"Out of humour, I guess," said the doctor. "I'll talk to you!--Take this and amuse yourself awhile, with something that isn't fresh, till I get through, and then you shall go home with me."
Fleda carried the large volume into one of the reading rooms, where there was nobody, and sat down at the baize-covered table. But the book was not of the right kind--or her mood was notfor it failed to interest her. She sat nonchalantly turning over the leaves; but mentally she was busy turning over other leaves which had by far the most of her attention. The pages that memory read--the record of the old times passed in that very room, and the old childish light-hearted feelings that were, she thought, as much beyond recall. Those pleasant times, when the world was all bright and friends all fair, and the light heart had never been borne down by the pressure of care, nor sobered by disappointment, nor chilled by experience. The spirit will not spring elastic again from under that weight; and the flower that has closed upon its own sweetness will not open a second time to the world's breath. Thoughtfully, softly, she was touching and feeling of the bands that years had fastened about her heart--they would not be undone,--though so quietly and almost stealthily they had been bound there. She was remembering the shadows that one after another had been cast upon her life, till now one soft veil of a cloud covered the whole; no storm cloud certainly, but also there was nothing left of the glad sunlight that her young eyes rejoiced in. At Queechy the first shadow had fallen;--it was a good while before the next one, but then they came thick. There was the loss of some old comforts and advantages,--that could have been borne;--then consequent upon that, the annoyances and difficulties that had wrought such a change in her uncle, till Fleda could hardly look back and believe that he was the same person. Once manly, frank, busy, happy and making his family so;--now reserved, gloomy, irritable, unfaithful to his duty and selfishly throwing down the burden they must take up, but were far less able to bear. And so Hugh was changed too; not in loveliness of character and demeanour, nor even much in the always gentle and tender expression of countenance; but the animal spirits and frame, that should have had all the strong cherishing and bracing that affection and wisdom together could have applied, had been left to wear themselves out under trials his father had shrunk from and other trials his father had made. And Mrs. Rossitur,--it was hard for Fleda to remember the face she wore at Paris,--the bright eye and joyous corners of the mouth, that now were so utterly changed. All by his fault--that made it so hard to bear. Fleda had thought all this a hundred times; she went over it now as one looks at a thing one is well accustomed to; not with new sorrow, only in a subdued mood of mind just fit to make the most of it. The familiar place took her back to the time when it became familiar; she compared herself sitting there and feeling the whole world a blank, except for the two or three at home, with the child who had sat there years before in that happy time "when the feelings were young and the world was new."
Then the Evelyns--why should they trouble one so inoffensive and so easily troubled as her poor little self? They did not know all they were doing,--but if they had eyes they must see a little of it. Why could she not have been allowed to keep her old free simple feeling with everybody, instead of being hampered and constrained and miserable from this pertinacious putting of thoughts in her head that ought not to be there? It had made her unlike herself, she knew, in the company of several people. And perhaps they might be sharp-sighted enough to read it!--but even if not, how it had hindered her enjoyment. She had taken so much pleasure in the Evelyns last year, and in her visit,--well, she would go home and forget it, and maybe they would come to their right minds by the next time she saw them.
Fleda saw with a start that it was Mr. Carleton.
"What pleasant times we used to have here once, uncle Orrin!" she said with half a sigh, the other half quite made up by the tone in which she spoke. But it was not, as she thought, uncle Orrin that was standing by her side, and looking up as she finished speaking Fleda saw with a start that it was Mr. Carleton. There was such a degree of life and pleasantness in his eyes that, in spite of the start, her own quite brightened.
"That is a pleasure one may always command," he said, answering part of her speech.
"Ay, provided one has one's mind always under command," said Fleda. "It is possible to sit down to a feast with a want of appetite."
"In such a case, what is the best tonic?"
His manner, even in those two minutes, had put Fleda perfectly at her ease, ill-bred eyes and ears being absent. She looked up and answered, with such entire trust in him as made her forget that she had ever had any cause to distrust herself.