FAREWELL TO BORROWNESS.
Two great honours were in store for Mona before she left Borrowness.
In the first place, the Misses Brown paid her a formal call. They
were arrayed in Sabbath attire, and were civil even to effusiveness;
but they did not invite Mona to their house, nor suggest another
excursion. Auntie Bell's remarks had had the intended effect of
making them feel very small; but, on reflection, they did not see
that they could have acted otherwise. It was a matter of comparative
indifference to them whether their brother married a rich woman or a
poor one; it was no part of their programme that he should marry at
all. They found it difficult to predict exactly how he would be
influenced by this fresh light on the situation; and, for the
present, they did not think it necessary to tell him anything about
it.
Some mysterious and exaggerated report, however, of "high
connections" must certainly have got wind, or I cannot think that the
second and greater honour would have fallen to Mona's share. It came
in the form of a note on thick hand-made paper, embossed with a
gorgeous crest
"Mr and Mrs Cookson request the pleasure of Miss Maclean's company to
dinner, etc."
Dinner! Mona had not "dined" for months. She tossed the note aside
with a laugh.
"If my friend Matilda has not played me false," she said--"and I
don't believe she has--this is indeed success!"
Her first impulse was to refuse, but she thought of Matilda's
disappointment; and she thought, too, that Dr Dudley, knowing what he
did of her relations with the girl, would think a refusal unworthy of
her; so she showed the note to Rachel.
"Of course you'll go," was Rachel's immediate reply to the unspoken
question. "But I do think, seeing how short a time we're to be
together, they might have asked me too!"
Mona did not answer. She was strongly tempted at that moment to
write and say she went nowhere without her cousin, but she could not
honestly agree that the Cooksons might have invited Rachel too.
She ended by going, dressed with the utmost care, that she might not
disappoint Matilda's expectations; and, on the whole, she was
pleasantly surprised. There was less vulgar display than she had
expected. Mrs Cookson was aggressively patronising, and Clarinda
almost rude, but for that Mona had been prepared. Mr Cookson cared
nearly as much for appearances as his wife did; but, as Mona had
guessed, there was good wood under all the veneer. He was much
pleased with Mona's appearance; his pleasure grew to positive liking
when she expressed a preference for _dry_ champagne; and when she
played some of Mendelssohn's _Lieder_, from Matilda's well-thumbed
copy, he became quite enthusiastic.
"I am afraid dear old Kullak's hair would stand on end, if he heard
me," Mona said to the eager girl at her elbow, "and he would throw my
music out of the window, as he did one day, when I thought I had
surpassed myself." But there were many stages of musical criticism
between Kullak and Mr Cookson.
"The girls have been playing those things to me for years," he said,
"but I never saw any sense in them before. It was all diddle-diddle,
twang-twang. Now, when you play them, bless me! I feel as I did
when Cook's man began to speak English to me, the first time I was at
a French railway station."
With Matilda's handsome brother, Mona did not get on so well.
"Getting tired of your hobby, Miss Maclean?" he said, standing in
front of her, and twirling his moustache.
Mona looked up with innocent eyes.
"Which hobby?" she said.
He laughed and changed the subject. He was not shy, but he had not
the courage to specify shopkeeping.
All evening Matilda followed Mona like a shadow; taking her hand
whenever she dared, and gazing up into her face with worshipping
eyes. "It is too lovely having you here," she said, "but I can't
forget it's the end of all things."
"Oh no, it is not," Mona answered. "You will be coming up to London
one of these days, and perhaps your mother will let you spend a few
days with me. In the meantime, I want you to spend a long afternoon
with me to-morrow."
The long afternoon was in some respects a trying one, but that and
most of the other farewells were over at length, and Mona was hard at
work packing up.
"What a lifetime it seemed, six months ago!" she said, "and now that
it is past---- And how little I ever dreamed that I should be so
sorry to go!"
She had to find room for quite a number of keepsakes, and she almost
wept over the heterogeneous collection. There were home-made
needle-books and pin-cushions from the girls who had come to her for
advice about bonnets, and situations, and husbands; there was a pair
of gaudy beaded footstools, which Rachel had got as a bargain at the
bazaar; there was a really beautiful Bible from the Bonthrons (how
Mona longed to show it to Dr Dudley!); and from Matilda Cookson there
was a wreath of shells and sea-weed picked up near Castle Maclean,
and mounted on cardboard, with these lines in the centre of the
wreath--
"FROM
M. C.
IN GRATEFUL MEMORY
OF
THE HAPPIEST HOURS OF HER LIFE."
The inspiration was a happy one, and it had been carried out with
much care, and a dash of art. Tradition and early education had of
course to put in their say; and they did it in the form of a massive
gold frame, utterly out of keeping with the simple wreath.
"Oh dear! why will people be so pathetic?" said Mona; but, if the
gifts had been priceless jewels, she could not have packed them with
tenderer care.
Then came the hardest thing of all, the parting with Rachel. A
bright and competent young woman had been engaged in Mona's place,
but Rachel could not be induced to hear a word in her favour.
"What's all that to me?" she sobbed; "it's not like one's own flesh
and blood. You'd better never have come!"
Mona felt sure that the edge of this poignant grief would very soon
wear off, but when the first bend in the railway had shut the limp,
flapping handkerchief out of sight, she sank back in the comfortless
carriage, feeling as if she had come to the end of a severe and
protracted campaign.
She was too exhausted to read, and was thankful that by some happy
chance she had no fellow-passengers. No mountains and fjords haunted
her memory now; but instead--changing incessantly like a
kaleidoscope--came a distorted phantasmagoria of perished elastic and
ill-assorted knitting-needles; red-cushioned pews and purple
bonnet-strings; suffering women in poor little homes; crowded bazaar
and whirling ball-room; rocky coast and frosted pines; and--steady,
unchanging, like the light behind the rattling bits of glass--the
wonderful, mystic glow of the suite of enchanted rooms.
Dusk was gathering when the train drew into the station. Yes; there
stood Doris and the Sahib. Doris was looking eagerly in the
direction of the coming train, and the Sahib was looking at Doris.
But what a welcome they gave the traveller! A welcome that drove all
the phantasmagoria out of her head, and made her forget that she was
anything other than Doris's sister, the friend of the Sahib,
and--something to somebody else.
"Ponies and pepper-pot still to the fore?" she said, as they crossed
the platform.
"Oh yes; but a horrible fear has seized me lately that the pepper-pot
is beginning to grow."
"Are you not coming with us?" Mona asked, as the Sahib arranged the
carriage-rug.
He looked down at his great athletic figure with a good-humoured
smile.
"How is it to be done?" he asked, "unless I put the whole toy in my
pocket--dolls and all. Miss Colquhoun has been kind enough to ask me
to dinner. I am looking forward to meeting you then."
Scarcely a word passed between the friends as they drove home, and
Mona was glad to lie down and rest until dinner-time.
"Welcome, Miss Maclean!" cried Mr Colquhoun as she entered the
drawing-room. "You've come in the very nick of time to give me your
opinion of a new microtome I want to buy. I could not have held out
another day. Why, I declare you are looking bonnier than ever!"
"She is looking five years younger," said Doris.
"Since we _are_ making personal remarks," said the Sahib, "I should
have said older, but that does not prevent my agreeing cordially with
Mr Colquhoun."
Mona's laugh only half concealed her rising colour.
"Older has it," she said, nodding to the Sahib. "Score!"
As they went in to dinner, she looked round at the unpretentious
perfection of the room and the table, with a long sigh of
satisfaction.
"There is no house in the world," she said, "where I have precisely
the sense of restfulness that I have here. Nothing jars; I don't
need to talk unless I like; and I can afford to be my very own self."
"That's a good hearing," said Mr Colquhoun heartily. "Have some
soup!"
The two gentlemen kept the ball going between them most of the time,
for Doris never talked much except in a _solitude à deux_. And yet
how intensely she made her presence felt, as she sat at the head of
the table,--sweet, gracious, almost childlike, her fair young face
scarcely giving a hint of the strength and enthusiasm that lay behind
it!
"I can hardly believe that I am to have you for a whole week," she
said, following Mona into her bedroom, and rousing the fire; "it is
too good to be true. And I am so glad you are going back to your
work!"
"So am I, dear," said Mona simply.
"Of course! I knew you would come back to the point you started
from."
Mona smiled. "You are determined not to make it a spiral, I see.
Ah, well! taking it as a circle, it is a bigger one than I imagined."
Her words would not have struck Doris but for the tone in which they
were unconsciously spoken.
"What has biggened it?" she said, looking up from the fire.
Mona's hands were clasped beneath her head on the low back of her
arm-chair, and her eyes were fixed on the ceiling.
"I don't know," she said. "Many things. How is Maggie getting on?"
"Famously. Laurie says she will make a first-rate cook. You should
have seen the child's face when I told her you were coming! I am so
grateful to you, Mona, for giving me a chance to help her. There is
so little that one can do!--that I can do at least! She is a sweet
little thing, and so pretty. When I think of that man----" her face
crimsoned, and she stopped short.
"Don't think of him, dear," said Mona. "It us no use; and, you know,
you must not spoil Maggie."
Doris bent low over the fire, and the tears glistened on her long
eyelashes. She tried to wink them away, but it was no use; and,
after all, there was only Mona there to see, and Mona was almost a
second self. She pressed her handkerchief hard against her eyes for
a moment, and then turned to her friend with a smile.
"What a time you must have had of it that night at the Wood! I _was_
proud of you!"
"I wish you had more cause, dear. My duties were simple in the
extreme."
"And the country doctor--what did he say when he found how you had
risen to the occasion?"
Mona's eyes were fixed on the ceiling again.
"I don't think he said anything that is likely to live in history. I
believe he ventured to suggest that Maggie might have some beef-tea."
This, as Dudley could have testified, was a pure fabrication.
"I don't suppose he would be man enough to admit it, but he must have
seen that you were in your proper place there--not he."
Mona opened her lips to reply, and then closed them again.
"Maggie has not been my only patient by any means," she said finally.
"I have had no end of practice. I assure you I might have set up my
carriage, if I had been paid for it all. Oh, Doris, it is sad work
sometimes!" and she told the story of the last patient she had had.
"Poor soul! Glad as I am that you have left that place, I don't know
how you could bring yourself to leave her."
"No more do I, quite."
"You could not have brought her into Edinburgh?"
Mona shook her head. "Too late!" she said.
"It must have been dreadful to give her over, after all, to a man. I
don't know how you could do it."
"That's because you don't know how kind he is, how he met me
half-way, and made my task easy. It was the Kilwinnie doctor, you
know, an elderly man." Mona sprang to her feet, and leaned against
the mantelpiece. "At the risk of forfeiting your esteem for ever,
Doris, I must record my formal testimony that the kindness I have met
with at the hands of men-doctors is almost incredible. When I think
how nice some of them are, I almost wonder that we women have any
patients at all!"
"_Nice!_" said Doris quietly, but with concentrated scorn. "It's
their _trade_ to be _nice_. I never consulted a man-doctor in my
life, and I never will; but if by any inconceivable chance I were
compelled to, I would infinitely prefer a boor to a man who was nice!"
Mona laughed. "Dear old niceness," she said, "I won't have him
abused. When all is said, he is so much more attractive than most of
the virtues. And before we banish him from the conversation,--how do
you like the Sahib?"
Doris's face brightened.
"_He_ believes in women-doctors," she said.
"Ay, and in all things lovely and of good report." Mona was
forgetting her resolution.
"He has very wholesome views on lots of subjects," Doris went on
reflectively.
"Have you seen much of him?"
"A good deal. He is very much interested in the things my father
cares about. I quite understand now what you meant when you said he
was the sort of man one would like to have for a brother."
This was disappointing, and Mona brought the conversation to a close.
Every day during her visit the Sahib came in for an hour or two,
sometimes to lunch or dinner, sometimes to escort "the girls" to a
lecture or concert. He was uniformly kind and brotherly to both, but
Mona fancied that at times he was sorely ill at ease.
"If only he would show a little common-sense," she thought, "and let
the matter drop altogether, what a relief it would be for both of us!"
But this was not to be.
On Sunday afternoon Doris had gone out to teach her Bible-class, Mr
Colquhoun was enjoying his weekly afternoon nap, and Mona was sitting
alone by the fire in the library, half lost in a mighty arm-chair,
with a book on her knee.
Suddenly the door opened, and the Sahib entered unannounced.
"You are alone?" he said, as though he had not counted on finding her
alone.
"Yes," said Mona, and she tried in vain to say anything more. It was
Sunday afternoon.
Somewhat nervously he lifted the book from her lap and glanced at the
title-page.
"Your choice of literature is exemplary," he said, seating himself
beside her.
"I am afraid the example begins and ends with the choice, then," said
Mona, colouring. "I have not read a line; I was dreaming."
He looked at her quickly.
"Miss Maclean," he said, making a bold plunge, "I have come for my
answer."
Mona raised her eyes.
"What answer do you want, Mr Dickinson?" she said quietly.
If the Sahib had been absolutely honest he would have replied, "Upon
my soul, I don't know!" but there are moments when the best of men
think it necessary to adapt the truth to circumstances. Before Mona
came to Edinburgh he had certainly regretted those hasty words of his
at the ball; but, now that he was in her presence again, now
especially that he was alone in her presence, the old charm returned
with all its force. Doris was a pearl, but Mona was a diamond; Doris
was spotless, but Mona was crystalline. If only he had met either of
these women three years ago, what a happy man he would have been!
The Sahib had lived a pure, straightforward life, and he was almost
indignant with Nature and the Fates for placing a man like him on the
horns of such a dilemma; but Nature has her freaks--and her revenges.
When he was alone with the pearl, the diamond seemed hard, and its
play of colours dazzling; when he was alone with the diamond--but no,
he could not admit that even the clearness and brilliancy of the
diamond suggested a want in the pearl.
"I am not a boy," he said hastily, almost indignantly, "not to know
my own mind."
True man as she knew him to be, his words rang false on Mona's
sensitive ear. She rose slowly from her chair and stood before the
fire.
"Nor am I a girl," she said, "not to know mine. It is no fault of
mine, Mr Dickinson, that you did not take my answer two months ago.
I can only repeat it now," and she turned to leave the room.
He felt keenly the injustice and justice of her anger; but he was too
honest to complain of the first without pleading guilty to the second.
"Considering all that has passed between us," he said simply, "I
think you might have said it less unkindly."
He was conscious of the weakness of the answer, but to her it was the
strongest he could have made. It brought back the brotherly Sahib of
former days, and her conscience smote her.
"Was I unkind?" she said, turning back. "Indeed, I did not mean to
be; but I thought you were honest enough, and knew me well enough, to
come and say you had made a mistake. I was hurt that you should
think me so small." She hesitated. "Sahib," she said, "Doris and I
have been friends ever since we were children, and no man has ever
known both of us without preferring her. I can scarcely believe that
any man will have the luck to win her, but I could not be jealous of
Doris----"
She stopped short. At Christmas she could have said the words with
perfect truth, but were they true now? The question flashed like
lightning through her mind, and the Sahib watched her with intense
interest while she answered it. Her face grew very pale, and her
lips trembled. She leaned her arm against the mantelpiece.
"Sahib," she said, "life gets so complicated, and it is so difficult
to tell what one is bound to say. You asked me if--if--there was
somebody else. There is somebody else; there was then. I did not
lie to you. I did not know. And even now--he--has not said----"
She broke off abruptly, and left the room.
The Sahib lifted up the book she had laid down, and carefully read
the title-page again, without really seeing one word. The question
had indeed been settled for him, and at that moment he would have
given wellnigh everything he possessed, if he could have been the man
to win and marry Mona Maclean.