Queechy Volume I Part 19

But Mr. Carleton did not think his efforts thrown away. He understood and admired his fine old host and hostess; and with all their ignorance of conventionalities and absence of what is called _polish_ of manner, he could enjoy the sterling sense, the good feeling, the true, hearty hospitality, and the dignified courtesy, which both of them showed. No matter of the outside; this was in the grain. If mind had lacked much opportunity, it had also made good use of a little; his host, Mr. Carleton found, had been a great leader, was well acquainted with history, and a very intelligent reasoner upon it; and both he and his sister showed a strong and quick apt.i.tude for intellectual subjects of conversation. No doubt aunt Miriam's courtesy had not been taught by a dancing- master, and her brown satin gown had seen many a fas.h.i.+on come and go since it was made, but a _lady_ was in both; and while Rossitur covertly smiled, Mr. Carleton paid his sincere respect where he felt it was due. Little Fleda's quick eye hardly saw, but more than half felt, the difference. Mr.

Carleton had no more eager listener now than she, and perhaps none whose unaffected interest and sympathy gave him more pleasure.

When they rose from the table Mr. Ringgan would not be _insinuated_ into the cold front room again.

"No, no," said he, "what's the matter? the table? Push the table back, and let it take care of itself, ? come, gentlemen, sit down ? draw up your chairs round the fire, and a fig for ceremony! Comfort, sister Miriam, against politeness, any day in the year; don't you say so too, Fairy? Come here by me."

"Miss Fleda," said Mr. Carleton, "will you take a ride with me to Montepoole to-morrow? I should like to make you acquainted with my mother."

Fleda coloured, and looked at her grandfather.

"What do you say, deary?" he inquired fondly; "will you go? ?

I believe, Sir, your proposal will prove a very acceptable one. You will go, wont you, Fleda?"

Fleda would very much rather not! But she was always exceedingly afraid of hurting people's feelings; she could not bear that Mr. Carleton should think she disliked to go with him, so she answered yes, in her usual sober manner.

Just then the door opened, and a man unceremoniously walked in, his entrance immediately following a little sullen knock that had made a mockery of asking permission. An ill-looking man, in the worst sense; his face being a mixture of cunning, meanness, and insolence. He shut the door, and came with a slow, leisurely step into the middle of the room, without speaking a word. Mr. Carleton saw the blank change in Fleda's face. She knew him.

"Do you wish to see me, Mr. McGowan?" said Mr. Ringgan, not without something of the same change.

"I guess I ha'n't come here for nothing," was the gruff retort.

"Wouldn't another time answer as well?"

"I don't mean to find you here another time," said the man, chuckling; "I have given you notice to quit, and now I have come to tell you you'll clear out. I ain't a going to be kept out of my property for ever. If I can't get my money from you, Elzevir Ringgan, I'll see you don't get no more of it in your hands."

"Very well, Sir," said the old gentleman. "You have said all that is necessary."

"You have got to hear a little more, though," returned the other; "I've an idee that there's a satisfaction in speaking one's mind. I'll have that much out of you! Mr. Ringgan, a man hadn't ought to make an agreement to pay what he doesn't _mean_ to pay; and what he has made an agreement to pay, he ought to meet and be up to, if he sold his soul for it! You call yourself a Christian, do you, to stay in another man's house, month after month, when you know you ha'n't got the means to give him the rent for it! That's what _I_ call stealing; and it's what I'd live in the County House before I'd demean myself to do! and so ought you."

"Well, well! neighbour," said Mr. Ringgan, with patient dignity; "it's no use calling names. You know as well as I do how all this came about. I hoped to be able to pay you, but I haven't been able to make it out, without having more time."

"Time!" said the other. "Time to cheat me out of a little more houseroom. If I was agoing to live on charity, Mr. Ringgan, I'd come out and say so, and not put my hand in a man's pocket this way. You'll quit the house by the day after to-morrow, or if you don't I'll let you hear a little more of me that you wont like."

He stalked out, shutting the door after him with a bang. Mr.

Carleton had quitted the room a moment before him.

n.o.body moved or spoke at first, when the man was gone, except Miss Cynthia, who, as she was taking something from the table to the pantry, remarked, probably for Mr. Rossitur's benefit, that "Mr. Ringgan had to have that man punished for something he did a few years ago, when he was justice of the peace, and she guessed likely that was the reason he had a grudge agin him ever since." Beyond this piece of dubious information nothing was said. Little Fleda stood beside her grandfather, with a face of quiet distress; the tears silently running over her flushed cheeks, and her eyes fixed upon Mr. Ringgan with a tender, touching look of sympathy, most pure from self- recollection.

Mr. Carleton presently came in to take leave of the disturbed family. The old gentleman rose, and returned his shake of the hand with even a degree more than usual of his manly dignity, or Mr. Carleton thought so.

"Good day to you, Sir!" he said, heartily. "We have had a great deal of pleasure in your society, and I shall always be very happy to see you ? wherever I am." And then following him to the door, and wringing his hand with a force he was not at all aware of, the old gentleman added in a lower tone, "I shall let her go with you."

Mr. Carleton read his whole story in the stern self-command of brow, and the slight convulsion of feature, which all the self-command could not prevent. He returned warmly the grasp of the hand, answering merely, "I will see you again."

Fleda wound her arms round her grandfather's neck when they were gone, and did her best to comfort him, a.s.suring him that "they would be just as happy somewhere else." And aunt Miriam earnestly proffered her own home. But Fleda knew that her grandfather was not comforted. He stroked her head, with the same look of stern gravity and troubled emotion which had grieved her so much the other day. She could not win him to a smile, and went to bed at last, feeling desolate. She had no heart to look out at the night. The wind was sweeping by in wintry gusts; and Fleda cried herself to sleep, thinking how it would whistle round the dear old house when their ears would not be there to hear it.

CHAPTER VII.

He from his old hereditary nook Must part; the summons came, ? our final leave we took.

WORDSWORTH.

Mr. Carleton came the next day, but not early, to take Fleda to Montepoole. She had told her grandfather that she did not think he would come, because after last night he must know that she would not want to go. About twelve o'clock, however, he was there, with a little wagon, and Fleda was fain to get her sunbonnet and let him put her in. Happily it was her maxim never to trust to uncertainties, so she was quite ready when he came, and they had not to wait a minute.

Though Fleda had a little dread of being introduced to a party of strangers, and was a good deal disappointed at being obliged to keep her promise, she very soon began to be glad.

She found her fear gradually falling away before Mr.

Carleton's quiet kind rea.s.suring manner; he took such nice care of her; and she presently made up her mind that he would manage the matter so that it would not be awkward. They had so much pleasant talk, too. Fleda had found before that she could talk to Mr. Carleton, nay, she could not help talking to him; and she forgot to think about it. And besides, it was a pleasant day, and they drove fast, and Fleda's particular delight was driving; and though the horse was a little gay she had a kind of intuitive perception that Mr. Carleton knew how to manage him. So she gave up every care and was very happy.

When Mr. Carleton asked after her grandfather, Fleda answered with great animation, "O, he's very well! and such a happy thing. You heard what that man said last night, Mr. Carleton, didn't you?"

"Yes."

"Well, it is all arranged; ? this morning Mr. Jolly ? he's a friend of grandpa's that lives over at Queechy Run and knew about all this ? he's a lawyer ? he came this morning and told grandpa that he had found some one that could lend him the money he wanted, and there was no trouble about it; and we are so happy, for we thought we should have to go away from where we live now, and I know grandpa would have felt it dreadfully.

If it hadn't been for that, ? I mean, for Mr. Jolly's coming, ? I couldn't have gone to Montepoole to-day."

"Then I am very glad Mr. Jolly made his appearance," said Mr.

Carleton.

"So am I," said Fleda; ? "but I think it was a little strange that Mr. Jolly wouldn't tell us who it was that he had got the money from. Grandpa said he never saw Mr. Jolly so curious."

When they got to the Pool, Fleda's nervousness returned a little; but she went through the dreaded introduction with great demureness and perfect propriety. And throughout the day Mr. Carleton had no reason to fear rebuke for the judgment which he had p.r.o.nounced upon his little paragon. All the flattering attention which was shown her, and it was a good deal, could not draw Fleda a line beyond the dignified simplicity which seemed natural to her; any more than the witty attempts at raillery and endeavours to amuse themselves at her expense, in which some of the gentlemen showed their wisdom, could move her from her modest self-possession. _Very_ quiet, _very_ modest, as she invariably was, awkwardness could not fasten upon her; her colour might come and her timid eye fall ? it often did; but Fleda's wits were always in their place and within a call. She would shrink from a stranger's eye, and yet when spoken to her answers were as ready and acute as they were marked for simplicity and gentleness. She was kept to dinner; and though the arrangement and manner of the service must have been strange to little Fleda, it was impossible to guess from word or look that it was the first time within her recollection that she had ever seen the like.

Her native instincts took it all as quietly as any old liberalized traveller looks upon the customs of a new country.

Mr. Carleton smiled as he now and then saw a glance of intelligence or admiration pa.s.s between one and another of the company; and a little knowing nod from Mrs. Evelyn, and many a look from his mother, confessed he had been quite right.

Those two, Mrs. Evelyn and Mrs. Carleton, were by far the most kind and eager in their attention to Fleda. Mrs. Thorn did little else but look at her. The gentlemen amused themselves with her. But Mr. Carleton, true to the hopes Fleda had founded upon his good-nature, had stood her friend all the day, coming to her help if she needed any, and placing himself easily and quietly between her and anything that threatened to try or annoy her too much. Fleda felt it with grateful admiration. Yet she noticed, too, that he was a very different person at this dinner-table from what he had been the other day at her grandfather's. Easy and graceful always, he filled his own place, but did not seem to care to do more; there was even something bordering on haughtiness in his air of grave reserve. He was not the life of the company here; he contented himself with being all that the company could possibly require of him.

On the whole Fleda was exceedingly well pleased with her day, and thought all the people in general very kind. It was quite late before she set out to go home again; and then Mrs. Evelyn and Mrs. Carleton were extremely afraid lest she should take cold; and Mr. Carleton, without saying one word about it, wrapped her up so very nicely after she got into the wagon, in a warm cloak of his mother's. The drive home, through the gathering shades of twilight, was to little Fleda thoroughly charming. It was almost in perfect silence, but she liked that; and all the way home her mind was full of a shadowy beautiful world that seemed to lie before and around her.

It was a happy child that Mr. Carleton lifted from the wagon when they reached Queechy. He read it in the utter lightheartedness of brow and voice, and the spring to the ground which hardly needed the help of his hands.

"Thank you, Mr. Carleton," she said, when she had reached her own door; (he would not go in) "I have had a very nice time!"

He smiled.

"Good night," said he. "Tell your grandfather I will come to- morrow to see him about some business."

Fleda ran gaily into the kitchen. Only Cynthia was there.

"Where is grandpa, Cynthy?"

"He went off into his room a half an hour ago. I believe he's layin' down. He ain't right well, I s'pect. What's made you so late?"

"O, they kept me," said Fleda. Her gayety suddenly sobered, she took off her bonnet and coat, and throwing them down in the kitchen, stole softly along the pa.s.sage to her grandfather's room. She stopped a minute at the door, and held her breath to see if she could hear any movement which might tell her he was not asleep. It was all still, and pulling the iron latch with her gentlest hand, Fleda went on tiptoe into the room. He was lying on the bed, but awake, for she had made no noise, and the blue eyes opened and looked upon her as she came near.