"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.