Constance after a little laughing and condoling, neither of which Fleda attempted to answer, ran off too, to dress herself; and Fleda after finishing her own toilette locked her door, sat down and cried heartily. She thought Mrs. Evelyn had been, perhaps unconsciously, very unkind; and to say that unkindness has not been meant is but to shift the charge from one to another vital point in the character of a friend, and one perhaps sometimes not less grave. A moment's passionate wrong may consist with the endurance of a friendship worth having, better than the thoughtlessness of obtuse wits that can never know how to be kind. Fleda's whole frame was still in a tremor from disagreeable excitement; and she had serious causes of sorrow to cry for. She was sorry she had lost what would have been a great pleasure in the ride,--and her great pleasures were not often,--but nothing would have been more impossible than for her to go after what Mrs. Evelyn had said;--she was sorry Mr. Carleton should have asked her twice in vain; what must he think?--she was exceeding sorry that a thought should have been put into her head that never before had visited the most distant dreams of her imagination,--so needlessly, so gratuitously;--she was very sorry, for she could not be free of it again, and she felt it would make her miserably hampered and constrained in mind and manner both, in any future intercourse with the person in question. And then again what would he think of that? Poor Fleda came to the conclusion that her best place was at home; and made up her mind to take the first good opportunity of getting there.
She went down to dinner with no traces of either tears or unkindness on her sweet face, but her nerves were quivering all the afternoon; she could not tell whether Mrs. Evelyn and her daughters found it out. And it was impossible for her to get back even her old degree of freedom of manner before either Mr. Carleton or Mr Thorn. All the more because Mrs. Evelyn was every now and then bringing out some sly allusion which afforded herself intense delight and wrought Fleda to the last degree of quietness. Unkind.--Fleda thought now it was but half from ignorance of the mischief she was doing, and the other half from the mere desire of selfish gratification. The times and ways in which Lot and Abraham were walked into the conversation were incalculable,--and unintelligible except to the person who understood it only too well. On one occasion Mrs. Evelyn went on with a long rigmarole to Mr. Thorn about sea-breezes, with a face of most exquisite delight at his mystification and her own hidden fun; till Fleda was absolutely trembling. Fleda shunned both the gentlemen at length with a kind of nervous horror.
One steamer had left New York, and another, and still Mr. Carleton did not leave it. Why he staid, Constance was as much in a puzzle as ever, for no mortal could guess. Clearly, she said, he did not delight in New York society, for he honoured it as slightly and partially as might be, and it was equally clear if he had a particular reason for staying he didn't mean anybody should know it.
"If he don't mean it, you won't find it out, Constance," said Fleda.
"But it is that very consideration, you see, which inflames my impatience to a most dreadful degree. I think our house is distinguished with his regards, though I am sure I can't imagine why, for he never condescends to anything beyond general benevolence when he is here, and not always to that. He has no taste for embroidery, or Miss Ringgan's crewels would receive more of his notice--he listens to my spirited conversation with a self-possession which invariably deprives me of mine!--and his ear is evidently dull to musical sensibilities, or Florence's harp would have greater charms. I hope there is a web weaving somewhere that will catch him--at present he stands in an attitude of provoking independence of all the rest of the world. It is curious!" said Constance with an indescribable face,--"I feel that the independence of another is rapidly making a slave of me!--"
"What do you mean, Constance?" said Edith indignantly. But the others could do nothing but laugh.
Fleda did not wonder that Mr. Carleton made no more efforts to get her to ride, for the very next day after his last failure he had met her driving with Mr. Thorn. Fleda had been asked by Mr. Thorn's mother in such a way as made it impossible to get off; but it caused her to set a fresh seal of unkindness to Mrs. Evelyn's behaviour.
One evening when there was no other company at Mrs. Evelyn's, Mr. Stackpole was entertaining himself with a long dissertation upon the affairs of America, past, present, and future. It was a favourite subject; Mr. Stackpole always seemed to have more complacent enjoyment of his easy chair when he could succeed in making every American in the room sit uncomfortably. And this time, without any one to thwart him, he went on to his heart's content, disposing of the subject as one would strip a rose of its petals, with as much seeming nonchalance and ease, and with precisely the same design, to make a rose no rose. Leaf after leaf fell under Mr. Stackpole's touch, as if it had been a black frost. The American government was a rickety experiment; go to pieces presently,--American institutions an alternative between fallacy and absurdity, the fruit of raw minds and precocious theories;--American liberty a contradiction;-- American character a compound of quackery and pretension;--American society (except at Mrs. Evelyn's) an anomaly;--American destiny the same with that of a Cactus or a volcano; a period of rest followed by a period of excitement; not however like the former making successive shoots towards perfection, but like the latter grounding every new face of things upon the demolition of that which went before. Smoothly and pleasantly Mr. Stackpole went on compounding this cup of entertainment for himself and his hearers, smacking his lips over it, and all the more, Fleda thought, when they made wry faces; throwing in a little truth, a good deal of fallacy, a great deal of perversion and misrepresentation; while Mrs. Evelyn listened and smiled, and half parried and half assented to his positions; and Fleda sat impatiently drumming upon her elbow with the fingers of her other hand, in the sheer necessity of giving some expression to her feelings. Mr. Stackpole at last got his finger upon the sore spot of American slavery, and pressed it hard.
"This is the land of the stars and the stripes!" said the gentleman in a little fit of virtuous indignation;--"This is the land where all are brothers!--where 'All men are born free and equal.'"
"Mr. Stackpole," said Fleda in a tone that called his attention,--"are you well acquainted with the popular proverbs of your country?"