Now Hazel knew that the wood was not in the least damp; how could it be, as it had not rained for days? But that this should have made her uneasy was a sign of her deep instinctive distrust of her grandfather’s widow.
Perhaps the strongest instinct in Hazel was that of hospitality—that all should be well, physically and morally, with the guests under the roof that she never forgot was hers, was a need in her much more pressing than any welfare of her own.
Meanwhile, Master Nathaniel, somewhat puzzled by the outlandish apparatus that was warming his room, had got into bed. He did not immediately put out his candle; he wished to think. For being much given to reverie, when he wanted to follow the sterner path of consecutive thought, he liked to have some tangible object on which to focus his eye, a visible goal, as it were, to keep his feet from straying down the shadowy paths that he so much preferred.
Tonight it was the fine embossed ceiling on which he fixed his eye—the same ceiling at which Ranulph used to gaze when he had slept in this room. On a ground of a rich claret colour patterned with azure arabesques, knobs of a dull gold were embossed, and at the four corners clustered bunches of grapes and scarlet berries in stucco. And though time had dulled their colour and robbed the clusters of many of their berries, they remained, nevertheless, pretty and realistic objects.
But, in spite of the light, the focus, and his desire for hard thinking, Master Nathaniel found his thoughts drifting down the most fantastic paths. And, besides, he was so drowsy and his limbs felt so strangely heavy. The colours on the ceiling were getting all blurred, and the old knobs were detaching themselves from their background and shining in space like suns, moons, and stars—or was it like apples—the golden apples of the West? And now the claret-coloured background was turning into a red field—a field of red flowers, from which leered Portunus, and among which wept Ranulph. But the straight road, which for the last few months had been the projection of his unknown, buried purpose, even through this confused landscape glimmered white … yet, it looked different from usual … why, of course, it was the Milky Way! And then he knew no more.
In the meantime Hazel had been growing more and more restless, and, though she scolded herself for foolishness, more and more anxious. Finally, she could stand it no more: “I think I’ll just creep up to the gentleman’s door and listen if I can hear him snoring,” she said to herself. Hazel believed that it was a masculine peculiarity not to be able to sleep without snoring.
But though she kept her ear to the keyhole for a full two minutes, not a sound proceeded from Master Nathaniel’s room. Then she softly opened the door. A lighted candle was guttering to its end, and her guest was lying, to all appearance, dead, whilst a suffocating atmosphere pervaded the room. Hazel felt almost sick with terror, but she flung open the casement window as wide as it would go, poured half the water from the ewer into the stove to extinguish its fire, and the remainder over Master Nathaniel himself. To her unspeakable relief he opened his eyes, groaned, and muttered something inaudible.
“Oh, sir, you’re not dead then!” almost sobbed Hazel. “I’ll just go and fetch you a cup of cordial and get you some hartshorn.”
When she returned with the two restoratives, she found Master Nathaniel sitting up in bed, and, though he looked a little fuddled, his natural colour was creeping back, and the cordial restored him to almost his normal condition.
When Hazel saw that he was really himself again, she sank down on the floor and, spent with terror, began to sob bitterly.
“Come, my child!” said Master Nathaniel kindly, “there’s nothing to cry about. I’m feeling as well as ever I did in my life … though, by the Harvest of Souls, I can’t imagine what can have taken me. I never remember to have swooned before in all my born days.”
But Hazel would not be comforted: “That it should have happened, here, in my house,” she sobbed. “We who have always stood by the laws of hospitality … and not a young gentleman, either … oh, dearie me; oh, dearie me!”
“What do you blame to yourself, my child?” asked Master Nathaniel. “Your hospitality is in no sense to blame if, owing perhaps to recent fatigues and anxieties, I should have turned faint. No, it is not you that are the bad host, but I that am the bad guest to have given so much trouble.”
But Hazel’s sobs only grew wilder. “I didn’t like her bringing in that firebox—no I didn’t! An evil outlandish thing that it is! That it should have happened under my roof! For it is my roof … and she’ll not pass another night under it!” and she sprang to her feet, with clenched fists and blazing eyes.
Master Nathaniel was becoming interested. “Are you alluding to your grandfather’s widow?” he asked quietly.
“Yes, I am!” cried Hazel indignantly. “Oh! she’s up to strange tricks, always … and none of her ways are those of honest farmers—no fennel over our doors, unholy fodder in our granary … and in her heart, thoughts as unholy. I saw the smile with which she looked at you at dinner.”
“Are you accusing this woman of actually having made an attempt on my life?” he asked slowly.
But Hazel flinched before this point-blank question, and her only answer was to begin again to cry. For a few minutes Master Nathaniel allowed her to do so unmolested, and then he said gently, “I think you have cried enough for tonight, my child. You have been kindness itself, but it is evident that I am not very welcome to your grandfather’s widow, so
