A LOCUM TENENS.
The excitement was over, and every one was suffering from a profound
reaction. Rachel's cold was no better, and her temper was decidedly
worse; for although the sermons still lay on her table, both they and
the illness that had brought them into requisition had lost the charm
of novelty. However--like the ravages of drink in relation to the
efforts of temperance reformers--it was of course impossible to say
how much worse she might have been without them.
Mona had by no means escaped the general depression consequent on the
bazaar and the ball, and her cousin's querulousness was a heavy
strain upon her endurance. Fortunately, it had the effect of putting
her on her mettle. "I am certainly not fit to be a doctor," she
thought, "if I cannot bear and forbear in a simple little case like
this." So she went from shop to parlour, and from parlour to shop,
with a light step and a cheerful face, striving hard to keep Rachel
supplied with scraps of gossip that would amuse her without tempting
her to talk.
"Mrs Smith has come to inquire for you," she said, as she entered the
close little sitting-room. "Do you think you ought to see her? You
know you made your chest worse by talking to Mrs Anderson the other
day."
"And how am I to get well, I should like to know, mope, mope, moping
all by myself from morning till night? All these blessed days I've
sat here, while other folks were gallivanting about taking their
pleasure. It's easy for you to say, 'Don't see her,' after all the
ploy you've been having, and all the folk you are seeing in the shop
to-day."
"Very well, I will bring her up; but do you let her talk, and save
your voice as much as you can."
The interview was a long one, but it did not appear to have the
desired effect of improving Rachel's spirits.
"Upon my word," she said, when the visitor had gone, "I never knew
anybody so close as you are. One would think, after all the pleasure
you've been having, while I've been cooped up in the house, that
you'd be glad to tell me any bit of news."
"Why, cousin," laughed Mona, "what else have I been doing? I have
even told you what everybody wore!"
"The like of that!" said Rachel scornfully; "and you never told me
you got the word of her ladyship? I wonder what Mrs Smith would
think of me knowing nothing about it?"
Mona was puzzled for a moment. "Oh," she said suddenly, "Lady
Kirkhope! She only said a few words to me."
"And how many would she say--the like of her to the like of you! I
suppose you think because your mother's sister is married on a Sir,
that their ladyships are as common as gooseberries. Much your
mother's sister has done for you--leaving you to take all sorts of
maggots into your head! But I've no doubt you think a sight more of
her than you do of me, for all the time you've been with me."
This was the first time the Munros had been mentioned between the
cousins, and Mona was not anxious to pursue the subject. "Your
mother's sister married on a Sir." Oh, the sordidness of it!
Mona had refused to see the Sahib again during his stay at the
Towers, and although she could not for a moment regret her refusal,
she was conscious of a distinct sense of emptiness in her life.
There was no doubt that for the moment she had lost her friend; and
perhaps things might never again be as they had been before his
clumsy and lamentable mistake. But although he was lost to her
directly, she was only now beginning to possess him through Doris.
"He will see her constantly for the next two months," she thought,
"and he cannot but love her. He loves her now, if he only knew it.
It is absurd to suppose that he ever looked at me with that light in
his eyes. He analyses me, and admires me deliberately, but Doris
bowls him over. Whether she will care for him, is another question;
but I am sure he at least possesses the prime merit in her eyes of
being a Sir Galahad; and by the doctrine of averages, a magnificent
son of Anak like that cannot be refused by two sensible women within
the space of two months. He will consider himself bound to me of
course, but he will fall in love with her all the faster for that;
and at the appointed time he will duly present himself in much fear
and trembling lest I should take him at his word. How amusing it
will be!" And a cold little ray of sunshine stole across the chill
grey mists of her life.
That day Rachel's appetite failed for the first time. Her face was
more flushed than usual, and her moist, flabby hands became dry and
hot. In some uneasiness Mona produced her clinical thermometer, and
found that her cousin's temperature had run up to 102°.
"You are a little feverish, dear," she said lightly. "I don't think
it is going to be anything serious, but it will be wise to go to bed
and let me fetch the doctor. Shall I send Sally or go myself?"
"Send Sally," was the prompt reply, "and let him find out for himself
that I am feverish. Don't tell him anything about that machine of
yours. He'd think it wasn't canny for the like of you."
"I will do as you please, of course; but lots of people have
thermometers now, who know no more of medicine--than that spoon. Not
but what the spoon's experience of the subject has been both varied
and profound!" she added, smiling, as she remembered Rachel's love
for domestic therapeutica.
Rachel smiled too at the feeble little joke. The knowledge that she
was really ill had improved her spirits wonderfully, partly by
gratifying her sense of self-importance, and partly by making the
occasion seem worthy of the manifestation of a little practical
Christianity.
It was evening when the doctor arrived, and then, of course, he could
say but little. Milk diet, a cooling draught, no visitors, and
patience. He would call about noon the next day.
"I fear you are as much in need of rest and care as my cousin is,"
said Mona, when a fit of coughing interrupted his final directions to
her at the door.
"I am fairly run off my feet," he said. "I have had a lot of
night-work, and now this bout of frivolity has given me a crop of
bronchial attacks and nervous headaches. I have got a friend to take
my work for a fortnight, but he can't come for a week or ten days
yet. I must just rub along somehow in the meantime. A good sharp
frost would do us all good; this damp weather is perfectly killing."
As if in answer to his wish, the frost came that night with a will.
In the morning Mona found a tropical forest on her window-panes; and
in a moment up ran the curtains of the invisible. The shop and the
dingy house fell into their true perspective, and she felt herself a
sentient human being--dowered with the glorious privilege of living.
Rachel was no better, and as soon as Mona had made her patient and
the room as neat and fresh as circumstances would allow, she set out
to do the marketing. "Send Sally," Rachel said; but customers never
came before ten, and Mona considered it the very acme of squalor to
leave that part of the housekeeping to chance, in the shape of a
thriftless, fusionless maid-of-all-work. She walked quickly through
the sharp frosty air, and came in with a sprinkle of snow on her dark
fluffy fur, and a face like a half-blown rose.
"The doctor has just gone up-stairs," whispered Sally, and Mona
hastened up to find, not Dr Burns, but Dr Dudley. She was too much
taken by surprise to conceal the pleasure she felt, and, much as
Dudley had counted on this meeting, his brain well-nigh reeled under
the exquisite unconscious flattery of her smile. It was a minute
before he could control himself sufficiently to speak.
"I am afraid Dr Burns is ill," said Mona, as she took his hand.
"Yes, poor fellow! He is very much below par altogether, and he has
taken a serious chill, which has settled on his lungs. I fear it
will be some time before he is about again. A substitute will be
here in a week, I hope; and in the meantime, _nolens volens_, I am
thrust into the service. Thank you, Miss Simpson, that will do, I
think." He took the thermometer to the light, and then gave Mona a
few directions. "You have not got one of these things, I suppose?"
he said.
"I never even had one in my hand," put in Rachel hastily.
"You know you can easily get one," added Mona severely.
"Oh, it's of no consequence. I think there is no doubt that this is
only a feverish cold. I wish I had no more serious case. Go on with
the mixture, but I should like Miss Simpson to take some quinine as
well. I have no doubt she will be about again in a few days."
He wrote a prescription--very unnecessarily, Mona thought,--and then
she followed him down-stairs. When they reached the shop he
deliberately stopped, and turned to face her. He did not speak; his
mind was in a whirl. He was thinking no longer of the beauty of her
mind, and character, and face; he had ceased even to admire. He only
knew that he wanted her, that he had found her out, that she was his
by right; every other thought and feeling was merged in the
consciousness that he was alone with the woman he loved. Oh, how
good it was to lose one's self at last in a longing like this!
His back was turned to the light, and Mona wondered why her
"playfellow" was so silent.
"This is an unfortunate holiday for you," she said.
He shook himself out of his dream, and answered gaily, "Oh, I don't
know. This sort of thing is a rest in one way at least,--it does not
call the same brain-cells into requisition, and it gives me a little
anticipation of the manhood my cursed folly has postponed."
Of course the humble words were spoken very proudly; and he looked
every inch a man even to eyes that still retained a vivid picture of
the Sahib. His shoulders seemed more broad and strong in the heavy
becoming Inverness cape, he held himself more upright than formerly,
and his face had gained an expression of quiet self-confidence.
"Work suits you," said Mona, smiling.
"That it does!" He brought his closed fist vehemently down upon the
counter. "When my examination is over, Miss Maclean, I shall be a
different being,--in a position to do and say things that I dare not
do and say now."
He spoke with emphasis, half hoping she would understand him, and
then broke off with sudden bitterness--
"Unless I fail!"
"_You_ fail!" laughed Mona.
"Ah! so outsiders always say. I can assure you, you have no idea how
chancy those London examinations are."
The colour rushed into her face. A dozen times she had tried to ask
Rachel's permission to tell him all; a dozen times the question, "Why
him rather than any one else?" had sealed her lips. What if she were
to make a clean breast of it now, and risk her cousin's anger
afterwards! She could never hope for such another opportunity.
She was determined to use it, to tell him she knew the chances of
those examinations only too well; but to her surprise she found the
confession far more difficult than the one she had made to the Sahib.
At the very thought of it, her heart beat hard and her breath came
fast.
"This is too absurd!" she thought, in fierce indignation at her own
weakness. "What do I care what he thinks? But if I cannot speak
without panting as if I were trying to turn a mill, I must hold my
peace. It is of little consequence, after all, whether he knows or
not."
"Do you know," said Dudley deliberately, "I thought for a moment that
I had come into the wrong house this morning? I never should have
recognised your--quarters."
"Did you notice the difference? You must have a quick eye and a good
memory."
Notice the difference! He had noticed few things in the last six
months that had given him half the pleasure of that sweeping
reformation. Dudley was no giant among men; but, if he cared for
name and outward appearance, at least he cared more for reality; and,
I think, the sight of that fresh, business-like, creditable shop was
a greater comfort to his mind than it would have been to see his
Cinderella at the ball. He had ceased to regret that Mona was a
shopkeeper, but he was not too much in love to be glad that she was a
good shopkeeper.
"I knew your influence was bound to tell in the long-run," he said.
"I suppose Miss Simpson did not greatly encourage you to interfere?"
"No, but she has been very good. I don't believe I should have left
an assistant as free a hand as she left me. I hope you admire my
window. I call it a work of art."
"I call it something a great deal better than that," he said rather
huskily, as he held out his hand. "Good morning."
"Bless her!" he said to himself as he jumped into his gig. "She
never apologises for the shop--never speaks as if it were something
beneath her. My God, what a snob I am!"
As soon as he was gone, Mona raised the hand he had shaken, and
looked at it deliberately. Then she took a few turns up and down the
shop. "I never mean to marry," she said very slowly to herself, "and
I don't suppose I shall ever know what it is to be in love; but it
would be a fine test of a man's sincerity to see whether he would be
willing to take me simply and solely as I am now--as Rachel Simpson's
assistant."
The next day was Sunday, and Rachel was so much better that she
insisted on Mona's going to church.
"Folk will be thinking it is something catching," she said, "and by
the time I'm down-stairs again, there'll be nobody in the shop to
talk to."
It was a bright, crisp morning, but Mona found the service rather a
barren one.
"I suppose the doctor has been here," she said with marked
indifference, when she re-entered Rachel's room.
"Yes; and very pleased he was to find me so well. He says I'm to get
up to tea to-day, and go out for ten minutes to-morrow, if all's
well. He is very busy, and he's not to come back unless we send for
him. He's not one of them that tries how many visits they can put
in."
"No," said Mona drearily, and then she roused herself with an effort.
"I am so glad you are better, dear," she said. "Mr Stuart is coming
to see you to-morrow afternoon."