Lucy had taken rooms for her mother in an unpretentious square in Bloomsbury, and Mr Reynolds had gladly agreed to spend his short summer holiday with his wife and daughter in London. Dr Alice Bateson had called the day after their arrival, and had gone into the case very thoroughly.
"There is no doubt that your mother must have an operation," she had said to Lucy, in her brusque fashion, "but it is nothing that need make you unhappy. So far as one can see, the chances are all in her favour, and she will be a different being when it is over. I would like her to rest, and take a tonic for a week or so, in order to get up her strength as much as possible; but I should not advise her to postpone it any longer than that."
Lucy was in great spirits. "What say you to that, Daddy," she cried, "as the first-fruits of your investment in me? We shall see Mother on the top of Snowdon before the summer is over."
"I think we shall be glad to rest content with something short of that," he said, smiling, and stroking his wife's soft hair.
The operation was successfully accomplished in due course, and as soon as Mrs Reynolds was well on the way to recovery, Lucy insisted on taking her father about "to see something of life," as she expressed it.
"I thought I knew the full extent of your aunt's fascination," she said to Mona, when the latter came in one day with a basket of hothouse fruit for the invalid, "but I do wish you had seen her with Father when we called. She was a perfect woman, and a perfect child. He was awfully impressed—thinks in his heart that she is thrown away on Sir Douglas, which, in the immortal words of Euclid, is absurd. Lady Munro told me afterwards that Father made her wish she could go back and live her life all over again. 'It is so strange,' she said, with exquisite frankness, 'that he should be your father!' '"Degeneration, a Chapter on Darwinism,'"—in fact?' I suggested; but she only smiled sweetly and said, 'What do you mean, child?'"
"Was Sir Douglas at home?"
"He came in for a few minutes at the end. He and my father got on all right. Of course they only met as——" she paused.
"Of course—as two men of the world."
"Do you call my father a man of the world?" Lucy asked, surprised and pleased.
"Assuredly."
"Of this world, or the other?"
Mona raised her eyes slowly. "Looked at from your father's point of view, it is a little difficult to say where this world ends and the other begins. He would tell you that this is the other world, and the other world w this."
"No, indeed, he would not. Father never gets on to the eternals with me."
This was rather a sore point with Lucy, so she hastened on, "Do you know, your aunt's 'At Home' is going to be no end of an affair?"
"Is it?"
"Yes; I am in a state of wild excitement. Father is giving me a new gown."
"I am frivolling shamefully this week," Mona said. "I have promised to go to the Bernards' at Surbiton from Saturday to Monday. I don't think I ought to go to my aunt's as well."
"Tell Sir Douglas that! By the way, while you are here, you might cast your eagle eye through that microscope, and tell me what the slide is. I forgot to label it at the time, and now I can't spot it."
Mona bent over Lucy's writing-table in the window. "I suppose you are not used to picrocarmine," she said. "It is only a 'venous congestion,' but it is cut far too thick. I can give you a much better one."
"Just scribble 'venous congestion' on the label, will you t before I forget again. Now I think of it, Miss Clark told me it must be 'venous congestion,' because that was the only red one we had mounted on a large slide! You will be shocked to hear, Mona, that I made Father take me to hear Dr Dudley lecture last night. That man's voice is worth a fortune!"
"Far too thick," repeated Mona, with unnecessary emphasis. "You can make out nothing with the high power at all. Where was he lecturing?"
"To his Literary Society. Angela Davidson sent a note to tell me. It really was magnificent—on The Rose in Tennyson.[1] I thought I knew my Tennyson, but Dr Dudley's insight seemed to me perfectly wonderful. He was showing how, all through Tennyson's poems, the red rose means love, and he showed it in a thousand things I had never thought of before. He began with The Gardener's Daughter, and with simple idyllic quotations, like—
'Her feet have touched the meadows,
And left the daisies rosy.'
And he showed us how the whole world becomes a rose to the lover. You know the passage, beginning, 'Go not, happy day.' Then he worked us gradually on to the tragedy of love,—
'I almost fear they are not roses, but blood.'
It made one's flesh creep to hear him say that. And again triumphantly,—
'The blood-red blossom of war with a heart of fire.'
Then he took us by surprise, passed beyond human love altogether, and ended up with God's rose:—
'At last I heard a voice upon the slope
Cry to the summit, "Is there any hope?"
To which an answer pealed from that high land,
But in a tongue no man could understand;
And on the glittering limit far withdrawn
God made Himself an awful rose of dawn.'
I did not understand it all; but, when he stopped, I found my eyes were full of tears, and Father was so struck that he went up to speak to Dr Dudley before we came away."
Mona said nothing. What would she not have given to have heard that paper!
"But here comes Dad," Lucy went on. "Father, I want you to tell Mona about that lecture last night."
"Your mother wants you, dear," he said, laying his hand on her shoulder, and then he seated himself by the open window.
"Yes, I confess I was very much struck," he said. "One rarely meets with such fine—appreciation. It seems to me that young man will make his mark. I should greatly like his help with a little bit of work I am doing on Wordsworth just now, so I asked him to come and see me some evening. He promised very cordially to do so to-morrow, and now I want him to meet my elder daughter. If you can spare the time, I am sure you would enjoy hearing him talk. Will you come?"
Mona retained sufficient presence of mind to wonder whether it was worth while trying to conceal how far she had lost it, and then she turned her white face to Mr Reynolds.
"I think I had better not come," she said, rather breathlessly. "I—know Dr Dudley."
Nay, verily! If ever they met again, it should be by no doing of hers.
"Just as you please, dear, of course."
She was a little surprised that Mr Reynolds asked no questions. She did not know that she had already given him the remaining links of her story, and that the chain in his mind was now practically complete.
All through the lecture on the previous evening, Dudley had wondered vaguely to whom the grand white head belonged, and when the owner of it came up at the close, and told him how much he had enjoyed the evening, Dudley felt the compliment much more keenly than most clever young men would have done. He was drawing sufficiently near the farther boundary of youth to dread the advance of age; and his love and admiration for Mrs Hamilton made a warm corner in his heart for all old people.
He arrived early on the evening of his appointment, and knocked at the door with a good deal of pleasant anticipation. The Reynolds seemed to have brought with them to London the atmosphere of their country home. The room was sweet with old-fashioned flowers, tea and fruit and home-made cake were laid out on the spotless cloth, and the windows were opened wide on a world of green. Moreover, the very sight of Mr Reynolds's refined and beautiful face seemed to throw the dust and turmoil of the world outside into the far distance. Petty aims lost half their attraction, the ideal became more real, when one entered that plain little room. "Is this really London?" Dudley said, as he shook hands with the invalid on the sofa.
"I am happy to say it is," she answered, smiling. "London has done great things for me."
"That is right. We hear so much of its misdeeds now-a-days that it is refreshing to be brought in contact with the other side of the question."
In a few minutes Lucy came in, bright and smiling. Dudley had not noticed her with her father at the lecture, and her relationship to the saintly old clergyman was as great a surprise to him as it had been to Lady Munro.
"How I wish I had asked Mona to come in!" she exclaimed, as she seated herself in front of the tea-tray.
No one answered, but Mr Reynolds glanced at his visitor's face.
"You know who I mean," Lucy went on, turning to Dudley, "my friend Miss Maclean. You were talking to her for a long time at the Davidsons' the other day. Is not she awfully clever?"
"Particularly, I should think."
There was no sneer in the words, but the frank, almost boyish simplicity, which had come so naturally to Dudley a few minutes before, was gone.
"'Her price is far above rubies,'" quoted Mr Reynolds quietly.
It was Dudley's turn now to raise his eyes, and glance quickly at his host.
Whenever there was a pause in the conversation, Lucy had some fresh tale to tell about Mona. This was nothing new with her, and Mr Reynolds made no effort to prevent it. He thought it a fortunate chance that, without a hint from him, she should thus unconsciously play so effectually into his hands. He could scarcely tell whether Dr Dudley found the conversation trying or not, but there could be no doubt that the young man was profoundly interested.
"Do you know Sir Douglas Munro?" he said suddenly to Lucy.
"Oh yes, very well indeed. Do you?"
"I met him accidentally, a year or two ago, and the other day I called to ask him to give me his votes for a case I am trying to get into the Incurable Hospital. He was very cordial, and asked me to a musical evening at his house to-morrow."
"Oh, do go! It is going to be splendid, and I expect you will hear Miss Maclean sing. She has such a sympathetic voice."
Wordsworth received but scant justice when the two men retired to Mr Reynolds's study. Each felt strongly the spiritual kinship of the other, and they talked as men rarely do talk at a first or second meeting.
"I have stayed an unconscionable time," Ralph said at last, "and I hope you will let me come again. I can scarcely tell you what you have done for me. You have made me feel that 'the best is yet to be.'"
Mr Reynolds did not answer immediately. When he did, it was to say somewhat dreamily—
"'But I need now as then,
Thee, God, who mouldest men.'
I wish I had your voice, Dr Dudley. With such an organ, and with such a faith, you ought to be able to move mankind."
"Faith?" repeated Dudley; "I am not overburdened with that."
"By faith I did not mean creed. I was thinking of your paper the other evening."
Dudley winced. "That paper was not written yesterday," he said. "I had neither the heart nor the energy to write another, so I
'Gored mine own thought, sold cheap what is most dear."
Greater men than I have preached to-day the faith of yesterday, in the hope that it might return to-morrow. But I am afraid that sort of faith never does return."
"Had you built your house upon the sand?"
Ralph coloured. He could not honestly say that.
"Dr Dudley," said the old man quietly, "you and I have been disposed to trust each other to-night. Before you go, there is one thing I want to tell you. You know that Miss Maclean is my daughter's friend. I don't know whether you are aware that she is as dear to me as my own child; that outside my own small family circle there is no woman living in whom I am so deeply interested. I invited her to meet you this evening, and she refused. If you had not made me respect you, I should not ask you, as I do now, to tell me why she refused?"
Dudley's face was a battle-field of conflicting emotions.
"What has she told you about me?" he said at last.
"She has never mentioned your name." Mr Reynolds hesitated; and then made up his mind to risk all, and go on. "One day I was praising her steadfastness of purpose in remaining in her uncongenial surroundings at Borrowness, and she told me, with an honesty of which I am not sure that you and I would have been capable, that—the people she met were not all uncongenial. She spoke as a girl speaks who has never thought of love or marriage; but her words conveyed more to my mind than they meant to her."
Vague as Mr Reynolds's words were, he could have chosen no surer key to unlock Ralph's heart. A vivid picture of the old idyllic days at Castle Maclean flashed across his mind, and with it came an almost unbearable sense of regret. Oh, the pity of it! the pity of it!
"I will tell you!" he burst out suddenly. "God knows it will be a relief to speak to any man, and I believe you will understand. Besides, I owe an explanation to somebody who cares for her. Ninety-nine men out of a hundred would have thought nothing of it, but to me it was just everything. If she failed me there, she failed me everywhere. One could reason about a crime, but you can't reason about a subtle thing like that. It is in the grain of a man's mind. If it strikes you, it strikes you; and if it doesn't strike you, it doesn't strike you; and that's final. It is everything or nothing. And the worst of it is, that as things stand, I have wronged her horribly, and I can't put it right. If she were an ordinary woman it would be a matter of honour to ignore it all, and ask her to be one's wife; but she is Miss Maclean. If one has any arrière pensée, one must at least have the decency to let things alone, and not insult her farther."
In the course of Mr Reynolds's experience as a clergyman he had heard many incoherent confessions, but he had rarely listened to one which left him so completely in the dark as this. His face betrayed no perplexity, however, as he said, "Tell me how you met her, and where."
Then by degrees the truth began to dawn upon him. With bitter self-mockery, Dudley told the story of his doubt as to whether he could marry a "shop-girl"; told how his passion grew till it swept away all obstacles; and then he just hinted at what took place that stormy night when he brought her home from the wood.
"And you told her you loved her?" The words were spoken very quietly and as a matter of course.
Dudley's face flushed more deeply.
"I think we had both risen pretty well above the need of words that night," he said, with a nervous laugh. "When an electric spark passes between two spheres—— You see, I was weighed down by the feeling that I had wasted my life; this London course was a sort of atonement; and I would not ask a woman to be my wife till I had at least left all schoolboy work behind me. But that night I forgot myself."
"And when you met her next——?"
"I left Borrowness the next day." Dudley's lip curled. "Our next meeting was a fine dramatic tableau at Burlington House, a modern version of the sudden transformation of Cinderella."
"But you had written to her?"
Dudley shook his head. "I had told her—before that night—that I should not be a free man till my examination was over in July. She was so quick; she always seemed to understand. But when I went down to Borrowness, half mad with longing for her—her cousin had gone to America, and Miss Maclean, I was told, was starting for Switzerland with a party of friends!"
"Did you write to her then?"
"I did not know her address. And it was no use writing about a thing like that. Then came my aunt's long illness. She was the best friend I had in the world, and she died."
He paused, and resumed with a sudden change of tone, "Miss Maclean told me her name was Margaret."
"Margaret is her second name."
"Of course I know," Dudley broke out again vehemently, "that thousands of men would treat the whole affair as a joke; would be glad to find that the woman they loved had money and position, after all; but I cared for Miss Maclean on a plane above that. It drives me mad to think how she sat looking at me with those honest eyes, listening to my confessions, and playing her pretty little comedy all the time."
Mr Reynolds waited in vain for Dudley to go on before he spoke.
"I cannot imagine," he said at last, "why you did not ask her to explain herself."
Dudley bit his lip. "If Miss Maclean had forged a cheque," he said, "I should have asked her to explain herself. It seems to me that the one thing in life of which no explanation is possible, in a difference of opinion as to what is due to friendship—or love."
"Did it never occur to you that Miss Maclean's cousin might have bound her over not to tell any one that she was a medical student?"
There was a pause.
"Why should she?" Dudley asked harshly.
"Why she did it I presume was best known to herself—though, considering the kind of person she seems to have been, it does not strike me as particularly surprising; but one thing I am in a position to say unhesitatingly, and that is, that she did do it."
Another long pause.
"Even if she did," Dudley said, "what was a trumpery promise like that between her and me, if she loved me?"
"Perhaps you did not give her much opportunity to speak of herself; but when I saw her in October, she certainly did not love any man. Whether you taught her to love you afterwards, you are of course the best judge. I do not think she was bound to tell you before she knew that you loved her; and, judging from your own account of what took place, you do not seem to have made it very easy for a self-respecting woman to tell you afterwards."
Little by little the truth of this came home to Ralph, as he sat with his eyes fixed on the glowing embers of the fire.
Mr Reynolds gave his words time to take full effect and then went on.
"When I think how you have made that sensitive girl suffer, Dr Dudley, I am tempted to forget that I owe my knowledge of the circumstances entirely to your courtesy."
Ralph looked up with a rather wintry smile.
"Don't spare me," he said. "Hit hard!" And then there was another long silence.
"The one thing I cannot explain," said Mr Reynolds, "is her telling you that her name was Margaret."
"Oh, that's simple enough. It was in early days. I was talking of the name in the abstract, and she said it was hers; I daresay she never thought of the incident again; and then I saw it in her prayer-book—her mother's, no doubt. Mr Reynolds, I have been a blind fool; but I do think still that she ought to have told me."
"Since the old man has your permission to hit hard, you will allow me to say, that I think you do not realise how far injured pride has a share in your righteous indignation; but I have no wish to convince you. I would fain see my 'elder daughter' the wife of a nobler man."
Ralph smiled in spite of himself.
"That certainly is delivered straight out from the shoulder!" he said; "but do you think it is quite just? Every man is exacting on certain points. That was mine. But I am not a savage. No woman on earth should be so free and so honoured as my wife."
Mr Reynolds rose and held out his hand.
"It is midnight," he said, "and I have no more to say. Go home and think about it."
But when Ralph left the house, it was not to go home, but to pace up and down the squares, in such a tumult of excitement and thanksgiving as he had never known before.