"That is a pleasure one may always command," he said, answering part of her speech.
"Ay, provided one has one's mind always under command," said Fleda. "It is possible to sit down to a feast with a want of appetite."
"In such a case, what is the best tonic?"
His manner, even in those two minutes, had put Fleda perfectly at her ease, ill-bred eyes and ears being absent. She looked up and answered, with such entire trust in him, as made her forget that she had ever had any cause to distrust herself.
"For me," she said, "as a general rule, nothing is better than to go out of doors into the woods or the garden they are the best fresheners I know of. I can do myself good there at times when books are a nuisance."
"You are not changed from your old self," he said.
The wish was strong upon Fleda to know whetherhewas, but it was not till she saw the answer in his face that she knew how plainly hers had asked the question. And then she was so confused that she did not know what the answer had been.
"I find it so, too," he said. "The influences of pure nature are the best thing I know for some moods after the company of a good horse."
"And you on his back, I suppose?"
"That was my meaning. What is the doubt thereupon?" said he, laughing.
"Did I express any doubt?"
"Or my eyes were mistaken."
"I remember they never used to be that," said Fleda.
"What was it?"
"Why," said Fleda, thinking that Mr. Carleton had probably retained more than one of his old habits, for she was answering with her old obedience "I was doubting what the influence is in that case worth analyzing, I think. I am afraid the good horse's company has little to do with it."
"What, then, do you suppose?" said he, smiling.
"Why," said Fleda "it might be but I beg your pardon, Mr.Carleton! I am astonished at my own presumption."
"Go on, and let me know why," he said, with that happiness of manner which was never resisted. Fleda went on, reassuring her courage now and then with a glance.
"The reliefmightspring, Sir, from the gratification of a proud feeling of independence or from a dignified sense of isolation or an imaginary riding down of opposition or the consciousness of being master of what you have in hand."
She would have added to the general category, "the running away from one's-self;" but the eye and bearing of the person before her forbade even such a thought as connected with him. He laughed, but shook his head.
"Perhaps, then," said Fleda, "it may be nothing worse than the working off of a surplus of energy or impatience that leaves behind no more than can be managed."
"You have learned something of human nature since I had the pleasure of knowing you," he said, with a look at once amused and penetrating.
"I wish I hadn't," said Fleda.
Her countenance absolutely fell.
"I sometimes think," said he, turning over the leaves of her book, "that these are the best companionship one can have the world at large is very unsatisfactory."
"O, how much!" said Fleda, with a long breath. "The only pleasant thing that my eyes rested upon as I came through the streets this afternoon, was a huge bunch of violets that somebody was carrying. I walked behind them as long as I could."
"Is your old love for Queechy in full force?" said Mr.Carleton, still turning over the leaves, and smiling.
"I believe so I should be very sorry to live here long at home I can always go out and find society that refreshes me."
"You have set yourself a high standard," he said, with no displeased expression of the lips.
"I have been charged with that," said Fleda; "but is it possible to set too high a standard, Mr. Carleton?"
"One may leave one's-self almost alone in the world."
"Well, even then," said Fleda, "I would rather have only the image of excellence than be contented with inferiority."
"Isn't it possible to do both?" said he, smiling again.
"I don't know," said Fleda; "perhaps I am too easily dissatisfied I believe I have grown fastidious, living alone I have sometimes almost a disgust at the world and everything in it."
"I have often felt so," he said; "but I am not sure that it is a mood to be indulged in likely to further our own good or that of others."
"I am sure it is not," said Fleda; "I often feel vexed with myself for it; but what can one do, Mr. Carleton?"
"Don't your friends the flowers help you in this?"
"Not a bit," said Fleda "they draw the other way; their society is so very pure and satisfying, that one is all the less inclined to take up with the other."
She could not tell quite what to make of the smile with which he began to speak; it half abashed her.
"When I spoke, a little while ago," said he, "of the best cure for an ill mood, I was speaking of secondary means simply the only really humanizing, rectifying, peace-giving thing I ever tried, was looking at time in the light of eternity, and shaming or melting my coldness away in the rays of the Sun of Righteousness."
Fleda's eyes, which had fallen on her book, were raised again with such a flash of feeling that it quite prevented her seeing what was in his. But the feeling was a little too strong the eyes went down, lower than ever, and the features showed that the utmost efforts of self-command were needed to control them.
"There is no other cure," he went on in the same tone; "but disgust and weariness and selfishness shrink away and hide themselves before a word or a look of the Redeemer of men. When we hear him say, 'I have bought thee thou art mine,' it is like one of those old words of healing, 'Thou art loosed from thine infirmity' 'Be thou clean' and the mind takes sweetly the grace and the command together, 'That he who loveth God love his brother also.' Only the preparation of the gospel of peace can make our feet go softly over the roughnesses of the way."
Fleda did not move, unless her twinkling eyelashes might seem to contradict that.
"I need not tell you," Mr. Carleton went on, a little lower, "where this medicine is to be sought."
"It is strange," said Fleda, presently, "how well one may know, and how well one may forget. But I think the body has a great deal to do with it sometimes these states of feeling, I mean."
"No doubt it has; and in these cases the cure is a more complicated matter. I should think the roses would be useful there?"
Fleda's mind was crossed by an indistinct vision of peas, asparagus, and sweet corn; she said nothing.
"An indirect remedy is sometimes the very best that can be employed. However, it is always true that the more our eyes are fixed upon the source of light, the less we notice the shadows that things we are passing fling across our way."
Fleda did not know how to talk for a little while; she was too happy. Whatever kept Mr. Carleton from talking, he was silent also. Perhaps it was the understanding of her mood.
"Mr. Carleton," said Fleda, after a little time, "did you ever carry out that plan of a rose-garden that you were talking of a long while ago?"
"You remember it?" said he, with a pleased look. "Yes, that was one of the first things I set about, after I went home but I did not follow the regular fashion of arrangement that one of your friends is so fond of."
"I should not like that for anything," said Fleda, "and least of all for roses."
"Do you remember the little shrubbery path that opened just in front of the library windows leading, at the distance of half a mile, to a long, narrow, winding glen?"
"Perfectly well," said Fleda, "through the wood of evergreens Oh, I remember the glen very well."
"About half way from the house," said he, smiling at her eyes, "a glade opens, which merges at last in the head of the glen I planted my roses there the circumstances of the ground were very happy for disposing them according to my wish."
"And how far?"
"The roses? Oh, all the way, and some distance down the glen. Not a continuous thicket of them," he added, smiling again "I wished each kind to stand so that its peculiar beauty should be fully relieved and appreciated; and that would have been lost in a crowd."
"Yes, I know it," said Fleda; "one's eye rests upon the chief objects of attraction, and the others are hardly seen they do not even serve as foils. And they must show beautifully against that dark background of firs and larches!"
"Yes; and the windings of the ground gave me every sort of situation and exposure. I wanted room, too, for the different effects of masses of the same kind growing together, and of fine individuals or groups standing alone, where they could show the full graceful development of their nature."
"What a pleasure! What a beauty it must be!"
"The ground is very happy many varieties of soil and exposure were needed for the plants of different habits, and I found or made them all. The rocky beginnings of the glen even furnished me with south walls for the little tea-roses, and the Macartneys, and musk roses; the banksias I kept nearer home."
"Do you know them all, Mr. Carleton?"
"Not quite," said he, smiling at her.
"I have seen one banksia the Macartney is a name that tells me nothing."
"They are evergreens with large white flowers very abundant and late in the season, but they need the shelter of a wall with us."
"I should think you would say 'with me,' " said Fleda. "I cannot conceive that the head-quarters of the rose tribe should be anywhere else."
"One of the queens of the tribe is there, in the neighbourhood of the Macartneys the difficultrosa sulphureait finds itself so well accommodated, that it condescends to play its part to perfection. Do you know that?"
"Not at all."
"It is one of the most beautiful of all, though not my favourite it has large double yellow flowers, shaped like the Provence very superb, but as wilful as any queen of them all."
"Which is your favourite, Mr. Carleton?"
"Not that which shows itself most splendid to the eye, but which offers fairest indications to the fancy."
Fleda looked a little wistfully, for there was a smile rather of the eye than of the lips, which said there was a hidden thought beneath.
"Don't you assign characters to your flowers?" said he, gravely.
"Always."
"Thatrosa sulphureais a haughty high-bred beauty, that disdains even to show herself beautiful, unless she is pleased I love better what comes nearer home to the charities and wants of every-day life."
He had not answered her, Fleda knew; she thought of what he had said to Mrs. Evelyn about liking beauty, but notbeauties.
"Then." said he, smiling again in that hidden way, "the head of the glen gave me the soil I needed for the Bourbons and French roses."
"Bourbons?" said Fleda.
"Those are exceeding fine a hybrid between the Chinese and therose-à-quatre-saisonsI have not confined them all to the head of the glen; many of them are in richer soil, grafted on standards."
"I like standard roses," said Fleda, "better than any."
"Not better than climbers?"
"Better than any climbers I ever saw except the banksia."
"There is hardly a more elegant variety than that, though it is not strictly a climber; and, indeed, when I spoke, I was thinking as much of the training roses. Many of thenoisettesare very fine. But I have the climbers all over in some parts nothing else, where the wood closes in upon the path there the evergreen roses or the Ayrshire, cover the ground under the trees, or are trained up the trunks, and allowed to find their own way through the branches down again themultiflorain the same manner. I have made theboursaultcover some unsightly rocks that were in my way. Then in wider parts of the glade, nearer home, are your favourite standards the damask, and Provence, and moss, which, you know, are varieties of thecentifolia, and thenoisettestandards some of them are very fine, and the Chinese roses, and countless hybrids and varieties of all these, with many Bourbons; and your beautiful American yellow rose, and the Austrian briar and eglantine, and the Scotch, and white and dog roses, in their innumerable varieties, change admirably well with the others, and relieve the eye very happily."
"Relieve the eye!" said Fleda; "my imagination wants relieving! Isn't there I have a fancy that there is a view of the sea from some parts of that walk, Mr. Carleton?"
"Yes you have a good memory," said he, smiling. "On one side the wood is rather dense, and in some parts of the other side; but elsewhere the trees are thinned off towards the south- west, and in one or two points the descent of the ground and some cutting have given free access to the air and free range to the eye, bounded only by the sea-line in the distance; if, indeed, that can be said to bound anything."
"I haven't seen it since I was a child," said Fleda. "And for how long a time in the year is this literally a garden of roses, Mr. Carleton?"
"The perpetual roses are in bloom for eight months the damask and the Chinese, and some of their varieties; the Provence roses are in blossom all the summer."
"Ah! we can do nothing like that in this country," said Fleda, shaking her head; "our winters are unmanageable."
She was silent a minute, turning over the leaves of her book in an abstracted manner.
"You have struck out upon a grave path of reflection," said Mr. Carleton, gently, "and left me bewildered among the roses."
"I was thinking," said Fleda, looking up and laughing, "I was moralizing to myself upon the curious equalization of happiness in the world; I just sheered off from a feeling of envy, and comfortably reflected that one measures happiness by what one knows not by what one does not know; and so, that in all probability I have had near as much enjoyment in the little number of plants that I have brought up and cherished, and know intimately, as you, Sir, in your superb walk through fairy-land."
"Do you suppose," said he, laughing, "that I leave the whole care of fairy-land to my gardener? No, you are mistaken; when the roses are to act as my correctors, I find I must become theirs. I seldom go among them without a pruning knife, and never without wishing for one. And you are certainly right so far that the plants on which I bestow most pains give me the most pleasure. There are some that no hand but mine ever touches, and those are by far the best loved of my eye."
A discussion followed partly natural, partly moral on the manner of pruning various roses, and on the curious connection between care and complacency, and the philosophy of the same.
"The rules of the library are to shut up at sundown, Sir," said one the bookmen, who had come into the room.
"Sundown!" exclaimed Fleda, jumping up; "is my uncle not here,Mr. Frost?"
"He has been gone half an hour, Ma'am."
"And I was to have gone home with him; I have forgotten myself."
"If that is at all the fault of my roses," said Mr. Carleton, smiling, "I will do my best to repair it."
"I am not disposed to call it a fault," said Fleda, tying her bonnet-strings; "it is rather an agreeable thing once in a while. I shall dream of those roses, Mr. Carleton."
"That would be doing them too much honour."
Very happily she had forgotten herself; and during all the walk home her mind was too full of one great piece of joy, and, indeed, too much engaged with conversation to take up her own subject again. Her only wish was that they might not meet any of the Evelyns; Mr. Thorn, whom they did meet, was a matter of entire indifference.
The door was opened by Dr. Gregory himself. To Fleda's utter astonishment, Mr. Carleton accepted his invitation to come in. She went up stairs to take off her things, in a kind of maze.
"I thought he would go away without my seeing him; and now, what a nice time I have had in spite of Mrs. Evelyn!"
That thought slipped in without Fleda's knowledge, but she could not get it out again.
"I don't know how much it has been her fault either, but one thing is certain I never could have had it at her house. How very glad I am! howveryglad I am! that I have seen him, and heard all this from his own lips. But how very funny that he will be here to tea!"
"Well!" said the doctor, when she came down, "youdolook freshened up, I declare. Here is this girl, Sir, was coming to me a little while ago, complaining that she wanted somethingfresh, and begging me to take her back to Queechy, forsooth, to find it with two feet of snow on the ground. Who wants to see you at Queechy?" he said, facing round upon her with a look half fierce, half quizzical.
Fleda laughed, but was vexed to feel that she could not help colouring, and colouring exceedingly, partly from the consciousness of his meaning, and partly from a vague notion that somebody else was conscious of it, too. Dr. Gregory, however, dashed right off into the thick of conversation with his guest, and kept him busily engaged till tea-time. Fleda sat still on the sofa, looking and listening with simple pleasure memory served her up a rich entertainment enough. Yet she thought her uncle was the most heartily interested of the two in the conversation; there was a shade more upon Mr. Carleton, not than he often wore, but than he had worn a little while ago. Dr. Gregory was a great bibliopole, and in the course of the hour hauled out, and made his guest overhaul, no less than several musty old folios, and Fleda could not help fancying that he did it with an access of gravity greater even than the occasion called for. The grace of his manner, however, was unaltered; and at tea, she did not know whether she had been right or not. Demurely as she sat there behind the tea-urn for Dr. Gregory still engrossed all the attention of his guest, as far as talking was concerned Fleda was again inwardly smiling to herself at the oddity and the pleasantness of the chance that had brought those three together in such a quiet way, after all the weeks she had been seeing Mr. Carleton at a distance. And she enjoyed the conversation, too; for though Dr. Gregory was a little fond of his hobby, it was still conversation worthy the name.
"I have been so unfortunate in the matter of the drives," Mr. Carleton said, when he was about to take leave, and standing before Fleda, "that I am half afraid to mention it again."
"I could not help it both those times, Mr. Carleton," saidFleda, earnestly.
"Both the last? or both the first?" said he, smiling.
"The last!" said Fleda.
"I have had the honour of making such an attempt twice within the last ten days to my disappointment."
"It was not by my fault then, either, Sir," Fleda said, quietly.
But he knew very well from the expression of her face a moment before, where to put the emphasis her tongue would not make.
"Dare I ask you to go with me, to-morrow?"
"I don't know," said Fleda, with the old childish sparkle of her eye; "but if you ask me, Sir, I will go."
He sat down beside her immediately, and Fleda knew, by his change of eye, that her former thought had been right.
"Shall I see you at Mrs. Decatur's, to-morrow?"
"No, Sir."
"I thought I understood," said he, in an explanatory tone, "from your friends, the Miss Evelyns, that they were going."
"I believe they are, and I did think of it; but I have changed my mind, and shall stay at home with Mrs. Evelyn."
After some further conversation, the hour for the drive was appointed, and Mr. Carleton took leave.
"Come for me twice, and Mrs. Evelyn refused without consulting me!" thought Fleda. "What could make her do so? How very rude he must have thought me! And how glad I am I have had an opportunity of setting that right!"
So, quitting Mrs. Evelyn, her thoughts went off upon a long train of wandering over the afternoon's talk.
"Wake up!" said the doctor, laying his hand kindly upon her shoulder; "you'll want something fresh again presently. What mine of profundity are you digging into now?"
Fleda looked up, and came back from her profundity with a glance and smile as simple as a child's.
"Dear uncle Orrin, how came you to leave me alone in the library?"
"Was that what you were trying to discover?"
"Oh no, Sir! But why did you, uncle Orrin? I might have been left utterly alone."
"Why," said the doctor, "I was going out, and a friend, that I thought I could confide in, promised to take care of you."
"A friend! Nobody came near me," said Fleda.
"Then I'll never trust anybody again," said the doctor. "But what were you hammering at, mentally, just now? Come, you shall tell me."
"O nothing, uncle Orrin," said Fleda, looking grave again, however; "I was thinking that I had been talking too much to- day."
"Talking too much? why, whom have you been talking to?"
"Oh, nobody but Mr. Carleton."
"Mr. Carleton! Why, you didn't say six and a quarter words while he was here."
"No, but I mean in the library, and walking home."
"Talking too much! I guess you did," said the doctor; "your tongue is like
'the music of the spheres, So loud it deafens human ears.'
How came you to talk too much? I thought you were too shy to talk at all in company."
"No, Sir, I am not; I am not at all shy unless people frighten me. It takes almost nothing to do that; but I am very bold if I am not frightened."
"Were you frightened this afternoon?"
"No, Sir?"
"Well, if you weren't frightened, I guess nobody else was," said the doctor.
"Whence came this?This is some token from a newer friend."SHAKESPEARE.
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 knowhowrude. 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 thedormeuse, and had an hour of luxurious quiet before anybody appeared. Not a footfall 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 vet. 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 noisiest 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 thedormeuse, 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 sunBut 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, you don't 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. "Captain Lewiston was telling me the other night how the thing is managed; and I recognised 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," saidEdith.
"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 call 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 shan'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, "whatareyou all talking about? Can'tConstance 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 show 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 "
"Whichdid 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 it 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 thebouquet 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 MissRinggan."
"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 green-house, 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 eyesore 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 thatheshould 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 aconnoisseurin 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. Oh, 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, wont 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, drily.
"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 day-light. 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 male 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, MissConstance."
"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 show 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 howyouever came to take up such notions."
"May I ask again, why not I?"
"Oh, 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 tohiswill that his creatures should live lives of tormenting themselves it so shows 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 show 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, drily, 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.
"Is it 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," saidMr. Stackpole.
"But, Sir," said Mrs. Evelyn "that doesn't stand alone theBible everywhere speaks of the fulness and freeness ofChrist'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 showed 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?" saidMrs. 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 showing 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."