CHAPTER XXVI.
A CHAT BY THE FIRE.
Mona hesitated at the door of her own room, and then decided to run down for ten minutes to the sitting-room fire. She was too depressed to go to bed, and she wanted something to change the current of her thoughts. To her surprise, she found Mr Reynolds still in his large arm-chair, apparently lost in thought.
Prompted by a sudden impulse, she seated herself on a stool close to him, and laid her hand on his knee.
"Mr Reynolds," she said, "life looks very grey sometimes."
He smiled. "We all have to make up our minds to that, dear;" and after a pause he added, "This is a strange duty that you have imposed upon yourself."
"Yes."
"For six months, is it not?"
"Yes."
"How much of the time is over?"
"Little more than one month."
"And the life is very uncongenial?"
"At the present moment—desperately. Not always," she added, laughing bravely. "Sometimes I feel as if the sphere were only too great a responsibility; but now—I don't know how to face it to-morrow."
"Poor child! I can only guess at all your motives for choosing it; but you know that
'Tasks in hours of insight willed,
Can be through hours of gloom fulfilled.'"
"Mr Reynolds, it was not insight, it was impulse. You see, I really had worked intelligently and conscientiously for years; I had never indulged in amusement purely for amusement's sake; and when I failed a second time in my examination, I felt as if the stars in their courses were fighting against me. It seemed no use to try again. Things had come to a deadlock. From the time when I was little more than a child, I had had the ordering of my own life, and perhaps you will understand how I longed for some one to take the reins for a bit. On every side I saw girls making light of, and ignoring, home duties; and, just I suppose because I had never had any, such duties had always seemed to me the most sacred and precious bit of moral training possible. I considered at that time that my cousin was practically my only living relative, and she was very anxious that I should go to her. I had promised to spend a fortnight with her in the autumn; but the day after I knew that I had failed, I wrote offering to stay six months.
"Of course I ought to have waited till I saw her and the place; but her niece had just been married, and she really wanted a companion. If I did not go, she must look out for some one else. I don't mean to pretend that that was my only reason for acting impulsively. The real reason was, that I wanted to commit myself to something definite, to burn my boats on some coast or other. I seemed to have muddled my own life, and here was a human being who really wanted me, a human being who had some sort of natural right to me."
"Dear child, why did you not come and be my elder daughter for a time? It would have been a grand thing for me."
Mona laughed through her tears, and, taking his delicate white hand in both her own, she raised it to her lips. "Sir Douglas said nearly the same thing, though he does not know what I am doing; but either of you would have spoilt me a great deal more than I had ever spoilt myself. You were kind enough to ask me to come to you at the time; but I thought then that I had passed my examination, and I did not know you as I do now. I was restless, and wanted to shake off the cobwebs on a walking tour: but when I heard that I had failed all the energy seemed to go out of me."
It was some minutes before he spoke.
"Tell me about your life at Borrowness. There is a shop, is there not?"
"I don't quarrel with the shop," said Mona warmly: "the shop is the redeeming feature. You don't know how it brings me in contact with all sorts of little joys and sorrows. I sometimes think I see the very selves of the women and girls, as neither priest nor Sunday-school teacher does. I have countless opportunities of sympathising, and helping, and planning, and economising—even of educating the tastes of the people the least little bit—and of suggesting other ways of looking at things. And there is another side to the question too. Some of those women teach me a great deal more than I could ever teach them."
"And what about your cousin?"
Mona hesitated. "I told Lucy that to give even a plain, unvarnished account of my life at Borrowness would be a disloyalty to my cousin, but one can say anything to you. Mr Reynolds, I knew before I went that my cousin was not a gentlewoman, that ours had for two generations been the successful, hers the unsuccessful, branch of my father's family. I knew she lived a simple and narrow life: but how could I tell that my cousin would be vulgar?—that if under any circumstances it was possible to take a mean and sordid view of a person, or an action, or a thing, she would be sure to take that mean and sordid view? I have almost made a vow never to lose my temper, but it is hard—it is all the harder because she is so good!
"Now you know the whole story. Pitch into me well. You are the only person who is in a position to do it, so your responsibility is great."
He had never taken his eyes from her mobile face while she was speaking. "I have no wish to pitch into you well," he said; "you disarm one at every turn. I need not tell you that your action in the first instance was hasty and childish—perhaps redeemed by just a dash of heroism."
Mona lifted her face with quivering lips.
"Never mind the heroism," she said, with a rather pathetic smile. "It was hasty and childish."
"But I do mind the heroism very much," he said, passing his hand over her wavy brown hair. "I believe that some of the deeds which we all look upon as instances of sublime renunciation have been done in just such a spirit. It is one of the cases in which it is very difficult to tell where the noble stops and the ignoble begins. But of one thing I am quite sure—the hasty and childish spirit speedily died a natural death, and the spirit of heroism has survived to bear the burden imposed by the two."
"Don't talk of heroism in connection with me." Mona bit her lip. "I see there is one thing more that I ought to tell you, since I have told you so much. When I went to Borrowness there was some one there a great deal more cultured than myself, whose occasional society just made all the difference in my life, though I did not recognise it at the time. It is partly because I have not that to look forward to when I go back that life seems so unbearable."
"Man or woman?"
"Man, but he was nice enough to be a woman."
The words were spoken with absolute simplicity. Clearly, the idea of love and marriage had not crossed her mind.
"Did he know your circumstances?"
"No; he took for granted that Borrowness was my home. I might have told him; but my cousin had made me promise not to mention the fact that I was a medical student."
"And he has gone?"
"Yes; he may be back for a week or so at Christmas, but I don't know even that." Mona looked up into the old man's face. "Now," she said, "you know the whole truth as thoroughly as I know it myself."
He repaid her look with interest.
"Honest is not the word for her," he thought. "She is simply crystalline."
"If I had the right," he said, "I should ask you to promise me one thing."
"Don't say 'If had the right,'" said Mona. "Claim it."
"Promise that you will not again give away your life, or any appreciable part of it, on mere impulse, without abundant consideration."
"I will promise more than that if you like. I will promise not to commit myself to anything new without first consulting you."
He could scarcely repress a smile. Evidently she did not foresee the contingency that had prompted his words. What a simple-hearted child she was, after all!
"I decline to accept that promise," he said; "I have abundant faith in your own judgment, if you only give it a hearing. But when your mind is made up, you know where to find a sympathetic ear; or if you should be in doubt or difficulty, and care to have an old man's advice, you know where to come for it. Make me the promise I asked for at first; that is all I want."
Mona looked up again with a smile, and clasped her hands on his knee. "I promise," she said slowly, "never again to give away my life, or any appreciable part of it, on mere impulse, without abundant consideration."
He smiled down at the bright face, and then stooped to kiss her forehead. "And now," he said, "let us take the present as we find it. I suppose no one but yourself can decide whether this duty is the more or the less binding because it is self-imposed."
Mona's face expressed much surprise. "Oh," she said, "I have not the smallest doubt on that score. I must go through with it now that I have put my hand to the plough."
"I am glad you think so, though there is something to be said on the other side as well. Your mind is made up, and that being so, you don't need me to tell you that you are doubly bound to take the life bravely and brightly, because you have chosen it yourself. Fortunately, yours is a nature that will develop in any surroundings. But I do want to say a word or two about your examination, and the life you have thrown aside for the time. I know you don't talk about it, but I think you will allow me to say what I feel. Preaching, you know, is an old man's privilege."
"Go on," said Mona, "talk to me. Nobody helps me but you. It does me good even to hear your voice.”