Queechy Volume Ii Part 91

"It will have nothing to act upon! And you are going to England! I think it is very mean of you not to ask me to go too, and be your bridesmaid."

"I don't expect to have such a thing," said Fleda.

"Not? ? Horrid! I wouldn't be married so, Fleda. You don't know the world, little Queechy; the art _de vous faire valoir_, I am afraid, is unknown to you."

"So it may remain with my good will," said Fleda.

"Why?" said Constance.

"I have never felt the want of it," said Fleda, simply.

"When are you going?" said Constance, after a minute's pause.

"By the 'Europa.' "

"But this is a very sudden move?"

"Yes; very sudden."

"I should think you would want a little time to make preparations."

"That is all happily taken off my hands," said Fleda. "Mrs.

Carleton has written to her sister in England to take care of it for me."

"I didn't know that Mrs. Carleton had a sister. What's her name?"

"Lady Peterborough."

Constance was silent again.

"What are you going to do about mourning, Fleda? wear white, I suppose. As n.o.body there knows anything about you, you won't care."

"I do not care in the least," said Fleda, calmly; "my feeling would quite as soon choose white as black. Mourning so often goes alone, that I should think grief might be excused for shunning its company."

"And as you have not put it on yet," said Constance, "you won't feel the change. And then, in reality, after all, he was only a cousin."

Fleda's quiet mood, sober and tender as it was, could go to a certain length of endurance, but this asked too much. Dropping the things from her hands, she turned from the trunk beside which she was kneeling, and hiding her face on a chair, wept such tears as cousins never shed for each other. Constance was startled and distressed; and Fleda's quick sympathy knew that she must be, before she could see it.

"You needn't mind it at all, dear Constance," she said, as soon as she could speak ? "it's no matter ? I am in such a mood sometimes that I cannot bear anything. Don't think of it," she said, kissing her.

Constance, however, could not for the remainder of her visit get back her wonted light mood, which indeed had been singularly wanting to her during the whole interview.

Mrs. Carleton counted the days to the steamer, and her spirits rose with each one. Fleda's spirits were quiet to the last degree, and pa.s.sive ? too pa.s.sive, Mrs. Carleton thought. She did not know the course of the years that had gone, and could not understand how strangely Fleda seemed to herself now to stand alone, broken off from her old friends and her former life, on a little piece of time that was like an isthmus joining two continents. Fleda felt it all exceedingly; felt that she was changing from one sphere of life to another; never forgot the graves she had left at Queechy, and as little the thoughts and prayers that had sprung up beside them. She felt, with all Mrs. Carleton's kindness, that she was completely alone, with no one on her side the ocean to look to; and glad to be relieved from taking active part in anything, she made her little Bible her companion for the greater part of the time.

"Are you going to carry that sober face all the way to Carleton?" said Mrs. Carleton one day pleasantly.

"I don't know, Ma'am."

"What do you suppose Guy will think of it?"

But the thought of what he would think of it, and what he would say to it, and how fast he would brighten it, made Fleda burst into tears. Mrs. Carleton resolved to talk to her no more, but to get her home as fast as possible.

"I have one consolation," said Charlton Rossitur, as he shook hands with her on board the steamer; "I have received permission, from head-quarters, to come and see you in England; and to that I shall look forward constantly from this time."

CHAPTER XXVII.

"The full sum of me Is sum of something; which to term in gross, Is an unlesson'd girl, unschool'd, unpractis'd: Happy in this, she is not yet so old But she may learn; and happier than this, She is not bred so dull but she can learn; Happiest of all, is that her gentle spirit Commits itself to yours to be directed, As from her lord, her governor, her king."

MERCHANT OF VENICE.

They had a very speedy pa.s.sage to the other side, and partly in consequence of that Mr. Carleton was _not_ found waiting for them in Liverpool. Mrs. Carleton would not tarry there, but hastened down at once to the country, thinking to be at home before the news of their arrival.

It was early morning of one fair day in July when they were at last drawing near the end of their journey. They would have reached it the evening before but for a storm which had constrained them to stop and wait over the night at a small town about eight miles off. For fear, then, of pa.s.sing Guy on the road, his mother sent a servant before, and, making an extraordinary exertion, was actually herself in the carriage by seven o'clock.

Nothing could be fairer than that early drive, if Fleda might have enjoyed it in peace. The sweet morning air was exceeding sweet, and the summer light fell upon a perfect luxuriance of green things. Out of the carriage Fleda's spirits were at home, but not within it; and it was sadly irksome to be obliged to hear and respond to Mrs. Carleton's talk, which was kept up, she knew, in the charitable intent to divert her. She was just in a state to listen to nature's talk; to the other she attended and replied with a patient longing to be left free that she might steady and quiet herself. Perhaps Mrs.

Carleton's tact discovered this in the matter-of-course and uninterested manner of her rejoinders; for, as they entered the park-gates, she became silent, and the long drive from them to the house was made without a word on either side.

For a length of way the road was through a forest of trees of n.o.ble growth, which in some places closed their arms overhead, and in all sentinelled the path in stately array. The eye had no scope beyond the ranks of this magnificent body; Carleton park was celebrated for its trees; but magnificent though they were, and dearly as Fleda loved every form of forest beauty she felt oppressed. The eye forbidden to range, so was the mind, shut in to itself; and she only felt under the gloom and shadow of those great trees the shadow of the responsibilities and of the change that were coming upon her. But after a while the ranks began to be thinned and the ground to be broken; the little touches of beauty with which the sun had enlivened the woodland began to grow broader and cheerfuller; and then as the forest scattered away to the right and left, gay streams of light came through the glades and touched the surface of the rolling ground, where, in the hollows, on the heights, on the sloping sides of the dingles, knots of trees of yet more luxuriant and picturesque growth, planted or left by the cultivator's hand long ago, and trained by no hand but nature's, stood so as to distract a painter's eye; and just now, in the fresh gilding of the morning, and with all the witchery of the long shadows upon the uneven ground, certainly charmed Fleda's eye and mind both. Fancy was dancing again, albeit with one hand upon gravity's shoulder, and the dancing was a little nervous too. But she looked and caught her breath as she looked, while the road led along the very edge of a dingle, and then was lost in a kind of enchanted open woodland ? it seemed so ? and then pa.s.sing through a thicket came out upon a broad sweep of green turf that wiled the eye by its smooth facility to the distant screen of oaks and beeches and firs on its far border. It was all new. Fleda's memory had retained only an indistinct vision of beauty, like the face of an angel in a cloud as painters have drawn it; now came out the beautiful features one after another, as if she had never seen them.

So far nature had seemed to stand alone. But now another hand appeared; not interfering with nature, but adding to her. The road came upon a belt of the shrubbery where the old tenants of the soil were mingled with lighter and gayer companions.h.i.+p, and in some instances gave it place, though in general the mingling was very graceful. There was never any crowding of effects; it seemed all nature still, only as if several climes had joined together to grace one. Then that was past; and over smooth undulating ground, bearing a lighter growth of foreign wood, with here and there a stately elm or ash that disdained their rivalry, the carriage came under the brown walls and turrets of the house. Fleda's mood had changed again, and, as the grave outlines rose above her, half remembered, and all the more for that imposing, she trembled at the thought of what she had come there to do and to be. She felt very nervous and strange and out of place, and longed for the familiar face and voice that would bid her be at home. Mrs. Carleton, now, was not enough of a stand-by. With all that, Fleda descended from the carriage with her usual quiet demureness; no one that did not know her well would have seen in her any other token of emotion than a somewhat undue and wavering colour.

They were welcomed, at least one of them was, with every appearance of sincerity by the most respectable-looking personage who opened to them, and whom Fleda remembered instantly. The array of servants in the hall would almost have startled her if she had not recollected the same thing on her first coming to Carleton. She stepped in with a curious sense of that first time, when she had come there a little child.

"Where is your master?" was Mrs. Carleton's immediate demand.

"Mr. Carleton set off this morning for Liverpool."

Mrs. Carleton gave a quick glance at Fleda, who kept her eyes at home.

"We did not meet him ? we have not pa.s.sed him ? how long ago?"

were her next rapid words.

"My master left Carleton as early as five o'clock; he gave orders to drive as fast as possible."

"Then he had gone through Hollonby an hour before we left it,"

said Mrs. Carleton, looking again to her companion; "but he will hear of us at Carstairs ? we stopped there yesterday afternoon ? he will be back again in a few hours, I am sure.

Then we have been expected?"

"Yes Ma'am ? my master gave orders that you should be expected."

"Is all well, Popham?"

"All is well, Madam."

"Is Lady Peterborough here?"

"His Lords.h.i.+p and Lady Peterborough arrived the day before yesterday," was the succinct reply.