Use your pleasure: If your love do not persuade you to come, let not
my letter.
Merchant of Venice.
On the way home Mrs. Rossitur and Fleda went a trifle out of their road to
say good-bye to Mrs. Douglass's family. Fleda had seen her aunt Miriam in
the morning, and bid her a conditional farewell; for, as after Mrs.
Rossitur's sailing she would be with Mrs. Carleton, she judged it little
likely that she should see Queechy again.
They had time for but a minute at Mrs. Douglass's. Mrs. Rossitur had
shaken hands and was leaving the house when Mrs. Douglass pulled
Fleda back.
"Be you going to the West Indies too, Fleda?"
"No, Mrs. Douglass."
"Then why don't you stay here?"
"I want to be with my aunt while I can," said Fleda.
"And then do you calculate to stop in New York?"
"For awhile," said Fleda colouring.
"O go 'long!" said Mrs. Douglass, "I know all about it. Now do you s'pose
you're agoing to be any happier among all those great folks than you
would be if you staid among little folks?" she added tartly; while
Catherine looked with a kind of incredulous admiration at the future lady
of Carleton.
"I don't suppose that greatness has anything to do with happiness, Mrs.
Douglass," said Fleda gently.
So gently,--and so calmly sweet the face was that said it that Mrs.
Douglass's mood was overcome.
"Well you ain't agoing to forget Queechy?" she said, shaking Fleda's hand
with a hearty grasp.
"Never--never!"
"I'll tell you what I think," said Mrs. Douglass, the tears in her eyes
answering those in Fleda's.--"It'll be a happy house that gets you into
it, wherever 'tis! I only wish it wa'n't out o' Queechy."
Fleda thought on the whole as she walked home that she did not wish any
such thing. Queechy seemed dismantled, and she thought she would rather go
to a new place now that she had taken such a leave of every thing here.
Two things remained however to be taken leave of; the house and Barby.
Happily Fleda had little time for the former. It was a busy evening, and
the morning would be more busy; she contrived that all the family should
go to rest before her, meaning then to have one quiet look at the old
rooms by herself; a leave-taking that no other eyes should interfere with.
She sat down before the kitchen fire-place, but she had hardly realized
that she was alone when one of the many doors opened and Barby's tall
figure walked in.
"Here you be," she half whispered. "I knowed there wouldn't be a minute's
peace to-morrow; so I thought I'd bid you good-bye to-night."
Fleda gave her a smile and a hand, but did not speak. Barby drew up a
chair beside her, and they sat silent for some time, while quiet tears
from the eyes of each said a great many things.
"Well, I hope you'll be as happy as you deserve to be,"--were Barby's
first words, in a voice very altered from its accustomed firm and
spirited accent.
"Make some better wish for me than that, dear Barby."
"I wouldn't want any better for myself," said Barby determinately.
"I would for you," said Fleda.
She thought of Mr. Carleton's words again, and went on in spite of
herself.
"It is a mistake, Barby. The best of us do not deserve anything good; and
if we have the sight of a friend's face, or the very sweet air we breathe,
it is because Christ has bought it for us. Don't let us forget that, and
forget him."
"I do, always," said Barby crying,--"forget everything. Fleda, I wish
you'd pray for me when you are far away, for I ain't as good as you be."
"Dear Barby," said Fleda, touching her shoulder affectionately, "I haven't
waited to be far away to do that."
Barby sobbed for a few minutes with the strength of a strong nature that
rarely gave way in that manner; and then dashed her tears right and left,
not at all as if she were ashamed of them, but with a resolution not to
be overcome.
"There won't be nothing good left in Queechy, when you're gone, you and
Mis' Plumfield--without I go and look at the place where Hugh lies--"
"Dear Barby," said Fleda with softening eyes, "won't you be something good
yourself?"
Barby put up her hand to shield her face. Fleda was silent for she saw
that strong feeling was at work.
"I wish I could," Barby broke forth at last, "if it was only for
your sake."
"Dear Barby," said Fleda, "you can do this for me--you can go to church
and hear what Mr. Olmney says. I should go away happier if I thought you
would, and if I thought you would follow what he says; for dear Barby
there is a time coming when you will wish you were a Christian more than
you do now; and not for my sake."
"I believe there is, Fleda."
"Then will you?--won't you give me so much pleasure?"
"I'd do a'most anything to do you a pleasure."
"Then do it, Barby."
"Well, I'll go," said Barby. "But now just think of that, Fleda, how you
might have stayed in Queechy all your days and done what you liked with
everybody. I'm glad you ain't, though; I guess you'll be better off."
Fleda was silent upon that.
"I'd like amazingly to see how you'll be fixed," said Barby after a trifle
of ruminating. "If 'twa'n't for my old mother I'd be 'most a mind to pull
up sticks and go after you."
"I wish you could, Barby; only I am afraid you would not like it so well
there as here."
"Maybe I wouldn't. I s'pect them English folks has ways of their own, from
what I've heerd tell; they set up dreadful, don't they?"
"Not all of them," said Fleda.
"No, I don't believe but what I could get along with Mr. Carleton well
enough--I never see any one that knowed how to behave himself better."
Fleda gave her a smiling acknowledgment of this compliment.
"He's plenty of money, ha'n't he?"
"I believe so."
"You'll be sot up like a princess, and never have anything to do no more."
"O no," said Fleda laughing,--"I expect to have a great deal to do; if I
don't find it, I shall make it."
"I guess it'll be pleasant work," said Barby. "Well, I don't care! you've
done work enough since you've lived here that wa'n't pleasant, to play for
the rest of your days; and I'm glad on't. I guess he don't hurt himself.
You wouldn't stand it much longer to do as you have been doing lately."
"That couldn't be helped," said Fleda; "but that I may stand it to-morrow
I am afraid we must go to bed, Barby."
Barby bade her good-night and left her. But Fleda's musing mood was gone.
She had no longer the desire to call back the reminiscences of the old
walls. All that page of her life, she felt, was turned over; and after a
few minutes' quiet survey of the familiar things, without the power of
moralizing over them as she could have done half an hour before, she left
them--for the next day had no eyes but for business.
It was a trying week or two before Mr. Rossitur and his family were fairly
on shipboard. Fleda as usual, and more than usual,--with the eagerness of
affection that felt its opportunities numbered and would gladly have
concentrated the services of years into days,--wrought, watched, and
toiled, at what expense to her own flesh and blood Mrs. Rossitur never
knew, and the others were too busy to guess. But Mrs. Carleton saw the
signs of it, and was heartily rejoiced when they were fairly gone and
Fleda was committed to her hands.
For days, almost for weeks, after her aunt was gone Fleda could do little
but rest and sleep; so great was the weariness of mind and body, and the
exhaustion of the animal spirits, which had been kept upon a strain to
hide her feelings and support those of others. To the very last moment
affection's sweet work had been done; the eye, the voice, the smile, to
say nothing of the hands, had been tasked and kept in play to put away
recollections, to cheer hopes, to soften the present, to lighten the
future; and hardest of all, to do the whole by her own living example. As
soon as the last look and wave of the hand were exchanged and there was no
longer anybody to lean upon her for strength and support, Fleda shewed how
weak she was, and sank into a state of prostration as gentle and deep
almost as an infant's.
As sweet and lovely as a child too, Mrs. Carleton declared her to be;
sweet and lovely as _she_ was when a child; and there was no going beyond
that. As neither this lady nor Fleda had changed essentially since the
days of their former acquaintanceship, it followed that there was still as
little in common between them, except indeed now the strong ground of
affection. Whatever concerned her son concerned Mrs. Carleton in almost
equal degree; anything that he valued she valued; and to have a thorough
appreciation of him was a sure title to her esteem. The consequence of all
this was that Fleda was now the most precious thing in the world to her
after himself; especially since her eyes, sharpened as well as opened by
affection, could find in her nothing that she thought unworthy of him. In
her personally, country and blood Mrs. Carleton might have wished changed;
but her desire that her son should marry, the strongest wish she had known
for years, had grown so despairing that her only feeling now on the
subject was joy; she was not in the least inclined to quarrel with his
choice. Fleda had from her the tenderest care, as well as the utmost
delicacy that affection and good-breeding could teach. And Fleda needed
both, for she was slow in going back to her old health and strength; and
stripped on a sudden of all her old friends, on this turning-point of her
life, her spirits were in that quiet mood that would have felt any jarring
most keenly.
The weeks of her first languor and weariness were over, and she was
beginning again to feel and look like herself. The weather was hot and the
city disagreeable now, for it was the end of June; but they had pleasant
rooms upon the Battery, and Fleda's windows looked out upon the waving
tops of green trees and the bright waters of the bay. She used to lie
gazing out at the coming and going vessels with a curious fantastic
interest in them; they seemed oddly to belong to that piece of her life,
and to be weaving the threads of her future fate as they flitted about in
all directions before her. In a very quiet, placid mood, not as if she
wished to touch one of the threads, she lay watching the bright sails that
seemed to carry the shuttle of life to and fro; letting Mrs. Carleton
arrange and dispose of everything and of her as she pleased.
She was on her couch as usual, looking out one fair morning, when Mrs.
Carleton came in to kiss her and ask how she did. Fleda said better.
"Better! you always say 'better'," said Mrs. Carleton; "but I don't see
that you get better very fast. And sober;--this cheek is too sober," she
added, passing her hand fondly over it;--"I don't like to see it so."
"That is just the way I have been feeling, ma'am--unable to rouse myself.
I should be ashamed of it, if I could help it."
"Mrs. Evelyn has been here begging that we would join her in a party to
the Springs--Saratoga--how would you like that?"
"I should like anything that you would like, ma'am," said Fleda, with a
thought how she would like to read Montepoole for Saratoga.
"The city is very hot and dusty just now."
"Very, and I am sorry to keep you in it, Mrs. Carleton."
"Keep me, love?" said Mrs. Carleton bending down her face to her again;--"
it's a pleasure to be kept anywhere by you."
Fleda shut her eyes, for she could hardly bear a little word now.
"I don't like to keep _you_ here--it is not myself I am thinking of. I
fancy a change would do you good."
"You are very kind, ma'am."
"Very interested kindness," said Mrs. Carleton. "I want to see you looking
a little better before Guy comes--I am afraid he will look grave at both
of us." But as she paused and stroked Fleda's cheek it came into her mind
to doubt the truth of the last assertion, and she ended off with, "I wish
he would come!--"
So Fleda wished truly; for now, cut off as she was from her old
associations, she longed for the presence of the one friend that was to
take place of them all.
"I hope we shall hear soon that there is some prospect of his getting
free," Mrs. Carleton went on. "He has been gone now,--how many weeks?--I
am looking for a letter to-day. And there it is!--"
The maid at this moment entered with the steamer despatches. Mrs. Carleton
pounced upon the one she knew and broke it open.
"Here it is!--and there is yours, Fleda."
With kind politeness she went off to read her own and left Fleda to study
hers at her leisure. An hour after she came in again. Fleda's face was
turned from her.
"Well what does he say?" she asked in a lively tone.
"I suppose the same he has said to you, ma'am," said Fleda.
"I don't suppose it indeed," said Mrs. Carleton laughing, "He has given me
sundry charges, which if he has given you it is morally certain we shall
never come to an understanding."
"I have received no charges." said Fleda.
"I am directed to be very careful to find out your exact wish in the
matter and to let you follow no other. So what is it, my sweet Fleda?"
"I promised--" said Fleda colouring and turning her letter over. But there
she stopped.
"Whom and what?" said Mrs. Carleton after she had waited a
reasonable time.
"Mr. Carleton."
"What did you promise, my dear Fleda?"
"That--I would do as he said."
"But he wishes you to do as you please."
Fleda brought her eyes quick out of Mrs. Carleton's view, and was silent.
"What do you say, dear Fleda?" said the lady, taking her hand and
bending over her.
"I am sure we shall be expected," said Fleda. "I will go."
"You are a darling girl!" said Mrs. Carleton kissing her again and again.
"I will love you forever for that. And I am sure it will be the best thing
for you--the sea will do you good--and ne vous en déplaise, our own home
is pleasanter just now than this dusty town. I will write by this steamer
and tell Guy we will be there by the next. He will have everything in
readiness, I know, at all events; and in half an hour after you get there,
my dear Fleda, you will be established in all your rights--as well as if
it had been done six months before. Guy will know how to thank you. But
after all, Fleda, you might do him this grace--considering how long he has
been waiting upon you."
Something in Fleda's eyes induced Mrs. Carleton to say, laughing,
"What's the matter?"
"He never waited for me," said Fleda simply.
"Didn't he?--But my dear Fleda I--" said Mrs. Carleton in amused
extremity,--"how long is it since you knew what he came out here for?"
"I don't know now, ma'am," said Fleda. But she became angelically rosy the
next minute.
"He never told you?"
"No."--
"And you never asked him?"
"Why no, ma'am!"
"He will be well suited in a wife," said Mrs. Carleton laughing. "But he
can have no objection to your knowing now, I suppose. He never told me but
at the latest. You must know, Fleda, that it has been my wish for a great
many years that Guy would marry--and I almost despaired, he was so
difficult to please--his taste in everything is so fastidious; but I am
glad of it now," she added, kissing Fleda's cheek. "Last spring--not this
last, but a year ago--one evening at home I was talking to him on this
subject; but he met everything I said lightly--you know his way--and I saw
my words took no hold. I asked him at last in a kind of desperation if he
supposed there was a woman in the world that could please him; and he
laughed, and said if there was he was afraid she was not in that
hemisphere. And a day or two after he told me he was going to America."
"Did he say for what?"
"No,--but I guessed as soon as I found he was prolonging his stay, and I
was sure when he wrote me to come out to him. But I never knew till I
landed, Fleda my dear, any more than that. The first question I asked him
was who he was going to introduce to me."
The interval was short to the next steamer, but also the preparations were
few. A day or two after the foregoing conversation, Constance Evelyn
coming into Fleda's room found her busy with some light packing.
"My dear little creature!" she exclaimed ecstatically,--"are you
going with us?"
"No," said Fleda.
"Where are you going then?"
"To England."
"England!--Has--I mean, is there any addition to my list of acquaintances
in the city?"
"Not that I know of," said Fleda, going on with her work.
"And you are going to England!--Greenhouses will be a desolation to me!--"
"I hope not," said Fleda smiling;--"you will recover yourself, and your
sense of sweetness, in time."
"It will have nothing to act upon!--And you are going to England!--I think
it is very mean of you not to ask me to go too and be your bridesmaid."
"I don't expect to have such a thing," said Fleda.
"Not?--Horrid! I wouldn't be married so, Fleda. You don't know the
world, little Queechy; the art _de vous faire valoir_ I am afraid is
unknown to you."
"So it may remain with my good will," said Fleda.
"Why?" said Constance.
"I have never felt the want of it," said Fleda simply.
"When are you going?" said Constance after a minute's pause.
"By the Europa."
"But this is a very sudden move!"
"Yes--very sudden."
"I should think you would want a little time to make preparations."
"That is all happily taken off my hands," said Fleda. "Mrs. Carleton has
written to her sister in England to take care of it for me."
"I didn't know that Mrs. Carleton had a sister.--What's her name?"
"Lady Peterborough."
Constance was silent again.
"What are you going to do about mourning, Fleda? wear white, I suppose. As
nobody there knows anything about you, you won't care."
"I do not care in the least," said Fleda calmly; "my feeling would quite
as soon choose white as black. Mourning so often goes alone, that I should
think grief might be excused for shunning its company."
"And as you have not put it on yet," said Constance, "you won't feel the
change. And then in reality after all he was only a cousin."
Fleda's quiet mood, sober and tender as it was, could go to a certain
length of endurance, but this asked too much. Dropping the things from her
hands, she turned from the trunk beside which she was kneeling and hiding
her face on a chair wept such tears as cousins never shed for each other.
Constance was startled and distressed; and Fleda's quick sympathy knew
that she must be, before she could see it.
"You needn't mind it at all, dear Constance," she said as soon as she
could speak,--"it's no matter--I am in such a mood sometimes that I cannot
bear anything. Don't think of it," she said kissing her.
Constance however could not for the remainder of her visit get back her
wonted light mood, which indeed had been singularly wanting to her during
the whole interview.
Mrs. Carleton counted the days to the steamer, and her spirits rose with
each one. Fleda's spirits were quiet to the last degree, and passive, too
passive, Mrs. Carleton thought. She did not know the course of the years
that had gone, and could not understand how strangely Fleda seemed to
herself now to stand alone, broken off from her old friends and her former
life, on a little piece of time that was like an isthmus joining two
continents. Fleda felt it all exceedingly; felt that she was changing from
one sphere of life to another; never forgot the graves she had left at
Queechy, and as little the thoughts and prayers that had sprung up beside
them. She felt, with all Mrs. Carleton's kindness, that she was completely
alone, with no one on her side the ocean to look to; and glad to be
relieved from taking active part in anything she made her little Bible her
companion for the greater part of the time.
"Are you going to carry that sober face all the way to Carleton?" said
Mrs. Carleton one day pleasantly.
"I don't know, ma'am."
"What do you suppose Guy will think of it?"
But the thought of what he would think of it, and what he would say to
it, and how fast he would brighten it, made Fleda burst into tears.
Mrs. Carleton resolved to talk to her no more, but to get her home as
fast as possible.
"I have one consolation," said Charlton Rossitur as he shook hands with
her on board the steamer;--"I have received permission, from
head-quarters, to come and see you in England; and to that I shall look
forward constantly from this time."