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Susan and Anna Warner - Wych Hazel

S >> Susan and Anna Warner >> Wych Hazel




'That puff of displeasure blows me fairly away!' she said,
jumping up and floating off to the mill door like any thistle
down, on the tips of her toes.

'Is it possible to make any comfortable arrangement for her at
the miller's house?' Mr. Falkirk asked in a low tone.

'Not if she be "true princess," ' said Rollo with a smile.
'There would be more than a few vegetables between Miss
Kennedy and comfort.'----He hesitated, and then suddenly asked
Wych if she were tired? Certainly her face told of some
fatigue, but the busy spirit was unconquered, and she said,
'No--not very much.'

'I am going on to Dr. Maryland's myself--with the miller's
horse and wagon, which I engaged provisionally. If Miss
Kennedy will trust herself to me--perhaps it would be less
wearisome than to stay here; and it would make a jubilee at
Dr. Maryland's as you know, sir. I will send the wagon back
for you to-morrow, in that case.'

'It is for her to say!' Mr. Falkirk answered, rather gloomily.
'It is a day of adventures, Wych--will you go to meet them, or
will you wait for them? There's no escape either way.' He
smiled a little at his ward as he spoke. But her eyes spoke
back only amazement.

'I shall stay with you, sir, of course.' Clearly Miss Kennedy
thought her guardian had taken leave of his senses.

'What if you take the wagon to Dr. Maryland's then, sir; Miss
Kennedy can hardly spend the night here. Even a twenty-five
mile drive is better.'

But Mr. Falkirk had reasons of his own for negativing that
plan, and negatived it accordingly.

'Go with me, then,' said Rollo, turning to Wych Hazel. 'I will
take care of you!' And he said it with something of the warm
smile which had met her before, power and promise together.

'Why, I'm not afraid,' she said, half laughing, yet half shyly
too; thinking with herself how strange the day had been. Since
until yesterday Mr. Rollo had scarcely paid her ordinary
attention; since until then Mr. Falkirk had always been the
one to care for her so carefully. She felt oddly alone,
standing there by them both, looking out with her great brown
eyes steadily into the setting sunshine; and a wistful air of
thought-taking replaced the smile. Rollo remarked that there
was but one unoccupied bed in the miller's house, and that
one, he knew, was laid upon butternuts.

Mr. Falkirk had been watching his ward. He drew near, and put
her hand upon his arm, looking and speaking with grave
tenderness.

'You shall do as you list, my dear; I cannot advise you, for I
do not know which would be worse, the fatigue of going or the
fatigue of staying. You must judge. Dr. Maryland will receive
you as his own child, if you go;--and I will keep you as my own
child if you stay,' he added after a second's hesitation.

'Yes, sir--I know--I think I shall stay. I don't think I can go,
Mr. Rollo; and as for the butternuts,' she added, recovering
her spirits the moment the decision was made, 'any one who
likes to sleep on them may! I shall play mouse among the meal
bags.'

'Then I will do what I can to get you out of your difficulties
to-morrow. I hope the play will not include sleeplessness,
which is my idea of a mouse.'

He offered his hand, clasped hers, lifted his hat, and was
gone.


CHAPTER IX.

CATS.


With the departure of the more stirring member of the company,
Miss Wych had subsided; and in that state could feel that she
was tired. She sat in the doorway of the mill. It was after
sundown; still, bright, sweet, and fair, as after sundown in
June can be. The sky all aglow still with cooler lights; in
the depth of the hollow the morsel of a lake had a dark
shining of its own, like a black diamond, or a green jasper,
with the light off. Mrs. Saddler was gone up the hill with
Phoebe, to get her share of hospitality. Mr. Falkirk had
supped on the remains of the strawberries and milk, and would
have nothing more. Guardian and ward were alone. The stillness
of Summer air floated down from the tree-tops, and did not
stir the lake.

'Wych, how do you like seeking your fortune? I am curious to
be informed?'

'Thank you, sir. The finding to-day has gone so far beyond my
expectations, that I am willing to rest the pursuit till to-
morrow.'

'Fortune and you clasp hands rather roughly at first setting
out! But what do you think of the train she has brought with
her in these seven days?'

'What train, sir?'

'I asked you what you thought of it. Answer straight like a
good child.'

'It's a wonderful train, if it has made a good child of me,'
she answered, with a half laugh. 'Do you mean of people, or
events, sir?'

'The events are left behind, child; the people follow.'

'Will they?' said Wych Hazel. 'Dr. Maryland and all? Mr.
Kingsland might stay behind. Nobody will ever want him.'

'All the rest have your good leave!' said Mr. Falkirk, with an
expression--Wych could not tell what sort of an expression, it
was so complicated. 'Do you think it is an easy office I have
to fill?' he went on.

'Maybe not, sir. I thought you seemed very ready to give it
up. I have felt like stray baggage to-day.'

'How do you suppose I am to guard you from so many enemies?'

'Ready to send me round the country, with the first knight-
errant that starts up?' said the girl, in an aggrieved voice.
'And if _I_ had proposed such a thing!'

'My dear,' said Mr. Falkirk, 'you would have been perfectly
safe at Dr. Maryland's. And much better off than in this old
mill. I am not sure but I ought to have made you go.'

'What do you mean by "enemies," just now, Mr. Falkirk?'

'There's an old proverb,' said Mr. Falkirk with a quirl of his
lips, 'that "a cat may look at a king." And no doubt it is a
queen's liability. But how am I to guard you from the teeth
and the claws?'

'My dear sir, very few cats are dangerous. I am not much
afraid of being scratched.'

'Have you any idea how many of your grimalkins are coming to
Chickaree this Summer?'

'No, sir. The more the better; for then they will have full
occupation for their claws without me.'

'Ah, my dear,' said Mr. Falkirk, 'don't you know that the cat
gets within springing distance before the claws are shown?'

'Yes, sir; but you are presupposing a stationary mouse. Pray,
how many fierce, soft-pawed, sharp-clawed monsters preside
over your ideas at present?'

'Six or seven,' said Mr. Falkirk with the utmost gravity.
'Fortune has come upon you suddenly, Wych.'

It was very pretty, the way she laughed and flushed.

'They are not all troubled with whiskers, sir--my kind medical
friend, for instance.'

'You think so! Pray, in your judgment, what is he, then?'

'Not a cat, sir, and yet no lion. Mr. Rollo calls him a
"specimen." '

'Of what?' (dryly enough.)

'I rebuked him for the expression, sir, but did not inquire
its meaning.'

'Do you suppose that the English traveller, Mr. Shenstone,
will come to Chickaree this Summer for the purpose of
inspecting the Morton manufactories?'

'Let us 'ope not, sir. Mr. Morton will, for his home is just
there. He told me so.'

'And young Nightingale has it in his mind to spend a good deal
of the Summer at his aunt's, Mrs. Lasalle's; for he told me
so. I saw him in town.'

'Mr. Falkirk, you are not a bit like yourself to-day. Are all
men cats, sir?' (very gravely.)

'My dear,' said Mr. Falkirk, 'most men are, when they see a
Chickaree mouse in their path!'

'Poor little me!' said Wych Hazel, laughing. She was silent a
minute, then went cheerfully on. 'I know, Mr. Falkirk, I shall
depend upon you! We're in a fairy tale, you remember, sir, and
you must be the three dogs.'

'Will you trust me, Wych, when I take such a shape to your
eyes?'

'Do you remember?' said she, not heeding. 'The first one with
eyes like saucers, looking--so! And the next with eyes like
mill wheels--so! And the next, with eyes like the full moon!--'
At which point Miss Hazel's own eyes were worth looking at.

'You do not answer me, I observe. Never mind. A woman's
understanding, I have frequently observed, develops like a
prophecy.'

The night in the mill was better, on the whole, than it
promised. No sound awoke Wych Hazel, till little messengers of
light came stealing through every crack and knot hole of the
mill, and a many-toed Dorking near by had six times proclaimed
himself the first cock in creation, let the other be who he
would!

To open her eyes was to be awake, with Wych Hazel; and softly
she stepped along the floor and out on the dewy path to the
lake side; and there stood splashing her hands in the water
and the water over her face, with intense satisfaction. The
lake was perfectly still, disturbed only by the dip of a king-
fisher or the spring of a trout. She stood there musing over
the last day and the last week, starting various profound
questions, but not stopping to run them down,--then went
meandering back to the mill again. On her way she came to a
spot in the grass where there was a sprinkling of robin's
feathers. Wych Hazel stopped short looking at them, smiling to
herself, then suddenly stopped and chose out three or four;
and went back with quick steps to the mill.

Bread and tea were had in the open air, with the seasoning of
the June morning. The stage coach rumbled off by the road it
had come, bearing with it the two countrywomen, and leaving a
pile of baggage for Chickaree. The miller came down and set
his mill agoing, excusing himself to his guests by saying that
there was a good lot of corn to be ground and the people would
be along for it. So the mill became no longer a place of rest,
and Miss Hazel and her guardian were driven out into the woods
by the rumble and dust and jar of machinery. Do what they
would, it was a long morning to twelve o'clock; when the mill
ceased its rumble and the miller went home to his dinner, and
the weary and warm loiterers came back to the shade of the
mill floor. Then the sound of wheels was heard at last; the
first that had broken the solitude that day; and presently at
the mill door Rollo presented himself, looking as if sunshine
agreed with him. He shook hands with Mr. Falkirk, but gave
Wych Hazel his old stately salutation.

'I could not come sooner,' he said. 'I did my best; but it is
thirty miles instead of twenty-five. How was the night?'

'Sadly oblivious and uneventful!'

'Mine wasn't! for I was getting dinner for you in my dreams
all night long. Being dependent on other people's resources,
you see--However, I had a good little friend to help me!'

'What carriage have you brought for us, Rollo?'

'Dr. Maryland's rockaway, sir; and the miller's wagon for the
trunks. To get anything else would have made much more delay.
Is my friend Phoebe here?'

'She will be soon. It is dinner-time in the mill. What do you
want, Mr. Rollo?'

'Three words and a little assistance.'

He went off, and in a little while was back again, accompanied
by Phoebe and plates and glasses; and the two went on to set
forth the dinner, which he drew from a great basket that had
come in the rockaway. All this was done, and order given at
the same time to other matters, with the light-handed
promptitude and readiness of the bird-roasting of yesterday;
Rollo assuring Wych Hazel between whiles that travelling was a
very good thing, if you took enough of it.

'Thirty miles this morning, and thirty last night; and how
many yesterday morning?--A hundred, I should say, by my
measurement.'

'Rollo!--What a dinner you have brought us!' said Mr. Falkirk,
who maintained a quiet and passive behaviour.

'You cannot set off for some hours yet, sir--the horses must
have rest. I believe--but am not sure--that somebody got up very
early this morning to make that pie. I told them I had left
some friends in distress; and Primrose and I--did what we
could. I realized this morning what must be the position of a
Commissary General on a rapid march.'

The provision on the board called for no excuses. Rollo served
everybody, even Mrs. Saddler, and afterwards dispensed
strawberries of much larger growth than those of the day
before. He was the impersonation of gay activity as long as
there was anything to do; and then he subsided into ease-
taking. The smoke of a cigar did not indeed offend Miss
Kennedy's mill-door; but in a luxurious position under a tree
at some distance the sometime smoker settled himself with his
sketch-book, and seemed to be comfortably busy at play, till
it was time for moving.

Wych Hazel had been in an altogether quiet mood since the
arrival of the rockaway. In that mood she had watched the
unpacking of the basket, in that mood she had eaten her
dinner. It was strange, even to herself, the sort of quietus
Mr. Rollo was to her. Not feeling free to play with him, by no
means disposed to play before him, she had ventured to offer
her services no further than by asking him what he wanted;
then left him to himself; oddly conscious all the while, that
if it had been any other one of her new feline friends, she
would have put her little hand into the business and the
basket with pleasant effect. So she sat still and watched
him,--giving a bit of a smile now and then indeed to his direct
remarks, but as often only a fuller look of the brown eyes.
Since the gentleman had been under the tree she had been idly
busy with her own thoughts, having sketched herself tired in
the morning. "Prim" she recognized at once--Dr. Maryland's
sister,--she had heard him speak of her. Would she be a friend?
any one to whom these many thoughts might come out? So Wych
Hazel sat, gazing out upon the lengthening shadows, leaning
her head somewhat wearily in her hand, wishing the journey
over and herself on her own vantage ground at Chickaree. It
would be such a help to be mistress of the house!--for these
last two days she had been nothing but a brown parcel, marked
"fragile"--"with care."


CHAPTER X.

CHICKAREE.


Rollo had driven the rockaway down and was going to drive
back. He put Wych Hazel into the carriage, recommending to her
to lean back in the corner and go to sleep. Phoebe was given
the place beside her; Mr. Falkirk mounted to the front seat;
and off they drove.

It was about four o'clock of a fine June day, and the air was
good to breathe; but the way was nothing extraordinary. A
pleasant country, nothing more; easy roads for an hour, then
heavier travelling.

The afternoon wore on; the miles were plodded over; as the sun
was dipping towards the western horizon they came into scenery
of a new quality. At once more wild and more dressed; the
ground bolder and more rocky in parts, but between filled with
gentler indications. The rockaway drew up. The driver looked
back into the carriage, while the other gentleman got down.

'Miss Kennedy, if you will change places with Mr. Falkirk now
you will be rewarded. I have something here a great deal
better than that book.'

'I have not been reading--I have been watching for landmarks
for some time,' she said, as she made the change; 'but I think
I can never have gone to Chickaree by this road.'

The change was great. However fair it had looked from
withinside, as soon as she got out on the front seat Wych
Hazel found that a flood of bright, slant sunbeams were
searching out all the beauty there was in the land, and
winning it into view. It was one of those illuminated hours,
that are to the common day as an old painted and jewelled
missal to an ordinary black letter.

'Is it better than your book?' said the charioteer, whose
reins were clearly only play to him, and who was much more
occupied with his companion. She glanced round at him, with
the very June evening in her eyes, dews and sunbeams and all.

'Better than most of the books that ever were written, I
suppose. But the book was not bad, Mr. Rollo.'

'What book was it? to be mentioned in the connection.'

' "I Promessi Sposi." '

'Unknown to me. Give me an idea of it--while we are getting up
this hill--there'll be something else to talk of afterwards.'

'Two people are betrothed, and proceed to get into all manner
of difficulties. That is the principal idea so far. I haven't
come to the turn of the story, which takes the thread out of
its tangle.'

'A very stupid idea! Yet you said the book was not a bad
book?' he said, looking gravely round upon her.

'No, indeed. And the idea is not stupid, in the book I mean,
because the people could not help themselves, and so you get
interested for them.'

'Do you get interested in people who cannot help themselves?'

'Yes, I think so--always,--people who _cannot_ in the impossible
sense. Not those who don't know or wont try. But my words did
not mean just that. I should have said, help _it_--help being in
difficulties.'

'I believe people can get out of difficulties,' said Rollo.
'What was the matter with these?'

'O the difficulties were piled on their heads by other people.
Lucia was a peasant, but she was "si bella" that one of the
grandees wanted to get her away from Renzo.'

'I don't see the difficulties yet. What next?'

'No, of course you don't!' said Wych, warming in defense of
her book. 'But if some Don Rodrigo forbade somebody to marry
_you_--and then sent a party to run away with your bride--so that
she had to go into a convent and you wander round the world in
ill humour--I daresay your clearness of vision would improve.'

'I dare say it would,' said Rollo, passing a hand over his
eyes,--'I think it would have to grow worse before all those
events could happen! But on the highest round of that ladder
of impossibilities, I think I should see my way into the
convent,--and escape the ill humour.'

'But Lucia would not be shut up from you, but from the
grandee. It would only make matters worse to bring her out.'

'Not for me,' said Rollo. 'It might for the book, because, as
you say, then the interest would be gone. Do you think the
people in a book are real people?--while you are reading it?'

'Not quite--they might have been real. I don't feel just as if
I should if I knew they were.'

'In that case the interest would be less?' he said, with a
laughing look.

'Yes--or at least different. There are so many things to
qualify your interest in real living people.'

'Yes. For instance in real life the people who cannot help
being in difficulties never interest me as much as the people
who get out of them; and so I think most novels are stupid,
because the men and women are all real to me. There!' he said,
pulling up as they reached the top of an ascent, 'there are no
difficulties in your way here. What do you think of that?'

The hill-top gave a wide view over a rich, cultivated,
inhabited country; its beauty was in the wide, generous eye-
view and the painter's colours that decked it; for which,
broken ground in front and distant low hills gave play to the
slant sunbeams. Warm, rich, inviting, looked every inch of
those wide-spread square miles.

'Do you know where you are?' said he in an enjoying tone.

'I suppose near home,--but it's not familiar yet.'

'No, you are some miles from home. Over there to the west,
lies Dr. Maryland's--but you can't see it in this light. It's
two miles away. Do you see, further to the north, standing
high on a hill, a white house-front that catches the sun?'

'Yes.'

'Mme. Lasalle's, Moscheloo. It's a pretty place--nothing like
Chickaree. When we reach the next turning you will catch a
glimpse of Crocus in the other direction--do you know what
Crocus is?'

'O yes, the village. Our house was brown, I remember that,--and
as you go up the hill Mr. Falkirk's cottage is just by the
roadside. Did you tell them to leave Mrs. Saddler there?'

'She will tell them herself, I fancy. Crocus is the place
where you will be expected to buy sugar and spice. It is some
four miles from Chickaree on that side, and we are about five
miles from it on this;' and as he spoke he set the horses in
motion. 'I sent on a rescript to Mrs. Bywank, bidding her on
her peril to be in order to receive you this evening. Mrs.
Bywank and I are old acquaintances,' he said, looking at Wych
Hazel.

'Dear Mrs. Bywank! how good she used to be. I haven't seen her
but once since I left home. I'm sure you have a great many
worse acquaintances, Mr. Rollo.'

'I am at a loss to understand how you can be sure of that. But
I have some better.--Miss Kennedy, I want you to give me a
boon. Say you will do it.'

'I'll hear it first.'

'Will you? that's fair, I suppose; but if we were better
friends, I should not be satisfied without a blank check put
into my hands for me to fill up. However,--as I am not to have
that honour on the present occasion I will explain. Let me be
the one to introduce you, some day, to one of your neighbours,
whom you do not remember, because she came here since you went
away. Will you?'

'Why yes, of course, if you wish it--only I will not be
responsible for any accidental introduction that may take
place first.'

'I will,' said Rollo. 'Then it is a bargain? I shall ask half
a day's excursion for it.'

'That is as much of a supplement as a woman's postscript, Mr.
Rollo. However, I suppose it is safe to let you ask what you
like.'

'You give it to me?'

'Maybe.'

'Then it is a bargain,' said he, smiling. 'Here is my hand
upon it.'

She laughed, looked round at him rather wonderingly, but gave
her hand, remarking:

'But you know I have the right to change my mind three times.'

There is a curious language in the touch of hands, saying
often inexplicably what the coarser medium of words would be
powerless to say; revealing things not meant to be discovered;
and also conveying sweeter, finer, more intimate touches of
feeling and mood than tongue could tell if it tried. Wych
Hazel remembered this clasp of her hand, and felt it as often
as she remembered it. There was nothing sentimental; it was
only a frank clasp, in which her hand for a moment was not her
own; and though the clasp did not linger, for that second's
continuance it gave her an indescribable impression, she could
hardly have told of what. It was not merely the gentleness;
she could not separate from that the notion of possession, and
of both as being in the mind, to which the hand was an index.
But such a thought passes as it comes. Something else in those
five minutes brought the colour flitting about her face,
coming and going as if ashamed of itself; but with it all she
was intensely amused; _she_ was not sentimental, nor even
serious, and the girlish light heart danced a _pas seul_ to such
a medley of tunes that it was a wonder how she could keep step
with them all.

'What do you expect to see at Chickaree?'

'Birds, trees, and horses, and--Mr. Falkirk, didn't you say
there would be cats?'

'Let him alone--he is deep in your book,' said Rollo, as Mr.
Falkirk made some astonished response. "I meant, what do you
remember of the place? we are almost at the gate.'

'I'll tell you--nothing yet. Ah!'--

Through some lapse in the dense woodland there gleamed upon
them as they swept on, the top of an old tower where the
sunbeams lay at rest; and from the top, its white staff
glittering with light, floated the heavy folds of a deep blue
flag, not at rest there, but curling and waving and shaking
out their white device, which was however too far off to be
distinguished. She had said she would tell him, but she never
spoke; after that one little cry, so full of tears and
laughter, he heard nothing but one or two sobs, low and choked
down. Now the lodge, nestling like an acorn under a great oak
tree, came in sight first, then the massive piers of the gate.
The gate was wide open, but while the little undergrowth of
children started up and took possession of window and door and
roadside, the gate was held by the head of the house, a
sturdy, middle aged American. Wych Hazel had leaned out,
watching the children; but as the carriage turned through the
gateway, and she saw this man, standing there uncovered,
caught the working of his brown weatherbeaten face, she bowed
her head indeed, in answer to his low salutation, but then
dropped her face in her hands in a perfect passion of weeping.
It came and went like a Summer storm, and again she was
looking intently. Now past Mr. Falkirk's white domicile, where
her glittering eyes flashed round upon him the "welcome home"
which her lips spoke but unsteadily,--then on, on, up the hill,
the thick trees hiding the sunset and brushing the carriage
with leafy hands,--it seemed to Mr. Rollo that still as the
very fingers of his companion were, he could almost feel the
bound of her spirit. Then out on a little platform of the
road--and there, he did not know why she leaned forward so
eagerly, till he saw across the dell the shining of white
marble.

He watched her, but drove on without making the least call
upon her attention. The views opened and softened as they drew
near the house; the trees here had been more thinned out, and
were by consequence larger; the carriage passed from one great
shadow to another, with the thrushes ringing out their clear
music and the wild roses breathing upon the evening air. From
out the forest came wafts of dark dewy coolness, overhead the
clouds revelled in splendour. Up still the horses went, ever
ascending, but slowly, for the ascent was steep. The delay,
the length of the drive tired her,--she sat up again--she had
been quietly leaning back; once or twice her hand went up with
a quick movement to drive back the feeling that was passing
limits; then gaining level ground once more, the horses sprang
forward, and in the failing twilight they swept round before
the house. Except the tower, it was but two stories high, the
front stretching along, with wide low steps running from end
to end. In unmatched glee Dingee stood on the carriage way
showing his teeth,--on the steps, striving in vain to clear her
eyes so that she might see, was Mrs. Bywank; her kindly
figure, which each succeeding year had gently developed, robed
in her state dress of black silk.

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