MONA MACLEAN
MEDICAL STUDENT
_A NOVEL_
BY
GRAHAM TRAVERS
(MARGARET TODD, M.D.)
FIFTEENTH AND CHEAPER EDITION
WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS
EDINBURGH AND LONDON
MDCCCC
_All Rights reserved_
_BY THE SAME AUTHOR._
WINDYHAUGH. Fourth Edition. Crown 8vo, 6s.
FELLOW TRAVELLERS. Fourth Edition. Crown 8vo, 6s.
WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS,
EDINBURGH AND LONDON.
CONTENTS.
CHAP.
I. IN THE GARDEN
II. THE LISTS
III. "ADOLESCENT INSANITY"
IV. SIR DOUGLAS
V. "AN AGATE KNIFE-EDGE"
VI. THE NÆRODAL
VII. A SON OF ANAK
VIII. BONS CAMARADES
IX. DORIS
X. BORROWNESS
XI. THE SHOP
XII. CASTLE MACLEAN
XIII. THE CHAPEL
XIV. REACTION
XV. THE BOTANISTS
XVI. "JOHN HOGG'S MACHINE"
XVII. AUNTIE BELL
XVIII. A SILHOUETTE
XIX. "LEAVES OF GRASS"
XX. ST RULES
XXI. THE FLYING SCOTCHMAN
XXII. DR ALICE BATESON
XXIII. A RENCONTRE
XXIV. A CLINICAL REPORT
XXV. A VOICE IN THE FOG
XXVI. A CHAT BY THE FIRE
XXVII. A NEOPHYTE
XXVIII. THE COLONEL'S YARN
XXIX. "YONDER SHINING LIGHT"
XXX. MR STUART'S TROUBLES
XXXI. STRADIVARIUS
XXXII. CHUMS
XXXIII. CARBOLIC!
XXXIV. PALM-TREES AND PINES
XXXV. WEEPING AND LAUGHTER
XXXVI. NORTHERN MISTS
XXXVII. THE ALGÆ AND FUNGI
XXXVIII. THE BAZAAR
XXXIX. THE BALL
XL. A LOCUM TENENS
XLI. A SINGED BUTTERFLY
XLII. QUESTIONINGS
XLIII. "MITHER!"
XLIV. A CRIMSON STREAK
XLV. AN UNBELIEVER
XLVI. FAREWELL TO BORROWNESS
XLVII. THE DISSECTING-ROOM
XLVIII. CONFIDENCES
XLIX. THE INTERMEDIATE
L. SUCCESS OR FAILURE?
LI. ANOTHER CHAT BY THE FIRE
LII. OLD FRIENDS
LIII. WAITING
LIV. PRESENTATION DAY
LV. LUCY TO THE RESCUE
LVI. A LOST CHANCE
LVII. HAVING IT OUT
LVIII. "LOVE MAY GO HANG!"
LIX. AT LAST!
LX. ON THE RIVER
LXI. A FIN-DE-SIECLE COURTSHIP
LXII. IN ARCADIA
LXIII. "VARIUM ET MUTABILE"
LXIV. PARTNERS
MONA MACLEAN,
MEDICAL STUDENT.
CHAPTER I.
IN THE GARDEN.
"I wish I were dead!"
"H'm. You look like it."
There was no reply for a second or two. The first speaker was
carefully extricating herself from the hammock in which she had been
idly swinging under the shade of a smoke-begrimed lime-tree.
"No," she said at last, shaking out the folds of her dainty blue
gown, "I flatter myself that I do not look like it. I have often
told you, my dear Mona, that from the point of view of success in
practice, the art of dressing one's hair is at least as important as
the art of dissecting."
She gave an adjusting touch to her dark-red curls and drew herself to
her full height, as though she were defying the severest critic to
say that she did not live up to her principles. Presently her whole
bearing collapsed, so to speak, into abject despair, half real, half
assumed. "But I do wish I were dead, all the same," she said.
"Well, I don't see why you should make me wish it too. Why don't you
go on with your book?"
"Go on with it! I like that! I never began. I have not turned a
page for the last half-hour. That's all the credit I get for my
self-repression! What time is it?"
"A quarter past twelve."
"Is that all? And the lists won't be up till two. When shall we
start?"
"About three, if we are wise--when the crush is over."
"Thank you! I mean to be there when the clock strikes two. There
won't be any crush. It's not like the Matric; and besides, every one
has gone down. I am sure I wish I had! A telegram 'strikes home,'
but the slow torture of wading through those lists----!"
She broke off abruptly, and Mona returned to her book, but before she
had read half-a-dozen lines a parasol was inserted between her eyes
and the page.
"It will be a treat, won't it?--wiring to the other students that
everybody has passed but me!"
"Lucy, you are intolerable. Have you finished packing?"
"Practically."
"Do you mean to travel half the night in that gown?"
"Not being a millionaire like you, I do not. You little know the
havoc this frock has to work yet. But I presume you would not have
me walk down to Burlington House in my old serge?"
"Why not? You say everybody is out of town."
"Precisely. Therefore we, the exceptions, will be all the more _en
évidence_. _I_ don't mean to be taken for an 'advanced woman.' Some
of the Barts. men will be there, and----"
But Mona was not listening. She had risen from the cushions on which
she had been lounging, and was pacing up and down the grass.
"You know, Mona, you may say what you please, but you are rather
white about the gills yourself, and you have no cause to be."
Mona stopped and shot a level glance at her companion.
"Why not?" she said. "Because I have been ploughed once already, and
so should be used to skinning like the eels?"
"Nonsense! How you contrived to fail once neither I nor any one else
can pretend to explain, but certain it is that, with the best of
will, you won't achieve the feat a second time. You will be in the
Honours list, of course."
Mona shrugged her shoulders. "Possibly," she said quietly, "if I
pass. But the question is, shall I pass?
'Oh the little more, and how much it is!
And the little less, and what worlds away!'"
They were walking up and down together now.
"And even if you don't--it will be a disgrace to the examiners, of
course, and a frightful fag, but beyond that I don't see that it
matters. There is no one to care."
Mona's cheek flushed. She raised her eyebrows, and turned her head
very slowly towards her companion, with a glance of enquiry.
"I mean," Lucy said hastily, "you are--that is to say, you are not a
country clergyman's daughter like me. If I fail, it will be the talk
of the parish. The grocer will condole with me over the counter, the
postman will carry the news on his rounds, and the farmers will hear
all about it when they come in to market next Wednesday. It will be
awfully hard on the Pater; he----"
"From what I know of him, I think he will be able to hold up his head
in spite of it."
They both laughed.
"By the way, that reminds me"--and Lucy produced a letter from her
pocket--"he is awfully anxious that you should come to us for a few
weeks this vacation. You have no idea what a conquest you have made
in that quarter. In fact I have been shining with reflected lustre
ever since he met you. He thinks there must be something in me after
all, since I have had the sense to appreciate you."
"I wonder wherein the attraction between us lies," Mona said
reflectively. "I suppose I am really less grave than I appear, and
you on the whole are less of a flibbertigibbet than the world takes
you to be. So we meet on something of a common ground. I see in you
a side of my nature which in the ordinary course of events I don't
find it easy to express, and possibly you see something of the same
sort in me. Each of us relieves the other of the necessity----"
"Don't prose, please!" interrupted Lucy. "I never yet found the
smallest difficulty in expressing myself, and--the saints be
praised!--you are not always quite so dull as you are to-day. I
suppose you won't come? What are tennis-parties and picnics to a
Wandering Jew like you?"
"It is awfully kind of your father. I can't tell you how much I
appreciate his goodness; but I am afraid I can't come."
"I thought so. Is it the North Pole or the wilds of Arabia this
time?"
Mona laughed. "To tell the truth," she said, "I must have a day with
my accounts and my bank-book before I stir from Grower Street."
"What! _you_, Crœsus?"
"The reproach is deserved, whether you meant it for one or not. I
have been spending too much. What with extra laboratory work in
winter, and coaching last term----"
"And all those pretty dresses."
"And all those pretty dresses," repeated Mona, with the air of one
who is making a deliberate confession.
"And nice damp uncut volumes."
"Not too many of those," with a defiant little nod of self-defence.
"And divers charities."
"Nay, alas! My bank-book has not suffered much from them."
"And concert tickets, and gloves for impecunious friends, not to say
a couple of excellent stalls from time to time----"
"Nonsense, Lucy! Considering how hard we have worked, I don't think
you and I have been at all extravagant in our amusements. No, no, I
ought to be able to afford all that. My father left me four hundred
a year, more or less."
"Good heavens!" If Mona had added a cipher, the sum could scarcely
have impressed her companion more.
"There! that is so like you schoolgirls----"
"Schoolgirls, indeed!"
"You have your allowance of thirty or forty pounds, and you flatter
yourselves that you dress on it, travel on it, amuse yourselves on
it, and surreptitiously feed on it. You never notice the countless
things that come to you from your parents, as naturally as the air
you breathe. You go with your mother to her cupboards and store
closets, or with your father to town, and all the time you are
absorbing money or money's worth. Then you get into debt; there is a
scene, a few tears, and your father's hand goes into his pocket, and
you find yourself with your debts paid, and a pound or two to the
good. I know all about it. Your allowance is the sheerest farce.
Cut off all those chances and possibilities, banish the very
conception of elasticity from your mind, before you judge of my
income."
Lucy's eyes had been fixed on the ground. She raised them now, and
said very slowly, with a trick of manner she had caught from her
friend,--
"I don't think I ever heard such a one-sided statement in my life."
Mona laughed. "Every revolution and reformation the world has seen
has been the fruit of a one-sided statement."
"I have already asked you not to prose. Besides, your good seed has
fallen on stony ground for once. Please don't attempt to
revolutionise or reform me!"
"My dear, if you indulge in the pedantry of quotation from ancient
Jewish literature, pray show some familiarity with the matter of it.
Although, as you remind me, I am not a country clergyman's daughter,
you will allow me to remind you that the seed on the stony ground did
spring up."
"Bother the seed on stony ground! You said your income was four
hundred a year."
"More or less. This year it happens to be less, and I have a strong
suspicion that I am in shallow water. If, as I fervently hope, my
suspicion is incorrect, I mean to have a fortnight's walking in Skye.
In any case, I have promised to spend a month on the east coast of
Scotland with a cousin of my father's."
"I thought you had no cousins?"
"No more I have--to call cousins. I never saw this one, and I don't
suppose I should ever have heard of her if she had not written to
borrow twenty pounds from me a few years ago. She is quite
comfortably off now, but she cannot get over her gratitude. I don't
suppose she is exactly what you would call a lady. My grandfather
was the successful man of the family in his generation, and my father
was the same in the next; so it is my fault if cousin Rachel and I
have not 'gone off on different lines.'"
"But why do you go to her?"
"I don't know. It is an old promise--in fact, she wants me to live
with her altogether--and I am curious to see my 'ancestral towers.'"
"And have you no other relatives?"
Mona laughed. "My mother's sister has just come home from India with
her husband, but we are just as far apart as when continents and
oceans divided us. I don't think my mother and she quite hit it off.
Besides, I can imagine her opinion of medical women, and I don't
suppose she ever heard of blessed Bloomsbury."
"Wait a little," said Lucy. "When you are a famous physician----"
"I know--bowling along on C springs----"
"Drawn by a pair of prancing, high-stepping greys----"
"Leaning back on the luxurious cushions----"
"Wrapt to the ears in priceless sables----"
"My waiting-room crowded with patient Duchesses. Yes, of course, she
will be sorry then. I suppose she will have an illness, some
'obscure internal lesion' which will puzzle all the London doctors.
As a last resource she will apply to me. I wave my wand. Hey,
presto! she is cured! But you can't expect her to foresee all that.
It would argue more than average intelligence, and besides, it would
spoil the story."