Wych Hazel Part 61

But that is not hard, nor uncomfortable, when ye love somebody?' she added, her sweet eyes going back to Wych Hazel.

The girl shook her head.

'I never loved anybody, then. Unless mamma,' she answered.

'Lady, do ye know those words in your Bible--"He that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty?" Giving up yourself to G.o.d will put ye just there! And then--"He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under His wings shalt thou trust." '

It is one thing to hear these words sonorously read in church, or to run one's eye over them in a perfunctory manner. To see Gyda speak them, with the accent and air of one undeniably proving the truth of them, that was another thing.

'There may be yet a difficulty, Gyda,' said Rollo.

'What is't?'

'One may not know just how to get there, even after you have shewed the way.'

Rollo was not speaking lightly; but Gyda as she went back to her seat only answered,

'Ye can always ask.'

'Whom would you bid me ask, Gyda? I would about as lieve come to you as anybody, if I wanted counsel.'

'Give yourself to G.o.d, lad, and ye'll know there's but One to ask of. And there's but One before that, if ye want real help.'

There was a minute's pause; and then Rollo asked what Gyda had for him to do. 'Not yet,' she answered; and with that left the room. Rollo brought his chair to Wych Hazel's side.

'She is going to get you some supper,' he said, with a smile.

'No, it will be all for you,--and you will give me part of it.

I should think you would come here very often, Mr. Rollo.'

'Do you?' said he, looking pleased. 'That shews I did right to bring you here. Now you'll have a Norse supper--the first you ever had. Gyda is Norse herself, I told you; she is a Tellemarken woman. If we were in Norway now, there would be in the further end of this room two huge cribs, which would be the sleeping place for the whole family. Overhead would be fis.h.i.+ng nets hanging from the rafters, and a rack with a dozen or more rifles and fowling-pieces. On the walls you would see collars for reindeer, powder-horns and daggers. Gyda's spinning-wheel _is_ here, you see; and her stove, besides the fireplace for cooking. Her dairy is a separate building, after Norway fas.h.i.+on, and so is her summer kitchen, where I know she is this minute, making porridge. Can you eat porridge?'

'Truly I cannot say, Mr. Rollo. But I do not often "thwart"

myself--as you may have observed. Does the absence of Norse blood make the fact doubtful?'

'Norse habit, say rather,' said Rollo, shaking his head; 'Norse habit, induced by Norse necessity. In many a Norwegian homestead you would get little besides porridge, often. But Gyda likes it, and so do I. At any rate, it is invariable for a Norse meal, in this house. It is one of the things which can be transplanted. Gyda would have enjoyed a row of reindeer's horns bristling along the eaves of her cottage; but I told her the boys of the Hollow would not leave them long if I set them there.'

'But you are half Danish,' said Wych Hazel. 'And was it for love of Denmark that you got your name?'

'Which name? If you please?'

'You know,' said Wych Hazel, with a shy blush, as if it were a sort of freedom for her to know and speak it, 'they call you, "Dane Rollo." '

'That's not my name, though,' said he, smiling. 'I am no further a Dane than being born in Copenhagen makes me so. I am half Norse, and a quarter German; Denmark has given me a nickname,--that's all.'

'Then, if we were in Norway and this a considerable farmhouse, we should have pa.s.sed through an ante-room filled with all sorts of things. Meal chests, and tools, and thongs of leather, skins of animals and wild birds, snow shoes and casks and little sledges. Do you know,' he went on, 'if this were not the land of my father, I could find it in my heart to go and live in the land of my mother. It is a n.o.ble land, and it is a fine people. Feudal law never obtained footing there; every landholder held under no superior; and so there is a manly, genial independence in all the country-side, not found everywhere else.'

He went on for some little time to give Wych Hazel pictures of the scenery, unlike all she had ever known. He knew and loved it well, and his sketches were given graphically. In the midst of this Gyda came in again; and Rollo broke off, and asked her, laughingly, if she had any 'fladbrod.'

'Fresh,' she said. 'Olaf, can't you get her some peaches?'

Rollo went off; and the old woman began to set her table with bowls and plates and spoons; an oddly carved little tub of b.u.t.ter, and a pile of thin brown cakes. Having done this, and Rollo not returning, on the contrary seeming to have found more than peach trees to detain him, for the sound of hammer was heard at intervals, the old woman came and stood by Wych Hazel again. The straw hat was off; and she eyed in a tender kind of way, wistful too, the fair young face.

'Dear,' she said, in that same wistful way, laying her hand on the girl's shoulder, 'does he love you?'

Hazel started in extreme surprise; looking up with wide-open eyes; and more pale than red in her first astonishment.

'He? me?--No!' she said, as the blood came surging back. But then recollections came too, and possibilities--and eyes and head both drooped. And with the inevitable instinct of truth the girl added, under her breath--

'Perhaps--how do I know? I cannot tell!'

By that time head and hands too were on the back of her chair, and she had turned from Gyda, and her face was out of sight.

With a tender little smile, which she could not see, the old Norse woman stood beside her, and with tender fingers which she did feel, smoothed and stroked the hair on each side of her head. For a few minutes.

'And, dear,' she said presently, in the same soft way, 'do you love him?'

There are questions, confusing enough when merely propounded by ourselves, in the solitude of our hearts; but which when coming first from the lips of another, before they have been fairly recognized as questions, become simply unbearable.

Hazel shrank away from the words, gentle as they were, with one of her quick gestures.

'I do not know,' she cried. 'I have never thought! I have no business to know!'

And lifting her head for a moment, with eyes all grave and troubled and almost tearful, she looked into the face of the old Norwegian, mutely beseeching her to be merciful, and not push her advantage any further.

'I know!' said Gyda, softly. 'But it's only me.' And as if recognizing a bond which Wych Hazel did not, she lifted one little white hand in her two brown ones and kissed it.

'Everybody shews me their hearts,' she went on; 'but it's all here,' touching her breast, and meaning probably that it went no further. 'May I love my lad's lady a little bit?'

A strangely humble, wistful, sweet look she bent on Hazel as she spoke, to which the girl herself, too dumbfounded and shaken off her feet to quite know where she was, could find no better answer than a full rush of bright drops to her eyes, coming she knew not whence; and then a deep suffusion of throat and cheeks and brow, but was much better recognized and said it meant to stay. Her head went down again.

'Now, it's only me,' said the old woman, quietly again. But Rollo's voice was heard from somewhere speaking her name, and she hurried out. There was a little interval, and then she came back bearing dishes to set on the table. Back and forth she went several times, and very likely had found more things to take up Rollo's attention; for he came not until she had her board all ready and summoned him. It was a well spread board when all was done. Shallow dishes of porridge, piles of fladbrod, bowls of cream, peaches, and coffee. And when Gyda with due care had made a cup for Wych Hazel and brought it to her hand, the little lady was obliged to confess that it was better than even Chickaree manufacture. And the porridge was no brown farinaceous ma.s.s in a rough and crude state, but came to table in thin, gelatinous cakes, sweet and excellent when broken into the cream. But if Wych Hazel had been afterwards put in the witness-box to tell what she had been eating, I think she would have refused to be sworn. The sheer necessity of the case had made her hold up her head--cool her cheeks she could not; but she took what was given her, and talked of it and praised it almost as steadily as if she had known what it was. Only, as extreme timidity is with some people an unnerving thing, there were moments when, do what she would, her lips must be screened behind the cup, and words that she said which were almost hoa.r.s.e from the extreme difficulty with which they were spoken. As for a laugh, she tried it once.

She was served and tended with, it is hard to say whether most care or most pleasure, by both her companions. Midway of the meal came a help to her shyness.

The door slowly opened and a girl stepped in. She might have been fourteen or fifteen; she was tall enough for that; but the little figure was like a rail. So slight, so thin, so little relieved by any sufficiency of drapery in her poor costume. But the face was above all thin, pale, worn; with eyes that looked large and gla.s.sy from want and weariness. She came in, but then stood still, looking at the party where she had expected to find only the old Norwegian woman.

'Who is this?' said Rollo to Gyda.

'It is Trudchen, of the Hollow. What is wanting, my child?'

said Gyda.

'Come seeking medicine for the mind or body?' said Rollo. But after a second glance he rose up, went to the girl and offered a chair. She looked at him without seeming to know his meaning.

'Speak Deutsch, Olaf,' said Gyda; 'and ye'll get better hearing. She can't speak yon.'

A few words in German made a change. The wan face waked up a little and looked astonished at the speaker. Rollo seated her; then poured out himself a cup of Gyda's coffee, creamed and sugared it duly, and offered it to the girl with the observance he would have given to a lady. Then he moved her chair nearer to the table, and supplied porridge and then peaches; talking and talking to her all the while. The answers began to come at last; the girl's colour changed with the coffee, and her eyes brightened with every spoonful of the cream and porridge; and at last came a smile--what was it like?--like the wintriest gleam of a cold sky upon a cold world. Rollo got better than that, however, before he was done.

He had come back to Wych Hazel and left the girl to finish her supper in peace; when suddenly his attention was attracted by some question addressed by the latter to Gyda. He looked up and himself answered. The girl started from her seat with a degree of animation she had given no symptom of till then, said a few words very eagerly and hurriedly, and darted from the door like a sprite.

'What now?' said Hazel, looking after the girl. 'What has Mr.

Rollo done?'