CHICKAREE.
Rollo had driven the rockaway down and was going to drive
back. He put Wych Hazel into the carriage, recommending to her
to lean back in the corner and go to sleep. Phoebe was given
the place beside her; Mr. Falkirk mounted to the front seat;
and off they drove.
It was about four o'clock of a fine June day, and the air was
good to breathe; but the way was nothing extraordinary. A
pleasant country, nothing more; easy roads for an hour, then
heavier travelling.
The afternoon wore on; the miles were plodded over; as the sun
was dipping towards the western horizon they came into scenery
of a new quality. At once more wild and more dressed; the
ground bolder and more rocky in parts, but between filled with
gentler indications. The rockaway drew up. The driver looked
back into the carriage, while the other gentleman got down.
'Miss Kennedy, if you will change places with Mr. Falkirk now
you will be rewarded. I have something here a great deal
better than that book.'
'I have not been reading--I have been watching for landmarks
for some time,' she said, as she made the change; 'but I think
I can never have gone to Chickaree by this road.'
The change was great. However fair it had looked from
withinside, as soon as she got out on the front seat Wych
Hazel found that a flood of bright, slant sunbeams were
searching out all the beauty there was in the land, and
winning it into view. It was one of those illuminated hours,
that are to the common day as an old painted and jewelled
missal to an ordinary black letter.
'Is it better than your book?' said the charioteer, whose
reins were clearly only play to him, and who was much more
occupied with his companion. She glanced round at him, with
the very June evening in her eyes, dews and sunbeams and all.
'Better than most of the books that ever were written, I
suppose. But the book was not bad, Mr. Rollo.'
'What book was it? to be mentioned in the connection.'
' "I Promessi Sposi." '
'Unknown to me. Give me an idea of it--while we are getting up
this hill--there'll be something else to talk of afterwards.'
'Two people are betrothed, and proceed to get into all manner
of difficulties. That is the principal idea so far. I haven't
come to the turn of the story, which takes the thread out of
its tangle.'
'A very stupid idea! Yet you said the book was not a bad
book?' he said, looking gravely round upon her.
'No, indeed. And the idea is not stupid, in the book I mean,
because the people could not help themselves, and so you get
interested for them.'
'Do you get interested in people who cannot help themselves?'
'Yes, I think so--always,--people who _cannot_ in the impossible
sense. Not those who don't know or wont try. But my words did
not mean just that. I should have said, help _it_--help being in
difficulties.'
'I believe people can get out of difficulties,' said Rollo.
'What was the matter with these?'
'O the difficulties were piled on their heads by other people.
Lucia was a peasant, but she was "si bella" that one of the
grandees wanted to get her away from Renzo.'
'I don't see the difficulties yet. What next?'
'No, of course you don't!' said Wych, warming in defense of
her book. 'But if some Don Rodrigo forbade somebody to marry
_you_--and then sent a party to run away with your bride--so that
she had to go into a convent and you wander round the world in
ill humour--I daresay your clearness of vision would improve.'
'I dare say it would,' said Rollo, passing a hand over his
eyes,--'I think it would have to grow worse before all those
events could happen! But on the highest round of that ladder
of impossibilities, I think I should see my way into the
convent,--and escape the ill humour.'
'But Lucia would not be shut up from you, but from the
grandee. It would only make matters worse to bring her out.'
'Not for me,' said Rollo. 'It might for the book, because, as
you say, then the interest would be gone. Do you think the
people in a book are real people?--while you are reading it?'
'Not quite--they might have been real. I don't feel just as if
I should if I knew they were.'
'In that case the interest would be less?' he said, with a
laughing look.
'Yes--or at least different. There are so many things to
qualify your interest in real living people.'
'Yes. For instance in real life the people who cannot help
being in difficulties never interest me as much as the people
who get out of them; and so I think most novels are stupid,
because the men and women are all real to me. There!' he said,
pulling up as they reached the top of an ascent, 'there are no
difficulties in your way here. What do you think of that?'
The hill-top gave a wide view over a rich, cultivated,
inhabited country; its beauty was in the wide, generous eye-
view and the painter's colours that decked it; for which,
broken ground in front and distant low hills gave play to the
slant sunbeams. Warm, rich, inviting, looked every inch of
those wide-spread square miles.
'Do you know where you are?' said he in an enjoying tone.
'I suppose near home,--but it's not familiar yet.'
'No, you are some miles from home. Over there to the west,
lies Dr. Maryland's--but you can't see it in this light. It's
two miles away. Do you see, further to the north, standing
high on a hill, a white house-front that catches the sun?'
'Yes.'
'Mme. Lasalle's, Moscheloo. It's a pretty place--nothing like
Chickaree. When we reach the next turning you will catch a
glimpse of Crocus in the other direction--do you know what
Crocus is?'
'O yes, the village. Our house was brown, I remember that,--and
as you go up the hill Mr. Falkirk's cottage is just by the
roadside. Did you tell them to leave Mrs. Saddler there?'
'She will tell them herself, I fancy. Crocus is the place
where you will be expected to buy sugar and spice. It is some
four miles from Chickaree on that side, and we are about five
miles from it on this;' and as he spoke he set the horses in
motion. 'I sent on a rescript to Mrs. Bywank, bidding her on
her peril to be in order to receive you this evening. Mrs.
Bywank and I are old acquaintances,' he said, looking at Wych
Hazel.
'Dear Mrs. Bywank! how good she used to be. I haven't seen her
but once since I left home. I'm sure you have a great many
worse acquaintances, Mr. Rollo.'
'I am at a loss to understand how you can be sure of that. But
I have some better.--Miss Kennedy, I want you to give me a
boon. Say you will do it.'
'I'll hear it first.'
'Will you? that's fair, I suppose; but if we were better
friends, I should not be satisfied without a blank check put
into my hands for me to fill up. However,--as I am not to have
that honour on the present occasion I will explain. Let me be
the one to introduce you, some day, to one of your neighbours,
whom you do not remember, because she came here since you went
away. Will you?'
'Why yes, of course, if you wish it--only I will not be
responsible for any accidental introduction that may take
place first.'
'I will,' said Rollo. 'Then it is a bargain? I shall ask half
a day's excursion for it.'
'That is as much of a supplement as a woman's postscript, Mr.
Rollo. However, I suppose it is safe to let you ask what you
like.'
'You give it to me?'
'Maybe.'
'Then it is a bargain,' said he, smiling. 'Here is my hand
upon it.'
She laughed, looked round at him rather wonderingly, but gave
her hand, remarking:
'But you know I have the right to change my mind three times.'
There is a curious language in the touch of hands, saying
often inexplicably what the coarser medium of words would be
powerless to say; revealing things not meant to be discovered;
and also conveying sweeter, finer, more intimate touches of
feeling and mood than tongue could tell if it tried. Wych
Hazel remembered this clasp of her hand, and felt it as often
as she remembered it. There was nothing sentimental; it was
only a frank clasp, in which her hand for a moment was not her
own; and though the clasp did not linger, for that second's
continuance it gave her an indescribable impression, she could
hardly have told of what. It was not merely the gentleness;
she could not separate from that the notion of possession, and
of both as being in the mind, to which the hand was an index.
But such a thought passes as it comes. Something else in those
five minutes brought the colour flitting about her face,
coming and going as if ashamed of itself; but with it all she
was intensely amused; _she_ was not sentimental, nor even
serious, and the girlish light heart danced a _pas seul_ to such
a medley of tunes that it was a wonder how she could keep step
with them all.
'What do you expect to see at Chickaree?'
'Birds, trees, and horses, and--Mr. Falkirk, didn't you say
there would be cats?'
'Let him alone--he is deep in your book,' said Rollo, as Mr.
Falkirk made some astonished response. "I meant, what do you
remember of the place? we are almost at the gate.'
'I'll tell you--nothing yet. Ah!'--
Through some lapse in the dense woodland there gleamed upon
them as they swept on, the top of an old tower where the
sunbeams lay at rest; and from the top, its white staff
glittering with light, floated the heavy folds of a deep blue
flag, not at rest there, but curling and waving and shaking
out their white device, which was however too far off to be
distinguished. She had said she would tell him, but she never
spoke; after that one little cry, so full of tears and
laughter, he heard nothing but one or two sobs, low and choked
down. Now the lodge, nestling like an acorn under a great oak
tree, came in sight first, then the massive piers of the gate.
The gate was wide open, but while the little undergrowth of
children started up and took possession of window and door and
roadside, the gate was held by the head of the house, a
sturdy, middle aged American. Wych Hazel had leaned out,
watching the children; but as the carriage turned through the
gateway, and she saw this man, standing there uncovered,
caught the working of his brown weatherbeaten face, she bowed
her head indeed, in answer to his low salutation, but then
dropped her face in her hands in a perfect passion of weeping.
It came and went like a Summer storm, and again she was
looking intently. Now past Mr. Falkirk's white domicile, where
her glittering eyes flashed round upon him the "welcome home"
which her lips spoke but unsteadily,--then on, on, up the hill,
the thick trees hiding the sunset and brushing the carriage
with leafy hands,--it seemed to Mr. Rollo that still as the
very fingers of his companion were, he could almost feel the
bound of her spirit. Then out on a little platform of the
road--and there, he did not know why she leaned forward so
eagerly, till he saw across the dell the shining of white
marble.
He watched her, but drove on without making the least call
upon her attention. The views opened and softened as they drew
near the house; the trees here had been more thinned out, and
were by consequence larger; the carriage passed from one great
shadow to another, with the thrushes ringing out their clear
music and the wild roses breathing upon the evening air. From
out the forest came wafts of dark dewy coolness, overhead the
clouds revelled in splendour. Up still the horses went, ever
ascending, but slowly, for the ascent was steep. The delay,
the length of the drive tired her,--she sat up again--she had
been quietly leaning back; once or twice her hand went up with
a quick movement to drive back the feeling that was passing
limits; then gaining level ground once more, the horses sprang
forward, and in the failing twilight they swept round before
the house. Except the tower, it was but two stories high, the
front stretching along, with wide low steps running from end
to end. In unmatched glee Dingee stood on the carriage way
showing his teeth,--on the steps, striving in vain to clear her
eyes so that she might see, was Mrs. Bywank; her kindly
figure, which each succeeding year had gently developed, robed
in her state dress of black silk.
Taking advantage of her outside position,--regardless of steps
as of wheels,--Wych Hazel vanished from the carriage, it was
hard to say how. As difficult as it would have been to guess
by what witchcraft a person or Mr. Bywank's proportions could
be spirited through the doorway--out of sight--in a twinkling of
time; yet it was done, and the steps were empty.
The hill at Chickaree was steepest on the side towards the
west, and down that slope an opening had been cut through the
trees--a sort of pathway for the sunbeams. The direct rays were
gone, and only the warm sky glow brightened the hall door,
when the young mistress of the place once more appeared. She
stood still a moment and went back again; and then came
Dingee.
'Miss Hazel say, sar, room's ready and supper won't be long.
Whar Mass Rollo?'
'I suppose he'll be here directly.'
Mr. Falkirk did not go into the house immediately; he stood
with folded arms waiting, or watching the fading red glow of
the western sky. In about ten minutes the tramp of a horse's
feet heralded the coming of Mr. Rollo, who appeared from the
corner or the house, mounted on an old grey cob, who switched
his tail and moved his ears as if he thought going out at that
time of day a peculiar proceeding. Dingee staid the rider with
the delivery of his young lady's message.
'I am afraid supper's more than ready somewhere else. I can't
stay, my friend--my thanks to the lady.' And letting fall on
the little dark figure who stood at his stirrup, a gold piece
and a smile, Rollo passed him, bent a moment to speak to Mr.
Falkirk, and brought the grey cob's ideas to a head by
stepping him off at a good pace.
The room was large, opening by glass doors upon a wilderness
of grass, trees and flowers. At every corner glass cupboards
showed a stock of rare old china; a long sideboard was
brilliant and splendid with old silver. Dark cabinet ware
furnished but not encumbered the room; in the centre a table
looked all of hospitality and welcome that a table can. There
was a great store of old fashioned elegance and comfort in
Wych Hazel's home; no doubt of it; of old-fashioned state too,
and old-time respectability; to which numberless old-time
witnesses stood testifying on every hand, from the teapot, the
fashion of which was a hundred years ancient, to the uncouth
brass andirons in the fireplace. Mr. Falkirk came in as one to
whom it was all very wonted and well known. The candles were
not lit; a soft, ruddy light from the west reddened the great
mirror over the fireplace and gave back the silver sideboard
in it. Not till the clear notes of a bugle, the Chickaree tea-
bell, had wound about the old house awakening sweet echoes,
did Wych Hazel make her appearance.
'Supper mos' as good hot as de weather,' remarked Dingee. 'Mas
Rollo, he say he break his heart dat his profess'nal duties
tears him 'way.'
'Dingee, go down stairs,' said Miss Hazel turning upon him,--
'and when you tell stories about Mr. Rollo tell them to
himself, and not to me. Will you come to tea, sir?'