It was a December afternoon. The sun shone down from a cloudless sky on the olive-woods of Bordighera, and Ralph lay stretched on a mossy terrace, looking up at the foliage overhead. It filled him with keen delight, that wonderful green canopy, shading here, as it did, into softest grey, glowing there into gold, or sparkling into diamonds. The air was soft and fragrant, and, away beyond the little town, he felt, though he could not see, the blue stretch of the Mediterranean. It seemed to him as though the stormy river of his life had merged into an ocean of infinite content. For the moment, ambition and struggle were dead within him, and he looked neither behind nor before.
The crackling of a dry twig made him turn round.
"Come along, sweetheart," he said; "I have been lazily listening for your step for the last half-hour."
"Then you began to listen far too soon," she said, seating herself beside him, and putting her hand in his. "But I am a few minutes late. The post came in just as I was starting."
"No letters, I hope?"
"Two for me—from Doris and Auntie Bell. I suppose you don't care to read them?"
He shook his head. "Not if you will boil them down for me."
"They had a delightful passage, and seem to be as happy as two human beings can be."
"Nay, that we know is impossible."
"Well, nearly as happy, let us say. Doris found my letter awaiting her at Bombay,—not the one that told of your 'Double First'; but she was delighted to hear that we had all passed. She did not in the least believe that Lucy would."
"Trust Miss Reynolds not to fail! One would as soon expect her to do brilliantly."
"Doris says I am not to forget to tell her whether Maggie's soups and sauces satisfy my lord and master."
He laughed. "I seem to recognise Miss Colquhoun in that last expression. What does Auntie Bell say?"
"She would dearly like to come and visit us in London; but her husband seems to be breaking up, and she has everything to superintend on the farm; so she 'maun e'en pit her mind past it, in the meantime.' You will be interested to hear that Matilda Cookson has carried her point. She goes up for her Preliminary Examination in July; and, if she passes, she is to join the Edinburgh School in October."
"You are a wonderful woman."
"Oh, by the way, Ralph, they are having an impromptu dance at the hotel to-night."
His face clouded. "Do you like dancing?" he asked.
"Very much indeed. Why don't you claim me for the first waltz?"
"Because I can't dance a little bit. You would lose every atom of respect you have for the creature, if you saw him being 'led through a quadrille,' as they call it."
"Would I? Try me!"
What a wonderful face it was, when she let it say all that it would! Ralph took it very tenderly between his hands, and greedily drank in its love and loyalty. Then he turned away. How he loathed the thought of this dance! There were one or two men in the house whom Mona had met repeatedly in London, and the thought of her dancing with them gave him positive torture.
"Come, friend!" he said to himself roughly. "We are not going to enact the part of the jealous husband at this time of day;" but when he entered the salon that evening, some time after the dance had begun, and morbidly noted the impression made by Mona's appearance there, he would gladly have given two years of his life to be able to waltz.
Of course he must look as if he enjoyed it, so he moved away, and spoke to an acquaintance; but above all the chatter, above the noise of the music, he could hear the words—
"May I have the honour of this waltz, Mrs Dudley?"
Very clearly, too, came Mona's reply.
"Thank you very much, but I only waltz with my husband. May I introduce you to Miss Rogers?"
A few minutes later Dudley turned to where his wife was sitting near the door,—his eyes dim with the expression a man's face wears when he is absolutely at the mercy of a woman. He could not bear the publicity of the ball-room, and he held out his arm to her without a word. Mona took it in silence. He wrapped a fleecy white shawl about her, and they walked out into the cool, quiet starlight.
"You do like this better than that heat and glare and noise?" he asked eagerly.
"That depends on my company. I would rather be there with you than here alone."
"Mona, is it really true,—what you said to that man?"
"That I only waltz with my husband? Oh, you silly old boy! Do you really think any other man has put his arm round me since you put yours that night in the dog-cart? Did not you know that you were teaching me what it all meant?"
He put it round her now, roughly, passionately. His next words were laughable, as words spoken in the intensity of feeling so often are.
"Sweetheart," he said, "I am so sorry I cannot dance. I will try to learn when we go back to town."
Mona laughed softly, and raised his hand to her lips.
"That is as you please," she said. "Personally I think your wife is getting too old for that kind of frivolity. Of course she is glad of any excuse for having your arm round her."
"It is a taste that is likely to be abundantly gratified," he said quietly. "Are you cold? Shall we go back to the hotel?"
"Yes, let us go to our own quiet sitting-room. And, please, be quite sure, Ralph, that I don't care for dancing one bit. I used to, when I was a girl, and I did think I should love to have a waltz with you: but, as you say, this is a thousand times better."
They walked back to the house in silence.
"Oh, Mona, my very own love," he said, throwing a great knot of olive-wood on to the blazing fire, "what muddlers those women are who obey their husbands!"
Mona did not answer immediately. She seated herself on the white rug at his feet, and took his hands in hers.
"Obedience comes very easy when one loves," she said at last,—"dangerously easy. I never realised it before. But passion dies, they tell us, and the tradition of obedience lives and chafes; and then the flood-gates of all the miseries are opened. Don't ever let me obey you, Ralph!"
"My queen!" he said. "Do you think I would blot out all the exquisite nuances of your tact and intuition with a flat, level wash of brute obedience? God help me! I am not such a blind bungler as that. Don't talk of passion dying, Mona. I don't know what it is I feel for you. I think it is every beautiful feeling of which my soul is capable. It cannot die."
"Ralph," said Mona, "man of the world, do I need to tell you that we must not treat our love in spendthrift fashion, like a mere boy and girl? Love is a weed. It springs up in our gardens of its own accord. We trample on it; but it flourishes all the more. We cut it down, mangle it, root it up; but it seems to be immortal. Nothing can kill it. Then at last we say, 'You are no weed; you are beautiful. Grow there, and my soul shall delight in you.' But from that hour the plant must be left to grow at random no more. If it is, it will slowly and gradually droop and wither. We must tend it, water it, guard with the utmost care its exquisite bloom; and then——"
"And then?"
"And then it will attain the perfectness and the proportions that were only suggested in the weed, and it will live for ever and ever."
"Amen!" said Ralph fervently. "Mona, how is it you know so much? Who taught you all this about love?"
She smiled. "I had some time to think about it after that night at Barntoun Wood. And I think my friends have very often made me their confidante. It is so easy to see where other people fail!”