'I must go. Give me your promise, Hazel, that you will not come near the Hollow without my leave.'
She answered with a certain subdued tone that matched the face,
'I have no intention of coming. Your command is enough. If I can keep it, I will. No amount of promises could make my words any stronger.' But she looked up again, one of her swift eager looks, which again fell in silent gravity. There was scarcely another word said; except one.
'Look away from second causes, Hazel.'
Linking her fingers round his hand, so she went with him silently through the hall and down the steps; and stood there until he rode away into the darkness and the light of his work, and she came back into the light and the darkness of her own house.
CHAPTER XVII.
ALONE IN THE FIGHT.
Nature, with all her many faces, her thousand voices has seldom a look or a tone to help our sorrow. Her joy is too endless in its upspringing, her tears are too fresh and sweet; even the calm steadiness of her quiet is to bewildered thoughts like the unflickering coast light, against which the wild birds of the ocean dash themselves, blinded, in the storm. Wych Hazel stood still at the foot of the steps, until not even imagination could hear so much as an echo of the rapid trot which she was not to hear again for so long a time. The sweet October night, its winds asleep, its insects silenced with a slight frost, its stars wheeling their brilliant courses without a cloud, all smote her like a pain. Then some faint stir of air brought, distantly and sweet, the scent of the woods where they had been chestnutting that very day. With a half cry the girl turned and fled up the steps, locking the door behind her; remembering then keenly what else she was shutting out. She went back to the red room, and stood thereshe and the spirit of desolation. There was no tea tray, happily, with its cheerful reminders; but there was the corner of the mantelpiece, and the spot on the rug, and the firenow slowly wearing down to embers, and the embers to ashes. There was her foot cushionand the crimson bergère. But she could not touch anything,could not take up the tongs which he had set down, even to put the fire in safe order for the night; some one else must do that. Slowly she went round the room, with a glance at everything; passed on to the door and stood looking back; then shut it and went slowly up the stairs. Midway she sat down and leaned her head against the banisters. Sat there she knew not how long, until she heard Mrs. Bywank's step going the rounds below; then rose and went on again. But as Wych Hazel's little foot passed slowly up from stair to stair, one thing in her mind came out in clear black and white, of one thing she was sure: she must lay hold of those immutable things after which she had striven before. Mere hoping would not do, she must make sure. In the happiness of the last weeks, she had said, like David in his prosperity, "I shall never be moved," where was it all now? Above all other thoughts, even to-night, this came: she could not live so. Tossed by one storm upon a roof here, and by the next one carried out to sea. Something to hold her, something that she could hold,that she must have.
Intensely bitter thoughts flocked in along with this. The hand she had clasped so lately, and the way it had clasped her; a longing that would hardly be gainsaid for the touch of it again. Was she forgetting that? was she trying to loosen that bond? She paused, leaning back against the wall, holding her hands tight. But even with the answer the other cry came up: the world was all reeling under her feet,she must have something that would stand. For the time everything else gave way. It was true, this trouble might pass,then others would come: others from which even Dane could not shield her. Already, twice in her little life, twice in three months, had such a crisis come. Mrs. Bywank got no sight of her that night; only gentle answers to enquiries through the closed door; and Hazel lighted her study lamp, and opening her Bible at the ninety-first psalm, and setting it up before her in the great easy chair, knelt down before it and laid her head down too. No need to go over the printed words,there was not one of them she did not know. But was there anything there to help? She went them over to herself, verse by verse, and verse after verse was not for her. It was Dane who had taken that stand, who was leading that life; these promises were all to him. No arrow of darkness was his fearshe knew that well: no pestilence walking at his side could alarm him. But as she went on, half triumphantly at first, with the detail of his faith and his security, the vision of his danger come too; and a long restless fit of pain ended all study for that time. Ended itself at last in sleep,and the dreams of what was about him, and thoughts of what he was about, gave no token of their presence but a sob or a sigh, until the few remaining hours of the night swept by, and the morning broke.
As I said somewhere else, the new day is often good for uncertainties. The foolish fears, the needless alarms, the whole buzzing troop of fidgets that come out in the darkness, go back to their swamps and hiding places when the day has fairly come. They cannot make head against the wholesome freshness of the morning wind. Then painted hopes and lace-winged fancies flit out to take their place: things certainly are better, or they will be better, or they never have been bad.