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
Lucy didn't stand beside him long. There was a door in the wall beside
the greenhouse that led out into one of the courts, and she flew over
to it. Fortunately the door was unlocked. Lucy looked eagerly round
the deserted court and raised her feeble cry for help. It was such a
feeble, piteous cry; it was like a wail. A man sitting reading at an
open window looked out at that strange sound, and Lucy called to him:
'Oh, come, come, do come!'
The man didn't stay to ask what had happened; he was at Lucy's side
in another moment, and she took him in through the open door to where
the Master lay. It was Wyatt Edgell. A gyp coming across the court had
heard the cry for help, and between them they bore the Master back to
the lodge.
When Mary Rae came in she found a little anxious group gathered round
him, and Wyatt Edgell was trying to reassure the frightened women.
Nothing very serious had happened. No bones were broken, but the Master
was very much shaken, and he was not quite himself. Wyatt Edgell stayed
with him until the doctor had come, and had ascertained that things
were not very bad--not so bad as they might have been--and had calmed
the fears of the women; and then Lucy was so shaken that he walked
back with her to Newnham.
Lucy certainly would have been 'hauled' if the Dons had seen her
walking back leaning heavily on an undergraduate's arm. She would have
been invited to an interview with the authorities in the Principal's
room, and she would have received a caution, perhaps a reprimand, and
she would have been very lucky if nothing worse had happened. Lucy
forgot all about the Dons and Pamela's warning. She only thought about
that poor old man at the lodge.
'I don't think he will ever get over this,' she said, or rather sobbed.
She was not herself at all. She was such a tearful, frightened little
Lucy. She was not in the least like a Stoic.
'I am afraid not,' said Edgell. 'The Master has been failing for some
time. The men all remarked that he would never read the Litany again in
chapel.'
'You think he is so bad as that?' Lucy said tearfully.
'Yes, quite. Think of his age. His time must come some day, and he has
lived longer than most men. You could not expect him, in any case, to
live for many months longer.'
'No,' said Lucy sadly; and then he saw the tears dropping down her pale
face. He could not believe she was weeping for that old, old man whose
time had come, and who was a stranger to her till yesterday.
'What will you do when he is gone?' he asked abruptly.
'Do? I don't know--I have not thought. I shall stay at Newnham, I
suppose, two years; I shall not be able to afford three; and then--and
then I shall go out as a governess.'
'You shall never go out as a governess!' said Edgell with an oath.
Lucy looked at him, frightened and bewildered; she couldn't think what
he meant, and then she broke down and began to cry.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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