Queechy, Volume II

by Susan Warner

CHAPTER II.

"Now the melancholy god protect thee: and the tailor make thy doublet of changeable taffeta, for thy mind is a very opal." TWELFTH NIGHT.

"Well, what did you come home for?" was Barby's salutation; "here's company been waiting for you till they're tired, and I am sure I be."

"Company!" said Fleda.

"Yes, and it's ungrateful in you to say so," said Barby; "for she's been in a wonderful hurry to see you, or to get somethin' to eat I don't know which; a little o' both, I hope in charity."

"Why didn't you give her something to eat? Who is it?"

"I don't know who it is! It's one of your highfliers, that's all I can make out. She 'a'n't a hat a bit better than a man's beaver; one 'ud think she had stole her little brother's for a spree, if the rest of her was like common folks; but she's got a tail to her dress as long as from here to Queechy Run, and she's been tiddling in and out here, with it puckered up under her arm, sixty times. I guess she belongs to some company of female militie, for the body of it is all thick with braid and buttons. I believe she ha'n't sot still five minutes since she come into the house, till I don't know whether I am on my head or my heels."

"But why didn't you give her something to eat?" said Fleda, who was hastily throwing off her gloves, and smoothing her disordered hair with her hands into something of composure.

"Did!" said Barby; "I give her some o' them cold biscuit and butter and cheese, and a pitcher of milk sot a good enough meal for anybody; but she didn't take but a crumb, and she turned up her nose at that. Come, go! you've slicked up enough; you're handsome enough to show yourself to her any time o' day, for all her jig-em bobs."

"Where is aunt Lucy?"

"She's up stairs; there's been nobody to see to her but me. She's had the hull lower part of the house to herself, kitchen and all, and she's done nothing but go out of one room into another ever since she come. She'll be in here again directly, if you aint spry."

Fleda went in, round to the west room, and there found herself in the arms of the second Miss Evelyn, who jumped to meet her, and half-stifled her with caresses.

"You wicked little creature! what have you been doing? Here have I been growing melancholy over the tokens of your absence, and watching the decline of the sun, with distracted feelings these six hours."

"Six hours!" said Fleda, smiling.

"My dear little Fleda! it's so delicious to see you again!" said Miss Evelyn, with another prolonged hug and kiss.

"My dear Constance! I am very glad! but where are the rest?"

"It's unkind of you to ask after anybody but me, when I came here this morning on purpose to talk the whole day to you. Now, dear little Fleda," said Miss Constance, executing an impatient little persuasive caper round her, "won't you go out and order dinner? for I'm raging. Your woman did give me something, but I found the want of you had taken away all my appetite; and now the delight of seeing you has exhausted me, and I feel that nature is sinking. The stimulus of gratified affection is too much for me."

"You absurd child!" said Fleda; "you haven't mended a bit. But I told Barby to put on the tea-kettle, and I will administer a composing draught as soon as it can be got ready; we don't indulge in dinners here in the wilderness. Meanwhile, suppose that exhausted nature try the support of this easy-chair."

She put her visitor gently into it, and, seating herself upon the arm, held her hand, and looked at her with a smiling face, and yet with eyes that were almost too gentle in their welcoming.

"My dear little Fleda! you're as lovely as you can be! Are you glad to see me?"

"Very."

"Why don't you ask after somebody else?"

"I was afraid of overtasking your exhausted energies."

"Come, and sit down here upon my lap! You shall, or I won't say another word to you. Fleda! you've grown thin! what have you been doing to yourself?"

"Nothing, with that particular purpose."

"I don't care you've done something. You have been insanely imagining that it is necessary for you to be in three or four places at the same time; and in the distracted effort after ubiquity, you are in imminent danger of being nowhere; there's nothing left of you!"

"I don't wonder you were overcome at the sight of me," said
Fleda.

"But you are looking charmingly for all that," Constance went on; "so charmingly, that I feel a morbid sensation creeping all over me while I sit regarding you. Really, when you come to us next winter, if you persist in being by way of showing your superiority to ordinary human nature a rose without a thorn, the rest of the flowers may all shut up at once. And the rose reddens in my very face, to spite me!"

"Is 'ordinary human nature' typified by a thorn? You give it rather a poor character."

"I never heard of a thorn that didn't bear an excellent character," said Constance, gravely.

"Hush!" said Fleda, laughing; "I don't want to hear about Mr.
Thorn. Tell me of somebody else."

"I haven't said a word about Mr. Thorn!" said Constance, ecstatically; "but since you ask about him, I will tell you. He has not acted like himself since you disappeared from our horizon that is, he has ceased to be at all pointed in his attentions to me; his conversation has lost all the acuteness for which I remember you admired it; he has walked Broadway in a moody state of mind all winter, and grown as dull as is consistent with the essential sharpness of his nature. I ought to except our last interview, though, for his entreaties to Mamma that she would bring you home with her were piercing."

Fleda was unable, in spite of herself, to keep from laughing; but entreated that Constance would tell her of somebody else.

"My respected parents are at Montepoole, with all their offspring that is, Florence and Edith; I am at present anxiously inquired after, being nobody knows where, and to be fetched by Mamma this evening. Wasn't I good, little Fleda, to run away from Mr. Carleton, to come and spend a whole day in social converse with you!"

"Carleton!" said Fleda.

"Yes? Oh, you don't know who he is! he's a new attraction; there's been nothing like him this great while, and all New York is topsy-turvy about him; the mothers are dying with anxiety, and the daughters with admiration; and it's too delightful to see the cool superiority with which he takes it all; like a new star that all the people are pointing their telescopes at, as Thorn said, spitefully, the other day. Oh, he has turned my head! I have looked till I cannot look at anything else. I can just manage to see a rose, but my dazzled powers of vision are equal to nothing more."

"My dear Constance!"

"It's perfectly true! Why, as soon as we knew he was coming to Montepoole, I wouldn't let Mamma rest till we all made a rush after him; and when we got here first, and I was afraid he wasn't coming, nothing can express the state of my feelings! But he appeared the next morning, and then I was quite happy," said Constance, rising and falling in her chair, on what must have been ecstatic springs, for wire ones it had none.

"Constance," said Fleda, with a miserable attempt at rebuke, "how can you talk so!"

"And so we were all riding round here this morning, and I had the self-denial to stop to see you, and leave Florence and the Marlboroughs to monopolize him all the way home. You ought to love me for ever for it. My dear Fleda!" said Constance, clasping her hands, and elevating her eyes in mock ecstasy, "if you had ever seen Mr. Carleton!"

"I dare say I have seen somebody as good," said Fleda, quietly.

"My dear Fleda!" said Constance, a little scornfully this time; "you haven't the least idea what you are talking about! I tell you, he is an Englishman; he's of one of the best families in England: not such as you ever see here but once in an age; he's rich enough to count Mr. Thorn over, I don't know how many times."

"I don't like anybody the better for being an Englishman," said Fleda; "and it must be a small man whose purse will hold his measure."

Constance made an impatient gesture.

"But I tell you it isn't! We knew him when we were abroad; and we know what he is; and we know his mother very well. When we were in England, we were a week with them down at their beautiful place in shire the loveliest time! You see, she was over here with Mr. Carleton once before, a good while ago; and mamma and papa were polite to them, and so they showed us a great deal of attention when we were in England. We had the loveliest time down there you can possibly conceive. And, my dear Fleda, he wears such a fur cloak! lined with the most exquisite black fox."

"But, Constance!" said Fleda, a little vexed, though laughing "any man may wear a fur cloak; the thing is, what is inside of it."

"It is perfectly indifferent to me what is inside of it," said Constance, ecstatically. "I can see nothing but the edges of the black fox, especially when it is worn so very gracefully."

"But, in some cases, there might be a white fox within."

"There is nothing of the fox about Mr. Carleton," said Constance, impatiently. "If it had been anybody else, I should have said he was a bear two or three times; but he wears everything as he does his cloak, and makes you take what he pleases from him what I wouldn't take from any- body else, I know."

"With a fox lining," said Fleda, laughing.

"Then foxes haven't got their true character, that's all. Now I'll just tell you an instance it was at a party somewhere it was at that tiresome Mrs. Swinburne's, where the evenings are always so stupid, and there was nothing worth going or staying for but the supper except Mr. Carleton and he never stays five minutes, except at two or three places; and it drives me crazy, because they are places I don't go to very often "

"Suppose you keep your wits, and tell me your story."

"Well don't interrupt me he was there, and he had taken me into the supper-room, when mamma came along, and took it into her head to tell me not to take something I forget what punch, I believe because I had not been well in the morning. Now, you know, it was absurd. I was perfectly well then, and I told her I shouldn't mind her; but do you believe, Mr. Carleton wouldn't give it to me? absolutely told me he wouldn't, and told me why, as coolly as possible, and gave me a glass of water, and made me drink it; and if it had been anybody else, I do assure you I would have flung it in his face, and never spoken to him again; and I have been in love with him ever since. Now, is that tea going to be ready?"

"Presently. How long have you been here?"

"Oh, a day or two and it has poured with rain every single day since we came, till this one; and just think," said Constance with a ludicrously scared face "I must make haste, and be back again. You see, I came away on principle, that I may strike with the effect of novelty when I appear again; but if I stay too long, you know there is a point "

"On the principle of the ice-boats," said Fleda, "that back a little to give a better blow to the ice, where they find it tough?"

"Tough!" said Constance.

"Does Florence like this paragon of yours as well as you do?"

"I don't know she don't talk so much about him, but that proves nothing; she's too happy to talk to him. I expect our family concord will be shattered by and by," said Constance, shaking her head.

"You seem to take the prospect philosophically," said Fleda, looking amused. "How long are you going to stay at the Pool?"

Constance gave an expressive shrug, intimating that the deciding of that question did not rest with her.

"That is to say, you are here to watch the transit of this star over the meridian of Queechy?"

"Of Queechy! of Montepoole."

"Very well of Montepoole. I don't wonder that nature is exhausted. I will go and see after this refection."

The prettiest little meal in the world was presently forth for the two. Fleda knew her aunt would not come down, and Hugh was yet at the mill; so she led her visitor into the breakfast- room alone Constance, by the way, again fondly embracing her, and repeating, "My dear little Fleda, how glad I am to see you!"

The lady was apparently hungry, for there was a minute of silence while the refection begun, and then Constance claimed, perhaps with a sudden appreciation of the delicious bread and butter, and cream and strawberries

"What a lovely old room this is and what lovely times you have here, don't you, Fleda?"

"Yes sometimes," Fleda said, with a sigh.

"But I shall tell mamma you are growing thin, and the first minute we get home I shall send for you to come us. Mrs. Thorn will be amazingly glad to see you."

"Has she got back from Europe?" said Fleda.

"Ages! and she's been entertaining the world as hard as she could ever since. I have no doubt Lewis has confided to the maternal bosom all his distresses; and there never was anything like the rush that I expect will be made to our greenhouse next winter. Oh, Fleda, you should see Mr. Carleton's greenhouses!"

"Should I?" said Fleda.

"Dear me! I hope mamma will come!" said Constance, with a comical, fidgety shake of herself; "when I think of those greenhouses I lose my self-command. And the park! Fleda, it's the loveliest thing you ever saw in your life; and it's all that delightful man's doing; only he wont have a geometric flower-garden, as I did everything I could think of to persuade him. I pity the woman that will be his wife she wont have her own way in a single thing; but then he will fascinate her into thinking that his way is the best so it will do just as well, I suppose. Do you know, I can't conceive what he has come over here for. He has been here before, you know, and he don't seem to me to know exactly what he means to do; at least, I can't find out, and I have tried."

"How long has he been here?"

"Oh, a month or two since the beginning of April, I believe. He came over with some friends of his a Sir George Egerton and his family; he is going to Canada, to be established in some post there, I forget what; and they are spending part of the summer here before they fix themselves at the North. It is easy to see what they are here for they are strangers, and amusing themselves; but Mr. Carleton is at home, and not amusing himself, at least, he don't seem to be. He goes about with the Egertons, but that is just for his friendship for them; and he puzzles me. He don't know whether he is going to Niagara he has been once already and 'perhaps' he may go to Canada and 'possibly' he will make a journey to the West and I can't find out that he wants anything in particular."

"Perhaps he don't mean that you shall," said Fleda.

"Perhaps he don't; but you see that aggravates my state of mind to a distressing degree. And then I'm afraid he will go somewhere where I can't keep watch of him!"

Fleda could not help laughing.

"Perhaps he was tired of home, and came for mere weariness."

"Weariness! it's my opinion he has no idea there is such a word in the language I am certain, if he heard it, he would call for a dictionary the next minute. Why, at Carleton, it seems to me he was half the time on horseback, flying about from one end of the country to the other; and, when he is in the house, he is always at work at something; it's a piece of condescension to get him to attend to you at all; only when he does, my dear Fleda! he is so enchanting that you live in a state of delight till next time. And yet, I never could get him to pay me a compliment to this minute I tried two or three times, and he rewarded me with some very rude speeches."

"Rude!" said Fleda.

"Yes that is, they were the most graceful and fascinating things possible, but they would have been rudeness in anybody else. Where is mamma?" said Constance, with another comic counterfeit of distress. "My dear Fleda, it's the most captivating thing to breakfast at Carleton!"

"I have no idea the bread and butter is sweeter there than in some other parts of the world," said Fleda.

"I don't know about the bread and butter," said Constance, "but those exquisite little sugar-dishes! My dear Fleda, every one has his own sugar-dish and cream-ewer the loveliest little things!"

"I have heard of such things before," said Fleda.

"I don't care about the bread and butter," said Constance "eating is immaterial, with those perfect little things right opposite to me. They weren't like any you ever saw, Fleda the sugar-bowl was just a little, plain, oval box, with the lid on a hinge, and not a bit of chasing, only the arms on the cover like nothing I ever saw but a old-fashioned silver tea-caddy; and the cream-jug, a little, straight, up-and-down thing to match. Mamma said they were clumsy, but they bewitched me!"

"I think everything bewitched you," said Fleda, smiling.
"Can't your head stand a sugar-dish and milk-cup?"

"My dear Fleda, I never had your superiority to the ordinary weaknesses of human nature I can stand one sugar-bowl, but I confess myself overcome by a dozen. How we have all wanted to see you, Fleda! and papa you have captivated papa! and he says "

"Never mind; don't tell me what he says," said Fleda.

"There! that's your modesty that everybody rave about: I wish I could catch it. Fleda, where did you get that little Bible? While I was waiting for you I tried to soothe my restless anticipations with examining all the things in all the rooms. Where did you get it?"

"It was given me a long while ago," said Fleda.

"But it is real gold on the outside the clasps and all. Do you know it? it is not washed."

"I know it," said Fleda, smiling; "and it is better than gold inside."

"Wasn't that mamma's favourite, Mr. Olmney, that parted from you at the gate?" said Constance, after a minute's silence.

"Yes."

"Is he a favourite of yours, too?"

"You must define what you mean by a favourite," said Fleda, gravely.

"Well, how do you like him?"

"I believe everybody likes him," said Fleda, colouring, and vexed at herself that she could not help it. The bright eyes opposite her took note of the fact with a sufficiently wide- awake glance.

"He's very good!" said Constance, hugging herself, and taking a fresh supply of butter; "but don't let him know I have been to see you, or he'll tell you all sorts of evil things about me, for fear you should innocently be contaminated. Don't you like to be taken care of?"

"Very much," said Fleda, smiling, "by people that know how."

"I can't bear it!" said Constance, apparently with great sincerity; "I think it is the most impertinent thing in the world people can do; I can't endure it, except from ! Oh, my dear Fleda, it is perfect luxury to have him put a shawl round your shoulders!"

"Fleda," said Earl Douglass, putting his head in from the kitchen, and before he said any more, bobbing it frankly at Miss Evelyn, half in acknowledgment of her presence, and half, as it seemed, in apology for his own; "Fleda, will you let Barby pack up somethin' 'nother for the men's lunch? my wife would ha' done it, as she had ought to, if she wa'n't down with the teethache, and Catherine's away on a jig to Kenton, and the men wont do so much work on nothin', and I can't say nothin' to 'em if they don't; and I'd like to get that 'ere clover-field down afore night: it's goin' to be a fine spell o' weather. I was a-goin' to try to get along without it, but I believe we can't."

"Very well," said Fleda. "But, Mr. Douglass, you'll try the experiment of curing it in cocks?"

"Well, I don't know," said Earl, in a tone of very discontented acquiescence; "I don't see how anythin' should be as sweet as the sun for dryin' hay; I know folks says it is, and I've heerd 'em say it is, and they'll stand to it, and you can't beat 'em off the notion it is, but somehow or 'nother I can't seem to come into it. I know the sun makes sweet hay, and I think the sun was meant to make hay, and I don't want to see no sweeter hay than the sun makes; it's as good hay as you need to have."

"But you wouldn't mind trying it for once, Mr. Douglass, just for me?"

"I'll do just what you please," said he, with a little exculpatory shake of his head; " 'tain't my concern it's no concern of mine; the gain or the loss 'll be your'n, and it's fair you should have the gain or the loss, whichever on 'em you choose to have. I'll put it in cocks: how much heft should be in 'em?"

"About a hundred pounds; and you don't want to cut any more than you can put up to-night, Mr. Douglass. We'll try it."

"Very good! And you'll send along somethin' for the men. Barby knows," said Earl, bobbing his head again intelligently at Fleda; "there's four on 'em, and it takes somethin' to feed 'em: workin' men 'll put away a good deal o' meat."

He withdrew his head and closed the door, happily for Constance, who went off into a succession of ecstatic convulsions.

"What time of day do your eccentric hay-makers prefer for the rest of their meals, if they lunch at three o'clock? I never heard anything so original in my life."

"This is lunch number two," said Fleda, smiling; "lunch number one is about ten in the morning, and dinner at twelve."

"And do they gladden their families with their presence at the other ordinary convivial occasions?"

"Certainly."

"And what do they have for lunch?"

"Varieties. Bread and cheese, and pies, and Quirl-cakes; at every other meal they have meat."

"Horrid creatures!"

"It is only during haying and harvesting."

"And you have to see to all this, poor little Fleda! I declare, if I was you, I'd do something "

"No," said Fleda, quietly, "Mrs. Douglass and Barby manage the lunch between them. I am not at all desperate."

"But to have to talk to these people!"

"Earl Douglass is not a very polished specimen," said Fleda, smiling; "but I assure you, in some of 'these people' there is an amount of goodness and wit, and shrewd practical sense and judgment, that would utterly distance many of those that would call them bears."

Constance looked a good deal more than she said.

"My dear little Fleda! you're too sensible for anything; but as I don't like sense from anybody but Mr. Carleton, I would rather look at you in the capacity of a rose, smiling a gentle rebuke upon me while I talk nonsense."

And she did talk, and Fleda did smile and laugh, in spite of herself, till Mrs. Evelyn and her other daughters made their appearance.

Then Barby said she thought they'd have talked the house down; and she expected there'd be nothing left of Fleda after all the kissing she got. But it was not too much for Fleda's pleasure. Mrs. Evelyn was so tenderly kind, and Miss Evelyn as caressing as her sister had been, and Edith, who was but a child, so joyously delighted, that Fleda's eyes were swimming in happiness as she looked from one to the other, and she could hardly answer kisses and questions fast enough.

"Them is good-looking enough girls," said Barby, as Fleda came back to the house after seeing them to their carriage, if they knowed how to dress themselves. I never see this fly-away one afore. I knowed the old one as soon as I clapped my eyes onto her. Be they stopping at the Pool again?"

"Yes."

"Well, when are you going up there to see 'em?"

"I don't know," said Fleda, quietly. And then, sighing as the thought of her aunt came into her head, she went off to find her and bring her down.

Fleda's brow was sobered, and her spirits were in a flutter that was not all of happiness, and that threatened not to settle down quietly. But as she went slowly up the stairs, faith's hand was laid, even as her own grasped the balusters, on the promise

"All the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth unto such as keep His covenant and His testimonies."

She set faith's foot down on those sure stepping-stones; and she opened her aunt's door and looked in with a face that was neither troubled nor afraid.