CHAPTER III.
"Ant. He misses not much. Seb. No, he doth but mistake the truth totally." TEMPEST.
It was the very next morning that several ladies and gentlemen were gathered on the piazza of the hotel at Montepoole, to brace minds or appetites with the sweet mountain air while waiting for breakfast. As they stood there, a young countryman came by bearing on his hip a large basket of fruit and vegetables.
"Oh, look at those lovely strawberries!" exclaimed Constance Evelyn, running down the steps. "Stop, if you please where are you going with these?"
"Marm!" responded the somewhat startled carrier.
"What are you going to do with them?"
"I aint going to do nothin' with 'em."
"Whose are they? Are they for sale?"
"Well, 'twon't deu no harm, as I know," said the young man, making a virtue of necessity, for the fingers of Constance were already hovering over the dainty little leaf-strewn baskets, and her eyes complacently searching for the most promising; "I ha'n't got nothin' to deu with 'ern."
"Constance!" said Mrs. Evelyn, from the piazza, "don't take that. I dare say they are for Mr. Sweet."
"Well, Mamma," said Constance, with great equanimity, "Mr. Sweet gets them for me, and I only save him the trouble of spoiling them. My taste leads me to prefer the simplicity of primitive arrangements this morning."
"Young man!" called out the landlady's reproving voice, "wont you never recollect to bring that basket round the back way!"
" 't aint no handier than this way," said Philetus, with so much belligerent demonstration, that the landlady thought best, in presence of her guests, to give over the question.
"Where do you get them?" said Mrs. Evelyn.
"How?" said Philetus.
"Where do they come from? Are they fresh picked?"
"Just afore I started."
"Started from where?" said a gentleman, standing by Mrs.
Evelyn.
"From Mr. Rossitur's, down to Queechy."
"Mr. Rossitur's!" said Mrs. Evelyn. "Does he send them here?"
"He doos not," said Philetus "he doosn't keep to hum for a long spell."
"Who does send them, then?" said Constance.
"Who doos? It's Miss Fliddy Ringgan."
"Mamma!" exclaimed Constance, looking up.
"What does she have to do with it?" said Mrs. Evelyn.
"There don't nobody else have nothin' to deu with it I guess she's pretty much the hull," said her coadjutor. "Her and me was a-picking 'em afore sunrise."
"All that basketful?"
" 't aint all strawberries there's garden sass up to the top."
"And does she send that, too?"
"She sends that teu," said Philetus, succinctly.
"But hasn't she any help in taking care of the garden?" said
Constance.
"Yes, Marm I calculate to help considerable in the back garden she wont let no one into the front where she grows her posies."
"But where is Mr. Hugh?"
"He's to hum."
"But has he nothing to do with all this? Does he leave it all to his cousin?"
"He's to the mill."
"And Miss Ringgan manages farm, and garden, and all?" said
Mrs. Evelyn.
"She doos," said Philetus.
And receiving a gratuity, which he accepted without demonstration of any kind whatever, the basket-bearer, at length released, moved off.
"Poor Fleda!" said Miss Evelyn, as he disappeared with his load.
"She's a very clever girl," said Mrs. Evelyn, dismissing the subject.
"She's too lovely for anything!" said Constance. "Mr. Carleton, if you will just imagine we are in China, and introduct a pair of familiar chopsticks into this basket, I shall be repaid for the loss of a strawberry by the expression of ecstasy which will immediately spread itself over your features. I intend to patronize the natural mode of eating in future. I find the ends of my fingers decidedly odoriferous."
He smiled a little as he complied with the young lady's invitation, but the expression of ecstasy did not come.
"Are Mr. Rossitur's circumstances so much reduced?" he said, drawing nearer to Mrs. Evelyn.
"Do you know them?" exclaimed both the daughters at once.
"I knew Mrs. Rossitur very well some years ago, when she was in Paris."
"They are all broken to pieces," said Mrs. Evelyn, as Mr. Carleton's eye went back to her for his answer; "Mr. Rossitur failed and lost everything bankrupt a year or two after they came home."
"And what has he been doing since?"
"I don't know trying to farm it here; but I am afraid he has not succeeded well I am afraid not. They don't look like it. Mrs. Rossitur will not see anybody, and I don't believe they have done any more than struggle for a living since they came here."
"Where is Mr. Rossitur now?"
"He is at the West, somewhere Fleda tells me he is engaged in some agencies there; but I doubt," said Mrs. Evelyn, shaking her head, compassionately, "there is more in the name of it than anything else. He has gone down hill sadly since his misfortunes. I am very sorry for them."
"And his niece takes care of his farm in the meantime?"
"Do you know her?" asked both the Miss Evelyns again.
"I can hardly say that," he replied. "I had such a pleasure formerly. Do I understand that she is the person to fill Mr. Rossitur's place when he is away?"
"So she says."
"And so she acts," said Constance. "I wish you had heard her yesterday. It was beyond everything. We were conversing very amicably, regarding each other through a friendly vista formed by the sugar-bowl and tea-pot, when a horrid man, that looked as if he had slept all his life in a haycock, and only waked up to turn it over, stuck his head in, and immediately introduced a clover-field; and Fleda and he went to tumbling about the cocks till, I do assure you, I was deluded into a momentary belief that hay-making was the principal end of human nature, and looked upon myself as a burden to society; and after I had recovered my locality, and ventured upon a sentence of gentle commiseration for her sufferings, Fleda went off into a eulogium upon the intelligence of hay-makers in general, and the strength of mind barbarians are universally known to possess."
The manner, still more than the matter of this speech, was beyond the withstanding of any good-natured muscles, though the gentleman's smile was a grave one, and quickly lost in gravity. Mrs. Evelyn laughed and reproved in a breath, but the laugh was admiring, and the reproof was stimulative. The bright eye of Constance danced in return with the mischievous delight of a horse that has slipped his bridle and knows you can't catch him.
"And this has been her life ever since Mr. Rossitur lost his property?"
"Entirely, sacrificed!" said Mrs. Evelyn, with a compassionately resigned air; education, advantages, and everything given up, and set down here, where she has seen nobody from year's end to year's end but the country people about very good people but not the kind of people she ought to have been brought up among."
"Oh, Mamma!" said the eldest Miss Evelyn, in a deprecatory tone, "you shouldn't talk so it isn't right I am sure she is very nice nicer now than anybody else I know, and clever too."
"Nice!" said Edith. "I wish I had such a sister."
"She is a good girl a very good girl," said Mrs. Evelyn, in a tone which would have deterred any one from wishing to make her acquaintance.
"And happy, Mamma Fleda don't look miserable she seems perfectly happy and contented."
"Yes," said Mrs. Evelyn, "she has got accustomed to this state of things it's her life she makes delicious bread and puddings for her aunt, and raises vegetables for market, and oversees her uncle's farmers; and it isn't a hardship to her she finds her happiness in it. She is a very good girl, but she might have been made something much better than a farmer's wife."
"You may set your mind at rest on that subject, Mamma," said Constance, still using her chopsticks with great complacency; "it's my opinion that the farmer is not in existence who is blessed with such a conjugal futurity. I think Fleda's strong pastoral tastes are likely to develop themselves in a new direction."
Mrs. Evelyn looked, with a partial smile, at the pretty features which the business of eating the strawberries displayed in sundry novel and picturesque points of view, and asked what she meant?
"I don't know," said Constance, intent upon her basket; "I
feel a friend's distress for Mr. Thorn it's all your doing,
Mamma you wont be able to look him in the face when we have
Fleda next fall. I am sure I shall not want to look at his.
He'll be too savage for anything."
"Mr. Thorn!" said Mr. Carleton.
"Yes," said Mrs. Evelyn, in an indulgent tone "he was very attentive to her last winter when she was with us, but she went away before anything was decided. I don't think he has forgotten her."
"I shouldn't think anybody could forget her," said Edith.
"I am confident he would be here at this moment," said
Constance, "if he wasn't in London."
"But what is 'all mamma's doing,' Constance?" inquired her sister.
"The destruction of the peace of the whole family of Thorns; I shouldn't sleep sound in my bed if I were she, with such a reflection. I look forward to heart-rending scenes, with a very disturbed state of mind."
"But what have I done, my child?" said Mrs. Evelyn.
"Didn't you introduce your favourite, Mr. Olmney, to Miss Ringgan, last summer? I don't know" her native delicacy shrunk from making any disclosures, and, of course, the tongue of friendship is silent "but they were out ages yesterday while I was waiting for her, and their parting at the gate was I feel myself unequal to the task of describing it," said Constance, ecstatically; "and she was in the most elevated tone of mind during our whole interview afterwards, and took all my brilliant remarks with as much coolness as if they had been drops of rain more, I presume, considering that it was hay-time."
"Did you see him?" said Mrs. Evelyn.
"Only at that impracticable distance, Mamma; but I introduced his name afterwards, in my usual happy manner, and I found that Miss Ringgan's cheeks were by no means indifferent to it. I didn't dare go any further."
"I am very glad of it. I hope it is so," said Mrs. Evelyn, energetically. "It would be a most excellent match. He is a charming young man, and would make her very happy."
"You are exciting gloomy feelings in Mr. Carleton's mind, Mamma, by your felicitous suggestions. Mr. Carleton, did your ears receive a faint announcement of ham and eggs, which went quite through and through mine just now?"
He bowed, and handed the young lady in; but Constance declared, that though he sat beside her, and took care of her at breakfast, he had on one of his intangible fits, which drove her to the last extreme of impatience and captivation.
The sun was not much more than two hours high the next morning, when a rider was slowly approaching Mr. Rossitur's house from the bridge, walking his horse, like a man who wished to look well at all he was passing. He paused behind a clump of locusts and rose-acacias, in the corner of the court- yard, as a figure, bonneted and gloved, came out of the house, and began to be busy among the rose-bushes. Another figure presently appeared at the hall door, and called out
"Fleda!"
"Well, Barby "
This second voice was hardly raised, but it came from so much nearer that the words could be distinctly heard.
"Mr. Skillcorn wants to know if you're going to fix the flowers for him to carry?"
"They're not ready, and it wont do for him to wait Mr. Sweet must send for them if he wants them. Philetus must make haste back, for you know Mr. Douglass wants him to help in the barn meadow. Lucas wont be here, and now the weather is so fine, I want to make haste with the hay."
"Well, will you have the samp for breakfast?"
"No we'll keep that for dinner. I'll come in and poach some eggs, Barby, if you'll make me some thin pieces of toast and call me when it's time. Thin, Barby."
The gentleman turned his horse, and galloped back to
Montepoole.
Some disappointment was created among a portion of Mr. Sweet's guests that afternoon, by the intelligence that Mr. Carleton purposed setting off the next morning to join his English friends at Saratoga, on their way to the Falls and Canada. Which purpose was duly carried into effect.