"More by good luck than good guidance," Mona said, the medicine she prescribed for the farm-servant proved effectual, at least for the moment; and a simple tonic, aided by abundant good things from Auntie Bell's larder and dairy, soon brought back the glow of health to the pale cheeks. Auntie Bell looked very grave, and said not one word on the subject either to Mona or any one else; but the patient was less reticent, and, before Mona left Borrowness, she was infinitely touched by an appeal that came to her from a sick woman in Kilwinnie.
"I've niver been able tae bring mysel' tae speak o't," she said, as Mona sat by her bedside, "an' noo, I doot it's ower late; but they do say ye're no' canny, an' I thocht maybe ye culd help me."
Poor Mona! Very few minutes were sufficient to convince her that she could do nothing, that the case was far beyond her powers, if, indeed, not beyond the possibility of surgical interference.
"I am so sorry," she said, with a quiver in her voice; "but I know so little, it is no wonder I cannot help you. You must let me speak to the doctor. He is a good man, and he knows so much more than I do. I will tell him all about it, so he won't have to worry you or ask you questions. He will be able to lessen the pain very much, and—to do you good."
Her conscience reproached her for the last words, but they were received only with a sigh of infinite resignation.
"I made sure it was ower late," said the woman wearily; "but when I heard about Mrs Easson's Christie, I just thocht I wad speir at ye mysel'. It was awfu' guid o' ye tae come sae far."
Mona could find no words. Even the tragedy of Maggie's story faded into insignificance before the pathos of this; for Mona was young and strong, and life seemed to her very sweet.
"Thank God, I am going back to work!" she thought as she hastened home. "I want to learn all that one human being can. It is awful to be buried alive in the coffin of one's own ignorance and helplessness."
Alas for the dreams of youth! We may work and strive, but do the coffin-walls ever recede so very far?
Two great honours were in store for Mona before she left Borrowness.
In the first place, the Misses Brown paid her a formal call. They were arrayed in Sabbath attire, and were civil even to effusiveness; but they did not invite Mona to their house, nor suggest another excursion. Auntie Bell's remarks had had the intended effect of making them feel very small; but, on reflection, they did not see that they could have acted otherwise. It was a matter of comparative indifference to them whether their brother married a rich woman or a poor one; it was no part of their programme that he should marry at all. They found it difficult to predict exactly how he would be influenced by this fresh light on the situation; and, for the present, they did not think it necessary to tell him anything about it.
Some mysterious and exaggerated report, however, of "high connections" must certainly have got wind, or I cannot think that the second and greater honour would have fallen to Mona's share. It came in the form of a note on thick hand-made paper, embossed with a gorgeous crest
"Mr and Mrs Cookson request the pleasure of Miss Maclean's company to dinner, etc."
Dinner! Mona had not "dined" for months. She tossed the note aside with a laugh.
"If my friend Matilda has not played me false," she said—"and I don't believe she has—this is indeed success!"
Her first impulse was to refuse, but she thought of Matilda's disappointment; and she thought, too, that Dr Dudley, knowing what he did of her relations with the girl, would think a refusal unworthy of her; so she showed the note to Rachel.
"Of course you'll go," was Rachel's immediate reply to the unspoken question. "But I do think, seeing how short a time we're to be together, they might have asked me too!"
Mona did not answer. She was strongly tempted at that moment to write and say she went nowhere without her cousin, but she could not honestly agree that the Cooksons might have invited Rachel too.
She ended by going, dressed with the utmost care, that she might not disappoint Matilda's expectations; and, on the whole, she was pleasantly surprised. There was less vulgar display than she had expected. Mrs Cookson was aggressively patronising, and Clarinda almost rude, but for that Mona had been prepared. Mr Cookson cared nearly as much for appearances as his wife did; but, as Mona had guessed, there was good wood under all the veneer. He was much pleased with Mona's appearance; his pleasure grew to positive liking when she expressed a preference fordrychampagne; and when she played some of Mendelssohn'sLieder, from Matilda's well-thumbed copy, he became quite enthusiastic.
"I am afraid dear old Kullak's hair would stand on end, if he heard me," Mona said to the eager girl at her elbow, "and he would throw my music out of the window, as he did one day, when I thought I had surpassed myself." But there were many stages of musical criticism between Kullak and Mr Cookson.
"The girls have been playing those things to me for years," he said, "but I never saw any sense in them before. It was all diddle-diddle, twang-twang. Now, when you play them, bless me! I feel as I did when Cook's man began to speak English to me, the first time I was at a French railway station."
With Matilda's handsome brother, Mona did not get on so well.
"Getting tired of your hobby, Miss Maclean?" he said, standing in front of her, and twirling his moustache.
Mona looked up with innocent eyes.
"Which hobby?" she said.
He laughed and changed the subject. He was not shy, but he had not the courage to specify shopkeeping.
All evening Matilda followed Mona like a shadow; taking her hand whenever she dared, and gazing up into her face with worshipping eyes. "It is too lovely having you here," she said, "but I can't forget it's the end of all things."
"Oh no, it is not," Mona answered. "You will be coming up to London one of these days, and perhaps your mother will let you spend a few days with me. In the meantime, I want you to spend a long afternoon with me to-morrow."
The long afternoon was in some respects a trying one, but that and most of the other farewells were over at length, and Mona was hard at work packing up.
"What a lifetime it seemed, six months ago!" she said, "and now that it is past—— And how little I ever dreamed that I should be so sorry to go!"
She had to find room for quite a number of keepsakes, and she almost wept over the heterogeneous collection. There were home-made needle-books and pin-cushions from the girls who had come to her for advice about bonnets, and situations, and husbands; there was a pair of gaudy beaded footstools, which Rachel had got as a bargain at the bazaar; there was a really beautiful Bible from the Bonthrons (how Mona longed to show it to Dr Dudley!); and from Matilda Cookson there was a wreath of shells and sea-weed picked up near Castle Maclean, and mounted on cardboard, with these lines in the centre of the wreath—
"FROMM. C.IN GRATEFUL MEMORYOFTHE HAPPIEST HOURS OF HER LIFE."
The inspiration was a happy one, and it had been carried out with much care, and a dash of art. Tradition and early education had of course to put in their say; and they did it in the form of a massive gold frame, utterly out of keeping with the simple wreath.
"Oh dear! why will people be so pathetic?" said Mona; but, if the gifts had been priceless jewels, she could not have packed them with tenderer care.
Then came the hardest thing of all, the parting with Rachel. A bright and competent young woman had been engaged in Mona's place, but Rachel could not be induced to hear a word in her favour.
"What's all that to me?" she sobbed; "it's not like one's own flesh and blood. You'd better never have come!"
Mona felt sure that the edge of this poignant grief would very soon wear off, but when the first bend in the railway had shut the limp, flapping handkerchief out of sight, she sank back in the comfortless carriage, feeling as if she had come to the end of a severe and protracted campaign.
She was too exhausted to read, and was thankful that by some happy chance she had no fellow-passengers. No mountains and fjords haunted her memory now; but instead—changing incessantly like a kaleidoscope—came a distorted phantasmagoria of perished elastic and ill-assorted knitting-needles; red-cushioned pews and purple bonnet-strings; suffering women in poor little homes; crowded bazaar and whirling ball-room; rocky coast and frosted pines; and—steady, unchanging, like the light behind the rattling bits of glass—the wonderful, mystic glow of the suite of enchanted rooms.
Dusk was gathering when the train drew into the station. Yes; there stood Doris and the Sahib. Doris was looking eagerly in the direction of the coming train, and the Sahib was looking at Doris. But what a welcome they gave the traveller! A welcome that drove all the phantasmagoria out of her head, and made her forget that she was anything other than Doris's sister, the friend of the Sahib, and—something to somebody else.
"Ponies and pepper-pot still to the fore?" she said, as they crossed the platform.
"Oh yes; but a horrible fear has seized me lately that the pepper-pot is beginning to grow."
"Are you not coming with us?" Mona asked, as the Sahib arranged the carriage-rug.
He looked down at his great athletic figure with a good-humoured smile.
"How is it to be done?" he asked, "unless I put the whole toy in my pocket—dolls and all. Miss Colquhoun has been kind enough to ask me to dinner. I am looking forward to meeting you then."
Scarcely a word passed between the friends as they drove home, and Mona was glad to lie down and rest until dinner-time.
"Welcome, Miss Maclean!" cried Mr Colquhoun as she entered the drawing-room. "You've come in the very nick of time to give me your opinion of a new microtome I want to buy. I could not have held out another day. Why, I declare you are looking bonnier than ever!"
"She is looking five years younger," said Doris.
"Since wearemaking personal remarks," said the Sahib, "I should have said older, but that does not prevent my agreeing cordially with Mr Colquhoun."
Mona's laugh only half concealed her rising colour.
"Older has it," she said, nodding to the Sahib. "Score!"
As they went in to dinner, she looked round at the unpretentious perfection of the room and the table, with a long sigh of satisfaction.
"There is no house in the world," she said, "where I have precisely the sense of restfulness that I have here. Nothing jars; I don't need to talk unless I like; and I can afford to be my very own self."
"That's a good hearing," said Mr Colquhoun heartily. "Have some soup!"
The two gentlemen kept the ball going between them most of the time, for Doris never talked much except in asolitude à deux. And yet how intensely she made her presence felt, as she sat at the head of the table,—sweet, gracious, almost childlike, her fair young face scarcely giving a hint of the strength and enthusiasm that lay behind it!
"I can hardly believe that I am to have you for a whole week," she said, following Mona into her bedroom, and rousing the fire; "it is too good to be true. And I am so glad you are going back to your work!"
"So am I, dear," said Mona simply.
"Of course! I knew you would come back to the point you started from."
Mona smiled. "You are determined not to make it a spiral, I see. Ah, well! taking it as a circle, it is a bigger one than I imagined."
Her words would not have struck Doris but for the tone in which they were unconsciously spoken.
"What has biggened it?" she said, looking up from the fire.
Mona's hands were clasped beneath her head on the low back of her arm-chair, and her eyes were fixed on the ceiling.
"I don't know," she said. "Many things. How is Maggie getting on?"
"Famously. Laurie says she will make a first-rate cook. You should have seen the child's face when I told her you were coming! I am so grateful to you, Mona, for giving me a chance to help her. There is so little that one can do!—that I can do at least! She is a sweet little thing, and so pretty. When I think of that man——" her face crimsoned, and she stopped short.
"Don't think of him, dear," said Mona. "It us no use; and, you know, you must not spoil Maggie."
Doris bent low over the fire, and the tears glistened on her long eyelashes. She tried to wink them away, but it was no use; and, after all, there was only Mona there to see, and Mona was almost a second self. She pressed her handkerchief hard against her eyes for a moment, and then turned to her friend with a smile.
"What a time you must have had of it that night at the Wood! Iwasproud of you!"
"I wish you had more cause, dear. My duties were simple in the extreme."
"And the country doctor—what did he say when he found how you had risen to the occasion?"
Mona's eyes were fixed on the ceiling again.
"I don't think he said anything that is likely to live in history. I believe he ventured to suggest that Maggie might have some beef-tea."
This, as Dudley could have testified, was a pure fabrication.
"I don't suppose he would be man enough to admit it, but he must have seen that you were in your proper place there—not he."
Mona opened her lips to reply, and then closed them again.
"Maggie has not been my only patient by any means," she said finally. "I have had no end of practice. I assure you I might have set up my carriage, if I had been paid for it all. Oh, Doris, it is sad work sometimes!" and she told the story of the last patient she had had.
"Poor soul! Glad as I am that you have left that place, I don't know how you could bring yourself to leave her."
"No more do I, quite."
"You could not have brought her into Edinburgh?"
Mona shook her head. "Too late!" she said.
"It must have been dreadful to give her over, after all, to a man. I don't know how you could do it."
"That's because you don't know how kind he is, how he met me half-way, and made my task easy. It was the Kilwinnie doctor, you know, an elderly man." Mona sprang to her feet, and leaned against the mantelpiece. "At the risk of forfeiting your esteem for ever, Doris, I must record my formal testimony that the kindness I have met with at the hands of men-doctors is almost incredible. When I think how nice some of them are, I almost wonder that we women have any patients at all!"
"Nice!" said Doris quietly, but with concentrated scorn. "It's theirtradeto benice. I never consulted a man-doctor in my life, and I never will; but if by any inconceivable chance I were compelled to, I would infinitely prefer a boor to a man who was nice!"
Mona laughed. "Dear old niceness," she said, "I won't have him abused. When all is said, he is so much more attractive than most of the virtues. And before we banish him from the conversation,—how do you like the Sahib?"
Doris's face brightened.
"Hebelieves in women-doctors," she said.
"Ay, and in all things lovely and of good report." Mona was forgetting her resolution.
"He has very wholesome views on lots of subjects," Doris went on reflectively.
"Have you seen much of him?"
"A good deal. He is very much interested in the things my father cares about. I quite understand now what you meant when you said he was the sort of man one would like to have for a brother."
This was disappointing, and Mona brought the conversation to a close.
Every day during her visit the Sahib came in for an hour or two, sometimes to lunch or dinner, sometimes to escort "the girls" to a lecture or concert. He was uniformly kind and brotherly to both, but Mona fancied that at times he was sorely ill at ease.
"If only he would show a little common-sense," she thought, "and let the matter drop altogether, what a relief it would be for both of us!"
But this was not to be.
On Sunday afternoon Doris had gone out to teach her Bible-class, Mr Colquhoun was enjoying his weekly afternoon nap, and Mona was sitting alone by the fire in the library, half lost in a mighty arm-chair, with a book on her knee.
Suddenly the door opened, and the Sahib entered unannounced.
"You are alone?" he said, as though he had not counted on finding her alone.
"Yes," said Mona, and she tried in vain to say anything more. It was Sunday afternoon.
Somewhat nervously he lifted the book from her lap and glanced at the title-page.
"Your choice of literature is exemplary," he said, seating himself beside her.
"I am afraid the example begins and ends with the choice, then," said Mona, colouring. "I have not read a line; I was dreaming."
He looked at her quickly.
"Miss Maclean," he said, making a bold plunge, "I have come for my answer."
Mona raised her eyes.
"What answer do you want, Mr Dickinson?" she said quietly.
If the Sahib had been absolutely honest he would have replied, "Upon my soul, I don't know!" but there are moments when the best of men think it necessary to adapt the truth to circumstances. Before Mona came to Edinburgh he had certainly regretted those hasty words of his at the ball; but, now that he was in her presence again, now especially that he was alone in her presence, the old charm returned with all its force. Doris was a pearl, but Mona was a diamond; Doris was spotless, but Mona was crystalline. If only he had met either of these women three years ago, what a happy man he would have been! The Sahib had lived a pure, straightforward life, and he was almost indignant with Nature and the Fates for placing a man like him on the horns of such a dilemma; but Nature has her freaks—and her revenges. When he was alone with the pearl, the diamond seemed hard, and its play of colours dazzling; when he was alone with the diamond—but no, he could not admit that even the clearness and brilliancy of the diamond suggested a want in the pearl.
"I am not a boy," he said hastily, almost indignantly, "not to know my own mind."
True man as she knew him to be, his words rang false on Mona's sensitive ear. She rose slowly from her chair and stood before the fire.
"Nor am I a girl," she said, "not to know mine. It is no fault of mine, Mr Dickinson, that you did not take my answer two months ago. I can only repeat it now," and she turned to leave the room.
He felt keenly the injustice and justice of her anger; but he was too honest to complain of the first without pleading guilty to the second.
"Considering all that has passed between us," he said simply, "I think you might have said it less unkindly."
He was conscious of the weakness of the answer, but to her it was the strongest he could have made. It brought back the brotherly Sahib of former days, and her conscience smote her.
"Was I unkind?" she said, turning back. "Indeed, I did not mean to be; but I thought you were honest enough, and knew me well enough, to come and say you had made a mistake. I was hurt that you should think me so small." She hesitated. "Sahib," she said, "Doris and I have been friends ever since we were children, and no man has ever known both of us without preferring her. I can scarcely believe that any man will have the luck to win her, but I could not be jealous of Doris——"
She stopped short. At Christmas she could have said the words with perfect truth, but were they true now? The question flashed like lightning through her mind, and the Sahib watched her with intense interest while she answered it. Her face grew very pale, and her lips trembled. She leaned her arm against the mantelpiece.
"Sahib," she said, "life gets so complicated, and it is so difficult to tell what one is bound to say. You asked me if—if—there was somebody else. There is somebody else; there was then. I did not lie to you. I did not know. And even now—he—has not said——"
She broke off abruptly, and left the room.
The Sahib lifted up the book she had laid down, and carefully read the title-page again, without really seeing one word. The question had indeed been settled for him, and at that moment he would have given wellnigh everything he possessed, if he could have been the man to win and marry Mona Maclean.
It was the luncheon-hour, and the winter term was drawing to a close. The dissecting-room was deserted by all save a few enthusiastic students who had not yet wholly exhausted the mysteries of Meckel's ganglion, the branches of the internal iliac, or the plantar arch. For a long time a hush of profound activity had hung over the room, and the silence had been broken only by the screams of a parrot and the cry of the cats'-meat-man in the street below; but by degrees the demoralising influence of approaching holidays had begun to make itself felt; in fact, to be quite frank, the girls were gossiping.
It was the dissector of Meckel's ganglion who began it.
"If you juniors want a piece of advice," she said, laying down her forceps,—"a thing, by the way, which you never do want, till an examination is imminent, and even then you don't take it,—you may have it for nothing. Form a clear mental picture of the spheno-maxillary fossa. When you have that, the neck of anatomy is broken. Miss Warden, suppose, just to refresh all our memories, you run over the foramina opening into the spheno-maxillary fossa, and the structures passing through them."
The dissector of the plantar arch groaned.
"Don't!" she entreated in assumed desperation. "With the examination so near, it makes me quite ill to be asked a question. I should not dare to go up, if Miss Clark were not going."
"I should not have thought she was much stand-by."
"Oh, but she is! If she passes, I may hope to. I was dissecting the popliteal space the other day, and she asked me if it was Scarpa's triangle!"
A murmur of incredulity greeted this statement.
"She has not had an inferior extremity," said a young girl, turning away from the cupboard in which the skeleton hung. "You can only learn your anatomy by dissecting yourself."
"It is a heavy price to pay," said she of the spheno-maxillary fossa: "and a difficult job at the best, I should fancy."
There was a general laugh, in which the girl at the cupboard joined.
"Where it is completed by the communicating branch of the dorsalis pedis," said Miss Warden irrelevantly. "I am no believer inEllis and Fordmyself," she went on, looking up, "but I do think one might learn from it the general whereabouts of Scarpa's triangle."
"Come now, Miss Warden, you know we don't believe that story. Have you decided whether to go to Edinburgh or Glasgow for your second professional, Miss Philips?"
"Oh, Glasgow," said the investigator of the internal iliac, almost impatiently. "I need all the time I can get. I have not begun to read the brain and special sense. Where can one get a bullock's eye?"
"At Dickson's, I fancy."
"And where can one see a dissection of the ear? It is so unsatisfactory getting it up from books."
"There is a model of it in the museum."
"Model!" The word was spoken with infinite contempt.
"Do you know what it is, Miss Philips? You are thrown away on those Scotch examinations. Why did you not go in for the London degree?"
"Matric.," was the laconic response.
"Oh, the Matric. is nothing!"
"Besides, I could not afford the time. Six years, even if one was lucky enough not to get ploughed."
"Talking of being ploughed," said a student who had just entered the room, "you won't guess whom I have just met?—Miss Maclean."
"Miss Maclean?—in London?"
"In the chemical laboratory at the present moment. She is going up for her Intermediate again, in July."
"Who is Miss Maclean?" asked the girl who had been studying the skeleton.
There was a general exclamation.
"Not to know her, my dear," said the new-comer, "argues yourself—quite beneath notice. Miss Maclean is one of the Intermediate Chronics."
"Miss Maclean is an extremely clever girl," said Miss Warden.
"When I first came to this school," said Miss Philips, "I wrote to my people that women medical students were very much like other folks, but that one or two were really splendid women; and I instanced Miss Maclean."
"The proof of the student is the examination."
"That is not true—except very broadly. You passed your Intermediate at the first go-off, but none of us would think of comparing you to Miss Maclean."
"Thank you," was the calm reply. "I always did appreciate plain speaking. It is quite true that I never went in for very wide reading, nor for the last sweet thing in theories; but I have a good working knowledge of my subjects all the same—at least I had at the time I passed."
"Miss Maclean is too good a student; that is what is the matter with her."
The dissector of Meckel's ganglion laughed. "Miss Maclean is awfully kind and helpful," she said; "but I shall never forget the day when I asked her to show me the nerve to the vastus externus on her own dissection. She drew aside a muscle with hooks, and opened up a complicated system of telephone wires that made my hair stand on end."
"I know. For one honest nerve with a name, she shows you a dozen that are nameless; and the number of abnormalities that she contrives to find is simply appalling."
"In other words, she has a spirit of genuine scientific research," said Miss Philips. "It does not say much for the examiners that such a woman should fail."
A student who had been studying a brain in the corner of the room, looked up at this moment, tossing back a mass of short dark hair from her refined and intellectual face.
"Poor examiners," she said. "Who would wish to stand in their shoes? Miss Maclean may be a good student, and she may have a spirit of genuine scientific research; but nobody fails for either of those reasons. Miss Maclean sees things very quickly, and she sees them in a sense exactly. She puts the nails in their right places, so to speak, and gives them a rap with the hammer; she fits in a great many more than there is any necessity for, but she does not drive them home. Then, when the examination comes, some of the most essential ones have dropped out, and have to be looked for all over again. It was a fatal mistake, too, to begin her Final work before she had passed her Intermediate. I don't know what subject Miss Maclean failed in, but I am not in the least surprised that she failed."
Her audience heard the last sentence in a kind of nightmare; for Mona had entered the room, and was standing listening, a few yards behind the speaker. The girl turned round quickly, when she saw the conscious glances.
"I did not know you were there, Miss Maclean," she said proudly, indignant with herself for blushing.
Mona drew a stool up to the same table, and sat down.
"It is I who ought to apologise, Miss Lascelles," she said, "for listening to remarks that were not intended for me; but I was so much interested that I did not stop to think. One so seldom gets the benefit of a perfectly frank diagnosis."
"I don't know that it was perfectly frank. Some one was abusing the examiners, and I spoke in hot blood——"
"It seems to me that statements made in hot blood are the only ones worth listening to—if we have a germ of poetry in us. Statements made in cold blood always prove to be truisms when you come to analyse them."
"And one thing I said was not even true—Iwassurprised when you failed."
Mona was not listening. "What you said was extremely sensible," she said, "but so neatly put that one is instinctively on one's guard against it. It is a dreary metaphor—driving in nails; and, if it be a just one, it describes exactly my quarrel with medicine, from an examination point of view. Why does not one big nail involve a lot of little ones? Or rather, why may we not develop like trees, taking what conduces to our growth, and rejecting the rest? Why are we doomed to make pigeon-holes, and drive in nails?"
"But the knowledge a doctor requires is in a sense unlike any other. He wants it, not for himself, but for other people."
"And so we come back to the eternal question, whether a man benefits humanity more by self-development or self-sacrifice? Does knowledge that is fastened on as an appendage ever do any good? Have not the great specialists, the men of genius, who are looked upon as towers of strength, worked mainly at the thing they enjoyed working at?"
"Yes," said Miss Lascelles, "but they passed their examinations first."
Mona laughed. "True," she said, "I own the soft impeachment; and there you have the one and only argument in favour of girls beginning to study medicine when they are quite young. It is so easy for them to get up facts and tables."
"I think one requires to get up less, in the way of facts and tables, for the London than for any other examination. It is more honest, more searching, than any other."
Mona smiled—a very sad little smile. "Perhaps," she said.
"I don't know what you mean by knowledge that is fastened on as an appendage never doing any good," said the girl who held that the proof of the student was the examination; "I don't profess to have found any mysterious food for my intellectual growth in the action and uses of rhubarb, but I don't find rhubarb any the less efficacious on that account when I prescribe it."
"But you open up a pretty wide field for thought when you ask yourself, Why rhubarb rather than anything else?"
"It is cheap," said the girl frivolously, "and it is always at hand."
No one vouchsafed any reply to this.
"You have surely done enough to those brain sections for one day, Miss Lascelles," said Mona; "won't you come and lunch with me? It is only a few minutes' walk to my rooms."
The girl hesitated. "Thank you," she said suddenly—"I will. I shall be ready in five minutes."
She slipped from her high stool, and stood putting away her things—a tiny figure scarcely bigger than a child, yet full of character and dignity.
"In the meantime come and demonstrate this tiresome old artery, Miss Maclean," said Miss Philips. "I am getting hopelessly muddled."
"If you knew the surroundings in which I have spent the last six months," said Mona, smiling, "you would not expect me to know more than the name of the internal iliac artery. I shall be very glad to come and look at your dissection though, if I may."
"You see I have not forgotten the kindness you showed me when I first began."
"I don't remember any kindness on my part. You were kind enough to let me refresh my memory on your dissection, I know."
"That's one way of putting it. Do you remember my asking you how closed tubes running through the body could do it any good?"
"Yes; and I remember how delighted I was with the intelligence of the question. Heigh-ho! what a child you seemed to me then!"
She took the forceps in her hand, and in a moment the old enthusiasm came back.
"How very interesting!" she said. "Look at this deep epigastric."
And a quarter of an hour had passed before she remembered her guest and her luncheon.
"I am so sorry," she said, pulling off the sleeves she had donned for the moment. "Is anybody going to dissect during the summer term? Shall I be able to get a part?"
The two girls walked home together to Mona's rooms, Miss Lascelles's diminutive figure, in its half-æsthetic, half-babyish gown and cape, forming a curious contrast to that of her companion.
"I really do apologise most humbly for my thoughtlessness," said Mona.
"Don't," replied the other, swinging her ungloved hand and raising her slow pleasant voice more than was necessary in the quiet street; "one does not see too much enthusiasm in the world. It is good to have you back."
"I feel rather like a Rip Van Winkle, as you may suppose."
"Yes. The students seem to get younger every year. It is a terrible pity. One does not see how they are ever to take the place of some of the present seniors. What can they know of life?"
"And, as a natural consequence, the supply of medical women will exceed the demand in the next ten years—in this country. After that, things will level themselves, I suppose; but at present, if a woman is to succeed, she must be better than the average man."
"Whereas at present we are getting mainly average women, and of course the average woman is inferior to the average man."
"Heretic!"
"Oh, but wait till women have had their chance! When they are really educated, things will be very different."
"Do you think so? If I did not believe in women as they are now, apart from a mythical posse, I should be miserable indeed. I have a great respect for higher education, but there is such a thing as Mother Nature as well."
"Even Mother Nature has only had her say for half the race."
They entered the house, and presently sat down to the luncheon-table.
"Explanations are always a mistake," said Miss Lascelles suddenly.
"Always," said Mona, "and especially when there is no occasion for them."
"——but I should like to tell you that I thought out that nail metaphor (God forgive the term!) in relation to myself originally. It is because I am so familiar with that weakness in myself, that I recognised, or fancied I recognised, it in you. I think our minds are somewhat alike, though, of course, you have a much fresher and brighter way of looking at things than I."
"——and I am the profounder student," she added mentally.
"Explanations are not always a mistake," said Mona. "It was very kind of you to make that one. I should be glad to think my cost of mind was like yours, but I am afraid it is only the superficial resemblance which Giuseppe's violins bore to those of the master."
"It is pleasant, is it not, to leave dusty museums now and then, and feel Science growing all around one? And what I love about London University is, that it allows for that kind of thing in its Honours papers. It is a case of 'This ought ye to have done, and not have left the other undone.' But it is difficult to find time for both."
"Ay, especially when one has to find time for so many other things as well."
"Yes. I feel that intensely. I hate to be insulated. I must touch at more points than one. But I do try to work conscientiously, or rather I don't try. It is my nature. Study is a pure delight to me."
"I expect you will be taking honours in all four subjects."
"I find it a great help in any case to do the honours work: it is so much more practical and useful; but it does take a lot of time. I find it impossible to work more than ten hours a day——"
Mona laid down the fish-slice in horror.
"Ten hours a day!" she exclaimed.
"Yes; I tried twelve, but I could not keep it up."
"I should hope not. I call eight hours spurting. I only read for six, as a rule, and for the last fortnight before an examination, only two."
"Why?"
"I can't read at the end. That is the ruin of me. Up to the last fortnight, I seem to know more than most of my fellow-students; but then I collapse, while they—they withdraw into private life. What mystic rites and incantations go on there I can't even divine; but they emerge all armedcap-à-pie, conquering and to conquer, while I crawl out from my lethargy to fail."
"You have the consolation of knowing that you really know your work better than they."
"Do you know, I have had nearly enough of that kind of consolation? I could make shift now to do with an inferior, more tangible kind."
"You will get that too this time."
Mona sighed. "HowI hope so!" she said. "Have some more Chablis, and let us drink to our joint success."
"I confess I was rather surprised that Miss Reynolds passed. I am not given to meddling in other people's affairs; but if Miss Reynolds is ever to take her degree at all, it was quite time you came back. Have you seen her yet?"
"Only for a few minutes. She is coming to spend the evening with me."
"You know she used to hide a capacity for very earnest work behind an aggravatingly frivolous exterior. Now it is just the other way. She professes to be in earnest, but I am sure she is doing nothing. You will wonder how I know, when I am not at hospital; but quite a number of the students have spoken of it. She never read widely. The secret of her success was that she took good notes of the lectures, and then got them up. But now they say she is taking no notes at all, scarcely. It was very much against her, of course, coming in in the middle of term; but one would have predicted that that would only have made her work the harder."
"I don't think so. That is not what I should have predicted. She really worked too hard last summer, and a thorough reaction is a good sign. I think that is quite sufficient to account for what you say. Miss Reynolds is a healthy animal, and one may depend upon her instincts to be pretty correct. She will accomplish all the more in the end, for letting her mind lie fallow this year."
But though Mona spoke with apparent certainty, she felt rather uneasy. Lucy's letters had been few and unsatisfactory of late; and her manner, when she met her old friend at the station, had been more unsatisfactory still.
"I can't force her confidence," Mona thought, when Miss Lascelles was gone; "but I hope she will tell me what is the matter. Poor little soul!"
It was pretty late in the evening when Lucy arrived, pale and tired. "I have kept you waiting for dinner," she said; "I am so sorry. A fractured skull came in just as I was leaving, and I waited to see them trephine. They don't think it will be successful, and—it made me rather faint. But it's an awfully neat operation."
Mona went to the table and poured out a glass of wine. "Drink that," she said, "and then come to my bedroom and have a good splash. I will do all the talking during dinner; and when you are quite rested, you shall tell me the news."
"Life will be a different thing, now you are back," Lucy said, as they seated themselves at the table. "What lovely flowers!"
"You ought to admire them. Aunt Maud sent them from your beloved Cannes. I do so admire that Frisia. It is white and virginal, like Doris."
The last remark was added hastily, for at the mention of Cannes, Lucy had blushed violently and incomprehensibly.
"I was at the School to-day," Mona went on.
"Were you really? It must have been horrid going back."
"It was very horrid to find the organic solutions in the chemical laboratory at such a low ebb. But I suppose they will be filled up again for the summer term."
"Oh, you know all those stupid old tests!"
"It is precisely the part of the examination that I am most afraid of. I have not your luck—or power of divination. Why don't they ask us to find whether a hydroxyl group is present in a solution, or something of that kind?"
"Thank heaven, they don't!"
"I wonder what a scientific chemist would say, if he were asked to identify two organic mixtures in an hour and a half!"
"I did it in half an hour."
"Yes, but how? By tasting, and guessing, and adding I in KI, or perchloride of iron."
Lucy helped herself to more potato.
"I seem to have heard these sentiments before," she said.
Mona laughed. "Yes; and you are in a fair way to hear them pretty frequently again, unless you keep out of my way for the next four months."
"Did you go into the dissecting-room?"
"Yes; and what do you think I found them dissecting?"
"Anything new?"
"Quite, I hope, in that connection—my unworthy self," and Mona told the story of her little adventure.
"Well, really," said Lucy indignantly, "those juniors want a good setting down. I never heard such a piece of bare-faced impudence in my life. What on earth do they know about you, except that you are one of the best students in the School?"
"There, there, firebrand!" said Mona, much relieved to see the old Lucy again, "I think you and I have been known to say as much as that of our betters. In truth, it did me a world of good. I was very morbid about going back to the anatomy-room—partly because I had got out of tune with the work, partly because I knew nobody would know what to say to me, and there would be an awkward choice between constrained remarks and more constrained silences. It was a great relief to find myself and my failures taken frankly for granted. How I wish people could learn that, unless they can be superlatively tactful, it is better not to be tactful at all; for of tact it is more true than of anything else, thatars est celare artem. But, to return to the point we started from, there is a great deal of truth in what Miss Lascelles said. For the next four months I am going to spend my lifedriving in nails."
Lucy shivered. "Couldn't you screw them in?" she suggested. "It would make so much less noise."
Mona reflected for a moment. "No," she said, "there is something in the idea of a good sharp rap with the hammer that gives relief to my injured feelings." And she brought her closed fist on the table with a force that sent a ruddy glow across her white knuckles.
"And now," she said, "it is your innings. I want to know so many things. How do you like hospital?"
"Oh, it is awfully interesting;" but Lucy's manner was not enthusiastic. "I spotted a presystolic murmur yesterday."
"H'm. Who said it was a presystolic? Did not you find it very cold coming back to London from the sunny South?"
Lucy shivered again. "It was horrid," she said.
"And you really had a good, gay, light-hearted time?"
It was a full minute before the girl answered, "Oh yes," she said hurriedly and emphatically. "It was delightful. I—I was not thinking."
"That is just what you were doing. A penny for your thoughts."
Again there was a silence. Evidently Lucy was strongly tempted to make a clean breast of it.
"I am in my father's black books," she said at last.
Mona looked at her searchingly. That the statement was true, she did not doubt; but that this was the sole cause of Lucy's evident depression, she did not believe for a moment.
"How have you contrived to get there?" she asked.
"It is not such a remarkable feat as you think. I went to Monte Carlo with the Munros."
"Did he object?"
"Awfully! You see, when I came to write about it, I thought I would wait and tell them when I got home: but Mr Wilson, one of the churchwardens, saw me there, and the story leaked out."
"But you did not play?"
"No—not to call playing. Evelyn was so slow—I pushed her money into place with the cue. But my father does not think so much of that. It is my being there at all that he objects to."
"Just for once?"
"Just for once. He said you would not have gone."
"That is a profound mistake. I want very much to see a gambling-saloon, and I certainly should have gone. I will tell him so the first time I see him."
"Oh, Mona, don't! What is the use? Two blacks don't make a white."
"Truly; but, on the other hand, you can't make a black white by painting it. Your father thinks me so much better than I am, that he binds me over to be honest with him. Besides, I want to defend my point. Of course, I should not go if I thought it wrong. But, Lucy, that is not a thing to worry about. It can't be undone now, even if you wished it; and your father would be the last man in the world to want you to distress yourself fruitlessly. Of all the men I know, he is the most godlike, in his readiness to say, 'Come now, and let us reason together.'"
"I am not distressing myself," Lucy said, brightening up with an evident effort. "Did I ever tell you, Mona, about the boy we met at Monte Carlo? He had got into a fix and was nearly frantic. We begged Lady Munro to speak to him, and she invited him to Cannes, and ultimately she and Sir Douglas sent him home. But it was such fun! He proved to be a medical student, a St Kunigonde's man. I was alone in the sitting-room when he called,—such a pretty sunny room it was, with a sort of general creamy-yellow tone that made my peacock dress simply lovely! Of course we fell to comparing notes. He goes in for his second examination at the Colleges in July, and you should have seen his face when I told him I had passed my Intermediate M.B. Lond.! I really believe it had never occurred to him that any woman under thirty, and devoid of spectacles, could go in for her Intermediate. He is coming to see me at the Hall."
A poorer counterfeit of Lucy's racy way of telling a story could scarcely have been imagined. Mona wondered much, but she knew now that nothing more was to be got out of her friend that night.
It was a hot day in June, and "blessed Bloomsbury" was converted into one great bakehouse. The flags in Gower Street radiated out a burning glow; the flower-sellers had much ado to preserve the semblance of freshness in their dainty wares; and those of the inhabitants who were the proud possessors of outside blinds were an object of envy to all their neighbours.
Mona was sitting at her writing-table, pen in hand, and with a formidable blue schedule before her. She was looking out of the window, but in her mind's eye the dusty, glaring street had given place to the breezy ramparts of Castle Maclean; and, instead of the noise of the traffic, she heard the soft plash of the waves. Presently she laid down her pen, and leaned against the scorching window-sill, with a smile, not on her lips, but in her eyes.
"My spirit and my God shall beMy seaward hill, my boundless sea,"
she quoted softly.
"What, Mona, caught poetising!" said Lucy unceremoniously entering the room.
"Far from it," said Mona drily. "I was engaged on the most prosaic work it is possible to conceive, filling in the schedule for my Intermediate. It seems to me that I have spent the greater part of my life filling in the schedule for my Intermediate. If I fail again I shall employ an amanuensis for the sole purpose. Come and help me. Full Christian name and surname?"
"Mona Margaret Maclean."
"Oh, drop the Margaret! I am prepared to take the chance of there being another Mona Maclean. Age, last birthday?"
"Ninety-nine."
"No doubt I shall fill that into an Intermediate schedule some day, but not yet awhile. I wonder if they will have reformed the Practical Chemistry by that time? Or will the dear old M.B. Lond. have lost itscachetaltogether? It is warm to-day, is it not?"
"Frightfully! I met Miss Lascelles just now, and she informed me, in her bell-like voice, that if we were quite civilised we should go about without any clothes at all just now. I told her I hoped the relics of barbarism would last out my time."
"Then I presume Miss Lascelles will not throw her pearls before swine again. Are you going to hospital?"
"Not to-day. Hospital is unbearable in this weather. The air is thick with microbes."
Mona looked at her friend reflectively. "Suppose you come down to Richmond with me," she said, "and blow away a few of the microbes on the river?"
"Oh, Mona, how lovely! But can you spare the time?"
"Yes, I began early to-day. But we will have some lunch first. In the meantime I will sing you my last song, and you shall criticise."
"Are you still going on with your singing lessons? I can't think how you find time for it."
"I think it saves time in the end. It is a grand safety-valve; and besides—a woman is robbed of half her armour if she cannot use her voice."
Her hands ran lightly up and down the keys of the piano, and she began to sing Schubert'sAve Maria.
"Miss Dalrymple says that is mychef-d'[oe]uvre," she said, when she had finished. "What think you?"
But Lucy made no answer.
"Mona," she said a minute later, "do you think it is worth while to go on the river, after all? It is rather a fag, and why should we?"
Her voice was husky, and suggestive of infinite weariness. Mona rose from the piano, and deliberately, almost brutally, took the girl's face between her hands, and turned it to the light. She was not mistaken. The pretty eyes were dim with tears.
"Lucy," she said, "you and I have pretended long enough. What is the use of friendship, if we never fall back upon it in time of need? I want you to tell me what it was that spoilt your visit to Cannes."
"Nothing," said Lucy, with burning face, "unless, perhaps, my own idiocy. Oh, Mona, you dear old bully, there is not anything to tell! I thought I was always going to get the best of it with men, and now a man has got the best of it with me. It's only fair. Now you know the whole story. Despise me as much as you like."
"When I take to despising people, I imagine I shall have to begin even nearer home than with my plucky little Lucy. Will it be any use to tell me about it, do you think? Or is the whole story better buried?"
"I can't bury it. And yet there is positively nothing to tell. When I look back upon it all, I cannot honestly say that the flirtation went any farther than half-a-dozen others have gone; but this time, somehow, everything was different."
"Is he a friend of the Munros?"
Lucy nodded. "Yes—you know—Mr Monteith. He arrived at the hotel the night of our first dance. I was wearing my mermaid costume for the first time, and—I saw him looking at me again and again. He was not particularly handsome, but there was a sort of bloom about him, don't you know? He made me feel so common and work-a-day. And then when I danced with him I felt as if I had never danced with a man in my life before. I did not see very much of him;—Lady Munro was so particular:—but one afternoon a party of us walked up to the chapel on the hill, and he and I got apart from the others somehow. It was the first time I had seen the Maritime Alps, and I never again saw them as they were that day in the sunset light. It was like looking into a golden future. Well, he went away. I was awfully low-spirited for a day or two; but somehow, whenever I thought of that evening on the hill, I felt as if the future was full of beautiful possibilities. One day we went to Monte Carlo, and there I met him again. He asked if I would like him to come back for a day or two to Cannes, and I said I did not care. He never came. Sometimes I wish I had begged him to,—yes, Mona, I have sunk as low as that—and sometimes I think he must have read my poor little secret all along, and I could kill myself for very shame. Oh, Mona, I wish you could take me out of myself!"
"You poor little soul! Lucy, dear, it sounds very trite and commonplace; but, by hook or by crook, you must get an interest in your hospital work, and go at it as hard as ever you can."
"It is no use. I hate hospital. I wonder now how I ever could care so much about prizes and marks and examinations. It is all such child's-play."
"Yes; but sorrow is not child's-play, and pain and death are not child's-play. It is only a question of working at it hard enough, old woman. You are bound to become interested in it in time, and that is the only way to get rid of yourself;—though it is strange teaching, perhaps, to come from self-centred me. They say we women of this generation have sacrificed a good deal of our birthright; don't let us throw away the grand compensation, the power to light our candles when the sun goes down. Do you remember Werther's description of the country lass whose sweetheart forsakes her, taking with him all the interest in her life? We at least have other interests, Lucy, and we can, if we try hard enough, turn the key on the suite of enchanted rooms, and live in the rest of the house."
"The rest of my house is a poky hole!"
Mona sighed sympathetically. "No matter," she said resolutely; "we must just set to work, and make it something better than a poky hole."
Further conversation was prevented for the time by the entrance of the luncheon-tray.
"Well, is it to be Richmond?" said Mona, when the meal was over.
Lucy blushed. "I have a great mind to go to hospital, after all," she said. "I don't think it is quite so hot as it was."
"No, I think there is a suspicion of a breeze.Au revoir! Come back soon."
I wish I could honestly say that Mona profited as much by Lucy's example as Lucy had by Mona's preaching; but I am forced to record that she did not open a book, nor return to her little laboratory, for the rest of the day. For a long time she sat in her rocking-chair with a frown on her brow. "I wonder if he has only been playing with her," she said—"the cad!" Then another thought crossed the outskirts of her mind. At first it scarcely entered the limits of her consciousness; but, like the black dog inFaust, it went on and on, in ominous, ever-narrowing circles, and she was forced to recognise that she must grapple with it sooner or later. Then she put up her hands to cover her face, although there was no one there to see, and the question sounded in her very ears—"What ifhehas only been playing withme?"
What then, Mona? Lock the door on the suite of enchanted rooms, and live in the rest of the house! But she never thought of her advice to Lucy. She threw herself on the couch, and lay there for a little while in an agony of shame. After all her lofty utterances, had she given herself away to a man who had not even asked for her? Why had he not spoken just one word, to save her from this torture?
By some curious chain of associations the words flashed into her mind—
"Denn, was man schwarz auf weiss besitzt,Kann man getrost nach Hause tragen."
She laughed a little breathlessly, and drew her hand across her damp forehead.
"I am a fool and a coward," she said; "I will ask Dr Alice Bateson to give me a tonic. What do mere words matter, after all, between people like him and me?"
She walked up to a calendar that hung on the wall, and carefully counted the days till the second week in August. Then she sighed regretfully.
"Poor little Lucy," she said, "what an unsympathetic brute she must have thought me!"
The classic precincts of Burlington House were once more invaded by a motley crowd of nervous, excited young men, who hung about the steps and entrance-hall, poring over their note-books, exchanging "tips," or coolly discussing the points of the women.
"None of them are so good-looking as the little girl with the red hair, who was up last year," Mona overheard one of them say, and she made a mental note to inform Lucy of her conquest.
About half-a-dozen girls were already assembled in the cloak-room when she entered.
"Well, Miss Maclean, how are you feeling?"
"Hardened," said Mona, taking off her hat, but she did not look particularly hardened.
"'In my heart if calm at allIf any calm, a calm despair,'"
quoted Miss Lascelles.
"Do tell me about the cardiac branches of the pneumo-gastric," said some one.
Miss Lascelles proceeded to give the desired information, while the others discussed the never-settled question of the number of marks required for a pass.
"It seems to me thatxequals the most you can make plus one," and Mona sighed resignedly.
"Now, ladies, please," said an imposing individual in broadcloth, and the little party was marshalled through the hall to the examination-room.
"Why has Miss Maclean done her hair like that?" said a student with a mind at leisure from itself. "It is not half so becoming as the old way."
Nor was it. Mona had made the alteration in order to change the outline of her head as much as possible, for she was most anxious that Dr Dudley should not recognise her, in surroundings that did not admit of an explanation on her part. She did not venture to raise her eyes as she entered the room, and as soon as she was seated, she bent low over the pink and green cahiers that lay on her desk. A minute later the examination papers were distributed, and for three hours neither Dudley nor any other human being had any existence for her. She wrote on till the last moment—wrote on, in fact, till the examiner, Dudley's "monument of erudition," came up and claimed her paper.
"I think I have seen you before," he said kindly.
"Twice," said Mona smiling, "and I am afraid you are in a fair way to see me again."
He looked at her with some amusement and interest in his shrewd Scotch face.
"I don't think you are much afraid of that," he said.
Mona followed him with her eye, as he turned away, and in another moment saw him at the other end of the room, shaking hands very cordially with Dr Dudley. She turned her back, and, hastily gathering together her pens and coloured chalks, she left the room. Her heart beat fast with apprehension till she reached the open air; and, as she walked up to Regent Street for lunch, she fancied every moment that she heard his step behind her.
But she need not have feared. For the three days that the written examination lasted, Dudley was aware of a patch of colour at the opposite side of the hall, where the women sat; but he was too indifferent and preoccupied to investigate its details. He felt so old among those boys and girls; his one wish was to get the examination over, and be done with it.
Now that she knew where he sat, Mona had no difficulty in avoiding his short-sighted eyes. In fact, as time went on, she grew bolder, and loved to look on from a distance, while Dudley's fellow-students gathered round and assailed him with a torrent of questions, the moment each paper was over. It was pleasant to see his relations with those lads,—the friendly raillery which they took in such good part. Clearly they looked upon him as a very good fellow, and a mine of wisdom.
"You are mere boys to him," thought Mona proudly. "He is willing to play with you; but I am his friend!"
Wednesday evening came at last, and with a mingled sense of excitement, and of weariness that amounted to physical pain, Mona went down the steps.
Lucy was awaiting her in the street, and they betook themselves to the nearest shop where they could get afternoon tea.
"Well," said Lucy, "what is your final judgment?"
Mona sighed. "Anatomy, very fair," she said—"morning paper especially; Physiology—between you and me and the lamp-post—the best paper I ever did in my life; Chemistry, safe, I think; Materia Medica—better at least than last time."
"Brava!" cried Lucy.
"Oh, don't! I ought not to have said so much. It is tempting the Fates."
"No matter. With a record like that you can afford to tempt the Fates. Oh, Mona, I do hope you have got the Physiology medal!" She raised her teacup. "Here's to Mona Maclean, Gold Medallist in Physiology!"
"No, no, no," said Mona. "My paper is not on those lines at all, and the Practical is still to come."
"And who is better prepared for that than you, with your private laboratory, and all the rest of it?"
"I have often told you that the best work of the world is rarely done with the best instruments."
Lucy groaned. "If three days' examination won't keep her from moralising," she said, "it may safely be predicted that nothing will. What a prospect?"
Mona wrote to Rachel that night, fixing the day and hour of her arrival at Borrowness some three weeks later; and the next day she went down to Bournemouth to visit some friends. Only a very unlikely chance could have taken Dudley to Bournemouth too, but Mona never saw a tall and lanky figure on the cliffs, without a sudden wild fancy that it might be he. There was a good deal of gladness in her agitation at these times, but she did not really want to see him there. No, no; let things take their course! Let it all come about quietly and naturally, at dear old Castle Maclean, in the second week of August!
She returned to town a few days before the Practical Examination, and found a letter from Rachel awaiting her.
"MY DEAR COUSIN,—I was very pleased to get your letter, telling me when you were coming to pay me a visit; but there has been a great change in my life since last I wrote you. You know I have never been the same being since you went away. That Miss Jenkins, that you thought so much of, did very well in the shop, and was good at figures, but she was not like one of my own folk. Then she was a U.P., and she had friends of her own that she always wanted to go to in the evening; and many's the time I've been so dull that if it hadn't been for Sally I believe I'd have gone clean daft. I wrote and told Mary Ann about it, and she wrote back saying, wouldn't I go and join her in America? Of course I never thought of such a thing, but I spoke to my friends about her writing, and a few days after I got a very good offer for the goodwill of the business. It really was like a leading, but I never thought of that at the time. Then, without waiting to hear from me, Mary Ann wrote again, begging me to come. There was word of a baby coming, and naturally at such a time she took a longing for her own flesh and blood. She never was one of your independent ones. Then I began to think I would like to go, but I'd an awful dread of the sea and the strangeness. Well, would you believe it? four days ago, Mrs Anderson came in and told me her brother was sailing to America in about ten days, with all his family from Glasgow, and he would be very glad to look after me if I would take my passage by the same steamer. So that settled it somehow. It's a queer-like thing, after sitting still all one's life, to make such a move all in a minute; but there seems to be the hand of Providence in it all, and Mary Ann says some of their acquaintances are most genteel, and the minister of the Baptist Chapel preaches the word with power.
"So you see, my dear, I shall be sailing from Glasgow the very day you were meaning to come to me. I am all in an upturn, as you may think, with a sale in the house and what not; but if you would come a week sooner, I'd be very pleased to see you. If you could have been happy to stay with me, I never would have thought of all this; but I never could have gone on as I was doing, though it is a terrible trial to break off all the old ties.
"You must write to me often and tell me what you are doing, and whether there is any word of your settling down in life.
"Your affectionate Cousin,"RACHEL SIMPSON.
"P.S.—Do you know of anything that is good for the seasickness?"
It was some time before Mona grasped the full consequences of this letter. She even allowed herself to wonder for a moment whether Mary Ann's difficulty in finding a lady-help had anything to do with this cordial invitation. But that fancy was soon crowded out of her mind by the formidable situation that had to be faced. No Rachel, no shop,—nothing more outside of herself to blush for; but, on the other hand, no wind-swept coast, no Castle Maclean, no long-postponed explanation, no Dr Dudley! The truth came upon her with a force that was absolutely crushing.
"I might have known it," she said, looking out of the window, with white lips and unseeing eyes. "I was counting on it too much. It has been the pivot on which my whole life has turned."
Then a bright idea occurred to her. Auntie Bell had plenty of spare room in the farmhouse, and she was sure the dear old woman would be glad to have a visit from her at any time.
But, when she timidly suggested it, Auntie Bell wrote back in great distress to say that, after much persuasion, she had let her up-stairs rooms to an artist for August. She would be so proud and pleased if Mona would come to her in September.
But Mona had promised to join the Munros on the 15th of August.
There still remained the chance of the Practical Examination; but Mona knew by experience that the initials D. and M. came sufficiently far apart in the alphabet to make it very unlikely that the owners of them would be called up at the same time.
Nor were they. Neither at Burlington House, nor at the Embankment, did Mona see a trace of her friend. At the Practical Physiology examination, all the students were called up together, but Mona did not take the pass paper; she went in for honours the following day, and her first glance round the handful of enthusiasts assembled for six hours' unbroken work was sufficient to convince her that Dr Dudley was not there. In this subject at least he had evidently contented himself with a pass. In the bitterness of her disappointment, she cared little for the results of the examination, and so worked coolly with a steady hand. When she was called up for her Viva she vaguely felt that she was doing better than her best, but she did not care.