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.