AT LAST!
Neither Ralph nor Mona slept much that night.
Mr Reynolds had said nothing to his "elder daughter" about his
conversation with Dr Dudley. He had sufficient confidence in her
absolute honesty to believe that she would do herself more justice if
she were taken unprepared; but Ralph's manner at the Munros' had been
a revelation in itself, and Mona felt sure that night that, for
better or worse, some great change had taken place in his feelings
towards her.
"Let me not lose my pride!" she cried. "Nothing can alter the fact
that he has treated me cruelly--cruelly."
She had promised to go down to Surbiton to spend a day or two with a
fellow-student, and, unwilling as she was to leave London at this
juncture, she determined to keep her promise to the letter.
So when Ralph knocked at her door in the early afternoon, he was met
by the news that she had gone to the country till Monday. She had
started only a few minutes before, and had left no address; but the
maid had heard her tell the cabman to drive to Waterloo.
Two minutes later Ralph was tearing through the streets in a hansom.
He had wasted time enough, fool that he was! Nothing should induce
him now to wait another hour.
Just outside the station he met Lucy.
"Mona is starting for Surbiton," she said. "I am hurrying to catch a
train at Cannon Street."
"Alone?"
Lucy did not ask to whom he referred. "Yes," she said.
"Thank you." He lifted his hat, and turned away without another
word. With the reckless speed of a schoolboy he tore through the
station, and overtook the object of his search as she passed inside
the rail of the booking office.
"Two first-class tickets for Surbiton," he said, before she had time
to speak.
"One third-class return for Surbiton," said Mona, with a dignity that
strangely belied the beating of her heart.
"No hurry, sir," said the man, stamping Mona's ticket first. "You
have three minutes yet."
"I have got your ticket," Dudley said, joining Mona on the platform.
"You will come with me."
The words were spoken almost more as a command than as a request.
("Let me not lose my pride!")
"Thank you very much." she said; "I never travel first-class."
"You will to-day."
Her only answer was to open the door of a third-class carriage.
Dudley bit his lip--then smiled. "Do you _prefer_ a
smoking-carriage?" he said.
She laughed nervously, and, moving on to the next, entered it without
a word. Ralph longed to follow her, but he prudently thought better
of it.
With punctilious courtesy he saw her into the carriage; and then,
closing the door, he lifted his hat and walked away.
Mona turned very pale.
"I cannot help it," she said. "He has treated me cruelly, and he
cannot expect me to forget it all in a moment." But I think it would
have done Ralph's heart good if he could have seen the expression of
her face.
Very slowly the train moved off, but Ralph's lucky star must have
been in the ascendant, for at the last moment a party of rough men
burst open the door, and projected themselves into the carriage where
Mona was sitting alone. They did not mean to be offensive, but they
laughed and talked loudly, and spat on the floor, and fondled their
pipes in a way that was not suggestive of prolonged abstinence from
the not very fragrant weed.
At the first station Ralph opened the door.
"You seem rather crowded here," he said, in a voice of cold courtesy.
"There is more room in a carriage further along. Do you think it
worth while to move?"
"Thank you," said Mona, and she rose and took his hand.
"Let me not lose my pride!" she prayed again, but she felt, as she
had done that night long ago in the shadow of the frosted pines, as
if the earth was slipping away from under her feet.
He followed her into the carriage and closed the door. It was big
with meaning for both of them, the sound of that closing door.
Neither spoke until the train had moved off.
"You need not have been so afraid to grant me an interview, Miss
Maclean," he said at length. "I only wished to ask your forgiveness."
In one great wave the blood rushed over her face, and she held out
her hand.
"Oh, Dr Dudley, forgive _me_!" she said.
"I want to," he said quite simply. "I have been far more to blame
than you, but that is nothing. Tell me about it. Did our friendship
mean nothing to you?--had I no claim upon your candour? Don't look
out of the window; look me in the face."
"Dr Dudley," she said, "you are so quick, so clever, did you not see?
My cousin had asked me not to say that I was a medical student, and I
had promised faithfully to do as she wished. It never entered my
mind at that time that I might want to tell any one down there,
and--and--I did not know till that night at the fir-wood---- But I
can't bear to have mysteries, even from my friends, and a dozen times
I was going to ask her permission to tell you, but somehow I had not
the courage. One morning, in the shop, after your first visit to
Rachel, I wanted to tell you then, and risk her anger afterwards; but
my heart beat so fast that I was ashamed to speak. Don't you see?
It was one of those trifles that one thinks about, and thinks about,
till one can't say or do them--like stopping to consider before
jumping across an easy crevasse. And yet, let me say this one thing
in my own defence. You can scarcely conceive how little opening you
gave me, how absolutely you took me for granted."
An expression of infinite relief had come over his face while she was
speaking; but now he winced and drew down his brows. "Don't!" he
ejaculated gloomily. Then he shook himself. "I retract that
'Don't,'" he said. "You shall say what you please. Your touch is a
great deal gentler than my boundless egotism deserves."
"It was not egotism," Mona said, recovering her self-possession in a
moment, with a pretty toss of her head. "I will not be cheated out
of the gracefullest compliment that ever was paid to me. I should
have been dreadfully hurt if you had told me I was out of
perspective."
"Your reading is the correct one," said Dudley gravely. "You are
perfectly right."
But his own confession was still to make, and he was determined not
to make it by halves.
"In the course of our acquaintance, Miss Maclean," he began somewhat
stiltedly, "you have known me in the three-fold capacity of snob,
fool, and child."
"In the course of our acquaintance," Mona interrupted hastily, "I
have known you in the threefold capacity of teacher, friend, and----"
"And what?"
She laughed. "Memory fails me. I don't know."
His eyes glowed like fire.
"Don't you?" he said, with a tremor in his beautiful voice. "_Come
and learn!_"
He rose and held out his arms.
Mona tried to laugh, but the laugh died away on her lips; she looked
out of the window, but the landscape swam before her eyes; even the
noisy racketing of the train sank away into the background of her
perception, and she was conscious of nothing save the magnetism of
his presence, and then of the passionate pressure of his arms. Her
head fell back, and her beautiful lips--all ignorant and
undefended--lay just beneath his own.
Oh human love! what are you?--the fairest thing that God has made, or
a Will-o'-the-wisp sent to brighten a brief space of life's journey
with delusive light? I know not. This I know, that when Ralph sent
a kiss vibrating through Mona's being, waking up a thousand echoes
that had scarcely been stirred before, the happiness of those two
human souls was almost greater than they could bear.