Queechy Volume I Part 16

"Uneducated!" exclaimed Mrs. Carleton.

"Don't mistake me, mother, ? I do not mean that it shows any want of reading or writing, but it does indicate an untrained character ? a mind unprepared for the exigencies of life."

"She met those exigencies indifferently well, too," observed Mr. Thorn.

"Ay ? but pride, and the dignity of rank, and undoubtedly some of the finer qualities of a woman's nature, might suffice for that, and yet leave her utterly unfitted to play wisely and gracefully a part in ordinary life."

"Well, she had no such part to play," said Mrs. Carleton.

"Certainly, mother ? but I am comparing faces."

"Well ? the other face?"

"It has the same style of refined beauty of feature, but ? to compare them in a word, Marie Antoinette looks to me like a superb exotic that has come to its brilliant perfection of bloom in a hothouse ? it would lose its beauty in the strong free air ? it would change and droop if it lacked careful waiting upon and constant artificial excitement; ? the other,"

said Mr. Carleton, musingly, ? "is a flower of the woods, raising its head above frost and snow and the rugged soil where fortune has placed it, with an air of quiet patient endurance; a storm wind may bring it to the ground, easily, ?

but if its gentle nature be not broken, it will look up again, unchanged, and bide its time in unrequited beauty and sweetness to the end."

"The exotic for me!" cried Rossitur, ? "if I only had a place for her. I don't like pale elegancies."

"I'd make a piece of poetry of that if I was you, Carleton,"

said Mr. Thorn.

"Mr. Carleton has done that already," said Mrs. Evelyn, smoothly.

"I never heard you talk so before, Guy," said his mother, looking at him. His eyes had grown dark with intensity of expression while he was speaking, gazing at visionary flowers or beauties through the dinner-table mahogany. He looked up and laughed as she addressed him, and rising, turned off lightly with his usual air.

"I congratulate you, Mrs. Carleton," Mrs. Evelyn whispered as they went from the table, "that this little beauty is not a few years older."

"Why?" said Mrs. Carleton, "If she is all that Guy says, I would give anything in the world to see him married."

"Time enough," said Mrs. Evelyn, with a knowing smile.

"I don't know," said Mrs. Carleton, ? "I think he would be happier. He is a restless spirit ? nothing satisfies him. ?

nothing fixes him. He cannot rest at home ? he abhors politics ? he flits away from country to country and doesn't remain long anywhere."

"And you with him."

"And I with him. I should like to see if a wife could not persuade him to stay at home."

"I guess you have petted him too much," said Mrs. Evelyn, slyly.

"I cannot have petted him too much, for he has never disappointed me."

"No, of course not; but it seems you find it difficult to lead him."

"No one ever succeeded in doing that," said Mrs. Carleton, with a smile, that was anything but an ungratified one. "He never wanted driving, and to lead him is impossible. You may try it; and while you think you are going to gain your end, if he thinks it worth while, you will suddenly find that he is leading you. It is so with everybody ? in some inexplicable way."

Mrs. Evelyn thought the mystery was very easily explicable, as far as the mother was concerned; and changed the conversation.

CHAPTER VI.

To them life was a simple art Of duties to be done, A game where each man took his part, A race where all must run; A battle whose great scheme and scope They little cared to know, Content, as men-at-arms, to cope Each with his fronting foe.

MILNES.

On so great and uncommon an occasion as Mr. Ringgan's giving a dinner-party, the disused front parlour was opened and set in order; the women-folks, as he called them, wanting the whole back part of the house for their operations. So when the visitors arrived, in good time, they were ushered into a large square, bare-looking room ? a strong contrast even to their dining-room at the Pool ? which gave them nothing of the welcome of the pleasant farm-house kitchen, and where nothing of the comfort of the kitchen found its way but a very strong smell of roast pig. There was the cheerless air of a place where n.o.body lives, or thinks of living. The very chairs looked as if they had made up their minds to be forsaken for a term of months; it was impossible to imagine that a cheerful supper had ever been laid upon the stiff, cold-looking table, that stood with its leaves down so primly against the wall.

All that a blazing fire could do to make amends for deficiencies, it did; but the wintry wind that swept round the house shook the paper window-shades in a remorseless way; and the utmost efforts of said fire could not prevent it from coming in, and giving disagreeable, impertinent whispers at the ears of everybody.

Mr. Ringgan's welcome, however, was, and would have been the same thing anywhere ? genial, frank, and dignified; neither he nor it could be changed by circ.u.mstances. Mr. Carleton admired anew, as he came forward, the fine presence and n.o.ble look of his old host; a look that it was plain had never needed to seek the ground; a brow that in large or small things had never been crossed by a shadow of shame. And to a discerning eye the face was not a surer index of a lofty than of a peaceful and pure mind; too peace-loving and pure, perhaps, for the best good of his affairs in the conflict with a selfish and unscrupulous world. At least, now, in the time of his old age and infirmity; in former days, his straightforward wisdom, backed by an indomitable courage and strength, had made Mr. Ringgan no safe subject for either braving or over- reaching.

Fleda's keen-sighted affection was heartily gratified by the manner in which her grandfather was greeted by at least one of his guests, and that the one about whose opinion she cared the most. Mr. Carleton seemed as little sensible of the cold room as Mr. Ringgan himself. Fleda felt sure that her grandfather was appreciated; and she would have sat delightedly listening to what the one and the other were presently saying, if she had not taken notice that her cousin looked _astray_. He was eyeing the fire with a profound air, and she fancied he thought it poor amus.e.m.e.nt. Little as Fleda in secret really cared about that, with an instant sacrifice of her own pleasure, she quietly changed her position for one from which she could more readily bring to bear upon Mr. Rossitur's distraction the very light artillery of her conversation; and attacked him on the subject of the game he had brought home.

Her motive and her manner both must have been lost upon the young gentleman. He forthwith set about amusing himself in a way his little entertainer had not counted upon, namely, with giving a chase to her wits; partly to pa.s.s away the time, and partly to gratify his curiosity, as he said, "to see what Fleda was made of." By a curious system of involved, startling, or absurd questions, he endeavoured to puzzle, or confound, or entrap her. Fleda, however, steadily presented a grave front to the enemy, and would every now and then surprise him with an unexpected turn or clever doubling, and sometimes when he thought he had her in a corner, jump over the fence and laugh at him from the other side. Mr. Rossitur's respect for his little adversary gradually increased, and finding that she had rather the best of the game, he at last gave it up, just as Mr. Ringgan was asking Mr. Carleton if he was a judge of stock? Mr. Carleton saying with a smile, "No, but he hoped Mr. Ringgan would give him his first lesson," ?

the old gentleman immediately arose with that alacrity of manner he always wore when he had a visitor that pleased him, and taking his hat and cane led the way out; choosing, with a man's true carelessness of housewifery etiquette, the kitchen route, of all others. Not even admonished by the sight of the bright Dutch oven before the fire, that he was introducing his visitors somewhat too early to the pig, he led the whole party through, Cynthia scuttling away in haste across the kitchen with something that must not be seen, while aunt Miriam looked out at the company through the crack of the pantry door, at which Fleda ventured a sly glance of intelligence.

It was a fine though a windy and cold afternoon; the lights and shadows were driving across the broad upland and meadows.

"This is a fine arable country," remarked Mr. Carleton.

"Capital, Sir, capital, for many miles round, if we were not so far from a market. I was one of the first that broke ground in this towns.h.i.+p, ? one of the very first settlers ? I've seen the rough and the smooth of it, and I never had but one mind about it from the first. All this ? as far as you can see ? I cleared myself; most of it with my own hand."

"That recollection must attach you strongly to the place, I should think, Sir."

"Hum, perhaps I cared too much for it," he replied, "for it is taken away from me. Well, it don't matter now."

"It is not yours?"

"No, Sir! it was mine a great many years; but I was obliged to part with it, two years ago, to a scoundrel of a fellow ?

McGowan, up here ? he got an advantage over me. I can't take care of myself any more as I used to do, and I don't find that other people deal by me just as I could wish ?"

He was silent for a moment and then went on ?

"Yes, Sir! when I first set myself down here, or a little further that way, my first house was, ? a pretty rough house, too, ? there wa'n't two settlers beside within something like ten miles round. ? I've seen the whole of it cleared, from the cutting of the first forest trees till this day."

"You have seen the nation itself spring up within that time,"

remarked his guest.

"Not exactly ? that question of our nationality was settled a little before I came here. I was born rather too late to see the whole of that play ? I saw the best of it, though ? boys were men in those days. My father was in the thick of it from beginning to end."

"In the army, was he?"

"Ho, yes, Sir! he and every child he had that wasn't a girl ?

there wasn't a man of the name that wa'n't on the right side.

I was in the army myself when I was fifteen. I was nothing but a fifer ? but I tell you, Sir! there wasn't a general officer in the country that played his part with a prouder heart than I did mine!"