"Don't talk to me of 'kariols' and 'stolkjaerres,'" said Sir Douglas hotly. "I never got such an infernal shaking in my life."
Mona laughed. "Do you know," she said, "I imagine that 'kariols' and 'stolkjaerres' have done more to make or mar Norway than all its mountains and fjords. They are so picturesque and characteristic, and they make up so neatly into wooden toys and silver ornaments. Scenery and sunsets are all very well, but it is amazing how grown-up children love to carry home a piece of cake from the party, and in this case the piece of cake serves as an excellent advertisement."
"Fill your pockets with cake by all means, but let us have more substantial diet while we are here. You girls may do as you like; for the future, Maud and I travel in a calesch."
They were all sitting on the grassy mounds and hillocks near the edge of the precipice, above the Nærodal at Stalheim.
The air was full of the fragrance of spicy herbs and shrubs, and the ceaseless buzz of insects in the mellow sunshine could be heard above the distant unvarying roar of the waterfalls.
In front lay the "narrow valley," bounded on either side by a range of barren, precipitous hills, half lost in shadow, half glowing in purple and gold. Some thousand feet below, like a white scar, lay the river, spanned by tiny bridges, over which horses and vehicles crawled like flies. Behind, the pretty, gimcrack hotel raised its insolent little gables in the midst of the great solitude; and beyond that, hills and mountains rose and fell like an endless series of mighty billows.
Lady Munro was leaning back in a hammock-chair, half asleep over her novel; Sir Douglas puffed at his fragrant cigar, and protested intermittently against all the hardships he had been called upon to endure; Evelyn, with the conscientiousness of an intelligent schoolgirl, was sketching the Nærodal; and Mona leaned idly against a hillock, her hands clasped behind her head, her face for the moment a picture of absolute rest and satisfaction.
"Why don't they bring the coffee?" said Lady Munro, stifling a yawn. "Evelyn, do go and enquire about it, do!"
"It has not been served on the verandah yet," said Evelyn, without looking up from her work, "and you know they are not likely to neglect us."
"No, indeed," said Mona. "I can assure you it is a great privilege to poor little insignificant me to travel in such company. I have long known that the god of hotel-keepers all over the world is the hot-tempered, exacting, free-handed Englishman. I used to think it a base superstition, but now that I have all the privileges of a satellite, I see that it is a wise and beneficent worship."
"You pert little minx!" said Sir Douglas, trying to control the twitching at the corners of his mouth.
"And I have also learned," continued Mona unabashed, looking at her aunt, "that a fascinating manner of languid dignity, mingled with a subtle Anglo-Indian imperiousness, is worth a whole fortune in 'tips.' I mean to cultivate a far-off imitation of it."
"Mona, you are too bad!" Lady Munro had become much attached to her niece, but she never felt quite sure of her even now.
"My own belief is," said Evelyn dreamily, "that the respect with which we are treated is due entirely to Nubboo."
"Well, he does give an air of distinction to the party, I confess," Mona answered. "When he is on the box of the calesch I shall feel that nothing more is required of me."
At this moment a stolid, fair-haired girl, in picturesque Norwegian dress, appeared with a tray of cups and saucers, and Nubboo followed with the coffee. There was a perpetual dispute between them as to who should perform this office. Each considered the other a most officious meddler, and they ended, not very amicably, by sharing the duty between them.
"What a jumble you are making of the world!" laughed Mona, as she watched the retreating figures. "How do you reconcile it with your sense of the fitting to bring together types like those? A century hence there will be no black, no white; humanity will all be uniformly, hideously, commonplacely yellow!"
"God forbid!" ejaculated Sir Douglas, with orthodox social horror of the half-caste. "Who the deuce taught these people to make coffee?"
"I am sure we have reason to know," sighed his wife, "that it is impossible to teach people to make coffee."
"Nascitur non fit? I suppose so, but it is curious—in a savage nation;" and he drank the coffee slowly and appreciatively, with the air of a professional wine-taster.
Mona rose, put her cup on the rustic table, and looked at Evelyn's painting. "How are you getting on?" she said, laying her hand caressingly on the girl's shoulder.
"If only the shadows would stand still! Mona, you are very lazy. Do come and draw. See, I've two sketch-blocks, and no end of brushes."
"Ah!" said Mona. "Let me really succeed with a Dies Iræ, or a Transfiguration, and then I shall think of attacking the Nærodal."
Evelyn raised her blue eyes. "Don't be cutting, please," she said quietly.
"And why not, pray, if it amuses me and does you no harm? In the insolent superiority of youth, must you needs dock one of the few privileges of crabbed age? My dear," she went on, seating herself again, "when I had reached the mature age of twelve I planned a great historic painting, The Death of William II. I took a pillow, tied a string some inches from one end, and round the kingly neck, thus roughly indicated, I fastened my own babyish merino cape, which was to do duty for the regal mantle. I threw my model violently on the floor to make the folds of the cape fall haphazard, and then with infinite pains I proceeded to make them a great deal more haphazard than the fall had done. To tell the truth, the size and cut of the garment were such that I might almost as well have tried to get folds in a collar."
"No great feat," said Sir Douglas ruefully, "if it came from a Norwegian laundry! Well?"
Mona laughed sympathetically. "On the same principle I studiously arranged my head and arms on the dressing-table before the glass to look as if I had fallen from my horse, and I studied the attitude till I flattered myself that I could draw it from memory. But the legs and the nether garments—there lay the rub! Heigh-ho, Evelyn! you need not grudge me my cheap cynicism as a solatium for the loss of the excitement that kept me awake making plans for hours at night, and the passionate eagerness with which I prosecuted my researches by day—between the boards of Collier's 'British History'!"
"But the picture," asked Sir Douglas; "does it survive!"
"Alas, no! Not even as an unfinished fragment. A laburnum-tree and two rose-bushes in the garden represented the New Forest, and I never watched any one leave the room without making a mental study of Walter Tyrrell disappearing among the trees. But the royal legs were too great a responsibility."
"Why on earth didn't you get some one to lie on the floor as a model?"
Mona's face assumed an expression of horror.
"You don't suppose I spoke to any one of my picture! I was worlds too shy. Is that all you know of the diffidence of genius?"
"I expect it was a very clever picture," said Lady Munro admiringly.
"My dear aunt, I can see it clearly in my mind's eye now, and although 'the past will always win a glory from its being far,' I cannot flatter myself that there is an atom of talent in that picture. There is not a strong line in it. I had plenty of resource, but no facility."
"It must have been a great disappointment to you to leave it unfinished at last."
"Oh dear, no! I believe the difficulty of the legs would have been surmounted in the long-run somehow, but I suddenly discovered that the true secret of happiness lay in novel-writing. I spent the one penny I possessed at the moment on a note-book, and set to work."
"What was the title?" asked Evelyn, who had some thoughts of writing a novel herself.
"'Jack's First Sixpence,'" said Mona solemnly.
"And the plot——?" asked Sir Douglas.
"——narrows itself naturally, as you will see, to what he did with the sixpence. I believe"—Mona's lips quivered, and her eyes brimmed over with laughter, but she still spoke with great solemnity—"that after much reflection he deposited it in the missionary-box. I clearly see, on looking back, that my budding originality found more congenial scope in art than in literature."
"And did that get finished?" asked Evelyn.
"It did—in the long-run; but it had a narrow escape. I had written some twelve pages, when I suddenly thought of a title for a new story. My next penny went on another note-book, and I wrote on the first page—
'The Bantam Cock and the Speckled Hen:
A Story.
By
Mona Maclean.'
It looked very well, but for the life of me I could get no further. To this day I have never had one idea in my head on the subject of that bantam cock and speckled hen. So I was forced to return to commonplace Jack; and a year later, when I went to school, the second note-book was filled up with four hundred dates, which I duly committed to memory. What a glorious thing education is!"
She sprang to her feet, ashamed of having talked so much, and was glad that the tardy arrival of the post from Vossevangen formed a natural interruption to her reminiscences. The portier brought out a bundle of Indian letters and papers for Sir Douglas, and a letter for Mona in Lucy's handwriting. It "brought her down to earth with a run," as she candidly informed the writer a fortnight later, and she put it in her pocket with a frown. It was not pleasant to be reminded of a commonplace, sneering, work-a-day world beyond the hills and the sunshine.
"Nothing for me!" exclaimed Evelyn. "Maria and Annette promised faithfully to answer my letters by return."
"I don't think they've had time even for that," said Mona. "The Norwegians pride themselves on their facilities for posting letters, but you must not expect a reply!"
Sir Douglas went indoors to read and answer his letters in comfort, Evelyn proceeded diligently with her painting, and Mona announced her intention of going for a walk.
"I cannot rest," she said, "till I have explored that path that runs like a belt round the hills to the Jördalsnut. I shall be back in plenty of time for supper."
"My dear Mona!" exclaimed her aunt, "it looks dreadfully dangerous. You must not think of it. A footpath half-way down a precipice!"
"It must be a horse-track," said Mona, "or we should not see it so distinctly from here. Certainly the least I owe you is not to run into any unnecessary danger; and I assure you, you may trust me. Do you see that cottage at the end of the path close to the Jördalsnut? When I get there, I will wave my large silk handkerchief. Perhaps you will see it if you are still here. Au revoir!" She kissed her aunt's dainty ringed hand, and set off at a good walking pace.
She had already made enquiry respecting the shortest way to the Jördalsnut, and she found it now without much difficulty. For half a mile or so it lay along the beaten road, and then turned off into the fields. From these, she passed into a straggling copse of stunted trees and tangled undergrowth, and emerged suddenly and unexpectedly on the brink of a deep gorge. Away down below, brawled and tumbled a foaming swollen tributary of the river, and Mona saw, with some uneasiness, that a plank without any kind of handrail did duty for a bridge.
"Now's your chance, my dear girl," she said; "if you mean to keep your head in a case of life and death, or in a big operation—keep it now!"
She gave herself a second to make up her mind—not another in which to think better of it—and then walked steadily across.
"After all, there was no danger for anybody one degree removed from an idiot," she said, with characteristic contempt for an achievement the moment it had passed from the region of posse into that of esse.
But it was with renewed energy that she climbed the opposite side of the gorge and mounted the steep stony path that brought her out on the open hillside. Now that she was actually among them, the mountains towered about her in awful silence. The sky above and the river below seemed alike distant. The sun had gone down, and she stood there all alone in the midst of barren immensity. She took off her hat, tossed back the hair from her heated forehead, and laughed softly.
But she was only now at the beginning of the walk she had planned, and there was no time to lose. The path was, as she had thought, a horse-track, and the walk involved no danger, so long as one did not too entirely lose sight of one's footing in the grandeur of the surroundings. Once she was almost startled by the sudden appearance of a man a few yards in front of her, a visitor at the hotel, probably, for he lifted his hat as he passed.
"Of all the hundreds who are passing through Stalheim to-day," she thought, "only one takes the trouble to come along here, out of the eternal rush of kariols. What do they come to Norway for?"
Every step of the walk was keen enjoyment. She had never allowed herself to get out of touch with nature. "The 'man' shall not 'perceive it die away,'" she had said in the confidence of youth. "Nature is jealous, I know, but she shall receive no cause of offence from me. She was my first friend, and she shall be my last."
She reached the tiny homestead she had seen from Stalheim, and she waved her handkerchief for some minutes, looking in vain for an answering signal. She was very near the Jördalsnut now, but to her great disappointment she found herself separated from it by a yawning valley which it was quite impossible to cross. The path by which she had come was continued along the hillside into this valley, turning upon itself almost at right angles.
"It's clear I shall get nowhere near the dear old roundhead to-night," she said, "but I may be able to see at least how the path reaches it ultimately."
She walked on for some time, however, without coming to any turning, and her spirits began to flag. The whole scene had changed within the last half-hour. The air was damp; poor-looking, half-grown trees concealed the view; and the ground was covered with long, dank grass.
"I suppose I must turn," she said regretfully. "I take five minutes' rest, and then be off home."
She seated herself on a great mossy boulder, and suddenly bethought herself of Lucy's letter. The familiar handwriting and words looked strangely out of place in this dreary solitude.
"MY DEAR MONA,—Perhaps you would like to know what I did when I read your letter. I sat on the floor and howled! Not with laughter,—don't flatter yourself that your witticisms had anything to do with it. They only added insult to injury. Don't imagine either that I mean to argue with you. It is impossible to influence you when your decision is right; and when it is wrong, one might as well reason with a mule. The idea! I told father you would walk through the examination in January and take your final M.B., when I did. It once or twice crossed my mind with horror that you might content yourself with a Scotch 'Triple,' or even a beggarly L.S.A.; but that you would be insane enough to chuck the whole thing, never so much as entered my head. It is too absurd. Because, as you are pleased to say, you have thrown three or four years of your life to the pigs and whistles, is that any reason why you should throw a fifth?
"And have you really the conceit to suppose that you would make a good barmaid—a profession that requires inborn talent and careful cultivation? Can you flirt a little bit, may I ask? Could you flirt if your life depended on it? Would anything ever teach you to flirt? Personally I take the liberty of doubting it. I suppose you think improving conversation and scientific witticisms will do equally well, or better?—will amuse the men, and improve them at the same time? Gott bewahre!
"Do you consider yourself even qualified to be a linen-draper's shop-girl? Are you in the habit of submitting to the whims and caprices of every Tom, Dick, and Harry who confers on you the favour of bargaining with you for a good penny's-worth? Is it possible you do not realise the extent to which you have always been—to use a metaphor of your own—the positively electrified object in the field?—how we have all meekly turned a negative side to you, and have revenged ourselves by being positive to the rest of the world? Can you hope to be a comfort even to your cousin? Do you think she will enjoy being snubbed if she calls things 'stylish' or 'genteel'? Do you imagine that 'Evenings with the Microscope' will fill the place of a comfortable gossip about village nothings and nonentities?
"Oh Mona, my friend, my wonderful, beautiful Mona, don't be an abject idiot! Write to your cousin that you have been a fool, and let us see your dear face in October. How is the School to get along without you?
"In any case, darling, write to me, and that right soon. Why did you not tell me more about the Munros. The idea of dangling such a delicious morsel as Sir Douglas before my eyes for a moment, only to withdraw him again? How could you tantalise me so? You know hot-tempered, military old Anglo-Indians are my Schwärmerei, &c., &c., &c."
Mona laughed, but her eyes were full of tears. She was not seriously moved by Lucy's letter but it depressed her sadly, and suggested food for much reflection. She sat for a long time, her head resting on her hand, her eyes fixed absently on the page before her. Suddenly the sharp rap of a raindrop on the paper brought her to a recollection of her surroundings, and she started to her feet in alarm. It had grown strangely dark. She could see the mist gathering even through the trees, and the rain was evidently coming on in earnest.
When she emerged into the comparative light and openness of the Nærodal, she found, as she had feared, that the mist was creeping rapidly down the hillsides. It was raining heavily, and she must soon be enveloped in a thick, wet cloud.
"I am an abject idiot, as you say, Lucy," she said, "but it was mainly your fault this time."
She hurried along in breathless haste, but she was soon obliged to slacken her pace. Although the path was safe enough, it was broken away in some places, and already she could scarcely see a yard in front of her.
"I don't mind the open hillside," she gasped, "but how I am to get across an invisible plank, with an invisible torrent roaring down below, heaven alone knows!"
And indeed she did mind the open hillside very much. In the clear daylight she had fancied herself half-way between earth and sky; now she was standing on a single square yard of stony ground in a universe of nothingness.
"It is simply impossible that I can find my way through that wood," she went on, becoming almost calm from very despair. "It was a pure chance that I took the right path when the sun was shining."
She had serious thoughts of deliberately spending the night on the hillside, and even sat down for a few minutes on a dripping stone; but her clothes were soaked through, and her teeth chattered with cold, so she was forced to go on.
"Shall I shout?" she thought. "No, I never shouted or screamed in my life, and I don't mean to begin now." But she knew well that she would have shouted eagerly enough, if there had been the faintest chance of her being heard. It was useless to shout to the mists and the barren hills.
Then for the first time it occurred to her that her uncle would send out a search-party; but, after the first rush of relief, this seemed the worst fate of all. Anything would be better than all that fuss and disturbance. It would be too humiliating to provide food for days of exaggerated gossip in the hotel, to be constrained with much penitence to curtail or forego her solitary walks. And it might all have been so easily avoided if she had had her wits about her. "Oh Lucy, I am an abject idiot!" she groaned.
At this moment she fancied she heard a step on the stones some distance behind her. Yes, there was no doubt of it. Some one was coming. Uncertain whether to be relieved or more alarmed than before, she stood still, her heart beating fast. The steps drew nearer and nearer. It was horrible to feel a presence so close at hand, and to strain her eyes in vain. In another moment a broad, ruddy, reassuring face looked down at her like the sun through the mist, and she drew a long breath of relief.
"Bless my soul!" the owner of the face exclaimed, aghast at finding a young girl in such a dangerous situation, "you don't mean to say you are alone?"
"Yes," laughed Mona. But the laugh was a very uncertain one, and revealed much that she would rather have kept to herself.
"Well, I am glad I have found you," he went on, shaking a shower of water from his dripping straw hat. "I shouldn't like to think my sister was out here alone on a night like this. Won't you take my arm? I'm afraid you are very tired, and it can't be easy to walk with your dress clinging to you so."
Mona's cheek flushed, but she was glad to take his arm. His tall, sturdy, tweeded figure belied the boyish, beardless face, and seemed like a tower of strength.
"You have had a soaking," he went on, with a sort of brotherly frankness which it was impossible to resent. "So have I, but knickerbockers adapt themselves better to untoward circumstances than your things. Am I walking too fast?"
"Not a bit. I need not tell you that I shall be glad to get home."
They both laughed at the equivocal compliment.
"Were you afraid?" he asked presently.
"Dreadfully," said Mona simply. "In fact," she added after a pause, "I am ashamed now to think how unnerved I allowed myself to get."
"Why—you had some cause. Few men would have strictly enjoyed the situation. How far had you gone?"
"I don't quite know. About a mile round the corner, I think. I was among the trees and did not notice the mist. By the way—did you get to the Jördalsnut?"
"No: I left my portmanteau at the inn, and started with that intention; but I went in for a bit of scrambling on this side of the valley, and then the mist drove me home. I am very glad it drove me to your assistance—not but what you would have got on all right without me."
"I can't tell you how glad I am. I really don't know what I should have done," and she raised her eyes to his with a frank look of gratitude.
He started, almost imperceptibly. There was a curious charm in that honest un-selfconscious glance, but there was something more than that.
"You are not travelling alone, are you?" he asked, after a minute's silence.
"No, I am with my uncle and aunt. Sir Doug—my uncle usually walks with me,—not that I think a chance accident like this is any argument against my going about alone if I choose."
There was no answer. He was looking at her in an interested way, as if meditating the question profoundly.
"Please don't tell any one you found me in extremis," she went on; "it would be too great a disappointment to be obliged to give up my solitary walks."
"How can I tell any one what is not true?" he said, recovering himself. "I did not find you in extremis at all. I did not even know you were frightened till you laughed. You looked at me with such dignified self-assurance when I hove in sight that I was more than half inclined to lift my hat and pass on."
Mona laughed incredulously.
They trudged on for a time in silence. Once she looked up and found his eyes fixed on her face with an expression of amusement. "It is very odd," he said, finding himself caught.
"What is?"
"Oh, I don't know—the whole thing."
He broke into a quiet laugh, and Mona joined in it from sympathy. He was a curious creature this son of Anak, whose broad, glistening face gleamed at her so benevolently through the mist.
"Have you been long at Stalheim?" he asked.
"Only a few days."
"Is the hotel good?"
"Ye-e-s. This part of Norway is in an awkward transition stage between the primitive inn and the cosmopolitan hotel."
"Are there many tourists?"
"Oh yes! They go rushing through by hundreds every day. They stop to smoke a cigar, eat a dinner, or sleep for a night, and then join the mad chase of kariols again. They are noisy, too; my uncle gets quite indignant at the way they clatter about the wooden floors in their heavy boots, and shout their private affairs up-stairs and down-stairs, or from the verandah to the road."
"I suppose he does," and the son of Anak laughed again.
The mist was beginning to clear by slow degrees when they came to the crest of the abrupt descent that led to the torrent.
"I can't tell you how I was dreading this part of the way," said Mona.
"Were you? Well, I must say it is a case where two are better than one. See, I will go first and hold out my hands behind me."
They got across in safety, and in a wonderfully short time found themselves on the road.
"Don't you find it very dull here in the evening?" he asked.
"No. But I can imagine any one would who was accustomed to being amused."
"You sit on the verandah, I suppose?"
"Not on the one overlooking the Nærodal. There is such a crowd there. We get one of the others to ourselves, and enjoy a cup of coffee, and a chat, or a quiet rubber."
"Now do get off those wet things instantly," he said as they drew near the house, "and promise me that you will have a glass of hot toddy or something equivalent. That's right!"—interrupting her thanks—"don't stand there for a moment. I shall take the liberty of presenting myself on the verandah after supper."
Mona ran up-stairs with a smile, but his last words had caused her some alarm. What sort of reception might he look for on the verandah? Lady Munro was considered extremely "exclusive"; and as for Sir Douglas, he classified the male tourists broadly as "counter-jumpers," and was indignant if they so much as looked at his niece and daughter. If her friend got a chance to speak for himself, nobody could fail to see that he was a gentleman, and in that case all would be well; but Sir Douglas was hasty, and not likely to welcome advances from a complete stranger.
"The fact is, I ought not to have hob-a-nobbed with him so," she said. "I need not have let my gratitude and relief run away with me. It is all my own fault. Yes, Lucy, I am an abject idiot!"
"Oh, I am so glad to see you!" cried Evelyn as Mona entered the room the cousins shared; "in another minute I should have told Mother."
"Where is aunt Maud?"
"She came in not long after you left, and has been asleep all the afternoon, so there was no one to tell Father. I should have gone to him in another minute. I have been so miserable."
"Plucky little soul! And she has actually had the stove lighted! I shall be dry in no time. Luckily, the mist is clearing every minute."
"My Etna will be boiling directly, and I have got wine to make you some negus. Oh, Mona, do make haste! What a state you are in!"
Mona hastily exchanged her dripping clothes for a comfortable dressing-gown, and after wringing out her long hair, she seated herself by the stove, sipping her negus.
"You must have been in fearful danger, I have imagined such things!"
"Not a bit. A son of Anak came to my rescue; but more of that anon. Get me out some clean things, like a darling."
"What dress will you wear?"
"Which of my evening gowns has my maid laid out?" laughed Mona. "Ah, the delaine. Curious the partiality she shows for that delaine! Now tell me exactly how much time I have. I don't want to lose a moment of this dolce far niente, but I must not be late for supper, whatever happens."
She was not late. The bell rang just as she was fastening her brooch.
"Got back, Mona?" said Lady Munro, emerging fresh and fragrant from her room.
"Yes, thank you." But before Mona had time to say more, Lady Munro turned to speak to Sir Douglas. It was impossible to begin a long story then.
The sudden change in the weather had induced many of the tourists to stay on, so the large dining-room was crowded. Mona just caught a glimpse of the son of Anak at the opposite end of another table, and she attempted once more to give a modified account of her afternoon's adventure. But the Fates were against her. A well-known Edinburgh professor was sitting opposite Sir Douglas, and the conversation became general.
"Let us hope he will give me five minutes' grace on the verandah," she said resignedly; but she had just remarked, by way of introduction, that the mist had almost entirely cleared, and Sir Douglas was in the act of lighting his first cigar, when the door opened, and her friend strode in with an air of infinite assurance.
"Aunt Maud," she began, but her voice was drowned in a general exclamation.
"Why, Sahib!" "Dickinson Sahib! Where on earth did you drop from?" "What a delightful surprise!" "Who would have thought of seeing you here? Sit down and tell us all about it. Oh, I forgot—Mr Dickinson, my niece, Miss Maclean."
"I was sure of it," exclaimed the new-comer, shaking hands cordially with the astonished Mona. "If I had met her in the wilds of Arabia, I could have sworn that she was a relative of Lady Munro's." And then the whole story came out, with modifications.
"Well, I must say," said Mona, when the questioning and explanations were over, "that you have treated me extremely badly."
He laughed like a schoolboy. "I am sure you don't grudge me my very small joke."
"No—especially as it makes us quits. Now we can begin a new page."
"I hope it may prove as pleasant as the first."
"Prettily said, Sahib," said Lady Munro. "Now, be sensible and give us an account of your eccentric movements."
"Eccentric!" he said, meditating a far-fetched compliment, but he was a sensible man and he thought better of it. "That's easily done. One of my Scotch visits fell through—a death in the house—so I ran over here for a few days. I thought I should probably run against you,—they say people always do meet in Norway. Of course, I knew you had sailed to Bergen."
"And what is your route now?"
"Is it for you to ask me that, as the filing said to the magnet?"
Sir Douglas went in search of maps and guide-books, and Mr Dickinson took a low chair beside Lady Munro.
"I need not ask if you are enjoying your tour," he said. "You are looking famously."
"Oh yes, I think this primitive world quite charming, and the air is so bracing! You have no idea what a pedestrian I have become. When Mona and my husband go off on breakneck excursions, Evelyn and I walk for hours—the whole day long nearly."
Mona looked up hastily. She had never heard of these wonderful walks; but her eyes met Evelyn's, and her question died on her lips.
"And Sir Douglas?" asked Mr Dickinson.
Lady Munro laughed, a low sweet laugh. "Oh, of course, he always grumbles; he says he has lived on roast leather and boiled flannel ever since we came. But he is enjoying himself immensely. It is a great thing for him to have Mona's company, as indeed it is for all of us. I am afraid she finds us dreadfully stupid. You have no idea what books she reads."
"At the present moment," said Mona gravely, "I am reading Moths."
Everybody laughed.
"Then you are meditating a cutting critique," said her aunt.
"I am reading the book simply and entirely for amusement," said Mona. "I am getting a little tired of ormolu and marqueterie, but one can't have everything one wants."
"But you don't really care for Ouida?" said the Sahib seriously.
Mona sighed. "If you force me to be critical," she said, "I do prefer sunlight, moonlight, or even glaring gaslight. Ouida takes one into a dark room, and, through a hole in the shutter, she flashes a brilliant gleam of light that never was on sea or land. But what then? She is a very clever woman, and she knows how to set about telling a story. One admires her power and esprit, one skips her vulgar descriptions, and one lets her morality alone."
Lady Munro laughed rather uneasily. She would not have owned to any man that she read Ouida, and Mona puzzled her. "After all, the child has been so buried in her studies," she thought, "that she knows nothing of the world. She will learn not to say risqué things to men, and, fortunately, it is only the Sahib."
Sir Douglas returned, and the conversation resolved itself into a discussion of routes and steamers.
"I will not sleep again at that horrid noisy Voss," he said. "We must lunch and change horses there, and get on to Eide the same night."
"Can you be ready to start at eight?" said the Sahib to Lady Munro.
"Oh dear, yes! I am up every morning hours before that."
Sir Douglas laughed cynically.
"Who is Mr Dickinson?" said Mona, when she and Evelyn had retired to their room.
"Deputy-Commissioner of—I always forget the name of the place."
"Never mind. Boggley Wallah will do equally well for me. And why do they call him Sahib? I thought everybody was a Sahib?"
"His family call him that for a joke, and it has stuck somehow. It was because he was very young when he got some appointment or other."
"He looks a mere boy now."
"I think he is thirty-three."
"I wish you would not tell him that I am a medical student; I don't feel that I have done credit to my cloth. I should not like him to think medical women were muffs."
"Oh, Mona, I do wish you would not be a medical woman, as you call it. Why don't you marry?"
"'Nobody axed me, sir, she said.' At least nobody that I call anybody."
"If you would go out to India, somebody would ask you every week of your life."
"Thanks. Even that is not absolutely my ideal of blessedness."
"But you don't want to be an old maid?"
"That expression is never heard now outside the walls of a ladies' boarding-school," said Mona severely. "Oh, my dear, at the romantic age of seventeen you cannot even imagine how much I prize my liberty; how many plans I have in my head that no married woman could carry out. It seems to me that the unmarried woman is distinctly having her innings just now. She has all the advantages of being a woman, and most of the advantages of being a man. I don't see how it can last. Let her make hay while the sun shines.
'Ergreife die Gelegenheit! Sie kehret niemals wieder.'"
"Well, I know I should be very disappointed, if I thought I should never have little children of my own."
"O Maternity, what crimes are perpetrated in thy name! Mothering is woman's work without a doubt, but she does not need to have children of her own in order to do it. You dear little soul! Never mind me. I wish you as many as you will wish for yourself when the time comes, and a sweet little mother they will have!"
"Nonsense!"
"Fact, my dear fellow! I knew it before I knew her, or I simply should never have believed it It's an awful shock to one's theories, don't you know?—one's views of womanliness and all that sort of thing. I have thought about it till I am tired, and I can't make it out; but upon my soul, Dickinson, you may say what you like, the girl's a brick."
"I'm quite sure of that already, and I'm sure she's clever enough for anything."
"Oh—clever, yes! But clever women don't need to—but there! I can't go into all that again. I simply give the subject up. Don't mention it to me again."
"But you know I am a staunch believer in women doctors. When my sister was so ill, the doctor at the station said she would be an invalid for life, and a staff surgeon who was passing through said the same. As a last resource I got a woman doctor to come a hundred miles to see her, and she brought Lena round in a few weeks. She knew her business, but—she was very different from Miss Maclean."
"Wasn't she? That's just it! Oh, I know they're a necessary evil. I should like to see a man doctor look at my Evelyn, except for a sore throat or a cut finger! I have always upheld the principle, in spite of the sacrifice involved; but how could I tell that any of my own womankind would take it up? You see, she was left so much to her own resources, poor child! There was no one to warn her of what it all meant. I reproach myself now for not having looked after her more; but how on earth could I know that she was going to turn out anything in particular? Gad! Dickinson, when I think of all that girl must know, it makes me sick—sick; but when I am speaking to her—upon my soul, I don't believe it has done her a bit of harm!"
The entrance of Mona and Evelyn into the sunny breakfast-room interrupted the conversation for a moment, and it was presently resumed in a lighter and more frivolous vein over the trout and the coffee.
"Oh, trout, yes!" said Sir Douglas. "I never said anything against the trout. If it were not for that, we should all be reduced to skin and bone. Evelyn, where is your mother?"
It was eight o'clock, and the calesch stood at the door, when Lady Munro appeared, serene and smiling; and then Evelyn and Mona had to hurry away and pack her valise for her.
"You know I've been up for hours," she said, with a charming nod to the Sahib, as she seated herself at the table, "but I began to write some letters——"
"Humph!" said Sir Douglas, and shrugging his shoulders, he abruptly left the room.
When the tardy valise was at last roped on to the calesch, and the portier was opening the door, the young Norwegian landlady came up shyly to Lady Munro.
"Will you haf?" she said in her pretty broken English, holding out a large photograph of the hotel, with its staff on the doorstep.
Never had Lady Munro smiled more sweetly.
"Is that really for me? How very kind! I cannot tell you how much I shall prize it as a memento of a charming visit. Why, I can recognise all of you!" and she looked round at the worshipping servants.
A minute later they drove off in state, with Nubboo enthroned on the box in front, and Dickinson Sahib following on in a kariol behind.
It was a glorious summer morning. Not a trace of mist or cloud lingered about the hillsides; the Nærodal was once more asleep in sunshine and shadow.
"Well, I am sure we shall not soon forget Stalheim," said Lady Munro. "It has been quite a new experience."
"Quite," agreed Sir Douglas. "It has been an absolutely new experience to me to see a hard-worked horse go up a hen's ladder to bed, with only a bundle of hay for supper, and never a touch from his groom. It is astonishing what plucky little beasts they are in spite of it."
"Now don't enjoy the scenery too much," said the Sahib, driving up alongside. "You have been over this ground before, and human nature cannot go on enjoying keenly all day long. Save yourselves for the afternoon. The drive from Voss to Eide is one of the finest things in Norway."
And so it proved. For the first few miles after they left Vossevangen, they drove through pine-woods and dripping cliffs, where every tiny ledge had its own tuft of luxuriant mosses; and then suddenly, at full speed, they began the descent to the sea-level.
"How dreadfully dangerous!" exclaimed Lady Munro.
"As good as a switchback," laughed Evelyn.
"What engineers those fellows must be!" said Sir Douglas admiringly, as every turn brought them in sight of the two great waterfalls, and their faces were drenched with spray.
"It is like going round and round the inside of a mighty chalice," said Mona.
And so it was; but the sides of the chalice were one living mass of the most glorious green, almost every square yard of which would have made a picture by itself.
When they reached the bottom, the driver suddenly dismounted, and proceeded to occupy himself with a piece of string and the weather-beaten straps that did duty for traces.
"Harness—broke!" he said calmly.
"The deuce it has!" exclaimed Sir Douglas. "I think you might have found that out at the top of the hill. Do you suppose our necks are of no more value than your own? Nubboo, just see that it is all right now."
"How horrible!" and Lady Munro shuddered.
Nubboo delivered a lengthy report in his native language, and Sir Douglas shrugged his shoulders resignedly.
"We must just chance it," he said. "I daresay it will be all right."
"How horrible!" repeated Lady Munro.
But they reached Eide without further accident, although rain fell steadily during the last hour of the drive.
It is the pleasant and primitive practice at Eide, especially in rainy weather, for the visitors to assemble in the large entrance-hall and verandah to watch the arrival of new-comers.
"If the show had been got up expressly for their benefit, and they had duly paid for their seats, they could not stare more frankly, could they?" laughed the Sahib, as he helped the ladies out of the calesch. "There is not an atom of concealment about it."
"Great privilege for us, upon my soul, to afford so much entertainment!" growled Sir Douglas.
"Won't you come for a turn in the garden before you go up-stairs?" the Sahib asked Mona, when the question of rooms had been settled. "We have five minutes to spare before supper, and there is a fine view of the fjord."
"But alack! what a change after dear, rugged old Stalheim!" she said, as they strolled down to the water's edge. "This might almost be an Interlaken garden."
"Quite tropical, isn't it? But look at the fjord!"
It spread out before them in a soft, hazy golden light, and the tiny waves broke gently on the steps at their feet.
Mona's face kindled. She did not think it necessary to speak.
"And yet," she said a minute later, "it is a cruel fjord. It is going to take us back to civilisation again." And then she could scarcely repress a laugh. Civilisation, indeed! Civilisation in a small shop at Borrowness!
He looked at her quickly. Did she repent of the life-work she had chosen?
"In the stores of your knowledge," he asked presently, his eyes on the hills, "do you include geology?"
"Among the rags and tags of my information," she replied, "I do not." "Oh, Sir Douglas, Sir Douglas," she thought, "you faithless knight!"
"I seem to have put my foot in it," he thought vaguely, "but I cannot imagine how." And so he proceeded to do it again.
"They have a lot of quaint old silver rings at the hotel," he said, as they turned back, "and other ancient Norwegian curios. I should like your opinion of them. Are you an authority on the subject?"
"Far from it," she said. "But I should like very much to see them, and to compare the things I like with the things I ought to like. Pray," she added, with an expression of almost childlike entreaty, "don't let any one persuade you that I am a learned woman. I wish with all my heart that I were, but I'm not, and I can't bear to feel like a hypocrite."
"I don't think any one will ever take you for that," he said, smiling.
"I suppose it must be my own fault," she went on, with curious impulsiveness, not heeding his remark. "I suppose my manner is dogmatic and priggish. But what can I do? When I am interested in a subject, I can't stop to think about my manner."
"If I might venture to advise," he said, "I should certainly say, 'Don't attempt it.'"
The next day they sailed for Odde. The fjord was smooth as glass, and every hamlet and tree on the peaceful hillsides was reflected in the water. It was a day for dreaming rather than for talking, and they scarcely spoke, save when each bay and gorge brought into view a fresh spur of the mighty glacier.
Early in the afternoon they reached Odde, beautiful Odde!—lying close to the edge of the fjord, embraced by the wooded hills, with pretty yachts and steamers at anchor in its bay, and the glacier looking coldly down from the great ice-sea above.
"We might almost be in England again," said Lady Munro, as they sat at lunch in the dining-room of the Hardanger.
"Yes, indeed," said Sir Douglas. "Civilised notions, half-a-dozen people in the place that one knows, two—actually two—shops, and dinners? Evelyn, you had better take a kariol and a tiger, and go shopping on the Boulevard!"
"I was just going to ask for your purse," said Evelyn calmly; "there are no end of things that I want to buy."
Finally, they betook themselves to the shops en famille, and a scene of reckless expenditure ensued. Sir Douglas heaped presents on "the girls," as he called Mona and Evelyn, and Lady Munro seemed to be in a fair way to buy up the whole shop.
"These old silver things are so pretty," she said childishly.
"And, at worst, they will do for bazaars," added Evelyn.
The saleswoman became more and more gracious. She had considerable experience in serving tourists who, with reminiscences of a previous summer in Switzerland or Italy, offered her "a pound for the lot," and her manner had acquired some asperity in consequence; but she quickly adapted herself to the people with whom she had to deal.
Mona watched her with a curious interest and fellow-feeling. "I ought to be picking up hints," she thought, with a smile. "I certainly might have a much worse teacher."
"Let me see. That's eleven and a half kroner," said a showy-looking man, taking a handful of gold and silver from his pocket. "I'll give you ten shillings."
No answer.
"Will you take ten shillings?"
"No, sir," very quietly.
He frowned. "Eleven shillings?"
"No, sir."
"What do you throw off?"
"Not—anything, sir," in slow but very unmistakable English.
He flounced out of the shop, leaving the things lying on the counter.
Not a muscle of the young woman's face changed, as she quietly returned the pretty toys to their place on the shelves.
"Brava!" said Mona to herself.
"A penny for your thoughts, Mona dear," said Evelyn's quiet voice a minute later. "Mr Dickinson has asked you twice how you like this old chatelaine. He wants to buy it for his sister."
Mona laughed and blushed.
"My thoughts are worth more than a penny," she said,—"to me at least." In point of fact, she was wondering whether it would be a part of her duty to say "Sir" and "Madam" to her customers at Borrowness.
In the course of the afternoon the Munros met a number of friends and acquaintances, and the next few days passed gaily away in excursions of all kinds. Night after night the party came home, sunburnt and stiff, but not too tired to enjoy a bright discussion across the pleasant dinner-table. There was nothing very profound about these conversations. Everybody had toiled and climbed enough during the day. Now they were content to fly lightly from crag to crag over a towering difficulty, or to cross a yawning problem on a rainbow bridge.
But after all, they were happy, and the world was not waiting in suspense for their conclusions.
Sunday morning came round all too soon, and on Monday the Munros were to sail for Bergen. Mona was sitting alone on the verandah, watching the people coming to church. The fjord lay sparkling in the sunshine, and from every hamlet and homestead along the coast, as far as the eye could reach, boats were setting out for Odde. As they drew in to the pier, the voluminous white sleeves, stiff halo-like caps, and brilliant scarlet bodices, made a pretty foreground of light and colour in the landscape.
But in the midst of her enjoyment Mona drew a long, deep, heartfelt sigh.
A little later Evelyn joined her. "I have been looking for you everywhere, Mona," she said. "Mr Dickinson has set his heart on going to the Buarbrae glacier to-day. The others all went before we came, and I think it would be insane to tire ourselves the last day. Father says he has not got over that 'Skedaddle' waterfall yet. You don't care to go, do you?"
Mona's eyes were still fixed on the fjord.
"Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die," she said half absently. "I will go with all the pleasure in life."
"Don't be profane, Mona. You are the queerest, cleverest girl that ever lived."
Mona laughed. "I don't consider that I am queer," she said; "I have good reason to know that I'm not clever; and all the world can see that I am not a girl. Otherwise, your description is correct. My compliments to the Sahib, and, if it please his Majesty to take me, I shall be only too glad to go."
"No doubt it will please his Majesty. You should hear how he speaks to Mother about you. You will soon be on a par with that wonderful sister of his. I think he talks too much about his sister, don't you?"
"No. He is among friends. I don't suppose he would do it in a scoffing world. Evelyn, dear, there is no use telling you not to grow cynical. We all do in this used-up age. Cheap, shallow, cynical talk is the shibboleth of the moment, and if we are at all sensitive, it is a necessary armour. But don't carry it into your immediate circle. In heaven's name, let us live frankly and simply at home, or life will indeed be apples of Sodom."
Evelyn looked rather blank. She did not know very well what all this meant, and still less could she see what it had to do with Mr Dickinson's sister. But she felt rebuked, and the words lingered in her memory.
In five minutes more the Sahib and Mona set off.
"What magnificent training you are in!" he said admiringly, as he watched her lithe young figure mount the hill at his side. "Your walking has improved immensely in the last week."
"Yes; one does get rather flabby towards the end of term, in spite of such specifics as tennis. But I don't think the circumstances of our first meeting were very conducive to a just estimate of my powers."
They both laughed at the recollection.
"What an age ago that seems!" he said.
"I am sorry the time has dragged so heavily."
"Nay. The difficulty is to believe that ten days ago I did not know you. Now turn and look behind."
The village had sunk picturesquely into the perspective of the landscape. Beside them the river surged down over the rocks and boulders to the fjord, and the sound of church bells came through the still summer air.
"This is better than being in church," he said.
"Much;—especially when one understands nothing of what is going on. But I am glad I have seen a Norwegian service. It is so simple and primitive, and besides"—she laughed—"I have a mental picture now of Kjelland's Morten Kruse."
"I do go to church as a rule," he said. "In India I consider it a duty."
Mona raised her eyebrows. "I go to church as a rule, too," she said. "But it never occurred to me to look upon it in the light of a duty."
"Don't you think that in that, as in other things, one has to think of one's neighbours?"
"I can't bear the word 'duty' in such a connection. It seems to me, too, that the Spirit of Praise and Prayer bloweth where it listeth. One cannot command it with mathematical precision at eleven o'clock on Sunday morning. The Spirit of Praise comes when one is alone in a world like this. I think we lose our individuality when there is nothing human near to remind us of it, and become as much a part of this great throbbing glorying Nature as the trees and the grass are."
"And the Spirit of Prayer?"
Mona smiled.
"The story of that," she said, "is written on each man's white stone."
"And yet, if most people act on that principle," he said, "they are a little apt to lose the Spirit of Praise and Prayer altogether. Don't you think so?"
Mona did not answer the question for a moment. Then she met the eyes that were fixed on her face. "Yes," she said frankly, "I do."
They walked on for a few minutes in silence.
"And may I ask what you do go to church for?" he said at last. "Don't answer if I take a liberty in asking."
"You don't at all; but it is a little difficult to say. I believe I go to church in order to get some one to think beautiful thoughts for me. When one's life is busy with work that takes all one's brain-power, there is little energy left with which to think beautiful thoughts. One loses sight of the ideal in the actual. I go to church in order to keep hold of it. If I were a seamstress I should probably go out among the hills on Sunday morning and think my beautiful thoughts for myself."
"You make it, in fact, a question of the division of labour. We are to buy our beautiful thoughts ready-made as we buy our boots, because a complicated state of society leaves us no time to make them."
"Precisely; and yet we are not exactly to buy them ready-made. I think it is Robertson who says that a thought is of no use to us, however beautiful, unless it is in a sense our own,—unless it makes us feel that we have been groping round it unconsciously, and all but grasping it. We cry 'Eureka!' when a beautiful thought strikes home, and we become aware for the first time that we have been in search of something. The moral of all this is, that our priest or preacher must be a man with a mind akin to our own, moving on the same plane, but if possible with a wider radius. This granted, his sect and creed are matters of infinitely little moment."
"But it seems to me that books would serve your purpose as well as sermons?"
"They serve the same purpose," she said; "but I am a strong believer in mesmeric influence, in the force of personality. Other things being equal, a voice impresses me much more than a printed page. Oh, I don't place sermons in a unique position by any means, or even sermons and books. It is very much a question of keeping 'a border of pinks round the potato-patch.' All the endless things that open up our horizon might be classed together; they would differ only as to the direction in which they open up the horizon. It is quite true in one sense that I go to church for the same reason that I go to the theatre—to keep myself from getting worldly; but a good sermon—I say a good sermon—has a more direct bearing on the ordinary affairs of life. In fact, it helps us to see not only the ideal, but, as I said before, the ideal in the actual."
"I think I see what you mean, although theatres are not commonly supposed to serve the purpose of keeping one unspotted from the world."
"It seems to me that one can get worldly over anything, from ballet-dancing to sweeping a room, if one does not see beyond it. There is another side to the 'trivial round, the common task' question, true and beautiful as Keble's poem is. Worldliness seems to me to be entirely a question of getting into a rut."
"All you say is very fine," he said; "but, with the curious provincialism of a Londoner—seen from the Anglo-Indian point of view—you are assuming that one has an unlimited number of preachers from whom to choose. What would you do if you were thrown back on one poor specimen of the 'fag end of the clergy'?"
Mona raised her eyes in surprise.
"I should never dream of going to church at all," she said, "unless there was something to be gained from the service."
"And suppose you were in India, where the lives of the English do not exactly tend to bear out the teaching of the missionaries?"
"I should remember that it must be very poor teaching which would be borne out by hypocrisy on my part."
"You would not go for the sake of example?"
"Most assuredly not. I don't believe in conscious influence."
They had come in sight of the Sandven-vand, and the little steamer stood at the pier. There were several other passengers on deck, so further conversation was impossible till they reached the other side. Then they made their way through the quaint old village, and up the bank of the river towards the glacier. Already it was in full view. Wooded hills closed in the valley on either side, and right in front of them the outlet was blocked, as it were, by a glowing, dazzling mountain of ice, snow-white under the cloudless blue sky.
"Oh, I am so glad we came!" And all the light from sky and glacier seemed reflected in Mona's face.
"I thought so," he said, well pleased. "I was sure it would be worth while."
Presently the view was hidden, as they passed under the trees that overarched the river.
"In fact," he said suddenly, as if the conversation had never been interrupted, "you don't believe in letting your light shine before men?"
"That I do!" she answered warmly. "I believe in letting a clear, steady, unvarying light fall alike on the evil and the good. I do not believe in running hysterically round with a farthing dip into every nook and cranny where we think some one may be guided by it."
"You are severe," he said quietly.
"Forgive me!" said Mona. "In truth, it is the metaphor that is too heavy for me: Fools and firearms—'the proverb is something musty.' Let me choose a weapon that I can use, and you will see what I mean.
"Let us say that each man's life is a garden, which he is called upon to cultivate to the best of his ability. Which do you think will do it best,—the man who, regardless of how his garden looks from the road, works honestly and systematically, taking each bed in its turn; or the man who constantly says, 'A. will be coming down the highroad to-day; I must see that the rose-bed is in good condition: or, B. will be looking over the hedge, I must get that turnip-patch weeded,'—and so on?"
It was some time before he answered.
"I think you are a little one-sided, if you will excuse my saying so."
"Please don't talk like that. How could I help being grateful for an honest opinion?—the more unlike my own, the better for me. Was I dogmatic again? Please remember that, whatever I say, I am feeling after the truth all the time."
He looked at her, smiling.
"But such as your metaphor is, let us carry it a little bit farther. Let us suppose that your garden is laid out in a land where the soil is poor and the people are starving. You know of a vegetable which would abundantly repay the trouble of cultivation, and would make all the difference between starvation and comparative comfort; but no one will believe in it. We will suppose that you yourself have ample means of livelihood, and are not dependent on any such thing. Would you not, nevertheless, sacrifice the symmetry of your flower-beds and grow my imaginary vegetable, if only to convince 'A. who comes down the highroad, and B. who looks over the hedge,' that starvation is needless?"
Mona smiled and held out her hand.
"Well said!" she cried cordially. "A good answer, and given with my own clumsy weapon. I admit that I would try to exercise 'conscious influence' in the very rare cases in which I felt called upon to be a reformer. But I am glad that is not required of me in the matter of church-going."
"And the whole, wide, puzzling subject of Compromise?" he said. "Is there nothing in that?"
Mona's face became very grave. "Yes," she said, "there is a great deal in that—though I believe, as some one says, that we studiously refrain from hurting people in the first instance, only to hurt them doubly and trebly when the time comes—there is a great deal in the puzzling subject of Compromise; but it has not come much into my life. There has been no one to care——"
Suddenly she laughed again and changed the subject abruptly.
"It is so odd," she said, "so natural, so like our humanity, that we should argue like this—you in favour of conscious influence, I against it—and I make not the smallest doubt that your life is incomparably simpler, franker, more straightforward than mine."
"That I do not believe," he said emphatically.
She looked at him with interest.
"I suppose you really don't. I suppose you are quite unconscious of being a moral Antiseptic?"
"A what?" he asked with pretended horror. "It doesn't sound very nice."
"Doesn't it? I should think it must be rather nice to make the world sweeter, sounder, wholesomer, simply by being one's self."
"Miss Maclean—you are very kind!"
"I wish I could say the same of you! I call it most unkind to make that conventional remark in response to a simple and candid statement of a fact."
"It was not conventional. I meant it. It is most kind of a man's friends to give expression now and then to the good things they think about him. One almost wonders why they do it so seldom. The world is ready enough to give him the other side of the question. The truth is—I was thinking how very difficult it would be to formulate a definition of you."
Mona put her fingers in her ears with unaffected alarm.
"Oh, please don't," she said. "That would be a mean revenge indeed. It is one thing to say frankly the thought that is in our mind, and quite another to go afield in search of our opinion of a friend. There is a crude brutality about the latter process."
"True," he said. "And I did not mean to attempt it. In fact, I should not dream of pigeon-holing you."
"You are unkind to-day. Did I deny that you were fifty other things besides an Antiseptic? and may not an Antiseptic have fifty other chemical properties even more important than that one? Who talks of pigeon-holing?"
"You must have the last word, I see."
"Womanlike!" she said, pretending to sneer.
"Womanlike!" he repeated mischievously.
"And now, pray note that I have presented you with the last word. Any woman could answer that taunt. Instead, I inquire what that shanty on the hill is?"
"That shanty, as you are pleased to call it, is the hotel and restaurant of the place. Shall we have lunch now, or after we have been on the glacier?"
"Oh, after! I cannot rest until I have felt the solid ice under my feet."
This proved to be no very easy achievement; but after a good deal of climbing, Mona's ambition was realised. Then they scrambled down to watch the water surging out from under the deep blue arches; and at last, tired and dishevelled, they betook themselves to the inn.
"I hope you are as hungry as I am," he said, with the old boyish manner, "and I hope we shall find something we can eat."
The "shanty" was clean and airy, with well-scoured floors, but the remains of lunch on the table certainly did not look very inviting,—a few transparent slices of Gruyère cheese, which seemed to have been all holes, some uninteresting-looking biscuits, and doubtful sausage.
"Have you coffee and eggs?" asked the Sahib. "Ah—that will do, won't it?"
"Coffee and eggs are food for the gods," said Mona.
"Or would be, if they did not spoil their appetites with nectar and ambrosia," he corrected; and they laughed and talked over the impromptu meal like a couple of children.
"How many ladies are there studying medicine just now?" asked the Sahib as they walked slowly homewards.
"Women? I don't quite know. About a hundred in the country, I should think."
"And what do the—I am afraid I had almost said the stronger sex—say to this infringement of their imagined rights?"
Mona looked at his stalwart, athletic figure.
"Pray don't apologise for calling them the stronger sex to me," she said, laughing. "I am not at all disposed to try my strength against yours. Oh, of course there was immense opposition at first. That is matter of history now. But it would be difficult to exaggerate the kindness and helpfulness of most of the younger men; and a few of the older ones have been heroes all along."
"That is a 'good hearing.' Then do you think it could all have been managed without opposition, by dint of a little waiting?"
"That I don't!" she answered warmly. "The first women, who were determined not merely to creep in themselves but to open up the way for others, must have suffered obloquy and persecution from all but the very few, at any time. If the lives of a little band of women—I had almost said if the life of one woman—could be blotted out, I wonder how many of us would have the courage to stand where we now do? It is a pretty and a wonderful sight, perhaps, to see a band of young girls treading the uphill path and singing as they go. 'How easy it is,' they say, 'and how sweet we make it with our flowers!' No doubt they do, and heaven bless them for it! But it has always seemed to me that the bit of eternal work was the making of the road."
She spoke with so much earnestness that the Sahib was almost uneasy.
"That is more than true," he said warmly. "It is the working of a universal principle. You know," he added shyly, "if you were, going to take to a public life, I wonder you did not think of the platform."
"The platform!" Mona laughed merrily. "If you put me on the platform with an audience in front of me, I should do what a fellow-student tells me she did on receipt of my last letter—'sit on the floor and howl'!"