And Darsie weakly, reluctantly obeyed.
Chapter Thirty.
Farewell to Newnham.
May week followed hard on the Tripos that year, but Darsie took no part in the festivities. The remembrance of the tragic event of last summer made her shrink from witnessing the same scenes, and in her physically exhausted condition she was thankful to stay quietly in college. Moreover, a sad task lay before her in the packing up her belongings, preparatory to bidding adieu to the beloved little room which had been the scene of so many joys and sorrows during the last three years.
Vie Vernon, as a publicly engaged young lady, was paying a round of visits to her fiancé’s relations, but Mr and Mrs Vernon had come up as usual, arranging to keep on their rooms, so that they might have the satisfaction of being in Cambridge when the Tripos List came out. With a son like Dan and a daughter like Hannah, satisfaction was a foregone conclusion; calm, level-headed creatures both of them, who were not to be flurried or excited by the knowledge of a critical moment, but most sanely and sensibly collected their full panoply of wits to turn them to good account.
Hannah considered it in the last degree futile to dread an exam. “What else,” she would demand in forceful manner—“what else are you working for? For what other reason are you here?” But her arguments, though unanswerable, continued to be entirely unconvincing to Darsie and other nervously constituted students.
The same difference of temperament showed itself in the manner of waiting for results. Dan and Hannah, so to speak, wiped their pens after the writing of the last word of the last paper, and there and then resigned themselves to their fate. They had done their best; nothing more was possible in the way of addition or alteration—for good or ill the die was cast. Then why worry? Wait quietly, and take what came along!
Blessed faculty of common sense! A man who is born with such a temperament escapes half the strain of life, though it is to be doubted whether he can rise to the same height of joy as his more imaginative neighbour, who lies awake shivering at the thought of possible ills, and can no more “wait quietly” for a momentous decision than he could breathe with comfort in a burning house.