Wych Hazel Part 39

'Why, no sir! By no means! Very h'extraordinary, I thought I said, sir--or h'indicated,' replied Gotham, going back to his leisurely motions about the table.

'Have the goodness to remember that it is proper her flowers should be extraordinary.'

'O, you are clearing the table,' Hazel said, flitting in; 'just what I wanted--tea early.'

'Tea never h'is late, Miss 'Azel!' said Gotham in an aggrieved voice.

'I didn't know but it might be to-night,' said the girl provokingly. 'But dear Mr. Falkirk, do you really like to have your books disturbed so often, just for me?'

'My dear,' said Mr. Falkirk rather lazily, brushing one hand over his forehead, 'you have done that for my life generally.'

'My dear Mr. Falkirk!--evidently I have just come in time to receive a shot meant for somebody else. I wonder you allow yourself to fire at random, sir, in that way.'

'Who has been sending you flowers, Miss Hazel?' her guardian asked, without change of tone.

She laughed.

'Shall I leave you the cards, sir--just to pa.s.s away the time while I am gone?'

'I'll take them now, Miss Hazel, if you please.' Mr. Falkirk stretched out his hand.

'They are not so precious as to be carried in my pocket, sir.

Do you want them before tea?'

'If you please, Miss Hazel!'

'I don't please a bit, sir. I am in a great hurry to go to my dressing. And you know, Mr. Falkirk, you seldom try for "the soul of wit" on such occasions.'

'Does that mean, you refuse me the sight of them?'

'No, sir!--"By no means!"--to quote Gotham,' said Wych Hazel, jumping up. She came back and laid the cards in his hand--quite a packet of them. Mr. Falkirk found names that he knew and names that he did not. He turned them over, speaking some of the names in an inexpressive sotto voce; and then began doubling them up, one after the other, and letting them fall on the floor beside him.

'Have you got a copy of the Arabian Nights in your library, my dear?' he asked. 'I wish you would send for it. I am not posted. I have an indistinct impression of a fight between two rival powers, in which, after a variety of transformations, the one of them in the shape of a kernel of corn was swallowed by the other in some appropriate shape. I should like to study the tactics, watch my opportunity, and make an end of these gentry.' Mr. Falkirk dropped the last card as he spoke.

'Ha! ha!' laughed Wych Hazel in her soft notes. 'You will feel better, sir, when you have had a cup of tea.' And she began preparing it at once. Whether or not Mr. Falkirk felt better he did not say.

The girl went off to her dressing. And just before the hour when Miss Bird must arrive she came silently in again and stood before her guardian. If Mr. Falkirk thought of humming- birds then, it could only have been of the tropical species. A dark dress, that shimmered and glittered and fell into shadows with every motion, first caught his eye; but then Mr. Falkirk saw that it was looped with bouquets. Now either Miss Hazel's admirers had differing tastes, or a different image of her, or else each sent what he could get; for the bouquets were extremely diverse. A bunch of heath and myrtle held up the dress here, a cl.u.s.ter of crimson roses held it back there; another cl.u.s.ter of gold and buff, a trailing handful of glowing fuchsias--there is no need to go through the list. But she had arranged them with great skill to set each other off; tied together by their own ribbands, catching up the shimmer of her dress.

Mr. Falkirk looked, and the fact that his face expressed nothing at all was rather significant. One glance at the girl's face he gave, and turned away.

'Take care, my dear,' he said.

'Of what, sir?'

'How do _you_ know but those flowers are bewitched? You would not be the first woman who had put on her own chains.'

She smiled--rather to herself than him--throwing her little white cloak over her shoulders; and then, girl-like, went down on one knee and kissed her guardian's hand.

'Good-night, sir,' she said. The carriage came, and she was gone.

CHAPTER XXI.

MOONSHINE.

After the day of rain, and the afternoon of clearing wind and clouds, the evening of Mrs. Merrick's party pa.s.sed into one of those strange, unearthly nights when the whole world seems resolved into moonlight and a midsummer night's dream. So while gas and hot-house flowers had it all their own way in the house at Merricksdale, over the rest of the outside world the wondrous moonlight reigned supreme. Not white and silvery, but as it were gilded and mellowed with the summer warmth.

Step by step it invaded the opening ranks of forest trees; and dark shadows wound noiselessly away from the close pursuit.

Not a wind whispered; not a moving thing was in sight along the open road. Except indeed Mr. Rollo, who--not invited to Mrs. Merrick's, and just returned from a short journey--was getting over the ground that lay between the railway station and home on foot. And his way took him along the highway that stretched from Crocus to the gates of Chickaree.

Now moonlight is a very bewildering thing--and thoughts do sometimes play the very will-o'-the-wisp with one. And when somebody you know is at a party, there is a funny inclination to go through the motions at least, and be up as late as anybody else. So it was with a somewhat sudden recollection that Mr. Rollo bethought him of what his watch might say. Just then he was in a belt of shadow, where trees crowded out the moon; but the next sharp turn of the road was all open and flooded with the yellow light.

It would be quite too much to suppose that the gentleman in question was particularly open to impressions--and it is certain that his thoughts at that minute were well wrapped up in their own affairs; and yet as he went round the turn, pa.s.sing out of the line of shadow into absolute moonshine again, there came upon him a strange sense of some presence there besides his own. But what the evidence was, whether it had smote upon his eye or upon his ear, of that Mr. Rollo was profoundly ignorant. Yet it is safe to say that he came out of his musings and looked about him. Only a midsummer night's dream still: the open road for a mile ahead in full view, the dark line of trees on each side as motionless as if asleep.

But the utter hush was perhaps more suggestive than the stir of a breezy night: it seemed as if everything was listening and held its breath to hear.

The gentleman in question, however, was not one to let slip such a suggestion to his nerves--or his senses. His nerves were of the coolest and steadiest kind; he could depend on _them_ for getting up no shams to puzzle him; and his senses had had capital training. Eye and ear were keen almost as those of some of the wild creatures whose dependence they are; and Rollo had the craft and skill of a practised hunter. So instead of dismissing the fancy that had struck him, as most men would, he fell noiselessly into the shadow again, with eyes and ears alive on the instant to take evidence that might be relied on. But nothing stirred. Nothing shewed. Except as before, the yellow moonlight and the dark trees. Rollo was a hunter, and patient. He stood still. The shadowy edges of the stream of light changed slowly, slightly, and still the evidence he looked for did not come. Nothing seemed to change but those dark fringes; only now some wave of the branches as the wind began to rise, let in the moonlight for a moment upon a small white speck across the road. He thought so: something whiter than a wet stone or a bleached stick,--or it might be fancy. Noiselessly and almost invisibly, for Dane could move like an Indian, and with such quickness, he was over the road and at the spot. There was no mistaking the token--it was a little glove of Wych Hazel's. Evidently dropped in haste; for one of her well-known jewelled fastenings lay glittering in his hand. But--Mrs. Gen. Merrick lived quite in another quarter of the world; and in no case did the direct road from Merricksdale lead by here.

If Rollo's senses had been alive before, which was but their ordinary and normal condition, he was now in the frame of mind of a Sioux on the war-path, and in corresponding alertness and acuteness of every faculty. The little glove was swiftly put where it would furnish a spot of light to no one else; and in breathless readiness for action, though that is rhetorical, for Rollo's breath was as regular and as calm as cool nerves could make it, he subsided again into the utter inaction which is all eye and ear. And then in a few minutes, from across the road again, and near where he was at first, came these soft words:

'Mr. Rollo--will you give quarter if I surrender at discretion?

Just to save you trouble--and let me get home the quicker.'

In the next instant the gentleman stood by the lady's side.

Well for him that he was a hunter, and that habit is a great thing; for he made no exclamations and showed no disturbance, though Wych Hazel in the woods at that time of night, was a thing to try most people's command of words at least. Only in the spring which brought him across the road he had spoken the one word "Hazel!" louder than an Indian would have done. Then he stood beside her. Wych Hazel herself--bareheaded, without gloves, her little white evening cloak not around her shoulders, but rolled up into the smallest possible compa.s.s, and held down by her side. She had been standing in the deepest depth of shadow under a low drooping hemlock, and now came out to meet him. But she seemed to have no more words to give. That something had happened, was very clear. Rollo's first move was to take the girl's hand, and the second to inquire in a low voice how she came there. The hand-touch was not in compliment, but such a taking-possession clasp as Hazel had felt from it before; one that carried, as a hand-clasp can, its guaranty of protection, guidance, defence.

Hazel did not answer at first--only there went a shiver over her from head to foot; and her hand was as cold as ice.

'I am very glad to find you, Mr. Rollo,' she said in a sort of measured voice; he could not tell what was in it.--'Will you walk home with me?'

Rollo's answer was not in a hurry. He first took from Wych Hazel her little bundle of the opera cloak, shook it out, and put it around her shoulders, drawing the fastening b.u.t.ton at the throat; then taking the little cold hand in his clasp again, and with the other arm lingering lightly round her shoulders, he asked her "what had happened?"

People are different, as has been remarked. There was n.o.body in the world that could have put the question to Wych Hazel as he put it, and afterwards she could recognize that. Mr.

Falkirk's words would have been more anxious; Dr. Maryland's would have been more astonished; and any one of Miss Hazel's admirers would have made speeches of surprise and sympathy and offered service. Rollo's was a business question, albeit in its somewhat curt accentuation there lurked a certain readiness for action; and there was besides, though indefinably expressed, the a.s.sumption of a right to know and a very intimate personal concern in the answer. How his eyes were looking at her the moonlight did not serve to shew; they were in shadow; yet even that was not quite hid from the object of them; and the arm that was round her was there, not in freedom-taking, but with the unmistakeable expression of shelter. So he stood and asked her what had happened.

'Thank you,' she said in the same measured tone. 'I am not cold--I think. But it is safe now. Will you walk home very fast, please? I promised Mr. Falkirk that I would be home by eleven!'--There was an accent of real distress then.

'Do you know what o'clock it is now?' said Rollo, drawing out his watch.

'I hoped--a while ago--it was near morning.'

He did not say what time it was. He put the little hand on his arm, guided Hazel into the road, and began his walk homeward, but with a measured quiet pace, not 'very fast.'

'Why did you wish it was morning?' he asked in the same way in which he had spoken before. No haste in it; calm business and self-possession; along with the other indications above mentioned. It was cool, but it was the coolness of a man intensely alive to the work in hand; the intonation towards Wych Hazel very gentle.

'I thought I had to walk home alone,' she said simply. 'And I wanted the time to come.'

'Please tell me the meaning of all this. You went to Merricksdale this evening--last evening?'