SIR DOUGLAS.
When Friday evening came, Mona took a curious pleasure in making the
very most of herself.
She knew, as well as any outsider could have told her, that her
present depression and apathy were but the measure of the passionate
enthusiasm with which she had lived the life of her choice; and yet
it was inevitable that for the time she should look at life wholly on
the shadowed side. Past and future seemed alike gloomy and
forbidding--"_Grau, grau, gleichgültig grau_"--and the eager,
unconscious protest of youth against such a destiny, took the form of
a resolution to enjoy to the utmost this glimpse of brightness and
colour. She would forget all but the present; new surroundings
should find her for the moment a new being.
When she reached Gloucester Place, Lady Munro and her daughter were
alone in the drawing-room.
Lady Munro was one of those people who make a marked impress on their
material surroundings. The rooms in which she lived quickly became,
as it were, a part of herself, which her friends could not fail to
recognise as such.
Eastern rugs and draperies clothed the conventional London
sitting-room; luxuriant, tropical-looking plants were grouped in
corners, great sensuous roses lolled in Indian bowls, and a few rich
quaint lamps cast a mellow glow across the twilight of the room.
"Why, Mona, can it really be you?" Lady Munro rose from her lounge,
and kissed her niece affectionately on both cheeks. For a moment
Mona could scarcely find words. She was keenly susceptible at all
times to the beauty of luxury, and the very atmosphere of this room
called up with irresistible force forgotten memories of childhood.
The touch of this gracious woman's lips, the sound of her voice, the
soft _frou-frou_ of her gown, all gave Mona a sense of exquisite
physical pleasure. Lady Munro was not, strictly speaking, a
beautiful woman; but a subtle grace, a subtle fascination, a subtle
perfume were part of her very being. She was worshipped by all the
men who knew her, but the most cynical of her husband's friends could
not deny that she was no whit less charming in her intercourse with
her own sex than she was with them. She was not brilliant; she was
not fast; she was simply herself.
"This is my daughter Evelyn," she said; and she laid her hand on a
sweet, quiet, overgrown English schoolgirl--one of those curious
chrysalis beings whom a few months of Anglo-Indian society transform
from a child into a finished woman of the world.
"I expect my husband every moment. He is longing to meet you."
Evelyn slowly raised her blue eyes, looked quietly at her mother for
a moment, and let them fall again without the smallest change of
expression. In fact, Lady Munro's remark was a graceful modification
of the truth. Sir Douglas Munro was nothing if not a man of the
world. He knew the points of a wine, and he knew the points of a
horse; but above all he flattered himself that he knew the points of
a woman. He had made a study of them all his life, and he believed,
perhaps rightly, that he could read them like an open book. "Sweet
seventeen" was at a cruel disadvantage in his hands, if indeed he
exerted himself to speak to her at all. The genus _Medical Woman_
was not as yet included in his collection, but he had heard of it,
and had classified it in his own mind as a useful but uninteresting
hybrid, which could not strictly be called a woman at all. In the
sense, therefore, in which a lukewarm entomologist "longs to meet"
the rare but ugly beetle which he believes will complete his cabinet,
Sir Douglas Munro was "longing" to make the acquaintance of Mona
Maclean.
The new beetle certainly took him by surprise when he came in a
minute later.
"Mona!" he replied to his wife's introduction; "Mona Maclean--the
doctor?"
Mona laughed as she rose, and took his proffered hand.
"Far from it," she said. "In the vacation I try to forget that I am
even the makings of one."
She looked almost handsome as she stood there in the soft light of
the room. Lady Munro forgot that her niece was a medical student,
and experienced a distinct sense of pride and proprietorship. No
ordinary _modiste_, she felt sure, had arranged those folds of soft
grey crape, and the dash of glowing crimson geraniums on the shoulder
was the touch of an artist.
"Mona is the image of her mother," she said.
"Ye-e-s," said Sir Douglas, availing himself of his wife's
relationship to look at Mona very frankly. "She reminds me a good
deal of what you were at her age."
"Nonsense!" said Mona hastily. "Remember I am not used to flattery."
"To receiving or to paying it?"
"To neither;" and she turned a look of very honest and almost
childlike admiration on her aunt.
Sir Douglas looked pleased, although he himself had long ceased to
pay his wife compliments.
"There's a great deal of your father in your face, too," he said.
"You have got his mouth. Ah, he was a good fellow! I could tell you
many a story of our Indian life--a man in a thousand!"
"You could tell me nothing I should more dearly like to hear," said
Mona, with eager interest.
"Ah, well--some day, some day."
A native servant announced dinner, and Sir Douglas gave Mona his arm.
"What! another scene from the 'Arabian Nights'?" she said as they
entered the dining-room. "It is clear that a very wonderful genius
presides over your household."
"You are going to have an Indian dinner, too," said Lady Munro.
"Nubboo makes all the _entrées_ and soups and sauces. He is worth
half-a-dozen English servants."
Mona looked up at the dark bearded face under the voluminous white
turban, but she could not tell whether Nubboo had heard the remark.
All the philosophy of Buddh might lie behind those sad impenetrable
eyes, or he might be thinking merely of the _entrées_; it was
impossible to say. If the whole occasion had not seemed to her, as
she said, a bit out of the 'Arabian Nights,' she would have thought
it sacrilege that a man with such a face should be employed in so
trivial an occupation as waiting at table.
"When I look at Nubboo I can almost believe myself a baby again," she
said. "He seems like a bit of my dream-world."
The feeblest ghost of a smile flitted across the man's face, as he
moved noiselessly from place to place.
"It must be a dream-world," laughed her aunt. "You cannot remember
much of that!"
"I don't;" and Mona sighed.
Lady Munro and Mona kept the ball going between them during dinner.
Evelyn only spoke now and then, to tone down one of her mother's most
piquant and highly coloured remarks; and she did this with a hidden
sense of humour which never rose to the surface in her face. Sir
Douglas spoke as much as courtesy absolutely demanded, but no more.
The new beetle was evidently perplexing him profoundly.
Lady Munro's feeling for her niece was one of mingled pride,
affection, disgust, and fear--disgust for the life-work she had
chosen, fear of her supposed "cleverness." Lady Munro despised
learned women, but she was not at all willing that they should
despise her. She exerted herself to talk well, but even Mona's
evident admiration could not put her quite at her ease.
"How is it we have seen so little of you, Mona?" she said, when they
had left Sir Douglas to his wine. "Where were you when we were last
at home?"
"In Germany, I suppose. I went there for three years after I left
school."
"To study music?"
"Both music and painting in a small way."
"You wonderful girl! Then you are a musician?"
"_Gott bewahre!_" burst from Mona involuntarily. "My musical friends
thought me a Turner, and my artistic friends thought me a Rubinstein;
from which you may gather the truth, that I had no real gift for
either."
"So you say! I expect you are an 'Admirable Crichton.'"
"If that be a euphemism for 'Jack-of-all-trades and master of none,'
I suppose I am--alas!"
"And does Homer never nod? Do you never amuse yourself like other
girls?"
"I am afraid I must not allow you to call me a girl I believe you
have my grandmother's Family Bible. Yes, indeed, Homer nods a great
deal more than is consistent with his lofty calling. I am an epicure
in frivolling."
"In what?"
"Forgive my school slang! It means that I indulge quite freely
enough in concerts, theatres, and in picture-galleries--not to say
shop-windows."
"You don't mean to say that _you_ care for shop-windows?" and again
Lady Munro's glance rested with satisfaction on Mona's pretty gown,
although she was half afraid her niece was laughing at her.
"Oh, don't I? You little know!"
"Pictures, I suppose, and old china and furniture and that sort of
thing," said Lady Munro, treading cautiously.
"Yes, I like all those, but I like pretty bonnets too, and tea-gowns
and laces and note-paper and--every kind of arrant frivolity and
bagatelle. But they must be pretty, you know. I am not caught with
absolute chaff."
"You don't care about fashion, you mean."
Mona drew down her brows in deep thought. Clearly she was talking
honestly. Then she shook her head with a light laugh.
"I am getting into deep water," she said. "I am afraid I do care
about fashion, fashion _quâ_ fashion, fashion pure and simple."
"Not if it is ugly?" questioned Evelyn gravely.
"Not if it is ugly, surely; but I question if it often is ugly in the
hands of the artists among dressmakers. It is just as unfair to
judge of a fashion as it issues from the hands of a mere seamstress,
as it is to judge of an air from its rendering on a barrel-organ or a
penny trumpet."
Lady Munro laughed. "I shall tell my husband that," she said.
"Douglas"--as he entered the room--"you have no idea of the heresies
Mona has been confessing. She cares as much about new gowns and
bonnets as anybody."
Sir Douglas looked at Mona very gravely. Either he had not heard the
remark, or he was striving to adapt it to his mental sketch of her
character.
He seated himself on the sofa beside her, and turned towards her as
though he meant to exclude his wife and daughter from the
conversation.
"Have you seriously taken up the study of medicine?" he asked.
"Now for it!" thought Mona.
She took for granted that he was a decided enemy of the "movement,"
and although at the moment she was in little humour for the old
battle, she was bound to be true to her colours. So she donned her
armour wearily.
"I certainly have," she said quietly.
"And you mean to practise?"
"Assuredly."
The examination and its concomitant sorrows were forgotten. She
answered the question as she would have answered it at any time in
the last three or four years.
"Are you much interested in the work?"
"Very much," she said warmly.
"I am sure you need scarcely ask that," said Lady Munro, with a kind
smile. "One does not undertake that sort of thing _pour s'amuser_!"
"There are other motives," he said, looking severely at his wife.
"There is ambition." This was shrewdly said, and Mona's respect for
her opponent rose. A fit of coughing had interrupted him.
His wife looked at him anxiously. "I wish you would prescribe for my
husband," she said, smiling.
"_Don't!_" ejaculated Sir Douglas fiercely, before the cough gave him
breath to speak.
At this moment Nubboo announced a visitor, a cousin of Sir Douglas',
and the latter seemed glad of an interruption which allowed him to
have Mona entirely to himself.
He shook hands with the new-comer, and then, returning to Mona's
side, sat in silence for a few moments as if trying to collect his
thoughts.
"The fact is," he broke out impulsively at last, "I am torn asunder
on this subject of women doctors--torn asunder. There is a terrible
necessity for them--terrible--and yet, what a sacrifice!"
Mona could scarcely believe her ears. This was very different from
the direct, brutal attack she had anticipated. Instinctively she
laid down her armour, and left herself at his mercy.
"I think you are unusually liberal to admit the necessity," she said,
but her sweet earnest face said much more for her than her words.
"_Liberal!_" he said. "What man can live and not admit it? It makes
me mad to think how a woman can allow herself to be pulled about by a
_man_. Fifty years hence no woman will have the courage to own that
it ever happened to her. But the sacrifice is a fearful one.
Picture my allowing Evelyn to go through what you are going through!"
And his glance rested fondly on his daughter's fair head.
"I agree with you so far," said Mona, "that no woman should undertake
such work under the age of twenty-three."
"_Twenty-three!_" he repeated. "It is bad for a _man_, but a man has
some virtues which remain untouched by it. A woman loses everything
that makes womanhood fair and attractive. You _must_ be becoming
hard and blunted?"
He looked at her as if demanding an answer.
"I hope not," said Mona quietly, and her eyes met his.
"You _hope_ not!" He dashed back her words with all the vehemence of
an evangelical preacher who receives them in answer to his
all-important question. "You _hope_ not! Is that all you can say?
You are not sure?"
"It is difficult to judge of one's self," said Mona thoughtfully,
turning her face full to his piercing gaze; "and one's own opinion
would not be worth having. I believe I am not becoming hardened. I
am sure my friends would say I am not."
She felt as if he were reading her inmost soul, and for the moment
she was willing that he should. No other argument would be of any
weight in such a discussion as this.
He dropped his eyes, half ashamed of his vehemence. "No need to tell
me that," he said hurriedly. "I am used to reading women's faces. I
have been searching yours all evening for the hard lines that must be
there, but there is not a trace that is not perfectly womanly. And
yet I cannot understand it! From the very nature of your work you
must revel in scenes of horror."
"_That_ I am sure we don't!" said Mona warmly. She would have
laughed if they had both been less in earnest. "You don't say that
of all the noble nurses who have had to face scenes of horror."
"But you must become blunted, if you are to be of any use."
"I don't think blunted is the word. It is extremely true, as some
one says, that pity becomes transformed from an emotion into a
motive."
He seemed to be weighing this.
"You dissect?" he said presently.
"Yes."
"Think of that alone! It is human butchery."
"Of course you must know that I do not look upon it in that light."
But a sense of hopelessness came upon her, as she realised how she
was handicapped in this discussion. She must either be silent or
speak in an unknown tongue. How could she explain to this man the
wonder and the beauty of the work that he dismissed in a brutal
phrase? How could she talk of that ever-new field for observation,
corroboration, and discovery; that unlimited scope for the keen eye,
the skilful hand, the thinking brain, the mature judgment? How could
she describe those exquisite mechanisms and traceries, those
variations of a common type, developing in accordance with fixed law,
and yet with a perfectness of adaptation that _a priori_ would have
seemed like an impossible fairy tale? How cruelly she would be
misunderstood if she talked here of the passionate delight of
discovery, of the enthusiasm that had often made her forgetful of
time and of all other claims? "To be a true anatomist," she thought
with glowing face, "one would need to be a mechanician and a
scientist, an artist and a philosopher. He who is not something of
all these must be content to learn his work as a trade."
Sir Douglas was looking at her intently. As a medical student she
had got beyond his range. As a woman, for the moment, she was
beautiful. Such a light is only seen in the eyes of those who can
see the ideal in the actual.
But he had not finished his study. He must bring her down to earth
again.
"Do you remember your first day in the dissecting-room?"
"Yes," said Mona. She sighed deeply, and the light died out of her
eyes.
"A ghastly experience!"
"Yes."
"And yet you say you have not become blunted?"
"I do not think," said Mona, trying hard with a woman's instinct to
avoid the least suspicion of dogmatism--"I do not think that one
becomes blunted when one ceases to look at the garbage side of a
subject. Every subject, I suppose, _has_ its garbage side, if one is
on the look-out for it; and in anatomy, unfortunately, that is the
side that strikes one first, and consequently the only one outsiders
ever see. It is difficult to discuss the question with one who is
not a doctor" ("nor a scientist," she added inwardly); "but if you
had pursued the study, I think you would see that one must, in time,
lose sight of all but the wonder and the beauty of it."
There was a long pause.
"When you are qualified," he said at last, "you only mean to attend
your own sex?"
"Oh, of course," said Mona earnestly.
He seemed relieved.
"That was why my wife made me angry by suggesting, even in play, that
you should prescribe for me. You women are--with or without
conscious sacrifice--wading through seas of blood to right a terrible
evil that has hitherto been an inevitable one. If you deliberately
and gratuitously repeat that evil by extending your services to men,
the sacrifice has all been for nothing, and less than nothing."
He spoke with his old vehemence, and then relapsed into silence.
His next remark sounded curiously irrelevant.
"How long do you remain here?"
"In London? I don't quite know. I am going to visit a cousin in ten
days or so."
Sir Douglas took advantage of a pause in the conversation between his
wife and their visitor.
"Bruce," he said, "let me introduce you to my niece, Miss Maclean."
"That," he continued to his wife, with a movement of his head in
Mona's direction, "is a great medical light."
Mona laughed.
"I am sure of it," said Lady Munro, with her irresistible smile. "As
for me, I would as soon have a woman doctor as a man."
Sir Douglas threw back his head and clapped his hands, with a harsh
laugh.
"Well," he said, "when you come to say that--the skies will fall."
"Douglas, what _do_ you mean?" She looked annoyed. At the moment
she really believed that she had been an advocate of women doctors
all her life. Sir Douglas seated himself on a low chair beside her,
and began to play with her embroidery silks.
When Mona rose to go, a little later, Lady Munro took her hand
affectionately.
"Mona," she said, "I told you we were starting on Monday morning for
a short tour in Norway. My husband and I should be so pleased if you
would go with us."
Mona's cheek flushed. "How _very_ kind!" she said. "I am so sorry
it is impossible."
"Why?" said Sir Douglas quickly. "You don't need to go to your
cousin till the end of the month."
Mona's colour deepened. "There is no use in beating about the bush,"
she said. "The fact is, I am engaged in the interesting occupation
of retrenching just now. You know"--as Sir Douglas looked
daggers--"I have not the smallest claim on you."
He laughed, and laid his hand on her shoulder.
"Don't be afraid, Mona," he said. "We are not trying to establish a
claim on you. The great medical light shall continue her way as
heretofore, without let or hindrance. Give us your society for a
fortnight, and we shall be only too much your debtors."
"It will make the greatest difference to all of us!" said Lady Munro
cordially.
And Evelyn, with the facile friendship of a schoolgirl, slipped her
arm caressingly round her cousin's waist.
And so it was arranged.
"Shall Nubboo call you a hansom," said Lady Munro.
"She doesn't want a hansom," said Sir Douglas. "Throw your gown over
your arm, and put on a cloak, and I will see you home."
It was a beautiful summer night; the air was soft and pleasant after
the burning heat of the day.
It was natural that Sir Douglas should be curious to see the habitat
of his new beetle, and after all, he was practically her uncle; but
when they reached her door she held out her hand with a frank smile.
"You have been very kind to me," she said. "Good night."
"I am afraid Lucy would say I had not 'stood up' to him enough," she
thought. "But all he wanted was to dissect me, and I hope he has
done it satisfactorily. What a curious man he is! I wonder if any
one ever took quite that view of the subject before? Not at all the
view of a Sir Galahad, I fancy"--and she thought of a passage that
had puzzled her in _Rhoda Fleming_--"but he was kind to me, and
honest with me, and I like him. I must try very hard not to become
unconsciously 'blunted' as he calls it."
Her eye fell on a letter from her cousin, and she sat down in her
rocking-chair, cast a regretful glance at the withered maidenhairs on
her shoulder, and tore open the envelope.
"MY DEAR COUSIN,--Your letter has just come in, and very good news it
is. All the world looks brighter since I read it. I will do my best
to make you happy, and although you will have plenty of time to
yourself, you will be of the greatest use to me. Both in the house
and in the shop----"
"Good God!" said Mona; and letting the letter fall, she buried her
face in her hands.