Wych Hazel Part 62

'Cut short somebody's supper, I'm afraid. But she finished her porridge, didn't she? And has taken one peach with her! Do they all look that, Gyda?'

Gyda answered that they were 'very bad;' she meant in their way of life and their thriving on it.

'And how otherwise?'

There seemed to be not much to say 'otherwise.' They were very good to her, Gyda remarked. Wych Hazel listened, but she risked no more questions. The supper lingered a while longer; Gyda and Rollo talking of various things and drawing in Wych Hazel when they could; then Gyda fetched a book and opened it and laid before Rollo. He left the table and came to Wych Hazel's side.

'Gyda always, when she can, has prayers with her visitors,' he said, 'and she makes them read for her. She, and I, would like it if you do the reading to-night. Will you?'

How easily she started to-night!--Hazel answered without looking up--

'She would rather have you.'

'No, she wouldn't. Excuse me! She asked me to ask you.'

The girl had not found her feet yet, nor got clear of her bewilderment. And so, before she more than half knew what she was about she had taken the book and was reading--absolutely reading aloud to those two!--the ninety-first Psalm. Aloud, it was; but only because the voice was so wonderfully clear and sweet-toned could they have heard a word. As it was, neither listener lost one.

They knelt then, and Gyda uttered a prayer sweet enough to follow the Psalm. A little louder than Wych Hazel's low key, but not less quiet in tone. It was not long; she took those two, as it were, in the arms of her love, and presented them as candidates for all the blessing of the Psalm; making her plea for the two, somehow, a compound and h.o.m.ogeneous one.

The sun was down: it was time to get to horse--for the riders.

Gyda's farewells were very affectionate in feeling, though also very quiet in manner.

'Will you come to see me again?' she asked of Wych Hazel, while Rollo was gone out to see to the horses.

'Will you let me? I should like to come.'

'Then you'll come,' said Gyda. She had shaken hands with Rollo before. But now when he came in for Wych Hazel he went up to where Gyda was standing, bent down and kissed her.

'Miss Kennedy, have you said "Tak for maden?" '

'I? No. How should I?' said Wych Hazel; 'is it a spell?'

'Come here,' said he, laughing. 'You must shake hands with Gyda and say, "Tak for maden;" that is, "Thanks for the meat."

That is Norwegian good manners, and you are in a Norwegian house. Come and say it.'

She came shyly, trying to laugh too, and again held out her hand; stammering a little over the unaccustomed syllables, but rather because they were prescribed than because they were difficult. Certainly if there was a spell in the air that night Wych Hazel thought it had got hold of her.

'That's proper,' said Rollo, 'and now we'll go. It ought to have been said when we rose from table; but better late than never. That's your first lesson in Norse.'

Rollo had been in a sort of quiet, gay mood all the afternoon.

Out of the house and in the saddle this mood seemed to be exchanged for a different one. He was silent, attending to his business with only a word here and there, alert and grave. The words to the ear, however, were free and pleasant as ever. At the bottom of the hill, in the meadow, he came close to Wych Hazel's side.

'Don't canter here,' said he. 'Trot. Not very fast, for the people are out from their work now, many of them. But we'll go as fast as we can.'

'Fast as you like,' she answered. 'I will follow your pace.'

'No,' said he, smiling; 'we might run over somebody.'

The people were out from their work, and many of them stood in groups and parties along the sides of the street. It was an irregular roadway, with here a mill and there a mill, on one side and on the other, and cottages scattered all along between and behind. It had been an empty way when they came; it was populous now. Men and women were there, sometimes in separate groups; and a fringe of children, boys and girls, on both sides of the road. The general mill population seemed to be abroad. They appeared to be doing nothing, all standing gazing at the riders. The light was fading now, and the wretchedness of their looks was not so plainly to be seen in detail; and yet, somehow, the aggregate effect was quite in keeping with that of Trudchen's appearance alone at the house above.

Through this scattering of humanity the riders went at a gentle, even trot; the horses pacing almost in step, the stirrups as near together as they could be. As they came to the thickest of this crowd of spectators, Rollo courteously raised his hat to them. There was at first no answer, then a murmur, then two or three old hats were waved in the air.

Again Rollo saluted them, and in two minutes more the mills were pa.s.sed. The road lay empty and quiet between the high banks, on which the soft twilight was beginning to settle down.

'I like that,' said Wych Hazel, impulsively, forgetting her shyness--she, too, had bowed as they rode by. 'Mr. Rollo, is it a secret, what you said to that child? It looks to me as if she had brought the people out to look at you.'

'Will you ride?' said he. 'Let us have a canter first.'

It was a pretty swift canter, and the two had flown over a good deal of ground before Rollo drew bridle again on coming out into the main road.

'Now,' he said, 'we can talk. There is no secret about anything. The girl asked, at Gyda's, how soon we were going away? I answered, in half an hour. Whereupon she begged very urgently that we would delay and not get to the mills till _she_ had been there; and darted away as you saw.'

'Impressive power of peaches!' said Hazel, with a laugh.

'Commend my penetration. I wish all our waste baskets of fruit could be emptied out in that Hollow, and so be of some use. It would be fun to send Mr. Morton's own grapes'--but there she stopped.

'I am afraid you are mistaken,' said Rollo, gravely. 'The manner and accent of the girl made me apprehend danger of some annoyance--which I think she went to prevent. The road being a _cul de sac_, she knew, and they knew, we must come back that way. Gyda will find out all about it; but she said it meant mischief.'

'Mischief? To us?'

'Yes. They are very degraded, and I suppose embittered, by their way of life; and do not like to see people taking their pleasure as we are doing.'

'_That_ was what they were out for! Mr. Falkirk may well say my eyes are ignorant,' said the girl, thoughtfully. 'But Mr.

Rollo--is this the only way to---- What do ordinary people call your friend?'

'Gyda? The name is Boerresen--contracted by vulgar usage to Borsen.'

'Well, is this the only way you can get to her cottage?'

'The only way; except by a scramble over the hills and fields where no way is. I fancy you are mistaken again, however, in your conclusions from what you have seen this evening. I do not think they were out to do us mischief. Their att.i.tude did not strike me as like that. I think Trudchen had been beforehand with them.'

'And does Mrs. Boerresen like to have you come and go through the Hollow, knowing the people?'

'I never heard of the least annoyance to any one there before.

I can only surmise that the sight of a lady, where no lady ever comes, excited the spite of some children perhaps. And they might have expressed their spite by throwing a few stones. _That_ I half expected.'

'What would you have done then?' said Wych Hazel, with sudden curiosity.

'Dodge the stones, of course!' Rollo answered quietly.

Hazel gleamed up at him from under her hat, her lips in a curl.

'That is only what you would have _tried_ to do,' she said. But then Miss Wych subsided and fell back into the closest rapt attention to the beauties of the landscape and the evening sky.

'The only time,' Rollo went on, 'when the least annoyance would be possible, is after work hours, or just at noon when they are out for dinner. At all other times the whole population is shut up in the mills, and the street is empty.'

'Was it your peaches then after all?' said the girl suddenly.

'Or did she pray us through?'

Rollo gave her one of the bright, sweet smiles he sometimes gave to his old nurse.