The Red Rat's Daughter

"I am very thankful I happened to be there at the time," the other replied with corresponding seriousness. "If you will be warned by me, you will be careful for the future how you venture on the mountains without a guide at this time of the year. Fogs, such as we have had to-day, descend so quickly, and the paths are dangerous at the best of times."

"You may be sure I will be more careful," she replied humbly. "But do not let me keep you now; I have detained you too long already. I shall be quite safe here."

"You are not detaining me," he answered. "I have nothing to do. Besides, I could not think of leaving you until I have seen you safely on your way back to your hotel. Have you been in Merok very long?"

"Scarcely a week," the girl replied. "We came from Hellesylt."

Browne wondered of whom the we might consist. Was the girl married? He tried to discover whether or not she wore a wedding-ring, but her hand was hidden in the folds her dress.

Five minutes later a cabriole made its appearance, drawn by a shaggy pony and led by a villager. Behind it, and considerably out of breath, toiled a stout and elderly lady, who, as soon as she saw the girl seated on the bank by the roadside, burst into a torrent of speech.

"Russian," said Brown to himself; "her accent puzzled me, but now I understand."

Then turning to the young man, who was experiencing some slight embarrassment at being present at what his instinct told him was a wigging, administered by a lady who was plainly a past mistress at the art, the girl said in English: —

"Permit me to introduce you to my guardian, Madame Bernstein."

The couple bowed ceremoniously to each other, and then Browne and the villager between them lifted the girl into the vehicle, the man took his place at the pony's head, and the strange cortège proceeded on its way down the hill towards the hotel. Once there, Browne prepared to take leave of them. He held out his hand to the girl, who took it.

"Good-bye," he said. "I hope it will not be long before you are able to get about once more."

"Good-bye," she answered; and then, with great seriousness, "Pray, believe that I shall always be grateful to you for the service you have rendered me this afternoon."

There was a little pause. Then, with a nervousness that was by no means usual to him, he added: —

"I hope you will not think me rude, but perhaps you would not mind telling me whom I have had the pleasure of helping?"

"My name is Katherine Petrovitch," she answered, with a smile, and then as frankly returned his question. "And yours?"

"My name is Browne," he replied; and also smiling as he said it, he added: "I am Browne's Mimosa Soap, Fragrant and Antiseptic."

CHAPTER II

When Browne reached the yacht, after bidding good-bye to the girl he had rescued, he found his friends much exercised in their minds concerning him. They had themselves been overtaken by the fog, and very naturally they had supposed that their host, seeing it coming on, had returned to the yacht without waiting for them. Their surprise, therefore, when they arrived on board and found him still missing was scarcely to be wondered at. In consequence, when he descended the companion ladder and entered the drawing-room, he had to undergo a cross-examination as to his movements. Strangely enough, this solicitude for his welfare was far from being pleasing to him. He had made up his mind to say nothing about the adventure of the afternoon, and yet, as he soon discovered, it was difficult to account for the time he had spent ashore if he kept silence on the subject. Accordingly he made the best excuse that occurred to him, and by disclosing a half-truth induced them to suppose that he had followed their party towards the waterfall, and had in consequence been lost in the fog.

"It was scarcely kind of you to cause us so much anxiety," said Miss Verney in a low voice as he approached the piano at which she was seated. "I assure you we have been most concerned about you; and, if you had not come on board very soon, Captain Marsh and Mr. Foote were going ashore again in search of you."

"That would have been very kind of them," said Browne, dropping into an easy-chair; "but there was not the least necessity for it. I am quite capable of taking care of myself."

"Nasty things mountains," said Jimmy Foote to the company at large. "I don't trust 'em myself. I remember once on the Rigi going out with old Simeon Baynes, the American millionaire fellow, you know, and his daughter, the girl who married that Italian count who fought Constantovitch and was afterwards killed in Abyssinia. At one place we very nearly went over the edge, every man-jack of us, and I vowed I'd never do such a thing again. Fancy the irony of the position! After having been poverty-stricken all one's life, to drop through the air thirteen hundred feet in the company of over a million dollars. I'm perfectly certain of one thing, however: if it hadn't been for the girl's presence of mind I should not have been here to-day. As it was, she saved my life, and, until she married, I never could be sufficiently grateful to her."

"Only until she married!" said Lady Imogen, looking up from the novel she was reading. "How was it your gratitude did not last longer than that?"

"Doesn't somebody say that gratitude is akin to love?" answered Foote, with a chuckle. "Of course I argued that, since she was foolish enough to show her bad taste by marrying somebody else, it would scarcely have become me to be grateful."

Browne glanced at Foote rather sharply. What did he mean by talking of life-saving on mountains, on this evening of all others? Had he heard anything? But Jimmy's face was all innocence.

At that moment the dressing gong sounded, and every one rose, preparatory to departing to their respective cabins.

"Where is Maas?" Browne inquired of Marsh, who was the last to leave.

"He is on deck, I think," replied the other; but as he spoke the individual in question made his appearance down the companion-ladder, carrying in his hand a pair of field-glasses.

For some reason or another, dinner that night was scarcely as successful as usual. The English mail had come in, and the Duchess had had a worrying letter from the Duke, who had been commanded to Osborne among the salt of the earth, when he wanted to be in the Highlands among the grouse; Miss Verney had not yet recovered from what she considered Browne's ill-treatment of herself that afternoon; while one of the many kind friends of the American Ambassador had forwarded him information concerning a debate in Congress, in order that he might see in what sort of estimation he was held by a certain portion of his fellow-countrymen. Never a very talkative man, Browne this evening was even more silent than usual. The recollection of a certain pale face and a pair of beautiful eyes haunted him continually. Indeed, had it not been for Barrington-Marsh and Jimmy Foote, who did their duty manfully, the meal would have been a distinct failure as far as its general liveliness was concerned. As it was, no one was sorry when an adjournment was made for coffee to the deck above. Under the influence of this gentle stimulant, however, and the wonderful quiet of the fjord, things brightened somewhat. But the improvement was not maintained; the pauses gradually grew longer and more frequent, and soon after ten o'clock the ladies succumbed to the general inertness, and disappeared below.

According to custom, the majority of the men immediately adjourned to the smoking-room for cards. Browne, however, excused himself on the plea that he was tired and preferred the cool. Maas followed suit; and, when the others had taken themselves off, the pair stood leaning against the bulwarks, smoking and watching the lights of the village ashore.

"I wonder how you and I would have turned out," said Maas quietly, when they had been standing at the rails for some minutes, "if we had been born and bred in this little village, and had never seen any sort of life outside the Geiranger?"

"Without attempting to moralize, I don't doubt but that we should have been better in many ways," Browne replied. "I can assure you there are times when I get sick to death of the inane existence we lead."

"Leben heisst träumen; weise sein heisst angenehm träumen," quoted Maas, half to himself and half to his cigar. "Schiller was not so very far out after all."

"Excellent as far as the sentiment is concerned," said Browne, as he flicked the ash off his cigar and watched it drop into the water alongside. "But, however desirous we may be of dreaming agreeably, our world will still take good care that we wake up just at the moment when we are most anxious to go on sleeping."

"In order that we may not be disillusioned, my friend," said Maas. "The starving man dreams of City banquets, and wakes to the unpleasant knowledge that it does not do to go to sleep on an empty stomach. The debtor imagines himself the possessor of millions, and wakes to find the man-in-possession seated by his bedside. But there is one cure; and you should adopt it, my dear Browne."

"What is that?"

"Marriage, my friend! Get yourself a wife and you will have no time to think of such things. Doesn't your Ben Jonson say that marriage is the best state for a man in general?"

"Marriage!" retorted Browne scornfully. "It always comes back to that. I tell you I have come to hate the very sound of the word. From the way people talk you might think marriage is the pivot on which our lives turn. They never seem to realise that it is the rock upon which we most of us go to pieces. What is a London season but a monstrous market, in which men and women are sold to the highest bidders, irrespective of inclination or regard? I tell you, Maas, the way these things are managed in what we call English society borders on the indecent. Lord A. is rich; consequently a hundred mothers offer him their daughters. He may be what he pleases – an honourable man, or the greatest blackguard at large upon the earth. In nine cases out of ten it makes little or no difference, provided, of course, he has a fine establishment and the settlements are satisfactory. At the commencement of the season the girls are brought up to London, to be tricked out, regardless of expense, by the fashionable dressmakers of the day. They are paraded here, there, and everywhere, like horses in a dealer's yard; are warned off the men who have no money, but who might very possibly make them happy; while they are ordered by the 'home authorities' to encourage those who have substantial bank balances and nothing else to recommend them. As the question of love makes no sort of difference, it receives no consideration. After their friends have sent them expensive presents, which in most cases they cannot afford to give, but do so in order that they may keep up appearances with their neighbours and tradesmen, the happy couple stand side by side before the altar at St. George's and take the most solemn oath of their lives; that done, they spend their honeymoon in Egypt, Switzerland, or the Riviera, where they are presented with ample opportunity of growing tired of one another. Returning to town, the man usually goes back to his old life and the woman to hers. The result is a period of mutual distrust and deceit; an awakening follows, and later on we have the cause célèbre, and, holding up our hands in horror, say, 'Dear me, how very shocking!' In the face of all this, we have the audacity to curl our lips and to call the French system unnatural!"

"I am afraid, dear Browne, you are not quite yourself to-night," said Maas, with a gentle little laugh, at the end of the other's harangue. "The mistake of believing that a marriage, with money on the side of the man and beauty on that of the woman, must irretrievably result in misfortune is a very common one. For my part, I am singular enough to believe it may turn out as well if not better than any other."

"I wasn't aware that optimism was your strong point," retorted Browne. "For my part I feel, after the quiet of this fjord, as if I could turn my back on London and never go near it again."

He spoke with such earnestness that Maas, for once in his life, was almost astonished. He watched his companion as he lit another cigar.

"One thing is quite certain," he said at length, "your walk this afternoon did you more harm than good. The fog must have got into your blood. And yet, if you will not think me impertinent for saying so, Miss Verney gave you a welcome such as many men would go through fire and water to receive."

Browne grunted scornfully. He was not going to discuss Miss Verney's opinion of himself with his companion. Accordingly he changed the subject abruptly by inquiring whether Maas had made any plans for the ensuing winter.

"I am a methodical man," replied the latter, with a smile at his companion's naive handling of the situation, "and all my movements are arranged some months ahead. When this charming voyage is at an end, and I have thanked you for your delightful hospitality, I shall hope to spend a fortnight with our dear Duchess in the Midlands; after that I am due in Paris for a week or ten days; then, like the swallow, I fly south; shall dawdle along the Mediterranean for three or four months, probably cross to Cairo, and then work my way slowly back to England in time for the spring. What do you propose doing?"

"Goodness knows," Browne replied lugubriously. "At first I thought of Rajputana; but I seem to have done, and to be tired of doing, everything. They tell me tigers are scarce in India. This morning I felt almost inclined to take a run out to the Cape and have three months with the big game."

"You said as much in the smoking-room last night, I remember," Maas replied. "Pray, what has occurred since then to make you change your mind?"

"I do not know, myself," said Browne. "I feel restless and unsettled to-night, that is all. Do you think I should care for Russia?"

"For Russia?" cried his companion in complete surprise. "What on earth makes you think of Russia?"

Browne shook his head.

"It's a notion I have," he answered; though, for my own part, I am certain that, until that moment, he had never thought of it. "Do you remember Demetrovitch, that handsome fellow with the enormous moustache who stayed with me last year at Newmarket?"

"I remember him perfectly," Maas replied; and had Browne been watching his face, instead of looking at the little hotel ashore, he would in all probability have noticed that a peculiar smile played round the corners of his mouth as he said it. "But what has Demetrovitch to do with your proposed trip to Russia? I had an idea that he was ordered by the Czar to spend two years upon his estates."