"What shall I do?" he said gently.
"About what, sir?"
"Making myself secure?"
"I do not know," said Wych Hazel. "No suggestion occurs to me that would be worth your consideration."
"I spoke to you once, some time ago, on the abstract grounds of the question we have under discussion. These, being only a wild lily, you did not comprehend. You do not love me, or you would give me my promise fast enough on other grounds. You leave me a very difficult way. You leave me no way but to take measures to remove you from temptation. Is not that less pleasant, Hazel, than to give me the promise?"
She was silent for several minutes; not pondering the question, but fighting the pain. To be _forced_ into anything,-- to have _him_ take that tone with her!--
"How will you do it?" she said.
He hesitated and then answered gently,
"You need not ask me that. You will not make it necessary."
"Not ask?" said Wych Hazel rousing up. "Of course I ask! Do you expect to frighten me off my feet with a mere impersonal "it"?"--Then with a laugh which somehow told merely of pain, she added: "You might cut short my allowance, and stint me in slippers,--only that unfortunately the allowance is a fixed fact."
"I did not mean to threaten," he said in a voice that certainly spoke of pain on his own part. "Is it so much to promise, Hazel?"
"You did do it, however," said the girl,--"but we will pa.s.s that. Everything is "much" to promise. And why I refuse, Mr.
Rollo, is not the question. But it seems to me, that while my father might command me, on my allegiance, to give such a promise, no delegated authority of his can reach so far. I may find myself mistaken."
"Do me justice," he said. "I did not command a promise; I sued for it. The protection the promise was to throw around you, I will secure in other ways if I must. But do not forget, Hazel, why I do it."
"I do not believe you know," said the girl excitedly. " "Wild lilies?"--why, even wild elephants are not usually required to tie their own knots. What comes next? I should like to have the whole, if possible, before I get home--which seems likely to be about breakfast time."
"Reo is driving as fast as he ought to drive, such a night.
What do you mean by "what comes next"?"
"You said, I thought, you had several things to speak of."
"I remember. I was going to ask you to go to see Gyda sometimes."
"That is already disposed of--if I am to be allowed to go nowhere," said Hazel, with a rush of pain which very nearly got into her voice. "The next, Mr. Rollo?"
"I think, nothing next. You know," he went on, speaking half lightly, and yet with a thread of tender persuasion in his voice, "you know that next year you can dispose of me. Seeing that in the mean while you cannot help yourself, would it not be better to give me the a.s.surance that for this year you will forego the waltz? and let things go on as they are? Field mice always make the best of circ.u.mstances."
"All summer," she answered, "you have not even taken the trouble to forbid me! And now, forbidding will not do, but you must use threats. They might at least wait until I had disobeyed."
"That is a very distant view of me indeed!" said Rollo.
"Details are lost. I will get you a lorgnette the next time I go anywhere."
"You had better," said Hazel, not stopping to weigh her words this time, "for such distance does not lend enchantment."-- After which the silence on her part became rather profound.
"No," said Rollo dryly, "I see it does not. What will you do by and by, when you are sorry for having treated me so this evening?"
"I daresay I shall find out when the time comes."--
She leaned her head back against the carriage, wanting dreadfully to get home, and put it down, and think. She could not think with her hand held fast in that fashion,--and she could not get it away, without making a fuss and so drawing attention to the fact that it was not in her own keeping. One or two slight efforts in that direction had been singularly fruitless. So she sat still, puzzling over questions which have perplexed older heads than hers. As, how you can have a thing given you, and yet not seem to possess it,--and why people cannot say words to give you pleasure, without at once adding others to give you pain. What had she done? Mr. Falkirk would have thought her a miracle of obedience these last two nights; she even wondered at herself. How she had enjoyed her home this summer! --it seemed to her that she loved every leaf upon every tree. What could he mean by "remove"? And here a long, deep sigh so nearly escaped her lips, that she sat up again in sudden haste, erect as before; but feeling unmistakably lonely, and just a little bit forlorn.
Perhaps her companion"s thoughts had come on one point near to hers; for he gently put the little white glove back upon her lap and left it there. His words went back to her last ones, though after a minute"s interval.
"It will come," he said confidently. "All the field mice of my acquaintance are true and tender. _When_ it comes, Hazel, will you do me justice?"
She stirred uneasily, and once or twice essayed to speak, and did not make it out. This way of taking things for granted, and on such made ground laying out railroads and running trains, was very confusing. Hazel felt as if the air were full of mistakes, and none of them within her reach. When at last she did speak, plainly she had laid hold of the easiest. The words came out abruptly, but in one of her sweet bird-like tones.
"Mr. Rollo--I am not the least imaginable bit like a field mouse!"
"In what respect?"
"These nice, tender people that you know"--she went on. "I believe I am true."
It might have been some pressure of the latter fact, that made her go on after a moments pause; catching her breath a little, as if to go on was very disagreeable, speaking quick and low; correcting herself here and there.
"I wish you would stop saying--all sorts of things, Mr. Rollo.
Because they are not true. Some of them. And--I do not understand you. Sometimes. And I do not know what you mean by my doing you justice. Because--I always did--I think,--and I have not "treated you," at all, to-night."
With which Hazel leaned head and hands down upon the window again, and looked out into the dark night. Would they ever get home?--But it was impossible to drive faster. A thick fog filled the air, and it was intensely dark.
"I have been telling you that I love you. That you do not quite understand. I am bound not to speak on the subject again for a whole year. But supposing that in the meantime you should come to the understanding of it,--and suppose you find out that I have given field mice a just character;--will you do me the justice to let me find it out? And in the meantime,--we shall be at Chickaree presently,--perhaps you will give me, in a day or two, the a.s.surance I have begged of you, and not drive me to extremities."
"Very well!" she said, raising her head again,--"if you will have it in that shape! But the worth of an insignificant thing depends a little upon the setting, and the setting of my refusal was much better than the setting of my compliance.
There is no grace whatever about this. And take notice, sir, that if you had gone to "extremities," you would have driven yourself. I always have obeyed, and always should. But I give the promise!"--and her head went down again, and her eyes looked straight out into the fog.
He said "Thank you!" earnestly, and he said no more. There is no doubt but he felt relieved; at the same time there is no doubt but Mr. Rollo was a mystified man. That her compliance had no grace about it was indeed manifest enough; the grace of her refusal was further to seek. He deposited the little lady of Chickaree at her own door with no more words than a "good- night;" and went the rest of his way in the fog alone. And if Wych Hazel had suffered some annoyance that evening, her young guardian was not without his share of pain. It was rather sharp for a time, after he parted from her. Had the work of these weeks, and of his revealed guardianship, and of his exercise of office, driven her from him entirely? He looked into the question, as he drove home through the fog.
CHAPTER x.x.xVIII.
DODGING.
It was no new thing for the young lady of Chickaree to come home late, and dismiss her attendants, and put herself to bed; neither was it uncommon for her to sleep over breakfast time in such cases, and take her coffee afterwards in Mrs. Byw.a.n.k"s room alone. But when the fog had cleared away, the morning after Mme. Lasalle"s ball, and the sun was riding high, and still no signs of Miss Wych, then Mrs. Byw.a.n.k went to her room. And the good housekeeper was much taken aback to find peasant dress and grey serge curled down together in a heap on the floor, and Miss Wych among them, asleep with her head in a chair. Perhaps that in itself was not so much; but the long eyelashes lay wet and heavy upon her cheek,--and Mrs. Byw.a.n.k knew that token of old.
I am afraid some hard thoughts about Mr. Rollo disturbed her mind, as she stood there looking. What use had he made of his ticket to distress her darling?--she such a mere child, and he with his mature twenty-five years? But Mrs. Byw.a.n.k did not dare to ask, even when the girl stirred and woke and rose up; though the ready flush, and the unready eyes, and the grave mouth, went to her very heart. She noted, too, that her young lady went into no graphic descriptions of the ball, as was her wont; but merely bade Phoebe take away the two fancy dresses, and ensconced herself in a maze of soft white folds, and then went and knelt down by the open window; leaning her elbows there, and her chin on her hands. Mrs. Byw.a.n.k waited.
"Miss Wych," she began after a while,--"my dear, you have had no breakfast."
"I want none."
"But you will have some lunch?"
"No."
"My dear,--you must," said Mrs. Byw.a.n.k. "You will be sick, Miss Wych."