Action and reaction are equal and opposite.
Dudley was back in his den in London. For the first day after his return, he had thought of nothing but Mona; her face had come between him and everything he did. Now it was bending, grave and motherly, over the fainting girl, now it was sparkling with mischief at the quotation from Faust, now it vibrated to the words of Stradivarius, and now—oftenest of all—it looked up at him in the dim lamplight, with that enquiring, inexplicable smile, half friendly, half defiant.
And the evening and the morning were the first day.
But now the second day had come, and Dudley was thinking—of Rachel Simpson.
He pushed aside his books, and tramped up and down the room. How came she there, his exquisite fern, in that hideous dungeon? And was she indeed so fair? Removed from those surroundings, would she begin for the first time to show the taint she had acquired? In the drawing-room, at the dinner-table, in a solitude à deux, what if one should see in her a suggestion of—Rachel Simpson?
And then Mona's face came back once more, pure, high-souled, virgin; without desire or thought for love and marriage. There was not the faintest ruby streak on the bud, and yet, and yet—what if he were the man to call it forth? Why had she refused his arm? It would have been pleasant to feel the touch of that strong, self-reliant little hand. It would be pleasant to feel it now——
There was a knock at the door, and a fair-haired, merry-eyed young man came in.
"Holloa, Melville!" said Dudley. "Off duty?"
"Ay; Johnston and I have swopped nights this week."
"Anything special on at the hospital?"
"No, nothing since I saw you. That Viking is not going to pull through, after all."
"You don't mean it!"
"Fact. I believe that bed is unlucky. This is the third case that has died in it. All pneumonia, too."
"I believe pneumonia cases ought to be isolated,"
"I know you have a strong theory to that effect. I did an external strabismus to-day."
"Successful?"
"I think so. I kept my hair on. By the way, you remember that duffer Lawson?"
"Yes."
"He has hooked an heiress—older than himself, but not so bad-looking. He will have a practice in no time now. I met him bowling along in his carriage, and there was I trudging through the mud! It's the irony of fate, upon my soul!"
"True," said Dudley; "but you know, when we have all the intellect, and all the heart, and all the culture, we don't need to grudge him his carriage."
"I'll shy something at you, Ralph! And now I want your news. How is the way?"
"Thorny."
"And the prospect of the anatomy medal?"
"Dim. But what are medals to an 'aged, aged man' like me?"
"You are hipped to-night. What's up?"
Dudley did not reply at once. He was intensely reserved, as a rule, about his private affairs, but a curious impulse was upon him now to contradict his own character.
"You and I have been chums for twenty years, more or less, Jack," he said irrelevantly.
"True, O king! Well?"
"I want to ask your advice on an abstract case."
"Do you? Fire away! I am a dab at medical etiquette." Dudley had been paying a few professional visits for a friend.
"It is not a question of medical etiquette," he said testily. "Suppose," he drew a long breath—"suppose you knew a young girl——"
"Ah! My dear fellow, I never do know a young girl! It is the greatest mistake in the world."
"Suppose," went on Dudley, unheeding, "that physically, mentally, and morally, she was about as near perfection as a human being can be."
"Oh, of course!"
"I don't ask your opinion as to the probability of it. I don't say I know such a person. Man alive! can't you suppose an abstract case?"
"It is a large order, but I am doing my level best."
"Suppose that, so far as she was concerned, it was simply all over with you."
"Oh, that is easy enough. Well?"
"Would you marry her, if——"
"Alack, it had to come! Yes. If——?"
"If she was a—a tremendous contrast to her people?"
"Oh, that is it, is it?" Melville sprang to his feet, and spoke very emphatically. "No, my dear fellow, upon my soul, I would not! They grow into their heredity with all the certainty of fate. I would rather marry a gauche and unattractive girl because her mother was charming."
This was rather beside the point, but it depressed Dudley, and he sighed.
"But suppose—one has either to rave or make use of conventional expressions—suppose she was infinitely bright, and attractive, and womanly?"
"Oh, they are all that, you know."
"If you knew her——"
"Oh, of course. That goes without saying. Now we come back to the point we started from. As I told you before, I never do know them, and it keeps me out of a world of mischief."
Melville seated himself by the fire, and buried his hands in his curly hair.
"Ralph, while we are at it," he said, "I want to give you a word of advice. Verb. sap., you know. If any man knows you, I am that man. As you were remarking, you have lain on my dissecting-board for twenty years."
"I wish you had done me under water. You would have made a neater thing of it."
"So I would, old fellow, but you were too big. The difficulty was to get you into my mental laboratory at all."
Dudley bowed.
"Don't bow. It was well earned. You fished for it uncommon neatly. But you know, Ralph, I am serious now. Let me say it for once—you are awfully fastidious, awfully sensitive, awfully over-cultured. Few women could please you. It matters little whether you marry a good woman or a bad,—I don't know that there is much difference between them myself; the saints and the sinners get jumbled somehow,—but you must marry a woman of the world. Gretchen would be awfully irresistible, I know—for a month; she would not wear. Marry a woman full of surprises, a woman who does not take all her colour from you, a woman who can keep you dangling, as it were."
"It sounds restful."
Melville laughed. "Restful or not, that's the woman for you, Ralph. You are not equal to an hour at the Pavilion, I suppose? Well, ta-ta."
Dudley sat in silence till the echo of his friend's steps on the pavement had died away. Then he rose and tramped up and down the room again.
"After all, Miss Simpson is only her cousin," he said. "If I routed about I might find some rather shady cousins myself. But then I don't live with them. If her parents were a decided cut above that, how comes she there? And being there, how can she have escaped contamination? I wonder what Miss Simpson's dinner-table is like? Ugh! Is it as squalid as the shop? And why is the shop so squalid? Does Miss Simpson allow no interference in her domain? And yet I cannot conceive of Miss Maclean being out of place at a duchess's table."
He dropped into a chair, clasped his hands behind his head, and spoke aloud almost indignantly in his perplexity.
"How can a provincial shop-girl be a woman of the world? And yet, upon my soul! Miss Maclean seems to me to come nearer Melville's description than any woman I ever knew. Alack-a-day! I must be besotted indeed. Oh, damn that examination!"
Ralph returned to his books, however, and tried hard to shut out all farther thoughts of Mona that night.