CHAPTER XLVI.
FAREWELL TO BORROWNESS.
Two great honours were in store for Mona before she left Borrowness.
In the first place, the Misses Brown paid her a formal call. They were arrayed in Sabbath attire, and were civil even to effusiveness; but they did not invite Mona to their house, nor suggest another excursion. Auntie Bell's remarks had had the intended effect of making them feel very small; but, on reflection, they did not see that they could have acted otherwise. It was a matter of comparative indifference to them whether their brother married a rich woman or a poor one; it was no part of their programme that he should marry at all. They found it difficult to predict exactly how he would be influenced by this fresh light on the situation; and, for the present, they did not think it necessary to tell him anything about it.
Some mysterious and exaggerated report, however, of "high connections" must certainly have got wind, or I cannot think that the second and greater honour would have fallen to Mona's share. It came in the form of a note on thick hand-made paper, embossed with a gorgeous crest
"Mr and Mrs Cookson request the pleasure of Miss Maclean's company to dinner, etc."
Dinner! Mona had not "dined" for months. She tossed the note aside with a laugh.
"If my friend Matilda has not played me false," she said—"and I don't believe she has—this is indeed success!"
Her first impulse was to refuse, but she thought of Matilda's disappointment; and she thought, too, that Dr Dudley, knowing what he did of her relations with the girl, would think a refusal unworthy of her; so she showed the note to Rachel.
"Of course you'll go," was Rachel's immediate reply to the unspoken question. "But I do think, seeing how short a time we're to be together, they might have asked me too!"
Mona did not answer. She was strongly tempted at that moment to write and say she went nowhere without her cousin, but she could not honestly agree that the Cooksons might have invited Rachel too.
She ended by going, dressed with the utmost care, that she might not disappoint Matilda's expectations; and, on the whole, she was pleasantly surprised. There was less vulgar display than she had expected. Mrs Cookson was aggressively patronising, and Clarinda almost rude, but for that Mona had been prepared. Mr Cookson cared nearly as much for appearances as his wife did; but, as Mona had guessed, there was good wood under all the veneer. He was much pleased with Mona's appearance; his pleasure grew to positive liking when she expressed a preference for dry champagne; and when she played some of Mendelssohn's Lieder, from Matilda's well-thumbed copy, he became quite enthusiastic.
"I am afraid dear old Kullak's hair would stand on end, if he heard me," Mona said to the eager girl at her elbow, "and he would throw my music out of the window, as he did one day, when I thought I had surpassed myself." But there were many stages of musical criticism between Kullak and Mr Cookson.
"The girls have been playing those things to me for years," he said, "but I never saw any sense in them before. It was all diddle-diddle, twang-twang. Now, when you play them, bless me! I feel as I did when Cook's man began to speak English to me, the first time I was at a French railway station."
With Matilda's handsome brother, Mona did not get on so well.
"Getting tired of your hobby, Miss Maclean?" he said, standing in front of her, and twirling his moustache.
Mona looked up with innocent eyes.
"Which hobby?" she said.
He laughed and changed the subject. He was not shy, but he had not the courage to specify shopkeeping.
All evening Matilda followed Mona like a shadow; taking her hand whenever she dared, and gazing up into her face with worshipping eyes. "It is too lovely having you here," she said, "but I can't forget it's the end of all things."
"Oh no, it is not," Mona answered. "You will be coming up to London one of these days, and perhaps your mother will let you spend a few days with me. In the meantime, I want you to spend a long afternoon with me to-morrow."
The long afternoon was in some respects a trying one, but that and most of the other farewells were over at length, and Mona was hard at work packing up.
"What a lifetime it seemed, six months ago!" she said, "and now that it is past—— And how little I ever dreamed that I should be so sorry to go!"
She had to find room for quite a number of keepsakes, and she almost wept over the heterogeneous collection. There were home-made needle-books and pin-cushions from the girls who had come to her for advice about bonnets, and situations, and husbands; there was a pair of gaudy beaded footstools, which Rachel had got as a bargain at the bazaar; there was a really beautiful Bible from the Bonthrons (how Mona longed to show it to Dr Dudley!); and from Matilda Cookson there was a wreath of shells and sea-weed picked up near Castle Maclean, and mounted on cardboard, with these lines in the centre of the wreath—
"FROM
M. C.
IN GRATEFUL MEMORY
OF
THE HAPPIEST HOURS OF HER LIFE."
The inspiration was a happy one, and it had been carried out with much care, and a dash of art. Tradition and early education had of course to put in their say; and they did it in the form of a massive gold frame, utterly out of keeping with the simple wreath.
"Oh dear! why will people be so pathetic?" said Mona; but, if the gifts had been priceless jewels, she could not have packed them with tenderer care.
Then came the hardest thing of all, the parting with Rachel. A bright and competent young woman had been engaged in Mona's place, but Rachel could not be induced to hear a word in her favour.
"What's all that to me?" she sobbed; "it's not like one's own flesh and blood. You'd better never have come!"
Mona felt sure that the edge of this poignant grief would very soon wear off, but when the first bend in the railway had shut the limp, flapping handkerchief out of sight, she sank back in the comfortless carriage, feeling as if she had come to the end of a severe and protracted campaign.
She was too exhausted to read, and was thankful that by some happy chance she had no fellow-passengers. No mountains and fjords haunted her memory now; but instead—changing incessantly like a kaleidoscope—came a distorted phantasmagoria of perished elastic and ill-assorted knitting-needles; red-cushioned pews and purple bonnet-strings; suffering women in poor little homes; crowded bazaar and whirling ball-room; rocky coast and frosted pines; and—steady, unchanging, like the light behind the rattling bits of glass—the wonderful, mystic glow of the suite of enchanted rooms.
Dusk was gathering when the train drew into the station. Yes; there stood Doris and the Sahib. Doris was looking eagerly in the direction of the coming train, and the Sahib was looking at Doris. But what a welcome they gave the traveller! A welcome that drove all the phantasmagoria out of her head, and made her forget that she was anything other than Doris's sister, the friend of the Sahib, and—something to somebody else.
"Ponies and pepper-pot still to the fore?" she said, as they crossed the platform.
"Oh yes; but a horrible fear has seized me lately that the pepper-pot is beginning to grow."
"Are you not coming with us?" Mona asked, as the Sahib arranged the carriage-rug.
He looked down at his great athletic figure with a good-humoured smile.
"How is it to be done?" he asked, "unless I put the whole toy in my pocket—dolls and all. Miss Colquhoun has been kind enough to ask me to dinner. I am looking forward to meeting you then."
Scarcely a word passed between the friends as they drove home, and Mona was glad to lie down and rest until dinner-time.
"Welcome, Miss Maclean!" cried Mr Colquhoun as she entered the drawing-room. "You've come in the very nick of time to give me your opinion of a new microtome I want to buy. I could not have held out another day. Why, I declare you are looking bonnier than ever!"
"She is looking five years younger," said Doris.
"Since we are making personal remarks," said the Sahib, "I should have said older, but that does not prevent my agreeing cordially with Mr Colquhoun."
Mona's laugh only half concealed her rising colour.
"Older has it," she said, nodding to the Sahib. "Score!"
As they went in to dinner, she looked round at the unpretentious perfection of the room and the table, with a long sigh of satisfaction.
"There is no house in the world," she said, "where I have precisely the sense of restfulness that I have here. Nothing jars; I don't need to talk unless I like; and I can afford to be my very own self."
"That's a good hearing," said Mr Colquhoun heartily. "Have some soup!"
The two gentlemen kept the ball going between them most of the time, for Doris never talked much except in a solitude à deux. And yet how intensely she made her presence felt, as she sat at the head of the table,—sweet, gracious, almost childlike, her fair young face scarcely giving a hint of the strength and enthusiasm that lay behind it!
"I can hardly believe that I am to have you for a whole week," she said, following Mona into her bedroom, and rousing the fire; "it is too good to be true. And I am so glad you are going back to your work!"
"So am I, dear," said Mona simply.
"Of course! I knew you would come back to the point you started from."
Mona smiled. "You are determined not to make it a spiral, I see. Ah, well! taking it as a circle, it is a bigger one than I imagined."
Her words would not have struck Doris but for the tone in which they were unconsciously spoken.
"What has biggened it?" she said, looking up from the fire.
Mona's hands were clasped beneath her head on the low back of her arm-chair, and her eyes were fixed on the ceiling.
"I don't know," she said. "Many things. How is Maggie getting on?"
"Famously. Laurie says she will make a first-rate cook. You should have seen the child's face when I told her you were coming! I am so grateful to you, Mona, for giving me a chance to help her. There is so little that one can do!—that I can do at least! She is a sweet little thing, and so pretty. When I think of that man——" her face crimsoned, and she stopped short.
"Don't think of him, dear," said Mona. "It us no use; and, you know, you must not spoil Maggie."
Doris bent low over the fire, and the tears glistened on her long eyelashes. She tried to wink them away, but it was no use; and, after all, there was only Mona there to see, and Mona was almost a second self. She pressed her handkerchief hard against her eyes for a moment, and then turned to her friend with a smile.
"What a time you must have had of it that night at the Wood! I was proud of you!"
"I wish you had more cause, dear. My duties were simple in the extreme."
"And the country doctor—what did he say when he found how you had risen to the occasion?"
Mona's eyes were fixed on the ceiling again.
"I don't think he said anything that is likely to live in history. I believe he ventured to suggest that Maggie might have some beef-tea."
This, as Dudley could have testified, was a pure fabrication.
"I don't suppose he would be man enough to admit it, but he must have seen that you were in your proper place there—not he."
Mona opened her lips to reply, and then closed them again.
"Maggie has not been my only patient by any means," she said finally. "I have had no end of practice. I assure you I might have set up my carriage, if I had been paid for it all. Oh, Doris, it is sad work sometimes!" and she told the story of the last patient she had had.
"Poor soul! Glad as I am that you have left that place, I don't know how you could bring yourself to leave her."
"No more do I, quite."
"You could not have brought her into Edinburgh?"
Mona shook her head. "Too late!" she said.
"It must have been dreadful to give her over, after all, to a man. I don't know how you could do it."
"That's because you don't know how kind he is, how he met me half-way, and made my task easy. It was the Kilwinnie doctor, you know, an elderly man." Mona sprang to her feet, and leaned against the mantelpiece. "At the risk of forfeiting your esteem for ever, Doris, I must record my formal testimony that the kindness I have met with at the hands of men-doctors is almost incredible. When I think how nice some of them are, I almost wonder that we women have any patients at all!"
"Nice!" said Doris quietly, but with concentrated scorn. "It's their trade to be nice. I never consulted a man-doctor in my life, and I never will; but if by any inconceivable chance I were compelled to, I would infinitely prefer a boor to a man who was nice!"
Mona laughed. "Dear old niceness," she said, "I won't have him abused. When all is said, he is so much more attractive than most of the virtues. And before we banish him from the conversation,—how do you like the Sahib?"
Doris's face brightened.
"He believes in women-doctors," she said.
"Ay, and in all things lovely and of good report." Mona was forgetting her resolution.
"He has very wholesome views on lots of subjects," Doris went on reflectively.
"Have you seen much of him?"
"A good deal. He is very much interested in the things my father cares about. I quite understand now what you meant when you said he was the sort of man one would like to have for a brother."
This was disappointing, and Mona brought the conversation to a close.
Every day during her visit the Sahib came in for an hour or two, sometimes to lunch or dinner, sometimes to escort "the girls" to a lecture or concert. He was uniformly kind and brotherly to both, but Mona fancied that at times he was sorely ill at ease.
"If only he would show a little common-sense," she thought, "and let the matter drop altogether, what a relief it would be for both of us!"
But this was not to be.
On Sunday afternoon Doris had gone out to teach her Bible-class, Mr Colquhoun was enjoying his weekly afternoon nap, and Mona was sitting alone by the fire in the library, half lost in a mighty arm-chair, with a book on her knee.
Suddenly the door opened, and the Sahib entered unannounced.
"You are alone?" he said, as though he had not counted on finding her alone.
"Yes," said Mona, and she tried in vain to say anything more. It was Sunday afternoon.
Somewhat nervously he lifted the book from her lap and glanced at the title-page.
"Your choice of literature is exemplary," he said, seating himself beside her.
"I am afraid the example begins and ends with the choice, then," said Mona, colouring. "I have not read a line; I was dreaming."
He looked at her quickly.
"Miss Maclean," he said, making a bold plunge, "I have come for my answer."
Mona raised her eyes.
"What answer do you want, Mr Dickinson?" she said quietly.
If the Sahib had been absolutely honest he would have replied, "Upon my soul, I don't know!" but there are moments when the best of men think it necessary to adapt the truth to circumstances. Before Mona came to Edinburgh he had certainly regretted those hasty words of his at the ball; but, now that he was in her presence again, now especially that he was alone in her presence, the old charm returned with all its force. Doris was a pearl, but Mona was a diamond; Doris was spotless, but Mona was crystalline. If only he had met either of these women three years ago, what a happy man he would have been! The Sahib had lived a pure, straightforward life, and he was almost indignant with Nature and the Fates for placing a man like him on the horns of such a dilemma; but Nature has her freaks—and her revenges. When he was alone with the pearl, the diamond seemed hard, and its play of colours dazzling; when he was alone with the diamond—but no, he could not admit that even the clearness and brilliancy of the diamond suggested a want in the pearl.
"I am not a boy," he said hastily, almost indignantly, "not to know my own mind."
True man as she knew him to be, his words rang false on Mona's sensitive ear. She rose slowly from her chair and stood before the fire.
"Nor am I a girl," she said, "not to know mine. It is no fault of mine, Mr Dickinson, that you did not take my answer two months ago. I can only repeat it now," and she turned to leave the room.
He felt keenly the injustice and justice of her anger; but he was too honest to complain of the first without pleading guilty to the second.
"Considering all that has passed between us," he said simply, "I think you might have said it less unkindly."
He was conscious of the weakness of the answer, but to her it was the strongest he could have made. It brought back the brotherly Sahib of former days, and her conscience smote her.
"Was I unkind?" she said, turning back. "Indeed, I did not mean to be; but I thought you were honest enough, and knew me well enough, to come and say you had made a mistake. I was hurt that you should think me so small." She hesitated. "Sahib," she said, "Doris and I have been friends ever since we were children, and no man has ever known both of us without preferring her. I can scarcely believe that any man will have the luck to win her, but I could not be jealous of Doris——"
She stopped short. At Christmas she could have said the words with perfect truth, but were they true now? The question flashed like lightning through her mind, and the Sahib watched her with intense interest while she answered it. Her face grew very pale, and her lips trembled. She leaned her arm against the mantelpiece.
"Sahib," she said, "life gets so complicated, and it is so difficult to tell what one is bound to say. You asked me if—if—there was somebody else. There is somebody else; there was then. I did not lie to you. I did not know. And even now—he—has not said——"
She broke off abruptly, and left the room.
The Sahib lifted up the book she had laid down, and carefully read the title-page again, without really seeing one word. The question had indeed been settled for him, and at that moment he would have given wellnigh everything he possessed, if he could have been the man to win and marry Mona Maclean.