I was nearing the end of my long journey, very near now, and it did not seem to me to matter much what I did. We were all—the new friends I had made on the way from Petrograd—pretty untidy and travel-stained, and if I wore a lace veil on my hair, the violinist had a huge rent in his shoe, and, having no money to buy more, he went into a shoe-shop and had it mended. I, with Buchanan a little recovered, sat beside him while it was done.
And in the afternoon we went by train through the neat and tidy country, Selma Lagerlof's country, to Stockholm. I felt as if I were resting, rested, because I was anxious no longer about Buchanan, who slumbered peacefully on my knee; and if anybody thinks I am making an absurd fuss about a little dog, let them remember he had been my faithful companion and friend in far corners of the earth when there were none but alien faces around me, and had stood many a time between me and utter loneliness and depression.
We discussed these sturdy Swedes. The Chicago woman's daughter, with the pertness and aptness of the American flapper, summed them up quickly.
“The men are handsome,” she said, looking round, “but the women—well, the women lack something—I call them tame.”
And I knew she had hit them off to a “T.” After that I never looked at a neat and tidy Swedish woman with her hair, that was fair without that touch of red that makes for gold—gives life—coiled at the back of her head and her mild eyes looking out placidly on the world around her without feeling that I too call her tame.
Stockholm for the most of us was the parting of the ways. The American consul took charge of the people who had come across Finland with us and the Oxford man and I alone went to the Continental Hotel, which, I believe, is the best hotel in that city. We had an evening meal together in a room that reminded me very much of the sort of places we used to call coffee palaces in Melbourne when I was a girl, and I met here again for the first time for many a long day tea served in cups with milk and cream. It was excellent, and I felt I was indeed nearing home. Things were getting commonplace and the adventure was going out of life. But I was tired and I didn't want adventure any more. There comes a time when we have a surfeit of it.
I remember my sister once writing from her home somewhere in the Malay jungle that her husband was away and it was awkward because every night a leopard came and took up his position under the house, and though she believed he was only after the fowls she didn't like it because of the children. If ever she complains that she hasn't had enough adventure in her life I remind her of that and she says that is not the sort of adventure she has craved. That is always the way. The adventure is not always in the form we want. I seemed to have had plenty, but I was weary. I wanted to sit in a comfortable English garden in the autumn sunshine and forget that such things as trains and ships—perish the thought of a mule litter—existed. I counted the hours. It couldn't be long now. We came down into the hall to find that I had been entered on the board containing the names of the hotel guests as the Oxford man's wife. Poor young man! It was a little rough on him, for I hadn't even a hat, and I felt I looked dilapidated.
I was too. That night in the sleeper crossing to Christiania the woman who had the bottom berth spoke excellent English. She was going to some baths and she gave some advice.
“You are very ill, Madame,” said she, “very ill.”
I said no, I was only a little tired.