They were alone one evening, rather past the middle of the winter. It was not one of Miss Kennedy's at-home nights; and in a snug little drawing-room the two were seated on opposite sides of the tea service. A fire of soft coal burning luxuriously; thick curtains drawn; warm-coloured paperhangings on the walls; silver bright in the gaslight, and Mr. Falkirk's evening papers ready at his hand. To-night Mr. Falkirk rather neglected them, and seemed to be in a meditative mood.
'Whereabouts are we in pursuit of our fortune, Miss Hazel?' he asked as he tasted his cup of hot tea.
'Rather deep down in Schiller and Dante, Sir.'
'Il Paradiso?' asked Mr. Falkirk meaningly.
'Pray do you call that "deep down"?' demanded Miss Hazel.
'I am merely inquiring where you are, my dear. I have heard of people's being over head and ears.'
'Only hearsay evidence, sir?' said Miss Hazel recklessly. But then she was not going to stand up and be shot at!
'I should like to know, merely as a satisfaction to my own mind, whether the quest is ended, Miss Hazel? Has Cinderella's glass slipper been fitted on? or has Quickear seized the singing bird and the golden water?'
'Princes are scarce!' said the girl derisively, but not without a rising blush.
'The true one not found yet, my dear?' said Mr. Falkirk with an amused glance across the table. 'What is to be our next move in search of him?'
'That is one way of putting it,' said Wych Hazel. 'I should think, sir, you had taken lessons of your devotee, Miss Fisher.'
'I am gladyoudon't,' said Mr. Falkirk earnestly. 'Miss Hazel, I should prefer that whensuchprincesses are in the parlour, Cinderella should keep to her kitchen. It is the court end in such a case.'
Kitty Fisher's name brought up visions. Hazel was silent.
'Do you ever hear from Chickaree?' her guardian asked presently.
'No one to write, sir, but Mrs. Bywank,—and she, you know, is not a scribe. I understand that the kitten is well.'
'That is important,' said Mr. Falkirk. 'She hasn't told you lately anything about your friend Rollo?'
'No, sir. Have you given up your share in his friendship?' inquired Miss Hazel.
Mr. Falkirk made no answer to this query, and seemed to have forgotten it presently in his musings. Hazel glanced at him furtively, choosing her form of attack; for Mr. Falkirk's manner seemed to say that hehadheard.
'You always played into each other's hands so delightfully, sir,' she began, with a verydégagéair,—'it is of course natural that he should keep you posted as to his own important proceedings. And a little ungrateful in you, Mr. Falkirk, I must say, to fling him off in this fashion.'
'I've nothing on my conscience respecting him,' said Mr. Falkirk, eating his toast with a contented air. 'I'm nothisguardian, nor ever was.'
'What a pity!' said Wych Hazel. 'Both of us together might have made your life more lively than my unassisted efforts could do.'
Mr. Falkirk grunted, and went on with his tea; and sent his cup to be refilled.
Hazel pondered.
'You seem depressed, Mr. Falkirk,' she said. 'Shall I give you an additional lump of sugar?'
Now Mr. Falkirk in truth seemed anything but depressed; and he raised his head to look at his questioner.
'I am quite satisfied with things as they are, Miss Hazel.'
'Are you, sir? I am delighted!' said Hazel. 'But I never even supposed such a thing possible. How are "things"—if I may be allowed to inquire?'
Some things are new,' returned her guardian. 'And I should not be satisfied with them, if they concerned me. Which I take for granted they do not. I saw Dr. Arthur down town to-day; and he told me some odd news about Rollo.' Mr. Falkirk was finishing his tea in a leisurely way, evidentlynotthinking that the news, whatever it was, concerned either of them seriously.
'Why did you not bring Dr. Arthur home to tea?' inquired his ward.
'I did not think of it, Miss Hazel. But he volunteered a visit in the course of the evening.'
'That will be delightful,—I like Dr. Arthur,' said Hazel, feeling that somehow or other she must get a glimpse of his news before he came.
'Well, if what he said gave you so much pleasure, why don't you repeat it to me, Mr. Falkirk,' she ventured.
'I do not remember that I said anything gave me pleasure,' returned her guardian. 'This don't. By what he says, Rollo has lost his wits. I thought him a shrewd man of business; and he was that, when your affairs were in his hand last summer; but if what Dr. Arthur tells me is true, and it must be, he has done a very strange thing with his own fortune.'
'Dear me! I hope he did not hurt himself looking after mine!' said Wych Hazel innocently. 'Are fortune and wits both in peril, Mr. Falkirk?'
'Not yours, I hope,' said her guardian. 'I should be very uneasy if I thought that.Ishould have no power to interfere. The will gives him absolute control, supposing that he had control at all.'
Perhaps it was just as well that at this moment Dr. Arthur was announced. Alas, not only Dr. Arthur, but Mrs. Coles! And Hazel, giving greetings to one and welcome to the other; insisting that they should come to the tea table, late as it was; went on all the while looking after her own wits and picking up her energies with all speed. She had need; for the harmless-seeming eyes of Mrs. Coles were always to her neighbours' interests. Very graciously now they watched Wych Hazel.
There was a great deal to talk about, in Miss Kennedy's house and winter and engagements; and in Dr. Maryland's house, and Primrose, and her school. An endless succession of points of talk, that ought to have been very interesting, to judge by the spirit with which they were discussed. All the while, Wych Hazel was watching for something else; and Prudentia, was she keeping the best for the last? She was extremely affable; she enjoyed her tea; she took off her bonnet and displayed the pale bandeaux of hair which were inevitably associated in Miss Kennedy's mind with one particular day and conversation; she admired the furniture; she discoursed on the advantages of city life. Dr. Maryland was, perforce, rather silent.
'Well, Arthur dear,' she said at last, taking her bonnet, 'we must be going presently. What do you think of Dane, Mr. Falkirk?'
Mr. Falkirk did not answer intelligibly, though the lady's face was turned full upon him; he uttered an inexplicable sort of grunt, and knotted his eyebrows. He didn't like Prudentia.
'I never saw anybody so changed in all my life,' pursued the lady. 'Such sudden changes are doubtful things, I always think;—come probably from some sudden cause, and may not last. But it is very surprising while itdoeslast.'
'I am sorry to contradict you, Prudens,' said Dr. Arthur here; 'but Dane was never more himself. He only happens to stand facing due north instead of north by east.'
'He was "north" enough before,' said his sister, a little, just a little bitterly; 'a trifle more of southern direction wouldn't have hurt him. ButIthink, he's out of his head. Men are, sometimes, you know,' she went on, looking full at Wych Hazel now. 'I shall let Miss Kennedy be judge. Do you know what Dane has been doing, Miss Kennedy?'
'Not waltzing?' said Hazel, opening her brown eyes with an expression of mild dismay which was very nearly too much for Dr. Arthur.
'Waltzing?' said Prudentia, mystified. 'I did not say anything about waltzing. Why shouldn't he waltz? I think he used. Why yes; he was a famous waltzer. Don't you waltz, Miss Kennedy?'
'But I was always known to be out of my head,' said Hazel. 'In what other possible way could Mr. Rollo shew the state of his?'
'I don't know what you mean,' said Prudentia, handling her bonnet. 'Then you haven't heard my story already. You know that old Mr. Morton has failed; did you hear of that?'
'Not the first time, is it?' said Miss Kennedy coolly. Dr.Arthur bit his lips.
'Yes, my dear! it's the first and only time; he was always supposed to be a very rich man. Well, Dane has taken his fortune and thrown it into those mills!'
'I was afraid you were going to say the mill stream,' said Wych Hazel, who was getting so nervous she didn't know what to do with herself; 'but the mills seem a safe place.'
'I don't know but he's better done that of the two,' said Prudentia. 'A safe place? Why, my dear, just think! he has bought all of Mr. Morton's right and title there; with Mr. Morton's three mills. Of course, itmusthave taken very nearly his whole fortune; itmust.'
'I fancy there's a trifle left over,' said Mr. Falkirk. 'But I can't conceive what possessed him. What does Rollo know of the mill business?'
'Nothing at all, of course,' said Prudentia. 'Nor of any other business. And he has shewed his ignorance—did Arthur tell you, sir, how he has shewed it?'
'In buying three mills to begin with,' said Mr. Falkirk. 'A modest man would have begun with one.'
'But my dear sir,thatisn't all. Whatdoyou suppose, MissKennedy, was his first move?'
'One is prepared for almost anything.'
'He will learn the business, before long,' said Dr. Arthur, 'if close attention can do it.'
'What should he learn the business for?' said his sister. 'He has already all that the mill business could give him, without any trouble.Ithink he's troubled in his wits; I do indeed. He was always a wild boy, and now he's a wilder man.'
'Troubled in his wits!' said Dr. Arthur, with such supreme derision, that Wych Hazel laughed. To her own great relief, be it said.
'But what is this that he has done?' Mr. Falkirk inquired, his brows looking very much disgusted.
'My dear sir! Fancy it. Fancy it, Miss Kennedy. The first thing he did was toraise the wages of his hands!'
Just one person caught the gleam from under Hazel's down-cast eyes,—perhaps something made his own quick-sighted. Dr. Arthur answered for her.
'They were not half paid before, Mr. Falkirk. That explains it.'
'Weren't they paid as other mill hands are paid, Dr. Arthur?'
'The more need for a change, then,' said the young man, who was a trifle Quixotic himself.
'But if the change is made by one man alone, he effects nothing but his own ruin.'
'That is what Dane is about, I am firmly persuaded,' said Mrs.Coles.
'No man ever yet went to ruin by doing right,' said Dr.Maryland.
'Many a one!' said Mr. Falkirk,—'by doing what hethoughtright; from John Brown up to John Huss, and from John Huss back to the time when history is lost in a fog bank.'
'They'll get their reward, I suppose, in the other world,' said Prudentia comfortably.
'How will his ruin affect the poor mill people?' said Wych Hazel, so seriously, that perhaps only Mr. Falkirk—knowing her— knew what she was about.
'Why, my dear, it ruins them too in the end; that's it. When he fails, of course his improvements fail, and everything goes back where it was before. Only worse.'
'Precisely,' said Mr. Falkirk. 'You cannot lift the world out of the grooves it runs in, by mere force; and he who tries, will put his shoulder out of joint.'
'Then my picture of "the loss of all things," is the portrait of a ruined man!' said Wych Hazel, with an expressive glance at Dr. Maryland. He smiled.
'It partly depends, you know, Miss Kennedy, upon where the race is supposed to end. But our friend is running well at present, for both worlds.'
'Arthur, he is not!' said his sister emphatically. 'Paul and John Charteris, the other mill-owners, hate him as hard as they can hate him; and if they can ruin him, they will; that you may depend upon.'
'And his own people love him as hard as they can,—so that, even if you allow one rich mill-owner to be worth a hundred poor employés, Dane can still strike a fair balance.'—Rather more than that, Dr. Arthur thought, as his quick eye took notice of the little screening hand that came suddenly up about Wych Hazel's mouth and chin.
'That's all nonsense, Arthur; business is business, and not sentiment. I never heard of a cotton mill yet that was run upon sentiment; nor did you. And I tell you, it won't pay. I am speaking of businessasbusiness. Paul and John Charteris will ruin Dane, if they can.'
'They probably can,' said Mr. Falkirk. 'They will make a combination with other mill-owners and undersell him; and paying less wages they can afford to do it, for a time. And a certain time will settle Rollo's business.'
'I think he has lost his wits,' Prudentia repeated, for the third or fourth utterance. 'Then another thing he has done—But really, Arthur, my dear, we must go.'
'O tell us some more!' said Miss Kennedy. 'We have not heard of any wits lost in this way, all winter; and it is quite exciting. What next, Mrs. Coles?'
Prudentia laughed.
'How comes it he don't tell you himself? I thought you used to be such friends—riding about everywhere. But indeedwedon't see much of Dane now; he lives at his old nurse's ever so much of the time; and comes scouring over the country on that bay horse of his, to consult papa about something;—butInever see him, except through the window. Sometimes he rides your brown horse, I think, Miss Kennedy. I suppose he is keeping it in order for you.'
'Well, that certainly does sound erratic!' said Miss Kennedy, drawing a long breath. 'I hope he will confine all new-fangled notions to the bay.'
'He has taught that creature to stand still,' said Mrs. Coles, looking at her.
'That must afford him immense satisfaction! Rather hard upon the bay, though.'
'He stands as still as a mountain,' Prudentia went on, carrying on meanwhile privately a mental speculation about Wych Hazel;—'he stands like a glossy statue, without being held, too; and comes when Dane snaps his fingers to him.'
'It only shews what unexpected docility exists in some natures,' said Miss Kennedy with an unreadable face.
'Come, Prudens—tell your story and have done!' said Dr.Arthur, speaking now. 'I have an appointment.'
'I am quite ready,' said Mrs. Coles starting up. 'Dear me! we have stayed an unconscionable time, but Miss Kennedy will forgive us, being country people and going back to the country to-morrow. Prim says Dane is coming down before long.'
'Tell your story!'
'Miss Kennedy won't care for it, and it will ruin Dane with Mr. Falkirk. He has introduced something like English penny readings at Morton Hollow,' said Prudentia, putting on her bonnet and turning towards Wych Hazel's guardian.
'What are penny readings?' said Mr. Falkirk.
'They had their origin in England, I believe; somebody set them on foot for the benefice of the poorer classes, or work people; and Dane has imported them. He receives the employés of the mills,' said Prudentia, chuckling,—'whoever will come and pay a penny; his own workmen and the others. The levee is held on Saturday nights; and Dane lays himself out to amuse them with reading to them and singing. Fancy it! Fancy Dane reading all sorts of things to those audiences! and the evenings are so interesting, I am told, that they do not disperse till eleven o'clock. I believe he has it in contemplation to add the more material refreshment of sandwiches and coffee as soon as he gets his arrangements perfected. And he is going to build, as soon as the spring opens, O, I don't know what!'
'Fools build houses, and other people live in them,' said Mr.Falkirk.
'O, it's not houses to live in—though I have a notion he is going to do that too. He lives with old Gyda pretty much of the time.'
'Well,' said Dr. Arthur, looking at Mr. Falkirk but speaking to Wych Hazel, 'I need only add, that my father thoroughly approves of all Rollo's work.'
'Work?—does he call it "work"?' said Wych Hazel, looking up.
'It is not exactly play, Miss Kennedy!'—
But the soft laugh that answered that, no one could define.
'He won't find it play by the by,' said Mr. Falkirk.
This visit and talk gave Hazel a great deal to ponder. The work, and—the doer of it; and—did he ever think of her, she questioned, in the doing? And did he expect to makeher'stand, as he had the bay'? and come, if he but 'snapped his fingers'? On the whole, Miss Wych did not feel as ifshewere developing any hidden stores of docility at present!—not at present; and one or two new questions, or old ones in a new shape, began to fill her mind; inserting themselves between the leaves of her Schiller, peeping cunningly out from behind 'reason' and 'instinct' and 'the wings of birds'; dancing and glimmering and hiding in the firelight. Mr. Falkirk might have noticed, about this time, that Miss Wych was never ready to have the gas lit.
The gas was lit, however, and the tea-tray just brought in, when one evening a few nights after the visit last recorded, Rollo himself was announced. Notwithstanding all Mrs. Coles had prognosticated, he seemed very much like himself both in face and manner; he came in and talked and took his place at the table, just as he had been used to do at Chickaree. Not even more grave than he had often been there.
It was not the first time Wych Hazel had confessed to herself that tea trays are a great institution; nor the first time she had found shelter behind her occupation. Very demurely she poured out the tea, and listened sedately to the talk between the gentlemen; but it was with extra gravity that she at last put her fingers in. She never could guess afterwards how she had dared.
'Do you think he looksmuchlike a ruined man, Mr. Falkirk?' she said, in one of the pauses of their talk.
A flash of lightning quickness and brightness came to her from Rollo's eyes. Mr. Falkirk lifted his dumbly, not knowing how to take the girl. He had not, so far in the talk, touched the subject of Mrs. Coles' communications, though no doubt they had not been out of his mind for one instant. But somehow, Mr. Falkirk had lacked inclination to call his younger coadjutor to account, and probably was hopeless of effecting any supposable good by so doing. Now he stared wonderingly up at Wych Hazel. She was looking straight at him, awaiting an answer; but fully alive to the situation, and a little bit frightened thereat, and with the fun and the confusion both getting into her face in an irresistible way. Mr. Falkirk's face went down again with a grunt, or a growl; it was rather dubious in intent. Rollo's eyes did not waver from their inquisition of Wych Hazel's face. It was getting to be hot work!—Hazel touched her hand bell, and turned away to give orders, and came back to her business; sending Mr. Falkirk a cup of tea that was simply scalding. Her bravery was done for that time.
'What have you been doing this winter?' Mr. Falkirk finally concluded to ask.
'Investing in new stock,' Rollo answered carelessly.
'Don't pay, does it?'
'I think it will. Money is worth what you can get out of it, you know.'
'Pray, if I may ask, what do you expect to get out of it in this way?'
'Large returns'—said Rollo very calmly.
'I don't see it,' said Mr. Falkirk. 'I hope you do; but I can't.'
'You have not the elements to make a perfect calculation.'
Rollo, it was plain, understood himself, and was in no confusion on the subject. Mr. Falkirk, either in uncertainty or in disgust, declined to pursue it. He finished his tea, and then, perhaps, feeling that he had no right to keep watch over his brother guardian, much to Wych Hazel's discomfiture, he took up his book and marched away.
Rollo left the table and came round then to a seat by her side.
'What haveyoubeen doing this winter?' he asked, putting the question with his eyes as well as with his words.
'Making old stock pay,'—said the girl, looking down at her folded hands; she was not of the calm sisterhood who hide themselves in crochet.
'Perhaps you will be so good as to enlarge upon that.'
Hazel sent back the first answer that came to her tongue, and the next: it was no part of her plan to have herself in the foreground.
'This is a fair average specimen of our tea-drinkings,' she said. 'And the mornings are hardly more eventful. Just lately, Mr. Falkirk has been a good deal disturbed about you. Or else he was easy about you, and disturbed about your doings,—he has such a confused way of putting things. But we heard you had copied my "hurricane track," ' said Miss Wych, folding her hands in a new position.
'And were you disturbed about my doings?'
'I? O no. I am never disturbed with what you do to anybody but me.'
Rollo did not choose to pursue that subject. He plunged into another.
'I should like to explain to you some of my doings; and I must go a roundabout way to do it. Miss Hazel, do you read the Bible much?'
'Much?' she said with a sudden look up. 'What do you call "much?" '
He smiled at her. 'Are you in the habit of studying it?'
'As I study other things I do not know?—Not often. Sometimes,' said Wych Hazel, thinking how often she had gone over that same ninety-first Psalm.
'What is your notion of religion?—as to what it means?'
She glanced up at him again, almost wondering for a moment if his wits were 'touched.' Then seeing his eyes were undoubtedly sane and grave, set her own wits to work.
'It means,' she answered slowly after a pause, 'to me, different things in different people. All sorts of contradictions, I believe!—In mamma, as they tell of her, it meant everything beautiful, and loving, and loveable, and tender. And it puts Dr. Maryland away off—up in the sky, I think. And it just blinds Prim, so that she cannot comprehend common mortals. And it seems to open Gyda's eyes, so that shedoesunderstand—like mamma. And—I do not know what it means in you, Mr. Rollo!'
'You never saw it in me.'
'No.'
'Let me give you a lesson to study,' said he. 'Something I have been studying lately a good deal. I must take this minute before we are interrupted. Have you got a Bible here?'
She sprang up and brought her own from the next room, with a certain quick way as if she were excited; Rollo took it and turned over the leaves, then placed it before her open.
'I have heard you read the Bible once. Read now those two verses.'
"For the love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead: and that he died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him which died for them, and rose again."—2 Cor. v. 14, 15.
Wych Hazel read the words slowly, softly,—then look[ed] up at him again.
'Isthatwhat it means in you?' she said.
'What do the words imply, for anybody?' he said, with his eyes going down into hers as they did sometimes, like as if they would get at the yet unspoken thoughts. But hers fell again to the book.
'I suppose, they should mean—what they say,' she answered in the same slow fashion. 'But what that is,—or at least would be,—I do not very well know.'
'If One died for me,—if it is because of his love and death for me that I live at all,—to whom do I properly belong? myself, or him?'
'Well, and then?' she said, passing the question as answered.
'Thena good many things,' he said, smiling again. 'Suppose that he, to whom I belong, has work that he wants done,— suppose there are people he wants taken care of and helped,—if I love him and if I belong to him, what shall I like to do?'
'What you are doing, I suppose,' said Hazel, with a little undefined twinge that came much nearer jealousy than she guessed.
'That is very plain, and perfectly simple, isn't it?'
'It sounds so.'—And glancing furtively at the bright, clear face, she added to herself Dr. Maryland's old words: 'Love likes her bonds!'—That was plain too.
'Then another question. If I belong to this One whom I love, does not all that I have belong to him too?'
'But it was notIwho said you were ruining yourself,' said the girl in her quick way. 'I liked it.'
'Did you?' said he, with one of his flashes of eye. 'But I am giving you a lesson to study. I am not justifying myself. Answer my question. Does not all I have belong to that One, who loves me and whom I love?'
She bowed her head in assent. Somehow the words hurt her.
'So that, whatever I do, I cannot be said togivehim anything? It is all his already. I am asking you a business question. I want you to answer just as it appears to you.'
'How can it appear but in one way?' said Hazel. 'That must be true, of course.'
'Very well. That is clear. Now suppose further that my Lord has left me special directions about what he wants done to these people I spoke of—am I not to take the directions exactly as they stand, without clipping?'
'Yes.'
He put his hand upon the book which lay before her, and turned back the leaves to the third chapter of Luke; there indicated a verse and bade her read again.
' "He that hath two coats, let him impart to him that hath none." '
'What does that mean?' asked Rollo.
'What it says—if it means anything, I suppose.'
Again Rollo put his hand upon the leaves, turning further back still till he reached the book of Isaiah. And then he gave Wych Hazel these words to read:
'Is not this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every joke? Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thine house? when thou seest the naked, that thou cover him; and that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh?'
'How are the commands to be met?' Rollo asked gravely when she had done.
'Why, you have found out!' said Hazel. 'I knew you would go off on a crusade after that October sky, Mr. Rollo.'
He seemed half to forget his subject, or to merge it, in a deep, thoughtful gaze at her for a few moments, over which a smile gradually broke.
'To come back to our lesson,' he said,—'are not these commands to be takenau pied de la lettre?'
'They can hardly be the one exception among commands, I should think,'—with a little arch of her eyebrows.
'Then I am bound, am I not, to undo every heavy burden that I can reach? to loose every bond of wickedness, and to break every yoke, and to remove oppression, in so far as it lies with me to do it? Do you not think so?'
'Why, yes!' said Wych Hazel. 'Does anybodylikeoppression?'
'Does anybody practise it?'
'I do not know, Mr. Rollo. O yes, of course, in some parts of the world. But I mean here. Yes,—those people used to look as if something kept them down,—and I used to think Mr. Morton might help it, I remember.'
'You are not to suppose that oppression is liked for its own sake. That is rarely the case, even in this world. It is for the sake of what it will bring, like other wrong things. But a question more. Can I doallI can, without giving and using all I have for it?'
'That is self-evident.'
'Then it only remains, how to use what I have to the best advantage.'
'Well, even Mr. Falkirk admits you are a good business man,' said Hazel, laughing a little.
'How are you for a business woman?'
'Nobody has ever found out. Of course I consider myself capable of anything. But then business never does come into my hands, you know.'
'This business does.'
'Does it? the business of caring for other people?—Last summer Dr. Maryland read a terrible text about the "tears of the oppressed, and they had no comforter." It haunted me for a while. But I could do nothing. No,—one must have more right of way than I have—yet.'
'I do not mean the business simply of caring for other people. I mean the whole course of action, beginning from those first words you read.'
'You know,' she said quietly, 'I have never tried.'
'Will you study the lesson I have set you?'
'The one you have been learning?'
'Yes. The one contained in these verses you have read. Shall I do harm if I mark this book?'
'No.'—The word came quick, under breath.
He turned to the different places where she had been reading, and carefully marked the passages; then sought out and likewise marked several others. 'Will you study the lesson out?' he asked as he was busy with the last marking.
'I will try—I think,' she answered slowly. 'As well as I know how.'
'Do not fancy,' he said, smiling as he shut the book, 'that the care of the needy, in any shape, is religion; nor think that He who loves us will takeanythingas a substitute for our whole-hearted love to him. If we give him that, he will let us know in what way we may shew it.'
She made no answer except by another swift look. This wasChaldee to her! He let the silence last a little while.
'Now I have asked you so many questions,' he said, 'I should like it if you would ask me a few.'
'What about?'
'All subjects are open to you!'
'How did you contrive to make the bay "stand"?'
The flash of Rollo's eye came first.
'How do you know I did?' he said laughing. 'But that is no answer. Let me see. I believe, first I made him know that he must mind me; and secondly, I persuaded him into loving me. All that remained, was to let him understand that I wanted him to be immovable when I was not on his back.'
'O, but!—' said Hazel hastily,—the sentence ending in crimson cheeks, and the shyest veil of reserve dropped over her face.
'I might question here,' said Rollo in an amused tone, and eyeing her inquisitively; 'but I have done it so often,—I leave the ground to you. What next?'
'What next' seemed to have flown away.
'Does Collingwood engross all the thoughts that go back toChickaree?'
A sidelong glance of the brown eyes was all that Mr. Rollo got by that venture.
How is Trüdchen?' she asked gravely.
'Flourishing. Asks after you whenever she gets a chance.'
'Mrs. Boërresen of course is well, as she has had you to look after?'
'Gyda is happy. It is a comfort to her to have to make fladbrod for two.'
'It must be a comfort to you to eat it!—How is poor Mr. Morton? I felt for him when I heard you had turned his world upside down.'
'What did you feel for him?' said Rollo quite innocently.
'You have asked all your questions. I think it would be proper now,' said Wych Hazel, folding her hands and controlling the curling lips, 'that you should go on and tell me all there is to be told, and save me the trouble of asking any more.'
'I do not wish to save you the trouble.'
'It is good practice occasionally to do what you do not wish.Instructive. And full of suggestion.'
'Suggestion of what?'
'Try, and you will know. I doubt if you ever did try,' saidWych Hazel.
'I tried it last night and yesterday morning, when I was turned away from your door with the announcement that you were out.'
'But you did not leave your name!' said Hazel, looking up.
'I found it "suggestive" too,' Rollo went on. 'I do not know whether you would like me to tell you all the things which it suggested.'
'How is everybody else at home?' said Hazel, changing her ground. 'I heard Miss May had been sick.'
The answer tarried, for Mr. Falkirk came in, and perhaps Rollo forgot it, or knew that Wych Hazel had; for it was never given. He entered into talk with Mr. Falkirk; and did his part well through the rest of the evening. Then, Mr. Falkirk expressing the surmise, it was hardly put in the form of a hope, that they would see him to breakfast or dinner, Rollo averred that he was going immediately home. He had done his work in town, and could not tarry. No remark from the lady of the house met that. Indeed she had been sitting in the silentest of moods, letting the gentlemen talk; having enough to think of and observe. For absence does change, even an intimate friend, and both lifts and drops a veil. Old characteristics stand out with new clearness; old graces of mind or manner strike one afresh; but the old familiarity which once in a sort took possession of all this, is now withdrawn a little,—we stand off and look. And so, secretly, modestly, shyly, Wych Hazel studied her young guardian that night. But when he had risen to go, the faintest little touch from one of her finger tips drew him a step aside.
'I said I would study that,' she began. 'But it seems to me you explained it all as you went along. What is there left to study?'
The grave penetrating eyes she met and had to meet once, gave all the needed force to his answer.—'Your part, Miss Hazel.' He stood looking at her a minute; and then he went away.
If when Rollo had entered he room where she was, that evening, the instant feeling had been that he must come often: perhaps the after feeling was that he could not stand much of this doubtful and neutral intercourse. For he did as he had promised; left her, practically, to Mr. Falkirk, and came not to town again during all the rest of that winter.
It seemed to Hazel, that in these days there was no end to the thinking she had to do; and if Mr. Rollo had only known, she remarked to herself, he need not have been at the trouble to point out new lines of study. The mere sight of him for two hours had put her head in a tangle that it would take her a month to clear away. Some of the questions indeed had started up under the conversation of Mrs. Coles; but with them now came others, all wrapped round and twisted in; and instead of dreamily watching the fire in her twilight musings, she began now to spend them with her cheek on her book, or her head dropped on her hands, an impatient little sigh now and then bearing witness to the depth of the difficulties in which she was plunged. What was foremost among the subjects of her musings?—perhaps this strange new talk of Mr. Rollo's, with the whole new world of work and interest and consecration which had opened before him. It made her sober,—it brought back the old lonely feelings which of late (since she knew herself to belong to somebody 'in idea') had somewhat passed out of sight. He was beginning a new, glad life; growing wiser and better than she; making himself a blessing, whereas she was only a care. What could she do for him any more?—would he even want her any more? given up now to these new ways of which she knew nothing, and in which somebody else might suit him better—say Primrose? But at that, Miss Wych started up and stirred the fire energetically, and then came back to her musings.
What did she care, anyhow? She passed that question, turned it round, and took it up in another shape. How would she bear to be all her life under orders? in 'closer' guardianship?—and there the word 'sweeter' flashed in, confusingly. But that was not business. Did she—that is, could she—like him well enough to like to give up her own way? Answer, a prompt negative. Never!—Not if she liked him ten times more than—but it is awkward dealing with unknown quantities: Hazel sheered off. Suppose shedidn'tlike it—could she do it? do it so that he would never find out what it cost her? do it to give him pleasure? do it because it was his right? Waiving her own pleasure, pushing aside her own will? Could she do it?—Well, there was not the least hope that she would wish to do it. She should always like her own best: no doubt of that.
Then could she (perhaps) learn such trust in his judgment, as would turn her own will round?—As hopeless as the other. Sometimes, of course, he might be right,—by a great stretch of leniency Miss Wych allowed so far,—sometimes, it was certain, she would. Well: could she give his judgment as well as his will the right of way? For unless she could, Wych hazel felt quite sure of one thing: she should never be happy a minute in such guardianship. She had not dared to give herself a possible reason for liking it in the old times,—could she do it, now that she dared? Was she willing to give up, sometimes or always, to just that one person in all the world?—turning her bonds into bracelets, and wearing them royally? And there her thoughts went down to the real bracelet on her arm, and its motto, so suddenly become his:
'In hope of eternal life.'—Would he care for her any more?
O how thoughts tired themselves, toiling round these points! and slowly uprising from them came yet another, which filled the air. What was she to say at the year's end?—or, ifthiswere the year's end, what would she say now?—supposing Mr. Rollo still cared what she said. But that last question must be studied by and by. Mr. Rollo would have been amused, may be, and may be a little touched, if he had known the ogre-like shapes in which the girl conjured him up, just to see if she could endure himso:putting herself to superhuman tests. But her imagination played tricks, after all; for every Afrite came up with a face and voice before which she yielded, perforce; and even her favourite scene of standing still as the bay and having him snap his fingers for her, ended one day in a laugh, as she thought what she would say if he everdid. Then finding she had got very far beyond limits, Hazel coloured furiously and ran away from her thoughts. But they hindered her new study, and interrupted it; and the study brought up the new pain; only slowly through it all, one thing gradually grew clear, helped on by her pain perhaps as much as anything: she would rather belong to somebody than not—if somebody wanted her! And there was only one somebody in the world, of whom that was true.
Whereupon, with characteristic waywardness, Miss Wych at once gave up her recluse life; accepted invitations, and pulled Mr. Falkirk into a round of outdoor gaiety that nearly turned his head. Trying, perhaps, to test her discoveries, or to get rid of her thoughts; or to prove to herself conclusively that she did not wish for any more visits from Chickaree.
And so Wych Hazel knew her own secret.
Typographical errors silently corrected :
Contents : =favors= silently corrected as =favours=