CONFIDENCES.
It was a hot day in June, and "blessed Bloomsbury" was converted into
one great bakehouse. The flags in Gower Street radiated out a
burning glow; the flower-sellers had much ado to preserve the
semblance of freshness in their dainty wares; and those of the
inhabitants who were the proud possessors of outside blinds were an
object of envy to all their neighbours.
Mona was sitting at her writing-table, pen in hand, and with a
formidable blue schedule before her. She was looking out of the
window, but in her mind's eye the dusty, glaring street had given
place to the breezy ramparts of Castle Maclean; and, instead of the
noise of the traffic, she heard the soft plash of the waves.
Presently she laid down her pen, and leaned against the scorching
window-sill, with a smile, not on her lips, but in her eyes.
"My spirit and my God shall be
My seaward hill, my boundless sea,"
she quoted softly.
"What, Mona, caught poetising!" said Lucy unceremoniously entering
the room.
"Far from it," said Mona drily. "I was engaged on the most prosaic
work it is possible to conceive, filling in the schedule for my
Intermediate. It seems to me that I have spent the greater part of
my life filling in the schedule for my Intermediate. If I fail again
I shall employ an amanuensis for the sole purpose. Come and help me.
Full Christian name and surname?"
"Mona Margaret Maclean."
"Oh, drop the Margaret! I am prepared to take the chance of there
being another Mona Maclean. Age, last birthday?"
"Ninety-nine."
"No doubt I shall fill that into an Intermediate schedule some day,
but not yet awhile. I wonder if they will have reformed the
Practical Chemistry by that time? Or will the dear old M.B. Lond.
have lost its _cachet_ altogether? It is warm to-day, is it not?"
"Frightfully! I met Miss Lascelles just now, and she informed me, in
her bell-like voice, that if we were quite civilised we should go
about without any clothes at all just now. I told her I hoped the
relics of barbarism would last out my time."
"Then I presume Miss Lascelles will not throw her pearls before swine
again. Are you going to hospital?"
"Not to-day. Hospital is unbearable in this weather. The air is
thick with microbes."
Mona looked at her friend reflectively. "Suppose you come down to
Richmond with me," she said, "and blow away a few of the microbes on
the river?"
"Oh, Mona, how lovely! But can you spare the time?"
"Yes, I began early to-day. But we will have some lunch first. In
the meantime I will sing you my last song, and you shall criticise."
"Are you still going on with your singing lessons? I can't think how
you find time for it."
"I think it saves time in the end. It is a grand safety-valve; and
besides--a woman is robbed of half her armour if she cannot use her
voice."
Her hands ran lightly up and down the keys of the piano, and she
began to sing Schubert's _Ave Maria_.
"Miss Dalrymple says that is my _chef-d'œuvre_," she said, when
she had finished. "What think you?"
But Lucy made no answer.
"Mona," she said a minute later, "do you think it is worth while to
go on the river, after all? It is rather a fag, and why should we?"
Her voice was husky, and suggestive of infinite weariness. Mona rose
from the piano, and deliberately, almost brutally, took the girl's
face between her hands, and turned it to the light. She was not
mistaken. The pretty eyes were dim with tears.
"Lucy," she said, "you and I have pretended long enough. What is the
use of friendship, if we never fall back upon it in time of need? I
want you to tell me what it was that spoilt your visit to Cannes."
"Nothing," said Lucy, with burning face, "unless, perhaps, my own
idiocy. Oh, Mona, you dear old bully, there is not anything to tell!
I thought I was always going to get the best of it with men, and now
a man has got the best of it with me. It's only fair. Now you know
the whole story. Despise me as much as you like."
"When I take to despising people, I imagine I shall have to begin
even nearer home than with my plucky little Lucy. Will it be any use
to tell me about it, do you think? Or is the whole story better
buried?"
"I can't bury it. And yet there is positively nothing to tell. When
I look back upon it all, I cannot honestly say that the flirtation
went any farther than half-a-dozen others have gone; but this time,
somehow, everything was different."
"Is he a friend of the Munros?"
Lucy nodded. "Yes--you know--Mr Monteith. He arrived at the hotel
the night of our first dance. I was wearing my mermaid costume for
the first time, and--I saw him looking at me again and again. He was
not particularly handsome, but there was a sort of bloom about him,
don't you know? He made me feel so common and work-a-day. And then
when I danced with him I felt as if I had never danced with a man in
my life before. I did not see very much of him;--Lady Munro was so
particular:--but one afternoon a party of us walked up to the chapel
on the hill, and he and I got apart from the others somehow. It was
the first time I had seen the Maritime Alps, and I never again saw
them as they were that day in the sunset light. It was like looking
into a golden future. Well, he went away. I was awfully
low-spirited for a day or two; but somehow, whenever I thought of
that evening on the hill, I felt as if the future was full of
beautiful possibilities. One day we went to Monte Carlo, and there I
met him again. He asked if I would like him to come back for a day
or two to Cannes, and I said I did not care. He never came.
Sometimes I wish I had begged him to,--yes, Mona, I have sunk as low
as that--and sometimes I think he must have read my poor little
secret all along, and I could kill myself for very shame. Oh, Mona,
I wish you could take me out of myself!"
"You poor little soul! Lucy, dear, it sounds very trite and
commonplace; but, by hook or by crook, you must get an interest in
your hospital work, and go at it as hard as ever you can."
"It is no use. I hate hospital. I wonder now how I ever could care
so much about prizes and marks and examinations. It is all such
child's-play."
"Yes; but sorrow is not child's-play, and pain and death are not
child's-play. It is only a question of working at it hard enough,
old woman. You are bound to become interested in it in time, and
that is the only way to get rid of yourself;--though it is strange
teaching, perhaps, to come from self-centred me. They say we women
of this generation have sacrificed a good deal of our birthright;
don't let us throw away the grand compensation, the power to light
our candles when the sun goes down. Do you remember Werther's
description of the country lass whose sweetheart forsakes her, taking
with him all the interest in her life? We at least have other
interests, Lucy, and we can, if we try hard enough, turn the key on
the suite of enchanted rooms, and live in the rest of the house."
"The rest of my house is a poky hole!"
Mona sighed sympathetically. "No matter," she said resolutely; "we
must just set to work, and make it something better than a poky hole."
Further conversation was prevented for the time by the entrance of
the luncheon-tray.
"Well, is it to be Richmond?" said Mona, when the meal was over.
Lucy blushed. "I have a great mind to go to hospital, after all,"
she said. "I don't think it is quite so hot as it was."
"No, I think there is a suspicion of a breeze. _Au revoir_! Come
back soon."
I wish I could honestly say that Mona profited as much by Lucy's
example as Lucy had by Mona's preaching; but I am forced to record
that she did not open a book, nor return to her little laboratory,
for the rest of the day. For a long time she sat in her
rocking-chair with a frown on her brow. "I wonder if he has only
been playing with her," she said--"the cad!" Then another thought
crossed the outskirts of her mind. At first it scarcely entered the
limits of her consciousness; but, like the black dog in _Faust_, it
went on and on, in ominous, ever-narrowing circles, and she was
forced to recognise that she must grapple with it sooner or later.
Then she put up her hands to cover her face, although there was no
one there to see, and the question sounded in her very ears--"What if
_he_ has only been playing with _me_?"
What then, Mona? Lock the door on the suite of enchanted rooms, and
live in the rest of the house! But she never thought of her advice
to Lucy. She threw herself on the couch, and lay there for a little
while in an agony of shame. After all her lofty utterances, had she
given herself away to a man who had not even asked for her? Why had
he not spoken just one word, to save her from this torture?
By some curious chain of associations the words flashed into her
mind--
"Denn, was man schwarz auf weiss besitzt,
Kann man getrost nach Hause tragen."
She laughed a little breathlessly, and drew her hand across her damp
forehead.
"I am a fool and a coward," she said; "I will ask Dr Alice Bateson to
give me a tonic. What do mere words matter, after all, between
people like him and me?"
She walked up to a calendar that hung on the wall, and carefully
counted the days till the second week in August. Then she sighed
regretfully.
"Poor little Lucy," she said, "what an unsympathetic brute she must
have thought me!"