Mona did not go to Surbiton, after all, that day. She telegraphed to her friend from Clapham Junction, and then she and Ralph took the train to Richmond.
"Let me take you for a pull on the river," he had said. "I have never done anything for you in my life, and my arms just ache to be used in your service. Oh Mona, Mona, Mona! it seems too good to be possible that you are still the same simple, true-hearted girl that I knew at Castle Maclean. By the way, do you know that Castle Maclean is yours for life now? At least Carlton Lodge is, and only the sea-gulls are likely to dispute my princess's claim to her battlements."
He handed her into a boat, and rowed out into the middle of the river.
"Now," he said, "you shall see what your slave's muscles are worth."
Like an arrow the little boat shot through the water in the sunshine, and Mona laughed with delight at the exhilaration of the swift rushing movement.
"That will do, Dr Dudley," she said at last. "Don't kill yourself."
"I don't answer to the name," he said shortly, pulling harder than ever.
"Oh, do please stop!" she cried.
"Who is to stop?" he panted, determined not to give in.
There was a moment's pause. A deep rosy colour settled on her eager face.
"Ralph," she said, scarcely above a whisper.
The oars came to a standstill with a splash in the middle of a stroke, and Ralph leaned forward with a low delighted laugh. Then he sighed.
"You had no eyes for me last night, Mona," he said.
"Had not I?"
"Had you?" very eagerly.
But when the language of looks and smiles begins, the historian does well to lay aside his pen. Are not these things written in the memory of every man and woman who has lived and loved?
Not that there was any lack of words between them that day. They had such endless arrears of talk to make up; and a strange medley it would have sounded to a third pair of ears. Now they were laughing over incidents in their life at Borrowness, now exchanging memories of childhood, and now consulting each other about puzzling cases they had seen in hospital.
It was a long cloudless summer day, and for these two it was one of those rare days when the cup of pure earthly happiness brims over, and merges into something greater. Every simple act of life took on a fresh significance now that it was seen through the medium of a double personality; every trifling experience was full of flavour and of promise, like the first-fruits of an infinite harvest.
What is so hard to kill as the illusions of young love? Crushed to-day under the cynicism and the grim experience of the ages, they raise their buoyant heads again to-morrow, fresher and more fragrant than ever.
"I am going in to see Mr Reynolds for a few minutes," Ralph said, as they walked home in the twilight. "Do you know when I can see your uncle?"
"On Monday morning, I should think—not too early. I want to tell you about Sir Douglas. He never was my guardian, and two years ago I had not even seen him; but his kindness to me since then has been beyond all words. Whatever he says—and I am afraid he will say a great deal—you must not quarrel with him. He won't in the end refuse me anything I have set my heart on. You see, he scarcely knows you at all, and that whole Borrowness episode is hateful to him beyond expression."
And indeed, when Ralph called at Gloucester Place on Monday, Sir Douglas forgot himself to an extent which is scarcely possible to a gentleman, unless he happen to be an Anglo-Indian.
Ralph stated his case well and clearly, but for a long time Sir Douglas could scarcely believe his ears. When at last doubt was no longer possible, he sat for some minutes in absolute silence, the muscles of his face twitching ominously.
"By Jove! sir, you have the coolness of Satan!" he burst forth at last, in a voice of concentrated passion; and every word that Ralph added to better his cause was torn to pieces and held up to derision with merciless cruelty.
The moment his visitor was out of the house, Sir Douglas put on his hat and went in search of Mona.
"It is not true, is it," he said, "that you want to marry that fellow?"
So Mona told the story of how the clever young doctor fell in love with the village shop-girl.
"King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid, in fact," he sneered. "If that young whipper-snapper had had the impertinence to tell me that he thought you were really a shop-girl, I should have knocked him down on my own doorstep. Who is Dr Dudley? I never heard of him before."
"I am afraid I am no authority on pedigrees," Mona said, smiling. "But I have no doubt you could get the required information from Colonel Lawrence."
To the last Sir Douglas maintained that he could not imagine what Mona saw in the fellow; but he came by degrees to admit to himself that things might have been worse. If Mona was determined to practise medicine, as was certainly the case, it was as well that she should have a man to relieve her of those parts of the work in which her womanhood was not an essential factor; and it was a great matter to think that he could have his niece in London under his own eye.
Jack Melville's opinion was characteristic.
"Well played, Ralph!" he exclaimed. "It just shows that one never ought to despair of a man. When you went down to Borrowness after your Intermediate, I could have sworn that the siren was going to have an easy walk over."
"I am glad you both had sense enough to settle it so quickly," Lucy said phlegmatically, when Mona told her the news.
"Do you mean to say you suspected anything?"
"Suspected! I call that gratitude! The first time I saw Dr Dudley at St Kunigonde's, he said the surgery was as close as a Borrowness town-council room; and as soon as I mentioned him to you, I saw it all. I have been trying to bring you together ever since.Suspect, indeed! I can tell you, Mona, it was as well for my peace of mind that I did suspect."
"What a she-Lothario it is!"
"Don't be alarmed," said Lucy loftily. "When I was a child I thought as a child, but—I have outgrown all such frivolities. I—Iam to be the advanced woman, after all! When you and Doris are lost in your nurseries, I shall be posing as a martyr, or leading a forlorn hope!"
It was arranged that the wedding should take place as soon as Ralph and Mona had passed their M.B. examination in the October of the following year; and during the fifteen months that intervened, they resolved to devote themselves with a whole heart to their studies, and if possible to forget that they were lovers.
"It would never do to fail at this juncture," Mona said, when the first week of their engagement came to an end, "and I certainly shall fail if we go on living at this rate. I have a great mind to go to the Colquhouns', and study at the Edinburgh School."
This arrangement was rendered needless, however, by Dudley's election as house-surgeon at St Kunigonde's,—an appointment which left him little time for reading, and less for any kind of recreation.
So they rarely saw each other more than once a week, and on these occasions Mona decreed that they should meet simply as good friends and comrades.
"For you must see, Ralph," she said, "how easy it is to crowd the life and energy of seven days into that one weekly meeting."
"Your will shall be law," he said. "What a spending we shall have some day, after all this saving!"
But I doubt whether any man ever got more pleasure from his courtship than Ralph did. There was a very subtle delight about the pretty pretence that the touch of Mona's hand meant no more than the touch of a friend's; and, in proportion as she gave him little, he valued that little much.
So the winter passed away, and summer came round once more.
Doris's marriage was to take place in August, and, a few weeks before the Sahib came to England to claim her, she went to London to visit Mona, and to order her outfit.
"I am just choosing my own things in my few spare hours," Mona said, the day after her friend's arrival, "so we can go shopping together."
They were sitting at afternoon tea, and Lucy had run in to borrow a book.
"You don't mean to say," Doris said, in great surprise, "that you are having a trousseau? When one is going to India, of course one requires things; but at home—it is a barbarous idea."
"Dear Doris," Mona said, "what do you suppose I am marrying for?"
"Miss Colquhoun does not understand," said Lucy. "ATrousseauis a thing no medical practitioner can be without. See, there it stands in five goodly volumes on the second shelf,—particularly valuable on the subject of epilepsy."
"Lucy, do talk sense," said Mona, laughing.
"I appeal to any unbiassed listener to say whether I am not the only person present who is talking sense. But seriously, Miss Colquhoun, I wish I had a rich and adoring uncle. To have a trousseau like Mona's I would marry the devil!"
She set down her cup and ran away, before either of them could enter a protest.
"Will she ever really be a doctor?" Doris asked doubtfully.
"Oh yes, indeed. Your presence seems to rouse a spirit of mischief within her, but you have no idea how she has developed. She will make a much better doctor than I shall. She would have been on the Register now but for her illness; as it is, she goes in with Ralph and me in October."
"Are you going to get another medal?"
"No, no," Mona said gravely. "I only aim at a pass, and I think I am pretty sure of that. There are fewer pitfalls than there were in the Intermediate for my mighty scientific mind. But we can talk of that another time. I want to hear about some one else now. Does your father really consent to your going to India?"
"Dear old Dad!" said Doris, smiling. "He is coming with us. He has not had a long holiday for years, and everybody goes to India now-a-days. When he comes back, I expect one of my aunts will keep house for him."
"He will miss you sadly; but I am very glad the Fates are smiling so brightly on the dear old Sahib."
Doris's face flushed. "Do you know, Mona," she said, "it is a dream of mine that I may be of some use in India. Knowing you so well, I shall be a sort of link between the cause here and the cause there; and I may be able in a small way to bring the supply into relation with the demand. If only I were going out as a qualified practitioner!"
"Oh, Doris, Doris! don't you see that an enthusiast who has no connection with the movement, and who happens to be the wife of the Deputy-Commissioner, will be able to do far more than an average doctor?"
"Especially when the Deputy-Commissioner is as much of an enthusiast as his wife," Doris answered with a very pretty blush.
"And I think it is worth living for to be able to show that a woman can be an enthusiast and a reformer, and at the same time a help meet for her husband."
Mona watched her friend rather anxiously as she said this, but Doris answered quite simply, "How often I shall long for you to talk to! The Sahib, as you call him, says that most of the women he meets out there have gone off on a wrong line, and want a little judicious backing before one can safely preach advancement to them; but it seems to me that the great majority of women only need to have things put before them in their true light. Don't you think so?"
"I don't know, dear," Mona said thoughtfully. "I am afraid I never try to influence my sex. I live a frightfully irresponsible life. Let me give you another cup of tea?"
"No, thank you. I shall have to drink a cup with my aunt, if I go to pay my respects to her. In fact, I ought to be there now."
She hurried away, and Mona was left alone. She did not rise from her chair, and half an hour later she was roused from a deep reverie by a well-known knock at the door.
"Come in!" she cried. "Oh Ralph, how delightful! Let me make you some fresh tea."
"No, thank you, my queen. It was my day out, and I could not settle to work till I had had a glimpse of you."
"I don't need to confess that I have been doing nothing," she said, holding out her empty hands. "The fact is, I am horribly depressed."
"Having a reaction?"
"I should think I was—a prussian-blue reaction, as Lucy would say."
"Examination fever?"
"Far worse than that. You see, dear, it's a great responsibility to become a registered practitioner, and it's a great responsibility to be married; and the thought of undertaking the two responsibilities at once is simply appalling."
"But we are going away for a good holiday in the first instance; and even when we come back, brilliant as we both are, I don't suppose we shall burst into busy practice all at once."
"I am not afraid of feeling pulses and taking temperatures," said Mona gravely, "nor even of putting your slippers to the fire. The thought that appals me is, that one must hold one's self up and look wise, and have an opinion about everything. No more glorious Bohemian irresponsibility: no more airy—'Bother women's rights!' One must have a hand to show, and show it. Ralph, do sit down!—No, on the other side of the fire—and let us discuss the Franchise."
"With all my heart. Shall we toss for sides?"
"If you like. I went once to a Women's Suffrage conversazione, and—well, I left without signing a petition. But the next day I heard two young women discussing it, chin in air.
"'I am interested in no cause,' said one, 'that excludes the half of humanity.'
"'As long as I live,' said the other, 'I prefer that men should open the door for me when I leave a room, or shut the window when I feel a draught.'
"I said nothing, but I put on my hat and set out to sign the petition."
"And did you do it?"
"Sagely asked! No, I did not. I reflected that I had a student's inherent right to be undecided; but that suit is played out now. Seriously, dear, it seems to me sometimes in my ignorance as if we women had gone half-way across a yawning chasm on a slender bridge. The farther shore, as we see it now, is not all that our fancy pictured; but it still seems on the whole more attractive than the one we have left behind.Que faire?We know that in life there is no going back; nor can we stand on the bridge for ever. I could not even advise, if I were asked. My attitude of mind on the subject would be best represented by one great point of interrogation. Only the future can show how the woman question is going to turn out, and in the meantime the making of the future lies in our own hands. There is a situation for you!"
She had opened the subject half in jest, but now her face wore the expression of intense earnestness, which in Dudley's eyes was one of her greatest charms. It interested him profoundly to watch the workings of her mind, and to see her opinions in the making. Perhaps it interested him the more, because it was the only form of intimacy she allowed.
"You must bear in mind," he said, "that every cause has to go through its hobbledehoy stage. The vocal cords give out dissonant sounds enough, when they are in the act of lengthening out to make broader vibrations; but we would not on that account have men speak all their lives in the shrill treble of boyhood."
"True," said Mona, "true;" and she smiled across at him.
Presently she sighed, and clasped her hands behind her head. "It must be a grand thing to lead a forlorn hope, Ralph," she said. "It must be so easy to say, 'Here I stand,' if one feels indeed that one cannot do otherwise. It would be a terrible thing for the leaders of any movement to lose faith in the middle of the bridge, and, if we cannot strengthen their hands, we are bound at least not to weaken them. A negative office, no doubt, and more liable than any partisanship to persecution; but, fortunately, here as everywhere, there is the duty next to hand. If we try to make the girls over whom we have any influence stronger and sweeter and sounder, we cannot at least be retarding the cause of women."
"Scarcely," said Ralph with a peculiar smile. "So, to return to the point we started from, we are not called upon to show our hand, after all."
Mona laughed. "In other words, don't let us take stock of our conclusions, Ralph," she said, "for that is intellectual death."
It was a December afternoon. The sun shone down from a cloudless sky on the olive-woods of Bordighera, and Ralph lay stretched on a mossy terrace, looking up at the foliage overhead. It filled him with keen delight, that wonderful green canopy, shading here, as it did, into softest grey, glowing there into gold, or sparkling into diamonds. The air was soft and fragrant, and, away beyond the little town, he felt, though he could not see, the blue stretch of the Mediterranean. It seemed to him as though the stormy river of his life had merged into an ocean of infinite content. For the moment, ambition and struggle were dead within him, and he looked neither behind nor before.
The crackling of a dry twig made him turn round.
"Come along, sweetheart," he said; "I have been lazily listening for your step for the last half-hour."
"Then you began to listen far too soon," she said, seating herself beside him, and putting her hand in his. "But I am a few minutes late. The post came in just as I was starting."
"No letters, I hope?"
"Two for me—from Doris and Auntie Bell. I suppose you don't care to read them?"
He shook his head. "Not if you will boil them down for me."
"They had a delightful passage, and seem to be as happy as two human beings can be."
"Nay, that we know is impossible."
"Well,nearlyas happy, let us say. Doris found my letter awaiting her at Bombay,—not the one that told of your 'Double First'; but she was delighted to hear that we had all passed. She did not in the least believe that Lucy would."
"Trust Miss Reynolds not to fail! One would as soon expect her to do brilliantly."
"Doris says I am not to forget to tell her whether Maggie's soups and sauces satisfy my lord and master."
He laughed. "I seem to recognise Miss Colquhoun in that last expression. What does Auntie Bell say?"
"She would dearly like to come and visit us in London; but her husband seems to be breaking up, and she has everything to superintend on the farm; so she 'maun e'en pit her mind past it, in the meantime.' You will be interested to hear that Matilda Cookson has carried her point. She goes up for her Preliminary Examination in July; and, if she passes, she is to join the Edinburgh School in October."
"You are a wonderful woman."
"Oh, by the way, Ralph, they are having an impromptu dance at the hotel to-night."
His face clouded. "Do you like dancing?" he asked.
"Very much indeed. Why don't you claim me for the first waltz?"
"Because I can't dance a little bit. You would lose every atom of respect you have for the creature, if you saw him being 'led through a quadrille,' as they call it."
"Would I?Try me!"
What a wonderful face it was, when she let it say all that it would! Ralph took it very tenderly between his hands, and greedily drank in its love and loyalty. Then he turned away. How he loathed the thought of this dance! There were one or two men in the house whom Mona had met repeatedly in London, and the thought of her dancing with them gave him positive torture.
"Come, friend!" he said to himself roughly. "We are not going to enact the part of the jealous husband at this time of day;" but when he entered the salon that evening, some time after the dance had begun, and morbidly noted the impression made by Mona's appearance there, he would gladly have given two years of his life to be able to waltz.
Of course he must look as if he enjoyed it, so he moved away, and spoke to an acquaintance; but above all the chatter, above the noise of the music, he could hear the words—
"May I have the honour of this waltz, Mrs Dudley?"
Very clearly, too, came Mona's reply.
"Thank you very much, but I only waltz with my husband. May I introduce you to Miss Rogers?"
A few minutes later Dudley turned to where his wife was sitting near the door,—his eyes dim with the expression a man's face wears when he is absolutely at the mercy of a woman. He could not bear the publicity of the ball-room, and he held out his arm to her without a word. Mona took it in silence. He wrapped a fleecy white shawl about her, and they walked out into the cool, quiet starlight.
"You do like this better than that heat and glare and noise?" he asked eagerly.
"That depends on my company. I would rather be there with you than here alone."
"Mona, is it really true,—what you said to that man?"
"That I only waltz with my husband? Oh, you silly old boy! Do you really think any other man has put his arm round me since you put yours that night in the dog-cart? Did not you know that you were teaching me what it all meant?"
He put it round her now, roughly, passionately. His next words were laughable, as words spoken in the intensity of feeling so often are.
"Sweetheart," he said, "I am so sorry I cannot dance. I will try to learn when we go back to town."
Mona laughed softly, and raised his hand to her lips.
"That is as you please," she said. "Personally I think your wife is getting too old for that kind of frivolity. Of course she is glad of any excuse for having your arm round her."
"It is a taste that is likely to be abundantly gratified," he said quietly. "Are you cold? Shall we go back to the hotel?"
"Yes, let us go to our own quiet sitting-room. And, please, be quite sure, Ralph, that I don't care for dancing one bit. I used to, when I was a girl, and I did think I should love to have a waltz with you: but, as you say, this is a thousand times better."
They walked back to the house in silence.
"Oh, Mona, my very own love," he said, throwing a great knot of olive-wood on to the blazing fire, "what muddlers those women are whoobeytheir husbands!"
Mona did not answer immediately. She seated herself on the white rug at his feet, and took his hands in hers.
"Obedience comes very easy when one loves," she said at last,—"dangerously easy. I never realised it before. But passion dies, they tell us, and the tradition of obedience lives and chafes; and then the flood-gates of all the miseries are opened. Don't ever let me obey you, Ralph!"
"My queen!" he said. "Do you think I would blot out all the exquisite nuances of your tact and intuition with a flat, level wash of brute obedience? God help me! I am not such a blind bungler as that. Don't talk of passion dying, Mona. I don't know what it is I feel for you. I think it is every beautiful feeling of which my soul is capable. It cannot die."
"Ralph," said Mona, "man of the world, do I need to tell you that we must not treat our love in spendthrift fashion, like a mere boy and girl? Love is a weed. It springs up in our gardens of its own accord. We trample on it; but it flourishes all the more. We cut it down, mangle it, root it up; but it seems to be immortal. Nothing can kill it. Then at last we say, 'You are no weed; you are beautiful. Grow there, and my soul shall delight in you.' But from that hour the plant must be left to grow at random no more. If it is, it will slowly and gradually droop and wither. We must tend it, water it, guard with the utmost care its exquisite bloom; and then——"
"And then?"
"And then it will attain the perfectness and the proportions that were only suggested in the weed, and it will live for ever and ever."
"Amen!" said Ralph fervently. "Mona, how is it you know so much? Who taught you all this about love?"
She smiled. "I had some time to think about it after that night at Barntoun Wood. And I think my friends have very often made me their confidante. It is so easy to see where other people fail!"
"You escaped us last night, Mrs Dudley," said one of her acquaintances next morning.
"Yes. I wanted to watch the dancing; but the salon gets so warm in the evening, I could not stand it. We went for a stroll instead."
"Neither of you gives us too much of your company, certainly. I am anxious to hear your husband's opinion of a leader in this morning'sTimes."
"Here he comes, then," said Mona, as Ralph appeared with a rug over his arm. "Captain Bruce wants to speak to you, dear. You will know where to find me by-and-bye."
She strolled on into the woods, and ensconced herself comfortably on a gnarled old trunk, to wait for her husband. It was not many minutes before he joined her.
"That's right!" he said, throwing himself on the grass at her feet, with a long sigh of content. "How you spoil one, dear, for other people's conversation!"
"I have not had a very alarming competitor this morning," she said, smiling.
"No; but if he had been an archangel, it would have made little difference. Go on, lady mine, talk to me—talk to me 'at lairge.' I want to hear your views about everything. Is not it delightful that we know each other so little?"
Mona laughed softly and then grew very grave.
"I hope you will say twenty years hence, 'How delightful it is that we know each other so well!'"
"I will say it now with all my heart! But it is very interesting to live when every little event of life, every picture one sees, every book one reads, has all the excitement of a lottery, till I hear your opinion of it."
Mona passed her hand through his hair. "Then I hope you will still say twenty years hence, 'How delightful it is that we know each other so little!'"
"I think there is little doubt of that. My conception of you is like a Gothic cathedral: its very beauty lies in the fact that one is always adding to it, but it is never finished. Or, shall I say of you what Kuenen says of Christianity?—'She is the most mutable of all things; that is her special glory.'"
"Varium et mutabilein fact! It is a pretty compliment, but I seem to have heard it before."
"Varium et mutabile semper femina," he repeated, smiling.
"A higher compliment was never paid to your sex.Varium et mutabile—like the sea! I never know whom I shall find when I meet you,—the high-souled philosopher, the earnest student, the brilliant woman of the world, the tender mother-soul, the frivolous girl, or the lovable child. I don't know which of them charms me most. And when I want something more than any of those, before I have time to call her, there she is,—my wife, 'strong and tender and true as steel.'"
Mona did not answer. Her turn would come another time. They knew each other too well to barter compliments like goods and coin across a counter.
"I thought you were going to talk to me," he said presently. "Let us talk about the things that can never be put into words. Imagine I am Gretchen, sitting at your feet. 'Glaubat du an Gott?'"
Mona smiled down on the upturned face.
"If Gretchen asked me, I hope the Good Spirit would give me words. If my husband asked me——"
"He does. 'Glaubst du an Gott?'"
Mona did not answer at once. She looked round at the silent eloquent world of olive-trees, with their grand writhing Laocoon-like stems, and their constant, ever-varying crown of leaves—those trees that seem to have watched the whole history of man, and that sum up in themselves all the mystery of his life, from the love of pleasure in the midst of pain, to the worship of sorrow in a world of beauty——
"Ralph," she said, "when you ask me I cannot tell; but I worship Him every moment of my life!"
She smiled. "You have surprised me out of my creed, and you see it is not a creed at all."
"Be thankful for that! It seems to me that the intensest moment in the life of a belief is when it is just on the eve of crystallising into a creed. Don't hurry it."
"No, I am content to wait. When I go to church, I always feel inclined to invert the words of the prayer, and say, 'Granting us in this world life everlasting, and, in the world to come, knowledge of Thy truth.'"
December still, but what a change! Without—bitter cold and driving rain; within—bright fires and welcoming faces and a home.
They had returned from the Continent a few hours before, had tested Maggie's "soups and sauces," had discussed ways and means by the fire in Mona's consulting-room; and now Ralph had gone through the curtained door into his own room adjoining, to look at his letters.
"I shall only be gone ten minutes," he had said, "if you invite me back. Nobody is likely to call on a night like this, even in 'blessed Bloomsbury.'"
Sir Douglas had begged them to settle in Harley Street, but both Ralph and Mona were far too enthusiastic to forego the early days of night-work, and of practice among the poor.
Ralph had scarcely finished reading his first letter when a patient was announced, and a moment later a young girl entered the room with a shrinking, uncertain step. Her hair was wet with the rain, and her white face expressionless, save for its misery.
"Do you wish to consult me?" he said. "Sit down. What can I do for you?"
She looked at him for a moment, and tried to speak, but her full lips quivered, and she burst into hysterical tears.
His practised eye ran over her figure half unconsciously.
"I think," he said kindly, "you would rather see the doctor who shares my practice," and he rose, and opened the door.
Mona looked up smiling.
She was sitting alone in the firelight, and his heart glowed within him as he contrasted her bright, strong, womanly face with—that other.
"Mona, dear," he said quietly, "here is a case foryou."
PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS.