Wych Hazel

by Susan Warner; Anna Bartlett Warner

CHAPTER XVIII.

COURT IN THE WOODS.

'Miss Wych—my dear—all in brown?' said Mrs. Bywank doubtfully, as her young charge was arraying herself one morning for the woodcraft. Some rain and some matters of business had delayed the occasion, and it was a good week since the fishing party.

'Harmonious, isn't it?' said Hazel.

'But, my dear—it looks—so sombre!' said Mrs. Bywank.

'Sombre?' said the girl, facing round upon her with such tinges of cheek and sparkles of eye that Mrs. Bywank laughed, too, and gave in.

'If it puts Mr. Falkirk to sleep, I can wake him up,' said
Wych Hazel, busy with her loopings. 'And as for Mr. Rollo'—

'Mr. Rollo!—is he to be of the party?' said the housekeeper.

'I suppose,—really,—he is the party,' said Wych Hazel. 'Mr. Falkirk and I scarcely deserve so festive a name by ourselves.'

'And what were you going to say to Mr. Rollo?'

'O nothing much. He may go to sleep if he chooses—and can,' added Miss Wych, for the moment looking her name. But the old housekeeper looked troubled.

'My dear,' she began—'I wouldn't play off any of my pranks upon Mr. Rollo, if I were you.'

'What is the matter with Mr. Rollo, that his life must be insured?' said Wych, gravely confronting her old friend with such a face that Mrs. Bywank was again betrayed into an unwilling laugh. But she returned to the charge.

'I wouldn't, Miss Wych! Gentlemen don't understand such things.'

'I do not think Mr. Rollo seems dull,' said the girl, with a face of grave reflection. 'Now, Byo—what are you afraid I shall do?' she went on, suddenly changing her tone, and laying both hands on her old friend's shoulders.

'Why, nothing, Miss Wych, dear!—I mean,'—Mrs. Bywank hesitated.

'You mean a great deal, I see,' said Wych Hazel. 'But do not you see, Byo, I cannot hang out false colours? There is no sort of use in my pretending not to be wild, because I am.'

Mrs. Bywank looked up in the young face,—loving and anxious.

'Miss Wych,' she said, 'what men of sense disapprove, young ladies in general had better not do.'

'O, I cannot follow you there,' said Wych Hazel. 'Suppose, for instance, Mr. Rollo (I presume you mean him by "men of sense") took a kink against my brown dress?'

Not very likely, Mrs. Bywank thought, as she looked at the figure before her. If Hazel had been a wood nymph a week ago she was surely the loveliest of brown fairies to-day. But still the old housekeeper sighed.

'My dear, I know the world,' she began.

'And I don't,' said Hazel. 'I am so glad! Never fear, Byo, for to-day at least I have got Mr. Falkirk between me and mischief. And there he is this minute, wanting his breakfast.'

But to judge by the housekeeper's face as she looked after her young mistress down the stairs, that barrier was not quite all that could be wished. However, if impenetrability were enough for a barrier, Mr. Falkirk could have met any inquisitions that morning.

He came to breakfast as usual; but this morning breakfast simply meant business. He ate his toast and read his newspaper. With the ending of breakfast came Rollo. And the party presently issued forth into the woods which were to be the scene of the day's work.

The woods of Chickaree were old and fine. For many years undressed and neglected, they had come at last to a rather rampant state of anarchy and misrule. Feebler, though perhaps not less promising members were oppressed by the overtopping growth of the stronger; there was an upstart crowd of young wood; and the best intentioned trees were hurting each other's efforts, because of want of room. It was a lovely wilderness into which the party plunged, and the June morning sat in the tops of the trees and laughed down at them. Human nature could hardly help laughing back in return, so utterly joyous were sun and sky, birds and insects and trees altogether. They went first to the wilderness through which Rollo and Wych Hazel had made their way on foot one morning; lying near to the house and in the immediate region of its owner's going and coming. Herein were great white oaks lifting their heads into greater silver pines. Here were superb hemlocks threatened by a usurping growth of young deciduous trees. There were dogwoods throwing themselves across everything; and groups of maples and beeches struggling with each other. As yet the wild growth was in many instances beautiful; the damage it was doing was beyond the reach of any but an experienced eye. Here and there a cross in white chalk upon the trunk of a tree was to be seen.

The three walked slowly down through this leafy wild till they were lost in it.

'Now,' said Rollo to the little lady in brown, 'what do you think ought to be done here?'

'I should like to make ways through al this, if I could. True wildwood ways, I mean,—that one must look for and hardly find; with here and there a great clearance that should seem to have made itself. What sort of a track would a hurricane make here, for instance?'

'A hurricane!' said Mr. Falkirk, facing round upon his ward.

'Rather indiscriminate in its action,' observed Rollo.

'The clearance a hurricane makes in a forest,' Mr. Falkirk went on, 'is generally in the tree tops. The ground is left a wreck.'

'Any system of clearing that I know, brings the trees to the ground,' said Wych Hazel. 'But I mean—I like the woods dearly as they are, Mr. Falkirk; but if I meddled with them, then I would have something to shew for it. I would have thoughts instead of the trees, and vistas full of visions. If anything is cut here, it ought to be in a broad hurricane track right down to the West, where

"The wind shall seek them vainly, and the sun
Gaze on the vacant space for centuries."

I do not like fussing with such woods.'

'What thought is expressed by a wide system of devastation?' asked Rollo, facing her.

'Power. Do not you like power, Mr. Rollo?' she said with a demure arch of her eyebrows.

Rollo bit his lips furtively but vigorously, and then demanded to know if Napoleon was her favourite character in history.

'No,' said Wych Hazel—'he did not know what to do with his power when he had it. A very common mistake, Mr. Rollo, you will find.'

'Don't make it,' said he, smiling.

'What are you talking about?' said Mr. Falkirk, turning round upon them. 'Miss Hazel, we are here in obedience to your wishes. What do you propose to do, now we are here? Do you know what needs doing?'

'What does, Mr. Falkirk?—in your opinion?' She came close to him, linking her hands upon his arm. 'Tell me first, and then I will tell you.'

'There must be a great many trees cut, Miss Hazel; they have grown up to crowd upon each other very mischievously. And a large quantity of saplings and underbrush must be cleared away. You see where I have begun to mark trees for the axe.'

'Truly, sir, I do! Mr. Falkirk, that bent oak is a beauty.'

'It will never make a fine tree. And the oak beside it will.'

'Well—it is to be congratulated,' said Miss Hazel, pensively. 'But what is to become of my poor woods, at that rate? There is an elm with a branch too many on one side; and a birch keeping house lovingly with a hemlock. If "woodcraft" means only such line-and-rule decimation, Mr. Falkirk—'

'I don't know what you mean by woodcraft, my dear. I mean, taking care of the woods.'

'And that means,' added Rollo, 'an intimate knowledge of their natures, and an affectionate care for their interests; a sympathetic, loving, watchful insight and forecast.'

Wych Hazel gave him a little nod of approval.

'Don't you see, sir?' she went on eagerly. 'You must have a bent tree now and then, because it is twice as interesting as the straight ones. And if you cut down all the bushes, Mr. Falkirk, you will clear me out,' she added, laughing up in his face.

'You might grant her so much, Mr. Falkirk,' said the other gentleman. 'A bent tree now and then; and all her namesakes. Certainly they ought to stand.'

M. Falkirk's answer was to take a few steps to a large white pine tree, and make a huge dash of white chalk upon its broad bole. Then he stepped back to look again. Action was more in his way than discussion to-day. Rollo began to get into the spirit of the thing; and suggested and pointed out here and there what ought to come down and what ought to be left, and the reasons, with a quick, clear insight and decision to which Mr. Falkirk invariably assented, and almost invariably in silence. Deeper and deeper into the wood they worked their way; where the shade lay dark upon the ferns and the air was cool and spicy with fragrance, and then where the sunlight came down and played at the trees' foot. For a while Wych Hazel kept pace with their steps; advising, countermanding, putting in her word generally. But by degrees she quitted the marking work, and began to flit about by herself; plunging her little fingers deep into moss beds, mimicking the squirrels, and—after her old fashion—breaking out from time to time into scraps of song. Now Mr. Falkirk's ears were delighted with the ringing chorus:

'Wooed and married and a'—
'Wooed and married and a';
'Wasna she vera weel aff
'That was wooed, and married, and a'?

Then a complete hush seemed to betoken sudden recollection on the singer's part; that was quite too private and confidential a matter to be trilled out at the top of one's voice. Presently again, slow and clear like the tinkle of a streamlet down the rocks, came the words of Aileen Asthore:

'Even the way winds
'Come to my cave and sigh; they often bring
'Rose leaves upon their wing,
'To strew
'Over my earth, and leaves of violet blue;
'In sooth, leaves of all kinds.'

It was a very sweet kind of telegraphing; but the two gentlemen, deep in the merits of a burly red oak, took no notice how suddenly the song broke off, nor that none other came after it. And when at last they bethought themselves of the young lady truant, and stopped to listen where she might be, they heard a murmur of tongues very different indeed from the silvery tones of Wych Hazel. And somewhat hastily retracing their steps, came presently into distant view if an undoubted little court, holden easily in the woods.

Miss Kennedy, uplifted on a grey rock, was the centre thereof, and around her some six or eight gentlemen paid their devoirs in most courtier-like fashion. On the moss at her feet lay Mr. Kingsland, with no less a companion than Mr. Simms—black whiskers, white Venetian collar and all. Three or four others, whom Mr. Falkirk did not know, were lounging and laughing and paying attentions of unmistakable reality; while Stuart Nightingale, who had come up on horseback, stood nearest of all, leaning against the rock, his hat off, his horse's bridle upon his arm.

The consequence of this revelation was a temporary suspension of woodcraft, properly so called; another sort of craft, it may possibly have occurred to the actors therein, coming into requisition. Mr. Falkirk at once went forward and joined the group around the rock. More slowly Rollo's movements also in time brought him there. They could see, as they came nearer, a fine example of the power of feminine adaptation. Was this the girl to whom Mr. Falkirk had discoursed the other night? How swiftly and easily she was taking her place! And though a little downcast and blushing now and then, beneath the subtle power of eyes and tongue, yet evidently all the while gathering up the reins and learning to drive her four in hand. Over the two at her feet she was openingly queening it already; over the others—what did Wych Hazel see concerning them, that curled her lips in their soft lines of mischief? Some exquisite hot-house flowers lay in her lap, and a delicate little basket by her side held strawberries—red, white and black—such as the neglected Chickaree gardens had never seen.

'Why, there is your venerable guardian, Miss Kennedy!' drawled out Mr. Kingsland, as Mr. Falkirk came in sight. 'How charming! Patriarchal. And who is that beyond?—Dane Rollo!—as I am a Christian!'

'Evidently then, somebody else,' said Mr. May. 'Who is it,
Nightingale?'

But Mr. Nightingale knew his business better than to reply; and Dane presently spoke for himself. It was the Dane of the Mountain House, courteous and careless; no fellow of these gentlemen, nor yet at all like Mr. Falkirk, a guard upon them. Mr. Falkirk's brows had unmistakeably drawn together at sight of the new comers; Rollo stood on the edge of the group, indifferent and at ease, after his wonted fashion in general society.

'You are making almost your first acquaintance with these beautiful woods?' Stuart remarked, to the little mistress of them, breaking the lull that Mr. Falkirk's arrival had produced.

'How old is your own, sir?' said Mr. Falkirk.

'I—really, I don't know—I have shot here a little; before you came, you know; when it was all waste ground.'

'I remember getting lost in them once, when I was a child,' said Wych Hazel,—'I think that was my first acquaintance. It was just before we went away. And Mr. Falkirk found me and carried me home. Do you remember, sir?'

But Mr. Falkirk was oblivious of such passages of memory in the present company. He gave no token of hearing. Instead, he cruelly asked Mr. Kingsland how farming got on this summer? And Mr. Kingsland, by way of returning good for evil, gave Mr. Falkirk a shower of reports and statistics which might have been true—they were so unhesitating. Through which rain of facts Mr. Falkirk could just catch the sound of words from Mr. May, the sense of which fell upon Miss Kennedy's ear alone. Until Rollo at her side broke the course of things.

'I beg your pardon! Miss Kennedy,' (in an aside) 'I see
Primrose and her father coming. Shall I stop them?'

'Why, of course!' she said, springing to her feet, 'What a question!'

The two recumbent gentlemen rose at once.

'Do you always wear wildwood tints, Miss Kennedy?' asked Mr. Simms, looking up admiringly at the slim figure. 'I thought the other day that green was matchless, but to-day—'

'Yes,' said Wych Hazel, 'but if you would just please stand out of my way, and let me jump down. I want to see Dr. Maryland.'

The gentleman laughed and retreated, and disregarding the half dozen offered hands, Hazel sprang from her rock and stood out a step or two, shading her eyes and looking down the woodland, where Rollo had disappeared to meet the approaching carriage. The thicket was so close just here that the carriage road though not far off was invisible. Down below Rollo had caught a glimpse of the well known little green buggy creeping up the hill; and in another few minutes its occupants appeared coming through the trees. Wych Hazel had hold of their hands almost before they had sight of her.

'I thought you had given me up, Dr. Maryland,' she said, 'and were never coming to see me at all!'

'Two days,' said the Doctor benignly, 'two fair days my dear, since we took breakfast together. I have not been very delinquent. Though it seems I am not the first here. Good morning, Mr. Kingsland!—how do you do, Mr. Burr?—how do you do, Mr. Sutphen?—Mr. May? Are you holding an assembly here, my dear?' And by that time Dr. Maryland had worked round to Mr. Falkirk; and the hands of the two gentlemen closed in an earnest prolonged clasp; after the approved method gentlemen have of expressing their estimation of each other.

'Miss Kennedy is pretty sure to "hold" whoever comes near her, sir,' said Mr. Burr.

'I can certify that the "assembly" is quite powerless, Doctor— if it will be any relief to your mind,' said Mr. Kingsland. While Hazel, with Prim's hand in hers, was eagerly speaking her pleasure.

'What are you doing?' said Primrose under her breath and looking in some astonishment at the gathering.

'O, nothing—talking,—they wanted to know how I got home,' said Wych, an amused look betraying itself. Then quitting Primrose, she went forward a little to receive the farewell addresses of several gentlemen who preferred to see Miss Kennedy alone. The group began to clear away. Prim's eye watched her, in her graceful, pretty self-possession, as she met and returned the parting salutation; and then went over by some instinct to where another eye was watching her too, with a contented sparkle in its intentness. That was only a second, though. Rollo had no mind to have all the world know what he was thinking about; and even as her glance found him, his turned away. The strangers being at last disposed of, those remaining began a slow procession towards the house. But a parting word of Mr. Nightingale's must be noted.

'Any chance for a ride to the wood to-morrow?' he said, with tones so modulated that he thought his words safe. And she answered:

'O, my horses have not come. There will be little riding for me yet a while.'

'And these are the Chickaree woods?' said Dr. Maryland, as they walked on. 'How beautiful they are! Are you very happy, Hazel, in the hope of being the mistress of all this?'

'Why I thought—I call myself the mistress now, sir. Is it an uncertainty dependent on my good behaviour?' she said with a laugh.

'You know you are not of age, my dear; but I suppose Mr. Falkirk gives you the essentials of dominion. Do you feel at home yet?'

'Very much! You know, sir, I have just a little remembrance of the old time—when mamma was here—to begin with. But how heedless I am!' she said, abruptly putting the little basket which had been swinging from her hand into the hands of Dr. Maryland. 'There, sir,—will you take some refreshment by the way?' Then turning to Primrose, Miss Kennedy laid the fragrant weight of hot-house flowers upon her.

'Are these from your garden?' said Primrose, somewhat bewildered. While Dr. Maryland, putting his fingers without scruple in among the black and white strawberries, asked in an approving tone of voice: 'Have you been picking these yourself, my dear?'

'I—picked them up, sir,' said Hazel with the laugh in her voice. 'Not off the vines, however. They are hothouse flowers,' she answered to Primrose. 'When my houses are in order you shall have them every day.'

'They are very good,' said Dr. Maryland gravely, eating away.
'Where did you get them, my dear?'

'Mr. May brought them, sir,' said the girl, looking down now, and walking straight on.

'Mr. May!' echoed Dr. Maryland. 'How comes Mr. May to be bringing you strawberries? And those flowers too?' glancing over at Primrose's full hands.

'No, sir, Mr. Burr brought the flowers.'

'You are a fearful man for asking questions, sir,' said Rollo, with a flash of fun in his face.

'Questions?' said the doctor, picking out the black strawberries abstractedly,—'I've a right to ask her questions. The strawberries are good!—but I wish Mr. May had not brought them.'

'So would he, if he knew you were eating them, sir.'

'I've eaten enough of them,' said Dr. Maryland, seeming to recollect himself. 'They are very good; they are the finest strawberries I have seen.' And he handed the basket to Mr. Falkirk, who immediately passed it over to Rollo. Rollo balanced the basket on his fingers and carried it so, but put never a finger inside.

'I am afraid your head will be turned, Hazel, my dear,' said Dr. Maryland, 'if the adulation has begun so soon. What will you do when you are a little better known?'

'Ah!' said Hazel, with an indescribable intonation, 'ask Mr. Falkirk that, Dr. Maryland. Poor Mr. Falkirk! he is learning every day of his life what it is to know me "a little better!" '

'I can imagine that,' said Dr. Maryland, quite gravely. 'My dear, what a beautiful old house you have!'

The June day, however, was so alluring that they could not make up their minds to go inside. On the basket chairs in the low verandah they sat down, and looked and talked. Primrose did not talk much—she was quiet; nor Mr. Falkirk—he was taciturn; the burden of talk was chiefly borne by Wych Hazel and the Doctor. In a genial, enjoying, sympathising mood, Dr. Maryland came out in a way uncommon for him! asked questions about the woods, the property, the old house; and delighted himself in the beauty that was abroad in earth and sky.

'My dear,' he said at last to Wych Hazel, 'you have all that this world can give you. What are you going to do with it?'

'Have I?' she said, rather wistfully. 'I thought I was looking for something more. What could I do with it, sir? You know Mr. Falkirk manages everything as well as can be, now.'

'Are you looking for something more?' said Dr. Maryland, tenderly. 'What more are you looking for, Hazel?'

'Suppose I should tell you I do not quite know, myself, sir?'

'I should say, my dear, the best thing would be to find out.'

'I shall know when I find it,' said the girl. 'If I find it.'

' "To him that hath shall be given!" One of the best ways,
Hazel, to find more is to make the best use of what we have.'

The girl left her seat, and kneeling down by Dr. Maryland, laid her hand on his shoulder.

'I mean,' she said, dropping her voice so that only the doctor could hear, 'not more of what people call much; but something, where I have nothing. To belong to somebody—to have somebody belong to me.'

'Ah, my dear,' said the doctor, wistfully, 'I am afraid
Primrose wouldn't do.'

'I have wanted her ever since she took me in out of the rain, and did not wonder how I got wet,' said Hazel laughing but dropping her voice again.

'If you had her, my dear, you would then want something or somebody else.'

'Maybe you do not understand me, sir,' she said, a little eager to be understood, and pouring out confidences in a way as rare with her as it was complimentary to her hearer. 'I am not complaining of anybody. I know Mr. Falkirk is very fond of me—but he likes to keep me off at a respectful distance. Only a few nights ago, I was feeling particularly good, for me, and rather lonely, and I just asked him to kiss me for good night— and it made him so glum that he has hardly opened his lips to me ever since!' said Wych Hazel in an aggrieved voice.

'Perhaps Mr. Falkirk has something upon his mind, my dear!' said Dr. Maryland, with raised eyebrows and an uncommon expression of fun playing about the lines of his mouth. 'It is not always safe to conclude that coincident facts have a relation of cause and effect.'

'No—' said the girl, 'I suppose not. But I stood there all by myself and heard him turn the keys and rattle the bolts—and then I ran upstairs to find Mrs. Bywank,—and of course she couldn't speak for a toothache. And then I felt as if there was nobody in all the world—in all my world—but me!'

Dr. Maryland looked tenderly upon the young girl beside him, yet uncomprehendingly. Probably his peculiar masculine nature furnished him with no clue to her essentially feminine views of things.

'I dare say, my dear,' he said,—'I dare say! The best cure for such a state of feeling hat I know, would be to begin living for other people. You will find the world grow populous very soon. And one other cure,'—he added, his eye going away from Wych Hazel into an abstracted gaze towards the outer world;— 'when you can say, "Whom have I in heaven but Thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire beside Thee." '

The little hand upon his shoulder stirred,—was lifted, and laid down again. Somehow she comprehended him better than he did her. Then with a sudden motion Hazel took off a luminous bracelet—one of the three she always wore, and laid it across Dr. Maryland's hand.

'Did mamma ever shew you that, sir?' she said. 'She had it made just for me. And then my wrist was so small that it would go twice round.'

It was a string of twelve stones, all different, all cut and set alike; each long parallelogram fitting rather closely to the next on either side; the hues—opaque, translucent, clouded—flashed and gleamed with every imaginable variation of colour and shade. The doctor looked at it in silence. Then spoke.

'What did she mean by it, Hazel, my dear? I do not catch the interpretation.'

She turned it a little in his hand, until the light fell on the gold framing beneath the gems, and Dr. Maryland could read the fine graven tracery:—"The first, a jasper."

'Ah!' he exclaimed with new interest, 'I see.' And he took up the chain of stones and turned it over and over, rather passed it through his fingers like a rosary, studying the stones and murmuring the names of them.

' "The wall of the city had twelve foundations," ' he said at last, giving the chain back, with a look of light and love combined; ' "and in the wall were twelve gates, and each several gate was one pearl; and the streets were gold, like unto transparent glass, and nothing that defileth shall by any means enter there, but those that are washed in the blood of the Lamb." I like that, my dear.'

His look made all the application his words did not. Presently he rose up and asked Wych Hazel if he might go into her library? A book was there, he thought, that he wanted to look at. Hazel guided him in, but then he dismissed her and she went back to Primrose on the verandah. Slowly back,—softly fingering her bright stones, soberly thinking to herself the motto upon the clasp:—"In hope of eternal life."

'What were you talking to papa about?' said Primrose, putting a loving hand into Wych Hazel's. The two other gentlemen were speaking together at a little distance. 'I thought you looked troubled; but I could not hear, for Duke was talking to me.'

'Dr. Maryland should have been the troubled one, part of the time,' said Hazel, bringing her other hand upon Prim's, 'for I asked him to give you to me.'

'What would become of him and Duke?' said Primrose smiling.

'Really, Mr. Rollo did not enter into my calculations!' said
Wych Hazel, coming back with a rebound into her everyday self.
'Does he require much time and care bestowed upon him?'

'Don't you think all men do?'

'I do not know all men,' said Wych Hazel. 'Mr. Falkirk does not get it. But does Mr. Rollo live at your house?'

'Why of course, when he's here. He always did, you know. And O, Duke helps me. It is twice as easy to take care of papa, when I have him in the house, too. But Hazel, I am going to get you to help me,—in another way—if I can.'

'What way?' said Hazel. 'Then if Mr. Rollo is so helpful, he might take care of Dr. Maryland altogether, and you could come to take care of me.'

Primrose laughed.

'O men cannot get along as women can—don't you know that?' she said. 'No, I want you for my Sunday school. What's the matter?'"

These last words were caused by a diversion of the speaker's thoughts. For she had noticed, while speaking, that a man had come in haste to the place where the two gentlemen were standing; and that after a very few words Mr. Falkirk had thrown on his hat and gone down the grassy slope with the messenger; while Rollo had turned as suddenly and was coming towards them.