Wych Hazel Part 64

'If the giver of the horse has no objections, Miss Hazel, I make none.'

'I am afraid, sir, your long seclusion has slightly unsettled your mind,' said Wych Hazel, looking at him with grave consideration, 'There is no "giver" of the horse in the first place; and in the second, you know perfectly well that with his first "objection" to my escorts, the horse would go back.

And you used to be so exact, Mr. Falkirk!' she added, in a melancholy tone.

'Yes, my dear,' said her guardian, pa.s.sing his hand over his face; 'no doubt my mind is in the condition you suggest. I am probably enchanted; which does not help me to guard you from falling into the same awkward condition. But, Miss Hazel, I have engaged a new groom for you. I desire that you will take him with you instead of Dingee. Dingee is no more than a monkey.'

It fell out, however, that Miss Kennedy in the next few days refused several 'escorts,' on her own responsibility; saying nothing about Jeannie Deans. Instead whereof, she went off in the early morning hours and had delightful long trots by herself, with only the new groom; who, she did not happen to remark, developed a remarkable familiarity with the new horse.

Threading her way among the beautiful woods of Chickaree, wherever a bridle-path offered, and sure to be at home long before Mr. Falkirk's arrival to breakfast, so that he knew nothing whatever about the matter. Just why this course of action was in favour, perhaps the young lady herself could scarcely have told, had she tried; but she did not try.

Whether other a.s.sociations would break the harmony of some already well established; whether she feared people's questions about her horse; whether she liked the wild, irregular roaming through the forest

' 'ith no one nigh to hender'--

as Lowell has it. This last was undeniably true.

Meantime Mr. Rollo himself was away again--gone for a few days at first, and then by business kept on and on; and it suddenly flashed into Wych Hazel's mind one day, that now, before he got home, was the very time to go and have a good long talk with Primrose and her father. n.o.body there to come in even at dinner time but Dr. Arthur; and him Wych Hazel liked so much and minded so little, that Dr. Arthur was in some danger of minding it a good deal. She would go early and ride Jeannie Deans, and get home before the crowd of loungers got out for their afternoon's play. At most it was but a little way from Dr. Maryland's to the edge of her own woods; not more than three miles perhaps; four to the gate.

Primrose was overjoyed to see her.

'What does make your visits so few and far between?' she cried as her hand came to lift off Wych Hazel's hat.

'Well,--what does make yours?' said Hazel, gaily. 'I am come for a little talk with you, and a lecture from Dr. Maryland, and any other nice thing I can find.'

'Then we shall keep you to dinner, and I'll have your horse put up. I do not see so much of you, Hazel, as I hoped I should when you came. You are such a gay lady.'

It was difficult to deny this. However, the talk ran on to other pleasanter topics, and was enjoyed by both parties for about half an hour. Then came a hindrance in the shape of a lady wearing the very face that had bowed to Wych Hazel so impressively from the carriage in Morton Hollow. The very same! the long pale features, the bandeaux of l.u.s.treless pale hair enclosing them, and two of those l.u.s.treless eyes which look as if they had not depth enough to be blue; eyes which give, and often appropriately, the feeling of shallowness in the character. But now and then a shallow lake of water has a pit of awful depth somewhere.

Prim's face did not welcome the interruption.

'This is my sister, Prudentia--Mrs. Coles,' she said. 'It is Miss Kennedy, Prudentia.'

A most gracious, not to say ingratiating, bend and smile of Mrs. Coles answered this. She was a tall, thin figure, dressed in black. It threw out the pale face and flaxen bandeaux and light grey eyes into the more relief.

'I am delighted to see Miss Kennedy,' she said. 'It is quite a hoped-for pleasure. But I have seen her before--just seen her.'

Wych Hazel bowed--remembering with some amus.e.m.e.nt Mr. Rollo's caracole on the former occasion all about Mrs. Coles.

Privately she wished she had not promised to stay to dinner.

'I was frightened to death at your riding'--the lady went on.

'Did your horse start at anything?'

'My horse starts very often when I am on him,' said Wych Hazel laughing.

'Does he! And do you think that is quite safe?'

'Why not?--if I start too. The chief danger in such cases is in being left behind.'

Wych Hazel was getting her witch mood on fast. Mrs. Coles looked a trifle puzzled.

'But my dear!' she said, 'the danger of _that_, I should think, would be if the other horse started.'

'O no, ma'am,' said Hazel gravely. 'My escorts never even so much as think of running away from me.'

At that point Primrose's gravity gave way, and she burst into a laugh. Mrs. Coles changed the subject.

'I have been very impatient to see one I have heard so much of,' she began again. 'In fact I have heard of you always. I should have called at Chickaree, but I couldn't get any one to take me. Arthur, he was busy--and Dr. Maryland never goes anywhere but to visit his people--Prim goes everywhere, but it is not where I want to go, for pleasure; and Dane I asked, and he wouldn't.'

'He did not say he wouldn't, Prudentia,' remarked her sister.

'He didn't say he would,' returned Mrs. Coles, with a peculiar laugh; 'and I knew what that meant. O, I should have got there some time. I will yet.'

Miss Kennedy bowed--she believed the fault must be hers. But she had not quite understood--or had confused things--in her press of engagements.

Mrs. Coles graciously a.s.sumed that there had been no failure in that quarter. And Dr. Maryland came in, and the dinner. A nice little square party they were, for Dr. Arthur was not at home; and yet somehow the conversation flowed in more barren channels than was ever the wont at that table in Wych Hazel's experience. A great deal of talk was about what people were doing; a little about what they were wearing; an enormous amount about what they were saying. Part of this seemed to be religious talk too, and yet what was the matter with it? Or was it with Wych Hazel that something was the matter? Primrose and Dr. Maryland then shared the trouble, for whatever they said was in attempted diversion or correction or emendation.

Certainly among them all the talk did not languish.

There came a pause for a short s.p.a.ce after dinner, when Dr.

Maryland had gone back to his study. Then there was a demand for Primrose; one of her Sunday school children wanted her.

Wych Hazel and Mrs. Coles were left alone. Mrs. Coles changed her seat for one nearer the young lady.

'I have been really anxious to see you, my dear Miss Kennedy,'

she began, benignly.

'Some one of my escapades has reached her ears!' thought the young lady to herself; 'now if I can give her a good, harmless, mental shock,--just to bear it out!--I certainly will.--That sounds very kind,' she said aloud.

'Yes,--you know I heard so much about you when you were a child, and your connection with this house, and all;--and your whole romantic story; and now when I learned that you were grown up and here again, I really wanted to see you and see how you looked. I must, you know,' she added, with her peculiar smile.

There was so much in these words that was incomprehensible, that Wych Hazel for the moment was at a loss for any answer at all; and waited for what would come next, with eyes rather larger than usual. Mrs. Coles went on, scanning her carefully as she spoke, that same smile, half flattering, half a.s.suming, wreathing her lips.

'I did want very much to see you--I was curious, and I am. Do tell me--how does it feel to have two guardians? I should think, you know, that one would be enough for comfort; and the other is sure to be a jealous guardian. Perhaps you don't mind it,' added Mrs. Coles, with a face so amiable, that if Wych Hazel had been a cat it would have certainly provoked a spring.

The first thing that struck the girl in this speech, was a certain sinister something, which by sheer instinct of self- defence threw her into position at once. The outward expression of it this time, seemed to be just one of the poor jokes about Mr. Rollo. 'Have you two guardians?' Mr.

Nightingale had said.

'O sometimes I mind one, and sometimes I do not!' she answered, with a laugh.

'Ah, but _which_ one do you mind?' said Mrs. Coles shrewdly. 'Or do they both pull together? To be sure, that is to be hoped, for your sake. It is a very peculiar position! And, I should think, trying. It would be to me.'

'People say there are a good many trying situations in life,'

said Wych Hazel meekly, watching her antagonist. Why did the lady seem to her such?

'Yes!' said Mrs. Coles with half a sigh. 'And to be young and rich and gifted with beauty and loaded with admiration, isn't the worst; if it _is_ trying to enjoy it all between two guardians. Do they keep you very close, my dear?'

('I think she is a little crazy,' thought the girl. 'No wonder--with such eyes.'--) 'A dozen could hardly do that, ma'am, thank you. Makes a more difficult fence to leap, of course--but when you are used to the exercise--'

Mrs. Coles laughed, a thin peculiar sort of laugh, not enjoyable to the hearer, though seeming to be enjoyed by the person from whom it proceeded. She had the air of being amused.

'Well,' she said, 'I should like to see you leap over fences of Dane's making. He used to do that for mine sometimes; it would serve him right. Does he know you do it?'