Hark! I hear the sound of coaches,
The hour of attack approaches.
Gay.
Mrs. Pritchard had arrayed Fleda in the white muslin, with an amount of
satisfaction and admiration that all the lines of her face were
insufficient to express.
"Now," she said, "you must just run down and let the doctor see you--afore
you take the shine off--or he won't be able to look at anything else when
you get to the place."
"That would be unfortunate!" said Fleda, and she ran down laughing into
the room where the doctor was waiting for her; but her astonished eyes
encountering the figure of Dr. Quackenboss she stopped short, with an air
that no woman of the world could have bettered. The physician of Queechy
on his part was at least equally taken aback.
"Dr. Quackenboss!" said Fleda.
"I--I was going to say, Miss Ringgan!" said the doctor with a most
unaffected obeisance,--"but--a--I am afraid, sir, it is a deceptive
influence!"
"I hope not," said Dr. Gregory smiling, one corner of his mouth for his
guest and the other for his niece. "Real enough to do real execution, or I
am mistaken, sir."
"Upon my word, sir," said Dr. Quackenboss bowing again,--"I hope--a--Miss
Ringgan!--will remember the acts of her executive power at home, and
return in time to prevent an unfortunate termination!"
Dr. Gregory laughed heartily now, while Fleda's cheeks relieved her dress
to admiration.
"Who will complain of her if she don't?" said the doctor. "Who will
complain of her if she don't?"
But Fleda put in her question.
"How are you all at home, Dr. Quackenboss?"
"All Queechy, sir," answered the doctor politely, on the principle of
'first come, first served,'--"and individuals,--I shouldn't like to
specify--"
"How are you all in Queechy, Dr. Quackenboss!" said Fleda.
"I--have the pleasure to say--we are coming along as usual," replied the
doctor, who seemed to have lost his power of standing up straight;--"My
sister Flora enjoys but poor health lately,--they are all holding their
heads up at your house. Mr. Rossitur has come home."
"Uncle Rolf! Has he!" exclaimed Fleda, the colour of joy quite supplanting
the other. "O I'm very glad!"
"Yes," said the doctor,--"he's been home now,--I guess, going on
four days."
"I am very glad!" repeated Fleda. "But won't you come and see me another
time, Dr. Quackenboss?--I am obliged to go out."
The doctor professed his great willingness, adding that he had only come
down to the city to do two or three chores and thought she might perhaps
like to take the opportunity--which would afford him such very great
gratification.
"No indeed, faire Una," said Dr. Gregory, when they were on their way to
Mrs. Thorn's,--"they've got your uncle at home now and we've got you; and
I mean to keep you till I'm satisfied. So you may bring home that eye that
has been squinting at Queechy ever since you have been here and make up
your mind to enjoy yourself; I sha'n't let you go till you do."
"I ought to enjoy myself, uncle Orrin," said Fleda, squeezing his arm
gratefully.
"See you do," said he.
The pleasant news from home had given Fleda's spirits the needed spur
which the quick walk to Mrs. Thorn's did not take off.
"Did you ever see Fleda look so well, mamma?" said Florence, as the former
entered the drawing-room.
"That is the loveliest and best face in the room," said Mr. Evelyn; "and
she looks like herself to-night."
"There is a matchless simplicity about her," said a gentleman standing by.
"Her dress is becoming," said Mrs. Evelyn.
"Why where did you ever see her, Mr. Stackpole, except at our house?" said
Constance.
"At Mrs. Decatur's--I have had that pleasure--and once at her uncle's."
"I didn't know you ever noticed ladies' faces, Mr. Stackpole," said
Florence.
"How Mrs. Thorn does look at her!" said Constance, under her breath. "It
is too much!"
It was almost too much for Fleda's equanimity, for the colour began to
come.
"And there goes Mr. Carleton!" said Constance. "I expect momentarily to
hear the company strike up 'Sparkling and Bright.'"
[Illustration: "And there goes Mr. Carleton!" said Constance.]
"They should have done that some time ago, Miss Constance," said the
gentleman.
Which compliment, however, Constance received with hardly disguised scorn,
and turned her attention again to Mr. Carleton.
"I trust I do not need presentation," said his voice and his smile at
once, as he presented himself to Fleda.
How little he needed it the flash of feeling which met his eyes said
sufficiently well. But apparently the feeling was a little too deep, for
the colour mounted and the eyes fell, and the smile suddenly died on the
lips. Mr. Thorn came up to them, and releasing her hand Mr. Carleton
stepped back and permitted him to lead her away.
"What do think of _that_ face?" said Constance finding herself a few
minutes after at his side.
"'That' must define itself," said he, "or I can hardly give a safe
answer."
"What face? Why I mean of course the one Mr. Thorn carried off just now."
"You are her friend, Miss Constance," he said coolly. "May I ask for your
judgment upon it before I give mine?"
"Mine? why I expected every minute that Mr. Thorn would make the musicians
play 'Sparkling and Bright,' and tell Miss Ringgan that to save trouble he
had directed them to express what he was sure were the sentiments of the
whole company in one burst."
He smiled a little, but in a way that Constance could not understand and
did not like.
"Those are common epithets," he said.
"Must I use uncommon?" said Constance significantly.
"No--but these may say one thing or another."
"I have said one thing," said Constance; "and now you may say the other."
"Pardon me--you have said nothing. These epithets are deserved by a great
many faces, but on very different grounds; and the praise is a different
thing accordingly."
"Well what is the difference?" said Constance.
"On what do you think this lady's title to it rests?"
"On what?--why on that bewitching little air of the eyes and mouth,
I suppose."
"Bewitching is a very vague term," said he smiling again more quietly.
"But you have had an opportunity of knowing it much better of late than
I--to which class of bright faces would you refer this one? Where does the
light come from?"
"I never studied faces in a class," said Constance a little scornfully.
"Come from?--a region of mist and clouds I should say, for it is sometimes
pretty well covered up."
"There are some eyes whose sparkling is nothing more than the play of
light upon a bright bead of glass."
"It is not that," said Constance, answering in spite of herself after
delaying as long as she dared.
"There is the brightness that is only the reflection of outward
circumstances, and passes away with them."
"It isn't that in Fleda Ringgan," said Constance, "for her outward
circumstances have no brightness, I should think, that reflection would
not utterly absorb."
She would fain have turned the conversation, but the questions were put
so lightly and quietly that it could not be gracefully done. She longed to
cut it short, but her hand was upon Mr. Carleton's arm and they were
slowly sauntering down the rooms,--too pleasant a state of things to be
relinquished for a trifle.
"There is the broad day-light of mere animal spirits," he went on, seeming
rather to be suggesting these things for her consideration than eager to
set forth any opinions of his own;--"there is the sparkling of mischief,
and the fire of hidden passions,--there is the passing brilliance of wit,
as satisfactory and resting as these gas-lights,--and there is now and
then the light of refined affections out of a heart unspotted from the
world, as pure and abiding as the stars, and like them throwing its soft
ray especially upon the shadows of life."
"I have always understood," said Constance, "that cats' eyes are brightest
in the dark."
"They do not love the light, I believe," said Mr. Carleton calmly.
"Well," said Constance, not relishing the expression of her companion's
eye, which from glowing had suddenly become cool and bright,--"where
would you put me, Mr. Carleton, among all these illuminators of the
social system?"
"You may put yourself--where you please, Miss Constance," he said, again
turning upon her an eye so deep and full in its meaning that her own and
her humour fell before it; for a moment she looked most unlike the gay
scene around her.
"Is not that the best brightness," he said speaking low, "that will last
forever?--and is not that lightness of heart best worth having which does
not depend on circumstances, and will find its perfection just when all
other kinds of happiness fail utterly?"
"I can't conceive," said Constance presently, rallying or trying to rally
herself,--"what you and I have to do in a place where people are enjoying
themselves at this moment, Mr. Carleton!"
He smiled at that and led her out of it into the conservatory, close to
which they found themselves. It was a large and fine one, terminating the
suite of rooms in this direction. Few people were there; but at the far
end stood a group among whom Fleda and Mr. Thorn were conspicuous. He was
busying himself in putting together a quantity of flowers for her; and
Mrs. Evelyn and old Mr. Thorn stood looking on; with Mr. Stackpole. Mr.
Stackpole was an Englishman, of certainly not very prepossessing exterior
but somewhat noted as an author and a good deal sought after in
consequence. At present he was engaged by Mrs. Evelyn. Mr. Carleton and
Constance sauntered up towards them and paused at a little distance to
look at some curious plants.
"Don't try for that, Mr. Thorn," said Fleda, as the gentleman was making
rather ticklish efforts to reach a superb Fuchsia that hung high,--"You
are endangering sundry things besides yourself."
"I have learned, Miss Fleda," said Thorn as with much ado he grasped the
beautiful cluster,--"that what we take the most pains for is apt to be
reckoned the best prize,--a truth I should never think of putting into a
lady's head if I believed it possible that a single one of them was
ignorant of its practical value."
"I have this same rose in my garden at home," said Fleda.
"You are a great gardener, Miss Fleda, I hear," said the old gentleman.
"My son says you are an adept in it."
"I am very fond of it, sir," said Fleda, answering _him_ with an entirely
different face.
"I thought the delicacy of American ladies was beyond such a
masculine employment as gardening," said Mr. Stackpole, edging away
from Mrs. Evelyn.
"I guess this young lady is an exception to the rule," said old Mr. Thorn.
"I guess she is an exception to most rules that you have got in your
note-book, Mr. Stackpole," said the younger man. "But there is no guessing
about the garden, for I have with my own eyes seen these gentle hands at
one end of a spade and her foot at the other;--a sight that--I declare I
don't know whether I was most filled with astonishment or admiration!"
"Yes," said Fleda half laughing and colouring,--"and he ingenuously
confessed in his surprise that he didn't know whether politeness ought to
oblige him to stop and shake hands or to pass by without seeing me;
evidently shewing that he thought I was about something equivocal."
The laugh was now turned against Mr. Thorn, but he went on cutting his
geraniums with a grave face.
"Well," said he at length, "I think it _is_ something of very equivocal
utility. Why should such gentle hands and feet spend their strength in
clod-breaking, when rough ones are at command?"
There was nothing equivocal about Fleda's merriment this time.
"I have learned, Mr. Thorn, by sad experience, that the rough hands break
more than the clods. One day I set Philetus to work among my flowers; and
the first thing I knew he had pulled up a fine passion-flower which didn't
make much shew above ground and was displaying it to me with the grave
commentary, 'Well! that root did grow to a great haigth!'"
"Some mental clod-breaking to be done up there, isn't there?" said Thorn
in a kind of aside. "I cannot express my admiration at the idea of your
dealing with those boors, as it has been described to me."
"They do not deserve the name, Mr. Thorn," said Fleda. "They are many
of them most sensible and excellent people, and friends that I value
very highly."
"Ah, your goodness would made friends of everything."
"Not of boors, I hope," said Fleda coolly. "Besides, what do you mean by
the name?"
"Anybody incapable of appreciating that of which you alone should be
unconscious," he said softly.
Fleda stood impatiently tapping her flowers against her left hand.
"I doubt their power of appreciation reaches a point that would surprise
you, sir."
"It does indeed--if I am mistaken in my supposition," he said with a
glance which Fleda refused to acknowledge.
"What proportion do you suppose," she went on, "of all these roomfuls of
people behind us,--without saying anything uncharitable,--what
proportion of them, if compelled to amuse themselves for two hours at a
bookcase, would pitch upon Macaulay's Essays, or anything like them, to
spend the time?"
"Hum--really, Miss Fleda," said Thorn, "I should want to brush up my
Algebra considerably before I could hope to find x, y, and z in such a
confusion of the alphabet."
"Or extract the small sensible root of such a quantity of light matter,"
said Mr. Stackpole.
"Will you bear with my vindication of my country friends?--Hugh and I sent
for a carpenter to make some new arrangement of shelves in a cupboard
where we kept our books; he was one of these boors, Mr. Thorn, in no
respect above the rest. The right stuff for his work was wanting, and
while it was sent for he took up one of the volumes that were lying about
and read perseveringly until the messenger returned. It was a volume of
Macaulay's Miscellanies; and afterwards he borrowed the book of me."
"And you lent it to him?" said Constance.
"Most assuredly! and with a great deal of pleasure."
"And is this no more than a common instance, Miss Ringgan?" said
Mr. Carleton.
"No, I think not," said Fleda; the quick blood in her cheeks again
answering the familiar voice and old associations;--"I know several of the
farmers' daughters around us that have studied Latin and Greek; and
philosophy is a common thing; and I am sure there is more sense"--
She suddenly checked herself, and her eye which had been sparkling
grew quiet.
"It is very absurd!" said Mr. Stackpole
"Why, sir?"
"O--these people have nothing to do with such things--do them nothing
but harm!"
"May I ask again, what harm?" said Fleda gently.
"Unfit them for the duties of their station and make them
discontented with it."
"By making it pleasanter?"
"No, no--not by making it pleasanter."
"By what then, Mr. Stackpole?" said Thorn, to draw him on and to draw her
out, Fleda was sure.
"By lifting them out of it."
"And what objection to lifting them out of it?" said Thorn.
"You can't lift everybody out of it," said the gentleman with a little
irritation in his manner,--"that station must be filled--there must always
be poor people."
"And what degree of poverty ought to debar a man from the pleasures of
education and a cultivated taste? such as he can attain?
"No, no, not that," said Mr. Stackpole;--"but it all goes to fill them
with absurd notions about their place in society, inconsistent with proper
subordination."
Fleda looked at him, but shook her head slightly and was silent.
"Things are in very different order on our side the water," said Mr.
Stackpole hugging himself.
"Are they?" said Fleda.
"Yes--we understand how to keep things in their places a little better."
"I did not know," said Fleda quietly, "that it was by _design_ of the
rulers of England that so many of her lower class are in the intellectual
condition of our slaves."
"Mr. Carleton," said Mrs. Evelyn laughing,--"what do you say to
that, sir?"
Fleda's face turned suddenly to him with a quick look of apology, which
she immediately knew was not needed.
"But this kind of thing don't make the people any happier," pursued Mr.
Stackpole;--"only serves to give them uppish and dissatisfied longings
that cannot be gratified."
"Somebody says," observed Thorn, "that 'under a despotism all are
contented because none can get on, and in a republic none are contented
because all can get on.'"
"Precisely," said Mr. Stackpole.
"That might do very well if the world were in a state of perfection," said
Fleda. "As it is, commend me to discontent and getting on. And the
uppishness I am afraid is a national fault, sir; you know our state motto
is 'Excelsior.'"
"We are at liberty to suppose," said Thorn, "that Miss Ringgan has
followed the example of her friends the farmers' daughters?--or led
them in it?--"
"It is dangerous to make surmises," said Fleda colouring.
"It is a pleasant way of running into danger," said Mr. Thorn, who was
leisurely pruning the prickles from the stem of a rose.
"I was talking to a gentleman once," said Fleda, "about the birds and
flowers we find in our wilds; and he told me afterwards gravely that he
was afraid I was studying too many things at once!--when I was innocent
of all ornithology but what my eyes and ears had picked up in the woods;
except some childish reminiscences of Audubon."
"That is just the right sort of learning for a lady," said Mr. Stackpole,
smiling at her, however;--"women have nothing to do with books."
"What do you say to that, Miss Fleda?" said Thorn.
"Nothing, sir; it is one of those positions that are unanswerable."
"But Mr. Stackpole," said Mrs. Evelyn, "I don't like that doctrine, sir. I
do not believe in it at all."
"That is unfortunate--for my doctrine," said the gentleman.
"But I do not believe it is yours. Why must women have nothing to do with
books? what harm do they do, Mr. Stackpole?"
"Not needed, ma'am,--a woman, as somebody says, knows intuitively all that
is really worth knowing."
"Of what use is a mine that is never worked?" said Mr. Carleton.
"It _is_ worked," said Mr. Stackpole. "Domestic life is the true training
for the female mind. One woman will learn more wisdom from the child on
her breast than another will learn from ten thousand volumes."
"It is very doubtful how much wisdom the child will ever learn from her,"
said Mr. Carleton smiling.
"A woman who never saw a book," pursued Mr. Stackpole, unconsciously
quoting his author, "may be infinitely superior, even in all those matters
of which books treat, to the woman who has read, and read intelligently, a
whole library."
"Unquestionably--and it is likewise beyond question that a silver sixpence
may be worth more than a washed guinea."
"But a woman's true sphere is in her family--in her home duties, which
furnish the best and most appropriate training for her faculties--pointed
out by nature itself."
"Yes!" said Mr. Carleton,--"and for those duties, some of the very
highest and noblest that are entrusted to human agency, the fine
machinery that is to perform them should be wrought to its last point of
perfectness. The wealth of a woman's mind, instead of lying in the rough,
should be richly brought out and fashioned for its various ends, while
yet those ends are in the future, or it will never meet the demand. And
for her own happiness, all the more because her sphere is at home, her
home stores should be exhaustless--the stores she cannot go abroad to
seek. I would add to strength beauty, and to beauty grace, in the
intellectual proportions, so far as possible. It were ungenerous, in man
to condemn the _best_ half of human intellect to insignificance merely
because it is not his own."
Mrs. Evelyn wore a smile of admiration that nobody saw, but Fleda's face
was a study while Mr. Carleton was saying this. Her look was fixed upon
him with such intent satisfaction and eagerness that it was not till he
had finished that she became aware that those dark eyes were going very
deep into hers, and suddenly put a stop to the inquisition.
"Very pleasant doctrine to the ears that have an interest in it!" said Mr.
Stackpole rather discontentedly.
"The man knows little of his own interest," said Mr. Carleton, "who would
leave that ground waste, or would cultivate it only in the narrow spirit
of a utilitarian. He needs an influence in his family not more refreshing
than rectifying; and no man will seek that in one greatly his inferior. He
is to be pitied who cannot fall back upon his home with the assurance that
he has there something better than himself."
"Why, Mr. Carleton, sir--" said Mrs. Evelyn, with every line of her mouth
saying funny things,--"I am afraid you have sadly neglected your own
interest--have you anything at Carleton better than yourself?"
Suddenly cool again, he laughed and said, "You were there, Mrs. Evelyn."
"But Mr. Carleton,--" pursued the lady with a mixture of insinuation and
fun,--"why were you never married?"
"Circumstances have always forbade it," he answered with a smile
which Constance declared was the most fascinating thing she ever saw
in her life.
Fleda was arranging her flowers, with the help of some very unnecessary
suggestions from the donor.
"Mr. Lewis," said Constance with a kind of insinuation very different from
her mother's, made up of fun and daring,--"Mr. Carleton has been giving me
a long lecture on botany; while my attention was distracted by listening
to your _spirituel_ conversation."
"Well, Miss Constance?"
"And I am morally certain I sha'n't recollect a word of it if I don't
carry away some specimens to refresh my memory--and in that case he would
never give me another!"
It was impossible to help laughing at the distressful position of the
young lady's eyebrows, and with at least some measure of outward grace Mr.
Thorn set about complying with her request. Fleda again stood tapping her
left hand with her flowers, wondering a little that somebody else did not
come and speak to her; but he was talking to Mrs. Evelyn and Mr.
Stackpole. Fleda did not wish to join them, and nothing better occurred to
her than to arrange her flowers over again; so throwing them all down
before her on a marble slab, she began to pick them up one by one and put
them together, with it must be confessed a very indistinct realization of
the difference between myrtle and lemon blossoms, and as she seemed to be
laying acacia to rose, and disposing some sprigs of beautiful heath behind
them, in reality she was laying kindness alongside of kindness and looking
at the years beyond years where their place had been. It was with a little
start that she suddenly found the person of her thoughts standing at her
elbow and talking to her in bodily presence. But while he spoke with all
the ease and simplicity of old times, almost making Fleda think it was but
last week they had been strolling through the Place de la Concorde
together, there was a constraint upon her that she could not get rid of
and that bound eye and tongue. It might have worn off, but his attention
was presently claimed again by Mrs. Evelyn; and Fleda thought best while
yet Constance's bouquet was unfinished, to join another party and make her
escape into the drawing-rooms.