A Red Wallflower

CHAPTER IX

WANT OF COMFORT

The months were many and long before there came another break in the monotony of Esther's life. The little girl was thrown upon her own ressources, and that is too hard a position for her years, or perhaps for any years. She had literally no companion but her father, and it is a stretch of courtesy to give the name to him. Another child would have fled to the kitchen for society, at least to hear human voices. Esther did not. The instincts of a natural high breeding restrained her, as well as the habits in which she had been brought up. Mrs. Barker waited upon her at night and in the morning, at her dressing and undressing: sometimes Esther went for a walk, attended by Christopher; the rest of the time she was either alone, or in the large, orderly room where Colonel Gainsborough lay upon the sofa, and there Esther was rather more alone than anywhere else. The colonel was reading; reverence obliged her to keep quiet; he drew long breaths of weariness or sadness every now and then, which every time came like a cloud over such sunshine as she had been able to conjure up; and besides all that, notwithstanding the sighs and the reading, her father always noticed and knew what she was doing. Now it is needless to say that Colonel Gainsborough had forgotten what it was to be a child; he was therefore an incompetent critic of a child's doings or judge of a child's wants. He had an impatience for what he called a 'waste of time;' but Esther was hardly old enough to busy herself exclusively with history and geography; and the little innocent amusements to which she had recourse stood but a poor chance under his censorship. 'A waste of time, my daughter,' he would say, when he saw Esther busy perhaps with some childish fancy work, or reading something from which she promised herself entertainment, but which the colonel knew promised nothing more. A word from him was enough. Esther would lay down her work or put away the book, and then sit in forlorn uncertainty what she should do to make the long hours drag less heavily. History and geography and arithmetic she studied, in a sort, with her father; and Colonel Gainsborough was not a bad teacher, so far as the progress of his scholar was concerned. So far as her pleasure went, the lessons were very far behind those she used to have with Pitt. And the recitations were short. Colonel Gainsborough gave his orders, as if he were on a campaign, and expected to see them fulfilled. Seeing them fulfilled, he turned his attention at once to something else.

Esther longed for her former friend and instructor with a longing which cannot be put into words. Yet longing is hardly the expression for it; she was not a child to sit and wish for the unattainable; it was rather a deep and aching sense of want. She never forgot him. If Pitt's own mother thought of him more constantly, she was the only person in the world of whom that was true. Pitt sometimes wrote to Colonel Gainsborough, and then Esther treasured up every revelation and detail of the letter and added them to what she knew already, so as to piece out as full an image as possible of Pitt's life and doings. But how the child wanted him, missed him, and wept for him! Though of the latter not much; she was not a child given to crying. The harder for her, perhaps.

The Dallases, husband and wife, were not much seen at this time in the colonel's quiet house. Mr. Dallas did come sometimes of an evening and sat and talked with its master; and he was not refreshing to Esther, not even when the talk ran upon his absent son; for the question had begun to be mooted publicly, whether Pitt should go to England to finish his education. It began to be spoken of in Pitt's letters too; he supposed it would come to that, he said; his mother and father had set their hearts on Oxford or Cambridge. Colonel Gainsborough heartily approved. It was like a knell of fate to Esther.

They were alone together one day, as usual, the father and daughter; and silence had reigned a long while in the room, when Esther broke it. She had been sitting poring over a book; now she looked up with a very burdened brow and put her question.

'Papa, how do people get comfort out of the Bible?'

'Eh – what, my dear?' said the colonel, rousing his attention.

'What must one do, to get comfort out of the Bible?'

'Comfort?' repeated the colonel, now looking round at her. 'Are you in want of comfort, Esther?'

'I would like to know how to find it, papa, if it is here.'

'Here? What have you got there? Come where I can see you.'

Esther drew near, unwillingly. 'It is the Bible, papa.'

'And what is it you want from the Bible? – Comfort?'

'Mamma used to say one could get comfort in the Bible, and I wanted to know how.'

'Did she?' said the colonel with grave thoughtfulness. But he said no more. Esther waited. Her father's tone had changed; he seemed to have gone back into regions of the past, and to have forgotten her. The minutes ran on, without her daring to remind him that her question was still unanswered. The colonel at last, with a long sigh, took up his book again; then seemed to bethink him, and turned to Esther.

'I do not know, my dear,' he said. 'I never could get it there myself, except in a very modified way. Perhaps it is my fault.'

The subject was disposed of, as far as the colonel was concerned. Esther could ask him no more. But that evening, when Mrs. Barker was attending upon her, she made one more trial.

'Barker, do you know the Bible much?'

'The Bible, Miss Esther!'

'Yes. Have you read it a great deal? do you know what is in it?'

'Well, Miss Esther, I ain't a heathen. I do read my Bible, to be sure, more or less, all my life, so to speak; which is to say, ever since I could read at all.'

'Did you ever find comfort in it?'

'Comfort, Miss Esther? Did I ever find comfort in it, did ye ask?' the housekeeper repeated, very much puzzled. 'Well, I can't just say. Mebbe I never was just particlarly lookin' for that article when I went to my Bible. I don't remember as I never was in no special want o' comfort – sich as should set me to lookin' for it; 'thout it was when missus died.'

'She said, one could find comfort in the Bible,' Esther went on, with a tender thrill in the voice that uttered the beloved pronoun.

'Most likely it's so, Miss Esther. What my mistress said was sure and certain true; but myself, it is something which I have no knowledge of.'

'How do you suppose one could find comfort in the Bible, Barker? How should one look for it?'

''Deed, Miss Esther, your questions is too hard for me. I'd ask the colonel, if I was you.'

'But I ask you, if you can tell me.'

'And that's just which I ain't wise enough for. But when I don't know where a thing is, Miss Esther, I allays begins at one end and goes clean through to the other end; and then, if the thing ain't there, why I knows it, and if it is there, I gets it.'

'It would take a good while,' said Esther musingly, 'to go through the whole Bible from one end to the other.'

'That's which I am thinkin', Miss Esther. I'm thinkin' one might forget what one started to look for, before one found it. But there! the Bible ain't just like a store closet, neither, with all the things ticketed on shelves. I'm thinkin' a body must do summat besides look in it.'

'What?'

'I don't know, Miss Esther; I ain't wise, no sort o' way, in sich matters; but I was thinkin' the folks I've seen, as took comfort in their Bibles, they was allays saints.'

'Saints! What do you mean by that?'

'That's what they was,' said Barker decidedly. 'They was saints. I never was no saint myself, but I've seen 'em. You see, mum, I've allays had summat else on my mind, and my hands, I may say; and one can't attend to more'n one thing at once in this world. I've allays had my bread to get and my mistress to serve; and I've attended to my business and done it. That's which I've done.'

'Couldn't you do that and be a saint too?'

'There's no one can't be two different people at one and the same time,

Miss Esther. Which I would say, if there is, it ain't me.'

If this was not conclusive, at least it was unanswerable by Esther, and the subject was dropped. Whether Esther pursued the search after comfort, no one knew; indeed, no one knew she wanted it. The colonel certainly not; he had taken her question to be merely a speculative one. It did sometimes occur to Barker that her young charge moped; or, as she expressed it to Mr. Bounder, 'didn't live as a child had a right to;' but it was not her business, and she had spoken truly: her business was the thing Mrs. Barker minded exclusively.

So Esther went on living alone, and working her way, as she could, alone, out of all the problems that suggested themselves to her childish mind. What sort of a character would grow up in this way, in such a close mental atmosphere and such absence of all training or guiding influences, was an interesting question, which, however, never presented itself before Colonel Gainsborough's mind. That his child was all right, he was sure; indeed how could she go wrong? She was her mother's daughter, in the first place; and in the next place, his own;noblesse oblige, in more ways than one; and then – she saw nobody! That was a great safeguard. But the one person whom Esther did see, out of her family, or I should say the two persons, sometimes speculated about her; for to them the subject had a disagreeable practical interest. Mr. Dallas came now and then to sit and have a chat with the colonel; and more rarely Mrs. Dallas called for a civil visit of enquiry; impelled thereto partly by her son's instances and reminders. She communicated her views to her husband.

'She is living a dreadful life, for a child. She will be everything that is unnatural and premature.'

Mr. Dallas made no answer.

'And I wish she was out of Seaforth; for as we cannot get rid of her, we must send away our own boy.'

'Humph!' said her husband. 'Are you sure? Is that a certain necessity?'

'Hildebrand, you would like to have him finish his studies at Oxford?' said his wife appealingly.

'Yes, to be sure; but what has that to do with the other thing? You started from that little girl over there.'

'Do you want Pitt to make her his wife?'

'No!' with quiet decision.

'He'll do it; if you do not take all the better care.'

'I don't see that it follows.'

'You do not see it, Hildebrand, but I do. Trust me.'

'What do you reason from?'

'You won't trust me? Well, the girl will be very handsome; she'll bevery handsome, and that always turns a young man's head; and then, you see, she is a forlorn child, and Pitt has taken it in to his head to replace father and mother, and be her good genius. I leave you to judge if that is not a dangerous part for him to play. He writes to me every now and then about her.'

Not very often; but Mrs. Dallas wanted to scare her husband. And so there came to be more and more talk about Pitt's going abroad; and Esther felt as if the one spot of brightness in her sky were closing up for ever. If Pitt did go, – what would be left?

It was a token of the real strength and fine properties of her mental nature, that the girl did not, in any true sense, mope. In want of comfort she was; in sad want of social diversion and cheer, and of variety in her course of thought and occupation; she suffered from the want; but Esther did not sink into idleness and stagnation. She worked like a beaver; that is, so far as diligence and purpose characterize those singular animals' working. She studied resolutely and eagerly the things she had studied with Pitt, and which he had charged her to go on with. His influence was a spur to her constantly; for he had wished it, and he would be coming home by and by for the long vacation, and then he would want to see what she had done. Esther was not quite alone, so long as she had the thought of Pitt and of that long vacation with her. If he should go to England, – then indeed it would be loneliness. Now she studied, at any rate, having that spur; and she studied things also with which Pitt had had no connection; her Bible, for instance. The girl busied herself with fancy work too, every kind which Mrs. Barker could teach her, and her father did not forbid. And in one other pleasure her father was helpful to her. Esther had been trying to draw some little things, working eagerly with her pencil and a copy, absorbed in her endeavours and in the delight of partial success; when one day her father came and looked over her shoulder. That was enough. Colonel Gainsborough was a great draughtsman; the old instinct of his art stirred in him; he took Esther's pencil from her hand and showed her how she ought to use it, and then went on to make several little studies for her to work at. From that beginning, the lessons went forward, to the mutual benefit of father and daughter. Esther developed a great aptitude for the art, and an enormous zeal. Whatever her father told her it would be good for her to do, in that connection, Esther did untiringly – ungrudgingly. It was the one exquisite pleasure which each day contained for her; and into it she gathered and poured her whole natural, honest, childlike desire for pleasure. No matter if all the rest of the day were work, the flower of delight that blossomed on this one stem was sweet enough to take the place of a whole nosegay, and it beautified Esther's whole life. It hardly made the child less sober outwardly, but it did much to keep her inner life fresh and sound.

Pitt this time did not allow it to be supposed that he had forgotten his friends. Once in a while he wrote to Colonel Gainsborough, and sent a message or maybe included a little note for Esther herself. These messages and notes regarded often her studies; but toward the end of term there began to be mention made of England also in them; and Esther's heart sank very low. What would be left when Pitt was gone to England?

CHAPTER X

THE BLESSING

So spring came, and then high summer, and the time when the collegian was expected home. The roses were blossoming and the pinks were sweet, in the old-fashioned flower garden in front of the house; and the smell of the hay came from the fields where mowers were busy, and the trill of a bob-o'-link sounded in the meadow. It was evening when Pitt made his way from his father's house over to the colonel's; and he found Esther sitting in the verandah, with all this sweetness about her. The house was old and country fashioned; the verandah was raised but a step above the ground, – low, and with slim little pillars to support its roof; and those pillars were all there was between Esther and the flowers. At one side of the house there was a lawn; in front, the space devoted to the flowers was only a small strip of ground, bordered by the paling fence and the road. Pitt opened a small gate, and came up to the house, through an army of balsams, hollyhocks, roses, and honeysuckles, and balm and southernwood. Esther had risen to her feet, and with her book in her hand, stood awaiting him. Her appearance struck him as in some sense new. She looked pale, he thought, and the mental tension of the moment probably made it true, but it was not merely that. There was a refined, ethereal gravity and beauty, which it is very unusual to see in a girl of thirteen; an expression too spiritual for years which ought to be full of joyous and careless animal life. Nevertheless it was there, and it struck Pitt not only with a sense of admiration, but almost with compassion; for what sort of apart and introverted life could it be which had called forth such a look upon so young a face? No child living among children could ever be like that; nor any child living among grown people who took proper care of her; unless indeed it were an exceptional case of disease, which sets apart from the whole world; but Esther was perfectly well.

'I've been watching for you,' she said as she gave him her hand, and a very lovely smile of welcome. 'I have been looking for you ever so long.'

I don't know what made Pitt do it, and I do not think he knew; he had never done it before; but as he took the hand, and met the smile, he bent down and pressed his lips to those innocent, smiling ones. I suppose it was a very genuine expression of feeling; the fact that he might not know what feeling is nothing to the matter.

Esther coloured high, and looked at him in astonishment. It was a flush that meant pleasure quite as much as surprise.

'I came as soon as I could,' he said.

'Oh, I knew you would! Sit down here, Pitt. Papa is sleeping; he had a headache. I am so glad you have come!'

'How is the colonel?'

'He says he's not well. I don't know.'

'And, Queen Esther, how are you?'

'Oh, I'm well.'

'Are you sure?'

'Why, certainly, Pitt. What should be the matter with me? There is never anything the matter with me.'

'I should say, a little too much thinking,' said Pitt, regarding her.

'Oh, but I have to think,' said Esther soberly.

'Not at all necessary, nor in my opinion advisable. There are other people in the world whose business it is to do the thinking. Leave it to them. You cannot do it, besides.'

'Who will do my thinking for me?' asked Esther, with a look and a smile which would have better fitted twice her years; a look of wistful inquiry, a smile of soft derision.

'I will,' said Pitt boldly.

'Will you? Oh, Pitt, I would like to ask you something! But not now,' she added immediately. 'Another time. Now, tell me about college.'

He did tell her. He gave her details of things he told no one else. He allowed her to know of his successes, which Pitt was too genuinely modest and manly to enlarge upon even to his father and mother; but to these childish eyes and this implicit trusting, loving, innocent spirit, he gave the infinite pleasure of knowing what he had secretly enjoyed alone, in the depths of his own mind. It pleased him to share it with Esther. As for her, her interest and sympathy knew no bounds.

Pitt, however, while he was talking about his own doings and affairs, was thinking about Esther. She had changed, somehow. That wonderful stage of life, 'where the brook and river meet,' she had hardly yet reached; she was really a little girl still, or certainly ought to be. What was then this delicate, grave, spiritual look in the face, the thoughtful intelligence, the refinement of perception, so beyond her years? No doubt it was due to her living alone, with a somewhat gloomy father, and being prematurely thrown upon a woman's needs and a woman's resources. Pitt recognised the fact that his own absence might have had something to do with it. So long as he had been with her, teaching her and making a daily breeze in her still life, Esther had been in a measure drawn out of herself, and kept from brooding. And then, beyond all, the natural organization of this fine creature was of the rarest; strong and delicate at once, of large capacities and with correspondingly large requirements; able for great enjoyment, and open also to keen suffering. He could see it in every glance of the big, thoughtful eyes, and every play of the sensitive lips, which had, however, a trait of steadfastness and grave character along with their sensitiveness. Pitt looked, and wondered, and admired. This child's face was taking on already a fascinating power of expression, quite beyond her years; and that was because the inner life was developing too soon into thoughtfulness and tenderness, and too early realizing the meaning of life. Nothing could be more innocent of self-consciousness than Esther; she did not even know that Pitt was regarding her with more attention than ordinary, or, if she knew, she took it as quite natural. He saw that, and so indulged himself. What a creature this would be, by and by! But in the meantime, what was to become of her? Without a mother, or a sister, or a brother; all alone; with nobody near who even knew what she needed. What would become of her? It was not stagnation that was to be feared, but too vivid life; not that she would be mentally stunted, but that the growth would be to exhaustion, or lack the right hardening processes, and so be unhealthy.

The colonel awoke after a while, and welcomed his visitor as truly, if not as warmly, as Esther had done. He always had liked young Dallas; and now, after so long living alone, the sight of him was specially grateful. Pitt must stay and have tea; and the talk between him and the colonel went on unflaggingly. Esther said nothing now; but Pitt watched her, and saw how she listened; saw how her eyes accompanied him, and her lips gave their silent tokens of understanding. Meanwhile she poured out tea for the gentlemen; did it with quiet grace and neatness, and was quick to see and attend to any little occasion for hospitable care.

The old life began again now in good measure. Esther had no need to beg Pitt to come often; he came constantly. He took up her lessons, as of old, and carried them on vigorously; rightly thinking that good sound mental work was wholesome for the child. He joined her in drawing, and begged the colonel to give him instruction too; and they studied the coins in the boxes with fresh zeal. And they had glorious walks, and most delightful botanizing, in the early summer mornings, or when the sun had got low in the western sky. Sometimes Pitt came with a little tax-cart and took Esther a drive. It was all delight; I cannot tell which thing gave her most pleasure. To study with Pitt, or to play with Pitt, one was as good as the other; and the summer days of that summer were not fuller of fruit-ripening sun, than of blessed, warm, healthy, and happy influences for this little human plant. Her face grew bright and joyous, though in moments when the talk took a certain sober tone Pitt could see the light or the shadow, he hardly knew which to call it, of that too early spiritual insight and activity come over it.

One day, soon after his arrival, he asked her what she had been thinking about so much. They were sitting on the verandah again, to be out of the way of the colonel; they were taking up lessons, and had just finished an examination in history. Pitt let the book fall.

'You said the other day, Queen Esther, that you were under the necessity of thinking. May I ask what you have been thinking about?'

'Did I say that?'

'Something like it.'

Esther's face became sober. 'Everybody must think, I suppose, Pitt?'

'That is a piece of your innocence. A great many people get along quite comfortably without doing any thinking at all.'

'One might as well be a squash,' said Esther gravely. 'I don't see how they can live so.'

'Some people think too much.'

'Why?'

'I don't know why, I am sure. It's their nature, I suppose.'

'What harm, Pitt?'

'You keep a fire going anywhere, and it will burn up what is next to it.'

'Is thought like fire?'

'So far, it is. What were you thinking about, Queen Esther?'

'I had been wanting to ask you about it, Pitt,' the girl said, a little with the air of one who is rousing herself up to give a confidence. 'I was looking for something and I did not know where to find it.'

'Looking for what?'

'I remembered, mamma said people could always find comfort in the

Bible; but I did not know how to look for it.'

'Comfort, Queen Esther!' said Pitt, rousing himself now; 'you were not in want of that article, were you?'

'After you were gone, you know – I hadn't anybody left. And oh, Pitt, are you going to – England?'

'One thing at a time. Tell me about this extraordinary want of comfort, at twelve years old. That is improper, Queen Esther!'

'Why?' she said, casting up to him a pair of such wistful, sensitive, beautiful eyes, that the young man was almost startled.

'People at your age ought to have comfort enough to give away to other people.'

'I shouldn't think they could, always,' said Esther quaintly.

'What is the matter with you?'

Esther looked down, a little uneasily. She felt that Pitt ought to have known. And he did know; however, he thought it advisable to have things brought out into the full light and put into form; hoping they might so be easier dealt with. Esther's next words were hardly consecutive, although perfectly intelligible.