Recovering from the shock of his turpitude, the college now reposed in peace upon its slender list of well-conducted and harmless undergraduates, its two or three tutors, and its dozen or so of gray old fellows, who dozed away their evenings in combination-room. Even such an event as the master's second marriage had scarcely power to stir Saint Bede's from its sleepy equanimity.
It was, indeed, a peaceful place. It had no grand entrance, but in a narrow back street you came suddenly upon its ancient gateway, through which you passed into a mediaeval world. The clock tower and clock, with an upright sundial affixed below it, marked the first court, whence, through a passage which, as is usual in colleges, had the hall on one hand and the buttery on the other, you entered the second court, round three sides of which ran cloisters of very ugly, very plain, but very ancient architecture. In a corner of these cloisters was the door of the Lodge—the master's private dwelling.
Private it could hardly be called; for, like all these lodges of colleges, it had an atmosphere most anti-home like, which at first struck you as extremely painful. Its ancientness, both of rooms and furniture, added to this feeling. When you passed through the small entrance hall, up the stone staircase, and into a long, narrow, mysterious gallery, looking as it must have looked for two centuries at least, you felt an involuntary shiver, as of warm, human, daily life brought suddenly into contact with the pale ghosts of the past. You could not escape the haunting thought that these oaken tables were dined at, these high-backed chairs sat upon, these black-framed, dirt-obscured portraits gazed at and admired by people, once flesh and blood like yourself, who had become skeletons—nay, mere dust, centuries before you were born. Also, that other people would be dining, sitting, gazing, and talking in this very same spot long after you yourself had become a skeleton in your turn.
This impression of the exceeding mutability of all things, common to most very old houses, was stronger than ordinary in this house, whose owners did not even hold it by ancestral right, so as to find and leave behind some few ancestral ties and memories, but came and went, with all that belonged to them; the only trace of their occupancy and themselves being a name on the college books, or a solitary portrait on the college wall. The old dervish's saying to the Eastern king, "Sire, this is not a place, but a caravanserai," might have been applied here only too truly. It was not a home, it was the lodge of a college.
Until eighteen months ago, the date of Dr. Grey's appointment, there had not been a woman's face or a child's foot about it for a hundred and fifty years. All the masters had been unmarried—grim, gray fellows—advanced in years. Dr. Arnold Grey, whose fellowship had terminated early, and who had afterward been tutor and dean, was the youngest master that had ever been known at Saint Bede's; and his election might consequently have been unpopular had he not been personally so much liked, and had there not happened immediately afterward that scandal about Edwin Uniacke. Therein he acted so promptly and wisely, that the sleepy, timid old dons as well as the Uniacke family—for the lad was highly connected—were thankful that this unlucky business had not occurred in the time of the late master, who was both old and foolish, and would have made it the talk of all England, instead of hushing it up, with the prudent decision of Dr. Grey, so that now it was scarcely spoken of beyond the college walls.
Solemn, quiet, and beautiful, as if they had never known a scandal or a tragedy, slept those old walls in the moonlight, which streamed also in long bars from window to window, across the ghostly gallery before mentioned. Ghostly enough in all conscience; and yet two little figures went trotting fearlessly down it, as they did every night at eight o'clock, between the two ancient apartments now converted into dining-room and nursery. The master's children were too familiar with these grim, shadowy corners to feel the slightest dread besides, they were not imaginative children. To Arthur, an "ally taw," that is, a real alabaster marble, such as he now fumbled in his pocket, was an object of more importance than all the defunct bishops, archbishops, kings, queens, and benefactors of every sort, whose grim portraits stared at him by day and night. And Letitia was far more anxious that the candle she carried should not drop any of its grease upon her best silk frock, than alarmed at the grotesque shadows it cast, making every portrait seem to follow her with his eyes, as old portraits always do. Neither child was very interesting. Letitia, with her angular figure and thin light hair, looked not unlike a diminished spectral reflection of the foundress herself—that pale, prim, pre-Raphaelitish dame who was represented all over the college, in all sizes and varieties of the limner's art. Arthur, who hung a little behind his sister, was different from her, being stout and square; but he, too, was not an attractive child, and there was a dormant sullenness in his under lip which showed he could be a very naughty one if he chose.
"I told you so, Titia," said he, darting to an open door facing the staircase at the gallery's end. "There's papa's study fire lit. I knew he was coming home to-night, though aunts won't let us sit up, as he said we should. But I will! I'll lie awake, if it's till twelve o'clock, and call him as he passes the nursery door."
"You forget," said Titia, drawing herself up with a womanly air, "papa will not be alone now. He may not care to come to you now he has got Mrs. Grey."
"Mrs. Grey!"
"You know aunts told us always to call her so. I'm sure I don't want to call her any thing. I hate her!"