About a week after Mona's visit to Auntie Bell, Dr Dudley was sitting alone in the dining-room at Carlton Lodge. It was nearly midnight, and a terrific storm was raging outside. One of the great trees at the foot of the garden had been blown down into the road, carrying with it a piece of the wall; and the wind roared round the lonely house like a volley of artillery.
Within, a bright wood-fire was reflected dimly on the oak wainscot, and a shaded lamp threw a brilliant light on scattered books and papers, shrouding the rest of the room in suggestive shadows.
Dr Dudley rose to his feet, and kicked a footstool across the room. You would scarcely have recognised his face as the one that had smiled at Mona across the counter. The wind played on his nerves as if they had been an instrument, but he was not thinking of the storm.
"Three years more before I can begin to do a man's work in the world," he said, "and nearly thirty lie behind me! It is enough to make one make tracks for the gold-fields to-morrow. What surety have I that all my life won't drift, drift, drift away, as the last thirty years have done? Upon my soul"—he drew up the blind and looked out on the darkness, which only threw back his image and that of the room—"I envy the poor devils who are called out to their patients in this tempest, for shilling or half-crown fees!"
He was young, you see, but not very young; for, instead of indulging in further heroics, he bit his lip and returned to his books and papers. "Hier oder nirgends ist Amerika!" He drew down his brows, and read aloud from the mighty tome at his side, stopping now and then to add a few lines to the diagram before him.
He held very strongly that, in addition to practical work, which was wellnigh everything, there was only one way of mastering anything approaching an exact science. Firstly, get the best handbook extant; secondly, read the diagrams only; thirdly, read the diagrams, letterpress and all; fourthly, read letterpress alone, constructing your own diagrams as you go. "For after all," he said, "another man's diagrams are but crutches at the best. It is only when you have assimilated a subject, and projected it again through the medium of your own temperament, that it is of any practical use to you, or indeed has any actual existence for you personally."
His opinion ought to have been of some value, for the study of an exact science was by no means the work for which his mind was best fitted; and it is not those whom Nature has endowed with a "royal road" to the attainment of any subject who are best able to direct their fellows.
The clock was striking two when he closed his books and extinguished the lamp. It was not his custom to work so late; he was oddly rational in such ways; but he had learned by experience that to act on the principle that "Hier oder nirgends ist Amerika" was the only cure—sometimes, alas! not a very effectual one—for moods of depression and bitter self-reproach.
The hurricane had raged for several days, but next morning the sun shone down on a smiling innocent world, with a pleasant suggestion of eternal renewal.
"I am going for a long drive past Kilwinnie," said Mrs Hamilton at lunch. "I am perishing for lack of fresh air; and I want you to go with me, Ralph."
"I am sorry I can't," he said shortly. It must be confessed that Dr Dudley was a man of moods.
"Oh, nonsense, Ralph! You have poked over those horrid books for days. You refused to come the last time I asked you, and that was centuries ago, before the storm began. I can't have you always saying 'No.'"
"It is a pity I did not learn to say 'No' a little earlier in life," he said gloomily; and then, with a dismal sense that the old lady was mainly dependent on him for moral sunshine, he got up and laid his hand on her shoulder—
"'I have been the sluggard, and must ride apace,For now there is a lion in the way,'"
he said, striving to speak cheerfully.
"I declare, Ralph, any one would think, to hear you talk, that you were a worn-outroué. What would have become of me for the last two years if you had been in busy practice? You know quite well that one might walk from Land's End to John o' Groat's in search of your equal in general culture. Professor Anderson was saying to me only the other day that it was impossible to find you tripping. Whether the conversation turned on some unheard-of lake in Central Africa, or the philosophy of Hegel, or Coptic hymnology, or Cistercian hill architecture of the Transition Period, you were as much at home as if it was the weather that was under discussion. I told him he might have included the last new thing in bonnets."
"No, no," said Ralph, laughing in spite of himself. "That was too bad. You know I draw the line there. These things are too wonderful for me."
"But you will come with me, won't you?"
"You coaxing old humbug!" he said affectionately, "I suppose I must. It will only mean burning a little more of the midnight oil. What havoc you must have wrought when you were young, if you understood a man's weakness for flattery as well as you do now!"
"Ah, but I did not," she responded quietly, having gained her point. "It takes a lifetime to fathom it."
He laughed again, kissed her on the forehead, and consented to have some tart after all. People were rather at fault who thought the old aunt poor company for the clever young doctor.
In due time the sleek old coachman brought round the sleek old horse, and they set off at a quiet trot along the level highroad.
"We must stop at Kirkstoun and speak to Hutchison about getting the wall put up," said Mrs Hamilton. "Well, it is like losing an old friend to see that tree! But we shall be at no loss for firewood during the winter. We shall have some royal Yule-logs, well seasoned, to welcome you back."
"Do," he said. "There is nothing like them after meagre London fires; and you know we must make the most of my Christmas visit. If you keep pretty strong, I must not come back till midsummer, when my examination is over. It won't do to come a cropper at my time of life. Just look at that wheat!"
The harvest had promised well before the storm began, but the corn which was still uncut had been beaten down level with the ground, and the "stocks" were sodden with rain.
"Most of the corn will have to be cut with the sickle now," said the old lady. "Next Sunday won't be 'stooky Sunday' after all."
They drove on past Kilwinnie, discussing Dr Dudley's approaching departure, and the date of his return.
"Why, that surely is a strange steamer," said Mrs Hamilton suddenly. "I wonder if she has been disabled. Can you see?"
"There is no use asking me about anything that is more than a yard off," he said. "I have left my eyes at home."
She handed him a field-glass, and he studied the vessel carefully.
"I don't know her from the Ark," he said, "but that is not surprising."
Before returning the glass, he swept it half absently along the coast, and he vaguely noticed two figures—a man's figure and a woman's—stooping towards the ground.
He would have thought nothing of it, but the man's hat was off, and—standing alone as they were on the sandy dunes—they suggested to Dudley's mind the figures in Millet's "Angelus." He laughed at the fancy, focussed the glass correctly, and looked at them again.
Just then the woman straightened herself up, and stood in silhouette against sea and sky. He would have known that lithe young form anywhere; but—all-important question—who was the man? Dudley subjected the unconscious figure to a searching examination, but in vain. To his knowledge he had never seen "the fellow" before.
Mrs Hamilton unwittingly came to his assistance. She took the glass from him, and examined the vessel herself.
"No," she said, "I don't know her at all. I expect she is coming in for repairs. Why, I believe that is Mr Brown, the draper at Kilwinnie. You know he is quite a remarkable botanist, a burning and shining light—under a bushel. I suppose that is one of his sisters with him. They say he is never seen with any other woman."
"Confound his impudence!" muttered Dudley involuntarily.
"Why, Ralph, what do you mean? You talk to me about 'the effete superstitions of an ancient gentry'; but even I have no objection to a well-conducted tradesman amusing himself with a scientific hobby in his spare time. It is a pity all young men of that class don't do the same. It would keep them out of a lot of mischief."
"Yes," said Dudley, rather vaguely.
He did not enter into any explanation of his strangely inconsistent utterance; but such silence on his part was too common an occurrence in his intercourse with his aunt to call for any remark.
Dr Dudley was not in love with Mona. It was his own firm conviction that he never would be really in love at all. All women attracted him who in any respect or in any degree approached his ideal; the devoted wife and mother, the artist, the beautiful dancer, the severe student, the capable housewife, the eloquent platform speaker,—in all of these he saw different manifestations of the eternal idea of womanhood, and he never thought of demanding that one woman should in herself combine the characteristics of all. He was content to take each one for what she was, and to enjoy her in that capacity. He keenly appreciated the society of women; but the moment he was out of their presence—sometimes even before he was out of it—he found himself analysing them as calmly as if they were men. Yet "analyse" is scarcely the right word to use, for Dr Dudley read character less by deliberate study than by a curious power of intuition, which few would have predicated from a general knowledge of his mind and character.
Mona would have been surprised at that time had she known how much truer was his estimate of her than was that of the Sahib. Almost at the first glance, he had understood something of both her simplicity and her complexity, her reserve and her unconventionally; almost at the first interview, he had realised that, whatever might be the case in the future, at present the idea of sex simply did not exist for her. She might well call himsimpatico. He was appreciative almost to the point of genius.
Certainly no woman had ever attracted him precisely as Mona did. She attracted him so much that he had been fain to hold his peace about her, and to wish that she were not "Miss Simpson's niece." And yet there was a pathos and a piquancy about her, in her dingy surroundings, which were not without their charm, and which appealed to a latent sense of the fatherly in him, the very existence of which he had scarcely suspected, for Dr Dudley was essentially a college man.
"Surely, surely," he thought as he enjoyed his after-dinner cigar in his tiny smoking-room, "she would never look at that fellow. She could not be such a fool. If she had lived fifty years ago it would have been allen règle, She would have married him as a matter of course, and an excellent match for her too. She would in due course have 'suckled fools and chronicled small-beer,' and at the present moment her granddaughters would be holding entrance scholarships for Newnham or Girton.
"But it's not too late for her yet. If only that dear old aunt of mine were not such a confounded Conservative, I would get her to pay for Miss Maclean's education. By Jove! it would be education in her case, and not mere instruction, as it is with most of the learned women one meets; but even if my old lady had the money to spare, she would infinitely rather give Miss Maclean her linen and her best bedroom furniture, and bestow her with a blessing on the draper!"
It did not occur to him to doubt that Mona was practically a fixture at Borrowness. His aunt had certainly spoken as if she were, on the one occasion when Mona had been mentioned between them. In truth, the old lady had taken for granted that he was referring to the real original niece, of whose departure for America she had never even heard; and Ralph knew no one else in the neighbourhood who was at all likely to give him incidental information about Miss Simpson's assistant. She must of course have been brought up elsewhere—so much at least he could tell from her accent; and, for the rest, he had always maintained that, in these latter days, the daughters of lower middle-class people stand a better chance of a good education than any other girls in the community: it was not altogether marvellous if one in a thousand made a good use of it.
The next day, while Mrs Hamilton was enjoying her afternoon nap, Dudley seated himself as usual with his books; but his head ached, and he soon gave up the attempt to study.
"For every hour I work to-day, I shall waste two to-morrow," he said; and taking a volume of poetry from the shelf, he strode down to the beach.
Other people besides Mona knew of "Castle Maclean"; perhaps some people had even discovered her predilection for it. Dudley reached the spot in about half the time that she would have taken, and scrambled up the huge uneven steps. There, comfortably ensconced at the top, sat the subject of his thoughts; a sketch-book open on her lap, and a well-used, battered paint-box at her side. Dudley was too much of an artist to dabble in colours himself, but he knew one paint-box from another, and he was duly impressed.
"I beg your pardon!" he said. "So you know this place?"
"It is my private property," she said with serene dignity, very different from her bright, alert manner in the shop,—"Castle Maclean."
He bowed low. "Shall I disturb you if I stay?"
"Not in the least." She put her head on one side, and critically examined her sky. "Not unless your hat absolutely comes between me and my subject."
"Change in the weather, is not it?"
"Has it not been glorious!" she said enthusiastically, laying down her brush. "This rocky old coast was in its element. It was something to live for, to see those great waves dashing themselves into gigantic fountains of spray."
"You don't mean to say you were down here?"
"Every minute that I could spare. Why not? A wetting does one no harm in a primitive world like this."
She glanced at his book and went on with her painting. Neither of them had come there to talk, and why should they feel called upon to do it?
"This is scarcely a lady's book," he said,—though he would not have thought this remark necessary to a "Girton girl,"—"but, if I may, I think I could find one or two things that you might like to hear."
She smiled, well pleased. She had not forgotten how
"Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,"
had rolled out in his musical bass.
He read on for half an hour or so. Mona soon forgot her sketch and sat listening, her head resting on her hand.
He closed the book abruptly; he wanted no verbal thanks.
"And now," he said, "for my reward. May I look at your sketches?"
She coloured awkwardly. How could she show them? The scraps from Norway, and Italy, and Saxon Switzerland, might be explained; but what of the memory sketches of "the potent, grave, and reverend signiors" who had examined her at Burlington House? What of the caricature, which had amused the whole School, of Mademoiselle Lucy undergoing a Viva? What of herchef-d'œuvre, the study of the dissecting-room?
"I promised Rachel that I would keep the dreadful secret," she said ironically to herself, "and I am not going to break my word." But it cost her an effort to refuse. Some of the sketches were, in their way, undeniably clever, and she would have enjoyed showing them to him; and, moreover, she intensely disliked laying herself open to a charge of false modesty.
"I am sorry to seem so churlish," she said, "but I would rather not show you the book."
He was surprised, but her tone was absolutely final. There was nothing more to be said.
"If you like," she said shyly, "I will pay you back in a poor counterfeit of your own coin. I will read to you, and you shall close your eyes and listen to the plash of the waves. That is one of my ideals of happiness."
She took the book from the rock and began to read; but he did not close his eyes. Her voice was not a remarkable one like his own; but it was sympathetic, and her reading suggested much more than it expressed. He enjoyed listening to her, and he was interested in her choice of a poem; but he liked best to watch her mobile, sensitive face.
"One effort more, my altar this bleak sand;That Thou, O God, my life hast lighted,With ray of light, steady, ineffable, vouchsafed of Thee,Light rare, untellable, lighting the very light,Beyond all signs, descriptions, languages,"—
She seemed to be repeating the words from memory, not reading them; for her eyes were fixed on the hills beyond the sea, and her face was kindled for the moment into absolute beauty. Then, for the first time, a distinct thought passed through Dudley's mind that he would like the mother of his children to have a face like that.
"She would make a man noble in spite of himself," he thought; but aloud he said—
"You knew that poem?"
"Yes."
"Did you know those I read?"
"Not all of them. I knewVigil StrangeandMy Captain."
There was silence between them for a few moments.
"Have you the smallest idea," he asked suddenly, "how you are throwing yourself away?"
She coloured, and was about to answer, but just then a gust of wind caught a page of her sketch-book, and blew it over.
She laughed, glad of an excuse for changing the subject.
"The Fates have apparently decreed," she said, "that you are to seethissketch," and she held it out to him.
It represented a red-cheeked, sonsy-faced girl, standing before a mirror, trying on a plain little bonnet. On all sides were suggestions of flowers and feathers, and brilliant millinery; and in the girl's round eyes was an expression of positive horror.
Beneath the picture Mona had written, "Is life worth living?"
Dudley laughed.
"That looks as if there ought to be a story connected with it," he said.
"Only a bit of one," and she gave him a somewhat cynical account of her little scullery-maid.
"I withdraw my remark," he said gravely. "You are not throwing yourself away. Would that we were all using ourselves to as much purpose!"
"Don't make me feel myself more of a fool than I do already."
"Fool! I was wishing there were a few more fools in the place to appreciate you—Ruskin for one!"
"I did try to comfort myself with recollections of Ruskin," she said, with a suspicion of tears in her laughter; "but I could only think of the bit about the crossing-sweeper and the hat with the feather."
He smiled. "You do Ruskin too much honour when you judge him by an isolated quotation," he said. "I thought that distinction was reserved for the Bible."
"But that is only the beginning of the story," said Mona. "I have had several orders since for similar bonnets—more from the mothers than from the girls themselves, I am sorry to say,—and among them the one that suggested the sketch. Have you ever seen Colonel Lawrence's quaint old housekeeper up at the wood?"
"Oh yes. Everybody knows the Colonel's Jenny."
"Her daughter went away to service some time ago, and came home to visit her mother the other day, with all her wages on her back, as Jenny expressed it,—such a poor, little, rosy-cheeked, tawdry bit of humanity! The mother marched her off to me in high dudgeon, and ordered a bonnet 'like Polly's at the Towers'; and that is exactly how the poor child looked when she tried it on. I could have found it in my heart to beg her off myself. Talk of breaking in a butterfly!"
"Yes," he said. "One is inclined to think that human butterflies should be allowed to be butterflies—till one sees them too near the candle!"
"If we knew whether it were really worth while trying to save them," said Mona, "I suppose we should indeed 'know what God and man is'; as it is, we can only act on impulse. But this little Maggie does not belong to the most puzzling class. She is a good little thing, after all. I should not wonder if she had the germ of a soul stowed away somewhere."
"She is a Maggie, is she?" he said, returning with a smile to the baby-face in the picture. "They are all Maggies here. One gets perfectly sick of the name."
"Does one?" said Mona. "Queen Margaret is a heroine of mine, and my very own saint to boot."
"Are you a Margaret?" he said. "You look like one. It is partly because the name is so beautiful that one resents that senseless 'Maggie.'"
Mona was just going to say that with her it was only an unused second name; but his face had grown very grave again, and she did not wish to jar on his mood. How little we can tell in life what actions or omissions will throw their light or shadow over our whole future!
"What right have we," he said musingly at last, "to say what is normal and what is not? How can we presume to make one ideal of virtue the standard for all? Look round the world boldly—not through the medium of tinted glass—and choose at random a dozen types. If there be a God at all, it is awful to think of His catholicity!"
Mona looked up with a smile.
"Forgive me, Miss Maclean," he said. "I have no right to talk like that."
"Why not? Is life never to be relieved by a strong picturesque statement? It takes a lot of conflicting utterances to make up a man'sCredo. When I want neat, little, compatible sentences, I resort to my cookery-book. Did you think," she added mischievously, "that I would place you on a pedestal with Ruskin and my Bible, and judge you by an isolated quotation?"
He laughed, and then grew suddenly grave.
"Talking," he said, "ismein Verderben. That is why I have chosen a profession that will give me no scope for it—not that I seem likely to make much of the profession, now that it is chosen! You see—my circumstances have been peculiar, and my education has been different in some respects from that of most men." He hesitated, and then, without a word of introduction, urged by some irresistible impulse, he plunged into the story of his life. Perhaps he was anxious to see how it looked in the eyes of a capable woman; certainly he regarded Mona as a wholly exceptional being, in his intercourse with whom he was bound by no ordinary rules.
"I left school when I was sixteen," he said, "laden with prizes and medals and all that sort of thing. It was my misfortune, not my fault, that I had a good deal of money to spend on my education, and a free hand as to the spending of it. I am inclined sometimes to envy fellows whose parents leave them no voice in the matter at all.
"I went first to Edinburgh University for three years, and took my M.A. There are worse degrees in the world than an Edinburgh M.A. It means no culture, no University life, no rubbing up against one's fellow-men; but it does mean a solid foundation of all-round, useful information, which no man need despise, and which is not heavy enough to extinguish the slumbering fires of genius should they chance to lie beneath. Of course, it is impossible to tella prioriwhat will prove aneducationto any man.
"When I left Edinburgh, I announced my intention of going to Cambridge. The classical professor wanted me to go in for the classical tripos, and the mathematical professor urged me to stick to the 'eternal,' of which he believes mathematics to be the sole manifestation granted to erring humanity. But I was determined to have a go at Natural Science. There was a great deal of loose scientific talk in the air, and people seemed to make so much of a minimum of knowledge that I fancied three years of conscientious work would take a man straight in behind the veil. I went to work enthusiastically at first, while hope was strong, more quietly later when I realised that at most I might move back the veil an inch or two, while infinity lay behind; that humanity might possibly in three hundred years accomplish what I had hoped to do in three. Of course, I might have added my infinitesimal might of labour and research, but I was not specially fitted for it. The difficulty all my life has been to find out what I was specially fitted for. However, I took my degree."
"Tripos?" said Mona.
"Third Class," he said contemptuously. "But I was not reading for a place. And, indeed, I grew more in those three years than in any other three of my life. Possibly it was the life at Cambridge. Possibly I might have accomplished more on the plains of Thibet."
He drew a long breath. He had wellnigh forgotten who his companion was, and talked on to give vent to his feelings. After all, it mattered little if she missed a point here and there. She would grasp as much of the spirit of the story as most confessors do.
"Well, then, I travelled for a couple of years. I studied at Heidelberg, and Göttingen, and Jena. I heard good music nearly every night, and I saw all the cathedrals and picture-galleries. Then I came home, determined to choose a profession. I chose medicine, mainly for the reason I gave you, and I studied in London for the examinations of the colleges. Why did I not choose the University? Would that I had! But you see I was past the age when boys 'get up' a subject with ease, and walk through brilliant examinations; and, moreover, in spite of a popular superstition to the contrary effect, two years of travel and art, and music and philosophy, do not tend to furbish up a man's mathematics and classics and natural science.
"Six months after I began to study I loathed medicine. To use a favourite expression here, it was neither fish, flesh, fowl, nor guid red herrin'. It was neither art, science, literature, nor philosophy. It was a hideous pot-pourri of all four, with a preponderating, overwhelming admixture of arrant humbug. Hitherto I had worked fairly well, but there had never been any moral value in my work. It was donecon amore. Now that theamorfailed, I scarcely worked at all. I suppose it was one of Nature's revenges that, as I had gone into a profession because it demanded silent work, I talked more in those years than at any other period of my life. I read all things rather than medicine, I moved in any society rather than the medical world, but I rubbed along somehow. I passed my first examination by a fluke, and I passed the second likewise. I never was at a loss for a brilliant theory to account for erroneous facts, and with some examiners that goes a long way. When it came to preparing for my Final, I hated surgery because I had scamped my anatomy. Medicine might have shared the same fate, but I had done a good deal of physiology in Gaskell's laboratory at Cambridge—more than was necessary, in fact—for the supposed connection between physiology and medicine is a purely fictitious one. The student has to take a header blindfold from the one to the other. It is almost incredible, but when I went up for my Final in due course, I did scrape through by the skin of my teeth. If ever any man got through those three examinations without a spill on the strength of less knowledge than I did, I should like to shake that man's hand. He deserves to be congratulated.
"The next thing was to look out for a practice, or alocum tenency; but, before doing so, I went down to Cambridge to visit some friends. While there I saw a good deal of M'Diarmid, the Professor of Anatomy. I don't know if you ever heard of him, but if ever a man made literal dry bones live, he does. Thoroughgoing to the soles of his boots—a monument of erudition—and yet with a mind open to fresh light as regards the minutest detail."
Mona flushed crimson, but fortunately he was not looking. This was indeed approaching dangerous ground. She was strongly inclined to think that the professor in question was one of "the potent, grave, and reverend signiors" in her sketch-book.
"It was so odd," continued Dudley. "All my life, while other men walked in shadow, I had seemed to see the light of the eternal, but in medicine I had missed it absolutely. Ah, well! one word will do for a thousand. I am afraid I wrote my 'Sorrows of Werther' once more, for the last time in this world let us hope, and then I began all over again to work for a London degree."
He stopped with an unpleasant sensation of self-consciousness. "And I wonder why I have inflicted all this on you," he said, a little coldly.
"I think it was a grand thing to do—to begin over again." said Mona. "You will make a magnificent doctor when you do take your degree, and none of those past years will be lost. You will be a famous professor yourself some day. How far have you got?"
"I passed the Matriculation almost immediately, and the Preliminary Scientific six months after. In July, I go in for my Intermediate, and two years later comes my Final. Once the Intermediate is over, a load will be taken off my mind. It is all grist that comes to one's mill after that, but it requires a little resolution to plod along side by side with mere schoolboys, as most of the students are."
"It must be an excellent thing for the schoolboys."
She was wishing with all her heart that she could tell him her story in return for his. Why had she made that absurd promise to Rachel? And what would Rachel think if she claimed permission to make an exception in Dr Dudley's favour? It was all too ridiculous, and when she began to think of it, she was inclined to wonder whether she really was the Mona Maclean who had studied medicine in London.
"Why, it is after five," said Dudley suddenly, looking at his watch.
Mona sprang to her feet, and then remembered with relief that, as Rachel was going out to tea, she need not be punctual.
"But I ought to have been in time to prevent her wearing the scarlet cap," she thought with a pang of self-reproach.
"Shall you go on with your sketch to-morrow?" asked Dudley, as they walked up to the road.
"To-morrow? No; my cousin is going to take me to St Rules."
"I thought Miss Simpson was your aunt?"
"No, she is my father's cousin—one of the very few relatives I have."
Dudley was relieved, he scarcely knew why.
"I might have known my old lady was not likely to know much about any one in the village," he thought.
"Have you never been to St Rules?" he said aloud. "That is a treat in store. Almost every stone in it has a history. But I have an appointment now with my aunt in Kirkstoun—I hate saying good-bye, don't you?"
"I do."
"I mean quite apart from the parting involved."
"Oh, quite!"
He looked at her with curious eagerness, and then held out his hand. Apparently he had no objection to that.
"Well, so long!"
"Sans adieu!"
Mona sighed as she re-entered the dreary little sitting-room. However freely she might let the breezes of heaven blow through the house in Rachel's absence, the rooms seemed to be as musty as ever five minutes after the windows had been shut.
The autumn evenings were growing chilly, but the white curtains, by the laws of the Medes and Persians, had to remain on duty a little longer; and great as was Mona's partiality for a good fire, the thermometer must have registered a very low figure indeed before she could have taken refuge in Sally's kitchen—at any other time than on Saturday afternoon, immediately after the weekly cleaning.
Tea was on the table. It had stood there since five o'clock.
Mona sighed again.
"If one divides servants," she said, "into three classes—those, who can be taught to obey orders in the spirit, those who can be taught to obey orders in the letter, and those who cannot be taught to obey orders at all—Sally is a bad second, with an occasional strong tendency to lapse into the third. I wish she had seen fit to lapse into the third to-night."
She pushed aside the cold buttered toast, helped herself to overdrawn tea, and glanced with a shiver at the shavings in the grate. In another moment her sorrows were forgotten. Leaning against the glass shade of the gilt clock on the mantelpiece, smiling at her across the room, stood a fair, fat, friendly budget in Lady Munro's handwriting.
"Gaudeamus igitur!" Mona seized the tea-cosy, tossed it up to the ceiling, and caught it again with an affectionate squeeze.
How delightful that the letter should come when she was alone! Now she could get the very maximum of enjoyment out of it. She stalked it stealthily, lest it should "vanish into thin air" before her eyes, took hold of it gingerly, examined the post-mark, smelt the faint perfume which, more than anything else, reminded her of the beautiful gracious woman in the rooms at Gloucester Place, and then opened the envelope carefully with her penknife.
She took out the contents, and arranged her three treasures on the table. Yes, there were three. They had all written. There was Sir Douglas's "My dear girl"; Lady Munro's "My darling Mona"; and Evelyn's "My very own dearest friend."
They were not clever letters at all, but they were affectionate and characteristic; and Mona laughed and cried over them, as she sat curled up in the corner of the stiff unyielding sofa. Sir Douglas was bluff and fatherly, and to the point. Lady Munro underlined every word that she would have emphasised in speaking. "Douglas was so dull and so cross after we parted from you. In fact even now he is constantly talking of you—constantly." Evelyn gave a detailed circumstantial account of all they had done since Mona had left them,—an account interspersed with many protestations of affection. "Mother and I start for Cannes almost immediately," she wrote. "Of course Father cannot be induced to leave Scotland as long as there is a bird on the moors. Write me long letters as often as ever you can. You do write such lovely letters." All three reminded Mona repeatedly of her promise to spend the whole of next summer with them somewhere.
"How good they are!" Mona kept repeating. "How good they are!"
When Mona was young, like every well-conducted school-girl, she had formed passionate attachments, and had nearly broken her heart when "eternal friendships" failed. "I will expect no friendship, no constancy in life," she had said. "I will remember that here I have no continuing city—even in the hearts of the people I love. I will hold life and love with a loose grasp."
And even now, when increasing years were making her more healthily human, true friendship and constancy had invariably called out a feeling of glad surprise. At every turn the world was proving kinder to her than she had dared to hope.
She was still deep in the letters when her cousin came home.
"Well," said Rachel, "I've just heard a queer thing. You know the work I had last week, teaching Mrs Robertson the stitch for that tidy? Well, she had some friends in to tea last night, and she never asked me! Did you ever hear the like of that? She thinks she's just going to get her use out of me!"
"I expect, dear," said Mona, "that the stitch proved more than she could manage after all, and she was afraid to confess it."
"Well, I never did know any one so slow at the crochet," said Rachel resentfully, releasing the wonderful red cap from its basket. "She may look for some other body to help her the next time. But we'd better take our porridge and be off to our beds, if we're going to St Rules to-morrow."
Mona read her letters once more in her own room, and then another thought asserted itself unexpectedly.
"I wish with all my heart that I could have shown him the sketch-book, and made a clean breast of it," she said to her trusty friend in the glass; "and yet"—her attitude changed—"why should he stand on a different footing from everybody else?"
The face in the glass looked back defiantly, and did not seem prepared with any answer.
When Mona appeared at the breakfast-table next morning, Rachel regarded her with critical dissatisfaction.
"I wonder you don't get tired of that dress," she said, as she poured out the tea—from the brown teapot. "It's very nice of course, and as good as new, but changes are lightsome, and one would think you would sometimes prefer to wear something more youthful-like. Pity your print's at the wash."
Mona looked out of the window.
"I have another," she said, "if you think it won't rain."
"Oh no. And besides, you can take your waterproof."
"It's not so much that I mind getting anything spoiled, as that I hate to be dressed unsuitably; but I do think it is going to be a beautiful day."
She left the room as soon as she had finished breakfast, and returned in about ten minutes.
"A gavotte in cream and gold," she said, making a low curtsey. "I hope it meets with your approval."
"My word!" said Rachel, "you do look the lady! and it's cheap stuff too. Why, I declare you would pass for a beauty if you took the trouble to dress well. It's wonderful how you become that hat!"
"Took a little trouble to dress well!" ejaculated Mona mentally. "A nice thing to say to a woman who makes dress her first aim in life!"
They walked in to Kirkstoun, and there took the coach. Mona would fain have gone outside, but Rachel wanted to point out the lions they passed on the way, and she considered that they got their "penny's worth" better inside. Fortunately there were not many passengers, and Mona succeeded in placing herself on the windward side of two fishwives.
About noon they reached St Rules, and wandered rather aimlessly through the streets, paying incidental visits to the various places of note. Rachel had about as much idea of acting the part of cicerone as she had of trimming hats, or making scones, or keeping shop, or indeed of doing anything useful; and she was in a constant state of nervous perturbation, lest some officious guide should force his services upon them, and then expect a gratuity.
The season was over and the visitors were few, so Mona's pretty gown attracted not a little attention. Simple as it was, she regretted fifty times that she had put it on; Rachel's dress would have escaped notice but for the contrast between them.
It was positively a welcome interlude when they arrived at the pastry-cook's; but at the door Rachel stood aside obsequiously, to give place to a lady who came up behind them "in her carriage;" and then gave her own order in a shamefaced undertone, as if she had no right to make use of the shop at the same moment as so distinguished a personage. Poor Mona! She thought once more of Lady Munro, and she sighed.
"The only other thing that we really need to see," said Rachel, wiping her hands on a crumpled paper bag that happened to lie beside her, "is the Castle. I'll be glad to rest my legs a bit, while you run round and look about you."
She had at least shown her good sense in reserving the Castle as abonne bouche. Mona's irritation vanished as she stood in the enclosure and saw the velvety green turf under foot, the broad blue sky overhead, the bold outline of ruined masonry round about, and the "white horses" rifling in on the rugged coast below. She was wandering hither and thither, examining every nook and cranny, when suddenly, in an out-of-the-way corner she came upon a young man and a girl in earnest conversation. The girl started and turned her back, and Mona left them in peace.
"Surely I have seen that face before," she thought, "and not very long ago. I know! It is that silly little minx, Matilda Cookson. I hope the young man is up to no mischief."
In another moment the "silly little minx" was swept out of her mind; for, standing on a grassy knoll, laughing and talking with Rachel, she saw Dr Dudley.
An instinctive rush of surprise and pleasure, a feeling of uneasiness at the thought of what Rachel might be saying, a sense of satisfaction in her own fresh girlish gown,—all these passed through Mona's mind, as she crossed the open space in the sunshine.
"Well," said Dudley, as she joined them, "this can give a point or two even to Castle Maclean."
"Do you think so?" she responded gravely. "That is high praise."
He laughed. "Have you seen that gruesome dungeon?"
"Not properly. I am on my way to it now."
He turned to walk with her, and they leant over the railing looking down on the blackness below. A few feet from the top of the dungeon a magnificent hart's-tongue fern sprang from a crevice, and curled its delicate, pale-green fronds over the dank, dark stone.
"How lovely!" said Mona.
"Yes," he said. "And it is not only the force of contrast. Its gloomy surroundings really do make it more beautiful."
"Yes," said Mona relentlessly; "but it is not what Nature meant it to be."
"True," he replied. "Yet who would wish it transplanted!"
Presently he turned away, and looked over the rough blue sea.
"This place depresses me unspeakably," he said. "It reminds me of a book of 'martyr stories' I had when I was a child. I have a mental picture now of a family sitting round a blazing fire, and saying in awestruck whispers, 'It's no' sae cheery as this the nicht i' the sea tower by St Rules.' What appalling ideas of history they give us when we are children!" And he added half absently—
"'Sitzt das kleine MenschenkindAn dem Ocean der Zeit,Schöpft mit seiner kleinen HandTropfen aus der Ewigkeit.'"
Mona looked up with sparkling eyes and made answer—
"'Schöpfte nicht das kleine MenschenkindTropfen aus dem Ocean der Zeit,Was geschieht verwehte wie der WindIn den Abgrund öder Ewigkeit.'"
"Go on, go on," she said, regardless of his unconcealed surprise, "the best thought comes last." So he took up the strain again:—
"'Tropfen aus dem Ocean der ZeitSchöpft das Mennchenkind mit kleiner Hand.Spiegelt doch, dem Lichte zugewandt,Sich darin die ganze Ewigkeit.'"
"I don't know," he said moodily. "There was precious little of Eternity in the drops that were doled out to me."
"Not then," said Mona; "but when you were old enough to turn them to the light, you could see the eternal even there."
His face relaxed into a smile. This girl was like an outlying part of his own mind.
They strolled slowly back to Rachel.
"Do you enjoy sight-seeing?" he asked.
"The question is too big. Cut it down."
"Nay, I will judge for myself,—if you are not too tired to turn back to the town."
"Not a bit."
When Rachel heard of the proposal, she rose to her feet, with considerable help from Mona and from a stout umbrella. She would fain have "rested her legs" a little longer, and the necessity of acting the part of chaperon never so much as crossed her mind; but the honour of Dr Dudley's escort through the streets of St Rules was not to be lightly foregone.
The first half-hour brought considerably more pain than pleasure to Mona. She was straining every nerve to draw out the best side of Rachel; and this, under the circumstances, was no easy task.
Rachel's manner was often simple, natural, and even admirable, when she was speaking to her inferiors; but the society of any one whom she chose to consider her superior was sure to draw out her innate vulgarity. Mona understood Dr Dudley well enough to know that he had no regal disregard for what are known as "appearances," and she suffered more for him than for herself.
It did not occur to her that Rachel was acting very effectively the part of the damp, black wall, which was throwing the dainty fern into more brilliant relief.
"It is all his own doing," sho thought indignantly. "Why has he brought this upon himself and me? And it will fall upon me to keep Rachel from talking about it for the next week."
Fortunately, though Rachel trudged about gallantly to the last, she soon became too tired to talk, and then Mona gave herself up to the enjoyment of the hour. Either Dr Dudley knew St Rules by heart, or he possessed a magnetic power of alighting on the things that were worth seeing. Curious manuscripts and half-effaced inscriptions; stained-glass windows and fine bits of carving; forgotten paintings, and quaint old vergers and janitors who had become a part of the buildings in which they had grown old;—all served in turn as the text for his brilliant talk. He might well say that talking was his Verderben.
Finally they wandered again through the ruins of the cathedral.
"'Pull down the nests and the rooks will fly away!'" quoted Dudley rather bitterly. "Here at least we have the other side of the 'martyr stories.'"
"I think sight-seeing is simply delightful," said Mona, as he stowed them into the coach; "but one wants special eyes to do it with."
"Everything becomes more interesting when seen 'through a temperament,'" he said. "I am glad if mine has served as a makeshift."
"She won't spotthatreference," he thought to himself.
That evening all three made reflections about the day's outing.
"It came off wonderfully well, considering that I went in search of it," thought Dudley. "I fully expected it to be a dead failure. She must have met the draper accidentally."
"He is very gentlemanly and amazingly clever," thought Rachel; "and he seemed as pleased at the meeting as any of us. But how my legsdoache!"
"I'll no more of this masquerading!" thought Mona. "I will take the first opportunity of asking Rachel's permission to tell him the whole truth. Perhaps he will take it all as a matter of course."
But when she went up to dinner the next day, Rachel calmly informed her that Dr Dudley had gone. "He has just walked up to the station with a bag in his hand," she said, "and Bill had a lot of luggage on a hurley. I think it's a queer sort of thing that he didn't look in and say good-bye, after we were all so friendly-like yesterday."
Mona smiled a little drearily.
"He might well say 'so long,'" she said to herself, an hour later, as she sat on the battlements of Castle Maclean. "Looked at in the abstract, as a period of time, three months is a pretty fair sample of the commodity!"
Thus does, the feminine mind, while striving to grasp the abstract, fall back inevitably into the concrete!
"As a man," said Mona, "he is not a patch upon the Sahib; but I never had such a playfellow in my life!"
"What do you think, my dear?" said Rachel, a few days later, with beaming face. "I have just had a letter from my niece. Would you like to hear it?"
"Very much," said Mona, "'First Impressions of a New Continent.' Is it the first you have had?"
"No, it's the second. She's no great hand at the letter-writing. But there's more 'impressions' in this. She says the difficulty of getting servants is beyond everything."
Rachel proceeded to read the epistle: and for once Mona found herself in absolute accord with her cousin. Rachel's niece was certainly "no great hand at the letter-writing."
It was evening, and Mona had just come in from a stroll in the twilight. She did not often go out after tea, but there was no denying the fact that the last few days had not been very lively ones, and that physical exercise had become more desirable than ever. She had not realised, till he was gone, that Dr Dudley's occasional companionship made any appreciable difference in the world at Borrowness; but she did not now hesitate for a moment to acknowledge the truth to herself.
"It is almost as if I had lost Doris or Lucy," she said; "and of course, in a place like this, sympathetic companionship is at a premium. One might go into a melancholia here over the loss of an intelligent dog or a favourite canary. The fact that so many women have fallen in love throws a lurid light on the lives they must have led. Poor souls! I will write to Tilbury to-morrow to send me my little box of books. Two hours' hard reading a day is a panacea for most things."
With this wholesome resolution she returned from her walk, to find Rachel in a state of beatification over her niece's letter.
"I declare I quite forgot," she said; "there's a parcel and letter for you too. I think you'll find them on the chair by the door."
"Nothing of much interest," said Mona; "at least I don't know the handwriting on either. A begging-letter, I expect."
She proceeded to open the parcel first, untying the knot very deliberately, and speculating vaguely as to the cause of the curious damp smell about the wrappings. "Fancy Ruching" in gilt letters on one end of the box was apparently a misleading title; for, when the cover was removed, a mass of damp vegetation came to view.
Rachel lifted her hands in horror. The idea of bringing caterpillars and earwigs and the like of that into the house!
On the top of the box lay a sheet of moist writing-paper folded lengthwise. Mona took it up.
"Why," she said, "how very kind! It is from Mr Brown. He has been out botanising, and has sent me the fruits of an afternoon's ramble."
"The man must be daft!" thought Rachel, "to pay the postage on stuff that anybody else would put on the ash-heap. The very box isn't fit to use after having that rubbish inside it."
Fortunately, before she could give utterance to her thoughts, a brilliant idea flashed into her mind. Regarded absolutely, the box might be rubbish; but relatively, it might prove to be of enormous value.
Everybody knew that the draper was "daft"; but nobody considered him any the less eligible in consequence, either as a provost or as a husband. For the matter of that, Mona was "daft" too. She cared as much about these bits of weed and stick as the draper did. There would be a pair of them in that respect. And then—how wonderfully things do come about in life!—Mona would find a field for her undeniable gifts in the shopkeeping line. At Mr Brown's things were done on as large a scale as even she could desire; and if she were called upon some day to fill the proud position of "provost's lady," what other girl in the place would look the part so well?
Of course the house at Borrowness would be sadly dull without her. But she might want to go away some time in any case, and at Kilwinnie she would always be within reach. Rachel would not admit even to herself that it might almost be a relief in some ways to be delivered from the quiet thoughtful look of those bright young eyes.
She beamed, and glowed, and would have winked, if there had been any one but Mona to wink to. With her of course she must dissemble, till things had got on a little farther. In the meantime, Mr Brown, quiet as he looked, seemed quite capable of fighting his own battles; though if any one had sent her such a box in her young days, she would have regarded it in the light of a mock valentine.
She longed to know what Mr Brown had said; but, when Mona handed her the letter, she found it sadly disappointing. In so far as it was not written in an unknown tongue, it seemed to be all about the plants; and who in the world had ever taken the trouble to give such grand names to things that grew in every potato-bed that was not properly looked after? But of course tastes did differ, and no doubt daft people understood each other.
Poor Rachel! This disappointment was nothing to the one in store for her. Mona had opened the "begging-letter," and had turned white to the lips.
"I must start by the early train to-morrow," she said, "and try to catch the Flying Scotchman. A little friend of mine in London is very ill."
It had proved to be a begging-letter indeed, but not of the kind she had supposed. It came from Lucy's father, Mr Reynolds.
"The doctor says that Lucy is in no actual danger," he wrote, "but she adds that her temperature must not go any higher. The child is fretting so for you that I am afraid this alone is enough to increase the fever. She was not very well when she left us to return to London a week ago; but our country doctor assured me there was no reason to keep her at home. Of course, Lucy had sent for a woman doctor before I arrived; and cordially as I approve her choice, a moment like this seems to call one's old prejudices, with other morbid growths, to life. Dr Alice Bateson seems very capable and is most attentive, but I need not deny that it would be a great relief to me to have you here. Lucy's mother is too much of an invalid to travel so far, and you have been like an elder sister to her for years.
"I know well that I need not apologise for the trouble to which I am putting you. I fully expect my little girl to improve from the moment she hears that I have written."
Mona read this aloud, adding, "I will go out and telegraph to him at once."
"Well, I'm sure," said Rachel, "it's a deal of trouble to take for a mere acquaintance—not even a blood relation."
"Lucy is more than a mere acquaintance," said Mona, with a quiver in her voice. "She has been, as he says, a little sister."
"What does he say is the matter?"
"Rheumatic fever."
"Then," said Rachel bitterly, "I suppose I may send your boxes after you?"
"No, no," said Mona, forcing herself to speak playfully; "a bargain is a bargain, and I mean to keep you to yours. Six months is in the bond. I will come back as soon as Lucy is well on the way to recovery—within a week, I hope. You know rheumatic fever is not the lengthy affair that it used to be. I assure you, dear, a visit to London is the very last thing I want at present. So far as I personally am concerned, I would infinitely rather stay with you. But I am not of so much use here that I should refuse to go to people who really need me."
If she wanted a crumb of encouragement, she was not disappointed, although Rachel was one of the people who do not find it easy to grant such crumbs.
"Well, I'm sure that's just what you are," she said. "I don't know what I am to do without you, and everybody says the shop has been a different place since you came." With a great effort she refrained from referring to stronger reasons still against Mona's departure.
Mona kissed her on the forehead.
"Then expect me back this day week or sooner," she said. "You don't want me more than I want to come."
This was the literal truth. When she had laid her plans, she was not grateful to the unfriendly Fates who interfered with their execution; she was honestly interested in her life at Borrowness; and it was a positive trial to return to London, a deserter at least for the time, just when all the scholastic world, with bustle and stir, was preparing for a new campaign.
She went to the post-office and sent off her telegram to Mr Reynolds, and another to Doris announcing the fact that she was going to London for a few days, and would be at the Waverley Station before ten the next morning. This done, she returned to the house, wrote a friendly note to Mr Brown, packed her valise, and spent the rest of the evening with Rachel and "Mrs Poyser."
She did not pass a very peaceful night. It was all very well to say that Lucy's temperature "must not go any higher"; but what if it did? If it had continued to rise ever since the letter was written, what might be the result even now? Mona had seen several such cases in hospital, and she remembered one especially, in which cold baths, ice-packs, and all other remedies had not been sufficient to prevent a lad's life from being burnt out in a few days. She tossed restlessly from side to side, and what sleep she got was little better than a succession of nightmares. She was thankful to rise even earlier than was necessary, and to busy herself with some of Mr Brown's specimens.
But, early as she was, Rachel was up before her, cutting bulky, untempting sandwiches; and when the train carried Mona away, an unexpected tear coursed down the flabby old cheek.
On the platform at Edinburgh stood Doris, fresh as a lily.
"It's very good of you to come," said Mona. "I did not half expect to see you."
"My dear," was the calm announcement, "I am going all the way."
"Nonsense!"
"Father remarked most opportunely that I seemed to be in need of a little change, and I gave him no peace till he allowed me to come with you. He admitted that such an opportunity might not occur again. He would have been here to see us off, but he had a big consultation at ten. You will show me the school and the hospital and everything, won't you?"
"That I will," said Mona.
That she would at all have preferred to keep away from her old haunts and companions, just at present, never crossed the mind of large-souled Doris. "Mona capable of such pettiness!" she would have said in reply to the suggestion. "You little know her!"
"One has not much space forminutiæin a telegram," said Mona, "or I would have explained that I am going to see a friend who is very ill. You have heard me speak of Lucy Reynolds?"
"Oh, I am sorry! But I shall not be in your way, you know. If you can spare a few hours some day, that is all I want."
"It is a matter of no moment of course, but do you happen to have any notion where you mean to put up?"
"I shall go to my aunt in Park Street of course, the one whose 'At Homes' you so loftily refused to attend. Father telegraphed to her last night, and I got a very cordial reply before I started. In point of fact, she is always glad to have me without notice. We don't stand on ceremony on either side."
"Well, you are a delightful person! I know no one who can do such sensible, satisfactory things without preliminary fuss. Shall we take our seats?"
"I took the seats long ago—two nice window seats in a third-class carriage. Your friend the 'pepper-pot' has duly deposited my wraps in one, and my dressing-bag in the other, and is now mounting guard in case of accident. You have plenty of time to have a cup of coffee at Spiers & Pond's."
In a few minutes they seated themselves in the carriage, dismissed the "pepper-pot," and launched into earnest conversation. Not till the train was starting did Mona raise her eyes, and then they alighted on a friendly, familiar figure, At the extreme end of the platform stood the Sahib. All unaware that she was in the train, he was waving his hat to some one else, his fine muscular figure reducing all the other men on the platform, by force of contrast, to mere pigmies.
When Mona saw him it was too late even to bow, and she turned away from the window, her face flushed with disappointment.
"Oh, Doris," she said, "that was the Sahib!"
"And who," asked Doris, "may the Sahib be?"
"A Mr Dickinson. I saw a good deal of him in Norway this summer. He is a great friend of the Munros, you know. Such a good fellow! The sort of man whom all women instinctively look upon as a brother."
"The type is a rare one," said Doris coldly, "but I suppose it does exist."
The conversation had struck the vein of her cynicism now, though the men who knew "the lily maid" would have been much surprised to hear that such a vein existed, and, most of all, to hear that it lay just there.
"I don't think any of us can doubt that there is such a type," said Mona. "Certainly no one doubts it who has the privilege of knowing the Sahib."
Doris did not answer, and they sat for some time in silence, the line on Mona's brow gradually deepening.
"Dearest," said Doris at last, "I don't bore you, do I? You would not rather be alone?"
Mona laughed. "What will you do if I say 'Yes'?" she said. "Pull the cord and pay the fine? or jump out of the window? My dear, I could count on the fingers of one hand the times when you have bored me, and I am particularly glad to have you to-day. I should fret myself to death if I were alone, between anxiety about Lucy, and vexation at having missed the Sahib."
Doris's face clouded. "Mona dear, I do wish the Munros had stayed in India till you had got on the Register. I don't approve of men whom all women instinctively look upon as brothers. Marriage is perfectly fatal to students of either sex."
"Marriage!" said Mona, aghast. "Marry the Sahib! My dear Doris, I would as soon think of marrying you!"
"I wish you would," said Doris calmly; "but I would not have a word to say to you till you had got on the Register. Oh how lovely!"
The train had emerged on the open coast, and every line and curve on creek and cliff stood out sharp and clear in the crisp light of the October morning.
"Isn't it?" The line on Mona's brow vanished. "You know, Doris, I believe I am a bit of the east coast, I love it so. Heigh-ho! I do think Lucy must be better."
"Judging from what you have told me of her. I should think the chances were in favour of her meeting you at the station."
Mona laughed. "She is an india-rubber ball—up one moment, down the next; but it has been no laughing matter this time. I told you she got through her examination all right."
"Thanks to your coaching, no doubt."
"No, no, no! I begin to think Lucy has a better head all round than mine. The fact is, Doris, I have to readjust my views of life somehow, and the only satisfactory basis on which I can build is the conviction that we have all been under a complete misapprehension as to my powers. There is something gloriously restful in the belief that one is nothing great, and is not called upon to do anything particular."
Doris smiled with serene liberality. Mona had been in her mind constantly during the last month.
"Very well," she said. "As long as you feel like that, go your own way. I am not afraid that the mood will last. In a few months you will be neither to hold nor to bind."
"Prophet of evil!"
"Nay; prophet of good."
"It is all very well for you, in your lovely leisure, realising the ideal of perfect womanhood."
"Don't be sarcastic, please. You know how gladly I would exchange my 'lovely leisure' for your freedom to work. But we need not talk of it. My mind is perfectly at rest about you. This is only a reaction—a passing phase."
"A great improvement on the restless, hounding desire to inflict one's powers, talents, and virtues—save the mark!—on poor, patient, long-suffering mankind. Oh, Doris, let us take life simply, and work our reformations unconsciously by the way. We don't increase our moral energy by pumping our resolutions up to a giddy height."
"I am not to remind you, I suppose, of the old gospel which some of your friends associate with you, that women ought always to have a purpose in life, and not be content to drift."
Mona turned a pair of laughing eyes full on her friend.
"Remind me of it by all means. Go a stage farther back, if you like, and remind me of my dolls. I am not sensitive on either point. I was saying to some one only the other clay that it takes a great many incompatible utterances to make up a man'sCredo, even at one moment. Perhaps," she added more slowly, "each of us is, in potentiality, as catholic as God Himself on a small scale; but owing to the restrictions and mutual pressure of human life, most of us can only develop one side at a time—some of us only one in a single 'Karma.'"
"You seem," said Doris quietly, "to have found the intellectual life at Borrowness at a surprisingly high level."
Mona raised her eyebrows with a quick, unconscious gesture.
"There are a few intelligent people," she said rather coldly, "even there."
"But, Mona, your life has been so free from restriction and pressure. You have been able to develop on the lines you chose."
"Don't argue that my responsibility is the greater! How do we know that it is not the less? Besides, there may be very real pressure and restriction, which is invisible even to the most sympathetic eye."
"I don't want to argue at all. I don't profess to follow all your flights; but I am perfectly satisfied that you will come back to the point you started from."
Mona rose and took down a plaid from the rack. "Make it a spiral, Doris, if you conscientiously can," she said gravely. "I don't like moving in a circle. 'Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul!'"
Doris looked admiringly at her friend. She could very conscientiously have "made it a spiral," but she was not in the habit of talking in metaphors as Mona was.
The conversation dropped, and they sat for a long time listening to the rattle and roar of the train. Mona did not like it. Somehow it forced her to remember that there was no necessary connection between Lucy's condition and the bright October weather.'
"A penny for your thoughts, Doris," she cried.
Doris's large grey eyes were sparkling.
"I was wondering," she said, "whether that delicious seal is still at the Zoo. Do you know?"
"I don't; you might as well ask me whether Carolus Rex is still brandishing his own death-warrant at Madame Tussaud's."
"Picture mentioning the two places on the same day!"
"I do it because they lie side by side in the fairy memory palace of childhood. Neither has any existence for me apart from that."
"And you a student of natural history! I should have thought that most of your spare time would have been spent at the Zoological Gardens."
"Ars longa!—but you are perfectly right. The Huxley of the next generation, instead of directing us to scalpel and dissecting-board, will tell us to forego the use of those, till we have studied the build and movements and habits of the animals in life. I quite agree with you that it is far better to know and love the creatures as you do, than to investigate personally the principal variations of the ground-plan of the vascular system, as I do."
"I don't see why we should not combine the two."
"Truly; but something else would have to go to the wall; Turner, perhaps, or Browning, or Wagner.
'We have not wings, we cannot soar;But we have feet to scale and climb.'"