ON THE RIVER.
Mona did not go to Surbiton, after all, that day. She telegraphed to
her friend from Clapham Junction, and then she and Ralph took the
train to Richmond.
"Let me take you for a pull on the river," he had said. "I have
never done anything for you in my life, and my arms just ache to be
used in your service. Oh Mona, Mona, Mona! it seems too good to be
possible that you are still the same simple, true-hearted girl that I
knew at Castle Maclean. By the way, do you know that Castle Maclean
is yours for life now? At least Carlton Lodge is, and only the
sea-gulls are likely to dispute my princess's claim to her
battlements."
He handed her into a boat, and rowed out into the middle of the river.
"Now," he said, "you shall see what your slave's muscles are worth."
Like an arrow the little boat shot through the water in the sunshine,
and Mona laughed with delight at the exhilaration of the swift
rushing movement.
"That will do, Dr Dudley," she said at last. "Don't kill yourself."
"I don't answer to the name," he said shortly, pulling harder than
ever.
"Oh, do please stop!" she cried.
"Who is to stop?" he panted, determined not to give in.
There was a moment's pause. A deep rosy colour settled on her eager
face.
"Ralph," she said, scarcely above a whisper.
The oars came to a standstill with a splash in the middle of a
stroke, and Ralph leaned forward with a low delighted laugh. Then he
sighed.
"You had no eyes for me last night, Mona," he said.
"Had not I?"
"_Had you?_" very eagerly.
But when the language of looks and smiles begins, the historian does
well to lay aside his pen. Are not these things written in the
memory of every man and woman who has lived and loved?
Not that there was any lack of words between them that day. They had
such endless arrears of talk to make up; and a strange medley it
would have sounded to a third pair of ears. Now they were laughing
over incidents in their life at Borrowness, now exchanging memories
of childhood, and now consulting each other about puzzling cases they
had seen in hospital.
It was a long cloudless summer day, and for these two it was one of
those rare days when the cup of pure earthly happiness brims over,
and merges into something greater. Every simple act of life took on
a fresh significance now that it was seen through the medium of a
double personality; every trifling experience was full of flavour and
of promise, like the first-fruits of an infinite harvest.
What is so hard to kill as the illusions of young love? Crushed
to-day under the cynicism and the grim experience of the ages, they
raise their buoyant heads again to-morrow, fresher and more fragrant
than ever.
"I am going in to see Mr Reynolds for a few minutes," Ralph said, as
they walked home in the twilight. "Do you know when I can see your
uncle?"
"On Monday morning, I should think--not too early. I want to tell
you about Sir Douglas. He never was my guardian, and two years ago I
had not even seen him; but his kindness to me since then has been
beyond all words. Whatever he says--and I am afraid he will say a
great deal--you must not quarrel with him. He won't in the end
refuse me anything I have set my heart on. You see, he scarcely
knows you at all, and that whole Borrowness episode is hateful to him
beyond expression."
And indeed, when Ralph called at Gloucester Place on Monday, Sir
Douglas forgot himself to an extent which is scarcely possible to a
gentleman, unless he happen to be an Anglo-Indian.
Ralph stated his case well and clearly, but for a long time Sir
Douglas could scarcely believe his ears. When at last doubt was no
longer possible, he sat for some minutes in absolute silence, the
muscles of his face twitching ominously.
"By Jove! sir, you have the coolness of Satan!" he burst forth at
last, in a voice of concentrated passion; and every word that Ralph
added to better his cause was torn to pieces and held up to derision
with merciless cruelty.
The moment his visitor was out of the house, Sir Douglas put on his
hat and went in search of Mona.
"It is not true, is it," he said, "that you want to marry that
fellow?"
So Mona told the story of how the clever young doctor fell in love
with the village shop-girl.
"King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid, in fact," he sneered. "If that
young whipper-snapper had had the impertinence to tell me that he
thought you were really a shop-girl, I should have knocked him down
on my own doorstep. Who is Dr Dudley? I never heard of him before."
"I am afraid I am no authority on pedigrees," Mona said, smiling.
"But I have no doubt you could get the required information from
Colonel Lawrence."
To the last Sir Douglas maintained that he could not imagine what
Mona saw in the fellow; but he came by degrees to admit to himself
that things might have been worse. If Mona was determined to
practise medicine, as was certainly the case, it was as well that she
should have a man to relieve her of those parts of the work in which
her womanhood was not an essential factor; and it was a great matter
to think that he could have his niece in London under his own eye.
Jack Melville's opinion was characteristic.
"Well played, Ralph!" he exclaimed. "It just shows that one never
ought to despair of a man. When you went down to Borrowness after
your Intermediate, I could have sworn that the siren was going to
have an easy walk over."
"I am glad you both had sense enough to settle it so quickly," Lucy
said phlegmatically, when Mona told her the news.
"Do you mean to say you suspected anything?"
"Suspected! I call that gratitude! The first time I saw Dr Dudley
at St Kunigonde's, he said the surgery was as close as a Borrowness
town-council room; and as soon as I mentioned him to you, I saw it
all. I have been trying to bring you together ever since.
_Suspect_, indeed! I can tell you, Mona, it was as well for my peace
of mind that I did suspect."
"What a she-Lothario it is!"
"Don't be alarmed," said Lucy loftily. "When I was a child I thought
as a child, but--I have outgrown all such frivolities. I--_I_ am to
be the advanced woman, after all! When you and Doris are lost in
your nurseries, I shall be posing as a martyr, or leading a forlorn
hope!"