Queechy Volume Ii Part 24

"Not that which shows itself most splendid to the eye, but which offers fairest indications to the fancy."

Fleda looked a little wistfully, for there was a smile rather of the eye than of the lips, which said there was a hidden thought beneath.

"Don't you a.s.sign characters to your flowers?" said he, gravely.

"Always."

"That _rosa sulphurea_ is a haughty high-bred beauty, that disdains even to show herself beautiful, unless she is pleased ? I love better what comes nearer home to the charities and wants of every-day life."

He had not answered her, Fleda knew; she thought of what he had said to Mrs. Evelyn about liking beauty, but not _beauties_.

"Then." said he, smiling again in that hidden way, "the head of the glen gave me the soil I needed for the Bourbons and French roses."

"Bourbons?" said Fleda.

"Those are exceeding fine ? a hybrid between the Chinese and the _rose-a-quatre-saisons_ ? I have not confined them all to the head of the glen; many of them are in richer soil, grafted on standards."

"I like standard roses," said Fleda, "better than any."

"Not better than climbers?"

"Better than any climbers I ever saw ? except the banksia."

"There is hardly a more elegant variety than that, though it is not strictly a climber; and, indeed, when I spoke, I was thinking as much of the training roses. Many of the _noisettes_ are very fine. But I have the climbers all over ? in some parts nothing else, where the wood closes in upon the path ?

there the evergreen roses or the Ayrs.h.i.+re, cover the ground under the trees, or are trained up the trunks, and allowed to find their own way through the branches down again ? the _multiflora_ in the same manner. I have made the _boursault_ cover some unsightly rocks that were in my way. Then in wider parts of the glade, nearer home, are your favourite standards ? the damask, and Provence, and moss, which, you know, are varieties of the _centifolia_, and the _noisette_ standards ? some of them are very fine, and the Chinese roses, and countless hybrids and varieties of all these, with many Bourbons; and your beautiful American yellow rose, and the Austrian briar and eglantine, and the Scotch, and white and dog roses, in their innumerable varieties, change admirably well with the others, and relieve the eye very happily."

"Relieve the eye!" said Fleda; "my imagination wants relieving! Isn't there ? I have a fancy that there is ? a view of the sea from some parts of that walk, Mr. Carleton?"

"Yes ? you have a good memory," said he, smiling. "On one side the wood is rather dense, and in some parts of the other side; but elsewhere the trees are thinned off towards the south- west, and in one or two points the descent of the ground and some cutting have given free access to the air and free range to the eye, bounded only by the sea-line in the distance; if, indeed, that can be said to bound anything."

"I haven't seen it since I was a child," said Fleda. "And for how long a time in the year is this literally a garden of roses, Mr. Carleton?"

"The perpetual roses are in bloom for eight months ? the damask and the Chinese, and some of their varieties; the Provence roses are in blossom all the summer."

"Ah! we can do nothing like that in this country," said Fleda, shaking her head; "our winters are unmanageable."

She was silent a minute, turning over the leaves of her book in an abstracted manner.

"You have struck out upon a grave path of reflection," said Mr. Carleton, gently, "and left me bewildered among the roses."

"I was thinking," said Fleda, looking up and laughing, "I was moralizing to myself upon the curious equalization of happiness in the world; I just sheered off from a feeling of envy, and comfortably reflected that one measures happiness by what one knows ? not by what one does not know; and so, that in all probability I have had near as much enjoyment in the little number of plants that I have brought up and cherished, and know intimately, as you, Sir, in your superb walk through fairy-land."

"Do you suppose," said he, laughing, "that I leave the whole care of fairy-land to my gardener? No, you are mistaken; when the roses are to act as my correctors, I find I must become theirs. I seldom go among them without a pruning knife, and never without wis.h.i.+ng for one. And you are certainly right so far ? that the plants on which I bestow most pains give me the most pleasure. There are some that no hand but mine ever touches, and those are by far the best loved of my eye."

A discussion followed ? partly natural, partly moral ? on the manner of pruning various roses, and on the curious connection between care and complacency, and the philosophy of the same.

"The rules of the library are to shut up at sundown, Sir,"

said one the bookmen, who had come into the room.

"Sundown!" exclaimed Fleda, jumping up; "is my uncle not here, Mr. Frost?"

"He has been gone half an hour, Ma'am."

"And I was to have gone home with him; I have forgotten myself."

"If that is at all the fault of my roses," said Mr. Carleton, smiling, "I will do my best to repair it."

"I am not disposed to call it a fault," said Fleda, tying her bonnet-strings; "it is rather an agreeable thing once in a while. I shall dream of those roses, Mr. Carleton."

"That would be doing them too much honour."

Very happily she had forgotten herself; and during all the walk home her mind was too full of one great piece of joy, and, indeed, too much engaged with conversation to take up her own subject again. Her only wish was that they might not meet any of the Evelyns; Mr. Thorn, whom they did meet, was a matter of entire indifference.

The door was opened by Dr. Gregory himself. To Fleda's utter astonishment, Mr. Carleton accepted his invitation to come in.

She went up stairs to take off her things, in a kind of maze.

"I thought he would go away without my seeing him; and now, what a nice time I have had ? in spite of Mrs. Evelyn!"

That thought slipped in without Fleda's knowledge, but she could not get it out again.

"I don't know how much it has been her fault either, but one thing is certain ? I never could have had it at her house. How very glad I am! ? how _very_ glad I am! ? that I have seen him, and heard all this from his own lips. But how very funny that he will be here to tea!"

"Well!" said the doctor, when she came down, "you _do_ look freshened up, I declare. Here is this girl, Sir, was coming to me a little while ago, complaining that she wanted something _fresh_, and begging me to take her back to Queechy, forsooth, to find it with two feet of snow on the ground. Who wants to see you at Queechy?" he said, facing round upon her with a look half fierce, half quizzical.

Fleda laughed, but was vexed to feel that she could not help colouring, and colouring exceedingly, partly from the consciousness of his meaning, and partly from a vague notion that somebody else was conscious of it, too. Dr. Gregory, however, dashed right off into the thick of conversation with his guest, and kept him busily engaged till tea-time. Fleda sat still on the sofa, looking and listening with simple pleasure ? memory served her up a rich entertainment enough.

Yet she thought her uncle was the most heartily interested of the two in the conversation; there was a shade more upon Mr.

Carleton, not than he often wore, but than he had worn a little while ago. Dr. Gregory was a great bibliopole, and in the course of the hour hauled out, and made his guest overhaul, no less than several musty old folios, and Fleda could not help fancying that he did it with an access of gravity greater even than the occasion called for. The grace of his manner, however, was unaltered; and at tea, she did not know whether she had been right or not. Demurely as she sat there behind the tea-urn ? for Dr. Gregory still engrossed all the attention of his guest, as far as talking was concerned ?

Fleda was again inwardly smiling to herself at the oddity and the pleasantness of the chance that had brought those three together in such a quiet way, after all the weeks she had been seeing Mr. Carleton at a distance. And she enjoyed the conversation, too; for though Dr. Gregory was a little fond of his hobby, it was still conversation worthy the name.

"I have been so unfortunate in the matter of the drives," Mr.

Carleton said, when he was about to take leave, and standing before Fleda, "that I am half afraid to mention it again."

"I could not help it both those times, Mr. Carleton," said Fleda, earnestly.

"Both the last? ? or both the first?" said he, smiling.

"The last!" said Fleda.

"I have had the honour of making such an attempt twice within the last ten days ? to my disappointment."

"It was not by my fault then, either, Sir," Fleda said, quietly.

But he knew very well from the expression of her face a moment before, where to put the emphasis her tongue would not make.

"Dare I ask you to go with me, to-morrow?"

"I don't know," said Fleda, with the old childish sparkle of her eye; "but if you ask me, Sir, I will go."

He sat down beside her immediately, and Fleda knew, by his change of eye, that her former thought had been right.