He had achieved both these things—the dearest wishes of his heart—but he had to serve a longer apprenticeship than most men. He had to wait forty years.
Rachel Thorne was worth waiting for. She was a child when he went away to college; she had run down to the Vicarage gate after him on that memorable morning to wish him 'good luck,' and she had stood watching him until a turn of the road hid him from her eyes.
She had watched for him turning that corner many times since. She had met him at the gate of the dear old Yorkshire Vicarage when he came back, term after term, a modest undergraduate blushing beneath his well-earned honours, with the eager question on her lips: 'What great things, have you done this term, Anthony?'
She always expected him to do great things, and he justified her faith in him. Perhaps her girlish faith had more to do with his success than he dreamed of. It was his beacon through all his lonely hours, and it had led him onward to distinction and honour.
She was brown-haired and fresh-cheeked when he went away; she was a middle-aged woman, with silver streaks in her brown hair, when he came back and asked her to share with him the honours he had won.
She waited for him through all the long years of his Fellowship—sad years when fortune had left her and sorrow had baptized her—sad friendless years, growing older, and grayer, and sick with waiting. But the reward had come at last, and her tranquil face had regained its cheerfulness, and was 'no longer wan and dree.'
It was a fitting crown to a scholarly life, this mellow, mature love—this gracious presence pervading the closing decades of his brilliant career.
Rachel Rae had been mistress of St. Benedict's over twenty years when our story opens. She had presided over the graceful hospitalities of the Master's lodge in her kindly, gracious way for twenty years. She had no daughter to share this delightful duty with her—she had married too late in life—but a niece of the Master's had been an inmate of the lodge for fifteen years or more, and filled a daughter's place.