CHAPTER LIV.
PRESENTATION DAY.
The eventful day dawned at last, clear and bright, with a summer sky and a fresh spring breeze.
"One would think I was a bride at the very least," Mona said, laughing, when Lucy and Evelyn came in to help her to dress.
"If you think we would take this amount of trouble for a common or garden bride," said Lucy loftily, "you are profoundly mistaken. Bride, indeed!"
Sir Douglas had insisted on giving Mona an undergraduate's gown, heavy and handsome as it could be made; and the sight of her in that, and in a most becoming trencher, did more to reconcile him to her study of medicine than any amount of argument could have done.
"Distinctly striking!" was Mona's comment, when Lucy and Evelyn stopped dancing round her, and allowed her to see herself in the pier-glass. And she was perfectly right. Never in all her bright young life had she looked so charming as she did that Presentation Day.
"You will go to the function to day, Ralph?" said Melville to his friend the same morning.
"Not I! God bless my soul! when a man has graduated at Edinburgh and Cambridge, he can afford to dispense with a twopenny-halfpenny function at Burlington House."
"I thought you admitted that, even in comparison with Cambridge and Edinburgh, London had its points?"
"So I do. But the graduation ceremony is not one of them. Ceremonial does not sprout kindly on nineteenth-century soil. One misses the tradition, the aroma of faith, the grand roll of the In nomine Patrix. Call it superstition, humbug, what you will, but materialism is confoundedly inartistic."
"Spoken like a book with pictures. But without entering fully into the question of Atheism versus Christianity, the point at issue is briefly this: I have got a ticket for the affair, for the first time in my life, and I want to applaud somebody I know. Sweet girl-graduates are all very well, but I decline to waste all my adolescent enthusiasm on a physiologist in petticoats."
"By the way, a woman did get the Physiology Medal, did not she?" And Dudley felt a faint, awakening curiosity to see that other Miss Maclean.
"Oh, if it is going to make you sigh like that," said Melville, "I withdraw all I have said. I have no wish to sacrifice you on the altar of friendship."
"Did I sigh?" said Ralph very wearily. "It was not for that. Oh yes, dear boy, I'll go. It won't be the first time I have made a fool of myself for your sake."
And he did feel himself very much of a fool when, a few hours later, he went up on the platform of the crowded theatre to receive the pretty golden toy. The experience reminded him of his brilliant schoolboy days, and he half expected some kindly old gentleman to clap Him on the shoulder as he went back to his seat. He was thankful to escape into insignificance again; and then, adjusting his gold-rimmed spectacles, he proceeded to watch for Miss Mona Maclean.
It was well that he had ceased to be the centre of attraction in the theatre. Ralph was not a blushing man, but a moment later his face became as red as the cushioned seats of the hall, and when the wave of colour passed away, it left him ashy pale. At the first sight of that dear familiar face, beautiful to-day with excitement, as he had seen it at Castle Maclean, his hard, aggrieved feeling against her vanished, and he thought only how good it would be to speak to her again. He was proud of her beauty, proud of the ovation she received, proud of his love for her.
But while the tedious ceremony went on, the facts of the case came back to him one by one, like common objects that have been blotted for the moment out of view by some dazzling light. His face settled into a heavy frown.
"I will walk along Regent Street with her," he thought, "and ask her what it all meant."
At last the "function" was over. Mona seemed to be surrounded by congratulating friends, and so indeed was he; but before many minutes had passed he found himself following her out of the hall,—gaining on her. She was very pale. Was it reaction after the excitement of the ceremony? or did she know that he was behind her?
In another moment he would have spoken, but during that moment a bluff, elderly professor, who had been looking at Mona with much interest and perplexity, suddenly seized her hand.
"Why, I declare it is Yum-Yum!" he exclaimed enthusiastically. "No wonder she took us by surprise on a deserted coast, when she wins an ovation like this at Burlington House!"
Mona stopped to speak, and Dudley passed on.
No wonder, indeed! What a blind bat, what an utter imbecile, he had been! and how he had babbled to her of his past, present, and future, while she had sat looking at him, with infinite simplicity and frankness in her honest eyes!
His lip curled with a cynical smile.
"Bravo, old chap!" said Melville's friendly voice. "It was a genuine consolation to my misanthropic mind to reflect that one of those medals was well earned."
Ralph stopped for a minute or two to speak to his friend, and then went down the steps. Most of the carriages had gone, but, a few yards from the door, a pair of fine bays were pawing the ground. Ralph looked up and recognised his Anglo-Indian friend, Sir Douglas Munro; but Sir Douglas was waiting for a lady, and had no eyes for the clever young doctor. Ralph's glance wandered on to the next carriage, and when it came idly back to the bays, he saw that the lady had arrived. Nay, more, the lady was looking at him with a very eloquent face.
"Dr Dudley," she said, almost below her breath.
For an instant Dudley hesitated,—then gravely lifted his hat and walked on. He could not speak to her now; he must have time to think. It seemed to him that his very soul was torn in two. One half loved Mona, clamoured for her, stretched out blind hands that longed to take her on any terms, unquestioning; but the other half refused to be carried away by glamour and mere blind impulse, the other half was outraged by this trivial motiveless deception, the other half had dreamed of an ideal marriage and would not be put off with anything short of its ideal. How little he knew of her, after all! He had not met her a dozen times—what wonder if he had been mistaken!
While he wrestled thus with himself, the mail-phaeton bowled rapidly past him. Dudley laughed gloomily. And he had meant her to trudge along Regent Street with him, and "tell him what it all meant"! What a hopeless imbecile he had been!
How could he guess that Mona would cheerfully have given three years' income to leave her uncle at that moment, and "trudge along Regent Street" with him?
"Who is that young fellow?" Sir Douglas was saying. "I seem to know his face."
"He is a Dr Dudley," Mona answered, stooping low to arrange the carriage-rug over her feet.
"Oh, to be sure. I remember—a clever fellow." Sir Douglas fell a-musing for a few minutes. "How did you pick him up, Mona? He told me when I last saw him that he did not know any of the women-students.”