Wych Hazel

by Susan Warner; Anna Bartlett Warner

'What's he doing? what are we waiting for? Can you see?' he asked impatiently.

'Yes—they are trying to find out which way to go, sir.'

Mr. Falkirk made a movement as if to get out himself; then checked it, seeing the helpless bevy of women who were dependent on him and now in the utmost perturbation. Standing still tried their nerves. To keep order withinside the coach was as much as he could attend to. Cries and moans and questions of involved incoherency, poured upon him. Would they ever get home? would the fire catch the coach? would it frighten the horses? what were they stopping for?—were some of the simplest inquiries that Mr. Falkirk had to hear and answer; in the midst of which one of the ladies assured herself and him that if 'Isaiah had come along with them they would never have got into such a fix.' Mrs. Saddler Mr. Falkirk peremptorily silenced; the others he soothed as best he might; and all the while Wych Hazel watched the signs without, and followed the climber in the pine tree, following him in his venturesome ascent and descent, which were both made with no lack of daring. He was on the ground at last, swinging himself from the end of a pine branch which he had compelled into his service; he came straight to Mr. Falkirk, heated, but mentally as cool as ever.

'I see our way,' he said, 'I am going on the box myself. Don't be concerned. I have driven a post-coach in England.'

He looked across to Wych Hazel, as he spoke, and his eye carried the promise again. Wych Hazel met his look, though with no answer in her own; fear, or self-control, or something back of both, made the very lines of her face still; only a sort of shiver of feeling passed over them as he said, 'Don't be concerned.' All this passes in a second; then Rollo is on the box with the stage driver and the stage is in motion again. But it is motion straight on to where Wych Hazel has seen that the smoke is thickest. The horses go fast; they know that another hand has the reins; the ground is swiftly travelled over. Now the puffs of smoke roll out round and defined from the burning woodland; and then, above the rattle of wheels and tread of hoofs, is heard another sound,—a spiteful snapping and crackling, faint but increasing. Can the air be borne?—it is hard to breathe; and flame, yes, flame is leaping from the dried leaves and curling out here and there from a tree. Mrs. Saddler put her head out of the coach.

'Oh, sir!' she shrieked, 'he is taking us right into it! O stop him! we'll be burned, sure! it's all fire—it's all fire!'

The chorus of shrieks became now almost a worse storm within than the tempest of fire which was raging without. The women were wild. It was an awful moment for everybody. The fire had full possession on both sides of the road, viciously sparkling and crackling and throwing out jets of flames and volumes of smoke, threatening to dispute the way with the stage coach; yet through it lay the only way to safety. It could not be borne long; the horses, urged by a hand that knew how to apply all means of stimulus and spared none, drew the coach along at a furious speed. The speed alone was distracting to the poor women, who had never known the like; the coach seemed to them, doubtless, hastening to destruction. Their shrieks were uncontrollable; and indeed no topics of comfort could be urged, when manifestly they were fleeing for their lives from the fire, and the fire on every side, before and behind them was threatening with fearful assertion of power that they should not escape. How swiftly thoughts careered through the mind of the one silent member of the company—thoughts like those quick flashed of flame, those dark curls of smoke. The questions she had been debating two hours before—were they all to have one short, sharp answer?—And what would become of her then? Were such days as the one before yesterday forever ended? How would it feel to be caught and wreathed about like one of those pines—how would Mr. Rollo feel to see it—and what if all the rest should be dead, there in the fire, and she only half dead; together with a strange impatience to know the worst and endure the worst. She had drawn back a little from the window, driven in by the scorching air, but looked out still with both hands up to shield her eyes. She did not know into what pitiful lines her mouth had shaped itself, nor what faintness and sickness were creeping over her with every breath of that smoke. The time was, after all, not long; but in the thickest of the fire, when the smoke literally choked up the way before the horses' eyes, the animals suddenly stopped; from a furious speed, the coach came to a blank stand-still. A voice was heard from the coach-box cheering the horses—but the dead pause continued. And now when the rattle of the wheels ceased, the sweep of the fiery storm could be heard and felt. A wind had risen, or more likely was created by the great draught of the fire; and its rush through the woods, driving the flames before it, and catching up the clouds of smoke to pile them upon the faces and throats of the travellers was with a hiss and a fury and a blinding which came like the malice of a spiteful thing. It was almost impossible to breathe; and yet the coach stood still! A half- minute seemed the growth of a year. The women became frantic; Mr. Falkirk kept them in the coach by the sheer exertion of force. Wych Hazel in vain strained her eyes to see through the smoke what the detaining cause was.

The horses had been scared at last by the fire crackling and snapping in their faces, and confounded by the clouds of smoke. Bewildered, they had stopped short; and voice and whip were powerless against fear. That was a moment never to be forgotten, at least by those withinside the stage-coach, who could do nothing but wait and scream.

'Hush! the horses are frightened: that is all,' said Mr. Falkirk. 'He's——what's he doing, Wych?—yes, he's blinding the leaders; that's it. There!'

The intense anxiety which was smothered in every one of these words, Wych Hazel long remembered. They saw, as he spoke, they could see Rollo at the horses' heads, going from one to the other; they saw him dimly through the smoke; they caught the light of something white in his hand. Mr. Falkirk had guessed right. Then they saw Rollo throw himself postillion-wise upon one of the leaders. In another moment the coach moved, doubtfully; then amid the rush and roar they could hear the cheer of their charioteer's voice, and the frightened animals plunged on again. Presently, encouraged perhaps by a little opening in the smoke, they dashed forward as heartily as ever, and—yes—the smoke was less thick and the air less dark, and momentarily brightening. The worst was over. Surely the worst was over, but the travellers drew breath if freer yet fearfully, till the lessening cloud and disappearing fire and stillness in the woods, said that had left the danger behind. Black charred stems and branches began to show what had been where they now were; little puffs of grey smoke from half consumed tufts of moss and old stumps of great trees were all that was left of the army of fire that had marched that way.