweep over the
blackboard and wipe all those cabalistic characters away. It was like
wiping out the record of her guilt.
Lucy shook off the dust and gloom of the lecture-room and ran off to
Addenbroke's. She really could run a good part of the way. She went
across the Fens, as less frequented, and giving her space to breathe
and think. It was such a blue day, and the fresh green of the year was
over the low-lying fields, and the chestnut-tree by the bridge was
budding, and the pollard willows that marked the winding course of the
river were sallow-gray in the sunshine, and the daisies were in bloom.
Lucy walked over quite a carpet of flowers; she crushed the little
tender pink buds remorselessly under her feet in her hurry to get to
Addenbroke's.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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