While he wrestled thus with himself, the mail-phaeton bowled rapidly past him. Dudley laughed gloomily. And he had meant her to trudge along Regent Street with him, and "tell him what it all meant"! What a hopeless imbecile he had been!
How could he guess that Mona would cheerfully have given three years' income to leave her uncle at that moment, and "trudge along Regent Street" with him?
"Who is that young fellow?" Sir Douglas was saying. "I seem to know his face."
"He is a Dr Dudley," Mona answered, stooping low to arrange the carriage-rug over her feet.
"Oh, to be sure. I remember—a clever fellow." Sir Douglas fell a-musing for a few minutes. "How did you pick him up, Mona? He told me when I last saw him that he did not know any of the women-students."
"I have an idea, Mona," said Lucy.
"Have you, dear? I wish I had!"
The two girls were in the Gower Street garden again, and Lucy was swinging lazily in the hammock, just as she had done that summer day nearly two years before.
"You know I told you the Pater had had a little money left him?"
"Yes, and very glad I was to hear it."
"Well, the more I see of what is being done in a medical way in the hub of the profession here, the more I am inclined to think it might be worth while for the Mater to come in to town."
Mona did not answer for a minute or two. She was trying to intensify her recollections of Mrs Reynolds's somewhat mysterious illness.
"I think it is extremely likely," she said at last.
"I would take her to Dr Bateson, get her to go into the case thoroughly, and then choose any specialist she liked—man or woman—to consult with. Don't you think that would be wise?"
"Very."
"It is perfectly awful to think how helpless people are who are quite outside the profession. I think it is worth while studying medicine, if only to be able to tell your friends whom, to consult,—or rather, whom not to consult."
"I know. When I am low-spirited I brood over all the people whose deaths I might have prevented, if I had known what I know now. If I were a reformer, like Miss Lascelles, there is one change I would try to work in the profession. Every family able to pay for a doctor at all should give a yearly amount to some sharp-eyed, keen-witted, common-sense man or woman, who would keep an eye on the children, and detect the first trace of struma, or lateral curvature, or any of the neuroses. He need not be a great don at all. He must understand the dynamics of a vital organism in relation to its surroundings——"
"Thewhat?" said Lucy.
"——know the value of iron and cod-liver oil; and, above all, see when the moment has arrived to send for a specialist. It seems to me that half the mistakes that are made would be prevented, if that plan were carried out."
"Or you might adopt the Chinese system,—salary the doctor, and stop his pay when you get ill."
Mona laughed. "The fact is, the public have not begun to realise yet how medicine is specialised, and most doctors are afraid to tell them."
There was a few minutes' silence.
"Edgar Davidson took me over St Kunigonde's yesterday," said Lucy presently.
"Who is Edgar Davidson?"
"I wish somebody would prescribe for your memory, Mona. Believe me, the moment has come, when your jog-trot, common-sense adviser"—she bowed—"suggests a specialist. Don't you remember the boy we met at Monte Carlo?"
"Oh yes, to be sure."
"He is developing a very wholesome admiration for me."
"I thought boy-worshippers were the special appanage of middle-aged women, like myself!"
"He is not such a boy, after all," said Lucy, colouring slightly. "And all his worship is reserved for a wonderful fellow-student of his, whom he introduced to me yesterday—Dr Dudley."
Mona rearranged her cushions.
"Do you still believe in nice men, Mona?"
"I always did."
"Ah, that's a pity. You will never know the joys of conversion."
"Who has been converting the pessimist in the hammock?"
"Oh, I am a hopeless sceptic. But I like Dr Dudley all the same. He seems to have an awfully good influence on the students. He is a good deal older than they are, and he lives his life according to his own tastes, without posing as a saint or being mistaken for a muff. What I liked was his manner with those horrid dirty 'casuals.' And then he is just enough of a cynic to give an edge to it all."
"I am afraid I am too old to appreciate cynics."
"Poor soul!" said Lucy, in a tone of profound commiseration. "Life is indeed a thing of the past for you. Cynics are the spice of the world. However, it seems to me the Mater should come up at once. It would not do for her to be here during the hottest of the summer. I will write to her this very day."
She proceeded to alight from the hammock as she spoke.
"By the way, Mona," she said suddenly, "you must have seen Dr Dudley. He was Anatomy medallist."
"Yes," said Mona, and she said no more. She hoped the broad brim of her garden-hat would conceal the whiteness of her face.
This was almost the first time that any outsider had spoken to her of Dr Dudley, and she was amazed to find how strong was her sense of possession in him. It was very characteristic of her that, after the first moment of indignation, she scarcely blamed Dudley at all for his frigid greeting in Burlington Gardens. She realised vividly how things must look from his point of view—so vividly that, with that quick power of seeing both sides of a question which was her compensation for "not being a reformer," she saw also her own danger, and cried out in her heart, "Whatever happens, let me not lose my pride!"
"I want you to come and have tea with me at the Hall on Saturday," Lucy said, when the friends met at hospital a few days later. "Knowing your love for what you are pleased to call 'sensuous beauty,' I have asked Edgar Davidson's sister to meet you. She has just come home from San Remo, and she really is the prettiest girl I ever saw in my life."
"I would go a long way to see a really beautiful woman," said Mona laughing; "but I have a young friend whose swans show an awkward tendency to turn out ugly ducklings."
"Ah, well! wait till you see Miss Davidson."
And when Saturday afternoon came, Mona confessed that Lucy was right. There could be no doubt that Angela Davidson was a beauty. A winter in the South had banished every apparent trace of delicacy, while leaving behind a bloom that was really flower-like.
"Miss Reynolds tells me that Lady Munro is your aunt," she said to Mona. "Do you think she would mind my calling to thank her for her wonderful kindness to Edgar at Monte Carlo?"
"I am sure she would be delighted to see you," Mona answered warmly; "but I expect she has entirely forgotten the incident."
"I shall not forget it as long as I live. Edgar never knew what it was to have a mother; and it seems as if people understood by a kind of instinct how terribly unwilling I was to leave him without a sister."
"A proposof that," said Lucy, "Miss Maclean is a co-medallist with Dr Dudley."
Miss Davidson raised wondering eyes. "You must be awfully clever," she said simply.
"Oh no; I failed twice before I carried home the medal. Do you know Dr Dudley?"
She scarcely even blushed as she asked the question. She was delighted at her own assurance and self-possession.
The girl's beautiful face lighted up. "I should think I did," she said. "He has been the turning-point in my brother's life. There is no one in the world to whom I owe so much as to Ralph Dudley."
A curious pain shot through Mona's heart. She had never experienced anything like it before, and it was gone before she could ask herself what it meant.
A few minutes later she rose to go.
"I am afraid it is taking a great liberty, with any one so busy and so clever," Miss Davidson said, in her pretty childlike fashion, "but I should be so proud if you would come and see me next Thursday. Miss Reynolds has promised to come, and I am expecting some of my very best friends."
"I will come with pleasure," said Mona quickly; and this time a more perceptible colour rose into her white forehead. She wanted to see this beautiful girl again, and—it would be interesting to know whether "Ralph Dudley" was one of her "very best friends."
That night as she sat by the open window in the twilight, looking out on the lime-trees in the garden, the same unaccountable pain came over her, and she proceeded to analyse it mercilessly. For a long time she remained there with a deep furrow on her brow.
"I thought I had attained," she said at last. "Were they all for nothing, those years of striving after the highest, with strong crying and tears? I thought I had attained, and here I am, at the end of it, only a commonplace, jealous woman after all!"
"Well," said Lucy the next day, "did I exaggerate? or is she as sweet and as pretty as they make 'em now-a-days?"
"I think she is," Mona said reflectively. "But don't introduce her to other people as a 'sensuous beauty.' The word is misleading in that connection."
"So I suppose. I used it in strict accordance with your own definition."
"No doubt; but you will find that, on hearing it, the popular imagination flies at once to a Rubens' model."
"I am so glad you promised to go and see her on Thursday. I was afraid you would not. When you were gone, I made her promise to ask Dr Dudley to meet us."
"Lucy!"
"Why not? I like him, and it must be most refreshing to him, after all the learned women he meets, to have this ignorant, beautiful creature look at him with great worshipping eyes."
"And you don't mind her telling him that we wished to meet him?"
"Oh, she won't do that. I told her not to breathe the words 'medical student.' It would be enough to keep him away. A man does not go out to afternoon tea with the prospect of being waylaid on the threshold of the drawing-room by an advanced woman who invites him to 'forget sex.'"
But Mona was not listening.
"It is so schoolgirl, so undignified! I would not stoop to ask a mere acquaintance not to repeat something I had said."
But now it was Lucy's turn to fire up.
"And suppose she does repeat it?" she said. "Is it a crime to say one wants to meet a good and clever man, who is years and years older than one's self? If it is a crime, I can only say your influence over me for the last three years has been less elevating than I supposed. You have a perfect right to be inconsistent, Mona; but if you expect me to be inconsistent at the same moment, and on precisely the same lines, you might give me a little warning!"
"Dr Dudley, let me introduce you to Miss Maclean."
Almost any hostess would have effected that introduction under the circumstances. Ralph and Mona were the two people in the crowded little drawing-room who made their presence felt; who, unconsciously to themselves, suggested grave reponsibilities on the part of their hostess; therefore by all means let them entertain each other.
Mona bowed, as she would have done to a stranger, and Dudley seated himself by her side. Without a moment's hesitation he began to discuss a book that lay on the table, and never had Mona admired his gift of utterance more. It was not that he said anything peculiarly brilliant, but he talked so easily and fluently that even she could not tell whether his self-possession was real or assumed. She would have been in less doubt on the subject, perhaps, if she had trusted herself to meet his eye when he entered the drawing-room. As it was, she was determined not to be outdone, so for nearly half an hour the stream of conversation ran lightly on.
At length several people rose to go, and, in the slight stir this involved, Ralph and Mona were left alone and unnoticed for a moment, in the oriel window.
In an instant the conversation ceased and their eyes met.
"Dr Dudley," Mona said impulsively, in a very low voice, "what have I done?"
The same honest eyes as of old—the eyes that had smiled and deceived him.
"Done?" he said coldly, with an accent of surprise. "Nothing whatsoever. I was under a stupid misapprehension as to the terms on which we stood; but I have long since seen my mistake. That is all."
He was annoyed with her for opening the subject there and then,—forgetting that women cannot always choose their opportunities,—but even as he spoke, his lips quivered; a terrible struggle was concealed beneath the calmness of his manner. One word more from her might have dragged aside the flimsy veil; but she, too, had her pride.
"Well, I am afraid I must go," she said, as Miss Davidson returned to her remaining guests. "Don't let me hurry you, Lucy; I must get that book you mentioned out of the library, Dr Dudley."
She bowed to him with a frank cordiality that was far more cutting than his coldness, shook hands with her hostess, and went away. Lucy, of course, accompanied her, and Dudley was left to reap what he had sown.
But Mona could not bear even Lucy's society to-day, and she made an excuse for parting from her before they had gone many hundred yards. Then her lithe figure straightened itself defiantly.
"Two chances I have given him," she said to herself; "and now, come what come may, he shall make the third himself!"
When Mona came in from hospital a few days later, she was met by the announcement that a gentleman had called to see her, and had said he would return in the evening.
"Did he leave no name?" she asked in some surprise.
"No, ma'am, he said it was of no consequence."
Mona bethought herself of Mr Reynolds.
"Was he an old gentleman?" she said.
"Oh no, ma'am; a youngish gentleman, tall and thin."
Mona's heart leaped. "Show him up to my sitting-room when he comes," she said quietly.
She went to her lecture as usual that afternoon, but found it difficult to give her full attention to the varieties, causes, and treatment of aneurism. The moment the class was over she hurried home, dressed with more than usual care, rearranged her flowers, dined without knowing what was on the table, and then seated herself in her rocking-chair with a book.
But she did not read. She proceeded to make a leisurely, critical survey of the room. It looked very pretty just then in the soft evening light, and at worst it was a picturesque, suggestive place.
She rose to her feet and redraped a curtain; then she glanced with satisfaction at the soft folds of her gown, and seated herself again with a sigh. How sensible of him it was to come to her quietly, here in her own territory, where they could talk over everything thoroughly, and explain all misunderstandings!
A loud rat-tat-tat resounded through the house. Alas! she knew that imperious knock only too well! A minute later Sir Douglas and her aunt entered the room.
"You do look well," he said, holding her at arm's-length before he kissed her. "I never saw you with such a colour."
"And your rooms are so charming," said Lady Munro. "I like them a great deal better than ours in Gloucester Place."
Mona laughed. She was well used by this time to her aunt's figures of speech.
"We are on our way to dinner at the Lacys', and as we had ten minutes to spare——"
"For a wonder!" growled Sir Douglas.
"——Douglas was determined to look in upon you."
Mona smiled across brightly at her uncle, but she fervently hoped the ten minutes would be over before Dr Dudley arrived. It was at least fortunate that the engagement was dinner.
The ten minutes, however, still had half their course to run when Mona heard a timid knock at the street-door.
"That can't be his," she said to herself. But she did not find it easy to preserve her self-control when she heard footsteps coming up-stairs.
A moment later the door was thrown open, and the parlour-maid announced—
"Mr Brown from Kilwinnie."
Mona's heart stood still, but the situation had to be faced.
"How kind of you to come and see me!" she said, going forward to meet him. "Aunt Maud, Uncle Douglas, this is my friend Mr Brown."
She laid the least possible deliberate emphasis on the words "my friend," and she turned to her uncle right proudly as she said them.
Sir Douglas had risen from his chair when she did, and now he bowed somewhat formally. The lines of his mouth were a little hard. Possibly he found it difficult to suppress a smile.
Mona made a motion of her hand towards an easy-chair, and Mr Brown seated himself on the edge of it, wiping his brow with a large silk handkerchief.
"I was coming up to town on business," he said shyly, "so I got your address from Mrs Easson."
"Oh yes. How is Mrs Easson?"
"She wasn't very well a week or two back, but she seems pretty much in her usual again."
Mona turned to her aunt. "Mr Brown is a fellow-enthusiast of mine on the subject of botany," she said. "He is the greatest living authority on the fauna and flora of the district in which he lives. I want him to write a book on the subject."
"Indeed!" said Lady Munro, with a pretty assumption of interest.
Mr Brown shook his head. "No, no," he said, "Professor Bristowe was saying that; but you would need to be familiar with the whole county before you could write a book it would be worth while reading, and I never have time to get very far. It's only once a-week that I can get an afternoon away from the shop, and now I shall have less time than ever." He looked rather sheepishly at Mona, and added, "They've just over-persuaded me to take the Provost-ship."
"I am glad to hear they have shown so much sense," she answered cordially. "I don't know whether you are to be congratulated or not, but I am quite sure they are."
"Oh, I don't know that. They could easily have got somebody who was more of a hand at speeches, but they would take no refusal, so to say."
There was a pause.
"I suppose you have just come up to town?" Sir Douglas remarked affably; and Mona looked at him with infinite gratitude.
"I came up last night." He looked again at Mona. "I was here once before, to-day."
She smiled. "I heard that somebody had called, but I did not know it was you. I am sorry you had the trouble of coming twice. I suppose you find London a great deal warmer than Kilwinnie?"
"It's warm everywhere just now." He turned to Sir Douglas, with an idea that his next remark was peculiarly suited to masculine ears. "It's very poor weather for the turnips."
"Ah! I suppose it is," Sir Douglas said, so genially that Mr Brown took courage, and looked at Mona's aunt.
Lady Munro's Indian shawl had fallen back, and the draper made a mental valuation of her heavy silk dress. It would be no use keeping a thing like that in his shop. Then his eye fell on Sir Douglas, and for the first time in his life he realised that a man could wear evening-dress without making a fool of himself. From the easily fitting swallow-tail his eye passed to the spotless, dazzling shirt-front, and, with something of a blush, he pulled the sleeves of his tweed coat over the cuffs which his sister had so carefully trimmed before he left home.
"I am afraid we shall have to go," Lady Munro said, glancing at Mona's carriage clock; and, as she rose, she looked somewhat pointedly at Mr Brown.
The hint was lost on him, however. He bowed awkwardly to Lady Munro, and waited till Mona returned to the sitting-room.
"Miss Maclean," he blurted out hastily, "you will be disposed to laugh at me when I tell you I came here to ask you to be my wife. I knew you were far above me, but I had no notion of the like of this. You've no need to tell me that it can never be, but if ever you stand in need of a plain man's friendship, you know who to come to."
He held out his hand, forgetful of the frayed cuff, and Mona's eyes filled with tears as she took it.
"It is true it can never be, Mr Brown," she said—"not because I am above you, but because I don't love you as a good woman will some day. But I shall be proud and grateful, as long as I live, to think that so good a man has honoured me with his love."
She went with him to the door, and with a few common-place words they parted.
For the first time in her life Mona felt something of a contempt for Dr Dudley.
"What a fool I am," she thought, "to break my heart for you, when at least two greater men have wanted to make me their wife!"
But, even as she spoke, she knew that her words were not perfectly just.
Lucy had taken rooms for her mother in an unpretentious square in Bloomsbury, and Mr Reynolds had gladly agreed to spend his short summer holiday with his wife and daughter in London. Dr Alice Bateson had called the day after their arrival, and had gone into the case very thoroughly.
"There is no doubt that your mother must have an operation," she had said to Lucy, in her brusque fashion, "but it is nothing that need make you unhappy. So far as one can see, the chances are all in her favour, and she will be a different being when it is over. I would like her to rest, and take a tonic for a week or so, in order to get up her strength as much as possible; but I should not advise her to postpone it any longer than that."
Lucy was in great spirits. "What say you to that, Daddy," she cried, "as the first-fruits of your investment in me? We shall see Mother on the top of Snowdon before the summer is over."
"I think we shall be glad to rest content with something short of that," he said, smiling, and stroking his wife's soft hair.
The operation was successfully accomplished in due course, and as soon as Mrs Reynolds was well on the way to recovery, Lucy insisted on taking her father about "to see something of life," as she expressed it.
"I thought I knew the full extent of your aunt's fascination," she said to Mona, when the latter came in one day with a basket of hothouse fruit for the invalid, "but I do wish you had seen her with Father when we called. She was a perfect woman, and a perfect child. He was awfully impressed—thinks in his heart that she is thrown away on Sir Douglas, which, in the immortal words of Euclid, is absurd. Lady Munro told me afterwards that Father made her wish she could go back and live her life all over again. 'It is so strange,' she said, with exquisite frankness, 'that he should be your father!' '"Degeneration, a Chapter on Darwinism,'"—in fact?' I suggested; but she only smiled sweetly and said, 'Whatdoyou mean, child?'"
"Was Sir Douglas at home?"
"He came in for a few minutes at the end. He and my father got on all right. Of course they only met as——" she paused.
"Of course—as two men of the world."
"Do you call my father a man of the world?" Lucy asked, surprised and pleased.
"Assuredly."
"Of this world, or the other?"
Mona raised her eyes slowly. "Looked at from your father's point of view, it is a little difficult to say where this world ends and the other begins. He would tell you that this is the other world, and the other world w this."
"No, indeed, he would not. Father never gets on to the eternals with me."
This was rather a sore point with Lucy, so she hastened on, "Do you know, your aunt's 'At Home' is going to be no end of an affair?"
"Is it?"
"Yes; I am in a state of wild excitement. Father is giving me a new gown."
"I am frivolling shamefully this week," Mona said. "I have promised to go to the Bernards' at Surbiton from Saturday to Monday. I don't think I ought to go to my aunt's as well."
"Tell Sir Douglas that! By the way, while you are here, you might cast your eagle eye through that microscope, and tell me what the slide is. I forgot to label it at the time, and now I can't spot it."
Mona bent over Lucy's writing-table in the window. "I suppose you are not used to picrocarmine," she said. "It is only a 'venous congestion,' but it is cut far too thick. I can give you a much better one."
"Just scribble 'venous congestion' on the label, will you t before I forget again. Now I think of it, Miss Clark told me it must be 'venous congestion,' because that was the only red one we had mounted on a large slide! You will be shocked to hear, Mona, that I made Father take me to hear Dr Dudley lecture last night. That man's voice is worth a fortune!"
"Far too thick," repeated Mona, with unnecessary emphasis. "You can make out nothing with the high power at all. Where was he lecturing?"
"To his Literary Society. Angela Davidson sent a note to tell me. It really was magnificent—on The Rose in Tennyson.[1] I thought I knew my Tennyson, but Dr Dudley's insight seemed to me perfectly wonderful. He was showing how, all through Tennyson's poems, the red rose means love, and he showed it in a thousand things I had never thought of before. He began withThe Gardener's Daughter, and with simple idyllic quotations, like—
'Her feet have touched the meadows,And left the daisies rosy.'
[1] The following sketch was suggested by a very beautiful but as yet unpublished paper, by a friend of the author.
And he showed us how the whole world becomes a rose to the lover. You know the passage, beginning, 'Go not, happy day.' Then he worked us gradually on to the tragedy of love,—
'I almost fear they are not roses, but blood.'
It made one's flesh creep to hear him say that. And again triumphantly,—
'The blood-red blossom of war with a heart of fire.'
Then he took us by surprise, passed beyond human love altogether, and ended up with God's rose:—
'At last I heard a voice upon the slopeCry to the summit, "Is there any hope?"To which an answer pealed from that high land,But in a tongue no man could understand;And on the glittering limit far withdrawnGod made Himself an awful rose of dawn.'
I did not understand it all; but, when he stopped, I found my eyes were full of tears, and Father was so struck that he went up to speak to Dr Dudley before we came away."
Mona said nothing. What would she not have given to have heard that paper!
"But here comes Dad," Lucy went on. "Father, I want you to tell Mona about that lecture last night."
"Your mother wants you, dear," he said, laying his hand on her shoulder, and then he seated himself by the open window.
"Yes, I confess I was very much struck," he said. "One rarely meets with such fine—appreciation. It seems to me that young man will make his mark. I should greatly like his help with a little bit of work I am doing on Wordsworth just now, so I asked him to come and see me some evening. He promised very cordially to do so to-morrow, and now I want him to meet my elder daughter. If you can spare the time, I am sure you would enjoy hearing him talk. Will you come?"
Mona retained sufficient presence of mind to wonder whether it was worth while trying to conceal how far she had lost it, and then she turned her white face to Mr Reynolds.
"I think I had better not come," she said, rather breathlessly. "I—know Dr Dudley."
Nay, verily! If ever they met again, it should be by no doing of hers.
"Just as you please, dear, of course."
She was a little surprised that Mr Reynolds asked no questions. She did not know that she had already given him the remaining links of her story, and that the chain in his mind was now practically complete.
All through the lecture on the previous evening, Dudley had wondered vaguely to whom the grand white head belonged, and when the owner of it came up at the close, and told him how much he had enjoyed the evening, Dudley felt the compliment much more keenly than most clever young men would have done. He was drawing sufficiently near the farther boundary of youth to dread the advance of age; and his love and admiration for Mrs Hamilton made a warm corner in his heart for all old people.
He arrived early on the evening of his appointment, and knocked at the door with a good deal of pleasant anticipation. The Reynolds seemed to have brought with them to London the atmosphere of their country home. The room was sweet with old-fashioned flowers, tea and fruit and home-made cake were laid out on the spotless cloth, and the windows were opened wide on a world of green. Moreover, the very sight of Mr Reynolds's refined and beautiful face seemed to throw the dust and turmoil of the world outside into the far distance. Petty aims lost half their attraction, the ideal became more real, when one entered that plain little room. "Is this really London?" Dudley said, as he shook hands with the invalid on the sofa.
"I am happy to say it is," she answered, smiling. "London has done great things for me."
"That is right. We hear so much of its misdeeds now-a-days that it is refreshing to be brought in contact with the other side of the question."
In a few minutes Lucy came in, bright and smiling. Dudley had not noticed her with her father at the lecture, and her relationship to the saintly old clergyman was as great a surprise to him as it had been to Lady Munro.
"How I wish I had asked Mona to come in!" she exclaimed, as she seated herself in front of the tea-tray.
No one answered, but Mr Reynolds glanced at his visitor's face.
"You know who I mean," Lucy went on, turning to Dudley, "my friend Miss Maclean. You were talking to her for a long time at the Davidsons' the other day. Is not she awfully clever?"
"Particularly, I should think."
There was no sneer in the words, but the frank, almost boyish simplicity, which had come so naturally to Dudley a few minutes before, was gone.
"'Her price is far above rubies,'" quoted Mr Reynolds quietly.
It was Dudley's turn now to raise his eyes, and glance quickly at his host.
Whenever there was a pause in the conversation, Lucy had some fresh tale to tell about Mona. This was nothing new with her, and Mr Reynolds made no effort to prevent it. He thought it a fortunate chance that, without a hint from him, she should thus unconsciously play so effectually into his hands. He could scarcely tell whether Dr Dudley found the conversation trying or not, but there could be no doubt that the young man was profoundly interested.
"Do you know Sir Douglas Munro?" he said suddenly to Lucy.
"Oh yes, very well indeed. Do you?"
"I met him accidentally, a year or two ago, and the other day I called to ask him to give me his votes for a case I am trying to get into the Incurable Hospital. He was very cordial, and asked me to a musical evening at his house to-morrow."
"Oh, do go! It is going to be splendid, and I expect you will hear Miss Maclean sing. She has such a sympathetic voice."
Wordsworth received but scant justice when the two men retired to Mr Reynolds's study. Each felt strongly the spiritual kinship of the other, and they talked as men rarely do talk at a first or second meeting.
"I have stayed an unconscionable time," Ralph said at last, "and I hope you will let me come again. I can scarcely tell you what you have done for me. You have made me feel that 'the best is yet to be.'"
Mr Reynolds did not answer immediately. When he did, it was to say somewhat dreamily—
"'But I need now as then,Thee, God, who mouldest men.'
I wish I had your voice, Dr Dudley. With such an organ, and with such a faith, you ought to be able to move mankind."
"Faith?" repeated Dudley; "I am not overburdened with that."
"By faith I did not mean creed. I was thinking of your paper the other evening."
Dudley winced. "That paper was not written yesterday," he said. "I had neither the heart nor the energy to write another, so I
'Gored mine own thought, sold cheap what is most dear."
Greater men than I have preached to-day the faith of yesterday, in the hope that it might return to-morrow. But I am afraid that sort of faith never does return."
"Had you built your house upon the sand?"
Ralph coloured. He could not honestly say that.
"Dr Dudley," said the old man quietly, "you and I have been disposed to trust each other to-night. Before you go, there is one thing I want to tell you. You know that Miss Maclean is my daughter's friend. I don't know whether you are aware that she is as dear to me as my own child; that outside my own small family circle there is no woman living in whom I am so deeply interested. I invited her to meet you this evening, and she refused. If you had not made me respect you, I should not ask you, as I do now, to tell me why she refused?"
Dudley's face was a battle-field of conflicting emotions.
"What has she told you about me?" he said at last.
"She has never mentioned your name." Mr Reynolds hesitated; and then made up his mind to risk all, and go on. "One day I was praising her steadfastness of purpose in remaining in her uncongenial surroundings at Borrowness, and she told me, with an honesty of which I am not sure that you and I would have been capable, that—the people she met were not all uncongenial. She spoke as a girl speaks who has never thought of love or marriage; but her words conveyed more to my mind than they meant to her."
Vague as Mr Reynolds's words were, he could have chosen no surer key to unlock Ralph's heart. A vivid picture of the old idyllic days at Castle Maclean flashed across his mind, and with it came an almost unbearable sense of regret. Oh, the pity of it! the pity of it!
"I will tell you!" he burst out suddenly. "God knows it will be a relief to speak to any man, and I believe you will understand. Besides, Iowean explanation to somebody who cares for her. Ninety-nine men out of a hundred would have thought nothing of it, but to me it wasjust everything. If she failed me there, she failed me everywhere. One could reason about a crime, but you can't reason about a subtle thing like that. It is in the grain of a man's mind. If it strikes you, it strikes you; and if it doesn't strike you, it doesn't strike you; and that's final. It is everything or nothing. And the worst of it is, that as things stand, I have wronged her horribly, and I can't put it right. If she were an ordinary woman it would be a matter of honour to ignore it all, and ask her to be one's wife; but she is Miss Maclean. If one has anyarrière pensée, one must at least have the decency to let things alone, and not insult her farther."
In the course of Mr Reynolds's experience as a clergyman he had heard many incoherent confessions, but he had rarely listened to one which left him so completely in the dark as this. His face betrayed no perplexity, however, as he said, "Tell me how you met her, and where."
Then by degrees the truth began to dawn upon him. With bitter self-mockery, Dudley told the story of his doubt as to whether he could marry a "shop-girl"; told how his passion grew till it swept away all obstacles; and then he just hinted at what took place that stormy night when he brought her home from the wood.
"And you told her you loved her?" The words were spoken very quietly and as a matter of course.
Dudley's face flushed more deeply.
"I think we had both risen pretty well above the need of words that night," he said, with a nervous laugh. "When an electric spark passes between two spheres—— You see, I was weighed down by the feeling that I had wasted my life; this London course was a sort of atonement; and I would not ask a woman to be my wife till I had at least left all schoolboy work behind me. But that night I forgot myself."
"And when you met her next——?"
"I left Borrowness the next day." Dudley's lip curled. "Our next meeting was a fine dramatic tableau at Burlington House, a modern version of the sudden transformation of Cinderella."
"But you had written to her?"
Dudley shook his head. "I had told her—before that night—that I should not be a free man till my examination was over in July. She was so quick; she always seemed to understand. But when I went down to Borrowness, half mad with longing for her—her cousin had gone to America, and Miss Maclean, I was told, was starting for Switzerland with a party of friends!"
"Did you write to her then?"
"I did not know her address. And it was no usewritingabout a thing like that. Then came my aunt's long illness. She was the best friend I had in the world, and she died."
He paused, and resumed with a sudden change of tone, "Miss Maclean told me her name was Margaret."
"Margaret is her second name."
"Of course I know," Dudley broke out again vehemently, "that thousands of men would treat the whole affair as a joke; would be glad to find that the woman they loved had money and position, after all; but I cared for Miss Maclean on a plane above that. It drives me mad to think how she sat looking at me with those honest eyes, listening to my confessions, and playing her pretty little comedy all the time."
Mr Reynolds waited in vain for Dudley to go on before he spoke.
"I cannot imagine," he said at last, "why you did not ask her to explain herself."
Dudley bit his lip. "If Miss Maclean had forged a cheque," he said, "I should have asked her to explain herself. It seems to me that the one thing in life of which no explanation is possible, in a difference of opinion as to what is due to friendship—or love."
"Did it never occur to you that Miss Maclean's cousin might have bound her over not to tell any one that she was a medical student?"
There was a pause.
"Why should she?" Dudley asked harshly.
"Whyshe did it I presume was best known to herself—though, considering the kind of person she seems to have been, it does not strike me as particularly surprising; but one thing I am in a position to say unhesitatingly, and that is, that she did do it."
Another long pause.
"Even if she did," Dudley said, "what was a trumpery promise like that between her and me, if she loved me?"
"Perhaps you did not give her much opportunity to speak of herself; but when I saw her in October, she certainly did not love any man. Whether you taught her to love you afterwards, you are of course the best judge. I do not think she was bound to tell you before she knew that you loved her; and, judging from your own account of what took place, you do not seem to have made it very easy for a self-respecting woman to tell you afterwards."
Little by little the truth of this came home to Ralph, as he sat with his eyes fixed on the glowing embers of the fire.
Mr Reynolds gave his words time to take full effect and then went on.
"When I think how you have made that sensitive girl suffer, Dr Dudley, I am tempted to forget that I owe my knowledge of the circumstances entirely to your courtesy."
Ralph looked up with a rather wintry smile.
"Don't spare me," he said. "Hit hard!" And then there was another long silence.
"The one thing I cannot explain," said Mr Reynolds, "is her telling you that her name was Margaret."
"Oh, that's simple enough. It was in early days. I was talking of the name in the abstract, and she said it was hers; I daresay she never thought of the incident again; and then I saw it in her prayer-book—her mother's, no doubt. Mr Reynolds, I have been a blind fool; but I do think still that she ought to have told me."
"Since the old man has your permission to hit hard, you will allow me to say, that I think you do not realise how far injured pride has a share in your righteous indignation; but I have no wish to convince you. I would fain see my 'elder daughter' the wife of a nobler man."
Ralph smiled in spite of himself.
"That certainly is delivered straight out from the shoulder!" he said; "but do you think it is quite just? Every man is exacting on certain points. That was mine. But I am not a savage. No woman on earth should be so free and so honoured as my wife."
Mr Reynolds rose and held out his hand.
"It is midnight," he said, "and I have no more to say. Go home and think about it."
But when Ralph left the house, it was not to go home, but to pace up and down the squares, in such a tumult of excitement and thanksgiving as he had never known before.
Lady Munro's "At Home" proved, as Lucy had predicted, "no end of an affair." Sir Douglas considered it snobbish to entertain on a scale beyond the resources of his ownménage; but, if the thing was to be done, he would at least have it done without any visible straining on the part of host and hostess. So the rooms at Gloucester Place were given over to the tender mercies of Liberty and Gunter for a day or two, and during that time most people found it advisable to keep out of Sir Douglas's way.
When Mona alighted from her cab on the expanse of crimson drugget before the door, she would not have recognised her aunt's rooms. The half lights, the subtle Eastern aroma, and the picturesque figure of Nubboo had disappeared, giving place to a blaze of pretty lamps, festoons of æsthetic drapery, profuse vegetation, and groups of magnificent footmen.
"Come along, Mona!" Evelyn cried impatiently. "Lucy has been here for half an hour. I was so afraid you would be too late to see the rooms before the bloom is knocked off them. The supper-table is simply a dream."
"Bless my soul!" said Lucy, in an awestruck whisper, as Mona threw off her cloak. "You do look imposing! Mary Stuart going to the scaffold is not in it. I don't think I ever saw you in black before. If only you would show a little more of that swan-white neck and arms, I honestly believe this would be the achievement by which you would live in history."
"The fact is," Mona said, laughing, "it has been borne in upon me lately that the youthfulness of my appearance now-a-days is dependent on the absence from the stage of sweet seventeen; so I resolved, like Sir Walter Scott, to strike out in a new line. I aim at dignity now. This"—she glanced over her shoulder at the stately figure in the pier-glass—"is myWaverley. I flatter myself that you young Byrons can't compete with me here."
"No, indeed! Schoolgirl is the word," Lucy said, ruefully stepping in front of Mona to survey her own pretty gown in the pier-glass; but this was so palpably untrue that they all laughed.
"I am sure you looked dignified enough in the blue velvet. I wonder you did not wear your diamonds, Mona, while you were about it?"
"I wanted to, but I did not dare to do it without asking Uncle Douglas, and he would not hear of such a thing. The old darling! He sent me these white orchids to make up. I must go and let him see how they look, before people begin to arrive."
But Sir Douglas was only half pleased with Mona's gown.
"It is all very well in a crowd like this, perhaps," he said, "but don't wear that dowager plumage when we are by ourselves."
An hour later the rooms were full, and a crowd had gathered in the street below to listen to the music, and to catch an occasional glimpse of fair faces and dainty gowns.
Several professional singers had been engaged, but when most of the people had gone down to supper, and the music-room was half empty, Sir Douglas begged Mona to sing.
"We want something to rest our nerves," he said, "after all that. Sing that little thing of Beethoven's."
He had heard her singing it in her own room one day, when she did not know he was within hearing, and the pathetic song had been a favourite with him ever since.
It was a fine exercise in self-control, and Mona accepted it. The excitement of the evening raised her somewhat above the level of her own personality, and she thought she could do justice to the pathos of the song without spoiling it by feeling too much.
"But if thy vow weary thee now,Though I should weep for thee, come not to me."
The door of the music-room stood open, and it was fortunate for the success of her song that the last wailing notes had died away before she caught sight of a figure on the landing, reflected in the mirror opposite.
In an instant the sympathetic pleading look went out of her face; she struck a few defiant chords, and launched into Moore's quaint, piquant little melody:—
"When Love is kind, cheerful, and free,Love's sure to find welcome from me;But when Love brings heartache and pang,Tears and such things, Love may go hang!
If Love can sigh for one alone,Well-pleased am I to be that one;But if I see Love giv'n to roveTo two or three,—then good-bye, Love!
Love must, in short, keep fond and true,Through good report and evil too;Else here I swear young Love may go,For aught I care, to Jericho!"
She sang with greatverve, and of course there was a storm of applause as she finished.
Ralph, looking on, could scarcely believe his eyes and ears. Was she thinking of him? Had his love brought her heartache and pang? He would fain have persuaded himself at that moment that it had; but the very idea of such a thing seemed ridiculous as he looked at her now.
What a chameleon she was! Ever since his conversation with Mr Reynolds the night before, he had pictured her looking up in his face with that sweet half-childlike expression, "Dr Dudley, what have I done?" and here she was, cold, brilliant, self-possessed, surrounded by a group of men of the world, and apparently very much at her ease with them.
"Why, Mona!" Sir Douglas said, laying his hand on her arm.
It was a pretty sight to see how her face changed.
"Don't be angry," she said coaxingly, turning away from the others. "We have had nothing but sentiment all evening, and it proved nauseous at last."
"We will discuss that another time. Come now and have some supper."
Dudley escaped into the adjoining room. He felt positively jealous of Sir Douglas.
"What the deuce did I come here for?" he said, looking round the sea of unknown faces. He would not own, even to himself, that he had come in the hope of having a long talk with Mona. But just then he caught sight of Lucy Reynolds, and went up to speak to her.
"Oh, Dr Dudley, I am so glad to see you," she said eagerly.
This was very soothing, and Ralph seated himself on a vacant chair beside her.
"I hope your father may be able to say the same when I meet him next. I am afraid I proved a heavy strain on his endurance last night."
"Oh no! I will spare your blushes, and not tell you what father said of you at breakfast this morning."
But this remark had not the desired effect of sparing Ralph's blushes.
"Do you know many people here?" he asked.
"No, I am rather out of it."
"So am I. It was quite refreshing to see a face I knew."
"Have you seen Miss Maclean?"
"I have heard her sing. She seems to be greatly in requisition."
"Well, of course she is practically a daughter of the house, and Miss Munro is so young."
"May I have the pleasure of taking you down to supper?"
"Thank you, I have promised to go with Mr Lacy. Here he comes."
And Ralph was left alone once more. He could not tear himself away from the house till he had seen Mona again; and, while he waited, he suddenly espied his friend Jack Melville.
"How in the world do you come to be here?" he asked, surprised.
"If I had not been well brought up, dear boy, I should repeat the question. As it is, with characteristic complaisance I answer it. I am here, firstly, because I cherish a hopeless passion for Lady Munro; secondly, because my cousins were kind enough to bring me."
"I did not know you knew the Munros."
"My acquaintance with them is not profound. It is enough to see Lady Munro, and hear her speak. She is simply perfect; at least I thought so until I was introduced to her niece. Jove! Ralph, that is a stunning girl!"
Ralph did not answer.
"Did you see her sing?"
"I heard her."
"Ah, but you should have seen her. She changed completely when she sang that first thing. She has a face like yourNydia."
At this moment Mona entered the room on her uncle's arm. She was, as Ralph had said, very much in requisition, and it was almost impossible to get a chance to speak to her. Ralph was very pale with excitement. Convinced as he now was that he had inflicted a great deal of unnecessary suffering, possibly on her, and certainly on himself, he would not have found it easy to face even Miss Simpson's assistant. How, then, was he to address this woman of the world, who sat there so thoroughly at ease in her own circle, so utterly regardless of him?
Ralph watched his opportunity, however, and when Mona rose, he took his courage in both hands.
"Miss Maclean," he said, in a low voice, "will you allow me to see you to your carriage?"
"Thank you very much," she said simply, "but I have promised to stay here all night."
Ralph bit his lip. No, certainly she had not been thinking of him when she sang that song.
He made a few commonplace remarks, to which Mona replied quietly, but it was maddening work trying to talk to her in that crowd, and he soon gave up the attempt in despair. To-morrow, thank heaven! he could see her alone.
"Have not you had enough of this, Jack?" he said to his friend. "I vote we go home."
"Done! Let's go and have a smoke."
When the two men entered Dudley's sitting-room, Jack walked straight up to theNydiaon the wall.
"There!" he said triumphantly. "Miss Maclean might have stood for that."
"Or you might!" said Ralph scornfully.
But when his friend was gone, he owned to himself that there was a superficial resemblance to Mona in the contour of the face, and in the breadth of movement suggested by the artist. Ralph laid down his meerschaum and walked across the room to look at it.
The blind girl was carrying roses—white roses—all white. One red rose had been among them, but it had fallen unheeded to the ground, and would soon be trodden under foot on the tesselated pavement. Why had she dropped the red rose? She could ill spare that.
And then a curious fancy came upon him, and he asked himself whether Mona too had dropped her red rose. She had seemed so cold, so self-possessed, so passionless. Did the red rose lie quite, quite behind her? Was it already withered and trampled under foot, or could he still help her to pick it up again?
"Oh, my love, my love," he said, "you don't really care for all those men! You do belong to me, don't you? don't you?"
But at this point Ralph's thoughts became incoherent, if indeed they had not been so before.
To-morrow, at least, thank God! she would be out of the din and crowd; to-morrow he could see her alone, and say whatever he would.
Neither Ralph nor Mona slept much that night.
Mr Reynolds had said nothing to his "elder daughter" about his conversation with Dr Dudley. He had sufficient confidence in her absolute honesty to believe that she would do herself more justice if she were taken unprepared; but Ralph's manner at the Munros' had been a revelation in itself, and Mona felt sure that night that, for better or worse, some great change had taken place in his feelings towards her.
"Let me not lose my pride!" she cried. "Nothing can alter the fact that he has treated me cruelly—cruelly."
She had promised to go down to Surbiton to spend a day or two with a fellow-student, and, unwilling as she was to leave London at this juncture, she determined to keep her promise to the letter.
So when Ralph knocked at her door in the early afternoon, he was met by the news that she had gone to the country till Monday. She had started only a few minutes before, and had left no address; but the maid had heard her tell the cabman to drive to Waterloo.
Two minutes later Ralph was tearing through the streets in a hansom. He had wasted time enough, fool that he was! Nothing should induce him now to wait another hour.
Just outside the station he met Lucy.
"Mona is starting for Surbiton," she said. "I am hurrying to catch a train at Cannon Street."
"Alone?"
Lucy did not ask to whom he referred. "Yes," she said.
"Thank you." He lifted his hat, and turned away without another word. With the reckless speed of a schoolboy he tore through the station, and overtook the object of his search as she passed inside the rail of the booking office.
"Two first-class tickets for Surbiton," he said, before she had time to speak.
"One third-class return for Surbiton," said Mona, with a dignity that strangely belied the beating of her heart.
"No hurry, sir," said the man, stamping Mona's ticket first. "You have three minutes yet."
"I have got your ticket," Dudley said, joining Mona on the platform. "You will come with me."
The words were spoken almost more as a command than as a request.
("Let me not lose my pride!")
"Thank you very much." she said; "I never travel first-class."
"You will to-day."
Her only answer was to open the door of a third-class carriage.
Dudley bit his lip—then smiled. "Do youprefera smoking-carriage?" he said.
She laughed nervously, and, moving on to the next, entered it without a word. Ralph longed to follow her, but he prudently thought better of it.
With punctilious courtesy he saw her into the carriage; and then, closing the door, he lifted his hat and walked away.
Mona turned very pale.
"I cannot help it," she said. "He has treated me cruelly, and he cannot expect me to forget it all in a moment." But I think it would have done Ralph's heart good if he could have seen the expression of her face.
Very slowly the train moved off, but Ralph's lucky star must have been in the ascendant, for at the last moment a party of rough men burst open the door, and projected themselves into the carriage where Mona was sitting alone. They did not mean to be offensive, but they laughed and talked loudly, and spat on the floor, and fondled their pipes in a way that was not suggestive of prolonged abstinence from the not very fragrant weed.
At the first station Ralph opened the door.
"You seem rather crowded here," he said, in a voice of cold courtesy. "There is more room in a carriage further along. Do you think it worth while to move?"
"Thank you," said Mona, and she rose and took his hand.
"Let me not lose my pride!" she prayed again, but she felt, as she had done that night long ago in the shadow of the frosted pines, as if the earth was slipping away from under her feet.
He followed her into the carriage and closed the door. It was big with meaning for both of them, the sound of that closing door.
Neither spoke until the train had moved off.
"You need not have been so afraid to grant me an interview, Miss Maclean," he said at length. "I only wished to ask your forgiveness."
In one great wave the blood rushed over her face, and she held out her hand.
"Oh, Dr Dudley, forgiveme!" she said.
"I want to," he said quite simply. "I have been far more to blame than you, but that is nothing. Tell me about it. Did our friendship mean nothing to you?—had I no claim upon your candour? Don't look out of the window; look me in the face."
"Dr Dudley," she said, "you are so quick, so clever, did you not see? My cousin had asked me not to say that I was a medical student, and I had promised faithfully to do as she wished. It never entered my mind at that time that I might want to tell any one down there, and—and—I did not know till that night at the fir-wood—— But I can't bear to have mysteries, even from my friends, and a dozen times I was going to ask her permission to tell you, but somehow I had not the courage. One morning, in the shop, after your first visit to Rachel, I wanted to tell you then, and risk her anger afterwards; but my heart beat so fast that I was ashamed to speak. Don't you see? It was one of those trifles that one thinks about, and thinks about, till one can't say or do them—like stopping to consider before jumping across an easy crevasse. And yet, let me say this one thing in my own defence. You can scarcely conceive how little opening you gave me, how absolutely you took me for granted."
An expression of infinite relief had come over his face while she was speaking; but now he winced and drew down his brows. "Don't!" he ejaculated gloomily. Then he shook himself. "I retract that 'Don't,'" he said. "You shall say what you please. Your touch is a great deal gentler than my boundless egotism deserves."
"It was not egotism," Mona said, recovering her self-possession in a moment, with a pretty toss of her head. "I will not be cheated out of the gracefullest compliment that ever was paid to me. I should have been dreadfully hurt if you had told me I was out of perspective."
"Your reading is the correct one," said Dudley gravely. "You are perfectly right."
But his own confession was still to make, and he was determined not to make it by halves.
"In the course of our acquaintance, Miss Maclean," he began somewhat stiltedly, "you have known me in the three-fold capacity of snob, fool, and child."
"In the course of our acquaintance," Mona interrupted hastily, "I have known you in the threefold capacity of teacher, friend, and——"
"And what?"
She laughed. "Memory fails me. I don't know."
His eyes glowed like fire.
"Don't you?" he said, with a tremor in his beautiful voice. "Come and learn!"
He rose and held out his arms.
Mona tried to laugh, but the laugh died away on her lips; she looked out of the window, but the landscape swam before her eyes; even the noisy racketing of the train sank away into the background of her perception, and she was conscious of nothing save the magnetism of his presence, and then of the passionate pressure of his arms. Her head fell back, and her beautiful lips—all ignorant and undefended—lay just beneath his own.
Oh human love! what are you?—the fairest thing that God has made, or a Will-o'-the-wisp sent to brighten a brief space of life's journey with delusive light? I know not. This I know, that when Ralph sent a kiss vibrating through Mona's being, waking up a thousand echoes that had scarcely been stirred before, the happiness of those two human souls was almost greater than they could bear.