Chapter XXXVI…

Chapter XXXVI

Whence came this? This is some token from a newer friend.

Shakspeare.

The snow-flakes were falling softly and thick when Fleda got up the next morning.

"No ride for me to-day--but how very glad I am that I had a chance of setting that matter right. What could Mrs. Evelyn have been thinking of?--Very false kindness!--if I had disliked to go ever so much she ought to have made me, for my own sake, rather than let me seem so rude--it is true she didn't know how rude. O snow-flakes--how much purer and prettier you are than most things in this place!"

No one was in the breakfast parlour when Fleda came down, so she took her book and the dormeuse and had an hour of luxurious quiet before anybody appeared. Not a foot-fall in the house; nor even one outside to be heard, for the soft carpeting of snow which was laid over the streets. The gentle breathing of the fire the only sound in the room; while the very light came subdued through the falling snow and the thin muslin curtains, and gave an air of softer luxury to the apartment. "Money is pleasant," thought Fleda, as she took a little complacent review of all this before opening her book.--"And yet how unspeakably happier one may be without it than another with it. Happiness never was locked up in a purse yet. I am sure Hugh and I,--They must want me at home!--"

There was a little sober consideration of the lumps of coal and the contented looking blaze in the grate, a most essentially home-like thing,--and then Fleda went to her book and for the space of an hour turned over her pages without interruption. At the end of the hour "the fowling piece," certainly the noiseliest of his kind, put his head in, but seeing none of his ladies took it and himself away again and left Fleda in peace for another half hour. Then appeared Mrs. Evelyn in her morning wrapper, and only stopping at the bell-handle, came up to the dormeuse and stooping down kissed Fleda's forehead, with so much tenderness that it won a look of most affectionate gratitude in reply.

"Fleda my dear, we set you a sad example. But you won't copy it. Joe, breakfast. Has Mr. Evelyn gone down town?"

"Yes, ma'am, two hours ago."

"Did it ever occur to you, Fleda my dear," said Mrs. Evelyn, breaking the lumps of coal with the poker in a very leisurely satisfied kind of a way,--"Did it ever occur to you to rejoice that you were not born a business man? What a life!--"

"I wonder how it compares with that of a business woman," said Fleda laughing. "There is an uncompromising old proverb which says

'Man's work is from sun to sun-- But a woman's work is never done.'"

A saying which she instantly reflected was entirely beyond the comprehension of the person to whose consideration she had offered it.

And then came in Florence, rubbing her hands and knitting her eyebrows.

"Why don't you look as bright as the rest of the world, this morning," said Fleda.

"What a wretched storm!"

"Wretched! This beautiful snow! Here have I been enjoying it for this hour."

But Florence rubbed her hands and looked as if Fleda were no rule for other people.

"How horrid it will make the going out to-night, if it snows all day!"

"Then you can stay at home," said her mother composedly.

"Indeed I shall not, mamma!"

"Mamma!" said Constance now coming in with Edith,--"isn't breakfast ready? It strikes me that the fowling-piece wants polishing up. I have an indistinct impression that the sun would be upon the meridian if he was anywhere."

"Not quite so bad as that," said Fleda smiling;--"it is only an hour and a half since I came down stairs."

"You horrid little creature!--Mamma, I consider it an act of inhospitality to permit studious habits on the part of your guests. And I am surprised your ordinary sagacity has not discovered that it is the greatest impolicy towards the objects of your maternal care. We are labouring under growing disadvantages; for when we have brought the enemy to at long shot there is a mean little craft that comes in and unmans him in a close fight before we can get our speaking-trumpets up."

"Constance!--Do hush!" said her sister. "You are too absurd."

"Fact," said Constance gravely. "Capt. Lewiston was telling me the other night how the thing is managed; and I recognized it immediately and told him I had often seen it done!"

"Hold your tongue, Constance," said her mother smiling,--"and come to breakfast."

Half and but half of the mandate the young lady had any idea of obeying.

"I can't imagine what you are talking about, Constance!" said Edith.

"And then being a friend, you see," pursued Constance, "we can do nothing but fire a salute, instead of demolishing her."

"Can't you?" said Fleda. "I am sure many a time I have felt as if you had left me nothing but my colours."

"Except your prizes, my dear. I am sure I don't know about your being a friend either, for I have observed that you engage English and American alike."

"She is getting up her colours now," said Mrs. Evelyn in mock gravity,--"you can tell what she is."

"Blood-red!" said Constance. "A pirate!--I thought so,"--she exclaimed, with an ecstatic gesture. "I shall make it my business to warn everybody!"

"Oh Constance!" said Fleda, burying her face in her hands. But they all laughed.

"Fleda my dear, I would box her ears," said Mrs. Evelyn commanding herself. "It is a mere envious insinuation,--I have always understood those were the most successful colours carried."

"Dear Mrs. Evelyn!--"

"My dear Fleda, that is not a hot roll--you sha'n't eat it--Take this. Florence give her a piece of the bacon--Fleda my dear, it is good for the digestion--you must try it. Constance was quite mistaken in supposing yours were those obnoxious colours--there is too much white with the red--it is more like a very different flag."

"Like what then, mamma?" said Constance;--"a good American would have blue in it."

"You may keep the American yourself," said her mother.

"Only," said Fleda trying to recover herself, "there is a slight irregularity--with you the stars are blue and the ground white."

"My dear little Fleda!" exclaimed Constance jumping up and capering round the table to kiss her, "you are too delicious for anything; and in future I will be blind to your colours; which is a piece of self-denial I am sure nobody else will practise."

"Mamma," said Edith, "what are you all talking about? Can't Constance sit down and let Fleda eat her breakfast?"

"Sit down, Constance, and eat your breakfast!"

"I will do it, mamma, out of consideration for the bacon.--Nothing else would move me."

"Are you going to Mrs. Decatur's to-night, Fleda?"

"No, Edith, I believe not"

"I'm very glad; then there'll be somebody at home. But why don't you?"

"I think on the whole I had rather not."

"Mamma," said Constance, "you have done very wrong in permitting such a thing. I know just how it will be. Mr. Thorn and Mr. Stackpole will make indefinite voyages of discovery round Mrs. Decatur's rooms, and then having a glimmering perception that the light of Miss Ringgan's eyes is in another direction they will sheer off; and you will presently see them come sailing blandly in, one after the other, and cast anchor for the evening; when to your extreme delight Mr. Stackpole and Miss Ringgan will immediately commence fighting. I shall stay at home to see!" exclaimed Constance, with little bounds of delight up and down upon her chair which this time afforded her the additional elasticity of springs,--"I will not go. I am persuaded how it will be, and I would not miss it for anything."

"Dear Constance!" said Fleda, unable to help laughing through all her vexation,--"please do not talk so! You know very well Mr. Stackpole only comes to see your mother."

"He was here last night," said Constance in an extreme state of delight,--"with all the rest of your admirers--ranged in the hall, with their hats in a pile at the foot of the staircase as a token of their determination not to go till you came home; and as they could not be induced to come up to the drawing-room Mr. Evelyn was obliged to go down, and with some difficulty persuaded them to disperse."

Fleda was by this time in a state of indecision betwixt crying and laughing, assiduously attentive to her breakfast.

"Mr. Carleton asked me if you would go to ride with him again the other day, Fleda," said Mrs. Evelyn, with her face of delighted mischief,--"and I excused you; for I thought you would thank me for it."

"Mamma," said Constance, "the mention of that name rouses all the bitter feelings I am capable of! My dear Fleda--we have been friends--but if I see you abstracting my English rose"--

"Look at those roses behind you!" said Fleda.

The young lady turned and sprang at the word, followed by both her sisters; and for some moments nothing but a hubbub of exclamations filled the air,

"Joe, you are enchanting!--But did you ever see such flowers?--Oh those rose-buds!--"

"And these Camellias," said Edith,--"look, Florence, how they are cut--with such splendid long stems."

"And the roses too--all of them--see mamma, just cut from the bushes with the buds all left on, and immensely long stems--Mamma, these must have cost an immensity!--"

"That is what I call a bouquet," said Fleda, fain to leave the table too and draw near the tempting shew in Florence's hand.

"This is the handsomest you have had all winter, Florence," said Edith.

"Handsomest!--I never saw anything like it. I shall wear some of these to-night, mamma."

"You are in a great hurry to appropriate it," said Constance,--"how do you know but it is mine?"

"Which of us is it for, Joe?"

"Say it is mine, Joe, and I will vote you--the best article of your kind!" said Constance, with an inexpressible glance at Fleda.

"Who brought it, Joe?" said Mrs. Evelyn.

"Yes, Joe, who brought it? where did it come from, Joe?"

Joe had hardly a chance to answer.

"I really couldn't say, Miss Florence,--the man wasn't known to me."

"But did he say it was for Florence or for me?"

"No ma'am--he"--

"Which did he say it was for?"

"He didn't say it was either for Miss Florence or for you, Miss Constance; he--"

"But didn't he say who sent it?"

"No ma'am. It's"--

"Mamma here is a white moss that is beyond everything! with two of the most lovely buds--Oh!" said Constance clasping her hands and whirling about the room in comic ecstasy--"I sha'n't survive if I cannot find out where it is from!--"

"How delicious the scent of these tea-roses is!" said Fleda. "You ought not to mind the snow storm to-day after this, Florence. I should think you would be perfectly happy."

"I shall be, if I can contrive to keep them fresh to wear to-night. Mamma how sweetly they would dress me."

"They're a great deal too good to be wasted so," said Mrs. Evelyn; "I sha'n't let you do it."

"Mamma!--it wouldn't take any of them at all for my hair and the bouquet de corsage too--there'd be thousands left--Well Joe,--what are you waiting for?"

"I didn't say," said Joe, looking a good deal blank and a little afraid,--"I should have said--that the bouquet--is--"

"What is it?"

"It is--I believe, ma'am,--the man said it was for Miss Ringgan."

"For me!" exclaimed Fleda, her cheeks forming instantly the most exquisite commentary on the gift that the giver could have desired. She took in her hand the superb bunch of flowers from which the fingers of Florence unclosed as if it had been an icicle.

"Why didn't you say so before?" she inquired sharply; but the "fowling-piece" had wisely disappeared.

"I am very glad!" exclaimed Edith. "They have had plenty all winter, and you haven't had one--I am very glad it is yours, Fleda."

But such a shadow had come upon every other face that Fleda's pleasure was completely overclouded. She smelled at her roses, just ready to burst into tears, and wishing sincerely that they had never come.

"I am afraid, my dear Fleda," said Mrs. Evelyn quietly going on with her breakfast,--"that there is a thorn somewhere among those flowers."

Fleda was too sure of it. But not by any means the one Mrs. Evelyn intended.

"He never could have got half those from his own greenhouse, mamma," said Florence,--"if he had cut every rose that was in it; and he isn't very free with his knife either."

"I said nothing about anybody's greenhouse," said Mrs. Evelyn,--"though I don't suppose there is more than one Lot in the city they could have come from."

"Well," said Constance settling herself back in her chair and closing her eyes,--"I feel extinguished!----Mamma, do you suppose it possible that a hot cup of tea might revive me? I am suffering from a universal sense of unappreciated merit!--and nobody can tell what the pain is that hasn't felt it."

"I think you are extremely foolish, Constance," said Edith. "Fleda hasn't had a single flower sent her since she has been here and you have had them every other day. I think Florence is the only one that has a right to be disappointed."

"Dear Florence," said Fleda earnestly,--"you shall have as many of them as you please to dress yourself,--and welcome!"

"Oh no--of course not!--" Florence said,--"it's of no sort of consequence--I don't want them in the least, my dear. I wonder what somebody would think to see his flowers in my head!"

Fleda secretly had mooted the same question and was very well pleased not to have it put to the proof. She took the flowers up stairs after breakfast, resolving that they should not be an eye-sore to her friends; placed them in water and sat down to enjoy and muse over them in a very sorrowful mood. She again thought she would take the first opportunity of going home. How strange--out of their abundance of tributary flowers to grudge her this one bunch! To be sure it was a magnificent one. The flowers were mostly roses, of the rarer kinds, with a very few fine Camellias; all of them cut with a freedom that evidently had known no constraint but that of taste, and put together with an exquisite skill that Fleda felt sure was never possessed by any gardener. She knew that only one hand had had anything to do with them, and that the hand that had bought, not the one that had sold; and "How very kind!"--presently quite supplanted "How very strange!"--"How exactly like him,--and how singular that Mrs. Evelyn and her daughters should have supposed they could have come from Mr. Thorn." It was a moral impossibility that he should have put such a bunch of flowers together; while to Fleda's eye they so bore the impress of another person's character that she had absolutely been glad to get them out of sight for fear they might betray him. She hung over their varied loveliness, tasted and studied it, till the soft breath of the roses had wafted away every cloud of disagreeable feeling and she was drinking in pure and strong pleasure from each leaf and bud. What a very apt emblem of kindness and friendship she thought them; when their gentle preaching and silent sympathy could alone so nearly do friendship's work; for to Fleda there was both counsel and consolation in flowers. So she found it this morning. An hour's talk with them had done her a great deal of good, and when she dressed herself and went down to the drawing-room her grave little face was not less placid than the roses she had left; she would not wear even one of them down to be a disagreeable reminder. And she thought that still snowy day was one of the very pleasantest she had had in New York.

Florence went to Mrs. Decatur's; but Constance according to her avowed determination remained at home to see the fun. Fleda hoped most sincerely there would be none for her to see.

But a good deal to her astonishment, early in the evening Mr. Carleton walked in, followed very soon by Mr. Thorn. Constance and Mrs. Evelyn were forthwith in a perfect effervescence of delight, which as they could not very well give it full play promised to last the evening; and Fleda, all her nervous trembling awakened again, took her work to the table and endeavoured to bury herself in it. But ears could not be fastened as well as eyes; and the mere sound of Mrs. Evelyn's voice sometimes sent a thrill over her.

"Mr. Thorn," said the lady in her smoothest manner,--"are you a lover of floriculture, sir?"

"Can't say that I am, Mrs. Evelyn,--except as practised by others."

"Then you are not a connoisseur in roses?--Miss Ringgan's happy lot--sent her a most exquisite collection this morning, and she has been wanting to apply to somebody who could tell her what they are--I thought you might know.--O they are not here," said Mrs. Evelyn as she noticed the gentleman's look round the room;--"Miss Ringgan judges them too precious for any eyes but her own. Fleda, my dear, won't you bring down your roses to let Mr. Thorn tell us their names?"

"I am sure Mr. Thorn will excuse me, Mrs. Evelyn--I believe he would find it a puzzling task."

"The surest way, Mrs. Evelyn, would be to apply at the fountain head for information," said Thorn dryly.

"If I could get at it," said Mrs. Evelyn, (Fleda knew with quivering lips,)--"but it seems to me I might as well try to find the Dead Sea!"

"Perhaps Mr. Carleton might serve your purpose," said Thorn.

That gentleman was at the moment talking to Constance.

"Mr. Carleton--" said Mrs. Evelyn,--"are you a judge, sir?"

"Of what, Mrs. Evelyn?--I beg your pardon."

The lady's tone somewhat lowered.

"Are you a judge of roses, Mr. Carleton?"

"So far as to know a rose when I see it," he answered smiling, and with an imperturbable coolness that it quieted Fleda to hear.

"Ay, but the thing is," said Constance, "do you know twenty roses when you see them?"

"Miss Ringgan, Mr. Carleton," said Mrs. Evelyn, "has received a most beautiful supply this morning; but like a true woman she is not satisfied to enjoy unless she can enjoy intelligently--they are strangers to us all, and she would like to know what name to give them--Mr. Thorn suggested that perhaps you might help us out of our difficulty."

"With great pleasure, so far as I am able,--if my judgment may be exercised by daylight. I cannot answer for shades of green in the night time."

But he spoke with an ease and simplicity that left no mortal able to guess whether he had ever heard of a particular bunch of roses in his life before.

"You give me more of Eve in my character, Mrs. Evelyn, than I think belongs to me," said Fleda from her work at the far centre-table, which certainly did not get its name from its place in the room. "My enjoyment to-day has not been in the least troubled by curiosity."

Which none of the rest of the family could have affirmed.

"Do you mean to say, Mr. Carleton," said Constance, "that it is necessary to distinguish between shades of green in judging of roses?"

"It is necessary to make shades of distinction in judging of almost anything, Miss Constance. The difference between varieties of the same flower is often extremely nice."

"I have read of magicians," said Thorn softly, bending down towards Fleda's work,--"who did not need to see things to answer questions respecting them."

Fleda thought that was a kind of magic remarkably common in the world; but even her displeasure could not give her courage to speak. It gave her courage to be silent, however; and Mr. Thorn's best efforts in a conversation of some length could gain nothing but very uninterested rejoinders. A sudden pinch from Constance then made her look up and almost destroyed her self-possession as she saw Mr. Stackpole make his way into the room.

"I hope I find my fair enemy in a mollified humour," he said approaching them.

"I suppose you have repaired damages, Mr. Stackpole," said Constance,--"since you venture into the region of broken windows again."

"Mr. Stackpole declared there were none to repair," said Mrs. Evelyn from the sofa.

"More than I knew of," said the gentleman laughing--"there were more than I knew of; but you see I court the danger, having rashly concluded that I might as well know all my weak points at once."

"Miss Ringgan will break nothing to-night, Mr. Stackpole--she promised me she would not."

"Not even her silence?" said the gentleman.

"Is she always so desperately industrious?" said Mr. Thorn.

"Miss Ringgan, Mr. Stackpole," said Constance, "is subject to occasional fits of misanthropy, in which cases her retreating with her work to the solitude of the centre-table is significant of her desire to avoid conversation,--as Mr. Thorn has been experiencing."

"I am happy to see that the malady is not catching, Miss Constance."

"Mr. Stackpole!" said Constance,--"I am in a morose state of mind!--Miss Ringgan this morning received a magnificent bouquet of roses which in the first place I rashly appropriated to myself; and ever since I discovered my mistake I have been meditating the renouncing of society--it has excited more bad feelings than I thought had existence in my nature."

"Mr. Stackpole," said Mrs. Evelyn, "would you ever have supposed that roses could be a cause of discord?"

Mr. Stackpole looked as if he did not exactly know what the ladies were driving at.

"There have five thousand emigrants arrived at this port within a week!" said he, as if that were something worth talking about.

"Poor creatures! where will they all go?" said Mrs. Evelyn comfortably.

"Country's large enough," said Thorn.

"Yes, but such a stream of immigration will reach the Pacific and come back again before long: and then there will be a meeting of the waters! This tide of German and Irish will sweep over everything."

"I suppose if the land will not bear both, one party will have to seek other quarters," said Mrs. Evelyn with an exquisite satisfaction which Fleda could hear in her voice. "You remember the story of Lot and Abraham, Mr. Stackpole,--when a quarrel arose between them?--not about roses."

Mr. Stackpole looked as if women were--to say the least--incomprehensible.

"Five thousand a week!" he repeated.

"I wish there was a Dead Sea for them all to sheer off into!" said Thorn.

"If you had seen the look of grave rebuke that speech called forth, Mr. Thorn," said Constance, "your feelings would have been penetrated--if you have any."

"I had forgotten," he said, looking round with a bland change of manner,--"what gentle charities were so near me."

"Mamma!" said Constance with a most comic shew of indignation,--"Mr. Thorn thought that with Miss Ringgan he had forgotten all the gentle charities in the room!--I am of no further use to society!--I will trouble you to ring that bell, Mr. Thorn, if you please. I shall request candles and retire to the privacy of my own apartment!"

"Not till you have permitted me to expiate my fault!" said Mr. Thorn laughing.

"It cannot be expiated!--My worth will be known at some future day.--Mr. Carleton, will you have the goodness to summon our domestic attendant?"

"If you will permit me to give the order," he said smiling, with his hand on the bell. "I am afraid you are hardly fit to be trusted alone."

"Why?"

"May I delay obeying you long enough to give my reasons?"

"Yes."

"Because," said he coming up to her, "when people turn away from the world in disgust they generally find worse company in themselves."

"Mr. Carleton!--I would not sit still another minute, if curiosity didn't keep me. I thought solitude was said to be such a corrector?"

"Like a clear atmosphere--an excellent medium if your object is to take an observation of your position--worse than lost if you mean to shut up the windows and burn sickly lights of your own."

"Then according to that one shouldn't seek solitude unless one doesn't want it."

"No," said Mr. Carleton, with that eye of deep meaning to which Constance always rendered involuntary homage,--"every one wants it;--if we do not daily take an observation to find where we are, we are sailing about wildly and do not know whither we are going."

"An observation?" said Constance, understanding part and impatient of not catching the whole of his meaning.

"Yes," he said with a smile of singular fascination,--"I mean, consulting the unerring guides of the way to know where we are and if we are sailing safely and happily in the right direction--otherwise we are in danger of striking upon some rock or of never making the harbour; and in either case, all is lost."

The power of eye and smile was too much for Constance, as it had happened more than once before; her own eyes fell and for a moment she wore a look of unwonted sadness and sweetness, at what from any other person would have roused her mockery.

"Mr. Carleton," said she, trying to rally herself but still not daring to look up, knowing that would put it out of her power,--"I can't understand how you ever came to be such a grave person."

"What is your idea of gravity?" said he smiling. "To have a mind so at rest about the future as to be able to enjoy thoroughly all that is worth enjoying in the present?"

"But I can't imagine how you ever came to take up such notions."

"May I ask again, why not I?"

"O you know--you have so much to make you otherwise."

"What degree of present contentment ought to make one satisfied to leave that of the limitless future an uncertain thing?"

"Do you think it can be made certain?"

"Undoubtedly!--why not? the tickets are free--the only thing is to make sure that ours has the true signature. Do you think the possession of that ticket makes life a sadder thing? The very handwriting of it is more precious to me, by far, Miss Constance, than everything else I have."

"But you are a very uncommon instance," said Constance, still unable to look up, and speaking without any of her usual attempt at jocularity.

"No, I hope not," he said quietly.

"I mean," said Constance, "that it is very uncommon language to hear from a person like you."

"I suppose I know your meaning," he said after a minute's pause;--"but, Miss Constance, there is hardly a graver thought to me than that power and responsibility go hand in hand."

"It don't generally work so," said Constance rather uneasily.

"What are you talking about, Constance?" said Mrs. Evelyn.

"Mr. Carleton, mamma,--has been making me melancholy."

"Mr. Carleton," said Mrs. Evelyn, "I am going to petition that you will turn your efforts in another direction--I have felt oppressed all the afternoon from the effects of that funeral service I was attending--I am only just getting over it. The preacher seemed to delight in putting together all the gloomy thoughts he could think of."

"Yes!" said Mr. Stackpole, putting his hands in his pockets,--"it is the particular enjoyment of some of them, I believe, to do their best to make other people miserable."

Mr. Thorn said nothing, being warned by the impatient little hammering of Fleda's worsted needle upon the marble, while her eye was no longer considering her work, and her face rested anxiously upon her hand.

"There wasn't a thing," the lady went on,--"in anything he said, in his prayer or his speech,--there wasn't a single cheering or elevating consideration,--all he talked and prayed for was that the people there might be filled with a sense of their wickedness--"

"It's their trade, ma'am," said Mr. Stackpole,--"it's their trade! I wonder if it ever occurs to them to include themselves in that petition."

"There wasn't the slightest effort made in anything he said or prayed for,--and one would have thought that would have been so natural!--there was not the least endeavour to do away with that superstitious fear of death which is so common--and one would think it was the very occasion to do it;--he never once asked that we might be led to look upon it rationally and calmly.--It's so unreasonable, Mr. Stackpole--it is so dissonant with our views of a benevolent Supreme Being--as if it could be according to his will that his creatures should live lives of tormenting themselves--it so shews a want of trust in his goodness!"

"It's a relic of barbarism, ma'am," said Mr. Stackpole;--"it's a popular delusion--and it is like to be, till you can get men to embrace wider and more liberal views of things."

"What do you suppose it proceeds from?" said Mr. Carleton, as if the question had just occurred to him.

"I suppose, from false notions received from education, sir."

"Hardly," said Mr. Carleton;--"it is too universal. You find it everywhere; and to ascribe it everywhere to education would be but shifting the question back one generation."

"It is a root of barbarous ages," said Mr. Stackpole,--"a piece of superstition handed down from father to son--a set of false ideas which men are bred up and almost born with, and that they can hardly get rid of."

"How can that be a root of barbarism, which the utmost degree of intelligence and cultivation has no power to do away, nor even to lessen, however it may afford motive to control? Men may often put a brave face upon it and shew none of their thoughts to the world; but I think no one capable of reflection has not at times felt the influence of that dread."

"Men have often sought death, of purpose and choice," said Mr. Stackpole dryly and rubbing his chin.

"Not from the absence of this feeling, but from the greater momentary pressure of some other."

"Of course," said Mr. Stackpole, rubbing his chin still,--there is a natural love of life--the world could not get on if there was not."

"If the love of life is natural, the fear of death must be so, by the same reason."

"Undoubtedly," said Mrs. Evelyn, "it is natural--it is part of the constitution of our nature."

"Yes," said Mr. Stackpole, settling himself again in his chair with his hands in his pockets--"it is not unnatural, I suppose,--but then that is the first view of the subject--it is the business of reason to correct many impressions and prejudices that are, as we say, natural."

"And there was where my clergyman of to-day failed utterly," said Mrs. Evelyn;--"he aimed at strengthening that feeling and driving it down as hard as he could into everybody's mind--not a single lisp of anything to do it away or lessen the gloom with which we are, naturally as you say, disposed to invest the subject."

"I dare say he has held it up as a bugbear till it has become one to himself," said Mr. Stackpole.

"It is nothing more than the mere natural dread of dissolution," said Mr. Carleton.

"I think it is that," said Mrs. Evelyn,--"I think that is the principal thing."

"Is there not besides an undefined fear of what lies beyond--an uneasy misgiving that there may be issues which the spirit is not prepared to meet?"

"I suppose there is," said Mrs. Evelyn,--"but sir--"

"Why that is the very thing," said Mr. Stackpole,--"that is the mischief of education I was speaking of--men are brought up to it."

"You cannot dispose of it so, sir, for this feeling is quite as universal as the other; and so strong that men have not only been willing to render life miserable but even to endure death itself, with all the aggravation of torture, to smooth their way in that unknown region beyond."

"It is one of the maladies of human nature," said Mr. Stackpole,--"that it remains for the progress of enlightened reason to dispel."

"What is the cure for the malady?" said Mr. Carleton quietly.

"Why sir!--the looking upon death as a necessary step in the course of our existence which simply introduces us from a lower to a higher sphere,--from a comparatively narrow to a wider and nobler range of feeling and intellect."

"Ay--but how shall we be sure that it is so?"

"Why Mr. Carleton, sir," said Mrs. Evelyn,--"do you doubt that? Do you suppose it possible for a moment that a benevolent being would make creatures to be anything but happy?"

"You believe the Bible, Mrs. Evelyn?" he said smiling slightly.

"Certainly, sir; but Mr. Carleton, the Bible I am sure holds out the same views of the goodness and glory of the Creator; you cannot open it but you find them on every page. If I could take such views of things as some people have," said Mrs. Evelyn, getting up to punch the fire in her extremity,--"I don't know what I should do!--Mr. Carleton, I think I would rather never have been born, sir!"

"Every one runs to the Bible!" said Mr. Stackpole. "It is the general armoury, and all parties draw from it to fight each other."

"True," said Mr. Carleton,--"but only while they draw partially. No man can fight the battle of truth but in the whole panoply; and no man so armed can fight any other."

"What do you mean, sir?"

"I mean that the Bible is not a riddle, neither inconsistent with itself; but if you take off one leg of a pair of compasses the measuring power is gone."

"But Mr. Carleton, sir," said Mrs. Evelyn,--"do you think that reading the Bible is calculated to give one gloomy ideas of the future?"

"By no means," he said with one of those meaning-fraught smiles,--"but is it safe, Mrs. Evelyn, in such a matter, to venture a single grasp of hope without the direct warrant of God's word?"

"Well, sir?"

"Well, ma'am,--that says, 'the soul that sinneth, it shall die.'"

"That disposes of the whole matter comfortably at once," said Mr. Stackpole.

"But, sir," said Mrs. Evelyn,--"that doesn't stand alone--the Bible everywhere speaks of the fulness and freeness of Christ's salvation?"

"Full and free as it can possibly be," he answered with something of a sad expression of countenance;--"but, Mrs. Evelyn, never offered but with conditions."

"What conditions?" said Mr. Stackpole hastily.

"I recommend you to look for them, sir," answered Mr. Carleton, gravely;--"they should not be unknown to a wise man."

"Then you would leave mankind ridden by this nightmare of fear?--or what is your remedy?"

"There is a remedy, sir," said Mr. Carleton, with that dilating and darkening eye which shewed him deeply engaged in what he was thinking about;--"it is not mine. When men feel themselves lost and are willing to be saved in God's way, then the breach is made up--then hope can look across the gap and see its best home and its best friend on the other side--then faith lays hold on forgiveness and trembling is done--then, sin being pardoned, the sting of death is taken away and the fear of death is no more, for it is swallowed up in victory. But men will not apply to a physician while they think themselves well; and people will not seek the sweet way of safety by Christ till they know there is no other; and so, do you see, Mrs. Evelyn, that when the gentleman you were speaking of sought to-day to persuade his hearers that they were poorer than they thought they were, he was but taking the surest way to bring them to be made richer than they ever dreamed."

There was a power of gentle earnestness in his eye that Mrs Evelyn could not answer; her look fell as that of Constance had done, and there was a moment's silence.

Thorn had kept quiet, for two reasons--that he might not displease Fleda, and that he might watch her. She had left her work, and turning half round from the table had listened intently to the conversation, towards the last very forgetful that there might be anybody to observe her,--with eyes fixed, and cheeks flushing, and the corners of the mouth just indicating delight,--till the silence fell; and then she turned round to the table and took up her worsted-work. But the lips were quite grave now, and Thorn's keen eyes discerned that upon one or two of the artificial roses there lay two or three very natural drops.

"Mr. Carleton," said Edith, "what makes you talk such sober things?--you have set Miss Ringgan to crying."

"Mr. Carleton could not be better pleased than at such a tribute to his eloquence," said Mr. Thorn with a saturnine expression.

"Smiles are common things," said Mr. Stackpole a little maliciously; "but any man may be flattered to find his words drop diamonds."

"Fleda my dear," said Mrs. Evelyn, with that trembling tone of concealed ecstasy which always set every one of Fleda's nerves a jarring,--"you may tell the gentlemen that they do not always know when they are making an unfelicitous compliment--I never read what poets say about 'briny drops' and 'salt tears' without imagining the heroine immediately to be something like Lot's wife."

"Nobody said anything about briny drops, mamma," said Edith. "Why there's Florence!--"

Her entrance made a little bustle, which Fleda was very glad of. Unkind!--She was trembling again in every finger. She bent down over her canvas and worked away as hard as she could. That did not hinder her becoming aware presently that Mr. Carleton was standing close beside her.

"Are you not trying your eyes?" said he.

The words were nothing, but the tone was a great deal, there was a kind of quiet intelligence in it. Fleda looked up, and something in the clear steady self-reliant eye she met wrought an instant change in her feeling. She met it a moment and then looked at her work again with nerves quieted.

"Cannot I persuade them to be of my mind?" said Mr. Carleton, bending down a little nearer to their sphere of action.

"Mr. Carleton is unreasonable, to require more testimony of that this evening," said Mr. Thorn;--"his own must have been ill employed."

Fleda did not look up, but the absolute quietness of Mr. Carleton's manner could be felt; she felt it, almost with sympathetic pain. Thorn immediately left them and took leave.

"What are you searching for in the papers, Mr. Carleton?" said Mrs. Evelyn presently coming up to them.

"I was looking for the steamers, Mrs. Evelyn."

"How soon do you think of bidding us good-bye?"

"I do not know, ma'am," he answered coolly--"I expect my mother."

Mrs. Evelyn walked back to her sofa.

But in the space of two minutes she came over to the centre-table again, with an open magazine in her hand.

"Mr. Carleton," said the lady, "you must read this for me and tell me what you think of it, will you sir? I have been shewing it to Mr. Stackpole and he can't see any beauty in it, and I tell him it is his fault and there is some serious want in his composition. Now I want to know what you will say to it."

"An arbiter, Mrs. Evelyn, should be chosen by both parties."

"Read it and tell me what you think!" repeated the lady, walking away to leave him opportunity. Mr. Carleton looked it over.

"That is something pretty," he said putting it before Fleda. Mrs. Evelyn was still at a distance.

"What do you think of that print for trying the eyes?" said Fleda laughing as she took it. But he noticed that her colour rose a little.

"How do you like it?"

"I like it,--pretty well," said Fleda rather hesitatingly.

"You have seen it before?"

"Why?" Fleda said, with a look up at him at once a little startled and a little curious;--"what makes you say so?"

"Because--pardon me--you did not read it."

"Oh," said Fleda laughing, but colouring at the same time very frankly, "I can tell how I like some things without reading them very carefully."

Mr. Carleton looked at her, and then took the magazine again.

"What have you there, Mr. Carleton?" said Florence.

"A piece of English on which I was asking this lady's opinion, Miss Evelyn."

"Now, Mr. Carleton!" exclaimed Constance jumping up,--"I am going to ask you to decide a quarrel between Fleda and me about a point of English"--

"Hush, Constance!" said her mother,--"I want to speak to Mr. Carleton--Mr. Carleton, how do you like it?"

"Like what, mamma?" said Florence.

"A piece I gave Mr. Carleton to read. Mr. Carleton, tell how you like it, sir."

"But what is it, mamma?"

"A piece of poetry in an old Excelsior--'The Spirit of the Fireside.' Mr. Carleton, won't you read it aloud, and let us all hear--but tell me first what you think of it."

"It has pleased me particularly, Mrs. Evelyn."

"Mr. Stackpole says he does not understand it, sir."

"Fanciful," said Mr. Stackpole,--"it's a little fanciful--and I can't quite make out what the fancy is."

"It has been the misfortune of many good things before not to be prized, Mr. Stackpole," said the lady funnily.

"True, ma'am," said that gentleman rubbing his chin--"and the converse is also true unfortunately,--and with a much wider application."

"There is a peculiarity of mental development or training," said Mr. Carleton, "which must fail of pleasing many minds because of their wanting the corresponding key of nature or experience. Some literature has a hidden freemasonry of its own."

"Very hidden indeed!" said Mr. Stackpole;--"the cloud is so thick that I can't see the electricity!"

"Mr. Carleton," said Mrs. Evelyn laughing, "I take that remark as a compliment, sir. I have always appreciated that writer's pieces--I enjoy them very much."

"Well, won't you please read it, Mr. Carleton?" said Florence, "and let us know what we are talking about."

Mr. Carleton obeyed, standing where he was by the centre-table.

"By the old hearthstone a Spirit dwells, The child of bygone years,-- He lieth hid the stones amid, And liveth on smiles and tears.

"But when the night is drawing on, And the fire burns clear and bright, He Cometh out and walketh about, In the pleasant grave twilight.

"He goeth round on tiptoe soft, And scanneth close each face; If one in the room be sunk in gloom, By him he taketh his place.

"And then with fingers cool and soft, (Their touch who does not know) With water brought from the well of Thought, That was dug long years ago,

"He layeth his hand on the weary eyes-- They are closed and quiet now;-- And he wipeth away the dust of the day Which had settled on the brow.

"And gently then he walketh away And sits in the corner chair; And the closed eyes swim--it seemeth to him The form that once sat there.

"And whispered words of comfort and love Fall sweet on the ear of sorrow;-- 'Why weepest thou?--thou art troubled now, But there cometh a bright to-morrow.

"'We too have passed over life's wild stream In a frail and shattered boat, But the pilot was sure--and we sailed secure When we seemed but scarce afloat.

"'Though tossed by the rage of waves and wind, The bark held together still,-- One arm was strong--it bore us along, And has saved from every ill.'

"The Spirit returns to his hiding-place, But his words have been like balm. The big tears start--but the fluttering heart Is soothed and softened and calm."

"I remember that," said Florence;--"it is beautiful."

"Who's the writer?" said Mr. Stackpole.

"I don't know," said Mrs. Evelyn,--"it is signed 'Hugh'--there have been a good many of his pieces in the Excelsior for a year past--and all of them pretty."

"Hugh!" exclaimed Edith springing forward,--"that's the one that wrote the Chestnuts!--Fleda, won't you read Mr. Carleton the Chestnuts?"

"Why no, Edith, I think not."

"Ah do! I like it so much, and I want him to hear it,--and you know mamma says they're all pretty. Won't you?"

"My dear Edith, you have heard it once already to day."

"But I want you to read it for me again."

"Let me have it, Miss Edith," said Mr. Carleton smiling,--"I will read it for you."

"Ah but it would be twice as good if you could hear her read it," said Edith, fluttering over the leaves of the magazine,--"she reads it so well. It's so funny--about the coffee and buckwheat cakes."

"What is that, Edith?" said her mother.

"Something Mr. Carleton is going to read for me, mamma."

"Don't you trouble Mr. Carleton."

"It won't trouble him, mamma--he promised of his own accord."

"Let us all have the benefit of it, Mr. Carleton," said the lady.

It is worthy of remark that Fleda's politeness utterly deserted her during the reading of both this piece and the last. She as near as possible turned her back upon the reader.

"Merrily sang the crickets forth One fair October night;-- And the stars looked down, and the northern crown Gave its strange fantastic light.

"A nipping frost was in the air, On flowers and grass it fell; And the leaves were still on the eastern hill As if touched by a fairy spell.

"To the very top of the tall nut-trees The frost-king seemed to ride; With his wand he stirs the chestnut burs, And straight they are opened wide.

"And squirrels and children together dream Of the coming winter's hoard; And many, I ween, are the chestnuts seen In hole or in garret stored.

"The children are sleeping in feather-beds-- Poor Bun in his mossy nest,-- He courts repose with his tail on his nose. On the others warm blankets rest.

"Late in the morning the sun gets up From behind the village spire; And the children dream, that the first red gleam Is the chestnut trees on fire!

"The squirrel had on when he first awoke All the clothing he could command; And his breakfast was light--he just took a bite Of an acorn that lay at hand;

"And then he was off to the trees to work;-- While the children some time it takes To dress and to eat what they think meet Of coffee and buckwheat cakes.

"The sparkling frost when they first go out, Lies thick upon all around; And earth and grass, as they onward pass, Give a pleasant crackling sound.

"O there is a heap of chestnuts, see!' Cried the youngest of the train; For they came to a stone where the squirrel had thrown What he meant to pick up again.

"And two bright eyes from the tree o'erhead, Looked down at the open bag Where the nuts went in--and so to begin, Almost made his courage flag.

"Away on the hill, outside the wood, Three giant trees there stand; And the chestnuts bright that hang in sight, Are eyed by the youthful band.

"And one of their number climbs the tree, And passes from bough to bough,-- And the children run--for with pelting fun The nuts fall thickly now.

"Some of the burs are still shut tight,-- Some open with chestnuts three,-- And some nuts fall with no burs at all-- Smooth, shiny, as nuts should be.

"O who can tell what fun it was To see the prickly shower! To feel what a whack on head or back. Was within a chestnut's power!--

"To run beneath the shaking tree, And then to scamper away; And with laughing shout to dance about The grass where the chestnuts lay.

"With flowing dresses, and blowing hair, And eyes that no shadow knew,-- Like the growing light of a morning bright--- The dawn of the summer blue!

"The work was ended--the trees were stripped-- The children were 'tired of play.' And they forgot (but the squirrel did not) The wrong they had done that day."

Whether it was from the reader's enjoyment or good giving of these lines, or from Edith's delight in them, he was frequently interrupted with bursts of laughter.

"I can understand that" said Mr. Stackpole, "without any difficulty."

"You are not lost in the mysteries of chestnuting in open daylight," said Mrs. Evelyn.

"Mr. Carleton," said Edith, "wouldn't you have taken the squirrel's chestnuts?"

"I believe I should, Miss Edith,--if I had not been hindered."

"But what would have hindered you? don't you think it was right?"

"Ask your friend Miss Ringgan what she thinks of it," said he smiling.

"Now Mr. Carleton," said Constance as he threw down the magazine, "will you decide that point of English between Miss Ringgan and me?"

"I should like to hear the pleadings on both sides, Miss Constance."

"Well, Fleda, will you agree to submit it to Mr. Carleton?"

"I must know by what standards Mr. Carleton will be guided before I agree to any such thing," said Fleda.

"Standards! but aren't you going to trust anybody in anything without knowing what standards they go by?"

"Would that be a safe rule to follow in general?" said Fleda smiling.

"You won't be a true woman if you don't follow it, sooner or later, my dear Fleda," said Mrs. Evelyn. "Every woman must."

"The later the better, ma'am, I cannot help thinking."

"You will change your mind," said Mrs. Evelyn complacently.

"Mamma's notions, Mr. Stackpole, would satisfy any man's pride, when she is expatiating upon the subject of woman's dependence," said Florence.

"The dependence of affection," said Mrs. Evelyn. "Of course! It's their lot. Affection always leads a true woman to merge her separate judgment, on anything, in the judgment of the beloved object."

"Ay," said Fleda laughing,--"suppose her affection is wasted on an object that has none?"

"My dear Fleda!" said Mrs. Evelyn with a funny expression,--"that can never be, you know--don't you remember what your favourite Longfellow says--'affection never is wasted'?--Florence, my love, just hand me 'Evangeline' there--I want you to listen to it, Mr. Stackpole--here it is--

'Talk not of wasted affection; affection never was wasted; If it enrich not the heart of another, its waters returning Back to their springs shall fill them full of refreshment. That which the fountain sends forth returns again to the fountain.'"

"How very plain it is that was written by a man!" said Fleda.

"Why?" said Mr. Carleton laughing.

"I always thought it was so exquisite!" said Florence.

"I was so struck with it," said Constance, "that I have been looking ever since for an object to waste my affections upon."

"Hush, Constance!" said her mother. "Don't you like it, Mr. Carleton?"

"I should like to hear Miss Ringgan's commentary," said Mr. Stackpole;--" I can't anticipate it. I should have said the sentiment was quite soft and tender enough for a woman."

"Don't you agree with it, Mr. Carleton," repeated Mrs. Evelyn.

"I beg leave to second Mr. Stackpole's motion," he said smiling.

"Fleda my dear, you must explain yourself,--the gentlemen are at a stand."

"I believe, Mrs. Evelyn," said Fleda smiling and blushing,--I am of the mind of the old woman who couldn't bear to see anything wasted."

"But the assertion is that it isn't wasted," said Mr. Stackpole.

"'That which the fountain sends forth returns again to the fountain,'" said Mrs. Evelyn.

"Yes, to flood and lay waste the fair growth of nature," said Fleda with a little energy, though her colour rose and rose higher.

"Did it never occur to you, Mrs. Evelyn, that the streams which fertilize as they flow do but desolate if their course be checked?"

"But your objection lies only against the author's figure," said Mr. Stackpole;--"come to the fact."

"I was speaking as he did, sir, of the fact under the figure--I did not mean to separate them."

Both the gentlemen were smiling, though with very different expression.

"Perhaps," said Mr. Carleton, "the writer was thinking of a gentler and more diffusive flow of kind feeling, which however it may meet with barren ground and raise no fruit there, is sure in due time to come back, heaven-refined, to refresh and replenish its source."

"Perhaps so," said Fleda with a very pleased answering look,--"I do not recollect how it is brought in--I may have answered rather Mrs. Evelyn than Mr. Longfellow."

"But granting that it is an error," said Mr. Stackpole, "as you understood it,--what shews it to have been made by a man?"

"Its utter ignorance of the subject, sir."

"You think they never waste their affections?" said he.

"By no means! but I think they rarely waste so much in any one direction as to leave them quite impoverished."

"Mr. Carleton, how do you bear that, sir?" said Mrs. Evelyn. "Will you let such an assertion pass unchecked?"

"I would not if I could help it, Mrs. Evelyn."

"That isn't saying much for yourself," said Constance;--"but Fleda my dear, where did you get such an experience of waste and desolation?"

"Oh, 'man is a microcosm,' you know," said Fleda lightly.

"But you make it out that only one-half of mankind can appropriate that axiom," said Mr. Stackpole. "How can a woman know men's hearts so well?"

"On the principle that the whole is greater than a part?" said Mr. Carleton smiling.

"I'll sleep upon that before I give my opinion," said Mr. Stackpole. "Mrs. Evelyn, good-evening!--"

"Well Mr. Carleton!" said Constance, "you have said a great deal for women's minds."

"Some women's minds," he said with a smile.

"And some men's minds," said Fleda. "I was speaking only in the general."

Her eye half unconsciously reiterated her meaning as she shook hands with Mr. Carleton. And without speaking a word for other people to hear, his look and smile in return were more than an answer. Fleda sat for some time after he was gone trying to think what it was in eye and lip which had given her so much pleasure. She could not make out anything but approbation,--the look of loving approbation that one gives to a good child; but she thought it had also something of that quiet intelligence--a silent communication of sympathy which the others in company could not share.

She was roused from her reverie by Mrs. Evelyn.

"Fleda my dear, I am writing to your aunt Lucy--have you any message to send?"

"No Mrs. Evelyn--I wrote myself to-day."

And she went back to her musings.

"I am writing about you, Fleda," said Mrs. Evelyn, again in a few minutes.

"Giving a good account, I hope, ma'am," said Fleda smiling.

"I shall tell her I think sea-breezes have an unfavourable effect upon you," said Mrs. Evelyn;--"that I am afraid you are growing pale; and that you have clearly expressed yourself in favour of a garden at Queechy rather than any lot in the city--or anywhere else;--so she had better send for you home immediately."

Fleda tried to find out what the lady really meant; but Mrs. Evelyn's delighted amusement did not consist with making the matter very plain. Fleda's questions did nothing but aggravate the cause of them, to her own annoyance; so she was fain at last to take her light and go to her own room.

She looked at her flowers again with a renewal of the first pleasure and of the quieting influence the giver of them had exercised over her that evening; thought again how very kind it was of him to send them, and to choose them so; how strikingly he differed from other people; how glad she was to have seen him again, and how more than glad that he was so happily changed from his old self. And then from that change and the cause of it, to those higher, more tranquilizing, and sweetening influences that own no kindred with earth's dust and descend like the dew of heaven to lay and fertilize it. And when she laid herself down to sleep it was with a spirit grave but simply happy; every annoyance and unkindness as unfelt now as ever the parching heat of a few hours before when the stars are abroad.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

Chapter XXXVII

A snake bedded himself under the threshold of a country house.

L'Estrange.

To Fleda's very great satisfaction Mr. Thorn was not seen again for several days. It would have been to her very great comfort too if he could have been permitted to die out of mind as well as out of sight; but he was brought up before her "lots of times," till poor Fleda almost felt as if she was really in the moral neighbourhood of the Dead Sea, every natural growth of pleasure was so withered under the barren spirit of raillery. Sea-breezes were never so disagreeable since winds blew; and nervous and fidgety again whenever Mr. Carleton was present, Fleda retreated to her work and the table and withdrew herself as much as she could from notice and conversation; feeling humbled,--feeling sorry and vexed and ashamed, that such ideas should have been put into her head, the absurdity of which, she thought, was only equalled by their needlessness. "As much as she could" she withdrew; but that was not entirely; now and then interest made her forget herself, and quitting her needle she would give eyes and attention to the principal speaker as frankly as he could have desired. Bad weather and bad roads for those days put riding out of the question.

One morning she was called down to see a gentleman, and came eschewing in advance the expected image of Mr. Thorn. It was a very different person.

"Charlton Rossitur! My dear Charlton, how do you do? Where did you come from?"

"You had better ask me what I have come for," he said laughing as he shook hands with her.

"What have you come for?"

"To carry you home."

"Home!" said Fleda.

"I am going up there for a day or two, and mamma wrote me I had better act as your escort, which of course I am most willing to do. See what mamma says to you."

"When are you going, Charlton?" said Fleda as she broke the seal of the note he gave her.

"To-morrow morning."

"That is too sudden a notice, Capt. Rossitur," said Mrs. Evelyn. "Fleda will hurry herself out of her colour, and then your mother will say there is something in sea-breezes that isn't good for her; and then she will never trust her within reach of them again,--which I am sure Miss Ringgan would be sorry for."

Fleda took her note to the window, half angry with herself that a kind of banter in which certainly there was very little wit should have power enough to disturb her. But though the shaft might be a slight one it was winged with a will; the intensity of Mrs. Evelyn's enjoyment in her own mischief gave it all the force that was wanting. Fleda's head was in confusion; she read her aunt's note three times over before she had made up her mind on any point respecting it.

"My Dearest Fleda,

Charlton is coming home for a day or two--hadn't you better take the opportunity to return with him? I feel as if you had been long away, my dear child--don't you feel so too? Your uncle is very desirous of seeing you; and as for Hugh and me we are but half ourselves. I would not still say a word about your coming home if it were for your good to stay; but I fancy from something in Mrs. Evelyn's letter that Queechy air will by this time do you good again; and opportunities of making the journey are very uncertain. My heart has grown lighter since I gave it leave to expect you. Yours, my darling,

L. R.

"P.S. I will write to Mrs. E. soon."

"What string has pulled these wires that are twitching me home?" thought Fleda, as her eyes went over and over the words which the feeling of the lines of her face would alone have told her were unwelcome. And why unwelcome?--"One likes to be moved by fair means and not by foul," was the immediate answer. "And besides, it is very disagreeable to be taken by surprise. Whenever, in any matter of my staying or going, did aunt Lucy have any wish but my pleasure?" Fleda mused a little while; and then with a perfect understanding of the machinery that had been at work, though an extremely vague and repulsed notion of the spring that had moved it, she came quietly out from her window and told Charlton she would go with him.

"But not to-morrow?" said Mrs. Evelyn composedly. "You will not hurry her off so soon as that, Capt. Rossitur?"

"Furloughs are the stubbornest things in the world, Mrs. Evelyn; there is no spirit of accommodation about them. Mine lies between to-morrow morning and one other morning some two days thereafter; and you might as soon persuade Atlas to change his place. Will you be ready, coz?"

"I will be ready," said Fleda; and her cousin departed.

"Now my dear Fleda" said Mrs. Evelyn, but it was with that funny face, as she saw Fleda standing thoughtfully before the fire,--you must be very careful in getting your things together--"

"Why, Mrs. Evelyn?"

"I am afraid you will leave something behind you, my love."

"I will take care of that, ma'am, and that I may I will go and see about it at once."

Very busy till dinner-time; she would not let herself stop to think about anything. At dinner Mr. Evelyn openly expressed his regrets for her going and his earnest wishes that she would at least stay till the holidays were over.

"Don't you know Fleda better, papa," said Florence, "than to try to make her alter her mind? When she says a thing is determined upon, I know there is nothing to do but to submit, with as good a grace as you can."

"I tried to make Capt. Rossitur leave her a little longer," said Mrs. Evelyn; "but he says furloughs are immovable, and his begins to-morrow morning--so he was immovable too. I should keep her notwithstanding, though, if her aunt Lucy hadn't sent for her."

"Well see what she wants, and come back again," said Mr. Evelyn.

"Thank you, sir," said Fleda smiling gratefully,--"I think not this winter."

"There are two or three of my friends that will be confoundedly taken aback," said Mr. Evelyn, carefully helping himself to gravy.

"I expect that an immediate depopulation of New York will commence," said Constance,--"and go on till the heights about Queechy are all thickly settled with elegant country-seats,--which is the conventional term for a species of mouse trap!"

"Hush, you baggage!" said her father. "Fleda, I wish you could spare her a little of your common-sense, to go through the world with."

"Papa thinks, you see, my dear, that you have more than enough--which is not perhaps precisely the compliment he intended."

"I take the full benefit of his and yours," said Fleda smiling.

After dinner she had just time to run down to the library to bid Dr. Gregory good-bye; her last walk in the city. It wasn't a walk she enjoyed much.

"Going to-morrow," said he. "Why I am going to Boston in a week--you had better stay and go with me."

"I can't now, uncle Orrin--I am dislodged--and you know there is nothing to do then but to go."

"Come and stay with me till next week."

But Fleda said it was best not, and went home to finish her preparations.

She had no chance till late, for several gentlemen spent the evening with them. Mr. Carleton was there part of the time, but he was one of the first to go; and Fleda could not find an opportunity to say that she should not see him again. Her timidity would not allow her to make one. But it grieved her.

At last she escaped to her own room, where most of her packing was still to do. By the time half the floor and all the bed was strewn with neat-looking piles of things, the varieties of her modest wardrobe, Florence and Constance came in to see and talk with her, and sat down on the floor too; partly perhaps because the chairs were all bespoken in the service of boxes and baskets, and partly to follow what seemed to be the prevailing style of things.

"What do you suppose has become of Mr. Thorn?" said Constance. "I have a presentiment that you will find him cracking nuts sociably with Mr. Rossitur or drinking one of aunt Lucy's excellent cups of coffee--in comfortable expectation of your return."

"If I thought that I should stay here," said Fleda. "My dear, those were my cups of coffee!"

"I wish I could make you think it then," said Constance.

"But you are glad to go home, aren't you, Fleda?" said Florence.

"She isn't!" said her sister. "She knows mamma contemplates making a grand entertainment of all the Jews as soon as she is gone. What does mamma mean by that, Fleda?--I observe you comprehend her with most invariable quickness."

"I should be puzzled to explain all that your mother means," said Fleda gently, as she went on bestowing her things in the trunk. "No--I am not particularly glad to go home--but I fancy it is time. I am afraid I have grown too accustomed to your luxury of life, and want knocking about to harden me a little."

"Harden you!" said Constance. "My dear Fleda, you are under a delusion. Why should any one go through an indurating process?--will you inform me?"

"I don't say that every one should," said Fleda,--"but isn't it well for those whose lot does not lie among soft things?"

There was extreme sweetness and a touching insinuation in her manner, and both the young ladies were silent for sometime thereafter watching somewhat wistfully the gentle hands and face that were so quietly busy; till the room was cleared again and looked remarkably empty with Fleda's trunk standing in the middle of it. And then reminding them that she wanted some sleep to fit her for the hardening process and must therefore send them away, she was left alone.

One thing Fleda had put off till then--the care of her bunch of flowers. They were beautiful still. They had given her a very great deal of pleasure; and she was determined they should be left to no servant's hands to be flung into the street. If it had been summer she was sure she could have got buds from them; as it was, perhaps she might strike some cuttings; at all events they should go home with her. So carefully taking them out of the water and wrapping the ends in some fresh earth she had got that very afternoon from her uncle's garden, Fleda bestowed them in the corner of her trunk that she had left for them, and went to bed, feeling weary in body, and in mind to the last degree quiet.

In the same mind and mood she reached Queechy the next afternoon. It was a little before January--just the same time that she had come home last year. As then, it was a bright day, and the country was again covered thick with the unspotted snow; but Fleda forgot to think how bright and fresh it was. Somehow she did not feel this time quite so glad to find herself there. It had never occurred to her so strongly before that Queechy could want anything.

This feeling flew away before the first glimpse of her aunt's smile, and for half an hour after Fleda would have certified that Queechy wanted nothing. At the end of that time came in Mr. Rossitur. His greeting of Charlton was sufficiently unmarked; but eye and lip wakened when he turned to Fleda.

"My dear child," he said, holding her face in both his hands,--how lovely you have grown!"

"That's only because you have forgotten her, father," said Hugh laughing.

It was a very lovely face just then. Mr. Rossitur gazed into it a moment and again kissed first one cheek and then the other, and then suddenly withdrew his hands and turned away, with an air--Fleda could not tell what to make of it--an air that struck her with an immediate feeling of pain; somewhat as if for some cause or other he had nothing to do with her or her loveliness. And she needed not to see him walk the room for three minutes to know that Michigan agencies had done nothing to lighten his brow or uncloud his character. If this had wanted confirmation Fleda would have found it in her aunt's face. She soon discovered, even in the course of the pleasant talkative hours before supper, that it was not brightened as she had expected to find it by her uncle's coming home; and her ears now caught painfully the occasional long breath, but half smothered, which told of a burden upon the heart but half concealed. Fleda supposed that Mr. Rossitur's business affairs at the West must have disappointed him; and resolved not to remember that Michigan was in the map of North America.

Still they talked on, through the afternoon and evening, all of them except him; he was moody and silent. Fleda felt the cloud overshadow sadly her own gayety; but Mrs. Rossitur and Hugh were accustomed to it, and Charlton was much too tall a light to come under any external obscuration whatever. He was descanting brilliantly upon the doings and prospects at Fort Hamilton where he was stationed, much to the entertainment of his mother and brother. Fleda could not listen to him while his father was sitting lost in something not half so pleasant as sleep in the corner of the sofa. Her eyes watched him stealthily till she could not bear it any longer. She resolved to bring the power of her sunbeam to bear, and going round seated herself on the sofa close by him and laid her hand on his arm. He felt it immediately. The arm was instantly drawn away to be put around her and Fleda was pressed nearer to his side, while the other hand took hers; and his lips were again on her forehead.

"And how do you like me for a farmer, uncle Rolf?" she said looking up at him laughingly, and then fearing immediately that she had chosen her subject ill. Not from any change in his countenance however,--that decidedly brightened up. He did not answer at once.

"My child--you make me ashamed of mankind!"

"Of the dominant half of them, sir, do you mean?" said Charlton,--"or is your observation a sweeping one?"

"It would sweep the greatest part of the world into the background, sir," answered his father dryly, "if its sense were the general rule."

"And what has Fleda done to be such a besom of desolation?"

Fleda's laugh set everybody else a going, and there was immediately more life and common feeling in the society than had been all day. They all seemed willing to shake off a weight, and even Fleda, in the endeavour to chase the gloom that hung over others, as it had often happened, lost half of her own.

"But still I am not answered," said Charlton when they were grave again. "What has Fleda done to put such a libel upon mankind?"

"You should call it a label, as Dr. Quackenboss does," said Fleda in a fresh burst,--"he says he never would stand being labelled!"--

"But come back to the point," said Charlton,--"I want to know what is the label in this case, that Fleda's doings put upon those of other people?"

"Insignificance," said his father dryly.

"I should like to know how bestowed," said Charlton.

"Don't enlighten him, uncle Rolf," said Fleda laughing,--"let my doings remain in safe obscurity,--please!"

"I stand as a representative of mankind," said Charlton, "and I demand an explanation."

"Look at what this slight frame and delicate nerves have been found equal to, and then tell me if the broad shoulders of all your mess would have borne half the burden or their united heads accomplished a quarter the results."

He spoke with sufficient depth of meaning, though now with no unpleasant expression. But Charlton notwithstanding rather gathered himself up.

"O uncle Rolf," said Fleda gently,--"nerves and muscles haven't much to do with it--after all you know I have just served the place of a mouth-piece. Seth was the head, and good Earl Douglass the hand."

"I am ashamed of myself and of mankind," Mr. Rossitur repeated, "when I see what mere weakness can do, and how proudly valueless strength is contended to be. You are looking, Capt. Rossitur,--but after all a cap and plume really makes a man taller only to the eye."

"When I have flung my plume in anybody's face, sir," said Charlton rather hotly, "it will be time enough to throw it back again."

Mrs. Rossitur put her hand on his arm and looked her remonstrance.

"Are you glad to be home again, dear Fleda?" she said turning to her.

But Fleda was making some smiling communications to her uncle and did not seem to hear.

"Fleda does it seem pleasant to be here again?"

"Very pleasant, dear aunt Lucy--though I have had a very pleasant visit too."

"On the whole you do not wish you were at this moment driving out of town in Mr. Thorn's cabriolet?" said her cousin.

"Not in the least," said Fleda coolly. "How did you know I ever did such a thing?"

"I wonder what should bring Mr. Thorn to Queechy at this time of year," said Hugh.

Fleda started at this confirmation of Constance's words; and what was very odd, she could not get rid of the impression that Mr. Rossitur had started too. Perhaps it was only her own nerves, but he had certainly taken away the arm that was round her.

"I suppose he has followed Miss Ringgan," said Charlton gravely.

"No," said Hugh, "he has been here some little time."

"Then he preceded her, I suppose, to see and get the sleighs in order."

"He did not know I was coming," said Fleda.

"Didn't!"

"No--I have not seen him for several days."

"My dear little cousin," said Charlton laughing,--"you are not a witch in your own affairs, whatever you may be in those of other people."

"Why, Charlton?"

"You are no adept in the art of concealment."

"I have nothing to conceal," said Fleda. "How do you know he is here, Hugh?"

"I was anxiously asked the other day," said Hugh with a slight smile, "whether you had come home; and then told that Mr. Thorn was in Queechy. There is no mistake about it, for my imformant had actually seen him, and given him the direction to Mr. Plumfield's, for which he was inquiring."

"The direction to Mr. Plumfield's!" said Fleda.

"What's your old friend Mr. Carleton doing in New York?" said Charlton.

"Is he there still?" said Mrs. Rossitur.

"As large as life," answered her son.

"Which, though you might not suppose it, aunt Lucy, is about the height of Capt. Rossitur, with--I should judge--a trifle less weight."

"Your eyes are observant!" said Charlton.

"Of a good many things," said Fleda lightly.

"He is not my height by half an inch," said Charlton;--"I am just six feet without my boots."

"An excellent height!" said Fleda,--"'your six feet was ever the only height.'"

"Who said that?" said Charlton.

"Isn't it enough that I say it?"

"What's he staying here for?"

"I don't know really," said Fleda. "It's very difficult to tell what people do things for."

"Have you seen much of him?" said Mrs. Rossitur.

"Yes ma'am--a good deal--he was often at Mrs. Evelyn's."

"Is he going to marry one of her daughters?"

"Oh no!" said Fleda smiling,--"he isn't thinking of such a thing;--not in America--I don't know what he may do in England."

"No!" said Charlton.--"I suppose he would think himself contaminated by matching with any blood in this hemisphere."

"You do him injustice," said Fleda, colouring;--"you do not know him, Charlton."

"You do?"

"Much better than that."

"And he is not one of the most touch-me-not pieces of English birth and wealth that ever stood upon their own dignity?"

"Not at all!" said Fleda;--"how people may be misunderstood!--he is one of the most gentle and kind persons I ever saw."

"To you!"

"To everybody that deserves it."

"Humph!--And not proud?"

"No, not as you understand it,"--and she felt it was very difficult to make him understand it, as the discovery involved a very offensive implication;--"he is too fine a character to be proud."

"That is arguing in a circle with a vengeance!" said Charlton.

"I know what you are thinking of," said Fleda, "and I suppose it passes for pride with a great many people who cannot comprehend it--he has a singular power of quietly rebuking wrong, and keeping impertinence at a distance--where Capt. Rossitur, for instance, I suppose, would throw his cap in a man's face, Mr. Carleton's mere silence would make the offender doff his and ask pardon."

The manner in which this was said precluded all taking offence.

"Well," said Charlton shrugging his shoulders,--"then I don't know what pride is--that's all!"

"Take care, Capt. Rossitur," said Fleda laughing,--"I have heard of such a thing as American pride before now."

"Certainly!" said Charlton, "and I'm quite willing--but it never reaches quite such a towering height on our side the water."

"I am sure I don't know how that may be," said Fleda, "but I know I have heard a lady, an enlightened, gentle-tempered American lady, so called,--I have heard her talk to a poor Irish woman with whom she had nothing in the world to do, in a style that moved my indignation--it stirred my blood!--and there was nothing whatever to call it out. 'All the blood of all the Howards,' I hope would not have disgraced itself so."

"What business have you to 'hope' anything about it?"

"None--except from the natural desire to find what one has a right to look for. But indeed I wouldn't take the blood of all the Howards for any security--pride as well as high-breeding is a thing of natural not adventitious growth--it belongs to character, not circumstance."

"Do you know that your favourite Mr. Carleton is nearly connected with those same Howards, and quarters their arms with his own?"

"I have a very vague idea of the dignity implied in that expression of 'quartering arms,' which comes so roundly out of your mouth, Charlton," said Fleda laughing. "No, I didn't know it. But in general I am apt to think that pride is a thing which reverses the usual rules of architecture, and builds highest on the narrowest foundations."

"What do you mean?"

"Never mind," said Fleda,--"if a meaning isn't plain it isn't worth looking after. But it will not do to measure pride by its supposed materials. It does not depend on them but on the individual. You everywhere see people assert that most of which they feel least sure, and then it is easy for them to conclude that where there is so much more of the reality there must be proportionably more of the assertion. I wish some of our gentlemen, and ladies, who talk of pride where they see and can see nothing but the habit of wealth--I wish they could see the universal politeness with which Mr. Carleton returns the salutes of his inferiors. Not more respectfully they lift their hats to him than he lifts his to them--unless when he speaks."

"You have seen it?"

"Often."

"Where?"

"In England--at his own place--among his own servants and dependents. I remember very well--it struck even my childish eyes."

"Well, after all, that is nothing still but a refined kind of haughtiness."

"It is a kind that I wish some of our Americans would copy," said Fleda.

"But dear Fleda," said Mrs. Rossitur, "all Americans are not like that lady you were talking of--it would be very unfair to make her a sample. I don't think I ever heard any one speak so in my life--you never heard me speak so."

"Dear aunt Lucy!--no,--I was only giving instance for instance. I have no idea that Mr. Carleton is a type of Englishmen in general--I wish he were. But I think it is the very people that cry out against superiority, who are the most happy to assert their own where they can; the same jealous feeling that repines on the one hand, revenges itself on the other."

"Superiority of what kind?" said Charlton stiffly.

"Of any kind--superiority of wealth, or refinement, or name, or standing. Now it does not follow that an Englishman is proud because he keeps liveried servants, and it by no means follows that an American lacks the essence of haughtiness because he finds fault with him for doing so."

"I dare say some of our neighbours think we are proud," said Hugh, "Because we use silver forks instead of steel."

"Because we're too good for steel forks, you ought to say," said Fleda. "I am sure they think so. I have been given to understand as much. Barby, I believe, has a good opinion of us and charitably concludes that we mean right; but some other of our country friends would think I was far gone in uppishness if they knew that I never touch fish with a steel knife; and it wouldn't mend the matter much to tell them that the combination of flavours is disagreeable to me--it hardly suits the doctrine of liberty and equality that my palate should be so much nicer than theirs."

"Absurd!" said Charlton.

"Very," said Fleda; "but on which side, in all probability, is the pride?"

"It wasn't for liveried servants that I charged Mr. Carleton," said her cousin. "How do the Evelyns like this paragon of yours?"

"O everybody likes him," said Fleda smiling,--"except you and your friend Mr. Thorn."

"Thorn don't like him, eh?"

"I think not."

"What do you suppose is the reason?" said Charlton gravely.

"I don't think Mr. Thorn is particularly apt to like anybody," said Fleda, who knew very well the original cause of both exceptions but did not like to advert to it.

"Apparently you don't like Mr. Thorn?" said Mr. Rossitur, speaking for the first time.

"I don't know who does, sir, much,--except his mother."

"What is he?"

"A man not wanting in parts, sir, and with considerable force of character,--but I am afraid more for ill than for good. I should be very sorry to trust him with anything dear to me."

"How long were you in forming that opinion?" said Charlton looking at her curiously.

"It was formed, substantially, the first evening I saw him, and I hare never seen cause to alter it since."

The several members of the family therewith fell into a general muse, with the single exception of Hugh, whose eyes and thoughts seemed to be occupied with Fleda's living presence. Mr. Rossitur then requested that breakfast might be ready very early--at six o'clock.

"Six o'clock!" exclaimed Mrs. Rossitur.

"I have to take a long ride, on business, which must be done early in the day."

"When will you be back?"

"Not before night-fall."

"But going on another business journey!" said Mrs. Rossitur. "You have but just these few hours come home from one."

"Cannot breakfast be ready?"

"Yes, uncle Rolf," said Fleda bringing her bright face before him,--"ready at half-past five if you like--now that I am to the fore, you know."

He clasped her to his breast and kissed her again; but with a face so very grave that Fleda was glad nobody else saw it.

Then Charlton went, averring that he wanted at least a night and a half of sleep between two such journeys as the one of that day and the one before him on the next,--especially as he must resign himself to going without anything to eat. Him also Fleda laughingly promised that precisely half an hour before the stage time a cup of coffee and a roll should be smoking on the table, with whatever substantial appendages might be within the bounds of possibility, or the house.

"I will pay you for that beforehand with a kiss," said he.

"You will do nothing of the kind," said Fleda stepping back;--"a kiss is a favour taken, not given; and I am entirely ignorant what you have done to deserve it."

"You make a curious difference between me and Hugh," said Charlton, half in jest, half in earnest.

"Hugh is my brother, Capt. Rossitur," said Fleda smiling,--and that is an honour you never made any pretensions to."

"Come, you shall not say that any more," said he, taking the kiss that Fleda had no mind to give him.

Half laughing, but with eyes that were all too ready for something else, she turned again to Hugh when his brother had left the room and looked wistfully in his face, stroking back the hair from his temples with a caressing hand.

"You are just as you were when I left you!--" she said, with lips that seemed too unsteady to say more, and remained parted.

"I am afraid so are you," he replied;--"not a bit fatter. I hoped you would be."

"What have you been smiling at so this evening?"

"I was thinking how well you talked."

"Why Hugh!--You should have helped me--I talked too much."

"I would much rather listen," said Hugh. "Dear Fleda, what a different thing the house is with you in it!"

Fleda said nothing, except an inexplicable little shake of her head which said a great many things; and then she and her aunt were left alone. Mrs. Rossitur drew her to her bosom with a look so exceeding fond that its sadness was hardly discernible. It was mingled however with an expression of some doubt.

"What has made you keep so thin?"

"I have been very well, aunt Lucy,--thinness agrees with me."

"Are you glad to be home again, dear Fleda?"

"I am very glad to be with you, dear aunt Lucy!"

"But not glad to be home?"

"Yes I am," said Fleda,--"but somehow--I don't know--I believe I have got a little spoiled--it is time I was at home I am sure.--I shall be quite glad after a day or two, when I have got into the works again. I am glad now, aunt Lucy."

Mrs. Rossitur seemed unsatisfied, and stroked the hair from Fleda's forehead with an absent look.

"What was there in New York that you were so sorry to leave?"

"Nothing ma'am, in particular,"--said Fleda brightly,--"and I am not sorry, aunt Lucy--I tell you I am a little spoiled with company and easy living--I am glad to be with you again."

Mrs. Rossitur was silent.

"Don't you get up to uncle Rolf's breakfast to-morrow, aunt Lucy."

"Nor you."

"I sha'n't unless I want to--but there'll be nothing for you to do, and you must just lie still. We will all have our breakfast together when Charlton has his."

"You are the veriest sunbeam that ever came into a house," said her aunt kissing her.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

Chapter XXXVIII

My flagging soul flies under her own pitch.

Dryden.

Fleda mused as she went up stairs whether the sun were a luminous body to himself or no, feeling herself at that moment dull enough. Bright, was she, to others? nothing seemed bright to her. Every old shadow was darker than ever. Her uncle's unchanged gloom,--her aunt's unrested face,--Hugh's unaltered delicate sweet look, which always to her fancy seemed to write upon his face, "Passing away!"--and the thickening prospects whence sprang the miasm that infected the whole moral atmosphere--alas, yes!--"Money is a good thing," thought Fleda;--"and poverty need not be a bad thing, if people can take it right;--but if they take it wrong!--"

With a very drooping heart indeed she went to the window. Her old childish habit had never been forgotten; whenever the moon or the stars were abroad Fleda rarely failed to have a talk with them from her window. She stood there now, looking out into the cold still night, with eyes just dimmed with tears--not that she lacked sadness enough, but she did lack spirit enough to cry. It was very still;--after the rattle and confusion of the city streets, that extent of snow-covered country where the very shadows were motionless--the entire absence of soil and of disturbance--the rest of nature--the breathlessness of the very wind--all preached a quaint kind of sermon to Fleda. By the force of contrast they told her what should be;--and there was more yet,--she thought that by the force of example they shewed what might be. Her eyes had not long travelled over the familiar old fields and fences before she came to the conclusion that she was home in good time,--she thought she had been growing selfish, or in danger of it; and she made up her mind she was glad to be back again among the rough things of life, where she could do so much to smooth them for others and her own spirit might grow to a polish it would never gain in the regions of ease and pleasure. "To do life's work!"--thought Fleda clasping her hands,--"no matter where--and mine is here. I am glad I am in my place again--I was forgetting I had one."

It was a face of strange purity and gravity that the moon shone upon, with no power to brighten as in past days; the shadows of life were upon the child's brow. But nothing to brighten it from within? One sweet strong ray of other light suddenly found its way through the shadows and entered her heart. "The Lord reigneth! let the earth be glad!"--and then the moonbeams pouring down with equal ray upon all the unevennesses of this little world seemed to say the same thing over and over. Even so! Not less equally his providence touches all,--not less impartially his faithfulness guides. "The Lord reigneth! let the earth be glad!" There was brightness in the moonbeams now that Fleda could read this in them; she went to sleep, a very child again, with these words for her pillow.

It was not six, and darkness yet filled the world, when Mr. Rossitur came down stairs and softly opened the sitting-room door. But the home fairy had been at work; he was greeted with such a blaze of cheerfulness as seemed to say what a dark place the world was everywhere but at home; his breakfast-table was standing ready, well set and well supplied; and even as he entered by one door Fleda pushed open the other and came in from the kitchen, looking as if she had some strange spirit-like kindred with the cheery hearty glow which filled both rooms.

"Fleda!--you up at this hour!"

"Yes, uncle Rolf," she said coming forward to put her hands upon his,--"you are not sorry to see me, I hope."

But he did not say he was glad; and he did not speak at all; he busied himself gravely with some little matters of preparation for his journey. Evidently the gloom of last night was upon him yet. But Fleda had not wrought for praise, and could work without encouragement; neither step nor hand slackened, till all she and Barby had made ready was in nice order on the table and she was pouring out a cup of smoking coffee.

"You are not fit to be up," said Mr. Rossitur, looking at her,---"you are pale now, Put yourself in that arm chair, Fleda, and go to sleep--I will do this for myself."

"No indeed, uncle Rolf," she answered brightly,--"I have enjoyed getting breakfast very much at this out-of-the-way hour, and now I am going to have the pleasure of seeing you eat it. Suppose you were to take a cup of coffee instead of my shoulder."

He took it and sat down, but Fleda found that the pleasure of seeing him was to be a very qualified thing. He ate like a business man, in unbroken silence and gravity; and her cheerful words and looks got no return. It became an effort at length to keep either bright. Mr. Rossitur's sole remarks during breakfast were to ask if Charlton was going back that day, and if Philetus was getting the horse ready.

Mr. Skillcorn had been called in good time by Barby at Fleda's suggestion, and coming down stairs had opined discontentedly that "a man hadn't no right to be took out of bed in the morning afore he could see himself." But this, and Barby's spirited reply, that "there was no chance of his doing that at any time of day, so it was no use to wait,"--Fleda did not repeat. Her uncle was in no humour to be amused.

She expected almost that he would go off without speaking to her. But he came up kindly to where she stood watching him.

"You must bid me good-bye for all the family, uncle Rolf, as I am the only one here," she said laughing.

But she was sure that the embrace and kiss which followed were very exclusively for her. They made her face almost as sober as his own.

"There will be a blessing for you," said he,--"if there is a blessing anywhere!"

"If, uncle Rolf?" said Fleda, her heart swelling to her eyes.

He turned away without answering her.

Fleda sat down in the easy chair then and cried. But that lasted very few minutes; she soon left crying for herself to pray for him, that he might have the blessing he did not know. That did not stop tears. She remembered the poor man sick of the palsy who was brought in by friends to be healed, and that "Jesus seeing their faith, said unto the sick of the palsy, 'Son, thy sins be forgiven thee.'" It was a handle that faith took hold of and held fast while love made its petition. It was all she could do, she thought; she never could venture to speak to her uncle on the subject.

Weary and tired, tears and longing at length lost themselves in sleep. When she awaked she found the daylight broadly come, little King in her lap, the fire, instead of being burnt out, in perfect preservation, and Barby standing before it and looking at her.

"You ha'n't got one speck o' good by this journey to New York," was Miss Elster's vexed salutation.

"Do you think so?" said Fleda rousing herself. "I wouldn't venture to say as much as that, Barby."

"If you have, 'tain't in your cheeks," said Barby decidedly. "You look just as if you was made of anything that wouldn't stand wear, and that isn't the way you used to look."

"I have been up a good while without breakfast--my cheeks will be a better colour when I have had that, Barby--they feel pale."

The second breakfast was a cheerfuller thing. But when the second traveller was despatched, and the rest fell back upon their old numbers, Fleda was very quiet again. It vexed her to be so, but she could not change her mood. She felt as if she had been whirled along in a dream and was now just opening her eyes to daylight and reality. And reality--she could not help it--looked rather dull after dreamland. She thought it was very well she was waked up; but it cost her some effort to appear so. And then she charged herself with ingratitude, her aunt and Hugh were so exceedingly happy in her company.

"Earl Douglass is quite delighted with the clover hay, Fleda," said Hugh, as the three sat at an early dinner.

"Is he?" said Fleda.

"Yes,--you know he was very unwilling to cure it in your way--and he thinks there never was anything like it now."

"Did you ever see finer ham, Fleda?" inquired her aunt. "Mr. Plumfield says it could not be better."

"Very good!" said Fleda, whose thoughts had somehow got upon Mr. Carleton's notions about female education and were very busy with them.

"I expected you would have remarked upon our potatoes, before now," said Hugh. "These are the Elephants--have you seen anything like them in New York?"

"There cannot be more beautiful potatoes," said Mrs. Rossitur.

"We had not tried any of them before you went away, Fleda, had we?"

"I don't know, aunt Lucy!--no, I think not."

"You needn't talk to Fleda, mother," said Hugh laughing,--"she is quite beyond attending to all such ordinary matters--her thoughts have learned to take a higher flight since she has been in New York."

"It is time they were brought down then," said Fleda smiling; "but they have not learned to fly out of sight of home, Hugh."

"Where were they, dear Fleda?" said her aunt.

"I was thinking a minute ago of something I heard talked about in New York, aunt Lucy; and afterwards I was trying to find out by what possible or imaginable road I had got round to it."

"Could you tell?"

Fleda said no, and tried to bear her part in the conversation. But she did not know whether to blame the subjects which had been brought forward, or herself, for her utter want of interest in them. She went into the kitchen feeling dissatisfied with both.

"Did you ever see potatoes that would beat them Elephants?" said Barby.

"Never, certainly," said Fleda with a most involuntary smile.

"I never did," said Barby. "They beat all, for bigness and goodness both. I can't keep 'em together. There's thousands of 'em, and I mean to make Philetus eat 'em for supper--such potatoes and milk is good enough for him, or anybody. The cow has gained on her milk wonderful, Fleda, since she begun to have them roots fed out to her."

"Which cow?" said Fleda.

"Which cow?--why--the blue cow--there ain't none of the others that's giving any, to speak of," said Barby looking at her. "Don't you know,--the cow you said them carrots should be kept for?"

Fleda half laughed, as there began to rise up before her the various magazines of vegetables, grain, hay, and fodder, that for many weeks had been deliciously distant from her imagination.

"I made butter for four weeks, I guess, after you went away," Barby went on;--"just come in here and see--and the carrots makes it as yellow and sweet as June--I churned as long as I had anything to churn, and longer; and now we live on cream--you can make some cheesecakes just as soon as you're a mind to,--see! ain't that doing pretty well?--and fine it is,--put your nose down to it--"

"Bravely, Barby--and it is very sweet."

"You ha'n't left nothing behind you in New York, have you?" said Barby when they returned to the kitchen.

"Left anything! no,--what do you think I have left?"

"I didn't know but you might have forgotten to pack up your memory," said Barby dryly.

Fleda laughed; and then in walked Mr. Douglass.

"How d'ye do?" said he. "Got back again. I heerd you was hum, and so I thought I'd just step up and see. Been getting along pretty well?"

Fleda answered, smiling internally at the wide distance between her "getting along" and his idea of it.

"Well the hay's first-rate!" said Earl, taking off his hat and sitting down in the nearest chair;--"I've been feedin' it out, now, for a good spell, and I know what to think about it. We've been feedin' it out ever since some time this side o' the middle o' November;--I never see nothin' sweeter, and I don't want to see nothin' sweeter than it is! and the cattle eats it like May roses--they don't know how to thank you enough for it."

"To thank you, Mr. Douglass," said Fleda smiling.

"No," said he in a decided manner,--"I don't want no thanks for it, and I don't deserve none! 'Twa'n't thanks to none of my fore-sightedness that the clover wa'n't served the old way. I didn't like new notions--and I never did like new notions! and I never see much good of 'em;--but I suppose there's some on 'em that ain't moon-shine--my woman says there is, and I suppose there is, and after this clover hay I'm willin' to allow that there is! It's as sweet as a posie if you smell to it,--and all of it's cured alike; and I think, Fleda, there's a quarter more weight of it. I ha'n't proved it nor weighed it, but I've an eye and a hand as good as most folks', and I'll qualify to there being a fourth part more weight of it;--and it's a beautiful colour. The critters is as fond of it as you and I be of strawberries."

"Well that is satisfactory, Mr. Douglass," said Fleda. "How is Mrs. Douglass? and Catherine?"

"I ha'n't heerd 'em sayin' nothin' about it," he said,--"and if there was anythin' the matter I suppose they'd let me know. There don't much go wrong in a man's house without his hearin' tell of it. So I think. Maybe 'tain't the same in other men's houses. That's the way it is in mine."

"Mrs. Douglass would not thank you," said Fleda, wholly unable to keep from laughing. Earl's mouth gave way a very little, and then he went on.

"How be you?" he said. "You ha'n't gained much, as I see. I don't see but you're as poor as when you went away."

"I am very well, Mr. Douglass."

"I guess New York ain't the place to grow fat. Well, Fleda, there ha'n't been seen in the whole country, or by any man in it, the like of the crop of corn we took off that 'ere twenty-acre lot--they're all beat to hear tell of it--they won't believe me--Seth Plumfield ha'n't shewed as much himself--he says you're the best farmer in the state."

"I hope he gives you part of the credit, Mr. Douglass;--how much was there?

"I'll take my share of credit whenever I can get it," said Earl, "and I think it's right to take it, as long as you ha'n't nothing to be ashamed of; but I won't take no more than my share; and I will say I thought we was a goin' to choke the corn to death when we seeded the field in that way.--Well, there's better than two thousand bushel--more or less--and as handsome corn as I want to see;--there never was handsomer corn. Would you let it go for five shillings?--there's a man I've heerd of wants the hull of it."

"Is that a good price, Mr. Douglass? Why don't you ask Mr. Rossitur?"

"Do you s'pose Mr. Rossitur knows much about it?" inquired Earl with a curious turn of feature, between sly and contemptuous. "The less he has to do with that heap of corn the bigger it'll be--that's my idee, I ain't agoin' to ask him nothin'--you may ask him what you like to ask him--but I don't think he'll tell you much that'll make you and me wiser in the matter o' farmin'."

"But now that he is at home, Mr. Douglass, I certainly cannot decide without speaking to him."

"Very good!" said Earl uneasily,--"'tain't no affair of mine--as you like to have it so you'll have it--just as you please!--But now, Fleda, there's another thing I want to speak to you about--I want you to let me take hold of that 'ere piece of swamp land and bring it in. I knew a man that fixed a piece of land like that and cleared nigh a thousand dollars off it the first year."

"Which piece?" said Fleda.

"Why you know which 'tis--just the other side of the trees over there--between them two little hills. There's six or seven acres of it--nothin' in the world but mud and briars--will you let me take hold of it? I'll do the hull job if you'll give me half the profits for one year.--Come over and look at it, and I'll tell you--come! the walk won't hurt you, and it ain't fur."

All Fleda's inclinations said no, but she thought it was not best to indulge them. She put on her hood and went off with him; and was treated to a long and most implicated detail of ways and means, from which she at length disentangled the rationale of the matter and gave Mr. Douglass the consent he asked for, promising to gain that of her uncle.

The day was fair and mild, and in spite of weariness of body a certain weariness of mind prompted Fleda when she had got rid of Earl Douglass, to go and see her aunt Miriam. She went questioning with herself all the way for her want of good-will to these matters. True, they were not pleasant mind-work; but she tried to school herself into taking them patiently as good life-work. She had had too much pleasant company and enjoyed too much conversation, she said. It had unfitted her for home duties.

Mrs. Plumfield, she knew, was no better. But her eye found no change for the worse. The old lady was very glad to see her, and very cheerful and kind as usual.

"Well are you glad to be home again?" said aunt Miriam after a pause in the conversation.

"Everybody asks me that question," said Fleda smiling.

"Perhaps for the same reason I did--because they thought you didn't look very glad."

"I am glad--" said Fleda,--"but I believe not so glad as I was last year."

"Why not

"I suppose I had a pleasanter time, I have got a little spoiled, I believe, aunt Miriam," Fleda said with glistening eyes and an altering voice,--"I don't take up my old cares and duties kindly at first--I shall be myself again in a few days."

Aunt Miriam looked at her with that fond, wistful, benevolent look which made Fleda turn away.

"What has spoiled you, love?"

"Oh!--easy living and pleasure, I suppose--" Fleda said, but said with difficulty.

"Pleasure?"--said aunt Miriam, putting one arm gently round her. Fleda struggled with herself.

"It is so pleasant, aunt Miriam, to forget these money cares!--to lift one's eyes from the ground and feel free to stretch out one's hand--not to be obliged to think about spending sixpences, and to have one's mind at liberty for a great many things that I haven't time for here. And Hugh--and aunt Lucy--somehow things seem sad to me--"

Nothing could be more sympathizingly kind than the way in which aunt Miriam brought Fleda closer to her side and wrapped her in her arms.

"I am very foolish--" Fleda whispered,--"I am very wrong--I shall get over it--"

"I am afraid, dear Fleda," Mrs. Plumfield said after a pause,--"it isn't best for us always to be without sad things--though I cannot bear to see your dear little face look sad--but it wouldn't fit us for the work we have to do--it wouldn't fit us to stand where I stand now and look forward happily."

"Where you stand?" said Fleda raising her head.

"Yes, and I would not be without a sorrow I have ever known. They are bitter now, when they are present,--but the sweet fruit comes after."

"But what do you mean by 'where you stand'?"

"On the edge of life."

"You do not think so, aunt Miriam!" Fleda said with a terrified look. "You are not worse?"

"I don't expect ever to be better," said Mrs. Plumfield with a smile. "Nay, my love," she said, as Fleda's head went down on her bosom again,--"not so! I do not wish it either, Fleda. I do not expect to leave you soon, but I would not prolong the time by a day. I would not have spoken of it now if I had recollected myself,--but I am so accustomed to think and speak of it that it came out before I knew it.--My darling child, it is nothing to cry for."

"I know it, aunt Miriam."

"Then don't cry," whispered aunt Miriam, when she had stroked Fleda's head for five minutes.

"I am crying for myself, aunt Miriam," said Fleda. "I shall be left alone."

"Alone, my dear child?"

"Yes--there is nobody but you that I feel I can talk to." She would have added that she dared not say a word to Hugh for fear of troubling him. But that pain at her heart stopped her, and pressing her hands together she burst into bitter weeping.

"Nobody to talk to but me?" said Mrs. Plumfield after again soothing her for some time,--"what do you mean, dear?"

"O--I can't say anything to them at home," said Fleda with a forced effort after voice;--"and you are the only one I can look to for help--Hugh never says anything--almost never--anything of that kind;--he would rather others should counsel him--"

"There is one friend to whom you may always tell everything, with no fear of wearying him,--of whom you may at all times ask counsel without any danger of being denied,--more dear, more precious, more rejoiced in, the more he is sought unto. Thou mayest lose friend after friend, and gain more than thou losest,--in that one."

"I know it," said Fleda;--"but dear aunt Miriam, don't you think human nature longs for some human sympathy and help too?"

"My sweet blossom!--yes--" said Mrs. Plumfield caressingly stroking her bowed head,--"but let him do what he will;--he hath said, 'I will never leave thee nor forsake thee.'"

"I know that too," said Fleda weeping. "How do people bear life that do not know it!"

"Or that cannot take the comfort of it. Thou art not poor nor alone while thou hast him to go to, little Fleda.--And you are not losing me yet, my child; you will have time, I think, to grow as well satisfied as I with the prospect."

"Is that possible,--for others?" said Fleda.

The mother sighed, as her son entered the room.

He looked uncommonly grave, Fleda thought. That did not surprise her, but it seemed that it did his mother, for she asked an explanation. Which however he did not give.

"So you've got back from New York," said he.

"Just got back, yesterday," said Fleda.

"Why didn't you stay longer?"

"I thought my friends at home would be glad to see me," said Fleda. "Was I mistaken?"

He made no answer for a minute, and then said,

"Is your uncle at home?"

"No," said Fleda, "he went away this morning on business, and we do not expect him home before night-fall. Do you want to see him?"

"No," said Seth very decidedly. "I wish he had staid in Michigan, or gone further west,--anywhere that Queechy'd never have heard of him."

"Why what has he done?" said Fleda, looking up half laughing and half amazed at her cousin. But his face was disagreeably dark, though she could not make out that the expression was one of displeasure. It did not encourage her to talk.

"Do you know a man in New York of the name of Thorn?" he said after standing still a minute or two.

"I know two men of that name," said Fleda, colouring and wondering.

"Is either on 'em a friend of your'n?"

"No."

"He ain't?" said Mr. Plumfield, giving the forestick on the fire an energetic kick which Fleda could not help thinking was mentally aimed at the said New Yorker.

"No certainly. What makes you ask?"

"O," said Seth dryly, "folks' tongues will find work to do;--I heerd say something like that--I thought you must take to him more than I do."

"Why what do you know of him?"

"He's been here a spell lately," said Seth,--"poking round; more for ill than for good, I reckon."

He turned and quitted the room abruptly; and Fleda bethought her that she must go home while she had light enough.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

Chapter XXXIX

Nothing could be more obliging and respectful than the lion's letter was, in appearance; but there was death in the true intent.--L'Estrange.

The landscape had grown more dark since Fleda came up the hill,--or else the eyes that looked at it. Both probably. It was just after sundown, and that is a very sober time of day in winter, especially in some states of the weather. The sun had left no largesses behind him; the scenery was deserted to all the coming poverty of night and looked grim and threadbare already. Not one of the colours of prosperity left. The land was in mourning dress; all the ground and even the ice on the little mill-ponds a uniform spread of white, while the hills were draperied with black stems, here just veiling the snow, and there on a side view making a thick fold of black. Every little unpainted workshop or mill shewed uncompromisingly all its forbidding sharpness of angle and outline darkening against the twilight. In better days perhaps some friendly tree had hung over it, shielding part of its faults and redeeming the rest. Now nothing but the gaunt skeleton of a friend stood there,--doubtless to bud forth again as fairly as ever should the season smile. Still and quiet all was, as Fleda's spirit, and in too good harmony with it; she resolved to choose the morning to go out in future. There was as little of the light of spring or summer in her own mind as on the hills, and it was desirable to catch at least a cheering reflection. She could rouse herself to no bright thoughts, try as she would; the happy voices of nature that used to speak to her were all hushed,--or her ear was deaf; and her eye met nothing that did not immediately fall in with the train of sad images that were passing through her mind and swell the procession. She was fain to fall back and stay herself upon these words, the only stand-by she could lay hold of;--

"To them who by patient continuance in well-doing seek for glory, and honour, and immortality, eternal life!"--

They toned with the scene and with her spirit exactly; they suited the darkening sky and the coming night; for "glory, honour, and immortality" are not now. They filled Fleda's mind, after they had once entered, and then nature's sympathy was again as readily given; each barren stern-looking hill in its guise of present desolation and calm expectancy seemed to echo softly, "patient continuance in well-doing." And the tears trembled then in Fleda's eyes; she had set her face, as the old Scotchman says, "in the right airth. [Footnote: quarter, direction]" "How sweet is the wind that bloweth out of the airth where Christ is!"

"Well," said Hugh, who entered the kitchen with her, "you have been late enough. Did you have a pleasant walk? You are pale, Fleda!"

"Yes, it was pleasant," said Fleda with one of her winning smiles,--"a kind of pleasant. But have you looked at the hills? They are exactly as if they had put on mourning--nothing but white and black--a crape-like dressing of black tree-stems upon the snowy face of the ground, and on every slope and edge of the hills the crape lies in folds. Do look at it when you go out! It has a most curious effect."

"Not pleasant, I should think," said Hugh.

"You'll see it is just as I have described it. No--not pleasant exactly--the landscape wants the sun to light it up just now--it is cold and wilderness looking. I think I'll take the morning in future. Whither are you bound?"

"I must go over to Queechy Run for a minute, on business--I'll be home before supper--I should have been back by this time but Philetus has gone to bed with a headache and I had to take care of the cows."

"Three times and out," said Barby. "I won't try again. I didn't know as anything would be too powerful for his head; but I find as sure as he has apple dumplin' for dinner he goes to bed for his supper and leaves the cows without none. And then Hugh has to take it. It has saved so many Elephants--that's one thing."

Hugh went out by one door and Fleda by another entered the breakfast-room; the one generally used in winter for all purposes. Mrs. Rossitur sat there alone in an easy-chair; and Fleda no sooner caught the outline of her figure than her heart sank at once to an unknown depth,--unknown before and unfathomable now. She was cowering over the fire,--her head sunk in her hands, so crouching, that the line of neck and shoulders instantly conveyed to Fleda the idea of fancied or felt degradation--there was no escaping it--how, whence, what, was all wild confusion. But the language of mere attitude was so unmistakable,--the expression of crushing pain was so strong, that after Fleda had fearfully made her way up beside her she could do no more. She stood there tongue-tied, spell-bound, present to nothing but a nameless chill of fear and heart-sinking. She was afraid to speak--afraid to touch her aunt, and abode motionless in the grasp of that dread for minutes. But Mrs. Rossitur did not stir a hair, and the terror of that stillness grew to be less endurable than any other.

Fleda spoke to her,--it did not win the shadow of a reply,--again and again. She laid her hand then upon Mrs. Rossitur's shoulder, but the very significant answer to that was a shrinking gesture of the shoulder and neck, away from the hand. Fleda growing desperate then implored an answer in words--prayed for an explanation--with an intensity of distress in voice and manner, that no one whose ears were not stopped with a stronger feeling could have been deaf to; but Mrs. Rossitur would not raise her head, nor slacken in the least the clasp of the fingers that supported it, that of themselves in their relentless tension spoke what no words could. Fleda's trembling prayers were in vain, in vain. Poor nature at last sought a woman's relief in tears--but they were heart-breaking, not heart-relieving tears--racking both mind and body more than they ought to bear, but bringing no cure. Mrs. Rossitur seemed as unconscious of her niece's mute agony as she had been of her agony of words; and it was from Fleda's own self-recollection alone that she fought off pain and roused herself above weakness to do what the time called for.

"Aunt Lucy," she said laying her hand upon her shoulder, and this time the voice was steady and the hand would not be shaken off,--"Aunt Lucy,--Hugh will be in presently--hadn't you better rouse yourself and go up stairs--for awhile?--till you are better?--and not let him see you so?--"

How the voice was broken and quivering before it got through!

The answer this time was a low long-drawn moan, so exceeding plaintive and full of pain that it made Fleda shake like an aspen. But after a moment she spoke again, bearing more heavily with her hand to mark her words.

"I am afraid he will be in presently--he ought not to see you now--Aunt Lucy, I am afraid it might do him an injury he might not get over--"

She spoke with the strength of desperation; her nerves were unstrung by fear, and every joint weakened so that she could hardly support herself. She had not however spoken in vain; one or two convulsive shudders passed over her aunt, and then Mrs. Rossitur suddenly rose turning her face from Fleda; neither would she permit her to follow her. But Fleda thought she had seen that one or two unfolded letters or papers of some kind, they looked like letters, were in her lap when she raised her head.

Left alone, Fleda sat down on the floor by the easy-chair and rested her head there; waiting,--she could do nothing else,--till her extreme excitement of body and mind should have quieted itself. She had a kind of vague hope that time would do something for her before Hugh came in. Perhaps it did; for though she lay in a kind of stupor, and was conscious of no change whatever, she was able when she heard him coming to get up and sit in the chair in an ordinary attitude. But she looked like the wraith of herself an hour ago.

"Fleda!" Hugh exclaimed as soon as he looked from the fire to her face,--"what is the matter?--what is the matter with you?"

"I am not very well--I don't feel very well," said Fleda speaking almost mechanically,--"I shall have a headache to-morrow--"

"Headache! But you look shockingly! what has happened to you? what is the matter, Fleda?"

"I am not ill--I shall be better by and by. There is nothing the matter with me that need trouble you, dear Hugh."

"Nothing the matter with you!" said he,--and Fleda might see how she looked in the reflection of his face,--"where's mother?"

"She is up-stairs--you mustn't go to her, Hugh!" said Fleda laying a detaining hand upon him with more strength than she thought she had,--"I don't want anything."

"Why mustn't I go to her?"

"I don't think she wants to be disturbed--"

"I must disturb her--"

"You musn't!--I know she don't--she isn't well--something has happened to trouble her--"

"What?"

"I don't know."

"And is that what has troubled you too?" said Hugh, his countenance changing as he gained more light on the subject;--"what is it, dear Fleda?"

"I don't know," repeated Fleda, bursting into tears. Hugh was quiet enough now, and sat down beside her, subdued and still, without even desiring to ask a question. Fleda's tears flowed violently, for a minute,--then she checked them, for his sake; and they sat motionless, without speaking to one another, looking into the fire and letting it die out before them into embers and ashes, neither stirring to put a hand to it. As the fire died the moonlight streamed in,--how very dismal the room looked!

"What do you think about having tea?" said Barby opening the door of the kitchen.

Neither felt it possible to answer her.

"Mr. Rossitur ain't come home, is he?"

"No," said Fleda shuddering.

"So I thought, and so I told Seth Plumfield just now--he was asking for him--My stars! ha'n't you no fire here? what did you let it go out for?"

Barby came in and began to build it up.

"It's growing cold I can tell you, so you may as well have something in the chimney to look at. You'll want it shortly if you don't now."

"Was Mr. Plumfield here, did you say, Barby?"

"Yes."

"Why didn't he come in?"

"I s'pose he hadn't a mind to," said Barby. "Twa'n't for want of being asked. I did the civil thing by him if he didn't by me;--but he said he didn't want to see anybody but Mr. Rossitur."

Did not wank to see anybody but Mr. Rossitur, when he had distinctly said he did not wish to see him? Fleda felt sick, merely from the mysterious dread which could fasten upon nothing and therefore took in everything.

"Well what about tea?" concluded Barby, when the fire was going according to her wishes. "Will you have it, or will you wait longer?"

"No--we won't wait--we will have it now, Barby," said Fleda, forcing herself to make the exertion; and she went to the window to put down the hangings.

The moonlight was very bright, and Fleda's eye was caught in the very act of letting down the curtain, by a figure in the road slowly passing before the courtyard fence. It paused a moment by the horse-gate, and turning paced slowly back till it was hid behind the rose acacias. There was a clump of shrubbery in that corner thick enough even in winter to serve for a screen. Fleda stood with the curtain in her hand, half let down, unable to move, and feeling almost as if the very currents of life within her were standing still too. She thought, she was almost sure, she knew the figure; it was on her tongue to ask Hugh to come and look, but she checked that. The form appeared again from behind the acacias, moving with the same leisurely pace the other way towards the horse-gate. Fleda let down the curtain, then the other two quietly, and then left the room and stole noiselessly out at the front door, leaving it open that the sound of it might not warn Hugh what she was about, and stepping like a cat down the steps ran breathlessly over the snow to the courtyard gate. There waited, shivering in the cold but not feeling it for the cold within,--while the person she was watching stood still a lew moments by the horse-gate and came again with leisurely steps towards her.

"Seth Plumfield!"--said Fleda, almost as much frightened at the sound of her own voice as he was. He stopped immediately, with a start, and came up to the little gate behind which she was standing. But said nothing.

"What are you doing here?"

"You oughtn't to be out without anything on," said he,--"you're fixing to take your death."

He had good reason to say so. But she gave him no more heed than the wind.

"What are you waiting here for? What do you want?"

"I have nothing better to do with my time," said he;--"I thought I'd walk up and down here a little. You go in!"

"Are you waiting to see uncle Rolf?" she said, with teeth chattering.

"You mustn't stay out here," said he earnestly--"you're like nothing but a spook this minute--I'd rather see one, or a hull army of 'em. Go in, go in!"

"Tell me if you want to see him, Seth."

"No I don't--I told you I didn't."

"Then why are you waiting for him?"

"I thought I'd see if he was coming home to-night--I had a word to say if I could catch him before he got into the house."

"Is he coming home to-night?" said Fleda.

"I don't know!" said he looking at her. "Do you?"

Fleda burst open the gate between them and putting her hands on his implored him to tell her what was the matter. He looked singularly disturbed; his fine eye twinkled with compassion; but his face, never a weak one, shewed no signs of yielding now.

"The matter is," said he pressing hard both her hands, "that you are fixing to be down sick in your bed by to-morrow. You mustn't stay another second."

"Come in then."

"No--not to-night."

"You won't tell me!--"

"There is nothing I can tell you--Maybe there'll be nothing to tell--Run in, run in, and keep quiet."

Fleda hurried back to the house, feeling that she had gone to the limit of risk already. Not daring to show herself to Hugh in her chilled state of body and mind she went into the kitchen.

"Why what on earth's come over you?" was Barby's terrified ejaculation when she saw her.

"I have been out and got myself cold--"

"Cold!" said Barby,--"you're looking dreadful! What on earth ails you, Fleda?"

"Don't ask me, Barby," said Fleda hiding her face in her hands and shivering,--"I made myself very cold just now--Aunt Lucy doesn't feel very well and I got frightened," she added presently.

"What's the matter with her?"

"I don't know--if you'll make me a cup of tea I'll take it up to her, Barby."

"You put yourself down there," said Barby placing her with gentle force in a chair,--"you'll do no such a thing till I see you look as if there was some blood in you. I'll take it up myself."

But Fleda held her, though with a hand much too feeble indeed for any but moral suasion. It was enough. Barby stood silently and very anxiously watching her, till the fire had removed the outward chill at least. But even that took long to do, and before it was well done Fleda again asked for the cup of tea. Barby made it without a word, and Fleda went to her aunt with it, taking her strength from the sheer emergency. Her knees trembled under her as she mounted the stairs, and once a glimpse of those words flitted across her mind,--"patient continuance in well-doing." It was like a lightning flash in a dark night shewing the way one must go. She could lay hold of no other stay. Her mind was full of one intense purpose--to end the suspense.

She gently tried the door of her aunt's room; it was unfastened, and she went in. Mrs. Rossitur was lying on the bed; but her first mood had changed, for at Fleda's soft word and touch she half rose up and putting both arms round her waist laid her face against her. There were no tears still, only a succession of low moans, so inexpressibly weak and plaintive that Fleda's nature could hardly bear them without giving way. A more fragile support was never clung to. Yet her trembling fingers, in their agony moved caressingly among her aunt's hair and over her brow as she begged her--when she could, she was not able at first--to let her know the cause that was grieving her. The straightened clasp of Mrs. Rossitur's arms and her increased moaning gave only an answer of pain. But Fleda repeated the question. Mrs. Rossitur still neglecting it, then made her sit down upon the bed, so that she could lay her head higher, on Fleda's bosom; where she hid it, with a mingling of fondness given and asked, a poor seeking for comfort and rest, that wrung her niece's heart.

They sat so for a little time; Fleda hoping that her aunt would by degrees come to the point herself. The tea stood cooling on the table, not even offered; not wanted there.

"Wouldn't you feel better if you told me, dear aunt Lucy?" said Fleda, when they had been for a little while perfectly still. Even the moaning had ceased.

"Is your uncle come home?" whispered Mrs. Rossitur, but so low that Fleda could but half catch the words.

"Not yet."

"What o'clock is it?"

"I don't know--not early--it must be near eight.--Why?"

"You have not heard anything of him?"

"No--nothing."

There was silence again for a little, and then Mrs. Rossitur said in a low fearful whisper,

"Have you seen anybody round the house?"

Fleda's thoughts flew to Seth, with that nameless fear to which she could give neither shape nor direction, and after a moment's hesitation she said,

"What do you mean?"

"Have you?" said Mrs. Rossitur with more energy.

"Seth Plumfield was here a little while ago."

Her aunt had the clew that she had not, for with a half scream, half exclamation, she quitted Fleda's arms and fell back upon the pillows, turning from her and hiding her face there. Fleda prayed again for her confidence, as well as the weakness and the strength of fear could do; and Mrs. Rossitur presently grasping a paper that lay on the bed held it out to her, saying only as Fleda was about quitting the room, "Bring me a light."

Fleda left the letter there and went down to fetch one. She commanded herself under the excitement and necessity of the moment,--all but her face; that terrified Barby exceedingly. But she spoke with a strange degree of calmness; told her Mrs. Rossitur was not alarmingly ill; that she did not need Barby's services and wished to see nobody but herself and didn't want a fire. As she was passing through the hall again Hugh came out of the sitting-room to ask after his mother. Fleda kept the light from her face.

"She does not want to be disturbed--I hope she will be better to-morrow."

"What is the matter, Fleda?"

"I don't know yet."

"And you are ill yourself, Fleda!--you are ill!--"

"No--I shall do very well--never mind me. Hugh, take some tea--I will be down by and by."

He went back, and Fieda went up stairs. Mrs. Rossitur had not moved. Fleda set down the light and herself beside it, with the paper her aunt had given her. It was a letter.

"Queechy, Thursday--

"It gives me great concern, my dear madam, to be the means of bringing to you a piece of painful information--but it cannot be long kept from your knowledge and you may perhaps learn it better from me than by any other channel. May I entreat you not to be too much alarmed, since I am confident the cause will be of short duration.

"Pardon me for what I am about to say.

"There are proceedings entered into against Mr. Rossitur--there are writs out against him--on the charge of having, some years ago, endorsed my father's name upon a note of his own giving.--Why it has lain so long I cannot explain. There is unhappily no doubt of the fact.

"I was in Queechy some days ago, on business of my own, when I became aware that this was going on--my father had made no mention of it to me. I immediately took strict measures--I am happy to say I believe with complete success,--to have the matter kept a profound secret. I then made my way as fast as possible to New York to confer on the subject with the original mover of it--unfortunately I was disappointed. My father had left for a neighbouring city, to be absent several days. Finding myself too late to prevent, as I had hoped to do, any open steps from being taken at Queechy, I returned hither immediately to enforce secrecy of proceedings and to assure you, madam, that my utmost exertions shall not be wanting to bring the whole matter to a speedy and satisfactory termination. I entertain no doubt of being able to succeed entirely--even to the point of having the whole transaction remain unknown and unsuspected by the world. It is so entirely as yet, with the exception of one or two law-officers whose silence I have means of procuring.

"May I confess that I am not entirely disinterested? May the selfishness of human nature ask its reward, and own its moving spring? May I own that my zeal in this cause is quickened by the unspeakable excellencies of Mr. Rossitur's lovely niece--which I have learned to appreciate with my whole heart--and be forgiven?--And may I hope for the kind offices and intercession of the lady I have the honour of addressing, with her niece Miss Ringgan, that my reward,--the single word of encouragement I ask for,--may be given me?--Having that, I will promise anything--I will guaranty the success of any enterprise, however difficult, to which she may impel me,--and I will undertake that the matter which furnishes the painful theme of this letter shall never more be spoken or thought of, by the world, or my father, or by Mrs. Rossitur's

obliged, grateful, and faithful servant, Lewis Thorn."

Fleda felt as she read as if icicles were gathering about her heart. The whirlwind of fear and distress of a little while ago which could take no definite direction, seemed to have died away and given place to a dead frost--the steady bearing down of disgrace and misery, inevitable, unmitigable, unchangeable; no lessening, no softening of that blasting power, no, nor ever any rising up from under it; the landscape could never be made to smile again. It was the fall of a bright star from their home constellation; but alas! the star was fallen long ago, and the failure of light which they had deplored was all too easily accounted for; yet now they knew that no restoration was to be hoped. And the mother and son--what would become of them? And the father--what would become of him? what further distress was in store?--Public disgrace?--and Fleda bowed her head forward on her clasped hands with the mechanical, vain endeavour to seek rest or shelter from thought. She made nothing of Mr. Thorn's professions; she took only the facts of his letter; the rest her eye had glanced over as if she had no concern with it, and it hardly occurred to her that she had any. But the sense of his words she had taken in, and knew, better perhaps than her aunt, that there was nothing to look for from his kind offices. The weight on her heart was too great just then for her to suspect as she did afterwards that he was the sole mover of the whole affair.

As the first confusion of thought cleared away, two images of distress loomed up and filled the view,--her aunt, broken under the news, and Hugh still unknowing to them; her own separate existence Fleda was hardly conscious of. Hugh especially,--how was he to be told, and how could he bear to hear? with his most sensitive conformation of both physical and moral nature. And if an arrest should take place there that night!--Fleda shuddered, and unable to go on thinking rose up and went to her aunt's bedside. It had not entered her mind till the moment she read Mr. Thorn's letter that Seth Plumfield was sheriff for the county. She was shaking again from head to foot with fear. She could not say anything--the touch of her lips to the throbbing temples, soft and tender as sympathy itself, was all she ventured.

"Have you heard anything of him?" Mrs. Rossitur whispered.

"No--I doubt if we do at all to-night."

There was a half breathed "Oh!--" of indescribable pain and longing; and with a restless change of position Mrs. Rossitur gathered herself up on the bed and sat with her head leaning on her knees. Fleda brought a large cloak and put it round her.

"I am in no danger," she said,--"I wish I were!"

Again Fleda's lips softly, tremblingly, touched her cheek.

Mrs. Rossitur put her arm round her and drew her down to her side, upon the bed; and wrapped half of the big cloak about her; and they sat there still in each other's arms, without speaking or weeping, while quarter after quarter of an hour passed away,--nobody knew how many. And the cold bright moonlight streamed in on the floor, mocking them.

"Go!" whispered Mrs. Rossitur at last,--"go down stairs and take care of yourself--and Hugh."

"Won't you come?"

Mrs. Rossitur shook her head.

"Mayn't I bring you something?--do let me!"

But Mrs. Rossitur's shake of the head was decisive. Fleda crawled off the bed, feeling as if a month's illness had been making its ravages upon her frame and strength. She stood a moment to collect her thoughts; but alas, thinking was impossible; there was a palsy upon her mind. She went into her own room and for a minute kneeled down,--not to form a petition in words, she was as much beyond that; it was only the mute attitude of appeal, the pitiful outward token of the mind's bearing, that could not be forborne, a silent uttering of the plea she had made her own in happy days. There was something of comfort in the mere feeling of doing it; and there was more in one or two words that even in that blank came to her mind;--"Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him;" and she again recollected that "Providence runneth not upon broken wheels." Nothing could be darker than the prospect before her, and these things did not bring light; but they gave her a sure stay to hold on by and keep her feet; a bit of strength to preserve from utterly fainting. Ah! the storehouse must be filled and the mind well familiarized with what is stored in it while yet the days are bright, or it will never be able to find what it wants in the dark.

Fleda first went into the kitchen to tell Barby to fasten the doors and not sit up.

"I don't believe uncle Rolf will be home to-night; but if he comes I will let him in."

Barby looked at her with absolutely a face of distress; but not daring to ask and not knowing how to propose anything, she looked in silence.

"It must be nine o'clock now," Fleda went on.

"And how long be you going to sit up?" said Barby.

"I don't know--a while yet."

"You look proper for it!" said Barby half sorrowfully and half indignantly;--"you look as if a straw would knock you down this minute. There's sense into everything. You catch me a going to bed and leaving you up! It won't do me no hurt to sit here the hull night; and I'm the only one in the house that's fit for it, with the exception of Philetus, and the little wit he has by day seems to forsake him at night. All the light that ever gets into his head, I believe, comes from the outside; as soon as ever that's gone he shuts up his shutters. He's been snoozing a'ready now this hour and a half. Go yourself off to bed, Fleda," she added with a mixture of reproach and kindness, "and leave me alone to take care of myself and the house too."

Fleda did not remonstrate, for Barby was as determined in her way as it was possible for anything to be. She went into the other room without a particle of notion what she should say or do.

Hugh was walking up and down the floor--a most unusual sign of perturbation with him. He met and stopped her as she came in.

"Fleda, I cannot bear it. What is the matter?--Do you know?'" he said as her eyes fell.

"Yes.----"

"What is it?"

She was silent and tried to pass on to the fire. But he stayed her.

"What is it?" he repeated.

"Oh I wish I could keep it from you!" said Fleda bursting into tears.

He was still a moment, and then bringing her to the arm-chair made her sit down, and stood himself before her, silently waiting, perhaps because he could not speak, perhaps from the accustomed gentle endurance of his nature. But Fleda was speechless too.

"You are keeping me in distress," he said at length.

"I cannot end the distress, dear Hugh," said Fleda.

She saw him change colour and he stood motionless still.

"Do you remember," said Fleda, trembling even to her voice,--"what Rutherford says about Providence 'not running on broken wheels'?"

He gave her no answer but the intent look of expectation. Its intentness paralyzed Fleda. She did not know how to go on. She rose from her chair and hung upon his shoulder.

"Believe it now, if you can--for oh, dear Hugh!--we have something to try it."

"It is strange my father don't come home," said he, supporting her with tenderness which had very little strength to help it,--"we want him very much."

Whether or not any unacknowledged feeling prompted this remark, some slight involuntary movement of Fleda's made him ask suddenly,

"Is it about him?"

He had grown deadly pale and Fleda answered eagerly,

"Nothing that has happened to-day--it is not anything that has happened to-day--he is perfectly well, I trust and believe."

"But it is about him?"

Fleda's head sank, and she burst into such an agony of tears that Hugh's distress was for a time divided.

"When did it happen, Fleda?"

"Years ago."

"And what?"

Fleda hesitated still, and then said,

"It was something he did, Hugh."

"What?"

"He put another person's name on the back of a note he gave."

She did not look up, and Hugh was silent for a moment.

"How do you know?"

"Mr. Thorn wrote it to aunt Lucy--it was Mr. Thorn's father."

Hugh sat down and leaned his head on the table. A long, long, time passed,--unmeasured by the wild coursing of thought to and fro. Then Fleda came and knelt down at the table beside him, and put her arm round his neck.

"Dear Hugh," she said--and if ever love and tenderness and sympathy could be distilled in tones, such drops were those that fell upon the mind's ear,--"can't you look up at me?"

He did then, but he did not give her a chance to look at him. He locked his arms about her, bringing her close to his breast; and for a few minutes, in utter silence, they knew what strange sweetness pure affection can mingle even in the communion of sorrow. There were tears shed in those minutes that, bitter as they seemed at the time, Memory knew had been largely qualified with another admixture.

"Dear Hugh," said Fleda,--"let us keep what we can--won't you go to bed and rest?"

He looked dreadfully as if he needed it. But the usual calmness and sweetness of his face was not altered;--it was only deepened to very great sadness. Mentally, Fleda thought, he had borne the shock better than his mother; for the bodily frame she trembled. He had not answered and she spoke again.

"You need it worse than I, poor Fleda"

"I will go too presently--I do not think anybody will be here tonight."

"Is--Are there--Is this what has taken him away?" said Hugh.

Her silence and her look told him, and then laying her cheek again alongside of his she whispered, how unsteadily, "We have only one help, dear Hugh."

They were still and quiet again for minutes, counting the pulses of pain; till Fleda came back to her poor wish "to keep what they could." She mixed a restorative of wine and water, which however little desired, she felt was necessary for both of them, and Hugh went up stairs. She staid a few minutes to prepare another glass with particular care for her aunt. It was just finished, and taking her candle she had bid Barby good-night, when there came a loud rap at the front door. Fleda set down candle and glass, from the quick inability to hold them as well as for other reasons; and she and Barby stood and looked at each other, in such a confusion of doubt and dread that some little time had passed before either stirred even her eyes. Barby then threw down the tongs with which she had begun to make preparations for covering up the fire and set off to the front.

"You mustn't open the door, Barby," cried Fleda, following her. "Come in here and let us look out of one of the windows."

Before this could be reached however, there was another prolonged repetition of the first thundering burst. It went through Fleda's heart, because of the two up stairs who must hear it.

Barby threw up the sash.

"Who's there?"

"Is this Mr. Rossitur's place?" enquired a gruff voice.

"Yes, it is."

"Well will you come round and open the door?"

"Who wants it open?"

"A lady wants it open?"

"A lady!--what lady?"

"Down yonder in the carriage."

"What lady? who is she?"

"I don't know who she is--she wanted to come to Mr. Rossitur's place--will you open the door for her?"

Barby and Fleda both now saw a carriage standing in the road.

"We must see who it is first," whispered Fleda.

"When the lady comes I'll open the door," was Barby's ultimatum.

The man withdrew to the carriage; and after a few moments of intense watching Fleda and Barby certainly saw something in female apparel enter the little gate of the court-yard and come up over the bright moonlit snow towards the house, accompanied by a child; while the man with whom they had had the interview came behind transformed into an unmistakeable baggage-carrier.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

Chapter XL

Zeal was the spring whence flowed her hardiment.

Fairfax.

Barby undid bolt and lock and Fleda met the traveller in the hall. She was a lady; her air and dress shewed that, though the latter was very plain.

"Does Mr. Rossitur live here?" was her first word.

Fleda answered it, and brought her visitor into the sitting room. But the light falling upon a form and face that had seen more wear and tear than time, gave her no clue as to the who or what of the person before her. The stranger's hurried look round the room seemed to expect something.

"Are they all gone to bed?"

"All but me," said Fleda.

"We have been delayed--we took a wrong road--we've been riding for hours to find the place--hadn't the right direction."--Then looking keenly at Fleda, from whose vision an electric spark of intelligence had scattered the clouds, she said;

"I am Marion Rossitur."

"I knew it!" said Fleda, with lips and eyes that gave her already a sister's welcome; and they were folded in each other's arms almost as tenderly and affectionately, on the part of one at least, as if there had really been the relationship between them. But more than surprise and affection struck Fleda's heart.

"And where are they all, Fleda? Can't I see them?"

"You must wait till I have prepared them--Hugh and aunt Lucy are not very well. I don't know that it will do for you to see them at all to-night, Marion."

"Not to-night! They are not ill?"

"No--only enough to be taken care of--not ill. But it would be better to wait"

"And my father?"

"He is not at home."

Marion exclaimed in sorrow, and Fleda to hide the look that she felt was on her face stooped down to kiss the child. He was a remarkably fine-looking manly boy.

"That is your cousin Fleda," said his mother.

"No--aunt Fleda," said the person thus introduced--"don't put me off into cousindom, Marion. I am uncle Hugh's sister--and so I am your aunt Fleda. Who are you?"

"Rolf Rossitur Schwiden."

Alas how wide are the ramifications of evil! How was what might have been very pure pleasure utterly poisoned and turned into bitterness. It went through Fleda's heart with a keen pang when she heard that name and looked on the very fair brow that owned it, and thought of the ineffaceable stain that had come upon both. She dared look at nobody but the child. He already understood the melting eyes that were making acquaintance with his, and half felt the pain that gave so much tenderness to her kiss, and looked at her with a grave face of awakening wonder and sympathy. Fleda was glad to have business to call her into the kitchen.

"Who is it?" was Barby's immediate question.

"Aunt Lucy's daughter."

"She don't look much like her!" said Barby intelligently.

"They will want something to eat, Barby."

"I'll put the kettle on. It'll boil directly. I'll go in there and fix up the fire."

A word or two more, and then Fleda ran up to speak to her aunt and Hugh.

Her aunt she found in a state of agitation that was frightful. Even Fleda's assurances, with all the soothing arts she could bring to bear were some minutes before they could in any measure tranquillize her. Fleda's own nerves were in no condition to stand another shock when she left her and went to Hugh's door. But she could get no answer from him though she spoke repeatedly.

She did not return to her aunt's room. She went down stairs and brought up Barby and a light from thence.

Hugh was lying senseless and white; not whiter than his adopted sister as she stood by his side. Her eye went to her companion.

"Not a bit of it!" said Barby--"he's in nothing but a faint--just run down stairs and get the vinegar bottle, Fleda--the pepper vinegar.--Is there any water here?--"

Fleda obeyed; and watched, she could do little more, the efforts of Barby, who indeed needed no help, with the cold water, the vinegar, and rubbing of the limbs. They were for sometime unsuccessful; the fit was a severe one; and Fleda was exceedingly terrified before any signs of returning life came to reassure her.

"Now you go down stairs and keep quiet!" said Barby, when Hugh was fairly restored and had smiled a faint answer to Fleda's kiss and explanations,--"Go, Fleda! you ain't fit to stand. Go and sit down some place, and I'll be along directly and see how the fire burns. Don't you s'pose Mis' Rossitur could come in and sit in this easy-chair a spell without hurting herself?"

It occurred to Fleda immediately that it might do more good than harm to her aunt if her attention were diverted even by another cause of anxiety. She gently summoned her, telling her no more than was necessary to fit her for being Hugh's nurse; and in a very few minutes she and Barby were at liberty to attend to other claims upon them. But it sank into her heart, "Hugh will not get over this!"--and when she entered the sitting-room, what Mr. Carleton years before had said of the wood-flower was come true in its fullest extent--"a storm-wind had beaten it to the ground."

She was able literally to do no more than Barby had said, sit down and keep herself quiet. Miss Elster was in her briskest mood; flew in and out; made up the fire in the sitting-room and put on the kettle in the kitchen, which she had been just about doing when called to see Hugh. The much-needed supper of the travellers must be still waited for; but the fire was burning now, the room was cosily warm and bright, and Marion drew up her chair with a look of thoughtful contentment. Fleda felt as if some conjuror had been at work here for the last few hours--the room looked so like and felt so unlike itself.

"Are you going to be ill too, Fleda?" said Marion suddenly. "You are looking--very far from well!"

"I shall have a headache to-morrow," said Fleda quietly. "I generally know the day beforehand."

"Does it always make you look so?"

"Not always--I am somewhat tired."

"Where is my father gone?"

"I don't know.--Rolf, dear," said Fleda bending forward to the little fellow who was giving expression to some very fidgety impatience,--"what is the matter? what do you want?"

The child's voice fell a little from its querulousness towards the sweet key in which the questions had been put, but he gave utterance to a very decided wish for "bread and butter."

"Come here," said Fleda, reaching out a hand and drawing him, certainly with no force but that of attraction, towards her easy-chair,--"come here and rest yourself in this nice place by me--see, there is plenty of room for you;--and you shall have bread and butter and tea, and something else too, I guess, just as soon as Barby can get it ready."

"Who is Barby?" was the next question, in a most uncompromising tone of voice.

"You saw the woman that came in to put wood on the fire--that was Barby--she is very good and kind and will do anything for you if you behave yourself."

The child muttered, but so low as to shew some unwillingness that his words should reach the ears that were nearest him, that "he wasn't going to behave himself."

Fleda did not choose to hear; and went on with composing observations till the fair little face she had drawn to her side was as bright as the sun and returned her smile with interest.

"You have an admirable talent at moral suasion, Fleda," said the mother half smiling;--"I wish I had it."

"You don't need it so much here."

"Why not?"

"It may do very well for me, but I think not so well for you."

"Why?--what do you mean? I think it is the only way in the world to bring up children--the only way fit for rational beings to be guided."

Fleda smiled, though the faintest indication that lips could give, and shook her head,--ever so little.

"Why do you do that?--tell me."

"Because in my limited experience," said Fleda as she passed her fingers through the boy's dark locks of hair,--"in every household where 'moral suasion' has been the law, the children have been the administrators of it. Where is your husband?"

"I have lost him--years ago--" said Marion with a quick expressive glance towards the child. "I never lost what I at first thought I had, for I never had it. Do you understand?"

Fleda's eyes gave a sufficient answer.

"I am a widow--these five years--in all but what the law would require," Marion went on. "I have been alone since then--except my child. He was two years old then; and since then I have lived such a life, Fleda!--"

"Why didn't you come home?"

"Couldn't--the most absolute reason in the world. Think of it!--Come home! It was as much as I could do to stay there!"

Those sympathizing eyes were enough to make her go on.

"I have wanted everything--except trouble. I have done everything--except ask alms. I have learned, Fleda, that death is not the worst form in which distress can come."

Fleda felt stung, and bent down her head to touch her lips to the brow of little Rolf.

"Death would have been a trifle!" said Marion. "I mean,--not that I should have wished to leave Rolf alone in the world; but if I had been left--I mean I would rather wear outside than inside mourning."

Fleda looked up again, and at her.

"O I was so mistaken, Fleda!" she said clasping her hands,--"so mistaken!--in everything;--so disappointed,--in all my hopes. And the loss of my fortune was the cause of it all."

Nay verily! thought Fleda; but she said nothing; she hung her head again; and Marion after a pause went on to question her about an endless string of matters concerning themselves and other people, past doings and present prospects, till little Rolf soothed by the uninteresting soft murmur of voices fairly forgot bread and butter and himself in a sound sleep, his head resting upon Fleda.

"Here is one comfort for you, Marion," she said looking down at the dark eyelashes which lay on a cheek rosy and healthy as ever seven years old knew;--"he is a beautiful child, and I am sure, a fine one."

"It is thanks to his beauty that I have ever seen home again," said his mother.

Fleda had no heart this evening to speak words that were not necessary; her eyes asked Marion to explain herself.

"He was in Hyde Park one day--I had a miserable lodging not far from it, and I used to let him go in there, because he must go somewhere, you know,--I couldn't go with him--"

"Why not?"

"Couldn't!--Oh Fleda!--I have seen changes!--He was there one afternoon, alone, and had got into difficulty with some bigger boys--a little fellow, you know,--he stood his ground man-fully, but his strength wasn't equal to his spirit, and they were tyrannizing over him after the fashion of boys, who are I do think the ugliest creatures in creation!" said Mme. Schwiden, not apparently reckoning her own to be of the same gender,--"and a gentleman who was riding by stopped and interfered and took him out of their hands, and then asked him his name,--struck I suppose with his appearance. Very kind, wasn't it? men so seldom bother themselves about what becomes of children, I suppose there were thousands of others riding by at the same time."

"Very kind," Fleda said.

"When he heard what his name was he gave his horse to his servant and walked home with Rolf; and the next day he sent me a note, speaking of having known my father and mother and asking permission to call upon me.--I never was so mortified, I think, in my life," said Marion after a moment's hesitation.

"Why?" said Fleda, not a little at a loss to follow out the chain of her cousin's reasoning.

"Why I was in such a sort of a place--you don't know, Fleda; I was working then for a fancy store-keeper, to support myself--living in a miserable little two rooms.--If it had been a stranger I wouldn't have cared so much, but somebody that had known us in different times--I hadn't a thing in the world to answer the note upon but a half sheet of letter paper."

Fleda's lips sought Rolf's forehead again, with a curious rush of tears and smiles at once. Perhaps Marion had caught the expression of her countenance, for she added with a little energy,

"It is nothing to be surprised at--you would have felt just the same; for I knew by his note, the whole style of it, what sort of a person it must be."

"My pride has been a good deal chastened," Fleda said gently.

"I never want mine to be, beyond minding everything," said Marion; "and I don't believe yours is. I don't know why in the world I did not refuse to see him--I had fifty minds to--but he had won Rolf's heart, and I was a little curious, and it was something strange to see the face of a friend, any better one than my old landlady, so I let him come."

"Was she a friend?" said Fleda.

"If she hadn't been I should not have lived to be here--the best soul that ever was; but still, you know, she could do nothing for me but be as kind as she could live;--this was something different. So I let him come, and he came the next day."

Fleda was silent, a little wondering that Marion should be so frank with her, beyond what she had ever been in former years; but as she guessed, Mme. Schwiden's heart was a little opened by the joy of finding herself at home and the absolute necessity of talking to somebody; and there was a further reason which Fleda could not judge of, in her own face and manner. Marion needed no questions and went on again after stopping a moment.

"I was so glad in five minutes,--I can't tell you, Fleda,--that I had let him come. I forget entirely about how I looked and the wretched place I was in. He was all that I had supposed, and a great deal more, but somehow he hadn't been in the room three minutes before I didn't care at all for all the things I had thought would trouble me. Isn't it strange what a witchery some people have to make you forget everything but themselves!"

"The reason is, I think, because that is the only thing they forget," said Fleda, whose imagination however was entirely busy with the singular number.

"I shall never forget him," said Marion. "He was very kind to me--I cannot tell how kind--though I never realized it till afterwards; at the time it always seemed only a sort of elegant politeness which he could not help. I never saw so elegant a person. He came two or three times to see me and he took Rolf out with him I don't know how often, to drive; and he sent me fruit--such fruit!--and game, and flowers; and I had not had anything of the kind, not even seen it, for so long--I can't tell you what it was to me. He said he had known my father and mother well when they were abroad."

"What, was his name?" said Fleda quickly.

"I don't know--he never told me--and I never could ask him. Don't you know there are some people you can't do anything with but just what they please? There wasn't the least thing like stiffness--you never saw anybody less stiff,--but I never dreamed of asking him questions except when he was out of sight. Why, do you know him?" she said suddenly.

"When you tell me who he was I'll tell you," said Fleda smiling.

"Have you ever heard this story before?"

"Certainly not!"

"He is somebody that knows us very well," said Marion, "for he asked after every one of the family in particular."

"But what had all this to do with your getting home?"

"I don't wonder you ask. The day after his last visit came a note saying that he owed a debt in my family which it had never been in his power to repay; that he could not give the enclosure to my father, who would not recognize the obligation; and that if I would permit him to place it in my hands I should confer a singular favour upon him."

"And what was the enclosure?"

"Five hundred pounds."

Fleda's head went down again and tears dropped fast upon little Rolf's shoulder.

"I suppose my pride has been a little broken too," Marion went on, "or I shouldn't have kept it. But then if you saw the person, and the whole manner of it--I don't know how I could ever have sent it back. Literally I couldn't, though, for I hadn't the least clue. I never saw or heard from him afterwards."

"When was this, Marion?"

"Last spring."

"Last spring!--then what kept you so long?"

"Because of the arrival of eyes that I was afraid of. I dared not make the least move that would show I could move. I came off the very first packet after I was free."

"How glad you must be!" said Fleda.

"Glad!--"

"Glad of what, mamma?" said Rolf, whose dreams the entrance of Barby had probably disturbed.

"Glad of bread and butter," said his mother; "wake up--here it is."

The young gentleman declared, rubbing his eyes, that he did not want it now; but however Fleda contrived to dispel that illusion, and bread and butter was found to have the same dulcifying properties at Queechy that it owns in all the rest of the world. Little Rolf was completely mollified after a hearty meal and was put with his mother to enjoy most unbroken slumbers in Fleda's room. Fleda herself, after a look at Hugh, crept to her aunt's bed; whither Barby very soon despatched Mrs. Rossitur, taking in her place the arm-chair and the watch with most invincible good-will and determination; and sleep at last took the joys and sorrows of that disturbed household into its kind custody.

Fleda was the first one awake, and was thinking how she should break the last news to her aunt, when Mrs. Rossitur put her arms round her and after a most affectionate look and kiss, spoke to what she supposed had been her niece's purpose.

"You want taking care of more than I do, poor Fleda!"

"It was not for that I came," said Fleda;--"I had to give up my room to the travellers."

"Travellers!--"

A very few words more brought out the whole, and Mrs. Rossitur sprang out of bed and rushed to her daughter's room.

Fleda hid her face in the bed to cry--for a moment's passionate indulgence in weeping while no one could see. But a moment was all. There was work to do and she must not disable herself. She slowly got up, feeling thankful that her headache did not announce itself with the dawn, and that she would be able to attend to the morning affairs and the breakfast, which was something more of a circumstance now with the new additions to the family. More than that she knew from sure signs she would not be able to accomplish.

It was all done and done well, though with what secret flagging of mind and body nobody knew or suspected. The business of the day was arranged, Barby's course made clear, Hugh visited and smiled upon; and then Fleda set herself down in the breakfast-room to wear out the rest of the day in patient suffering. Her little spaniel, who seemed to understand her languid step and faint tones and know what was coming, crept into her lap and looked up at her with a face of equal truth and affection; and after a few gentle acknowledging touches from the loved hand, laid his head on her knees, and silently avowed his determination of abiding her fortunes for the remainder of the day.

They had been there for some hours. Mrs. Rossitur and her daughter were gathered in Hugh's room; whither Rolf also after sundry expressions of sympathy for Fleda's headache, finding it a dull companion, had departed. Pain of body rising above pain of mind had obliged as far as possible even thought to be still; when a loud rap at the front door brought the blood in a sudden flush of pain to Fleda's face. She knew instinctively what it meant.

She heard Barby's distinct accents saying that somebody was "not well." The other voice was more smothered. But in a moment the door of the breakfast-room opened and Mr. Thorn walked in.

The intensity of the pain she was suffering effectually precluded Fleda from discovering emotion of any kind. She could not move. Only King lifted up his head and looked at the intruder, who seemed shocked, and well he might. Fleda was in her old headache position; bolt upright on the sofa, her feet on the rung of a chair while her hands supported her by their grasp upon the back of it. The flush had passed away leaving the deadly paleness of pain, which the dark rings under her eyes shewed to be well seated.

"Miss Ringgan!" said the gentleman, coming up softly as to something that frightened him,--"my dear Miss Fleda!--I am distressed!--You are very ill--can nothing be done to relieve you?"

Fleda's lips rather than her voice said, "Nothing."

"I would not have come in on any account to disturb you if I had known--I did not understand you were more than a trifle ill--"

Fleda wished he would mend his mistake, as his understanding certainly by this time was mended. But that did not seem to be his conclusion of the best thing to do.

"Since I am here,--can you bear to hear me say three words? without too much pain?--I do not ask you to speak"--

A faint whispered "yes" gave him leave to go on. She had never looked at him. She sat like a statue; to answer by a motion of her head was more than could be risked.

He drew up a chair and sat down, while King looked at him with eyes of suspicious indignation.

"I am not surprised," he said gently, "to find you suffering. I knew how your sensibilities must feel the shock of yesterday--I would fain have spared it you--I will spare you all further pain on the same score if possible--Dear Miss Ringgan, since I am here and time is precious may I say one word before I cease troubling you--take it for granted that you were made acquainted with the contents of my letter to Mrs. Rossitur?--with all the contents?--were you?"

Again Fleda's lips almost voicelessly gave the answer.

"Will you give me what I ventured to ask for?" said he gently,--"the permission to work for you? Do not trouble those precious lips to speak--the answer of these fingers will be as sure a warrant to me as all words that could be spoken that you do not deny my request."

He had taken one of her hands in his own. But the fingers lay with unanswering coldness and lifelessness for a second in his clasp and then were drawn away and took determinate hold of the chair-back. Again the flush came to Fleda's cheeks, brought by a sharp pain,--oh, bodily and mental too!--and after a moment's pause, with a distinctness of utterance that let him know every word, she said,

"A generous man would not ask it, sir."

Thorn sprang up, and several times paced the length of the room, up and down, before he said anything more. He looked at Fleda, but the flush was gone again, and nothing could seem less conscious of his presence. Pain and patience were in every line of her face, but he could read nothing more, except a calmness as unmistakably written. Thorn gave that face repeated glances as he walked, then stood still and read it at leisure. Then he came to her side again and spoke in a different voice.

"You are so unlike anybody else," he said, "that you shall make me unlike myself. I will do freely what I hoped to do with the light of your smile before me. You shall hear no more of this affair, neither you nor the world--I have the matter perfectly in my own hands--it shall never raise a whisper again. I will move heaven and earth rather than fail--but there is no danger of my failing. I will try to prove myself worthy of your esteem even where a man is most excusable for being selfish."

He took one of her cold hands again,--Fleda could not help it without more force than she cared to use, and indeed pain would by this time almost have swallowed up other sensation if every word and touch had not sent it in a stronger throb to her very finger ends. Thorn bent his lips to her hand, twice kissed it fervently, and then left her; much to King's satisfaction, who thereupon resigned himself to quiet slumbers.

His mistress knew no such relief. Excitement had dreadfully aggravated her disorder, at a time when it was needful to banish even thought as far as possible. Pain effectually banished it now, and Barby coming in a little after Mr. Thorn had gone found her quite unable to speak and scarce able to breathe, from agony. Barby's energies and fainting remedies were again put in use; but pain reigned triumphant for hours, and when its hard rule was at last abated Fleda was able to do nothing but sleep like a child for hours more.

Towards a late tea-time she was at last awake, and carrying on a very one-sided conversation with Rolf, her own lips being called upon for little more than a smile now and then. King, not able to be in her lap, had curled himself up upon a piece of his mistress's dress and as close within the circle of her arms as possible, where Fleda's hand and his head were on terms of mutual satisfaction.

"I thought you wouldn't permit a dog to lie in your lap," said Marion.

"Do you remember that?" said Fleda with a smile. "Ah I have grown tender-hearted, Marion, since I have known what it was to want comfort myself. I have come to the conclusion that it is best to let everything have all the enjoyment it can in the circumstances. King crawled into my lap one day when I had not spirits enough to turn him out, and he has kept the place ever since.--Little King!"--In answer to which word of intelligence King looked in her face and wagged his tail, and then earnestly endeavoured to lick all her fingers. Which however was a piece of comfort she would not give him.

"Fleda," said Barby putting her head in, "I wish you'd just step out here and tell me which cheese you'd like to have cut."

"What a fool!" said Marion. "Let her cut them all if she likes."

"She is no fool," said Fleda. She thought Barby's punctiliousness however a little ill-timed, as she rose from her sofa and went into the kitchen.

"Well you do look as if you wa'n't good for nothing but to be taken care of!" said Barby. "I wouldn't have riz you up if it hadn't been just tea-time, and I knowed you couldn't stay quiet much longer;"--and with a look which explained her tactics she put into Fleda's hand a letter directed to her aunt.

"Philetus gave it to me," she said, without a glance at Fleda's face,--"he said it was give to him by a spry little shaver who wa'n't a mind to tell nothin' about himself."

"Thank you, Barby!" was Fleda's most grateful return; and summoning her aunt up-stairs she took her into her own room and locked the door before she gave her the letter which Barby's shrewdness and delicacy had taken such care should not reach its owner in a wrong way. Fleda watched her as her eye ran over the paper and caught it as it fell from her fingers.

"My Dear Wife,

"That villain Thorn has got a handle of me which he will not fail to use--you know it all I suppose, by this time--It is true that in an evil hour, long ago, when greatly pressed, I did what I thought I should surely undo in a few days--The time never came--I don't know why he has let it lie so long, but he has taken it up now, and he will push it to the extreme--There is but one thing left for me--I shall not see you again. The rascal would never let me rest, I know, in any spot that calls itself American ground.

"You will do better without me than with me.

"R. R."

Fleda mused over the letter for several minutes, and then touched her aunt who had fallen on a chair with her head sunk in her hands.

"What does he mean?" said Mrs. Rossitur, looking up with a perfectly colourless face.

"To leave the country."

"Are you sure? is that it?" said Mrs. Rossitur, rising and looking over the words again;--"He would do anything, Fleda--"

"That is what he means, aunt Lucy;--don't you see he says he could not be safe anywhere in America?"

Mrs. Rossitur stood eying with intense eagerness for a minute or two the note in her niece's hand.

"Then he is gone! now that it is all settled!--And we don't know where--and we can't get word to him--"

Her cheek which had a little brightened became perfectly white again.

"He isn't gone yet--he can't be--he cannot have left Queechy till to-day--he will be in New York for several days yet probably."

"New York!--it may be Boston?"

"No, he would be more likely to go to New York--I am sure he would--he is accustomed to it."

"We might write to both places," said poor Mrs. Rossitur. "I will do it and send them off at once."

"But he might not get the letters," said Fleda thoughtfully,--"he might not dare to ask at the post-office."

His wife looked at that possibility, and then wrung her hands.

"Oh why didn't he give us a clew!"

Fleda put an arm round her affectionately and stood thinking; stood trembling might as well be said, for she was too weak to be standing at all.

"What can we do, dear Fleda?" said Mrs. Rossitur in great distress. "Once out of New York and we can get nothing to him! If he only knew that there is no need, and that it is all over!--"

"We must do everything, aunt Lucy," said Fleda thoughtfully, "and I hope we shall succeed yet. We will write, but I think the most hopeful other thing we could do would be to put advertisements in the newspapers--he would be very likely to see them."

"Advertisements!--But you couldn't--what would you put in?"

"Something that would catch his eye and nobody's else--that is easy, aunt Lucy."

"But there is nobody to put them in, Fleda,--you said uncle Orrin was going to Boston--"

"He wasn't going there till next week, but he was to be in Philadelphia a few days before that--the letter might miss him."

"Mr. Plumfield!--Couldn't he?"

But Fleda shook her head.

"Wouldn't do, aunt Lucy--he would do all he could, but he don't know New York nor the papers--he wouldn't know how to manage it--he don't know uncle Rolf--shouldn't like to trust it to him."

"Who then?--there isn't a creature we could ask--"

Fleda laid her cheek to her poor aunt's and said,

"I'll do it."

"But you must be in New York to do it, dear Fleda,--you can't do it here."

"I will go to New York."

"When?"

"To-morrow morning."

"But dear Fleda, you can't go alone! I can't let you, and you're not fit to go at all, my poor child!--" and between conflicting feelings Mrs. Rossitur sat down and wept without measure.

"Listen, aunt Lucy," said Fleda, pressing a hand on her shoulder,--"listen, and don't cry so!--I'll go and make all right, if efforts can do it. I am not going alone--I'll get Seth to go with me; and I can sleep in the cars and rest nicely in the steamboat--I shall feel happy and well when I know that I am leaving you easier and doing all that can be done to bring uncle Rolf home. Leave me to manage, and don't say anything to Marion,--it is one blessed thing that she need not know anything about all this. I shall feel better than if I were at home and had trusted this business to any other hands."

"You are the blessing of my life," said Mrs. Rossitur.

"Cheer up, and come down and let us have some tea," said Fleda, kissing her; "I feel as if that would make me up a little; and then I'll write the letters. I sha'n't want but very little baggage; there'll be nothing to pack up."

Philetus was sent up the hill with a note to Seth Plumfield, and brought home a favorable answer. Fleda thought as she went to rest that it was well the mind's strength could sometimes act independently of its servant the body, hers felt so very shattered and unsubstantial.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

Chapter XLI

I thank you for your company; but good faith, I had as lief have been myself alone.--As You Like It.

The first thing next morning Seth Plumfield came down to say that he had seen Dr. Quackenboss the night before and had chanced to find out that he was going to New York too, this very day; and knowing that the doctor would be just as safe an escort as himself, Seth had made over the charge of his cousin to him; "calculating," he said, "that it would make no difference to Fleda and that he had better stay at home with his mother."

Fleda said nothing and looked as little as possible of her disappointment, and her cousin went away wholly unsuspecting of it.

"Seth Plumfield ha'n't done a smarter thing than that in a good while," Barby remarked satirically as he was shutting the door. "I should think he'd ha' hurt himself."

"I dare say the doctor will take good care of me," said Fleda;--"as good as he knows how."

"Men beat all!" said Barby impatiently.--"The little sense there is into them!--"

Fleda's sinking heart was almost ready to echo the sentiment; but nobody knew it.

Coffee was swallowed, her little travelling bag and bonnet on the sofa; all ready. Then came the doctor.

"My dear Miss Ringgan!--I am most happy of this delightful opportunity--I had supposed you were located at home for the winter. This is a sudden start."

"Is it sudden to you, Dr. Quackenboss?" said Fleda.

"Why--a--not disagreeably so," said the doctor smiling;--"nothing could be that in the present circumstances,--but I--a--I hadn't calculated upon it for much of a spell beforehand."

Fleda was vexed, and looked,--only unconversable.

"I suppose," said the doctor after a pause,--"that we have not much time to waste--a--in idle moments. Which route do you intend to travel?"

"I was thinking to go by the North River, sir."

"But the ice has collected,--I am afraid,--"

"At Albany, I know; but when I came up there was a boat every other day, and we could get there in time by the stage--this is her day."

"But we have had some pretty tight weather since, if you remember," said the doctor; "and the boats have ceased to connect with the stage. We shall have to go to Greenfield to take the Housatonic which will land us at Bridgeport on the Sound"

"Have we time to reach Greenfield this morning?"

"Oceans of time?" said the doctor delightedly; "I've got my team here and they're jumping out of their skins with having nothing to do and the weather--they'll carry us there as spry as grasshoppers--now, if you're ready, my dear Miss Ringgan!"

There was nothing more but to give and receive those speechless lip-messages that are out of the reach of words, and Mrs. Rossitur's half-spoken last charge, to take care of herself; and with these seals upon her mission Fleda set forth and joined the doctor; thankful for one foil to curiosity in the shape of a veil and only wishing that there were any invented screen that she could place between her and hearing.

"I hope your attire is of a very warm description," said the doctor as he helped her into the wagon;--"it friz pretty hard last night and I don't think it has got out of the notion yet. If I had been consulted in any other--a--form, than that of a friend, I should have disapprobated, if you'll excuse me, Miss Ringgan's travelling again before her 'Rose of Cassius' there was in blow. I hope you have heard no evil tidings? Dr.--a--Gregory, I hope, is not taken ill?"

"I hope not, sir," said Fleda.

"He didn't look like it. A very hearty old gentleman. Not very old either, I should judge. Was he the brother of your mother or your father?"

"Neither, sir."

"Ah!--I misunderstood--I thought, but of course I was mistaken,--I thought I heard you speak to him under the title of uncle. But that is a title we sometimes give to elderly people as a term of familiarity--there is an old fellow that works for me,--he has been a long time in our family, and we always call him 'uncle Jenk.'"

Fleda was ready to laugh, cry, and be angry, in a breath. She looked straight before her and was mum.

"That 'Rose of Cassius' is a most exquisite thing!" said the doctor, recurring to the cluster of bare bushy stems in the corner of the garden. "Did Mr. Rossitur bring it with him when he came to his present residence?"

"Yes sir."

"Where is Mr. Rossitur now?"

Fleda replied, with a jump of her heart, that business affairs had obliged him to be away for a few days.

"And when does he expect to return?" said the doctor.

"I hope he will be home as soon as I am," said Fleda.

"Then you do not expect to remain long in the city this time?"

"I shall not have much of a winter at home if I do," said Fleda. "We are almost at January."

"Because," said the doctor, "in that case I should have no higher gratification than in attending upon your motions. I--a--beg you to believe, my dear Miss Ringgan, that it would afford me the--a--most particular--it would be most particularly grateful to me to wait upon you to--a--the confines of the world."

Fleda hastened to assure her officious friend that the time of her return was altogether uncertain; resolving rather to abide a guest with Mrs. Pritchard than to have Dr. Quackenboss hanging upon her motions every day of her being there. But in the mean time the doctor got upon Capt. Rossitur's subject; then came to Mr. Thorn; and then wanted to know the exact nature of Mr. Rossitur's business affairs in Michigan; through all which matters poor Fleda had to run the gauntlet of questions, interspersed with gracious speeches which she could bear even less well. She was extremely glad to reach the cars and take refuge in seeming sleep from the mongrel attentions, which if for the most part prompted by admiration owned so large a share of curiosity. Her weary head and heart would fain have courted the reality of sleep, as a refuge from more painful thoughts and a feeling of exhaustion that could scarcely support itself; but the restless roar and jumble of the rail-cars put it beyond her power. How long the hours were--how hard to wear out, with no possibility of a change of position that would give rest; Fleda would not even raise her head when they stopped, for fear of being talked to; how trying that endless noise to her racked nerves. It came to an end at last, though Fleda would not move for fear they might be only taking in wood and water.

"Miss Ringgan!" said the doctor in her ear,--"my dear Miss Ringgan!--we are here!--"

"Are we?" said Fleda, looking up;--"what other name has the place, doctor?"

"Why Bridgeport," said the doctor,--"we're at Bridgeport--now we have leave to exchange conveyances. A man feels constrained after a prolonged length of time in a place. How have you enjoyed the ride?"

"Not very well--it has seemed long. I am glad we are at the end of it!"

But as she rose and threw back her veil the doctor looked startled.

"My dear Miss Ringgan!--are you faint?"

"No sir."

"You are not well, indeed!--I am very sorry--the ride has been--Take my arm!--Ma'am," said the doctor touching a black satin cloak which filled the passage-way,--"will you have the goodness to give this lady a passport?"

But the black satin cloak preferred a straightforward manner of doing this, so their egress was somewhat delayed. Happily faintness was not the matter.

"My dear Miss Ringgan!" said the doctor as they reached the ground and the outer air,--"what was it?--the stove too powerful? You are looking--you are of a dreadfully delicate appearance!"

"I had a headache yesterday," said Fleda; "it always leaves me with a disagreeable reminder the next day. I am not ill."

But he looked frightened, and hurried her, as fast as he dared, to the steamboat; and there proposed half a dozen restoratives; the simplest of which Fleda took, and then sought delicious rest from him and from herself on the cushions of a settee. Delicious!--though she was alone, in the cabin of a steamboat, with strange forms and noisy tongues around her, the closed eyelids shut it out all; and she had time but for one resting thought of "patient continuance in well-doing," and one happy heart-look up to him who has said that he cares for his children, a look that laid her anxieties down there,--when past misery and future difficulty faded away before a sleep that lasted till the vessel reached her moorings and was made fast.

She was too weary and faint even to think during the long drive up to Bleecker-st. She was fain to let it all go--the work she had to do and the way she must set about it, and rest in the assurance that nothing could be done that night. She did not so much as hear Dr. Quackenboss's observations, though she answered a few of them, till, at the door, she was conscious of his promising to see her to-morrow and of her instant conclusion to take measures to see nobody.

How strange everything seemed. She walked through the familiar hall, feeling as if her acquaintance with every old thing was broken. There was no light in the back parlour, but a comfortable fire.

"Is my--is Dr. Gregory at home?" she asked of the girl who had let her in.

"No ma'am; he hasn't got back from Philadelphia."

"Tell Mrs. Pritchard a lady wants to see her."

Good Mrs. Pritchard was much more frightened than Dr. Quackenboss had been when she came into the back parlour to see "a lady" and found Fleda in the great arm-chair taking off her things. She poured out questions, wonderings and lamentings, not "in a breath" but in a great many; quite forgot to be glad to see her, she looked so dreadfully; and "what had been the matter?" Fleda answered her,--told of yesterday's illness and to-day's journey; and met all her shocked enquiries with so composed a face and such a calm smile and bearing, that Mrs. Pritchard was almost persuaded not to believe her eyes.

"My uncle is not at home?"

"O no, Miss Fleda! I suppose he's in Philadelphy--but his motions is so little to be depended on that I never know when I have him; maybe he'll stop going through to Boston, and maybe no, and I don't know when; so anyhow I had to have a fire made and this room all ready; and ain't it lucky it was ready for you to-night!--and now he ain't here you can have the great chair all to yourself and make yourself comfortable--we can keep warmer here, I guess, than you can in the country," said the good housekeeper, giving some skilful admonishing touches to the fire;--"and you must just sit there and read and rest, and see if you can't get back your old looks again. If I thought it was that you came for I'd be happy. I never did see such a change in any one in five days!--"

She stood looking down at her guest with a face of very serious concern, evidently thinking much more than she chose to give utterance to.

"I am tired, Mrs. Pritchard," said Fleda, smiling up at her.

"I wish you had somebody to take care of you, Miss Fleda, that wouldn't let you tire yourself. It's a sin to throw your strength away so--and you don't care for looks nor nothing else when it's for other people. You're looking just as handsome, too, for all," she said, her mouth giving way a little, as she stooped down to take off Fleda's overshoes, "but that's only because you can't help it. Now what is there you'd like to have for supper!--just say and you shall have it--whatever would seem best--because I mightn't hit the right thing?"

Fleda declared her indifference to everything but a cup of tea, and her hostess bustled away to get that and tax her own ingenuity and kindness for the rest. And leaning her weary head back in the lounge Fleda tried to think,--but it was not time yet; she could only feel; feel what a sad change had come over her since she had sat there last; shut her eyes and wish she could sleep again.

But Mrs. Pritchard's hospitality must be gone through with first.

The nicest of suppers was served in the bright little parlour and her hostess was a compound of care and good will; nothing was wanting to the feast but a merry heart. Fleda could not bring that, so her performance was unsatisfactory and Mrs. Pritchard was distressed. Fleda went to her own room promising better doings to-morrow.

She awoke in the morning to the full burden of care and sorrow which sheer weakness and weariness the day before had in part laid down; to a quicker sense of the state of things than she had had yet. The blasting evil that had fallen upon them,--Fleda writhed on her bed when she thought of it. The sternest, cruellest, most inflexible, grasp of distress. Poverty may be borne, death may be sweetened, even to the survivors; but disgrace--Fleda hid her head, as if she would shut the idea out with the light. And the ruin it had wrought. Affection killed at the root,--her aunt's happiness withered, for this world,--Hugh's life threatened,--the fair name of his family gone,--the wear and weariness of her own spirit,--but that had hardly a thought. Himself?--oh no one could tell what a possible wreck, now that self-respect and the esteem of others, those two safe-guards of character, were lost to him. "So much security has any woman in a man without religion;" she remembered those words of her aunt Miriam now; and she thought if Mr. Thorn had sought an ill wind to blow upon his pretensions he could not have pitched them better. What fairer promise, without religion, could be than her uncle had given? Reproach had never breathed against his name, and no one less than those who knew him best could fancy that he had ever given it occasion. And who could have more at stake?--and the stake was lost--that was the summing up thought.

No, it was not,--for Fleda's mind presently sprang beyond,--to the remedy; and after a little swift and earnest flitting about of thought over feasibilities and contingencies, she jumped up and dressed herself with a prompt energy which shewed a mind made up to its course. And yet when she came down to the parlour, though bending herself with nervous intentness to the work she had to do, her fingers and her heart were only stayed in their trembling by some of the happy assurances she had been fleeing to;--

"Commit thy works unto the Lord, and all thy thoughts shall be established."--

"In all thy ways acknowledge Him: He shall direct they paths."--

--Assurances, not indeed that her plans should meet with success, but that they should have the issue best for them.

She was early, but the room was warm and in order and the servant had left it. Fleda sought out paper and pencil and sat down to fashion the form of an advertisement,--the first thing to be done. She had no notion how difficult a thing till she came to do it.

"R. R. is entreated to communicate with his niece at the old place in Bleecker-street, on business of the greatest importance."

"It will not do," said Fleda to herself as she sat and looked at it,--"there is not enough to catch his eye; and there is too much if it caught anybody else's eye;--'R. R.', and 'his niece,' and 'Bleecker-street,'--that would tell plain enough."

"Dear uncle, F. has followed you here on business of the greatest importance. Pray let her see you--she is at the old place."

"It will not do," thought Fleda again,--"there is still less to catch his eye--I cannot trust it. And if I were to put 'Queechy' over it, that would give the clue to the Evelyns and everybody. But I had better risk anything rather than his seeing it--"

The miserable needlessness of the whole thing, the pitiful weighing of sorrow against sorrow, and shame against shame overcame her for a little; and then dashing away the tears she had no time for and locking up the strong box of her heart, she took her pencil again.

"Queechy.

"Let me see you at the old place. I have come here on urgent business for you. Do not deny me, for H---'s sake!"

With a trifle of alteration she thought this would do; and went on to make a number of fair copies of it for so many papers, This was done and all traces of it out of the way before Mrs. Pritchard came in and the breakfast; and after bracing herself with coffee, though the good housekeeper was still sadly dissatisfied with her indifference to some more substantial brace in the shape of chickens and ham, Fleda prepared herself inwardly and outwardly to brave the wind and the newspaper offices, and set forth. It was a bright keen day; she was sorry; she would it had been cloudy. It seemed as if she could not hope to escape some eyes in such an atmosphere.

She went to the library first, and there requested the librarian, whom she knew, to bring her from the reading-room the files of morning and evening papers. They were many more than she had supposed; she had not near advertisements enough. Paper and ink were at hand however, and making carefully her list of the various offices, morning and evening separate, she wrote out a copy of the notice for each of them.

The morning was well on by the time she could leave the library. It was yet far from the fashionable hour, however, and sedulously shunning the recognition of anybody, in hopes that it would be one step towards her escaping theirs, she made her way down the bright thoroughfare as far as the City Hall, and then crossed over the Park and plunged into a region where it was very little likely she would see a face that she knew. She saw nothing else either that she knew; in spite of having studied the map of the city in the library she was forced several times to ask her way, as she visited office after office, of the evening papers first, till she had placed her notice with each one of them. Her courage almost failed her, her heart did quite, after two or three. It was a trial from which her whole nature shrank, to go among the people, to face the eyes, to exchange talk with the lips, that were at home in those purlieus; look at them she did not. Making her slow way through the choked narrow streets, where the mere confusion of business was bewildering,--very, to any one come from Queechy; among crowds, of what mixed and doubtful character, hurrying along and brushing with little ceremony past her; edging by loitering groups that filled the whole sidewalk, or perhaps edging through them, groups whose general type of character was sufficiently plain and unmixed; entering into parley with clerk after clerk who looked at such a visiter as an anomaly,--poor Fleda almost thought so too, and shrank within herself; venturing hardly her eyes beyond her thick veil, and shutting her ears resolutely as far as possible to all the dissonant rough voices that helped to assure her she was where she ought not to be. Sometimes she felt that it was impossible to go on and finish her task; but a thought or two nerved her again to plunge into another untried quarter or make good her entrance to some new office through a host of loungers and waiting news-boys collected round the door. Sometimes in utter discouragement she went on and walked to a distance and came back, in the hope of a better opportunity. It was a long business; and she often had to wait. The end of her list was reached at last, and the paper was thrown away; but she did not draw free breath till she had got to the west side of Broadway again, and turned her back upon them all.

It was late then, and the street was thinned of a part of its gay throng. Completely worn, in body as well as mind, with slow faltering steps, Fleda moved on among those still left; looking upon them with a curious eye as if they and she belonged to different classes of beings; so very far her sobered and saddened spirit seemed to herself from their stir of business and gayety; if they had been a train of lady-flies or black ants Fleda would hardly have felt that she had less in common with them. It was a weary long way up to Bleecker-street, as she was forced to travel it.

The relief was unspeakable to find herself within her uncle's door with the sense that her dreaded duty was done, and well and thoroughly. Now her part was to be still and wait. But with the relief came also a reaction from the strain of the morning. Before her weary feet had well mounted the stairs her heart gave up its control; and she locked herself in her room to yield to a helpless outpouring of tears which she was utterly unable to restrain, though conscious that long time could not pass before she would be called to dinner. Dinner had to wait.

"Miss Fleda," said the housekeeper in a vexed tone when the meal was half over,--"I didn't know you ever did any thing wrong."

"You are sadly mistaken, Mrs. Pritchard," said Fleda half lightly, half sadly.

"You're looking not a bit better than last night, and if anything rather worse," Mrs. Pritchard went on. "It isn't right, Miss Fleda. You oughtn't to ha' set the first step out of doors, I know you oughtn't, this blessed day; and you've been on your feet these seven hours,--and you shew it! You're just ready to drop."

"I will rest to-morrow," said Fleda,--"or try to."

"You are fit for nothing but bed," said the housekeeper,--"and you've been using yourself, Miss Fleda, as if you had the strength of an elephant. Now do you think you've been doing right?"

Fleda would have made some cheerful answer, but she was not equal to it; she had lost all command of herself, and she dropped knife and fork to burst into a flood of exceeding tears. Mrs. Pritchard equally astonished and mystified, hurried questions, apologies, and consolations, one upon another; and made up her mind that there was something mysterious on foot about which she had better ask no questions. Neither did she, from that time. She sealed up her mouth, and contented herself with taking the best care of her guest that she possibly could. Needed enough, but all of little avail.

The reaction did not cease with that day. The next, Sunday, was spent on the sofa, in a state of utter prostration. With the necessity for exertion the power had died. Fleda could only lie upon the cushions, and sleep helplessly, while Mrs. Pritchard sat by, anxiously watching her; curiosity really swallowed up in kind feeling. Monday was little better, but towards the after part of the day the stimulant of anxiety began to work again, and Fleda sat up to watch for a word from her uncle, But none came, and Tuesday morning distressed Mrs. Pritchard with its want of amendment. It was not to be hoped for, Fleda knew, while this fearful watching lasted. Her uncle might not have seen the advertisement--he might not have got her letter--he might be even then setting sail to quit home forever. And she could do nothing but wait. Her nerves were alive to every stir; every touch of the bell made her tremble; it was impossible to read, to lie down, to be quiet or still anywhere. She had set the glass of expectancy for one thing in the distance; and all things else were a blur or a blank.

They had sat down to dinner that Tuesday, when a ring at the door which had made her heart jump was followed--yes, it was,--by the entrance of the maid-servant holding a folded bit of paper in her hand. Fleda did not wait to ask whose it was; she seized it and saw; and sprang away up stairs. It was a sealed scrap of paper, that had been the back of a letter, containing two lines without signature.

"I will meet you at Dinah's--if you come there alone about sundown."

Enough! Dinah was an old black woman who once had been a very attached servant in Mr. Rossitur's family, and having married and become a widow years ago, had set up for herself in the trade of a washerwoman, occupying an obscure little tenement out towards Chelsea. Fleda had rather a shadowy idea of the locality, though remembering very well sundry journeys of kindness she and Hugh had made to it in days gone by. But she recollected it was in Sloman-street and she knew she could find it; and dropping upon her knees poured out thanks too deep to be uttered and too strong to be even thought without a convulsion of tears. Her dinner after that was but a mental thanksgiving; she was hardly conscious of anything beside; and a thankful rejoicing for all her weary labours. Their weariness was sweet to her now. Let her but see him;--the rest was sure.

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