Wych Hazel Part 8

'How soon do you go to Chickaree?' said the gentleman, in a pre-engaged tone, very busy with his pencil.

'How soon?' repeated the lady, surveying her own sketch--'why-- not too soon for anybody that wants me away, I suppose. Ask Mr. Falkirk.'

'Is it long since you have seen the place?'

'I can hardly be said to have "seen" it at all. I think my landscape eyes were not open at that remote period of which you speak.'

'I was a red squirrel then, in the "former state" to which I referred a while ago. So you see your late threat has no terrors for me. Is it in process of execution?'

'O were you?' said Miss Hazel, absorbed in her drawing. 'Yes-- but the expression is very difficult!--Did you think you knew me as a field mouse?'

He laughed a little.

'Then, I suppose you have not the pleasure of knowing your neighbours, the Marylands?--except the specimen lately on hand?'

'No, I have heard an account of them,' said Miss Kennedy. 'For shame, Mr. Rollo, Dr. Maryland isn't a "specimen." He's good.

I like him.'

The gentleman made no remark upon this, but confined his attention to his work for a few minutes; then looked at his watch.

'Is that sketch ready to show?--Time's up.'

'And the squirrel is down. But not much else.'

Not much!--the squirrel sat contemplatively gazing into Mr.

Rollo's hat, which lay on the rock before him, quite undisturbed by a remarkable looking witch who rose up at the other end. The gentleman surveyed them attentively.

'Do you consider these true portraits?'

'I do not think the hat would be a tight fit,' said she, smothering a laugh.

'Well!' said he comically, 'it is said that no man knows himself--how it may be with women I can't say!' And he made over the sketch in his hand and went to his former work; which had been cutting a stick.

There was more in this second sketch. The handling was effective as it had been swift. Considering that fifteen minutes and a lead pencil were all, there had been a great deal done, in a style that proved use and cultivation as well as talent. The rocks, upper and lower, were truly given; the artist had chosen a different state of light from the actual hour of the day, and had thus thrown a great ma.s.s into fine relief. Round it the ferns and mosses and creepers with a light hand were beautifully indicated. But in the nook where Wych Hazel had stationed herself, there was no pretty little figure with her book on her lap; in its place, sharply and accurately given, was a scraggy, irregular shaped bush, with a few large leaves and k.n.o.bby excrescences which looked like acorns, but an oak it was not, still less a tree. The topmost branch was crowned with Miss Kennedy's nodding hat, and upon another branch lay her open drawing book. Miss Kennedy shook her head.

'I cannot deny the relations.h.i.+p!--Your style of handling is perhaps a trifle dry. That is not what you call an "ideal woman," is it, Mr. Rollo?'

'I might fairly retort upon that. What do you say to our moving from this ground, before the band up there gets into Minor?'

Retaking of a sudden her demureness, slipping away to her first position on the rock, with hands busy about the pink flowers, Wych Hazel answered, as once before--

'Do not let me detain you--do not wait for me, Mr. Rollo.'

'Shall I consider myself dismissed? and send some more fortunate friend to help you out of your difficulty?'

'I am not in any difficulty, thank you.'

'Only you don't know your way,' he said, with perhaps a little amus.e.m.e.nt, though it hardly appeared. 'Is it true that you will not give me the honour of guiding you?'

'In the first place,' said Miss Hazel, wreathing her pink flowers with quick fingers, 'I know the way by which I came, perfectly. In the second place, I never submit voluntarily to anybody's guidance.'

'Will you excuse me for correcting myself. I meant, in "not knowing your way," merely the way in which you are to _go_.'

'Do you know it?'

'If you suffer my guidance--undoubtedly.'

'Ah!--if. In that case so do I. But I "suffered" so much on the last occasion--and Dr. Maryland has left the Mountain.'

'I would not for the world be importunate! Perhaps you will direct me if I shall inform any one of your hiding place--or do you desire to have it remain such?'

'Thank you,' said Miss Hazel, framing the landscape in her pink wreath and gazing at it intently, 'I suppose there is not much danger. But if you see Mr. Falkirk you may reveal to him my distressed condition. He needs stimulus occasionally.'

Rollo lifted his hat with his usual Spanish courtesy; then disappeared, but not indeed by the way he had come. He threw himself upon an outstanding oak branch, from which, lightly and lithely, as if he had been the red squirrel himself, he dropped to some place out of sight. One or two bounds, rustling amid leaves and branches, and he had gone from hearing as well as from view.

Wych Hazel had time to meditate. Doubtless she once more scanned the rocks by which inexplicably she had let herself down to her present position; but in vain, no strength or agility of hers, unaided, could avail to get up them again.

Indeed it was not easy to see how aid could mend the matter.

Miss Hazel left considering the question. It was a wild place she was in, and wild things suited it; the very birds, unaccustomed to disturbance, hopped near her and eyed her out of their bright eyes. If they could have given somewhat of their practical sageness to the human creature they were watching! Wych Hazel had very little of it, and just then, in truth, would have chosen their wings instead. She did not, even now, in their innocent, busy manners, read how much else they had that she lacked; though she looked at them and at all the other wild things. The tree branches that stretched as they listed, no axe coming ever upon their freedom; the moss and lichens that flourished in luxuriant beds and pastures, not breathed on by even a naturalist's breath; the rocks that they had clothed for ages, no one disturbing. The very cloud shadows that now and then swept over the ravine and the hillside, meeting nothing less free than themselves, scarce anything less noiseless, seemed to a.s.sert the whole scene as Nature's own. Since the days of the red men nothing but cloud shadows had travelled there; the nineteenth century had made no entrance, no wood-cutter had lifted his axe in the forest; the mountain streams, that you might hear soft rus.h.i.+ng in the distance, did not work but their own in their citadel of the hills. Wych Hazel had time to consider it all, and to watch more than one shadow walk slowly from end to end of the long stretch of the mountain valley, before she heard anything else than the wild noise of leaf and water and bird. At last there came something more definite, in the sounds of leaves and branches over her head; and then with certainly a little difficulty, Mr. Falkirk let himself down to her standing place. To say that Mr. Falkirk looked in a gratified state of mind would be to strain the truth; though his thick eyebrows were unruffled.

'How did you get here, Wych?' was his undoubtedly serious inquiry.

'Oh!' she said, jumping up, and checking her own wild murmurs of song,--'My dear Mr. Falkirk, how did you? What is the last news from civilization?' She looked wild wood enough, with the pink wreath round her hat and her curls twisted round the wind's fingers.

'But what did you come here for?'

'It's a pleasant place, sir--Mr. Rollo says. I was going to propose that you and I should have a joint summer house here, with strawberries and cream. Mr. Falkirk, haven't you a bun in your pocket?'

At this moment, and in the most matter-of-fact manner, presented himself her red squirrel friend, arriving from n.o.body knew where; and bringing not only himself but a little basket in which appeared--precisely--biscuits and strawberries.

Silently all this presented itself. Wych Hazel's cheeks rivalled the strawberries for about a minute, but whether from stirred vanity or vexation it was hard to tell.

'Mr. Falkirk!' she cried, 'are all the rest of the staff coming? Here is the Commissary--is the Quarter-master behind, in the bushes?'

'I have no doubt we shall find him,' said Mr. Falkirk, dryly.

'How did you get into this bird's nest, child?'

'She was drawn here, sir,--by a red squirrel.'

'I was not drawn!--Mr. Falkirk, what are they about up there, besides lamenting my absence.'

Mr. Falkirk seemed uneasy. He only looked at the little speaker, busy with her strawberries, and spoke not, but Rollo answered instead.

'They are looking over the rocks and endeavouring to compute the depth to the bottom, with a reference to your probable safety.' There was a s.h.i.+mmer of light in the speaker's eye.

'If they are taking mathematical views of the subject, they are in a dangerous way! Mr. Falkirk, it is imperatively necessary that I should at once rejoin the rest of society,-- will you let yourself be torn from this rock, like a sea anemone?'

Mr. Falkirk had been for a few minutes taking a minute and business-like survey of the place.

'I see no way of getting you out, Wych,' he said despondingly, 'without a rope. I must go back for one, I believe, and you and society must wait.'