Wych Hazel Part 10

The answer was not in English or French. Looking from her window as far as she could, Wych Hazel now saw Rollo cross the road and make for a tall pine which stood at a little distance. She saw him throw his coat and hat on the ground; then catching one of the long lithe branches he was in a moment off the ground and in the tree; yes, and making determinately for the top of it. The 'red squirrel' had not learnt climbing for nothing; agile, steady, quick, he mounted and mounted. She grew dizzy with looking. Mr. Falkirk had not the same view.

'What's he doing? what are we waiting for? Can you see?' he asked impatiently.

'Yes--they are trying to find out which way to go, sir.'

Mr. Falkirk made a movement as if to get out himself; then checked it, seeing the helpless bevy of women who were dependent on him and now in the utmost perturbation. Standing still tried their nerves. To keep order withinside the coach was as much as he could attend to. Cries and moans and questions of involved incoherency, poured upon him. Would they ever get home? would the fire catch the coach? would it frighten the horses? what were they stopping for?--were some of the simplest inquiries that Mr. Falkirk had to hear and answer; in the midst of which one of the ladies a.s.sured herself and him that if 'Isaiah had come along with them they would never have got into such a fix.' Mrs. Saddler Mr.

Falkirk peremptorily silenced; the others he soothed as best he might; and all the while Wych Hazel watched the signs without, and followed the climber in the pine tree, following him in his venturesome ascent and descent, which were both made with no lack of daring. He was on the ground at last, swinging himself from the end of a pine branch which he had compelled into his service; he came straight to Mr. Falkirk, heated, but mentally as cool as ever.

'I see our way,' he said, 'I am going on the box myself. Don't be concerned. I have driven a post-coach in England.'

He looked across to Wych Hazel, as he spoke, and his eye carried the promise again. Wych Hazel met his look, though with no answer in her own; fear, or self-control, or something back of both, made the very lines of her face still; only a sort of s.h.i.+ver of feeling pa.s.sed over them as he said, 'Don't be concerned.' All this pa.s.ses in a second; then Rollo is on the box with the stage driver and the stage is in motion again. But it is motion straight on to where Wych Hazel has seen that the smoke is thickest. The horses go fast; they know that another hand has the reins; the ground is swiftly travelled over. Now the puffs of smoke roll out round and defined from the burning woodland; and then, above the rattle of wheels and tread of hoofs, is heard another sound,--a spiteful snapping and crackling, faint but increasing. Can the air be borne?--it is hard to breathe; and flame, yes, flame is leaping from the dried leaves and curling out here and there from a tree. Mrs. Saddler put her head out of the coach.

'Oh, sir!' she shrieked, 'he is taking us right into it! O stop him! we'll be burned, sure! it's all fire--it's all fire!'

The chorus of shrieks became now almost a worse storm within than the tempest of fire which was raging without. The women were wild. It was an awful moment for everybody. The fire had full possession on both sides of the road, viciously sparkling and crackling and throwing out jets of flames and volumes of smoke, threatening to dispute the way with the stage coach; yet through it lay the only way to safety. It could not be borne long; the horses, urged by a hand that knew how to apply all means of stimulus and spared none, drew the coach along at a furious speed. The speed alone was distracting to the poor women, who had never known the like; the coach seemed to them, doubtless, hastening to destruction. Their shrieks were uncontrollable; and indeed no topics of comfort could be urged, when manifestly they were fleeing for their lives from the fire, and the fire on every side, before and behind them was threatening with fearful a.s.sertion of power that they should not escape. How swiftly thoughts careered through the mind of the one silent member of the company--thoughts like those quick flashed of flame, those dark curls of smoke. The questions she had been debating two hours before--were they all to have one short, sharp answer?--And what would become of her then? Were such days as the one before yesterday forever ended? How would it feel to be caught and wreathed about like one of those pines--how would Mr. Rollo feel to see it--and what if all the rest should be dead, there in the fire, and she only half dead; together with a strange impatience to know the worst and endure the worst. She had drawn back a little from the window, driven in by the scorching air, but looked out still with both hands up to s.h.i.+eld her eyes. She did not know into what pitiful lines her mouth had shaped itself, nor what faintness and sickness were creeping over her with every breath of that smoke. The time was, after all, not long; but in the thickest of the fire, when the smoke literally choked up the way before the horses' eyes, the animals suddenly stopped; from a furious speed, the coach came to a blank stand-still. A voice was heard from the coach-box cheering the horses--but the dead pause continued. And now when the rattle of the wheels ceased, the sweep of the fiery storm could be heard and felt. A wind had risen, or more likely was created by the great draught of the fire; and its rush through the woods, driving the flames before it, and catching up the clouds of smoke to pile them upon the faces and throats of the travellers was with a hiss and a fury and a blinding which came like the malice of a spiteful thing. It was almost impossible to breathe; and yet the coach stood still! A half- minute seemed the growth of a year. The women became frantic; Mr. Falkirk kept them in the coach by the sheer exertion of force. Wych Hazel in vain strained her eyes to see through the smoke what the detaining cause was.

The horses had been scared at last by the fire crackling and snapping in their faces, and confounded by the clouds of smoke. Bewildered, they had stopped short; and voice and whip were powerless against fear. That was a moment never to be forgotten, at least by those withinside the stage-coach, who could do nothing but wait and scream.

'Hus.h.!.+ the horses are frightened: that is all,' said Mr.

Falkirk. 'He's----what's he doing, Wych?--yes, he's blinding the leaders; that's it. There!'

The intense anxiety which was smothered in every one of these words, Wych Hazel long remembered. They saw, as he spoke, they could see Rollo at the horses' heads, going from one to the other; they saw him dimly through the smoke; they caught the light of something white in his hand. Mr. Falkirk had guessed right. Then they saw Rollo throw himself postillion-wise upon one of the leaders. In another moment the coach moved, doubtfully; then amid the rush and roar they could hear the cheer of their charioteer's voice, and the frightened animals plunged on again. Presently, encouraged perhaps by a little opening in the smoke, they dashed forward as heartily as ever, and--yes--the smoke was less thick and the air less dark, and momentarily brightening. The worst was over. Surely the worst was over, but the travellers drew breath if freer yet fearfully, till the lessening cloud and disappearing fire and stillness in the woods, said that had left the danger behind.

Black charred stems and branches began to show what had been where they now were; little puffs of grey smoke from half consumed tufts of moss and old stumps of great trees were all that was left of the army of fire that had marched that way.

The horses were brought back to a moderate going. A quieting of the storm within accompanied the pa.s.sing away of the storm without. Fairly overcome now, dizzy besides with the almost flaming current which had blown full against her in that last charge through the fire, Wych Hazel drooped her head lower and lower till it rested on the sill of the window; but no one marked just then. The women were drying their eyes and uttering little jets of excited or thankful exclamation. Mr.

Falkirk watched from his window what was to be done next.

'We'll have to put up, if it be onconvenient,' said the driver. 'Can't ask a team to do _more'n_ that at a time, sir.

'Tain't no tavern, neither--but there's Siah Sullivan's; he's got fodder, and food, allays, for a friend in need.'

'How far is Lupin?' called out Mr. Falkirk. 'Aren't we on the Lupin road?'

'Na--it's a good bit 'tother side o' that 'ere flamin'

pandemony, sir, Lupin's.'

'No it isn't! I mean Lupin, where Braddock's mill used to be-- old John Braddock's.'

' 'Taint called Lupin now,' observed the driver,--'that ere's West Lupinus. Wal--John Braddock's there now; it's four or five mile straight ahead.'

'We can go there,' said Rollo. 'That will give us the best chance.'

Gently they took those three or four miles. The open country to which they soon came, getting out of the woods, looked very lovely and peaceful to them; the fire had not been there, and quiet suns.h.i.+ne lay along the fields. In the last mile or two the fields gave place again to broken country; a brawling stream was heard and seen by intervals, black and chafing over a rocky bed. Then the road descended sharply, among thick leaf.a.ge, fresh and fair, not pine needles; and finally at the bottom of the descent the stage stopped.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE MILL FLOOR.

The place was a dell in the woods, the bottom filled with a dark, clear little lake. At the lower end of it stood the mill; picturesque enough under the trees, with its great doors opening upon the lake. On the floor within could be seen the bags of flour and grain piled about, and the miller pa.s.sing to and fro. It was deeply still; the light came cool and green through the oaks and maples and ashes; the trickling of water was heard. Dark slept the little lake, overshadowed by the leafy banks which shut it in; the only chief spot of light was the miller's open door, where the sunbeams lit up his bags and him; the mill-stream brawled away somewhere below, and beyond the mill the road curled away out of sight to mount the hill again. This was Braddock's mill.

Mr. Falkirk got out, and then Mr. Rollo helped out the women and Mrs. Saddler, who was confused out of all her proprieties, for she pushed before her young lady; finally Wych Hazel.

'How do you do?' said he, scanning her.

Apparently the dizziness had not gone off, for she raised her head and came out of the coach in the slowest and most mechanical way, lifting her hand and pus.h.i.+ng back her hair with a weary sort of gesture as he spoke. So weary her face was, so utterly subdued, it might have touched anybody to see it. It never seemed to occur to her that the question needed an answer.

'Your best chance is the mill,' said he; 'I think you can rest there. At any rate, it is your chance.'

He put her hand upon his arm and led her down the few steps of rocky way to the mill door. Mr. Falkirk followed. The women had paired off to seek the miller's house, out of sight above on the bank. Only Mrs. Saddler came after Mr. Falkirk.

The mill floor was large, cool and clean; that is, in the shade, and with the exception of the dust of flour on everything. Mr. Falkirk entered into explanations with the miller; while Rollo, after a brief word of leave-asking, proceeded to arrange a pile of grain bags so as to form an extempore divan. Harder might be; and over it he spread the gentlemen's linen dusters and all the travelling shawls of the party; and upon it then softly placed Wych Hazel. Poor child!

she was used to cus.h.i.+ons, and in need of them, from the way she dropped down among these. She had thrown off her hat, and Mr. Falkirk stopped and unfastened her mantle, and softly began to pull off one of her gloves; the miller's daughter, a fair, plump, yellow-haired damsel, coming out from among the grain bins, began upon the other.

'What's happened here?' said she, pityingly.

'Have you anything this lady could eat?' was the counter- question. 'She is exhausted; fire in the woods drove us out of the way.'

'Do tell! I heard say the woods was all afire. Why there's enough in the house, but it ain't here. We live up the hill a ways. I'll start and fetch something--only say what. O here's this, if she's fainted.'--And producing a very amulet-looking bottle of salts, suspended round her neck by a blue ribband, she at once administered a pretty powerful whiff. With great suddenness Wych Hazel laid hold of the little smelling bottle, opening her brown eyes to their fullest extent and exclaiming:

'What in the world are you all about!'

'Ah!' said Mr. Falkirk. 'Get what you can my good girl; only don't stand about it. Can you give her a gla.s.s of milk? or a cup of tea?'

The girl left them and sprang away up the path at a rate that showed her good will, followed by Rollo. Arrived at the miller's house, which proved a poor little affair, the cup of tea was hastily brewed; and Rollo having contrived to find out pretty well the resources of the family in that as well as in other lines of accommodation, and having despatched along with the tea whatever he thought might stand least chance of being refused, left the miller's daughter to convey it, and betook himself to his own amus.e.m.e.nts.

The meal was not much. But when it was over Wych Hazel found a better refreshment and one even more needed just then. Mrs.

Saddler at a little distance nodded and dreamed; Mr. Falkirk also had moved off and at least made believe rest. Then did his ward take the comfort, a rare one to her, of pouring out a mindful to somebody of her own s.e.x and age. It was only to the little miller's daughter; yet the true honest face and rapt attention made amends for all want of conventionalities.

'What did you get that salts for?' she began.

'He said you was faint.'

'Who is "he"?'

'The gentleman--I mean the young one.'

'Ah--Well, but I was holding you down by the blue ribband for ever so long.'

'Yes--because--I had promised not to take it off,' said the girl, blus.h.i.+ng.

'What a promise?'

'O, but you know, ma'am--I mean, it was give to me, and so I promised. When folks give you things they always expect you never to take 'em off.'

'Do they?' said Wych Hazel. But then she launched forth into the account of all the day's distress, electrifying her listener with some of the fear and excitement so long pent up.

Yet the mill girl's comment was peculiar.