Hazelhurst

by Enid Leigh Hunt

Hazel gazed upon the undergrowth with reflecting knowledge. It was one of her delights to separate with the eye, briar and bramble, whortleberry and woodrush, from out the delicious tangle it exhibited, to paint and fashion it all in spring colours and shapes of scarlet bells and purple berries.

Now and again Paul looked round at the girl, smiling to himself at her abstracted face and mien. Twice he called to her to beware of a treacherous branch, and Hazel obediently ducked. He was about to do so on a third occasion, when that befell which, terrible as it appeared to Hazel, left Paul thankful in that the seeming mischance wrought him nothing but good, and bid him enter into his man's heritage: a woman's love—to taste of its fulness. For, in an unguarded moment, when stress of emotion had unlocked the close-fastened child-heart, there was no time to secure it again before Paul had entered and taken full possession.

At the moment of turning in the saddle to call Hazel's attention to the third and last limb along the track, that threatened danger, his horse had sighted a wheel-barrow—left by some woodsman beside the pathway—before it stood revealed to his master; and, swerving, with a sudden leap plunged forward, dashing his rider against the low-hanging bough that, with nice calculation, he had given himself ample time to avoid, had not the unforeseen so altered the measured pace that the riders had adopted.

Struck full in the chest, Paul's progress was effectually stayed, the startled animal swept from under him, and the next moment he was stretched his length upon the ground.

With a low cry of dismay, so soon as she could check her horse's wild curvetting, before, indeed, bringing him to a stand, Hazel slipped from her saddle and, speeding to the spot, knelt beside Paul's inanimate form. In an agony of tender solicitude she raised his head, that her arm might pillow it. The ground was slightly stained with blood from a small scalp wound and, in most unwonted sort—for the girl was ever prone to look at all ills in their best and most hopeful aspect—Hazel was under the appalling conviction that her lover was dead.

Lowering his head again, she opened his coat and waistcoat and placed a little, trembling hand upon his heart, but could detect no motion. She bent her cheek near his mouth, but the cold air permitted no warm breath to penetrate to her senses. In wild grief the poor girl called frantically upon his name.

"Paul, Paul," she cried; "Oh, Paul, darling old fellow! I am saying it now, but you can't hear me! I am kissing you, Paul, but you can't feel it! You are dead—dead—and can never know that at last your Wych-hazel was able to tell you how she loved you!"

And, with a piteous little moan, the stricken child sank down beside him, and with her head upon his breast, one arm flung appealingly about his neck, she mercifully lost consciousness.

Paul, who was but momentarily stunned, heard her without at once being able to rouse himself from the stupor into which the fall had thrown him. In dreamy delight he drank in the words that fell upon his ears, even while he could not comprehend their full import. He felt two tremulous kisses upon his cheek; but it was not till her voice fell silent and he felt her weight against him, that he realised she had fainted.

Then necessity came to his aid. With a desperate effort he shook himself free from the torpor of mind and body, and succeeded in collecting his wandering senses. Placing his arm about the unconscious girl, he raised himself to a sitting posture, and proceeded to chafe the hand that his movement had caused to slip from his neck to his breast, whilst in his turn he called her name, beseeching her to open her eyes. And presently Hazel, with a little fluttering sigh, obeyed his agonised appeal, and, opening her eyes, looked up into his face, while Paul talked softly and watched consciousness returning to their depths.