When Mona first began her medical career, she was actuated partly by intense love of study and scientific work, partly by a firm and enthusiastic conviction that, while the fitness of women for certain spheres of usefulness is an open question, medical work is the natural right and duty of the sex, apart from all shifting standards and conventional views. Her repeated failure "took the starch out of her," as she expressed it, but I do not think that she ever for more than a moment seriously thought of giving up the work, when she laid it aside for a time; and her promise to Mr Reynolds was made, less out of gratitude to him than from a stern sense of duty. But now the cold hard lines of duty were broken through by the growing developing force of a living inspiration. We need many fresh initiations into a life-work that is really to move mankind, and Mona underwent one that night at Barntoun Wood, hundreds of miles away from the scene of her studies, with the silvered pines for a temple, the lonely house for a holy place, and a shrine of sin and sorrow. "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these—" Who shall tell beforehand what events will form the epochs, or the turning-points, in the life of any one of us? Verily the wind bloweth where it listeth.
The night was over, and the morning sun was once more kindling all the ice-crystals into sparkles of light, when Mrs Arnot arrived—kind and motherly, but of course inexpressibly shocked. Mona conjured her not to have any conversation about the past that might agitate the patient; and then set out for home, promising to return before night. The ready tears welled up in Maggie's eyes as she watched her benefactress go; and then she turned her face to the wall and pretended to sleep. If she could only be with Miss Maclean always, how easy it would be to be good; and perhaps in time she would even begin to forget—about him.
Since her illness Rachel had been very affectionate to her cousin, and Mona was quite unprepared for the torrent of indignation that assailed her when she entered the sitting-room. She had found Maggie ill at the Wood alone, she said, and almost in a moment Rachel guessed what had happened.
For some time Mona tried to discuss the question calmly, but the cutting, merciless words wounded her more than she could bear; so she rose and took her gloves from the table.
"That will do, cousin," she said coldly; "but for the accident of circumstances it might have been you or I."
This of course was a truism, but Rachel could not be expected to see it in that light, and the flames of her wrath leaped higher.
"Jenny can pay for a nurse from Kirkstoun," she said; "I'll not have you waiting hand and foot on a creature no decent woman would speak to. You'll not enter that house again."
"I've promised to go back this afternoon. Of course you have a perfect right, if you like, to forbid me to return here. But I am very tired, and I think it would be a pity, after all your kindness to me, to send me away with such an interpretation as this of the parable of the Good Samaritan. Unless you mention the incident, people will never find out that I had anything to do with it."
She left the room without giving her cousin time to reply. Before long Sally knocked at her door with a tolerably inviting breakfast-tray. Poor Rachel! She had never made any attempt to reduce her opinions and convictions to common principles, and it was very easy to defeat her with a weapon out of her own miscellaneous armoury. She was perfectly satisfied that the parable of the Good Samaritan had nothing to do with the case, but the mention of it reminded her of other incidents in the Gospel narrative which seemed to lend some support to Mona's position. But then things were so different now-a-days. Was that wicked little minx to be encouraged to hold up her head again as if nothing her happened?
Not even for Jenny's sake could Mona stoop to beg her cousin to hold her peace, but Rachel had already resolved to do this for reasons of her own. She was shrewd enough to see that if the incident came out at all at present, it would come out in its entirety, and, rather than sacrifice "her own flesh and blood," she would spare even Maggie—for the present.
About mid-day Dudley arrived at the shop on foot.
"I thought the friendly Fates would let me find you alone," he said. "Your patients are thriving famously. I came to tell you that Jenny is to arrive at Kirkstoun to-night. I know it is asking a hard thing; but it would soften matters so for everybody else if you could meet her."
"Thank you so much for coming to tell me. I have been very unhappy about her home-coming. I am afraid I cannot do much, but I need not say I will do my best. I meant to go out this afternoon, but I will wait now, and go with Jenny. Poor soul! it will be an awful blow to her."
Dudley was looking at her fixedly. "Having expressed my delight at finding you," he said, "I am going to proceed, with true masculine inconsistency, to scold you for not taking a few hour's sleep. You look very tired."
"Appearances are deceptive."
"I am afraid Miss Simpson is not pleased with last night's work."
She hesitated, then smiled. "Miss Simpson is not the keeper of my conscience."
"Thank God for that at least! You will not stay for more than half an hour to-night?"
"I don't know."
"No, Miss Maclean, you will not," he said firmly; "I will not have it."
Her eyes sparkled with mischief. "Bear with my dulness," she said, "and explain to me your precise right to interfere. Is it the doctor's place to arrange how long the nurses are to remain on duty? I only ask for information, you know."
"Yes," he said boldly, "it is."
"Ah! so it becomes a simple matter of official duty. Thank you for explaining it to me."
Then suddenly the blood rushed up into her face. "Oh, Dr Dudley," she said impulsively, "what a brute I am to laugh and jest the moment I have turned my back on a tragedy like that!"
"And why?" he asked. "Do not the laughter and jesting, like the flowers and the sunshine, show that the heart of things is not all tragedy? If you and I could not laugh a little, in sheer healthy human reaction from too near a view of the seamy side of life, I think we should go mad; don't you?"
"Yes," she said earnestly.
"I think it is a great mistake to encourage mere feeling beyond the point where it serves as a motive. As we say in physiology that the optimum stimulus is the one that produces the maximum contraction; so the optimum feeling is not the maximum feeling, but the one that produces the maximum of action. Maggie is as safe with you as if she had fallen into the hands of her guardian angel. There is but little I can do, as the law does not permit us, even under strong provocation, to wring the necks of our fellow-men; but I will see Jenny to-morrow, and arrange about making the fellow contribute to the support of the child. Do you think you and I need to be afraid of an innocent laugh if it chances to come in our way?"
Dudley spoke simply and naturally, without realising how his sympathetic chivalrous words would appeal to a woman who loved her own sex. Mona tried to thank him, but the words would not come, so with an instinct that was half that of a woman, half that of a child, she looked up and paid him the compliment of the tears for which she blushed.
It was then that Dudley understood for the first time all the possibilities of Mona's beauty, and realised that the face of the woman he loved was as potter's clay in the grasp of a beautiful soul.
He held out his hand without a word, and left the shop.