"Go on," said Mona, "talk to me. Nobody helps me but you. It does me good even to hear your voice."
Once more Mona arrived at Borrowness, and once more Rachel was awaiting her at the station.
There was no illusion now about the life before her, no uncertainty, no vague visions of self-renunciation and of a vocation. All was flat, plain, shadowless prose.
"I must e'en dree my weird," she said to herself as the train drew into the station; but a bright face smiled at Rachel from the carriage-window, a light step sprang on to the platform, and a cheerful voice said—
"Well, you see I am all but true to my word; and you have no idea what a lot of pretty things I have brought with me."
"Mona," said Rachel mysteriously, as they walked down the road to the house, "I have a piece of news for you. Who do you think called?"
"I am afraid I can't guess."
"Mr Brown!"
"Did he?" said Mona rather absently.
"Yes. At first I was that put out at you being away, and I had the awfullest hurry getting on my best dress; but just as I was showing him out, who should pass but Mrs Robertson. My word, didn't she stare! The Browns would never think of calling on her. I told him you were away visiting friends. I didn't say in London, for fear he might find out about your meaning to be a doctor."
"That would be dreadful, would not it?"
"Yes, but you needn't be afraid. He said something about its being a nice change for you to come here after teaching, and I never let on you weren't a teacher, though it was on the tip of my tongue to tell him what a nice bit of a tocher you had of your own."
"Pray don't say that to any one," said Mona rather sharply. "I have no wish to be buzzed round by a lot of raw Lubins in search of Phyllis with a tocher."
"Well, my dear, you know you're getting on. It's best to make hay while the sun shines."
"True," said Mona cynically; "but when a woman has even four hundred a year of her own, she has a good long day before her."
Early in the evening Bill arrived with Mona's boxes, and the two cousins entered with equal zest upon the work of unpacking them. "My word!" and "Well, I never!" fell alternately from Rachel's lips as treasure after treasure came to view. Ten pounds was a great sum of money, to be sure; but who would have thought that even ten pounds could buy all this? "Youarea born shopkeeper, Mona!" she said, with genuine admiration.
Mona laughed. "Shall we advertise in theGazettethat 'Our Miss Maclean has just returned from a visit to London, and has brought with her a choice selection of all the novelties of the season'?" she said; but she withdrew the suggestion hastily, when she saw that Rachel was disposed to take it seriously.
"And now," she went on, "there is one thing more, not for the shop but for you;" and from shrouding sheets of tissue-paper, she unfolded a quiet, handsome fur-lined cloak.
"Oh, my goodness!" Rachel had never seen anything so magnificent in her life, and the tears stood in her eyes as she tried it on.
"It's your kindness I'm thinking of, my dear, not of the cloak," she said; "but there isn't the like of it between this and St Rules. It'll last me all my life."
Mona kissed her on the forehead, well pleased.
"And I brought a plain muff and tippet for Sally. She says she always has a cold in the winter. This is a reward to her for spending some of her wages on winter flannels, sorely against her will."
"Dear me! She will be set up. There will be no keeping her away from Bible Class and Prayer Meeting now! It is nice having you back, Mona. I can't tell you how many folk have been asking for you in the shop; there's twice as much custom since you came. Miss Moir wouldn't buy a hat till you came back to help her to choose it; and Polly Baines from the Towers brought in some patterns of cloth to ask your advice about a dress."
"Did she? How sweet of her! I hope you told her to call again. Has the Colonel's Jenny been in?"
"Oh no, it's very seldom she gets this length. Kirkstoun's nearer, and there's better shops."
"She told me there's no one to write her letters for her, since Maggie went away, and I promised to go out there before long and act the part of scribe. It was quite a weight on my mind while I was in London, but I will go as soon as I get these things arranged in the shop. Has the Colonel gone yet?"
"No; I understand he goes to his sister's to-morrow."
Most of Jenny's acquaintances gladly seized the opportunity to call on her when her master was away from home. The Colonel had the reputation of being the most outrageously eccentric man in the whole country-side, and it required courage of no common order to risk an accidental encounter with him. He might chance, of course, to be in an extremely affable humour, but it was impossible to make sure of this beforehand; and one thing was quite certain, that the natural frankness of his intercourse with his fellow-men was not likely to be modified by any sense of tact, or even of common decency. What he thought he said, and he often delighted in saying something worse than his deliberate thought. Not many years before, his family had owned the whole of the estate on which he was now content to rent a pretty cottage, standing some miles from the sea, in a few acres of pine-wood. Here he lived for a great part of the year, alone with his quaint old housekeeper Jenny, taking no part in the social life of the neighbourhood, but calling on whom he chose, when he chose, regardless of all etiquette in the matter. Strange tales were told of him—tales to which Jenny listened in sphinx-like silence, never giving wing to a bit of gossip by so much as an "Ay" or "Nay." She had grown thoroughly accustomed to the old man's ways, and it seemed to be nothing to her if his language was as strong as his potions.
"Have a glass of whisky and water, Colonel?" Mrs Hamilton had asked one cold morning, when he dropped into her house soon after breakfast.
"Thank you, madam," he had replied, "I won't trouble you for the water."
The clever old lady was a prime favourite with him, the more so as she considered it the prescriptive right of a soldier of good family to be as outrageous as he chose.
He was a kind-hearted man, too, and fond of children, though they rarely lost their fear of him. He was reported to be "unco near," but if he met a bright-faced child whom he knew, in his favourite resort, the post-office, he would say—
"Sixpenn'orth of sweets for this young lady, Mr Dalgleish. You may put in as many more as you like from yourself, but sixpenn'orth will be from me."
Mona was somewhat curious to see the old man, as she fancied that in her childhood she had heard her father speak of him; but her time was fully occupied in the shop for some days after her return. Rachel had actually consented to have the old place re-papered and painted, and when Mona put the finishing touch to her arrangements one afternoon, no one would have recognised "Miss Simpson's shop."
Mona clapped her hands in triumph, and feasted her eyes on the work of reformation. Then she looked at her watch, but it was already late, and as the Colonel's wood lay three or four miles off, her visit had to be postponed once more. She was too tired to sketch, so she took a book and strolled down to Castle Maclean.
It was a quiet, grey afternoon. The distant hills were blotted out, but the rocky coast was as grand as ever, and the plash of the waves, as they broke on the beach beneath her, was sweeter in her ears than music.
She was disturbed in her reverie by a step on the rocks, and for a moment her heart beat quicker. Then she almost laughed at her own stupidity. And well she might, for the step only heralded the approach of Matilda Cookson, with her smart hat and luxuriant red hair.
"Where ever have you been, Miss Maclean?" she began rather breathlessly, seating herself on a ledge of rock. "I have been looking out for a chance of speaking to you for nearly a fortnight."
Mona's face expressed the surprise she felt.
"I have been away from home," she said. "What did you want with me?"
"Away from home! Then you haven't told anybody yet?"
Mona began to think that one or other of them must be the victim of delusional insanity.
"Told anybody—what?"
Matilda frowned. If Miss Maclean had really noticed nothing, it was a pity she had gone out of her way to broach the subject, but she could not withdraw from it now.
"I thought you saw me—that day at St Rules."
"Oh!" said Mona, as the recollection came slowly back to her. "So I did,—but why do you wish me not to tell any one?"
Matilda blushed violently at the direct question, and proceeded to draw designs on the carpet of Castle Maclean with the end of her umbrella. She had intended to dispose of the matter in a few airy words; and she felt convinced still that she could have done so in her own house, or in Miss Simpson's shop, if she had chanced to see Miss Maclean alone in either place. But Mona looked so serenely and provokingly at home out here on the rocks, with the half-cut German book in her delicate white hands, that the whole affair began to assume a much more serious aspect.
Mona studied the crimson face attentively.
It had been her strong instinctive impulse to say, "My dear child, if you had not reminded me of it I should never have thought of the matter again," and so to dismiss the subject. But she was restrained from doing so by a vague recollection of her conversation with Dr Dudley about these girls. She forgot that she was supposed to be their social inferior, and remembered only that she was a woman, responsible in a greater or a less degree for every girl with whom she came in contact.
She laid her hand on her visitor's shoulder.
"You may be quite sure," she said, "that I don't want to get you into trouble, but I think you had better tell me why you wish me not to speak of this."
Mona's touch was mesmeric,—at least Matilda Cookson found it so. In all her vapid little life she had never experienced anything like the thrill that passed through her now. She would have confessed anything at that moment, and perhaps have regretted her frankness bitterly an hour later; for, after all, confession is only occasionally of moral value in itself, however priceless it may be in its results.
The story was not a particularly novel one, even to Mona's inexperienced ears. Two years before, all the girls in Miss Barnett's private school at Kirkstoun had been "in love" with the drawing-master, who came twice a week from St Rules. His languid manner and large dark eyes had wrought havoc within the "narrowing nunnery walls," and when his work at St Rules had increased so much that he no longer required Miss Barnett's support, he had taken his departure amid much wailing and lamentation.
Matilda had gone soon after to a London boarding-school, where she had forgotten all about him; but a chance meeting at a dance, on her return, had renewed the old attraction. This first chance meeting had been followed by a number of others; and when, only a short time before, Mrs Cookson had suddenly decreed that Matilda was to go to St Rules once a week for music lessons, the temptation to create a few more "chance meetings" had proved irresistible.
Mona was rather at a loss to know what to do with the confession, now that she had got it. She knew so little of this girl. What were her gods? Had she any heroes?—any heroines?—any ideals? Was there anything in her to which one might appeal? Mona was too young herself to attack the situation with weapons less cumbrous than heavy artillery.
"How old are you?" she asked suddenly.
"Eighteen."
"And don't you mean to be a fine woman—morally a fine woman, I mean?"
"Morally a fine woman"—the words, spoken half shyly, half wistfully, were almost an unknown tongue to Matilda Cookson. Almost, but not quite. They called up vague visions of evening services, and of undefined longings for better things,—visions, more distinct, of a certain "revival," when she had become "hysterical," had stayed to the "enquiry meeting," and had professed to be "converted." She had been very happy then for a few weeks, but the happiness had not lasted long. Those things never did last; they were all pure excitement, as her father had said at the time. What was the use of raking up that old story now?
"I don't see that there was any great harm in my meeting him," she said doggedly.
"I am quite sure you did not mean any great harm; but do you know how men talk about girls who 'give themselves away,' as they call it?"
Matilda coloured. "I am sure he would not say anything horrid about me. He is awfully in love."
"Is he? I don't know much about love; but if he loves you, you surely want him to respect you. You would not like him to be a worse man for loving you,—and he must become a worse man, if he has a low opinion of women."
"You mean that I am not to meet him any more?"
"I mean that he cannot possibly respect you, while he knows you meet him without your mother's knowledge."
"And suppose I won't promise not to meet him again, what will you do?"
"I don't consider that I have the smallest right to exact a promise from you."
"Then you won't speak of this to any one, whatever happens?"
Mona smiled. "I am not quite clear that you have any right to exact a promise from me."
Matilda could not help joining in the smile. This was good fencing.
"At any rate, you have not told any one yet?"
"I have not."
"Not Miss Simpson?"
"Not any one; and therefore not Miss Simpson."
"Well, I must say it was very kind of you."
"I am afraid I ought not to accept your praise; it never occurred to me to speak of it."
"And yet you recognised me?"
Mona laughed outright—a very friendly laugh.
"And yet I recognised you."
Matilda drew the sole of her high-heeled shoe over the ground in front of her, and began an entirely new design.
"What do you mean by 'respect,' Miss Maclean? It is such a chilly word. There is no warmth or colour in it."
"There is no warmth nor colour in the air, yet air is even more essential than sunshine."
There was silence for some minutes. Matilda obliterated the new design with a little stamp of her foot.
"Long ago, when I was a girl, I began to believe in self-denial, and high ideals, and all that sort of thing. But you can't work it in with your everyday life. It is all a dream."
"A dream!" said Mona softly,—
"'No, no, by all the martyrs and the dear dead Christ!'
Everything else is a dream. That is real. That was your chance in life. You should have clung to it with both hands. Your soul is drowning now for want of it, in a sea of nothingness."
The revival preacher himself could scarcely have spoken more strongly, and Matilda felt a slight pleasurable return of the old excitement. She did not show it, however.
"It is easy to talk," she said, "but you don't know what it is to be the richest people in a place like this. Pa and Ma won't let anybody speak to us. I believe it will end in our never getting married at all. We shall be out of the wood before they find their straight stick."
"My dear child, is marriage the end of life? And even if it is, surely the girls who make good wives are those who are content to be the life and brightness of their home circle, and who are not constantly straining their eyes in search of the knight-errant who is to deliver them from Giant Irksome."
In the course of her life in London, Mona had met many girls who chafed at home duties, and longed for a 'sphere,' but a girl who longed for a husband,quâhusband, was so surprising an instance of atavism as to be practically a new type.
Matilda sighed. "You don't know what our home life is," she said. "We pay calls, and people call on us; we go for proper walks along the highroad; we play on the piano and we do crewel-work; we get novels from the library,—and that is all. Just the same thing over and over again."
"And don't you care enough for books and music to find scope in them?"
Matilda shook her head. "Can you read German!" she asked abruptly, looking at Mona's book.
"Yes; do you?"
"No; and I never in my life met any one who could, unless perhaps my German teachers. I took it for three years at school, but I should not know one word in ten now. I wish I did! We had a nice row, I can tell you, when I first came home from school, and Father brought in a German letter from the office one day. He actually expected me to be able to read it!"
"You could easily learn. It only wants a little dogged resolution,—enough to worry steadily through one German story-book with a dictionary. After that the neck of the difficulty is broken."
Matilda made a grimace. "I have only gotBilderbuch," she said, "and I know the English of that by heart, from hearing the girls go over and over it in class. Start me off, and I can go on; but I can scarcely tell you which word stands for moon."
She was almost startled at her own frankness. She had never talked like this to any one before.
"You know I am not going to take you at your own valuation. Let me judge for myself," and Mona opened her book at the first page and held it out.
Matilda put her hands up to her face. "Don't!" she said. "I couldn't bear to let you see how little I know. But I will try to learn. I will beginBilderbuchthis very night, though I hate it as much as I doLycidasandHamlet, and everything else I read at school."
Mona shivered involuntarily. "Don't read anything you are sick of," she said. "If you like, I will lend you an interesting story that will tempt you on in spite of yourself."
"Thanks awfully. You are very kind."
"I shall be very glad to help you if you get into a real difficulty." Mona paused. "As I said before, I have no right to exact a promise from you—but I can't tell you how much more highly I should think of you if you did worry on to the end."
The conclusion of this sentence took Matilda by surprise. She had imagined that Mona was going back to the subject of the drawing-master, but Mona seemed to have forgotten the existence of everything but German books.
"And may I come here sometimes in the afternoon, and talk to you? I often see you go down to the beach."
"I never know beforehand when I shall be able to come; but, if you care to take the chance, I shall always be glad to see you."
"The new Adam will," she said to herself, with a half-amused, half-rueful smile, when her visitor had gone, "but the old Adam will have a tussle for his rights."
A moment later Matilda reappeared, shy and awkward.
"Would you mind telling me again that thing you said about the martyrs?"
Mona smiled. "If you wait a moment, I will write it down for you;" and, tearing a leaf from her note-book, she wrote out the whole verse—
"No, no, by all the martyrs and the dear dead Christ;By the long bright roll of those whom joy enticedWith her myriad blandishments, but could not win,Who would fight for victory, but would not sin."
Matilda read it through, and then carefully folded the paper. In doing so she noticed some writing on the back, and read aloud—
"Lady Munro, Poste Restante, Cannes." "Who is Lady Munro?" she asked, with unintentional rudeness.
"She is my aunt. I did not know her address was written there." Mona tore off the name, and handed back the slip of paper.
"Lady Munro your aunt, and you live with Miss Simpson?"
"Why not? Miss Simpson is my cousin."
"Miss Maclean, if I had a 'Lady' for my aunt, everybody should know it. I don't believe I should even travel in a railway carriage, without the other passengers finding it out."
Mona laughed. "I have already told you that I don't mean to take you at your own valuation. In point of fact, I had much rather the people here knew nothing about Lady Munro. I should not like others to draw comparisons between her and Miss Simpson."
"I beg your pardon. I did not mean——"
"Oh, I know you did not mean any harm. It was my own stupidity; but, as I say, I should not like others to talk of it.Auf Wiedersehen!"
Alone once more, Mona clasped her hands behind her head, and looked out over the sea.
"Well, playfellow," she said, "have I done good or harm? At the present moment, as she walks home, she does not know whether to venerate or to detest me. It is an even chance which way the scale will turn. And is it all an affair of infinite importance, or does it not matter one whit?"
This estimate of Matilda's state of mind was a shrewd one, except for one neglected item. Now that the moment of impulse was over, the balance might have been even: but Lady Munro's name had turned the scale, and Matilda 'venerated' her new friend. Mona's strong and vivid personality would have made any one forget in her presence that she was 'only a shop-girl'; but no power on earth could prevent the recollection from returning—perhaps with renewed force—when her immediate influence was withdrawn. If a man of culture like Dr Dudley could not wholly ignore the fact of her social inferiority, how much less was it possible to an empty little soul like Matilda Cookson? for she was one of those people to whose moral and spiritual progress an earthly crutch is absolutely essential. She never forgot that conversation at Castle Maclean; but the two things that in after years stood out most clearly in her memory were the quotation about the martyrs, and Mona's relationship to Lady Munro. And surely this is not so strange? Do not even the best of us stand with one foot on the eternal rock, and the other on the shifting sands of time?
"How odd that she should be struck by that quotation!" mused Mona. "I wonder what Dr Dudley would say if he knew that the notes of the Pilgrims' Chorus, rising clear, steady, and unvarying above all the noises of the world, appealed even to the stupid little ears of Matilda Cookson. If the mother is no more than he says, there must be some good stuff in the father.Ex nihilo, nihil fit."
The next morning brought Mona a budget of letters on the subject of Lucy's visit to the Riviera. Lady Munro had risen to the occasion magnificently. "If your friend is in the least like you," she wrote, "I shall be only too glad to have her as a companion for Evelyn. I have written to ask her to be my guest for a month, and the sooner she comes the better."
"I have only known you for a few years," wrote Lucy, "and I seem to have grown tired of saying that I don't know how to thank you. It will be nuts for me to go to Cannes, without feeling that my father is living on hasty-pudding at home; and it will be a great thing to be with people like the Munros; but if they expect that I am going to live up to your level, I shall simply give up the ghost at once. I have written to assure them that I am an utter and unmitigated fraud; but do you tell them the same, in case there should be bloodshed on my arrival.
"As for your dear letter and enclosure, I handed them straight over to Father, and asked him what I was to do. He read the letter twice through carefully, and then gave me back—the bank-note only! 'Keep it,' he said briefly; and I fancied—I say Ifancied—that there was a suspicious dimness about his eyes. You have indeed made straight tracks for the Pater's heart, Mistress Mona, if he allows his daughter to accept twenty pounds from you.
"Allowing for all the expenses of the journey, I find I can afford two gowns and a hat, and much anxious thought the selection has given me, I assure you. One thing I have absolutely settled on,—a pale sea-green Liberty silk, with suggestions of foam; and when I decided on that, I came simultaneously to another decision, that life is worth living after all.
"I only wish I felt perfectly sure that you could afford it, darling. You told me you were getting nothing new for yourself this winter, &c., &c."
Finally, there was a little note from Mr Reynolds to his "elder daughter,"—a note in no way remarkable for originality, yet full of that personal, life-giving influence which is worth a thousand brilliant aphorisms.
Mona was very busy in the shop that morning, but in her spare minutes she contrived to write a letter to Lucy.
"I do not wish to put you in an awkward position," she wrote, "but I think you have sufficient ingenuity and resource to keep me out of difficulties also. You know that when I promised to go to my cousin, I had not even seen the Munros. I met them immediately afterwards: and our intimacy has ripened so rapidly that I should not now think it right to take an important step in life without at least letting them know. I mean to tell them ultimately about my winter in Borrowness; but nothing they could say would alter my opinion of my obligation to remain here, and I think I am justified in wishing to avoid useless friction in the meantime. You can imagine what the situation would be, if Sir Douglas were to appear in the shop some fine morning, and demand my instant return to civilised life. He is quite capable of doing it, and I am very anxious if possible to avoid such a clumsydénouement. You will see at a glance how inartistic it would be.
"You will tell me that it is absolutely impossible to conceal the truth, but I do not think you will find it so when you get to Cannes. It is very doubtful whether you will see Sir Douglas at all,—he is looking forward so much to the pheasant-shooting; and Lady Munro is not the person to ask questions except in a general sort of way. She exists far too gracefully for that. You can honestly say, if needful, that I am very busy, but that I have not yet returned to town; I don't think you will find it necessary to say even that.
"But show me up a thousand times over rather than sail nearer the wind than your conscience approves. I merely state the position, and I know you will appreciate my difficulty quite as fully as I do myself.
"Please don't have the smallest scruple about accepting the money. When I told you I was 'on the rocks,' I did not mean it in the sense in which a young man about town would use the expression. My debts did not amount to more than twenty or thirty pounds. All things in life are relative, you see. I spent nothing in Norway, and my cousin will not hear of my paying for my board here. She is kind enough to say that, even pecuniarily, she is richer since I came. Of course I do not want any more gowns; I go nowhere, and see no one. Doris tells me she is studying medicine—by proxy. I am glad to think that I shall be shining in society this winter—also by proxy. I hope I may have the good fortune to see you in your newrôleof mermaid before the run is over. I am sure it will be a very successful one.
"Please give your father my most dutiful love, and tell him that I will answer his kind note in a day or two."
The writing of this letter, together with a few grateful lines to Lady Munro, occupied all Mona's spare time before dinner; and as soon as the unbeautiful meal was over, she set off at last to the Colonel's wood.
"If the scale has turned against me, Matilda Cookson will not go to Castle Maclean," she reflected. "If it has turned in my favour, it will do her no harm to look for me in vain."
She had to walk in to Kirkstoun, and then strike up country for two or three miles; but before she had proceeded far on her way, she met Mr Brown.
"So you have got back," he said, looking very shy and uncomfortable.
"Yes, I have been back for some days."
"How is Miss Simpson?"
"She is very well, thank you."
"Were you going anywhere in particular?"
"I am going to Barntoun Wood, but don't let me take you out of your way," she said.
He did not answer, but walked by her side into town.
"Do you take ill with the smell of tobacco?" he asked, taking his pipe from his pocket.
"Not in the least."
"Have you been doing any more botanising?"
"I have not had time. Thank you so much for sending me that box of treasures. Some of them interested me greatly."
"I thought you would like them. Will you be able to come again some day, and hunt for yourself?"
"Is not it getting too late in the year?"
"Not for the mosses and lichens and sea-weeds. Have you gone into them at all?"
"Not a bit. They must be extremely interesting, but very difficult."
"Oh, you get hold of the thread in time, especially with the mosses. The Algæ and Fungi are a tremendous subject of course. One can only work a bit on the borders of it. But if you care to come for a few more rambles, I could soon show you the commonest things we have, and a few of the rarer ones."
"I should like it immensely. Could your sister come with us?"
"Oh yes; she was not really tired that day. It was just that her boot was too tight. I had a laugh at her when we got home."
"Well, I suppose we part company here. I am going out to Colonel Lawrence's."
"I am not doing anything particular this afternoon. I could walk out with you."
The words were commonplace, but something in his manner startled Mona.
As regarded the gift of utterance, Mr Brown was not many degrees removed from the dumb creation. He could discuss a cashmere with the traveller, a right-of-way with a fellow-townsman, or a bit of local gossip with his sisters. He could talk botany to a clever young woman, and he could blurt out in honest English the fact that he wanted her to be his wife; but of love-making as an art, of the delicate crescendo by which women are won in spite of themselves, he was as ignorant as a child. It was natural and easy to his mind to make one giant stride from botany to marriage; and it never occurred to him that the woman might require a few of those stepping-stones which developing passion usually creates for the lover, and whichsavoir vivreteaches the man of the world to place deliberately.
"Thank you very much," said Mona; "but I could not think of troubling you. I am well used to going about alone." She held out her hand, but, as he did not immediately take it, she bowed cordially, and left him helplessly watching her retreating figure.
She passed the museum, and, leaving the town behind her, walked out among the fields. Most of the corn had been gathered in, but a few stooks still remained here and there to break the monotony of the stubble-grown acres. Trees in that district were so rare that one scraggy sycamore by the roadside had been christened Balmarnie Tree, and served as an important landmark; while, for many miles around, the Colonel's tiny wood stood out as a feature of the landscape, the little freestone cottage peeping from beneath the dark shade of the pines like a rabbit from its burrow.
"It seems to me, my dear," she said to herself, "that you are rather a goose. Are you only seventeen, may I ask, that you should be alarmed by a conversation from Ollendorf? But all the same, if Miss Brown's shoe pinches her next time, my shoe shall pinch me too."
She passed Wester and Easter Barntoun, the two large farms that constituted the greater part of the estate: and then a quarter of an hour's walk brought her to Barntoun Wood. A few small cottar-houses stood within a stone's-throw of the gate, but the place seemed curiously lonely to be the chosen home of an old man of the world. Yet there could be no doubt that it was a gentleman's residence. A well-trained beech hedge surmounted the low stone dyke, from whose moss-grown crannies sprang a forest of polypody, and a few graceful fronds of wild maidenhair. The carriage-drive was smooth and well kept, but, on leaving it, one plunged at once into the shade of the trees, with generations of pine-needles under foot, and the weird cooing of wood-pigeons above one's head. Mona longed to explore those mysterious recesses, but there was no time for that to-day. She walked straight up to the house and knocked.
She was met in the doorway by the quaintest old man she had ever beheld. His clean-shaven face was a network of wrinkles, and he wore a nut-brown wig surmounted by a red night-cap.
"Who are you?" he asked abruptly.
"I am Mona Maclean." Some curious impulse prompted her to add, for the first time during her stay at Borrowness, not "Miss Simpson's cousin," but, "Gordon Maclean's daughter."
He seized her almost roughly by the shoulder, and turned her face to the light.
"By Gad, so you are!" he exclaimed, "though you are not so bonny as your mother was before you. But come in, come in; and tell me all about it."
He opened the door of an old-fashioned, smoke-seasoned parlour, and Mona went in.
"But I did not mean to disturb you," she said. "I came to see Jenny."
"Tut, tut, sit down, sit down! Jenny, damn ye, come and put a spunk to this fire. There's a young lady here."
The old woman came in, bobbing to Mona as she passed. She was not at all surprised to see Miss Simpson's assistant in her master's parlour. One of Jenny's chief qualifications for her post of housekeeper was the fact that she had long ceased to speculate about the Colonel's vagaries.
"I wonder what I have got that I can offer you?" said the old man meditatively. He unlocked a small sideboard, produced from it some rather mouldy sweet biscuits, and poured out a glass of wine.
"That's lady's wine," he said, "so you need not be afraid of it. It's not what I drink myself." He laughed, and, helping himself to a small glass of whisky, he looked across at his visitor.
"Here's to old times and Gordon Maclean!" he said, "the finest fellow that ever kept open house at Rangoon," and he tossed off the whisky at a gulp.
Mona drank the toast, and smiled through a sudden and blinding mist of tears. It was meat and drink to her to hear her father's praise even on lips like these.
"Come, come, don't fret," said the Colonel kindly. "He was a fine fellow, as I say, but I think he knew the way to heaven all the same."
"I am quite sure of that."
"That's right, that's right. Where are you stopping—the Towers?—Balnamora?"
"No, no; I am staying at Borrowness, with my cousin Miss Simpson."
He stared at her blankly.
"Miss Simpson?" he said, "Rachel Simpson!" His jaw dropped, and, throwing back his head on the top of his chair, he burst into an unpleasant laugh.
"Your father was a rich man, though he died young," he said, recovering himself suddenly. "He must have left you a tidy little portion."
"So he did," said Mona. "Things were sadly mismanaged after his death; but in the end I got what was quite sufficient for me."
"You have had a good education?—learned to sing, and parley-voo, and"—he ran his fingers awkwardly up and down the table—"this sort of thing?"
Mona laughed. "Yes," she said, "I have learned all that."
He puffed away at his pipe for a time in silence.
"Why are you not with the Munros?" he said abruptly. "With Munro's eye for a pretty young woman, too!"
"The Munros took me to Norway this summer. Sir Douglas is kindness itself, and so is Lady Munro; but Miss Simpson is my cousin."
He laughed again, the same discordant laugh.
"Drink your wine, Miss Maclean," he said, "and I will spin you a bit of a yarn. Maybe some of it will be news to you.
"A great many years before you were bora, my grandfather was the laird of all this property. Your father's people, the Macleans, were tenants on the estate—respectable, well-to-do tenants, in a small way. Your grandfather was a remarkable man, cut out for success from his cradle,—always at the top of his class at school, don't you know? always keen to know what made the wheels go round, always ready to touch his hat to the ladies. His only brother, Sandy, was a ne'er-do-weel who never came to anything, but your grandfather soon became a rich man. There were two sisters, and each took after one of the brothers, so to say. Margaret was a fine, strapping, fair-spoken wench; Ann was a poor fusionless thing, who married the first man that asked her. Margaret never married. The best grain often stands.
"Your grandfather had, let me see, three children—two boys and a girl. A boy and girl died. It was a sad story—you'll know all about it?—fine healthy children, too! But your father was a chip of the old block. He had a first-rate education, and then he went to India and made a great name for himself. I never knew a man like him. People opened their hearts and homes to him wherever he went. Not a door that was closed to him, and yet he never forgot an old friend. Well, the first time he came home, like the gentleman he was, he must needs look up his people here. Most of them were dead. Sandy had gone to Australia; there were only Ann's children, Rachel Simpson and her sister Jane. Jane had married a small shopkeeper, and had a boy and girl of her own. They were very poor, so he made each of them a yearly allowance.
"Well, he was visiting with his young wife at a house not a hundred miles from here, and the two of them were the life of the party. I know all about it, because I came to stay at the house myself a day or two before they left. After they had gone—after they had gone, mark ye!—who should come to call at the house in all their war-paint but Rachel Simpson and her sister! And, by Jove! they were a queerish couple. Rachel had notions of her own about dress in those days, I can tell you."
Mona blushed crimson. No one who knew Rachel could have much doubt that the story was true.
"They announced themselves as 'Gordon Maclean's cousins,' and of course they were civilly received; but the footman got orders that if they called again his mistress was not at home. I had a pretty good inkling that Maclean was providing them with funds, so I thought it only right to tip him a wink. He took it amazingly well—he was a good fellow!—but I believe he gave his fair cousins pretty plainly to understand that, though he was willing to share his money, his friends were his own till he chose to introduce them. I never heard of their playing that little game again, for, after all, the funds were of even more importance than the high connections. But they never forgave your father. They always thought that he might have pulled them up the ladder with him—ha, ha, ha! a pretty fair weight they would have been!"
Mona did not laugh. Nothing could make the least difference now, but she did wish she had heard this story before.
"You did not know old Simpy in your father's time?"
Mona hesitated. She was half inclined to resent the insulting diminutive, but what was the use? The Colonel took liberties with every one, and perhaps he could tell her more.
"No," she said. "I vaguely knew that I had a cousin, but I never thought much about it till she wrote to me a few years ago."
"The deuce she did! To borrow money, I'll be bound. That nephew of hers was a regular sink for money, till he and his mother died. But Simpy should be quite a millionaire now. She has the income your father settled on her. and a little money besides—let alone the shop! She is not sponging on you now, I hope?"
"Oh no," said Mona warmly. "On the contrary, I am staying here as her guest."
He burst out laughing again.
"Rather you than me!" he said. "But well you may; it is all your father's money, first or last."
Mona rose to go.
"I am glad you have told me all this," she said, "though it is rather depressing."
"Depressing? Hoot, havers! It will teach you how to treat Rachel Simpson for the future. I have a likeness of your father and mother here. Would you like to see it?"
"Very much indeed. It may be one I have never seen."
He took up a shabby old album, and turned his back while he found the place; but a page must have slipped over by accident in his shaky old hands, for when Mona looked she beheld only a vision of long white legs and flying gauzy petticoats.
"Damnation!" shouted the old man, and snatching the book away, he hastily corrected his mistake.
It was all right this time. No living faces were so familiar to Mona as were those of the earnest, capable man, and the beautiful, queenly woman in the photograph.
"I have never seen this before," she said. "It is very good."
"I'll leave it to you in my will, eh? It will be worth as much as most of my legacies."
"If everything you leave is as much valued as that will be, your legatees will have much to be grateful for."
The old face furrowed up into a broad smile. "Well," he said, "I start for London to-night, but I hope we may meet again. I'll send Jenny in to see you. We are good comrades, she and I—we never enquire into each other's affairs."
Mona found it rather difficult to give her full attention to Jenny's letters, interesting and characteristic as these were. One was addressed to a sailor brother; another to Maggie, and the latter was not at all unlike a quaint paraphrase of Polonius's advice to his son. The poor woman's mind was apparently ill at ease about the child of her old age.
"I suld hae keepit her by me," she said. "She's ower young tae fend for hersel'; but it was a guid place, an' she was that keen tae gang, puir bit thing!"
"I do think it would be well if you could get her a good place somewhere in the neighbourhood," said Mona; "and I should not think it would be difficult."
"Ay, but she maun bide her year. It's an ill beginning tae shift ere the twel'month's oot. We maun e'en thole."
But Jenny forgot her forebodings in her admiration of Mona's handwriting.
"I can maist read it mysel'," she said. "Ye write lood oot, like the print i' the big Bible."
Miss Simpson's shop had undeniably become one of the lions of Borrowness. An advertisement in theKirkstoun Gazettewould have been absolutely useless, compared with the rumour which ran from mouth to mouth, and which brought women of all classes to see the novelties for themselves. Rachel had to double and treble her orders when the traveller came round, and it soon became quite impossible for her and Mona to leave the shop at the same time.
"I find it a little difficult to do as you asked me about reading," Mona wrote to Mr Reynolds, "for the shop-keeping really has become hard work, calling for all one's resources; and my cousin naturally expects me to be sociable for a couple of hours in the evening. I keenly appreciate, however, what you said about beginning the work leisurely, and leaving a minimum of strain to the end; so I make it a positive duty to read for one hour a-day, and, as a general rule, the hour runs on to two. When my six months here are over, I will take a short holiday, and then put myself into a regular tread-mill till July; and I will do my very best to pass. What you said to me that night is perfectly true. I have read too muchcon amore, going as far afield as my fancy led me, and neglecting the old principle of 'line upon line; precept upon precept.' It certainly has been my experience, thatwisdomcomes, butknowledgelingers; and I mean this time, as a Glasgow professor says, to stick to a policy of limited liability, and learn nothing that will not pay. That is what the examiners want, and they shall not have to tell me so a third time!
"Forgive this bit of pique. It is an expiring flame. I don't really cherish one atom of resentment in my heart. I admit that I was honestly beaten by the rules of the game; and, from the point of view of the vanquished, there is nothing more to be said. I will try to leave no more loose ends in my life, if I can help it, and I assure you my resolution in this respect is being subjected to a somewhat stern test here.
"It was very wise and very kind of you to make me talk the whole subject out. I should not be so hard and priggish as I am, if, like Lucy, I had had a father."
One morning when Rachel was out, three elderly ladies entered the shop. They were short, thick-set, sedate, unobtrusively dignified, and at a first glance they all looked exactly alike. At a second glance, however, certain minor points of difference became apparent. One had black cannon-curls on each side of her face; one wore an eyeglass; and the third was easily differentiated by the total absence of all means of differentiation.
"I hear Miss Simpson has got a remarkable collection of new things," said the one with the curls.
"Not at all remarkable, I fear," said Mona, smiling. "But she has got a number of fresh things from London. If you will sit down, I will show you anything you care to see."
If Mona was brusque and cavalier in her treatment of her fellow-students, nothing could exceed the gentle respect with which she instinctively treated women older than herself. She had that inborn sense of the privileges and rights of age which is perhaps the rarest and most lovable attribute of youth.
The ladies remained for half an hour, and they spent three-and-sixpence.
"I think I have seen you sometimes at the Baptist Chapel," said the one with the eyeglass, as they rose to go.
"Yes, I have been there sometimes with my cousin."
"Have you been baptised?" asked the one who had no distinguishing feature.
"Oh yes!" said Mona, rather taken aback by the question.
"I notice you don't stay to the Communion," said the one with the curls.
"I was baptised in the Church of England."
"Oh!" said all three at once, in a tone that made Mona feel herself an utter fraud.
"You must have a talk with Mr Stuart," said the one with the eyeglass, recovering herself first. Every one agreed that she was the "cliverest" of the sisters.
"Yes," said the others, catching eagerly at a method of reconciling Christian charity and fidelity to principle; and, with enquiries after Miss Simpson, they left the shop.
"It would be the Miss Bonthrons," said Rachel, when she heard Mona's description of the new customers. "They are a great deal looked up to in Kirkstoun. Their father was senior deacon in the Baptist Chapel for years, and the pulpit was all draped with black when he died. He has left them very well provided for, too."
Meanwhile Matilda Cookson had found an object in life, and was happy. It was well for her that her enthusiastic devotion to Mona was weighted by the ballast of conscientious work, or her last state might have been worse than her first. As it was, she laboured hard, and when her family enquired the cause of her sudden fit of diligence, she took a pride in looking severely mysterious. Miss Maclean was a princess in disguise, and she was the sole custodian of the great secret. The constant effort to refrain from confiding it, even to her sister, was, in its way, as valuable a bit of moral discipline as was the laborious translation of theGeier-Wally.
"I would have come sooner," she said one day to Mona at Castle Maclean, "but my people can't see why I want to walk on the beach at this time of year, and it is so difficult to get rid of Clarinda. Of course if they knew you were Lady Munro's niece they would be only too glad that I should meet you anywhere, but I have not breathed a syllable of that."
She spoke with pardonable pride. She had not yet learned to spare Mona's feelings, and the latter sighed involuntarily.
"Thank you," she said; "but I don't want you to meet me 'on the sly.'"
"I thought of that. Mother would not be at all pleased at my getting to know you as things are, or as she thinks they are; but if there was a row, and she found out that you were Lady Munro's niece, she would more than forgive me. You will tell people who you are some time, won't you?"
For, after all, in what respect is a princess in disguise better than other people, if the story has nodénouement?
"I wish very much," said Mona patiently, "that you would try to see the matter from my point of view. I have taken no pains to prevent people from finding out who my other relatives are; but, as a matter of personal taste, I prefer that they should not talk of it. Besides, it is just as unpleasant to me to be labelled Lady Munro's niece, as to be labelled Miss Simpson's cousin. People who really care for me, care for myself."
Matilda had been straining her eyes in the direction of "yonder shining light," and she certainly thought she saw it. The difficulty was to keep it in view when she was talking to her mother or Clarinda.
"You know I care for you yourself," she said. "I don't think I ever cared for anybody so much in my life."
"Hush-sh! It is not wise to talk like that when you know me so little. If the scale turns, you will hate me all the more because you speak so strongly now."
"Hate you!" laughed Matilda, with the sublime confidence of eighteen.
"How goesGeier-Wally?"
Mona had a decided gift for teaching, and the next half-hour passed pleasantly for both of them. Then, in a very shamefaced way, Matilda drew a letter from her pocket. "I wanted to tell you," she said, "I have been writing to—to—my friend."
Her face turned crimson as she spoke. She had met Mona several times, but this was the first reference either of them had made to the original subject of debate.
"Have you?" said Mona quietly.
"Yes. Would you mind reading the letter? I should like to know if there is anything I ought to alter."
Mona read the letter. It was headed by a showy crest and address-stamp, and it was without exception the most pathetic and the most ridiculous production she had ever seen. It was very long, and very sentimental: it made repeated reference to "your passionate love"; and, to Mona's horror, it wound up with the line about the martyrs.
However, it had one saving feature. Between the beginning and the end, Matilda did contrive to give expression to the conviction that she had done wrong in meeting her correspondent, and to the determination that she never would do it again. Compared with this everything else mattered little.
"Is that what you would have said?" she asked eagerly, as Mona finished reading it.
"It would be valueless if it were," said Mona, smiling. "He wants your views, not mine. But in quoting that line you are creating for yourself a lofty tradition that will not always be easy to live up to. I speak to myself as much as to you, for it was I who set you the example—for evil or good. You and I burn our boats when we allow ourselves to repeat a line like that."
"I want to burn them," said Matilda eagerly, only half understanding what was in Mona's mind. "I am quite sure you have burned yours. Then you don't want me to write it over again?"
"No," said Mona reflectively. "You have said definitely what you intended to say, and few girls could have done as much under the circumstances. Moreover, you have said it in your own way, and that is better than saying it in some one else's way. No, I would not write it over again."
"Thanks awfully. I am very glad you think it will do. It is a great weight off my mind to have it done. I owe a great deal to you, Miss Maclean."
"I owe you a great deal," said Mona, colouring. "You have taught me a lesson against hasty judgment. When you came into the shop to buy blue ribbon, I certainly did not think you capable of that amount of moral pluck," and she glanced at the letter on Matilda's lap.
"What you must have thought of us!" exclaimed Matilda, blushing in her turn. "Two stuck-up, provincial—cats! Tell me, Miss Maclean, did Dr Dudley know then—what I know about you?"
Matilda was progressing. She saw that Mona winced at the unceasing reference to Lady Munro, so she attempted a periphrasis.
"He does not know now."
"Then I shall like Dr Dudley as long as I live. He is sarcastic and horrid, but he must be one of the people you were talking of the other day who see the invisible."
For Mona had got into the way of giving utterance to her thoughts almost without reserve when Matilda Cookson was with her. It was pleasant to see the look of rapt attention on the girl's face, and Mona did not realise—or realising, she did not care—how little her companion understood. Mona's talk ought to have been worth listening to in those days when her life was so destitute of companionship; but the harvest of her thought was carried away by the winds and the waves, and only a few stray gleanings fell into the eager outstretched hands of Matilda Cookson. Yet the girl was developing, as plants develop on a warm damp day in spring, and Mona was unspeakably grateful to her. The Colonel's story had not interfered with Mona's determination to "take up each day with both hands, and live it with all her might;" but it certainly had not made it any easier to see the ideal in the actual. Here, however, was one little human soul who clung to her, depended on her, learnt from her; and it would have been difficult to determine on which side the balance of benefit really lay.
Very slowly the days and weeks went by, but at last the end of November drew near. The coast was bleak and cold now, and it was only on exceptionally fine days that Mona could spend a quiet hour at Castle Maclean. When she escaped from the shop she went for a scramble along the coast; and when physical exercise was insufficient to drive away the cobwebs, she walked out to the Colonel's wood to see old Jenny, or, farther still, beyond Kilwinnie to have a chat with Auntie Bell.
With the latter she struck up quite a cordial friendship, and she had the doubtful satisfaction of hearing the Colonel's yarn corroborated in Auntie Bell's quaint language.
"Rachel's queer, ye ken," said Auntie Bell, as Mona took her farewell in the exquisitely kept, old-fashioned garden. "She's a' for the kirk and the prayer-meetin'; an' yet she's aye that keen tae forgather wi' her betters."
"She wants to make the best of both worlds, I suppose," said Mona. "Poor soul! I am afraid she has not succeeded very well as regards this one."
"Na," said Auntie Bell tersely. "An' between wersels, I hae ma doots o' the ither."
Mona laughed. It was curious how she and Auntie Bell touched hands across all the oceans that lay between them.
"Are ye muckle ta'en up wi' this 'gran' bazaar,' as they ca' it!"
"Not a bit," said Mona; "I hate bazaars."
"Eh, but we're o' ae mind there!" and Auntie Bell clapped her hands with sufficient emphasis to start an upward rush of crows from the field beyond the hedge.
Nearly half the county at this time was talking of one thing and of only one—the approaching bazaar at Kirkstoun. It was almost incredible to Mona that so trifling an event should cause so much excitement; but bazaars, like earthquakes, vary in importance according to the part of the world in which they occur.
And this was no sale for church or chapel, at which the men could pretend to sneer, and which a good burgher might consistently refuse to attend; it was essentially the bazaar of the stronger sex—except in so far as the weaker sex did all the work in connection with; it was for no less an object than the new town hall.
For many years the inhabitants of Kirkstoun had felt that their town hall was a petty, insignificant building, out of all proportion to the size and importance of the burgh; and after much deliberation they had decided on the bold step of erecting a new building, and of looking mainly to Providence—spelt with a capital, of course—for the funds.
All this, however, was now rapidly becoming a matter of ancient history; the edifice had been complete for some time; about one-third of the expense had been defrayed; and, in order that the debt might be cleared off with a clean sweep, the ladies of the town had "kindly consented" to hold a bazaar.
"Man's extremity is woman's opportunity" had been the graceful, if not original, remark of one of the local bailies; but men are proverbially ungrateful, and this view of the matter had not been the only one mooted.
"Kindly consented, indeed!" one carping spirit had growled. "Pretty consent any of you would have given if it had not been an opportunity for dressing yourselves up and having a ploy. Whose pockets is all the money to come out of first or last? That's what I would like to know!"
It is quite needless to remark that the first of these speeches had been made on the platform, the second in domestic privacy.
Like wildfire the enthusiasm had spread. All through the summer, needles had flown in and out; paint-brushes had been flourished somewhat wildly; cupboards had been ransacked; begging-letters had been written to friends all over the country, and to every man who, in the memory of the inhabitants, had left Kirkstoun to make his fortune "abroad."
It was very characteristic of "Kirkstoun folk" that not many of these letters had been written in vain. Kirkstoun men are clannish. Scatter as they may over the whole known world, they stand together shoulder to shoulder like a well-trained regiment.
The bazaar was to be held for three days before Christmas, and was to be followed by a grand ball. Was not this excitement enough to fill the imagination of every girl for many miles around? The matrons had a harder time of it, as they usually have, poor souls! With them lay the solid responsibility of getting together a sufficiency of work—and alas for all the jealousies and heart-burnings this involved!—with them lay the planning of ball-dresses that were to cost less, and look better, than any one else's; with them lay the necessity of coaxing and conciliating "your papa."
Rachel Simpson was not a person of sufficient social importance to be a stall-holder, or a receiver of goods; and she certainly was not one of those women who are content to work that others may shine, so Mona had taken little or no interest in the projected bazaar.
One morning, however, she received a letter from Doris which roused her not a little.
"Kirkstoun is somewhere near Borrowness, is it not?" wrote her friend. "If so, I shall see you before Christmas. Those friends of mine at St Rules, to whom you declined an introduction, have a stall at the Town Hall bazaar, and I am going over to assist them. It is a kind of debt, for they helped me with my last enterprise of the kind, but I should contrive to get out of it except for the prospect of seeing you.
"You will come to the bazaar, of course: I should think you would be ready for a little dissipation by that time; and I will promise to be merciful if you will visit my stall."
"How delightful!" was Mona's first thought; "how disgusting!" was her second; "how utterly out of keeping Doris will be with me and my surroundings!" was her conclusion. "Ponies and pepper-pots do not harmonise very well with shops and poor relations. But, fortunately, the situation is not of my making."
She was still meditating over the letter when Rachel came in looking flushed and excited.
"Mona," she said, "I have made a nice little engagement for you. You know you say you like singing?"
"Yes," said Mona, with an awful premonition of what might be coming.
"I met Mr Stuart on the Kirkstoun road just now. He was that put about! Two of his best speakers for thesoiréeto-night have fallen through, he says. Mr Roberts has got the jaundice, and Mr Dowie has had to go to the funeral of a friend. Mr Stuart said the whole thing would be a failure, and he was fairly at his wits' end. You see there's no time to do anything now. He said if he could get a song or a recitation, or anything, it would do; so of course I told him you were a fine singer, and I was sure you would give us a song. You should have seen how his face brightened up. 'Capital!' said he; 'I have noticed her singing in church. Perhaps she would give us "I know that my Redeemer liveth," or something of that kind?'"
"My dear cousin," said Mona, at last finding breath to speak, "you might just as well ask me to give a performance on the trapeze. I have never sung since I was in Germany. It is one thing to chirp to you in the firelight, and quite another to stand up on a public platform and perform. The thing is utterly absurd."
"Hoots," said Rachel, "they are not so particular. Many's the time I have seen them pleased with worse singing than yours."
Then ensued the first 'stand-up fight' between the two. As her cousin waxed hotter Mona waxed cooler, and finally she ended the discussion by setting out to speak to Mr Stuart herself.
She found him in his comfortable study, his slippered feet on the fender, and a polemico-religious novel in his hand.
"I am sorry to find my cousin has made an engagement for me this evening," she said. "It is quite impossible for me to fulfil it."
"Oh, nonsense!" he said kindly. "It is too late to withdraw now. Your name is in the programme," and he glanced at the neatly written paper on his writing-table, as if it had been a legal document at the least. "My wife is making copies of that for all the speakers. You can't draw back now."
"It might be too late to withdraw," said Mona, "if I had ever put myself forward; but, although my cousin meant to act kindly to every one concerned, she and I are two distinct people."
"Come, come! Of course I quite understand your feeling a little shy, if you are not used to singing in public; but you will be all right as soon as you begin. I remember my first sermon—what a state I was in, to be sure! And yet they told me it was a great success."
"I am very sorry," said Mona. "It is not mere nervousness and shyness—though there is that too, of course—it is simply that I am not qualified to do it."
"We are not very critical. There won't be more than three persons present who know good singing from bad."
"Unfortunately I should wish to sing for those three."
"Ah," he said, with a curl of his lip, "you must have appreciation. The lesson some of us have got to learn in life, Miss Maclean, is to do without appreciation." He paused, but her look of sudden interest was inviting. "One is tempted sometimes to think that one could speak to so much more purpose in a world where there is some intellectual life, where people are not wholly blind to the problems of the day; but to preach Sunday after Sunday to those who have no eyes to see, no ears to hear, to suppress one's best thoughts——"
He stopped short.
"It is a pity surely to do that, unless one is a prophet indeed."
"Ah," he said, "you cannot understand my position. It is a singular one, unique perhaps.—You will sing for us to-night?"
"Mr Stuart," said Mona, struggling against the temptation to speak sharply, "I should not have left my work to come here in the busiest time of the day, if I had been prepared to yield in the end. And indeed why should I? There are plenty of people in the neighbourhood who sing as well as I; and people who are well known have a right to claim a little indulgence. I have none. It is not even as if I were a member of the Chapel."
"I hope you will be soon."
"Well," said Mona, rising with a smile, "you have more pressing claims on your attention at present than my conversion to Baptist principles. Good morning."
"Yes," he said reproachfully, "I must go out in this rain, and try to beat up a substitute for you. A country minister's life is no sinecure, Miss Maclean; and his work is doubled when he feels the necessity of keeping pace with the times." He glanced at the book he had laid down.
"I suppose so," said Mona, somewhat hypocritically. She longed to make a very different reply, but she was glad to escape on any terms. "I wish you all success in your search. You will not go far before you find a fitter makeshift than I."
"I doubt it," he said, going with her to the door. "Did any young lady's education ever yet fit her to do a thing frankly and gracefully, when she was asked to do it?"
Mona sighed. "Education is a long word, Mr Stuart," she said. "It savours more of eternity than of time. 'So many worlds, so much to do.' If we should meet in another life, perhaps I shall be able to sing for you then."
He was absolutely taken aback. What did she mean? Was she really poaching in his preserves? It was his privilege surely to give the conversation a religious turn, and he did not see exactly how she had contrived to do it. However, it was his duty to rise to the occasion, even although the effort might involve a severe mental dislocation.
"I hope we shall sing together there," he said, "with crowns on our heads, and palms in our hands."
It was Mona's turn to be taken aback. She had not realised the effect of her unconventional remarks, when tried by a conventional standard.
"Behüte Gott!" she said as she made her way home in the driving rain. "There are worse fates conceivable than annihilation."
Rachel was severely dignified all day, but she was anxious that Mona should go with her to thesoirée, so she was constrained to bury the hatchet before evening. Mona was much relieved when things had slipped back into their wonted course. Her life was a fiasco indeed if she failed to please Rachel Simpson.