Wych Hazel Part 21

'I know by the signs. You will find, I think, Mme. Lasalle up there, and probably a few of her family.'

'Mme. Lasalle!'

By what connection did not appear, but Miss Hazel's fingers were immediately very busy disengaging the rose branch from the b.u.t.ton of her habit, where it had hung during the walk.

'I think that is the prospect. But I do not know that I am under any obligation to meet her, so I think I shall prefer the company of your vixenish little mare. Not to speak of the chance of encountering Mr. Falkirk,' said Rollo, lifting his eyebrows. 'I shouldn't like to stand Mr. Falkirk's shot this morning!'

'It will hit n.o.body but me,' she said, rather soberly.

'Is he a good marksman?'

'Depends a little on what he aims at,' said the girl. 'It is easier, sometimes--as, perhaps, you know--to hit people than things.'

'Take care!' said Rollo, again, as another obstacle in the path presented itself; 'I don't mean anything shall hit you while I have the care of you.' Putting his hands for an instant on the girl's shoulders, he removed her lightly from one side of the walk to the other, and then attacked a sweeping dogwood branch, which, very lovely but very persevering, hung just too low. It cost a little trouble to dispose of it.

They were not on the great carriage road, but following one of the embowered paths which led through the woods. It went winding up, under trees of great beauty, thickset, and now for long default of masters.h.i.+p, overbearing and encroaching in their growth. A wild beauty they made, now becoming fast disorderly and in places rough. The road wound about so much that their progress was slow.

'Chickaree has had no guardian for a good while,' said Rollo, as they went on. 'Look at that elm! and the ashes beyond it.

But don't cut too much, when you cut here; nor let Mr.

Falkirk.'

'He shall not cut a branch, and I love the thickets too well to meddle with them. Unless they actually come in my face.'

'Then you do not love the thickets well enough. Come here,'

said he, drawing her gently to one side,--'stand a little this way--do you see how that white oak is crowding upon those two ashes? They are suffering already; and in another year it would be in the way of that beautiful spruce fir. And the white oak itself is not worth all that.'

'But if you cut it down there will be a great blank s.p.a.ce. The crowding is much prettier than that!'

'The blank s.p.a.ce in two years' time will be filled again.'

'So soon?' she said doubtfully. Then with one of her half laughs,--'You see I do not believe pruning and thinning out and reducing to order agrees with everything; and naturally enough my sympathies are the other way. I like to see the stiff leaves and the soft leaves all mixed up together; they show best so. Not standing off in open s.p.a.ce--like Mr. Falkirk and me.'

He took her up in the same tone; and for a little more of the way there was a delicious bit of talk. Delicious, because Wych Hazel had eyes and capacities; and her companion's eyes and capacities were trained and accomplished. He was at home in the subject; he brought forward his reading and his seeing for her behoof; recommended Ruskin, and gave her some disquisitions of his own that Ruskin need not have been ashamed of. For those ten or fifteen minutes he was a different man from what Wych Hazel had ever seen him. Then the house came in sight, and a new subject claimed their attention. For the mare, whether scenting her stable or finding her spirits raised by getting nearer home, abandoned her quiet manner of going, and after a little dancing and pulling her bridle, testified her disapprobation of all sorts of restraint by flinging her heels into the air, and being obliged to follow her leader, she repeated the amus.e.m.e.nt continuously.

'Do your drawing-room windows look on the front?' said Rollo.

'Some of them. Why?'

'Then, by your leave, as I do not care to act the Merry Andrew for half a dozen pair of eyes, I will go to the rear to mount.' But instead of his more stately salutation, he held out his hand to Wych Hazel with a smile.

'Good bye,' she said. 'I am sorry you have had such a hot walk. But why don't you mount here?'

'I like to choose my audience when I exhibit.'

He clasped Wych Hazel's hand after the fas.h.i.+on of the other day; then disappeared one way as she went the other.

Pa.s.sing swiftly on, holding up her long riding skirt so that it seemed no enc.u.mbrance, musing to herself on past events and present expectations; and not without a certain flutter of pleasure and amus.e.m.e.nt and timidity at the part she had to fill, Wych Hazel reached the low, broad steps and went in.

A slender little person, as airy and independent as the bush she was named for; one of those figures that never by any chance fall into any att.i.tude or take any pose that is not lovely. Hair--as to arrangement--decidedly the worse for the walk; cheeks a little warmed up with the sun, and perhaps other things; grave eyes, where the woman was but beginning to supplant the child; a mouth as sweet as it could be, in all its changes; and a hand and foot that were fabulous. So the mistress of Chickaree went in to receive her first instalment of visitors.

CHAPTER XIV.

HOLDING COURT.

She was scarcely within the door when Mr. Falkirk met her, put her arm within his and led her into the drawing-room. For a few minutes there the impression was merely of a flutter of gauzes, a s.h.i.+fting scene of French bonnets, a show of delicately gloved hands, and a general breeze of compliments and gratulations, in those soft and indeterminate tones that stir nothing. Mme. Lasalle it was, with a bevy of ladies, older and younger, among whom it was impossible at first to distinguish one from the other. So similar was in every case the display of French flowers, gloves and embroidery; so accordant the make of every dress and the modulation of every tone. Mme. Lasalle herself was, however, prominent, having a pair of black eyes which once fairly seen were for ever after easily recognizable. Fine eyes, too; bright and merry, which made themselves quite at home in your face in half a minute.

She was overflowing with graciousness. Her nephew, the gentleman of the roses, the only cavalier of the party, kept himself in a modest background.

'I have been longing to see you at home, my dear,' said Mme.

Lasalle. 'All in good time; but I always am impatient for what I want. And then we have all wanted you; the places of social comfort in the neighbourhood are so few that we cannot afford to have Chickaree shut up. This beautiful old house! I am so delighted to be in it again. But I hope you have met with no accident this morning? You have not?'

'Accident?--O no!'

'You have surely not been thrown,' said another lady.

'No, ma'am.' The demure face was getting all alight with secret fun.

'But how was it?' pursued Mme. Lasalle, with an air of interest. 'We saw you walk up to the door--what had become of your horse?'

'He walked to another door.'

'And you have really been taking foot exercise this morning,'

said the lady, in whose eyes and the lines of her face might be seen a slight shadow. Miss Kennedy then had been on foot of choice, and so accompanied! And Wych Hazel was too inexperienced to notice--but her guardian was not--that Mr.

Nightingale, to whom he had been talking, paused in his attention and turned to catch the answer.

'I have been finding out that my woods need attention,' said Miss Kennedy, who never chose to be catechised if she could help it. 'It is astonis.h.i.+ng that they can have grown so much in these years when I have grown so little!'

'You have got to make acquaintance with a great many other things here besides your trees. Do you know any of your neighbours? or is it all unbroken ground?'

'I do not even know how much there is to break.'

'How delicious!' remarked a languid lady. 'Think of coming into a region where all is new! Things get so tiresome when you know them too well.'

'People and all!' said Mr. Falkirk.

'Well, yes--don't you think they do? When there is nothing more to be found out about them.'

'I don't agree with you,' said another lady. 'I think it's so tiresome to find them out. When you once know them, then you give up being disappointed.'

'My dear Clara!' said Mme. Lasalle, 'what a misanthropical sentiment! Miss Kennedy, I know by her face, will never agree with you. Were you ever disappointed, my dear, in your life?

There! I know you were not.'

'Not often, I think.' What were they talking about,--these people who looked so gay and spoke so languidly? Miss Kennedy rang for refreshments, hoping to revive them a little.

'But, my dear, how far have you walked in this hot sun? You see, you quite dismay us country people. Do tell us! How far have you walked?'

'The miles are as unknown to me as the inhabitants,' she said gayly. 'But we brown people are never afraid of the sun.'