Wych Hazel

by Susan Warner; Anna Bartlett Warner

CHAPTER XVI.

FISHING.

Several people were on the steps before the door, watching and waiting for them. The house shewed large and stately; the flight of steps imposing. Hot-house plants stood around in boxes; the turf was well shaven; the gravelled road in order; the overhanging trees magnificent. Moscheloo was a fine place. As the riders approached the door, Mme. Lasalle came forward, pouring forth welcomes, and invitations to Rollo. But after dismounting Wych Hazel, and so disappointing the gentleman who wanted to do it, Rollo excused himself and set off down the hill again. Mme. Lasalle turned to Wych Hazel, and led her, with flying introductions by the way, to the stairs and up to a dressing-room.

'It is quite charming to see you, and to think that Chickaree is inhabited and has a mistress—it makes Moscheloo, I assure you, several degrees brighter. Now, my dear, what will you have?—is it nothing but to take off this habit-skirt?—let me undo it. What an odd mortal that is, that came with you!'

But to that Wych Hazel answered nothing. The light riding skirt and jacket taken off, left her in green from head to foot. A daring colour for a brunette. But her own tint was so clear and the mossy shade of her dress was so well chosen, that the effect was extremely good. She looked like a wood nymph.

'Charming!—vraie Française'—said Madame, softly. 'That is a coquettish colour, my dear—are you of that character!'

'I am not sure that I know my own character yet,' Hazel said, laughing a little.

'Ah! that's dangerous. You don't know your own character?—then do you read other people's? Rollo—do you know him well?'

Mme. Lasalle was somewhat officiously but with great attention stroking into order one or two of Wych Hazel's curls which the riding had tossed.

'O, I dare say I shall make new discoveries, Mme. Lasalle.'

'He's the best creature in the world, everybody likes him; but—Oh dear! well I suppose all young men are so; they all like power. Did you notice that Miss Powder down stairs, that I introduced to you?'

'Hardly.'

'You had no time. She's a sweet creature. Oh, no, you hadn't time; but I want you to see her do-day. I have a little plan in my head.' And Mme. Lasalle left the curls and whispered with a serious face. 'She's the young lady Rollo paid so much devotion to before he went abroad. Everybody knew that; and I know he liked her; but then, you see, he went off, and nothing came of it; but it's a pity, for Mrs. Powder would have been much pleased, I know, with her large family of daughters—to be sure, she has married two of them now;—but what is worse,' (in a lower whisper) 'Annabella would have been pleased too; and she hasn't been pleased since. Now isn't it a shame?'

Wych Hazel considered the matter. With a curious feeling of disbelief in her mind, which (without in the least knowing where it came from) found its way to her face.

'I wonder she would tell of it!'

'My dear, she didn't; only one sees, one can't help it. One sees a great many disagreeable things, but it's no use to think about it. It was nothing very bad in Rollo, you know; he has that way with him, of seeming to like people; but it don't mean anything, except that he does like them. O, I know that he liked her—and I am going to make you accomplice in a little plot of mine. I won't tell you now—by and by, when you have seen Annabella a little more. I would have asked Dane to join our party to-day, but I didn't dare—I was afraid he would guess what I was at. Now, my dear, I won't keep you up here any longer. Pardon me, you are charming! If Dane sees much of you, I am afraid my fine scheming will do Annabella no good!' And shaking her head gaily, the lady ran down stairs followed by Wych Hazel.

There was a great muster then of fishing-rods and baskets; and everybody being provided, the company was marshalled forth, each lady being under the care of a gentleman, who carried her basket and rod. Wych Hazel found herself without knowing how or why, leading the march with Mr. Lasalle. He proved rather a sober companion. A sensible man, but thoroughly devoted to business, his French extraction seemed to have brought him no inheritance of grace or liveliness—unless Mme. Lasalle had acted as an absorbent and usurped it at all. He was polite, and gave good host-like attention to his fair little companion; but it was as well for her that the walk presently sufficed of itself for her entertainment. They went first across several fields, where the sun beat down freely on all their heads, and divers fences gave play to the active and useful qualities of the gentlemen. Suddenly from the last field they went down a grassy descent—and found themselves at the side of a brook.

Well, it was a good-sized brook, overhung with a fine bordering of trees that shaded and sheltered it. The ladies cried 'lovely!'—and so it was, after the sunshiny fields on a warm June morning. But this was not the fishing ground. The brook must be followed up to the woods whence it came. And soon the banks became higher and broken, the ascent steeper, the trees closer; no longer a mere fringe or veil to the fostering waters. Fields were forgotten; the brook grew wild and lively, and following its course became a matter of some difficulty. Sometimes there was no edge of footing beside the stream; they must take to the stones and rocks which broke its way, or cross it by fallen trees, and recross again. The woods made a thicket of wilderness and stillness and green beauty and shady sweetness, invaded just now by an inroad of fashion and society.

Like a sprite Wych Hazel led the van, making her way over rocks and through vine tangles and across the water, after a fashion attainable by no other feet. Mr. Lasalle had no trouble but to follow; had not even the task of hearing exclamations or being entertained; for Wych Hazel had by no means acquired that amiable habit of society which is full dress upon all occasions. To-day she was like a child out of school in her gleeful enjoyment, only very quiet. So she flitted on through the mazes of the wood and the brook, making deep remarks to herself over its dark pools, perching herself on a rock for a backward look at Miss Powder, and then darting on. The party in the rear, struggling after, eyed her in the distance with various feelings.

'The flower she trod on dipped and rose,
'And turned to look at her!—'

So quoted Metastasio Simms, who played the part of cavalier to
Mme. Lasalle, and of poet and troubadour in general.

'There steals over me, Madame,' said another cavalier, 'the fairy tale remembrance of a marvellous bird with green plumage—which flitting along before the traveller did thereby allure him to his captivity. Are you pledge for Miss Kennedy's good faith?'

'I am pledged for nothing. I advise you to take care of yourself, Mr. May—I have no doubt she is dangerous. Haven't we come far enough? Do run down the line, and tell them all to stop where they are; we must not be too close upon one another. And when you come back I will reward you with another commission.'

While Mr. Simms was gone down the brook, however, Mme. Lasalle permitted the pair next below to pass her and go up to stop Mr. Lasalle and Wych Hazel from proceeding any further. So it came to pass that the highest group on the stream was composed of four instead of two; and the additional two were Stuart Nightingale and Miss Annabella Powder. Now the fishing rods were put into the ladies' hands; now the cavaliers attentively supplied their hooks with what was supposed to be bait, and performing afterwards the same office for their own, the brook presently had the appearance, or would to a bird's-eye view, of a brook in toils.

'What do we expect to catch, sir?' asked Miss Kennedy of Mr. Lasalle, as she watched his motions and dropped her own line in imitation.

'If I were a member of the firm, I should say, "all hearts," mademoiselle, without doubt.'

'For shame, Mr. Lasalle!' cried Miss Powder.

'Fish are made to be caught, mademoiselle,' said Mr. Lasalle, throwing his own line again.

'For shame, Mr. Lasalle! How many hearts do you think one lady wishes to catch?'

'No limit that I know'—said the gentleman serenely.

'Well, but—are there no other fish in this brook?' said Wych
Hazel.

'Miss Kennedy makes small account of the first kind,' said Stuart, laughing. 'That sport is old already. There must be difficulty to give interest, Lasalle, you know.'

'You gentlemen are complimentary,' said Miss Powder.

'Upon my word, I said what I thought,' replied the first gentleman.

'Miss Kennedy,' called Stuart out from his post down the brook; 'should compliments be true or false, to be compliments? Miss Powder is too indignant to be judge in the case.'

'I do not see how false ones can compliment,' said the lady in green, much intent upon her line. 'There!—Mr. Lasalle—is that what you call a bite?'

It was no bite.

'But people need not know they are false?' pursued Stuart.

'Well,' said Wych Hazel, looking down at him, 'you were talking of what things are—not what they seem.'

'You may observe,' said Mr. Lasalle, 'that most people find it amusing to get bites—if only they don't know there's no fish at the end of them.' Mr. Lasalle spoke feelingly, for he had just hooked and drawn up what proved to be a bunch of weeds.

'But where there is,' said Wych hazel. 'There! Mr. Lasalle, I have got your fish!' and swung up a glittering trophy high over the gentleman's head.

'The first fish caught, I'll wager!' cried Stuart; and he looked at his watch. 'Twenty-seven minutes past twelve. Was that skill or fortune, Miss Kennedy?'

'Neither, sir,' observed Mr. Simms, who had wandered that way in search of a hook. 'There was no hope of Miss Kennedy's descending to the bed of the brook—what could the fish do but come to her? Happy trout!'

'I am afraid he feels very much like a fish out of water, nevertheless,' said Wych Hazel, eyeing her prize and her line with a demure face.

Alas! it was the beginning and ending of their good fortune for some time. Mr. Simms went back to his place; Mr. Lasalle disengaged the fish and rearranged the bait; and all four fell to work, or to watching, with renewed animation; but in vain. The rods kept their angle of suspension, unless when a tired arm moved up or down; the fishers' eyes gazed at the lines; the water went running by with a dance and a laugh; the fish laughed too, perhaps; the anglers did not. There were spicy wood smells, soft wood flutter and flap of leaves, stealing and playing sunbeams among the leaves and the tree stems; but there was too much Society around the brook, and nobody heeded all these things.

'Well, what success?' said Mme. Lasalle coming up after a while. 'What have you caught? One little fish! Poor little thing! Is that all? Well, it's luncheon time. Lasalle, I wish you'd go and see that everybody is happy at the lower end of the line; and I'll do your fishing meanwhile. Oh, Simms has almost killed me! Stuart! do take charge of that basket, will you?'

Mr. Nightingale receiving the basket from the hands of a servant, inquired of his aunt what he was to do with it.

'Mercy! open it and give us all something—I am as hungry as I can be. What have you all been doing that you haven't caught more fish? My dear,' (to Wych Hazel), 'that is all you will get till we go home; we came out to work to-day.'

And Stuart coming up, relieved her of her fishing rod, found a pleasant seat on a mossy stone, and opened his basket.

'As the fish won't bite—Miss Kennedy, will you?'

'If you please,' she said, taking a new view from her new position. 'How beautiful everything is to-day! Certainly I have learned something about brooks.'

'And something about fishing?'

'Not much.'

'The best thing about fishing,' said Stuart, after serving the other ladies and coming back to her, 'is that it gives one an appetite.'

'Oh, then you have not studied the brook.'

'Certainly not,' said he, laughing, 'or only as one studies a dictionary—to see what one can get out of it. Please tell me, what did you?'

'New thoughts,' she said. 'And new fancies. And shadows, and colours. I forgot all about the fish sometimes.'

'You are a philosopher?' said Stuart, inquisitively.

'Probably. Don't I look like one?'

He laughed again, with an unequivocal compliment in his bright eyes. He was a handsome fellow, and a gentleman from head to foot. So far at least as manners can make it.

'I do not judge from appearances. Do you care to know what I judge from?'

'Your judgment cannot have been worth much just now,' said Wych Hazel, shaking her head. 'But I am willing to hear what led it astray.'

'What led it,—not astray,—was your calm declining of all but true words of service.'

'O, had you gone back there?' she said. 'I think it takes very little philosophy to decline what one does not want.'

'Evidently. But how came you not to want what everybody else wants? There is the philosophy, you see. If you bring all things down to bare truth, you will be Diogenes in his tub presently.'

' "Bare truth!" '—said the girl. 'How people say that, as if truth were only a lay figure!'

'But think how disagreeable truth would often be, if it were not draped! Could you stand it? I beg pardon! I mean, not you, but other people!'

'I have stood it pretty often,' said the girl with a grave gesture of her head.

'Impossible! But did you believe that it was truth?'

'Too self-evident to be doubted!'

Stuart laughed, again with a very unfeigned tribute of pleasure or admiration in his face. 'It is a disagreeable truth,' said he, 'that that is not a good sandwich. Permit me to supply its place with something else. Here is cake, and nothing beside that I can see; will you have a piece of cake? It is said to be a feminine taste.'

'No, not any cake,' said Wych Hazel, her eyes searching the brook shadows. 'But I will have another sandwich, Mr. Nightingale—if there is one. At least, if there is more than one!'

'Ah,' said Stuart, 'you shall have it, and you shall not know the state of the basket. Those two people have so much to talk about, they have no time to eat!' And he took another sandwich himself.

'Is that old woman in the cottage a friend of yours?'

'I never saw her before the other day.'

'She lost no time! A little garrulous, isn't she? I made acquaintance there one day when I went in to light a cigar. I have a mind to ask you to give me the distinction I am ready to claim, of being your oldest acquaintance in these parts. I think I shall claim it yet. Let me look at the state of your hook.'

They dropped their lines in the brook again, but no fish were caught, and fish might cleverly have run away with their bait several times without being found out. The conversation was lively for some time. Stuart had sense and was amusing, and had roamed about the world enough to have a great deal to say. The pair were not agreeably interrupted after half an hour by Mme. Lasalle, who discovered that Wych Hazel was fishing where she could get nothing, and brought her down the brook to the close neighbourhood of Miss Powder, where Stuart's attentions had to be divided. But so the two girls had a chance to see something of each other; a chance which Miss Powder improved with manifest satisfaction. She was a wax-Madonna sort of beauty, with a sweet face, fair, pure, placid, but either somewhat impassive or quite self-contained in its character. Her figure was good, her few words showed her not wanting in sense or breeding.

Wych Hazel was by this time far enough out of the reserve of first meetings to let the exhilarating June air and sunshine do their work, and her voice, never raised beyond a pretty note, was ready with laugh and word and repartee. Now studying her hook, now questioning Miss Powder, now answering Mr. Nightingale, and then seriously devoted to her fishing,—she shewed the absolute sport of her young joyous nature, a thing charming in itself, even without so piquant a setting. It was no great wonder that a gentleman now and then took ground on the opposite side of the brook, and directed his eyes as if the fish would only come from that point of the shore where Miss Kennedy sat. This happened more and more, as by degrees the line of fishers was broken and the unskilled or unsuccessful, tired of watching the water, gave it up, and strolled up the brook to see who had better luck. And so few fish were the result of the day's sport, so many of the company had nothing better to do than to look at what somebody else was doing, that by degrees nearly the whole party were gathered around that spot where Wych Hazel had caught the first fish. They were relieved, perhaps, that the effort was over; perhaps the prospect of going home to dinner was encouraging; certainly the spirits of all the party were greatly enlivened by something. Mme. Lasalle's ears heard the pleasant sound of voices in full chorus of speech and laughter all the way home.

It was rather late before Madame's carriage could be ordered to take Miss Kennedy home. Mme. Lasalle herself attended her, and would suffer the attendance of no one else. A young moon was shedding a delicious light on the Lollard poplars past which Wych Hazel had cantered in the morning. It was an hour to be still an enjoy, and think; but did Mme. Lasalle ever think? She ceased not to talk. And Wych Hazel, after her day of caressing and petting and admiration, how was she? She had caught the first fish; she had been queen of the feast; she had given the first toast, she had received the first honours of every eye and ear in the company. Her host and hostess had lavished all kindness on her; ladies had smiled; and gentlemen, yes, six gentlemen had come down the steps to put her into the carriage. But if she wanted to think, Mme. Lasalle gave her no chance.

'Where shall you go to church on Sunday, my dear?' she asked on the way.

'Dr. Maryland's, of course, ma'am.'

'O, that's where we all go, of course; delightful creature that he is. And yet he rebukes every single individual thing that one does. Dear Dr. Maryland, he's so good, he don't see what is going in his own family. Do you know, it makes me unhappy when I think of it. But, my dear, that's the very thing I wanted to talk to you about,—Miss Powder, you've seen her, aren't you pleased with her?'

'She was very pleasant to me.'

'She is that to everybody, and her mother is a very fine woman. Now, my dear, you will be at your pleasure, seeing your friends at Chickaree—couldn't you contrive to bring Dane and Annabella together again?'

'I?' said Wych Hazel, surprised. 'Why, I do not know how to contrive things for myself.'

'O! I do not mean anything complicated—that never does well; but you could quite naturally, you know, give them opportunities of seeing each other pleasantly. I think if he saw her he might come round again and take up his old fancy; and you being a stranger, you know, might do it without the least difficulty or gaucherie; they would meet quite on neutral ground, for nobody would suspect that you were au fait of our country complications. I dare not stir, you see; that was the reason I could not invite Dane to our fishing to-day. I knew it wouldn't do. This was my plot for you, that I told you about—what do you think? It would be doing a kind thing, and hurting nobody, at any rate.'

It did come to Miss Kennedy's mind that Mr. Rollo was quite capable of 'contriving' his own situations; but she answered only, 'Would it, ma'am?'

'It couldn't do any harm, you know. And you are the very person to do it. And then, if your plan should succeed, it would have another good effect, to put Primrose Maryland in safety.'

If it had been daylight instead of moonlight, Mme. Lasalle might have seen the young face at her side knit itself into a very perplexed state indeed at these words; and the more Hazel thought the deeper she got.

'It would be quite natural, you know,' Mme. Lasalle went on after a pause, 'that a girl like her should be fascinated, and Rollo, without meaning to do any harm, would give her cause enough. He is fascinating you know, but he is too cool by half. Dr. Maryland, of course, never would see or understand what was going on; and Primrose is so sweet and inexperienced. I know her sister was very uneasy about it before Rollo went away—so long ago. I fancy his going was partly thanks to her care.'

Closer and closer came the dark brows together, until by degrees her extremely fancy-free thoughts took a turn. 'What a fuss! what was Mme. Lasalle talking about? "Fascinating," forsooth!—she should like to see anybody that could fascinate her.' And so the whole thing grew ludicrous, and she laughed, her soft ringing, girlish laugh.

'What a pirate he must be, Mme. Lasalle. A true Dane! Do many of that sort live on shore?'

'Take care!' said the lady in a different tone—'dangers that are slighted are the first to be run into.'

The carriage stopped at that moment, so Wych Hazel had no need to reply. She watched Mme. Lasalle drive off, took a comprehensive view of the moon for a minute, and then pirouetting round on the tips of her toes she flashed into the sitting room and favoured Mr. Falkirk with a courtesy profound enough for her grandmother.