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!”