A SILHOUETTE.
About a week after Mona's visit to Auntie Bell, Dr Dudley was sitting
alone in the dining-room at Carlton Lodge. It was nearly midnight,
and a terrific storm was raging outside. One of the great trees at
the foot of the garden had been blown down into the road, carrying
with it a piece of the wall; and the wind roared round the lonely
house like a volley of artillery.
Within, a bright wood-fire was reflected dimly on the oak wainscot,
and a shaded lamp threw a brilliant light on scattered books and
papers, shrouding the rest of the room in suggestive shadows.
Dr Dudley rose to his feet, and kicked a footstool across the room.
You would scarcely have recognised his face as the one that had
smiled at Mona across the counter. The wind played on his nerves as
if they had been an instrument, but he was not thinking of the storm.
"Three years more before I can begin to do a man's work in the
world," he said, "and nearly thirty lie behind me! It is enough to
make one make tracks for the gold-fields to-morrow. What surety have
I that all my life won't drift, drift, drift away, as the last thirty
years have done? Upon my soul"--he drew up the blind and looked out
on the darkness, which only threw back his image and that of the
room--"I envy the poor devils who are called out to their patients in
this tempest, for shilling or half-crown fees!"
He was young, you see, but not very young; for, instead of indulging
in further heroics, he bit his lip and returned to his books and
papers. "_Hier oder nirgends ist Amerika!_" He drew down his brows,
and read aloud from the mighty tome at his side, stopping now and
then to add a few lines to the diagram before him.
He held very strongly that, in addition to practical work, which was
wellnigh everything, there was only one way of mastering anything
approaching an exact science. Firstly, get the best handbook extant;
secondly, read the diagrams only; thirdly, read the diagrams,
letterpress and all; fourthly, read letterpress alone, constructing
your own diagrams as you go. "For after all," he said, "another
man's diagrams are but crutches at the best. It is only when you
have assimilated a subject, and projected it again through the medium
of your own temperament, that it is of any practical use to you, or
indeed has any actual existence for you personally."
His opinion ought to have been of some value, for the study of an
exact science was by no means the work for which his mind was best
fitted; and it is not those whom Nature has endowed with a "royal
road" to the attainment of any subject who are best able to direct
their fellows.
The clock was striking two when he closed his books and extinguished
the lamp. It was not his custom to work so late; he was oddly
rational in such ways; but he had learned by experience that to act
on the principle that "_Hier oder nirgends ist Amerika_" was the only
cure--sometimes, alas! not a very effectual one--for moods of
depression and bitter self-reproach.
The hurricane had raged for several days, but next morning the sun
shone down on a smiling innocent world, with a pleasant suggestion of
eternal renewal.
"I am going for a long drive past Kilwinnie," said Mrs Hamilton at
lunch. "I am perishing for lack of fresh air; and I want you to go
with me, Ralph."
"I am sorry I can't," he said shortly. It must be confessed that Dr
Dudley was a man of moods.
"Oh, nonsense, Ralph! You have poked over those horrid books for
days. You refused to come the last time I asked you, and that was
centuries ago, before the storm began. I can't have you always
saying 'No.'"
"It is a pity I did not learn to say 'No' a little earlier in life,"
he said gloomily; and then, with a dismal sense that the old lady was
mainly dependent on him for moral sunshine, he got up and laid his
hand on her shoulder--
"'I have been the sluggard, and must ride apace,
For now there is a lion in the way,'"
he said, striving to speak cheerfully.
"I declare, Ralph, any one would think, to hear you talk, that you
were a worn-out _roué_. What would have become of me for the last
two years if you had been in busy practice? You know quite well that
one might walk from Land's End to John o' Groat's in search of your
equal in general culture. Professor Anderson was saying to me only
the other day that it was impossible to find you tripping. Whether
the conversation turned on some unheard-of lake in Central Africa, or
the philosophy of Hegel, or Coptic hymnology, or Cistercian hill
architecture of the Transition Period, you were as much at home as if
it was the weather that was under discussion. I told him he might
have included the last new thing in bonnets."
"No, no," said Ralph, laughing in spite of himself. "That was too
bad. You know I draw the line there. These things are too wonderful
for me."
"But you will come with me, won't you?"
"You coaxing old humbug!" he said affectionately, "I suppose I must.
It will only mean burning a little more of the midnight oil. What
havoc you must have wrought when you were young, if you understood a
man's weakness for flattery as well as you do now!"
"Ah, but I did not," she responded quietly, having gained her point.
"It takes a lifetime to fathom it."
He laughed again, kissed her on the forehead, and consented to have
some tart after all. People were rather at fault who thought the old
aunt poor company for the clever young doctor.
In due time the sleek old coachman brought round the sleek old horse,
and they set off at a quiet trot along the level highroad.
"We must stop at Kirkstoun and speak to Hutchison about getting the
wall put up," said Mrs Hamilton. "Well, it is like losing an old
friend to see that tree! But we shall be at no loss for firewood
during the winter. We shall have some royal Yule-logs, well
seasoned, to welcome you back."
"Do," he said. "There is nothing like them after meagre London
fires; and you know we must make the most of my Christmas visit. If
you keep pretty strong, I must not come back till midsummer, when my
examination is over. It won't do to come a cropper at my time of
life. Just look at that wheat!"
The harvest had promised well before the storm began, but the corn
which was still uncut had been beaten down level with the ground, and
the "stocks" were sodden with rain.
"Most of the corn will have to be cut with the sickle now," said the
old lady. "Next Sunday won't be 'stooky Sunday' after all."
They drove on past Kilwinnie, discussing Dr Dudley's approaching
departure, and the date of his return.
"Why, that surely is a strange steamer," said Mrs Hamilton suddenly.
"I wonder if she has been disabled. Can you see?"
"There is no use asking me about anything that is more than a yard
off," he said. "I have left my eyes at home."
She handed him a field-glass, and he studied the vessel carefully.
"I don't know her from the Ark," he said, "but that is not
surprising."
Before returning the glass, he swept it half absently along the
coast, and he vaguely noticed two figures--a man's figure and a
woman's--stooping towards the ground.
He would have thought nothing of it, but the man's hat was off,
and--standing alone as they were on the sandy dunes--they suggested
to Dudley's mind the figures in Millet's "Angelus." He laughed at
the fancy, focussed the glass correctly, and looked at them again.
Just then the woman straightened herself up, and stood in silhouette
against sea and sky. He would have known that lithe young form
anywhere; but--all-important question--who was the man? Dudley
subjected the unconscious figure to a searching examination, but in
vain. To his knowledge he had never seen "the fellow" before.
Mrs Hamilton unwittingly came to his assistance. She took the glass
from him, and examined the vessel herself.
"No," she said, "I don't know her at all. I expect she is coming in
for repairs. Why, I believe that is Mr Brown, the draper at
Kilwinnie. You know he is quite a remarkable botanist, a burning and
shining light--under a bushel. I suppose that is one of his sisters
with him. They say he is never seen with any other woman."
"Confound his impudence!" muttered Dudley involuntarily.
"Why, Ralph, what do you mean? You talk to me about 'the effete
superstitions of an ancient gentry'; but even I have no objection to
a well-conducted tradesman amusing himself with a scientific hobby in
his spare time. It is a pity all young men of that class don't do
the same. It would keep them out of a lot of mischief."
"Yes," said Dudley, rather vaguely.
He did not enter into any explanation of his strangely inconsistent
utterance; but such silence on his part was too common an occurrence
in his intercourse with his aunt to call for any remark.
Dr Dudley was not in love with Mona. It was his own firm conviction
that he never would be really in love at all. All women attracted
him who in any respect or in any degree approached his ideal; the
devoted wife and mother, the artist, the beautiful dancer, the severe
student, the capable housewife, the eloquent platform speaker,--in
all of these he saw different manifestations of the eternal idea of
womanhood, and he never thought of demanding that one woman should in
herself combine the characteristics of all. He was content to take
each one for what she was, and to enjoy her in that capacity. He
keenly appreciated the society of women; but the moment he was out of
their presence--sometimes even before he was out of it--he found
himself analysing them as calmly as if they were men. Yet "analyse"
is scarcely the right word to use, for Dr Dudley read character less
by deliberate study than by a curious power of intuition, which few
would have predicated from a general knowledge of his mind and
character.
Mona would have been surprised at that time had she known how much
truer was his estimate of her than was that of the Sahib. Almost at
the first glance, he had understood something of both her simplicity
and her complexity, her reserve and her unconventionally; almost at
the first interview, he had realised that, whatever might be the case
in the future, at present the idea of sex simply did not exist for
her. She might well call him _simpatico_. He was appreciative
almost to the point of genius.
Certainly no woman had ever attracted him precisely as Mona did. She
attracted him so much that he had been fain to hold his peace about
her, and to wish that she were not "Miss Simpson's niece." And yet
there was a pathos and a piquancy about her, in her dingy
surroundings, which were not without their charm, and which appealed
to a latent sense of the fatherly in him, the very existence of which
he had scarcely suspected, for Dr Dudley was essentially a college
man.
"Surely, surely," he thought as he enjoyed his after-dinner cigar in
his tiny smoking-room, "she would never look at that fellow. She
could not be such a fool. If she had lived fifty years ago it would
have been all _en règle_, She would have married him as a matter of
course, and an excellent match for her too. She would in due course
have 'suckled fools and chronicled small-beer,' and at the present
moment her granddaughters would be holding entrance scholarships for
Newnham or Girton.
"But it's not too late for her yet. If only that dear old aunt of
mine were not such a confounded Conservative, I would get her to pay
for Miss Maclean's education. By Jove! it would be education in her
case, and not mere instruction, as it is with most of the learned
women one meets; but even if my old lady had the money to spare, she
would infinitely rather give Miss Maclean her linen and her best
bedroom furniture, and bestow her with a blessing on the draper!"
It did not occur to him to doubt that Mona was practically a fixture
at Borrowness. His aunt had certainly spoken as if she were, on the
one occasion when Mona had been mentioned between them. In truth,
the old lady had taken for granted that he was referring to the real
original niece, of whose departure for America she had never even
heard; and Ralph knew no one else in the neighbourhood who was at all
likely to give him incidental information about Miss Simpson's
assistant. She must of course have been brought up elsewhere--so
much at least he could tell from her accent; and, for the rest, he
had always maintained that, in these latter days, the daughters of
lower middle-class people stand a better chance of a good education
than any other girls in the community: it was not altogether
marvellous if one in a thousand made a good use of it.