"LEAVES OF GRASS."
The next day, while Mrs Hamilton was enjoying her afternoon nap,
Dudley seated himself as usual with his books; but his head ached,
and he soon gave up the attempt to study.
"For every hour I work to-day, I shall waste two to-morrow," he said;
and taking a volume of poetry from the shelf, he strode down to the
beach.
Other people besides Mona knew of "Castle Maclean"; perhaps some
people had even discovered her predilection for it. Dudley reached
the spot in about half the time that she would have taken, and
scrambled up the huge uneven steps. There, comfortably ensconced at
the top, sat the subject of his thoughts; a sketch-book open on her
lap, and a well-used, battered paint-box at her side. Dudley was too
much of an artist to dabble in colours himself, but he knew one
paint-box from another, and he was duly impressed.
"I beg your pardon!" he said. "So you know this place?"
"It is my private property," she said with serene dignity, very
different from her bright, alert manner in the shop,--"Castle
Maclean."
He bowed low. "Shall I disturb you if I stay?"
"Not in the least." She put her head on one side, and critically
examined her sky. "Not unless your hat absolutely comes between me
and my subject."
"Change in the weather, is not it?"
"Has it not been glorious!" she said enthusiastically, laying down
her brush. "This rocky old coast was in its element. It was
something to live for, to see those great waves dashing themselves
into gigantic fountains of spray."
"You don't mean to say you were down here?"
"Every minute that I could spare. Why not? A wetting does one no
harm in a primitive world like this."
She glanced at his book and went on with her painting. Neither of
them had come there to talk, and why should they feel called upon to
do it?
"This is scarcely a lady's book," he said,--though he would not have
thought this remark necessary to a "Girton girl,"--"but, if I may, I
think I could find one or two things that you might like to hear."
She smiled, well pleased. She had not forgotten how
"Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,"
had rolled out in his musical bass.
He read on for half an hour or so. Mona soon forgot her sketch and
sat listening, her head resting on her hand.
He closed the book abruptly; he wanted no verbal thanks.
"And now," he said, "for my reward. May I look at your sketches?"
She coloured awkwardly. How could she show them? The scraps from
Norway, and Italy, and Saxon Switzerland, might be explained; but
what of the memory sketches of "the potent, grave, and reverend
signiors" who had examined her at Burlington House? What of the
caricature, which had amused the whole School, of Mademoiselle Lucy
undergoing a Viva? What of her _chef-d'œuvre_, the study of the
dissecting-room?
"I promised Rachel that I would keep the dreadful secret," she said
ironically to herself, "and I am not going to break my word." But it
cost her an effort to refuse. Some of the sketches were, in their
way, undeniably clever, and she would have enjoyed showing them to
him; and, moreover, she intensely disliked laying herself open to a
charge of false modesty.
"I am sorry to seem so churlish," she said, "but I would rather not
show you the book."
He was surprised, but her tone was absolutely final. There was
nothing more to be said.
"If you like," she said shyly, "I will pay you back in a poor
counterfeit of your own coin. I will read to you, and you shall
close your eyes and listen to the plash of the waves. That is one of
my ideals of happiness."
She took the book from the rock and began to read; but he did not
close his eyes. Her voice was not a remarkable one like his own; but
it was sympathetic, and her reading suggested much more than it
expressed. He enjoyed listening to her, and he was interested in her
choice of a poem; but he liked best to watch her mobile, sensitive
face.
"One effort more, my altar this bleak sand;
That Thou, O God, my life hast lighted,
With ray of light, steady, ineffable, vouchsafed of Thee,
Light rare, untellable, lighting the very light,
Beyond all signs, descriptions, languages,"--
She seemed to be repeating the words from memory, not reading them;
for her eyes were fixed on the hills beyond the sea, and her face was
kindled for the moment into absolute beauty. Then, for the first
time, a distinct thought passed through Dudley's mind that he would
like the mother of his children to have a face like that.
"She would make a man noble in spite of himself," he thought; but
aloud he said--
"You knew that poem?"
"Yes."
"Did you know those I read?"
"Not all of them. I knew _Vigil Strange_ and _My Captain_."
There was silence between them for a few moments.
"Have you the smallest idea," he asked suddenly, "how you are
throwing yourself away?"
She coloured, and was about to answer, but just then a gust of wind
caught a page of her sketch-book, and blew it over.
She laughed, glad of an excuse for changing the subject.
"The Fates have apparently decreed," she said, "that you are to see
_this_ sketch," and she held it out to him.
It represented a red-cheeked, sonsy-faced girl, standing before a
mirror, trying on a plain little bonnet. On all sides were
suggestions of flowers and feathers, and brilliant millinery; and in
the girl's round eyes was an expression of positive horror.
Beneath the picture Mona had written, "Is life worth living?"
Dudley laughed.
"That looks as if there ought to be a story connected with it," he
said.
"Only a bit of one," and she gave him a somewhat cynical account of
her little scullery-maid.
"I withdraw my remark," he said gravely. "You are not throwing
yourself away. Would that we were all using ourselves to as much
purpose!"
"Don't make me feel myself more of a fool than I do already."
"Fool! I was wishing there were a few more fools in the place to
appreciate you--Ruskin for one!"
"I did try to comfort myself with recollections of Ruskin," she said,
with a suspicion of tears in her laughter; "but I could only think of
the bit about the crossing-sweeper and the hat with the feather."
He smiled. "You do Ruskin too much honour when you judge him by an
isolated quotation," he said. "I thought that distinction was
reserved for the Bible."
"But that is only the beginning of the story," said Mona. "I have
had several orders since for similar bonnets--more from the mothers
than from the girls themselves, I am sorry to say,--and among them
the one that suggested the sketch. Have you ever seen Colonel
Lawrence's quaint old housekeeper up at the wood?"
"Oh yes. Everybody knows the Colonel's Jenny."
"Her daughter went away to service some time ago, and came home to
visit her mother the other day, with all her wages on her back, as
Jenny expressed it,--such a poor, little, rosy-cheeked, tawdry bit of
humanity! The mother marched her off to me in high dudgeon, and
ordered a bonnet 'like Polly's at the Towers'; and that is exactly
how the poor child looked when she tried it on. I could have found
it in my heart to beg her off myself. Talk of breaking in a
butterfly!"
"Yes," he said. "One is inclined to think that human butterflies
should be allowed to be butterflies--till one sees them too near the
candle!"
"If we knew whether it were really worth while trying to save them,"
said Mona, "I suppose we should indeed 'know what God and man is'; as
it is, we can only act on impulse. But this little Maggie does not
belong to the most puzzling class. She is a good little thing, after
all. I should not wonder if she had the germ of a soul stowed away
somewhere."
"She is a Maggie, is she?" he said, returning with a smile to the
baby-face in the picture. "They are all Maggies here. One gets
perfectly sick of the name."
"Does one?" said Mona. "Queen Margaret is a heroine of mine, and my
very own saint to boot."
"Are you a Margaret?" he said. "You look like one. It is partly
because the name is so beautiful that one resents that senseless
'Maggie.'"
Mona was just going to say that with her it was only an unused second
name; but his face had grown very grave again, and she did not wish
to jar on his mood. How little we can tell in life what actions or
omissions will throw their light or shadow over our whole future!
"What right have we," he said musingly at last, "to say what is
normal and what is not? How can we presume to make one ideal of
virtue the standard for all? Look round the world boldly--not
through the medium of tinted glass--and choose at random a dozen
types. If there be a God at all, it is awful to think of His
catholicity!"
Mona looked up with a smile.
"Forgive me, Miss Maclean," he said. "I have no right to talk like
that."
"Why not? Is life never to be relieved by a strong picturesque
statement? It takes a lot of conflicting utterances to make up a
man's _Credo_. When I want neat, little, compatible sentences, I
resort to my cookery-book. Did you think," she added mischievously,
"that I would place you on a pedestal with Ruskin and my Bible, and
judge you by an isolated quotation?"
He laughed, and then grew suddenly grave.
"Talking," he said, "is _mein Verderben_. That is why I have chosen
a profession that will give me no scope for it--not that I seem
likely to make much of the profession, now that it is chosen! You
see--my circumstances have been peculiar, and my education has been
different in some respects from that of most men." He hesitated, and
then, without a word of introduction, urged by some irresistible
impulse, he plunged into the story of his life. Perhaps he was
anxious to see how it looked in the eyes of a capable woman;
certainly he regarded Mona as a wholly exceptional being, in his
intercourse with whom he was bound by no ordinary rules.
"I left school when I was sixteen," he said, "laden with prizes and
medals and all that sort of thing. It was my misfortune, not my
fault, that I had a good deal of money to spend on my education, and
a free hand as to the spending of it. I am inclined sometimes to
envy fellows whose parents leave them no voice in the matter at all.
"I went first to Edinburgh University for three years, and took my
M.A. There are worse degrees in the world than an Edinburgh M.A. It
means no culture, no University life, no rubbing up against one's
fellow-men; but it does mean a solid foundation of all-round, useful
information, which no man need despise, and which is not heavy enough
to extinguish the slumbering fires of genius should they chance to
lie beneath. Of course, it is impossible to tell _a priori_ what
will prove an _education_ to any man.
"When I left Edinburgh, I announced my intention of going to
Cambridge. The classical professor wanted me to go in for the
classical tripos, and the mathematical professor urged me to stick to
the 'eternal,' of which he believes mathematics to be the sole
manifestation granted to erring humanity. But I was determined to
have a go at Natural Science. There was a great deal of loose
scientific talk in the air, and people seemed to make so much of a
minimum of knowledge that I fancied three years of conscientious work
would take a man straight in behind the veil. I went to work
enthusiastically at first, while hope was strong, more quietly later
when I realised that at most I might move back the veil an inch or
two, while infinity lay behind; that humanity might possibly in three
hundred years accomplish what I had hoped to do in three. Of course,
I might have added my infinitesimal might of labour and research, but
I was not specially fitted for it. The difficulty all my life has
been to find out what I was specially fitted for. However, I took my
degree."
"Tripos?" said Mona.
"Third Class," he said contemptuously. "But I was not reading for a
place. And, indeed, I grew more in those three years than in any
other three of my life. Possibly it was the life at Cambridge.
Possibly I might have accomplished more on the plains of Thibet."
He drew a long breath. He had wellnigh forgotten who his companion
was, and talked on to give vent to his feelings. After all, it
mattered little if she missed a point here and there. She would
grasp as much of the spirit of the story as most confessors do.
"Well, then, I travelled for a couple of years. I studied at
Heidelberg, and Göttingen, and Jena. I heard good music nearly every
night, and I saw all the cathedrals and picture-galleries. Then I
came home, determined to choose a profession. I chose medicine,
mainly for the reason I gave you, and I studied in London for the
examinations of the colleges. Why did I not choose the University?
Would that I had! But you see I was past the age when boys 'get up'
a subject with ease, and walk through brilliant examinations; and,
moreover, in spite of a popular superstition to the contrary effect,
two years of travel and art, and music and philosophy, do not tend to
furbish up a man's mathematics and classics and natural science.
"Six months after I began to study I loathed medicine. To use a
favourite expression here, it was neither fish, flesh, fowl, nor guid
red herrin'. It was neither art, science, literature, nor
philosophy. It was a hideous pot-pourri of all four, with a
preponderating, overwhelming admixture of arrant humbug. Hitherto I
had worked fairly well, but there had never been any moral value in
my work. It was done _con amore_. Now that the _amor_ failed, I
scarcely worked at all. I suppose it was one of Nature's revenges
that, as I had gone into a profession because it demanded silent
work, I talked more in those years than at any other period of my
life. I read all things rather than medicine, I moved in any society
rather than the medical world, but I rubbed along somehow. I passed
my first examination by a fluke, and I passed the second likewise. I
never was at a loss for a brilliant theory to account for erroneous
facts, and with some examiners that goes a long way. When it came to
preparing for my Final, I hated surgery because I had scamped my
anatomy. Medicine might have shared the same fate, but I had done a
good deal of physiology in Gaskell's laboratory at Cambridge--more
than was necessary, in fact--for the supposed connection between
physiology and medicine is a purely fictitious one. The student has
to take a header blindfold from the one to the other. It is almost
incredible, but when I went up for my Final in due course, I did
scrape through by the skin of my teeth. If ever any man got through
those three examinations without a spill on the strength of less
knowledge than I did, I should like to shake that man's hand. He
deserves to be congratulated.
"The next thing was to look out for a practice, or a _locum tenency_;
but, before doing so, I went down to Cambridge to visit some friends.
While there I saw a good deal of M'Diarmid, the Professor of Anatomy.
I don't know if you ever heard of him, but if ever a man made literal
dry bones live, he does. Thoroughgoing to the soles of his boots--a
monument of erudition--and yet with a mind open to fresh light as
regards the minutest detail."
Mona flushed crimson, but fortunately he was not looking. This was
indeed approaching dangerous ground. She was strongly inclined to
think that the professor in question was one of "the potent, grave,
and reverend signiors" in her sketch-book.
"It was so odd," continued Dudley. "All my life, while other men
walked in shadow, I had seemed to see the light of the eternal, but
in medicine I had missed it absolutely. Ah, well! one word will do
for a thousand. I am afraid I wrote my 'Sorrows of Werther' once
more, for the last time in this world let us hope, and then I began
all over again to work for a London degree."
He stopped with an unpleasant sensation of self-consciousness. "And
I wonder why I have inflicted all this on you," he said, a little
coldly.
"I think it was a grand thing to do--to begin over again." said Mona.
"You will make a magnificent doctor when you do take your degree, and
none of those past years will be lost. You will be a famous
professor yourself some day. How far have you got?"
"I passed the Matriculation almost immediately, and the Preliminary
Scientific six months after. In July, I go in for my Intermediate,
and two years later comes my Final. Once the Intermediate is over, a
load will be taken off my mind. It is all grist that comes to one's
mill after that, but it requires a little resolution to plod along
side by side with mere schoolboys, as most of the students are."
"It must be an excellent thing for the schoolboys."
She was wishing with all her heart that she could tell him her story
in return for his. Why had she made that absurd promise to Rachel?
And what would Rachel think if she claimed permission to make an
exception in Dr Dudley's favour? It was all too ridiculous, and when
she began to think of it, she was inclined to wonder whether she
really was the Mona Maclean who had studied medicine in London.
"Why, it is after five," said Dudley suddenly, looking at his watch.
Mona sprang to her feet, and then remembered with relief that, as
Rachel was going out to tea, she need not be punctual.
"But I ought to have been in time to prevent her wearing the scarlet
cap," she thought with a pang of self-reproach.
"Shall you go on with your sketch to-morrow?" asked Dudley, as they
walked up to the road.
"To-morrow? No; my cousin is going to take me to St Rules."
"I thought Miss Simpson was your aunt?"
"No, she is my father's cousin--one of the very few relatives I have."
Dudley was relieved, he scarcely knew why.
"I might have known my old lady was not likely to know much about any
one in the village," he thought.
"Have you never been to St Rules?" he said aloud. "That is a treat
in store. Almost every stone in it has a history. But I have an
appointment now with my aunt in Kirkstoun--I hate saying good-bye,
don't you?"
"I do."
"I mean quite apart from the parting involved."
"Oh, quite!"
He looked at her with curious eagerness, and then held out his hand.
Apparently he had no objection to that.
"Well, so long!"
"_Sans adieu!_"
Mona sighed as she re-entered the dreary little sitting-room.
However freely she might let the breezes of heaven blow through the
house in Rachel's absence, the rooms seemed to be as musty as ever
five minutes after the windows had been shut.
The autumn evenings were growing chilly, but the white curtains, by
the laws of the Medes and Persians, had to remain on duty a little
longer; and great as was Mona's partiality for a good fire, the
thermometer must have registered a very low figure indeed before she
could have taken refuge in Sally's kitchen--at any other time than on
Saturday afternoon, immediately after the weekly cleaning.
Tea was on the table. It had stood there since five o'clock.
Mona sighed again.
"If one divides servants," she said, "into three classes--those, who
can be taught to obey orders in the spirit, those who can be taught
to obey orders in the letter, and those who cannot be taught to obey
orders at all--Sally is a bad second, with an occasional strong
tendency to lapse into the third. I wish she had seen fit to lapse
into the third to-night."
She pushed aside the cold buttered toast, helped herself to overdrawn
tea, and glanced with a shiver at the shavings in the grate. In
another moment her sorrows were forgotten. Leaning against the glass
shade of the gilt clock on the mantelpiece, smiling at her across the
room, stood a fair, fat, friendly budget in Lady Munro's handwriting.
"_Gaudeamus igitur!_" Mona seized the tea-cosy, tossed it up to the
ceiling, and caught it again with an affectionate squeeze.
How delightful that the letter should come when she was alone! Now
she could get the very maximum of enjoyment out of it. She stalked
it stealthily, lest it should "vanish into thin air" before her eyes,
took hold of it gingerly, examined the post-mark, smelt the faint
perfume which, more than anything else, reminded her of the beautiful
gracious woman in the rooms at Gloucester Place, and then opened the
envelope carefully with her penknife.
She took out the contents, and arranged her three treasures on the
table. Yes, there were three. They had all written. There was Sir
Douglas's "My dear girl"; Lady Munro's "My darling Mona"; and
Evelyn's "My very own dearest friend."
They were not clever letters at all, but they were affectionate and
characteristic; and Mona laughed and cried over them, as she sat
curled up in the corner of the stiff unyielding sofa. Sir Douglas
was bluff and fatherly, and to the point. Lady Munro underlined
every word that she would have emphasised in speaking. "Douglas was
so dull and so cross after we parted from you. In fact even now he
is constantly talking of you--_constantly_." Evelyn gave a detailed
circumstantial account of all they had done since Mona had left
them,--an account interspersed with many protestations of affection.
"Mother and I start for Cannes almost immediately," she wrote. "Of
course Father cannot be induced to leave Scotland as long as there is
a bird on the moors. Write me long letters as often as ever you can.
You do write such lovely letters." All three reminded Mona
repeatedly of her promise to spend the whole of next summer with them
somewhere.
"How good they are!" Mona kept repeating. "How good they are!"
When Mona was young, like every well-conducted school-girl, she had
formed passionate attachments, and had nearly broken her heart when
"eternal friendships" failed. "I will expect no friendship, no
constancy in life," she had said. "I will remember that here I have
no continuing city--even in the hearts of the people I love. I will
hold life and love with a loose grasp."
And even now, when increasing years were making her more healthily
human, true friendship and constancy had invariably called out a
feeling of glad surprise. At every turn the world was proving kinder
to her than she had dared to hope.
She was still deep in the letters when her cousin came home.
"Well," said Rachel, "I've just heard a queer thing. You know the
work I had last week, teaching Mrs Robertson the stitch for that
tidy? Well, she had some friends in to tea last night, and she never
asked me! Did you ever hear the like of that? She thinks she's just
going to get her use out of me!"
"I expect, dear," said Mona, "that the stitch proved more than she
could manage after all, and she was afraid to confess it."
"Well, I never did know any one so slow at the crochet," said Rachel
resentfully, releasing the wonderful red cap from its basket. "She
may look for some other body to help her the next time. But we'd
better take our porridge and be off to our beds, if we're going to St
Rules to-morrow."
Mona read her letters once more in her own room, and then another
thought asserted itself unexpectedly.
"I wish with all my heart that I could have shown him the
sketch-book, and made a clean breast of it," she said to her trusty
friend in the glass; "and yet"--her attitude changed--"why should he
stand on a different footing from everybody else?"
The face in the glass looked back defiantly, and did not seem
prepared with any answer.