It seems gratuitously cruel to take my readers back to bleak old Borrowness in this dreary month of December: away from the roses and the sunshine, and the wonderful matchless blue, to the mud, and the mist, and the barren fields, and the cold, grey sea.
Princely, luxurious Cannes! Home of the wealth of nations! stretched out at ease like a beautiful woman, along the miles of wooded hill that embrace the bay. Homely, work-a-day Borrowness! stooping down all unseen, shrouded in northern mists, to gather its daily bread. Do you indeed belong to the same world? feel the same needs? share the same curse? Do the children play on the graves in the one as in the other? in both do man and maid touch hands and blush and wonder? Is there canker at the core of the luscious glowing fruit? is there living sap in the heart of the gnarled and stunted tree? Beautiful Cannes! resting, expanding, enjoying, smiling! Brave little Borrowness! frowning and panting and sighing, and wiping with weary hand the sweat from a workworn brow!
Christmas was drawing near, but it had been heralded by no fairy frost, only by rain and fog and dull grey skies. Mona's life had been unmarked by any event that had distinguished one day from another. The last entry in the unwritten diary of her life was some three weeks old, and consisted of one word in red letters—Stradivarius. And yet the days had been so full, that, in order to redeem her promise to Mr Reynolds, she had often found herself constrained, when bedtime came, to rake together the embers of the fire, and spend an hour over the mechanics of the circulation, or the phenomena of isomerism. "Don't talk to me of the terpenes or the recent work on the sugars," she wrote to a friend in London, who had offered to send her some papers. "I have little time to read at all; and when I do, I have sworn to keep to the beaten track. Well-thumbed, jog-trot text-books for me; no nice damp Transactions! Wae is me! wae is me! You must send your entrancing fairy tales to some one else!"
Trade had continued very brisk in the little shop; indeed its character and reputation had completely changed. A few interesting boxes had arrived from the Stores, and the local traveller no longer had amusing tales to relate of the way in which Miss Simpson kept shop. In fact, had it not been for his prospects in life, and for his desire to spare the feelings of his family, he would have been strongly tempted to offer his heart and hand to Miss Simpson's bright and capable assistant. It would be an advantage in many ways to have a wife who understood the business; and, poor thing, she would not readily find a husband in Borrowness. She was thrown away at present—there was no doubt of that. Why, with her quick head at figures, and her fine lady manners, she could get a situation anywhere.
Mona, fortunately, was all unaware of the tempting fruit that dangled just above her head. She had, it is true, some difficulty in keeping the traveller to the point, when she had dealings with him; but her limited intercourse with the other sex had not taught her to regard this as peculiarly surprising.
What rejoiced her heart, far more even than the success of the shop, was the number of women and girls who had got into the way of consulting her about all sorts of things. "I exist here now," she wrote to Doris, "in the dual capacity of assistant to Miss Simpson, and of general referee on the choice of new goods and the modification of old ones. 'Goods' is a vague term, and is to be interpreted very liberally. It includes not only dresses and bonnets and furniture, but also husbands."
Rachel did not at all approve of this large and unremunerative clientèle. If there had been any question of "honesty and religion like," it would have been different; but she considered that the "hussies wasted a deal of Mona's time, when she might have been better employed."
To Matilda Cookson, of course, she objected less; but she never could sufficiently express her wonder at Mona's inconsistency in this respect.
"As soon as the Cooksons begin to notice you, you just bow down like all the rest, for all your fine talk," she said one day, in a moment of irritation.
Mona strove to find a gentle reply in vain, so, contrary to all her principles, she was constrained to receive the remark in irritating silence.