Volume Ii Part 70 (1/2)

”Well, Sir, I'll open it if you wish it,” said the man, civilly, ”but they say we sha'n't have nothing to make fires with more than an hour or two longer; so maybe you'll think we can't afford to let any too much cold in.”

The gentleman however, persisting in his wish, and the wish being moreover backed with those arguments to which every grade of human reason is accessible, the window was opened. At first the rush of fresh air was a great relief; but it was not very long before the raw snowy atmosphere, which made its way in, was felt to be more dangerous, if it was more endurable, than the close pent-up one it displaced. Mr. Carleton ordered the window closed again; and Fleda's glance of meek grateful patience was enough to pay any reasonable man for his share of the suffering. _Her_ share of it was another matter. Perhaps Mr.

Carleton thought so, for he immediately bent himself to reward her and to avert the evil, and for that purpose brought into play every talent of manner and conversation that could beguile the time, and make her forget what she was among. If success were his reward he had it. He withdrew her attention completely from all that was around her, and without tasking it; she could not have borne that. He did not seem to task himself; but without making any exertion, he held her eye and ear, and guarded both from communication with things disagreeable. He knew it. There was not a change in her eye's happy interest, till, in the course of the conversation, Fleda happened to mention Hugh, and he noticed the saddening of the eye immediately afterwards.

”Is he ill?” said Mr. Carleton.

”I don't know,” said Fleda, faltering a little ? ”he was not ?

very ? but a few weeks ago.”

Her eye explained the broken sentences which there, in the neighbourhood of other ears, she dared not finish.

”He will be better after he has seen you,” said Mr. Carleton, gently.

”Yes.”

A very sorrowful and uncertain ”yes,” with an ”if” in the speaker's mind, which she did not bring out.

”Can you sing your old song yet?” said Mr. Carleton, softly ?

”Yet one thing secures us, Whatever betide?”

But Fleda burst into tears.

”Forgive me,” he whispered, earnestly, ”for reminding you of that ? you did not need it, and I have only troubled you.”

”No, Sir, you have not,” said Fleda ? ”it did not trouble me, and Hugh knows it better than I do. I cannot bear anything to- night I believe” ?

”So you have remembered that, Mr. Carleton?” she said, a minute after.

”Do you remember that?” said he, putting her old little Bible into her hand.

Fleda seized it, but she could hardly bear the throng of images that started up around it. The smooth worn cover brought so back the childish happy days when it had been her constant companion ? the shadows of the Queechy of old, and Cynthia and her grandfather, and the very atmosphere of those times when she had led a light-hearted strange wild life all alone with them, reading the Encyclopaedia, and hunting out the wood-springs. She opened the book and slowly turned over the leaves where her father's hand had drawn those lines of remark and affection round many a pa.s.sage ? the very look of them she knew; but she could not see it now, for her eyes were dim, and tears were dropping fast into her lap ? she hoped Mr.

Carleton did not see them, but she could not help it; she could only keep the book out of the way of being blotted. And there were other and later a.s.sociations she had with it too ?

how dear! ? how tender! ? how grateful!

Mr. Carleton was quite silent for a good while ? till the tears had ceased; then he bent towards her so as to be heard no further off.

”It has been for many years my best friend and companion,” he said, in a low tone.

Fleda could make no answer, even by look.

”At first,” he went on, softly, ”I had a strong a.s.sociation of you with it; but the time came when I lost that entirely, and itself quite swallowed up the thought of the giver.”

A quick glance and smile told how well Fleda understood, how heartily she was pleased with that. But she instantly looked away again.

”And now,” said Mr. Carleton, after a pause ? ”for some time past, I have got the a.s.sociation again; and I do not choose to have it so. I have come to the resolution to put the book back into your hands, and not receive it again, unless the giver go with the gift.”

Fleda looked up, a startled look of wonder, into his face, but the dark eye left no doubt of the meaning of his words; and in unbounded confusion she turned her own and her attention, ostensibly, to the book in her hand, though sight and sense were almost equally out of her power. For a few minutes poor Fleda felt as if all sensation had retreated to her finger- ends. She turned the leaves over and over, as if willing to cheat herself or her companion into the belief that she had something to think of there, while a.s.sociations and images of the past were gone with a vengeance, swallowed up in a tremendous reality of the present; and the book, which a minute ago was her father's Bible, was now, ? what was it? ?

something of Mr. Carleton's, which she must give back to him.