Volume Ii Part 22 (1/2)
”I shall let her encounter the dullness alone, Ma'am,” said Fleda, lightly.
But it was not in a light mood that she put on her bonnet after dinner, and set out to pay a visit to her uncle at the library; she had resolved that she would not be near the _dormeuse_ in whatsoever relative position that evening. Very, very quiet she was; her grave little face walked through the crowd of busy, bustling, anxious people, as if she had nothing in common with them; and Fleda felt that she had very little.
Half unconsciously, as she pa.s.sed along the streets, her eye scanned the countenances of that moving panorama; and the report it brought back made her draw closer within herself.
She wondered that her feet had ever tripped lightly up those library stairs.
”Ha! my fair Saxon,” said the doctor, ”what has brought you down here to-day?”
”I felt in want of something fresh, uncle Orrin, so I thought I would come and see you.”
”Fres.h.!.+” said he. ”Ah! you are pining for green fields, I know. But, you little piece of simplicity, there are no green fields now at Queechy, they are two feet deep with snow by this time.”
”Well, I am sure _that_ is fresh,” said Fleda, smiling.
The doctor was turning over great volumes one after another in a delightful confusion of business.
”When do you think you shall go north, uncle Orrin?”
”North?” said he ? ”what do you want to know about the north?”
”You said, you know, Sir, that you would go a little out of your way to leave me at home.”
”I wont go out of my way for anybody. If I leave you there, it will be in my way. Why, you are not getting home-sick?”
”No Sir, not exactly; but I think I will go with you when you go.”
”That wont be yet awhile; I thought those people wanted you to stay till January.”
”Ay, but suppose I want to do something else?”
He looked at her with a comical kind of indecision, and said ?
”You don't know what you want; I thought when you came in you needn't go further than the gla.s.s to see something fresh; but I believe the sea-breezes haven't had enough of you yet. Which part of you wants freshening?” he said, in his mock-fierce way.
Fleda laughed, and said she didn't know.
”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 n.o.body, and sat down at the baize-covered table. But the book was not of the right kind, or her mood was not, for 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 most of her attention. The pages that memory read ? the record of the old times pa.s.sed 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 cheris.h.i.+ng 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.
”What pleasant times we used to have here once, uncle Orrin!”