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A Red Wallflower

by Susan Warner · English · Gutenberg #26828 · 842,391 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: A Red Wallflower

Author: Susan Warner


        
Release date: October 7, 2008 [eBook #26828]
                Most recently updated: January 4, 2021

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/26828

Credits: Produced by Daniel Fromont


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A RED WALLFLOWER ***




Produced by Daniel Fromont









[Transcriber's note: Susan Warner, _A red wallflower_, (1884), Nisbet
1913 edition]





A RED WALLFLOWER



BY SUSAN WARNER AUTHOR OF 'THE WIDE, WIDE WORLD,' 'QUEECHY,' ETC.


LONDON JAMES NISBET & CO. LIMITED 21 BERNERS STREET W



NOTE TO THE READER.


The story following is again in its whole chain of skeleton facts a
true story. I beg to observe, in particular, that the denominational
feeling described in both families, with the ways it showed itself, is
part of the truth of the story, and no invention of mine.


S. W.


MARTLAER'S ROCK, June 25, 1884.




CONTENTS.


CHAPTER

       I. AFTER DANDELIONS
      II. AT HOME
     III. THE BOX OF COINS
      IV. LEARNING
       V. CONTAMINATION
      VI. GOING TO COLLEGE
     VII. COMING HOME
    VIII. A NOSEGAY
      IX. WANT OF COMFORT
       X. THE BLESSING
      XI. DISSENT
     XII. THE VACATION
    XIII. LETTERS
     XIV. STRUGGLES
      XV. COMFORT
     XVI. REST AND UNREST
    XVII. MOVING
   XVIII. A NEIGHBOUR
     XIX. HAPPY PEOPLE
      XX. SCHOOL
     XXI. THE COLONEL'S TOAST
    XXII. A QUESTION
   XXIII. A DEBATE
    XXIV. DISAPPOINTMENT
     XXV. A HEAD OF LETTUCE
    XXVI. WAYS AND MEANS
   XXVII. ONIONS
  XXVIII. STRAWBERRIES
    XXIX. HAY AND OATS
     XXX. A HOUSE
    XXXI. MAJOR STREET
   XXXII. MOVING
  XXXIII. BETTY
   XXXIV. HOLIDAYS
    XXXV. ANTIQUITIES
   XXXVI. INTERPRETATIONS
  XXXVII. A STAND
 XXXVIII. LIFE PLANS
   XXXIX. SKIRMISHING
      XL. LONDON
     XLI. AN OLD HOUSE
    XLII. THE TOWER
   XLIII. MARTIN'S COURT
    XLIV. THE DUKE OF TREFOIL
     XLV. THE ABBEY
    XLVI. A VISIT
   XLVII. A TALK
  XLVIII. A SETTLEMENT




A RED WALLFLOWER.




CHAPTER I.

_AFTER DANDELIONS_.


It is now a good many years ago that an English family came over from
the old country and established itself in one of the small villages
that are scattered along the shore of Connecticut. Why they came was
not clearly understood, neither was it at all to be gathered from their
way of life or business. Business properly they had none; and their way
of life seemed one of placid contentment and unenterprising domestic
pleasure. The head of the family was a retired army officer, now past
the prime of his years; tall, thin, grey, and grave; but a gentleman
through and through. Everybody liked Colonel Gainsborough, although
nobody could account for a man of his age leading what seemed such a
profitless life. He was doing really nothing; staying at home with his
wife and his books. Why had he come to Connecticut at all? If he lived
for pleasure, surely his own country would have been a better place to
seek it. Nobody could solve this riddle. That Colonel Gainsborough had
anything to be ashamed of, or anything to be afraid of, entered
nobody's head for a moment. Fear or shame were unknown to that grave,
calm, refined face. The whisper got about, how, it is impossible to
say, that his leaving home had been occasioned by a disagreement with
his relations. It might be so. No one could ask him, and the colonel
never volunteered to still curiosity on the subject.

The family was small. Only a wife and one little girl came with the
colonel to America; and they were attended by only two old retainers, a
man and a woman. They hired no other servants after their arrival,
which, however, struck nobody as an admission of scantness of means.
According to the views and habits of the countryside, two people were
quite enough to look after three; the man outside and the woman inside
the house. Christopher Bounder took care of the garden and the cow, and
cut and made the hay from one or two little fields. And Mrs. Barker,
his sister, was a very capable woman indeed, and quite equal to the
combined duties of housekeeper, cook, lady's maid, and housemaid, which
she fulfilled to everybody's satisfaction, including her own. However,
after two or three years in Seaforth these duties were somewhat
lessened; the duties of Mrs. Barker's hands, that is, for her head had
more to do. Mrs. Gainsborough, who had been delicate and failing for
some time, at last died, leaving an almost inconsolable husband and
daughter behind her. I might with truth say quite inconsolable; for at
the time I speak of, a year later than Mrs. Gainsborough's death,
certainly comfort had come to neither father nor daughter.

It was one morning in spring-time. Mrs. Barker stood at the door of her
kitchen, and called to her brother to come in to breakfast. Christopher
slowly obeyed the summons, leaving his spade stuck upright in the bed
he was digging, and casting loving looks as he came at the budding
gooseberry bushes. He was a typical Englishman; ruddy, fair-skinned,
blue-eyed, of very solid build, and showing the national tendency to
flesh. He was a handsome man, and not without a sufficiency of
self-consciousness, both as regarding that and other things. Mrs.
Barker was a contrast; for she was very plain, some years older than
her brother, and of rather spare habit though large frame. Both faces
showed sense, and the manner of both indicated that they knew their own
minds.

'Season's late,' observed Mrs. Barker, as she stepped back from the
door and lifted her coffee-pot on the table.

'Uncommon late,' answered her brother. 'Buds on them gooseberry bushes
only just showin' green. Now everything will be coming all together in
a heap in two weeks more. That's the way o' this blessed climate! And
then when everything's started, maybe a frost will come and slap down
on us.'

'Peas in?'

'Peas in a fortnight ago. They'll be showin' their heads just now.'

'Christopher, can you get me some greens to day?'

'Greens for what?'

'Why, for dinner. Master likes a bit o' boiled beef now and again,
which he used to, anyway; and I thought greens is kind o' seasonable at
this time o' year, and I'd try him with 'em. But la! he don't care no
more what he eats.'

'How is the old gentleman?'

'Doin' his best to kill hisself, I should say.'

'Looks like it,' said Christopher, going on with a good breakfast the
while in a business manner. 'When a man don't care no more what he
eats, the next thing'll be that he'll stop it; and then there's only
one thing more he will do.'

'What's that?'

'Die, to be sure!'

'He ain't dyin' yet,' said Mrs. Barker thoughtfully, 'but he ain't
doin' the best he can wi's life, for certain. Can ye get me some
greens, Christopher?'

'Nothing in _my_ department. I can take a knife and a basket and find
you some dandelions.'

'Will ye go fur to find 'em?'

'No furder'n I can help, you may make your affidavit, with all there is
to do in the garden yet. What's about it?'

'If you're goin' a walk, I'd let Missie go along. She don't get no
chance for no diversion whatsomever when young Mr. Dallas don't come
along. She just mopes, she do; and it's on my mind, and master he don't
see it. I wish he would.'

'The little one does wear an uncommon solemn countenance,' said the
gardener, who was in his way quite an educated man, and used language
above his station.

'It do vex me,' repeated the housekeeper.

'But young Mr. Dallas comes along pretty often. If Miss Esther was a
little older, now, we should see no more of her solemnity. What 'ud
master say to that?'

'It's good things is as they be, and we've no need to ask. I don't want
no more complications, for my part. It's hard enough to manage as it
is.'

'But things won't stay as they be,' said the gardener, with a twinkle
of his shrewd blue eye as he looked at his sister. 'Do you expect they
will, Sarah? Miss Esther's growin' up fast, and she'll be an uncommon
handsome girl too. Do you know that?'

'I shouldn't say she was what you'd go fur to call handsome,' returned
the housekeeper.

'I doubt you haven't an eye for beauty. Perhaps one ought to have a bit
of it oneself to be able to see it in others.'

'Well I haven't it,' said Mrs. Barker; 'and I never set up to have it.
And I allays thought rosy cheeks went with beauty; and Missie has no
more colour in her cheeks, poor child, than well--than I have myself.'

'She's got two eyes, though.'

'Who hasn't got two eyes?' said the other scornfully.

'Just the folks that haven't an eye,' said the gardener, with another
twinkle of his own. 'But I tell you, there ain't two such eyes as Miss
Esther's between here and Boston. Look out; other folk will find it out
soon if you don't. There ain't but three years between twelve and
fifteen; and then it don't take but two more to make seventeen.'

'Three and two's five, though,' said Mrs. Barker; 'and five years is a
long time. And Miss Esther ain't twelve yet, neither. Then when'll ye
be goin' after the greens, Christopher?'

'It'll be a bit yet. I'll let you know.'

The fair spring morning was an hour or two farther on its way,
accordingly, when the gardener and the little girl set out on their
quest after greens. Yet it was still early, for the kitchen breakfast
was had betimes. The gardener carried a basket, and Esther too did the
like; in hers there was a small trowel, for 'she might find something,'
she said. Esther always said that, although hitherto her 'findings' had
amounted to nothing of any account; unless, indeed, I correct that, and
say, in any eyes but her own. For in Esther's eyes every insignificant
growth of the woods or the fields had a value and a charm
inexpressible. Nothing was 'common' to her, and hardly anything that
grew was relegated to the despised community of 'weeds.'

'What are you going for now, Christopher?' she asked as they trudged on
together.

'Well, miss, my old woman there has sent me for some greens. She has a
wild tooth for greens, she has,' he added, half to himself.

'What sort of greens can you get?'

'There's various sorts to be had, Miss Esther; a great variety of the
herbs of the field are good for eating, at the different times o' the
year; even here in this country; and I do suppose there ain't a poorer
on the face o' the earth!'

'Than _this_ country? than Seaforth? O Christopher!'

'Well, m'm, it beats all _I_ ever knew for poorness. You should see
England once, Miss Esther! That's the place for gardens; and the fields
is allays green; and the flowers do be beautiful; and when the sun
_shines_, it shines; here it burns.'

'Not to-day,' said Esther gleefully. 'How nice it is!'

She might say so, for if the spring is rough in New England, and there
is no denying it, there do nevertheless come days of bewitching,
entrancing, delicious beauty, in the midst of the rest. Days when the
air and sky and sunlight are in a kind of poise of delight, and earth
beneath them, is, as it were, still with pleasure. I suppose the spring
may be more glorious in other lands,--more positively glorious; whether
relatively, I do not know. With such contrasts before and behind
them,--contrasts of raw, chill air, and rough, cutting winds, with
skies of grey and gloom,--one of these perfect days of a lost Paradise
stands in a singular setting. It was such a day when Esther and
Christopher went after dandelions. Still, balmy air, a tender sky
slightly veiled with spring mistiness, light and warmth so gentle that
they were a blessing to a weary brain, yet so abundant that every bud
and leaf and plant and flower was unfolding and out-springing and
stretching upward and dispensing abroad all it had of sweetness. The
air was filled with sweetness; not the heavy odours of the blossoms of
summer, or the South, but a more delicate and searching fragrance from
resinous buds and freshly-opened tree flowers and the young green of
the shooting leaf. I don't know where spring gets it all, but she does
fling abroad her handfuls of perfume such as summer has no skill to
concoct, or perhaps she lacks the material. Esther drew in deep breaths
for the mere pleasure of breathing, and looked on all the world of
nature before her with an eye of quiet but intense content.

Christopher had been quite right in his hint about Esther's eyes. They
were of uncommon character. Thoughtful, grave, beautiful eyes; large,
and fine in contour and colour; too grave for the girl's years. But
Esther had lived all her life so far almost exclusively with grown
people, and very sober grown people too; for her mother's last years
had been dulled with sickness, and her father's with care, even if he
had not been--which he was--of a taciturn and sombre deportment in the
best of times. And this last year past had been one heavy with
mourning. So it was no wonder if the little girl's face showed undue
thoughtfulness, and a shade of melancholy all premature. And
Christopher was honestly glad to see the melancholy at least vanish
under the influence of the open earth and sky. The thoughtfulness, he
hoped, would go too some day.

The walk in itself offered nothing remarkable. Fields where the grass
was very green and fast growing; other fields that were rocky and
broken, and good for little except the sheep, and sometimes rose into
bare ridges and heights where spare savins were mingled with a variety
of deciduous trees; such was the ground the two went over this morning.
This morning, however, glorified everything; the fields looked soft,
the moss and lichens on the rocks were moist and fresh coloured, grey
and green and brown; the buds and young leafage of the trees were of
every lovely hue and shade that young vegetation can take; and here and
there Esther found a wild flower. When she found one, it was very apt
to be taken up by the roots with her little trowel, and bestowed in her
basket for careful transport home; and on the so endangered beauties in
her basket Esther looked down from time to time with fond and delighted
eyes.

'Are you going for cresses, Christopher?'

'No, Miss Esther, not at this time. Sarah has set her mind that she
must have boiled greens for dinner; and her will must be done. And here
is the article--not boiled yet, however.'

He stopped and stooped, and with a sharp knife cut a bunch of
stout-looking leaves growing in the grass; then made a step to another
bunch, a yard off, and then to another.

'What are they, Christopher?'

'Just dandelions, Miss Esther. _Leontodon taraxacum_.'

'Dandelions! But the flowers are not out yet.'

'No, Miss Esther. If they was out, Sarah might whistle for her greens.'

'Why? You could tell better where they are.'

'They wouldn't be worth the finding, though.'

Christopher went on busily cutting. He did not seem to need the yellow
blossoms to guide him.

'How can you be sure, Christopher, that you are always getting the
right ones?'

'Know the look o' their faces, Miss Esther.'

'The _flowers_ are their faces,' said the little girl.

Christopher laughed a little. 'Then what are the leaves?' said he.

'I don't know. The whole of them together show the _form_ of the plant.'

'Well, Miss Esther, wouldn't you know your father, the colonel, as far
off as you could see him, just by his figger?'

'But I know papa so well.'

'Not better than I know the _Leontodon_. See, Miss Esther, look at
these runcinate leaves.'

'Runcinate?'

'Toothed-pinnatifid. That's what it gets its name from; lion's tooth.
_Leontodon_ comes from two Greek words which mean a lion and a tooth.
See--there ain't another leaf like that in the hull meadow.'

'There are a great many kinds of leaves!' said Esther musingly.

'Like men's human figgers,' said the gardener sagely. 'Ain't no two on
'em just alike.'

Talking and cutting, they had crossed the meadow and came to a rocky
height which rose at one side of it; such as one is never very far from
in New England. Here there were no dandelions, but Esther eagerly
sought for something more ornamental. And she found it. With
exclamations of deep delight she endeavoured to dig up a root of
bloodroot which lifted its most delicate and dainty blossom a few
inches above the dead leaves and moss with which the ground under the
trees was thickly covered. Christopher came to her help.

'What are you goin' to do with this now, Miss Esther?'

'I want to plant it out in my garden. Won't it grow?'

Christopher answered evasively. 'These here purty little things is
freaky,' said he. 'They has notions. Now the _Sanguinaria_ likes just
what it has got here; a little bit of rich soil, under shade of woods,
and with covering of wet dead leaves for its roots. It's as dainty as a
lady.'

'_Sanguinaria?_' said Esther. 'I call it bloodroot.'

'_Sanguinaria canadensis_. That's its name, Miss Esther.'

'Why isn't the other its name?'

'That's its nickname, you may say. Look here, Miss Esther,--here's the
_Hepatica_ for you.'

Esther sprang forward to where Christopher was softly pushing dead
leaves and sticks from a little low bunch of purple flowers. She
stretched out her hand with the trowel, then checked herself.

'Won't that grow either, Christopher?'

'It'll grow _here_, Miss Esther. See,--ain't that nice?' he said, as he
bared the whole little tuft.

Esther's sigh came from the depths of her breast, as she looked at it
lovingly.

'This is _Hepatica acutiloba_. I dare say we'd find the other, if we
had time to go all over the other side of the hill.'

'What other?'

'The _americana_, Miss Esther. But I'm thinking, them greens must go in
the pot.'

'But what _is_ this lovely little thing? What's its name, I mean?'

'It's the _Hepatica_, Miss Esther; folks call it liverleaf. We ought to
find the _Aquilegia_ by this time; but I don't see it.'

'Have you got dandelions enough?'

'All I'll try for. Here's something for you, though,' said he, reaching
up to the branches of a young tree, the red blossoms of which were not
quite out of reach; 'here's something pretty for you; here's _Acer
rubrum_.'

'And what is _Acer rubrum?_'

'Just soft maple, Miss Esther.'

'Oh, that is beautiful! Do you know everything that grows, Christopher?'

'No, Miss Esther; there's no man living that does that. They say it
would take all one man's life to know just the orchids of South
America; without mentioning all that grows in the rest of the world.
There's an uncommon great number of plants on the earth, to be sure!'

'And trees.'

'Ain't trees plants, mum?'

'Are they? Christopher, are those dandelions _weeds?_'

'No, Miss Esther; they're more respectable.'

'How do you know they're not weeds?'

Christopher laughed a little, partly at his questioner, partly at the
question; nevertheless the answer was not so ready as usual.

'They ain't weeds, however, Miss Esther; that's all I can tell you.'

'What are weeds, then?'

'I don't know, mum,' said Christopher grimly. 'They're plants that has
no manners.'

'But some good plants have no manners,' said Esther, amused. 'I know
I've heard you say, they ran over everything, and wouldn't stay in
their places. You said it of moss pink, and lily of the valley. Don't
you remember?'

'Yes mum, I've cause to remember; by the same token I've been trimming
the box. That thing grows whenever my back is turned!'

'But it isn't a weed?'

'No mum! No mum! The _Buxus_ is a very distinguished family indeed, and
holds a high rank, it does.'

'Then I don't see what _is_ a weed, Christopher.'




CHAPTER II.

_AT HOME_.


Upon reaching home Esther sought to place her bloodroot in safety,
giving it a soft and well-dug corner in her little plot of garden
ground. She planted it with all care in the shadow of a rose-bush; and
then went in to put her other flowers in water.

The sitting-room, whither she went, was a large, low, pleasant place;
very simply furnished, yet having a cheerful, cosy look, as places do
where people live who know how to live. The room, and the house, no
doubt, owed its character to the rule and influence of Mrs.
Gainsborough, who was there no longer, and to a family life that had
passed away. The traces abode still. The chintz hangings and the carpet
were of soft colours and in good harmony; chairs and lounges were
comfortable; a great many books lined the walls, so many indeed that
the room might have been styled the library. A portfolio with
engravings was in one place; Mrs. Gainsborough's work-table in another;
some excellent bronzes on the bookcases; one or two family portraits,
by good hands; and an embroidery frame. A fine English mastiff was
sleeping on the rug before the fire; for the weather was still cold
enough within doors to make a fire pleasant, and Colonel Gainsborough
was a chilly man.

He lay on the couch when Esther came in with her flowers; a book in his
hand, but not held before his eyes. He was a handsome man, of a severe,
grave type; though less well-looking at this time because of the
spiritless, weary, depressed air which had become his habit; there was
a want of spring and life and hope in the features and in the manner
also of the occupant of the sofa. He looked at Esther languidly, as she
came in and busied herself with arranging her maple blossoms, her
Hepatica and one or two delicate stems of the bloodroot in a little
vase. Her father looked at the flowers and at her, in silence.

'Papa, aren't those _beautiful?_' she asked with emphasis, bringing the
vase, when she had finished, to his side.

'What have you got there, Esther?'

'Just some anemones, and liverleaf, and bloodroot, and maple blossoms,
papa; but Christopher calls them all sorts of big names.'

'They are very fragile blossoms,' the colonel remarked.

'Are they? They won't do in the garden, Christopher says, but they grow
nicely out there in the wood. Papa, what is the difference between a
weed and a flower?'

'I should think you were old enough to know.'

'I know them by sight--sometimes. But what is the _difference?_'

'Your eyes tell you, do they not?'

'No, papa. They tell me, sometimes, which is which; but I mean, why
isn't a flower a weed? I asked Christopher, but he couldn't tell me.'

'I do not understand the question. It seems to me you are talking
nonsense.'

The colonel raised his book again, and Esther took the hint, and went
back to the table with her flowers. She sat down and looked at them.
Fair they were, and fresh, and pure; and they bore spring's messages,
to all that could hear the message. If Esther could, it was in a
half-unconscious way, that somehow awakened by degrees almost as much
pain as pleasure. Or else, it was simply that the glow and stir of her
walk was fading away, and allowing the old wonted train of thought to
come in again. The bright expression passed from her face; the features
settled into a melancholy dulness, most unfit for a child and painful
to see; there was a droop of the corners of the mouth, and a lax fall
of the eyelids, and a settled gloom in the face, that covered it and
changed it like a mask. The very features seemed to grow heavy, in the
utter heaviness of the spirit.

She sat so for a while, musing, no longer busy with such pleasant
things as flowers and weeds; then roused herself. The weariness of
inaction was becoming intolerable. She went to a corner of the room,
where a large mahogany box was half-concealed beneath a table covered
with a cloth; with a good deal of effort she lugged the box forth. It
was locked, and she went to the sofa.

'Papa, may I look at the casts?'

'Yes.'

'You have got the key, papa.'

The key was fished out of the colonel's waistcoat pocket, and Esther
sat down on the floor and unlocked the box. It was filled with casts in
plaster of Paris, of old medals and bas-reliefs; and it had long been a
great amusement of Esther's to take them all out and look at them, and
then carefully pack them all away again between their layers of soft
paper and cotton batting. In the nature of the case, this was an
amusement that would pall if too often repeated; so it rarely happened
that Esther got them out more than three or four times a year. This
time she had hardly begun to take them out and place them carefully on
the table, when Mrs. Barker came in to lay the cloth for dinner. Esther
must put the casts back, and defer her amusement till another time in
the day.

Meals were served now for the colonel and his daughter in this same
room, which served for sitting-room and library. The dining-room was
disused. Things had come by degrees to this irregularity, Mrs. Barker
finding that it made her less work, and the colonel in his sorrowful
abstraction hardly knowing and not at all caring where he took his
dinner. The dinner was carefully served, however, and delicately
prepared; for there Barker's pride came in to her help; and besides,
little as Colonel Gainsborough attended now to the food he ate, it is
quite possible that he would have rebelled against any disorder in that
department of the household economy.

The meal times were sorrowful occasions to both the solitary personages
who now sat down to the table. Neither of them had become accustomed
yet to the empty place at the board. The colonel ate little and talked
none at all; and only Esther's honest childish appetite saved these
times from being seasons of intolerable gloom. Even so, she was always
glad when dinner was done.

By the time that it was over to-day, and the table cleared, Esther's
mood had changed; and she no longer found the box of casts attractive.
She had seen what was in it so often before, and she knew just what she
should find. At the same time she was in desperate want of something to
amuse her, or at least to pass away the time, which went so slowly if
unaided. She bethought her of trying another box, or series of boxes,
over which she had seen her father and mother spend hours together; but
the contents hitherto had not seemed to her interesting. The key was on
the same chain with the key of the casts; Esther sat down on the floor
by one of the windows, having shoved one of the boxes into that
neighbourhood, turned the key, and opened the cover. Her father was
lying on the couch again and gave her no attention, and Esther made no
call upon him for help.

An hour or two had passed. Esther had not changed her place, and the
box, which contained a quantity of coins, was still open; but the
child's hands lay idly in her lap, and her eyes were gazing into
vacancy. Looking back, perhaps, at the images of former days; smiling
images of light and love, in scenes where her mother's figure filled
all the foreground. Colonel Gainsborough did not see how the child sat
there, nor what an expression of dull, hopeless sorrow lay upon her
features. All the life and variety of which her face was abundantly
capable had disappeared; the corners of the mouth drawn down, the brow
rigid, the eyes rayless, she sat an image of childish desolation. She
looked even stupid, if that were possible to Esther's features and
character.

What the father did not see was revealed to another person, who came in
noiselessly at the open door. This new-comer was a young man, hardly
yet arrived at the dignity of young manhood; he might have been
eighteen, but he was really older than his years. His figure was well
developed, with broad shoulders and slim hips, showing great muscular
power and the symmetry of beauty as well. The face matched the figure;
it was strong and fine, full of intelligence and life, and bearing no
trace of boyish wilfulness. If wilfulness was there, which I think, it
was rather the considered and consistent wilfulness of a man. As he
came in at the open door, Esther's position and look struck him; he
paused half a minute. Then he came forward, came to the colonel's sofa,
and standing there bowed respectfully.

The colonel's book went down. 'Ah, William,' said he, in a tone of
indifferent recognition.

'How do you do, sir, to-day?'

'Not very well! my strength seems to be giving way, I think, by
degrees.'

'We shall have warm weather for you soon again, sir; that will do you
good.'

'I don't know,' said the colonel. 'I doubt it; I doubt it. Unless it
could give me the power of eating, which it cannot.

'You have no appetite?'

'That does not express it.'

There was an almost imperceptible flash in the eyes that were looking
down at him, the features, however, retaining their composed gravity.

'Perhaps shad will tempt you. We shall have them very soon now. Can't
you eat shad?'

'Shad,' repeated the colonel. 'That's your New England piscatory
dainty? I have never found out why it is so reckoned.'

'You cannot have eaten them, sir; that's all. That is, not cooked
properly. Take one broiled over a fire of corn cobs.'

'A fire of corn cobs!'

'Yes, sir; over the coals of such a fire, of course, I mean.'

'Ah! What's the supposed advantage?'

'Flavour, sir; gusto; a spicy delicacy, which from being the spirit of
the fire comes to be the spirit of the fish. It is difficult to put
anything so ethereal into words.' This was spoken with the utmost
seriousness.

'Ah!' said the colonel. 'Possibly. Barker manages those things.'

'You do not feel well enough to read to-day, sir?'

'Yes,' said the colonel, 'yes. One must do something. As long as one
lives, one must try to do something. Bring your book here, William, if
you please. I can listen, lying here.'

The hour that followed was an hour of steady work. The colonel liked
his young neighbour, who belonged to a family also of English
extraction, though not quite so recently moved over as the colonel's
own. Still, to all intents and purposes, the Dallases were English; had
English connections and English sympathies; and had not so long mingled
their blood with American that the colour of it was materially altered.
It was natural that the two families should have drawn near together in
social and friendly relations; which relations, however, would have
been closer if in church matters there had not been a diverging power,
which kept them from any extravagance of neighbourliness. This young
fellow, however, whom the colonel called 'William,' showed a
carelessness as to church matters which gave him some of the advantages
of a neutral ground; and latterly, since his wife's death, Colonel
Gainsborough had taken earnestly to the fine, spirited young man;
welcomed his presence when he came; and at last, partly out of
sympathy, partly out of sheer loneliness and emptiness of life, he had
offered to read the classics with him, in preparation for college. And
this for several months now they had been doing; so that William was a
daily visitor in the colonel's house.




CHAPTER III.

_THE BOX OF COINS_.


The reading went on for a good hour. Then the colonel rose from his
sofa and went out, and young Dallas turned to Esther. During this hour
Esther had been sitting still in her corner by her boxes; not doing
anything; and her face, which had brightened at William's first coming
in, had fallen back very nearly to its former heavy expression. Now it
lighted up again, as the visitor left his seat and came over to her. He
had not been so taken up with his reading but he had noticed her from
time to time; observed the drooping brow and the dull eye, and the sad
lines of the lips, and the still, spiritless attitude. He was touched
with pity for the child, whom he had once been accustomed to see very
different from this. He came and threw himself down on the floor by her
side.

'Well, Queen Esther!' said he. 'What have you got there?'

'Coins.'

'Coins! What are you doing with them?'

'Nothing.'

'So it seems. What do you want to do?'

'I wanted to amuse myself.'

'And don't succeed? Naturally. What made you think you would?
Numismatology isn't what one would call a _lively_ study. What were you
going to do with these old things, eh?'

'Nothing,' said Esther hopelessly. 'I used to hear papa talk about
them; and I liked to hear him.'

'Why don't you get him to talk to you about them again?'

'Oh, he was not talking to _me_.'

'To whom, then?'

Esther hesitated; the young man saw a veil of moisture suddenly dim the
grave eyes, and the lips that answered him were a little unsteady.

'It was mamma,' she breathed rather than spoke.

'And you liked to hear?' he went on purposely.

'Oh, yes. But now I can't understand anything by myself.'

'You can understand by yourself as much as most people I know. Let us
see what you have got here. May I look?'

He lifted a small piece of metal out of its nest, in a shallow tray
which was made by transverse slips of wood to be full of such nests, or
little square compartments. The trays were beautifully arranged, one
fitting close upon another till they filled the box to its utmost
capacity.

'What have we here? This piece has seen service. Here is a tree, Queen
Esther,--a flourishing, spreading tree,--and below it the letters, R.
E. P. F., if I read aright, and then the word "Reich." What is that,
now? "R. E. P. F. Reich." And here is a motto above, I am sorry to say,
so far worn that my reading it is a matter of question. "Er,"--that is
plain,--then a worn word, then, "das Land." Do you understand German?'

'No; I don't know anything.'

'Too sweeping, Queen Esther. But I wish I could read that word! Let us
try the other side. Ha! here we have it. "Lud. xvi."--two letters I
can't make out--then "Fr. and Nav. Rex." Louis the Sixteenth, king of
France and Navarre.'

'I know him, I believe,' said Esther. 'He was beheaded, wasn't he, in
the great French revolution?'

'Just that. He was not a wise man, you know.'

'If he had been a wise man, could he have kept his life?'

'Well, I don't know, Queen Esther, whether any wisdom would have been
wise enough for that. You see, the people of France were mad; and when
a people get mad, they don't listen to reason, naturally. Here's
another, now; what's this? "Zeelandia, 1792," not so very old. On the
other side--here's a shield, peculiar too; with the motto plain
enough,--"Luctor et emergo." A good motto that.'

'What does it mean?'

'It means, something like--"Struggle and come out," or "come
through,"--literally, "emerge." Our English word comes from it. Colonel
Gainsborough does not teach you Latin, then?'

'No,' said Esther, sighing. 'He doesn't teach me much lately, of
anything.'

Dallas cast a quick look at the girl, and saw again the expression of
quiet hopelessness that had moved him. He went on turning over the
coins.

'Do you want to learn Latin?'

'Yes.'

'Why?'

'Why do _you_ want to learn it, Pitt?'

'Well, you see, it is different. I must, you know. But queens are not
expected to know the dead languages--not Queen Esther, at any rate.'

'Do you learn them because it is expected of you?'

The young man laughed a little.

'Well, there _are_ other reasons. Now here's a device. Two lions
rampant--shield surmounted by a crown; motto, "Sp. nos in Deo." _Let us
hope in God_.'

'Whose motto was that?'

'Just what I can't make out. I don't know the shield--which I ought to
know; and the reverse of the coin has only some unintelligible letters:
D. Gelriae, 1752. Let us try another, Queen Esther. Ha! here's a coin
of William and Mary--both their blessed heads and names; and on the
reverse a figure three, and the inscription claiming that over Great
Britain, _France_ and Ireland, they were "Rex and Regina." Why, this
box of coins is a capital place to study history.'

'I don't know history,' Esther said.

'But you are going to know it.'

'Am I? How can I?'

'Read.'

'I don't know what to read. I have just read a little history of
England--that's all. Mother gave me that. But when I read, there are so
many things I don't know and want to ask about.'

'Ask the colonel.'

'Oh, he doesn't care to be troubled,' the little girl said sadly.

'Ask me.'

'_You!_ But you are not here to ask.'

'True; well, we must see. Ah, here's a pretty thing! See, Esther,
here's an elegant crown, really beautiful, with the fleurs de lys of
France, and the name of the luckless Louis XVI. "Roi de France and de
Navarre" but no date. On the other side, "Isles de France and de
Bourbon." These coins seem to belong to European history.'

'There's another box with Greek and Roman coins, and, the names of
Roman emperors; but I know _them_ even less still than I do these,'
said Esther.

'Your want of knowledge seems to weigh upon your mind, Queen Esther.'

'I can't help it,' said the little girl resignedly.

'Are you sure of that? I am not. Well, I wish I knew who this is.'

He had taken up a very small coin, much less than a three-cent piece,
and with the help of a magnifying glass was studying it eagerly.

'Why?' said Esther.

'It is such a beautiful head! Wonderfully beautiful, and old. Crowned,
and with a small peaked beard; but the name is so worn off. On the
other side "Justitia." Queen Esther, this box is a first-rate place to
study history.'

'Is it?'

'It is. What do you say? Suppose you let me come here and study history
with you over these old coins; and then you come over to my house and
learn Latin with me. Hey?'

He glanced up, and Esther looked at him with a wondering, grave,
inquiring face. He nodded in answer and smiled, a little quizzically.

'What do you mean, Pitt?'

'There was a wise man once, who said, the use of language is to conceal
one's thoughts. I hope you are not labouring under the impression that
such is _my_ practice and belief?'

'But would you teach me?' said the girl gravely.

'If your majesty approves.'

'I think it would be very troublesome to you?'

'I, on the contrary, think it would not.'

'But it would after a little while?' said Esther.

'When I want to stop, I'll let you know.'

'Will you? Would you?'

'Both would and will.'

The girl's face grew intense with life, yet without losing its gravity.

'When, Pitt? When would you teach me, I mean?'

'I should say, every day; wouldn't you?'

'And you'll come here to study the coins?'

'And teach you what I learn.'

'Oh! And you'll give me Latin lessons? Lessons to study?'

'Certainly.'

'And we will study history over the coins?'

'Don't you think it will be a good way? Here's a coin of Maria Theresa,
now: 1745, Hungary and Böhmen, that is Bohemia. This old piece of
copper went through the Seven Years' war.'

'What war was that?'

'Oh, we'll read about it, Queen Esther. "Ad usum," "Belgae, Austria."
These coins are delightful. See here--don't you want to go for a walk?'

'Oh yes! I've had one walk to-day already, and it just makes me want
another. Did you see my flowers?'

She jumped up and brought them to him.

'Here's the liverleaf, and anemone, and bloodroot; and we couldn't find
the columbine, but it must be out. Christopher calls them all sorts of
hard names, that I can't remember.'

'_Anemone_ is anemone, at any rate. These two, Esther, this and the
_Hepatica_, belong to one great family, the family of the
Crowfoots--Ranunculaceae.'

'Oh, but that is harder and harder!'

'No it isn't; it is easier and easier. See, these belong to one family;
so you learn to know them as relations, and then you can remember them.'

'How do you know they are of the same family?'

'Well, they have the family features. They all have an acrid sap or
juice, exogenous plants, with many stamens. These are the stamens, do
you know? They have calyx and corolla both, and the corolla has
separate petals, see; and the Ranunculaceae have the petals and sepals
deciduous, and the leaves generally cut, as you see these are. They are
what you may call a bitter family; it runs in the blood, that is to
say, in the juice of them; and a good many of the members of the family
are downright wicked, that is, poisonous.'

'Pitt, you talk very queerly?'

'Not a bit more queer than the things are I am talking of. Now this
_Sanguinaria_ belongs to the Papaveraceae--the poppy family.'

'Does it! But it does not look like them, like poppies.'

'This coloured juice that you see when you break the stem, is one of
the family marks of this family. I won't trouble you with the others.
But you must learn to know them, Queen Esther. King Solomon knew every
plant from the royal cedar to the hyssop on the wall; and I am sure a
queen ought to know as much. Now the blood of the Papaveraceae has a
taint also; it is apt to have a narcotic quality.'

'What is narcotic?'

'Putting to sleep.'

'That's a good quality.'

'Hm!' said Dallas; 'that's as you take it. It isn't healthy to go so
fast asleep that you never can wake up again.'

'Can people do that?' asked Esther in astonishment.

'Yes. Did you never hear of people killing themselves with laudanum, or
opium?'

'I wonder why the poppy family was made so?'

'Why not?'

'So mischievous.'

'That's when people take too much of them. They are very good for
medicine sometimes, Queen Esther.'

The girl's appearance by this time had totally changed. All the dull,
weary, depressed air and expression were gone; she was alert and erect,
the beautiful eyes filled with life and eagerness, a dawning of colour
in the cheeks, the brow busy with stirring thoughts. Esther's face was
a grave face still, for a child of her years; but now it was a noble
gravity, showing intelligence and power and purpose; indicating
capacity, and also an eager sympathy with whatever is great and worthy
to take and hold the attention. Whether it were history that Dallas
touched upon, or natural science; the divisions of nations or the
harmonies of plants; Esther was ready, with her thoughtful, intent
eyes, taking in all he could give her; and not merely as a snatch-bite
of curiosity, but as the satisfaction of a good healthy mental appetite
for mental food.

Until to-day the young man had never concerned himself much about
Esther. Good nature had moved him to-day, when he saw the dullness that
had come over the child and recognised her forlorn solitude; and now he
began to be interested in the development of a nature he had never
known before. Young Dallas was a student of everything natural that
came in his way, but this was the first bit of human nature that had
consciously interested him. He thought it quite worth investigating a
little more.




CHAPTER IV.

_LEARNING_.


They had a most delightful walk. It was not quite the first they had
taken together; however, they had had none like this. They roved
through the meadows and over the low rocky heights and among the
copsewood, searching everywhere for flowers, and finding a good variety
of the dainty and delicate spring beauties. Columbine, most elegant,
stood in groups upon the rocks; _Hepatica_ hid under beds of dead
leaves; the slender _Uvularia_ was met with here and there; anemone and
bloodroot and wild geranium, and many another. And as they were
gathered, Dallas made Esther observe their various features and family
characteristics, and brought her away from Christopher's technical
phraseology to introduce her instead to the living and everlasting
relations of things. To this teaching the little girl presently lent a
very delighted ear, and brought, he could see, a quick wit and a keen
power of discrimination. It was one thing to call a delicate little
plant arbitrarily _Sanguinaria canadensis;_ it was another thing to
find it its place among the floral tribes, and recognise its kindred
and associations and family character.

On their way home, Dallas proposed that Esther should stop at his house
for a minute, and become a little familiar with the place where she was
to come to study Latin; and he led her in as he spoke.

The Dallases' house was the best in the village. Not handsome in its
exterior, which bore the same plain and somewhat clumsy character as
all the other buildings in its neighbourhood; but inside it was
spacious, and had a certain homely elegance. Rooms were large and
exceedingly comfortable, and furnished evidently with everything
desired by the hearts of its possessors. That fact has perhaps more to
do with the pleasant, _liveable_ air of a house than aesthetic tastes
or artistic combinations apart from it. There was a roomy verandah,
with settees and cane chairs, and roses climbing up the pillars and
draping the balustrade. The hall, which was entered next, was wide and
homelike, furnished with settees also, and one or two tables, for
summer occupation, when doors could be set open front and back and the
wind play through. Nobody was there to-day, and Dallas turned to a door
at the right and opened it. This let them into a large room where a
fire was burning, and a soft genial warmth met them, along with a
certain odour, which Esther noticed and felt without knowing what it
was. It was very faint, yet unmistakeable; and was a compound probably
made up from the old wood of the house, burning coals in the chimney,
great cleanliness, and a distant, hidden, secret store of all manner of
delicate good things, fruits and sweets and spices, of which Mrs.
Dallas's store closet held undoubtedly a great stock and variety. The
brass of the old-fashioned grate glittered in the sunlight, it was so
beautifully kept; between the windows hung a circular mirror, to the
frame of which were appended a number of spiral, slim, curling
branches, like vine tendrils, each sustaining a socket for a candle.
The rest of the furniture was good; dark and old and comfortable;
painted vases were on the mantelpiece, and an old portrait hung over
it. The place made a peculiar agreeable impression upon any one
entering it; ease and comfort and good living were so at home in it,
and so invited one to take part in its advantages. Esther had hardly
been in the house since the death of her mother, and it struck her
almost as a stranger. So did the lady sitting there, in state, as it
seemed to the girl.

For Mrs. Dallas was a stately person. Handsome, tall, of somewhat large
and full figure and very upright carriage; handsomely dressed; and with
a calm, superior air of confidence, which perhaps had more effect than
all the other good properties mentioned. She was sitting in an
easy-chair, with some work in her hands, by a little work-table on
which lay one or two handsomely bound books. She looked up and reviewed
Esther as her son and she came in.

'I have brought Esther Gainsborough, mother; you know her, don't you?'

'I know her, certainly,' Mrs. Dallas answered, holding out her hand to
the child, who touched it as somewhat embodying a condescension rather
than a kindness. 'How is your father, my dear?'

'He does not feel very well,' said Esther; 'but he never does.'

'Pity!' said the lady; but Esther could not tell what she meant. It was
a pity, of course, that her father did not feel well. 'Where have you
been all this while?' the lady went on, addressing her son.

'Where?--well, in reality, walking over half the country. See our
flowers! In imagination, over half the world. Do you know what a
collection of coins Colonel Gainsborough has?'

'No,' said the lady coldly.

'He has a very fine collection.'

'I see no good in coins that are not current.'

'Difference of opinion, you see, there, mother. An old piece, which
when it was current was worth only perhaps a farthing or two, now when
its currency is long past would sell maybe for fifty or a hundred
pounds.'

'That is very absurd, Pitt!'

'Not altogether.'

'Why not?'

'Those old coins are history.'

'You don't want them for history. You have the history in books.'

Pitt laughed.

'Come away, Esther,' he said. 'Come and let me show you where you are
to find me when you want me.'

'Find you for what?' asked the lady, before they could quit the room.

'Esther is coming to take lessons from me,' he said, throwing his head
back laughingly as he went.

'Lessons! In what?'

'Anything she wants to learn, that I can teach her. We have been
studying history and botany to-day. Come along, Esther. We shall not
take our lessons _here_.'

He led the way, going out into the hall and at the further end of it
passing into a verandah which there too extended along the back of the
house. The house on this side had a long offset, or wing, running back
at right angles with the main building. The verandah also made an angle
and followed the side of this wing, which on the ground floor contained
the kitchen and offices. Half way of its length a stairway ran up, on
the outside, to a door nearer the end of the building. Up this stair
young Dallas went, and introduced Esther to a large room, which seemed
to her presently the oddest and also the most interesting that she had
ever in her life seen. Its owner had got together, apparently, the old
bits of furniture that his mother did not want any longer; there was an
old table, devoid of all varnish, in the floor, covered, however, with
a nice green cloth; two or three chairs were the table's
contemporaries, to judge by their style, and nothing harder or less
accommodating to the love of ease ever entered surely a cabinetmaker's
brain. The wood of which they were made had, however, come to be of a
soft brown colour, through the influence of time, and the form was not
inelegant. The floor was bare and painted, and upon it lay here an old
rug and there a great thick bearskin; and on the walls there were
several heads of animals, which seemed to Esther very remarkable and
extremely ornamental. One beautiful deer's head, with elegant horns;
and one elk head, the horns of which in their sweep and extent were
simply enormous; then there were one or two fox heads, and a raccoon;
and besides all these, the room was adorned with two or three birds,
very well mounted. The birds, as the animals, were unknown to Esther,
and fascinated her greatly. Books were in this room too, though not in
large numbers; a flower press was in one place, a microscope on the
table, a kind of _étagère_ was loaded with papers; and there were
boxes, and glasses, and cases; and a general air of a place where a
good deal of business was done, and where a variety of tastes found at
least attempted gratification. It was a pleasant room, though the
description may not sound like it; the heterogeneous articles were in
nice order; plenty of light blazed in at the windows, and the bearskin
on the floor looked eminently comfortable. If that were luxurious, it
was the only bit of luxury in the room.

'Where will you sit?' asked its owner, looking round. 'There isn't
anything nice enough for you. I must look up a special chair for you to
occupy when you come here. How do you like my room?'

'I like it--very much,' said Esther slowly, turning her eyes from one
strange object to another.

'Nobody comes here but me, so we shall have no interruption to fear.
When you come to see me, Queen Esther, you will just go straight
through the house, out on the piazza, and up these stairs, with out
asking anybody; and then you will turn the handle of the door and come
in, without knocking. If I am here, well and good; if I am not here,
wait for me. You like my deer's horns? I got them up in Canada, where I
have been on hunting expeditions with my father.'

'Did _you_ kill them?'

'Some of them. But that great elk head I bought.'

'What big bird is that?'

'That? That is the white-headed eagle--the American eagle.'

'Did that come from Canada too?'

'No; I shot him not far from here, one day, by great luck.'

'Are they difficult to shoot?'

'Rather. I sat half a day in a booth made with branches, to get the
chance. There were several of them about that day, so I lay in wait.
They are not very plenty just about here. That other fellow is the
great European lammergeyer.'

Esther had placed herself on one of the hard wooden chairs, but now she
rose and went nearer the birds, standing before them in great
admiration. Slowly then she went from one thing in the room to another,
pausing to contemplate each. A beautiful white owl, very large and
admirably mounted, held her eyes for some time.

'That is the Great Northern Owl,' observed her companion. 'They are
found far up in the regions around the North Pole, and only now and
then come so far south as this.'

'What claws!' said Esther.

'Talons. Yes, they would carry off a rabbit very easily.'

'Do they!' cried Esther, horrified.

'I don't doubt that fellow has carried off many a one, as well as hosts
of smaller fry--squirrels, mice, and birds.'

'He looks cruel,' observed Esther, with an abhorrent motion of her
shoulders.

'He does, rather. But he is no more cruel than all the rest.'

'The rest of what?' said Esther, turning towards him.

'The rest of creation--all the carnivorous portion of it, I mean.'

'Are they all like that? they don't look so. The eyes of pigeons, for
instance, are quite different.'

'Pigeons are not flesh-eaters.'

'Oh!' said Esther wonderingly. 'No, I know; they eat bread and grain;
and canary birds eat seeds. Are there _many_ birds that live on flesh?'

'A great many, Queen Esther. All creation, nearly, preys on some other
part of creation--except that respectable number that are granivorous,
and herbivorous, and graminivorous.'

Esther stood before the owl, musing; and Dallas, who was studying the
child now, watched her.

'But what I want to know, is,' began Esther, as if she were carrying on
an argument, '_why_ those that eat flesh look so much more wicked than
the others that eat other things?'

'Do they?' said Dallas. 'That is the first question.'

'Why, yes,' said Esther, 'they do, Pitt. If you will think. There are
sheep and cows and rabbits, and doves and chickens'--

'Halt there!' cried Dallas. 'Chickens are as good flesh-eaters as
anybody, and as cruel about it, too. See two chickens pulling at the
two ends of one earthworm.'

'Oh, don't!' said Esther. 'I remember they do; and they haven't nice
eyes either, Pitt. But little turkeys have.'

Dallas burst out laughing.

'Well, just think,' Esther persisted. 'Think of horses' beautiful eyes;
and then think of a tiger.'

'Or a cat,' said Dallas.

'But why is it, Pitt?'

'Queen Esther, my knowledge, such as it is, is all at your majesty's
service; but the information required lies not therein.'

'Well, isn't it true, what I said?'

'I am inclined to think, and will frankly admit, that there is
something in it.'

'Then don't you think there must be a _real_ difference, to make them
look so different? and that I wasn't wrong when I called the owl cruel!'

'The study of animal psychology, so far as I know, has never been
carried into a system. Meanwhile, suppose we come from what I cannot
teach, to what I can? Here's a Latin grammar for you.'

Esther came to his side immediately, and listened with grave attention
to his explanations and directions.

'And you want me to learn these declensions?'

'It is a necessary preliminary to learning Latin.'

Esther took the book with a very awakened and contented face; then put
a sudden irrelevant question. 'Pitt, why didn't you tell Mrs. Dallas
what you were going to teach me?'

The young man looked at her, somewhat amused, but not immediately ready
with an answer.

'Wouldn't she like you to give me lessons?'

'I never asked her,' he answered gravely.

Esther looked at him, inquiring and uncertain.

'I never asked her whether I might take lessons from your father,
either.'

'No, of course not; but'--

'But what?'

'I don't know. I don't want to do it if she would not like it.'

'Why shouldn't she like it? She has nothing to do with it. It is I who
am going to give you the lessons, not she. And now for a lesson in
botany.'

He brought out a quantity of his dried flowers, beautifully preserved
and arranged; and showed Esther one or two groups of plants, giving her
various initiatory instruction by the way. It was a most delightful
half hour to the little girl; and she went home after it, with her
Latin grammar in her hands, very much aroused and wakened up and
cheered from her dull condition of despondency; just what Pitt had
intended.




CHAPTER V.

_CONTAMINATION_.


The lessons went on, and the interest on both sides knew no flagging.
Dallas had begun by way of experiment, and he was quite contented with
his success. In his room, over Latin and botany, at her own home, over
history and the boxes of coins, he and Esther daily spent a good deal
of time together. They were pleasant enough hours to him; but to her
they were sources of life-giving nourishment and delight. The girl had
been leading a forlorn existence; mentally in a desert and alone; and,
added to that, with an unappeased longing for her departed mother, and
silent, quiet, wearing grief for the loss of her. Even now, her
features often settled into the dulness which had so struck Dallas; but
gradually there was a lightening and lifting of the cloud: when
studying she was wholly intent on her business, and when talking or
reciting or examining flowers there was a play of life and thought and
feeling in her face which was a constant study to her young teacher, as
well as pleasure, for the change was his work. He read indications of
strong capacity; he saw the tokens of rare sensitiveness and delicacy;
he saw there was a power of feeling as well as a capacity for suffering
covered by the quiet composure and reserve of manner and habit which,
he knew, were rather signs of the depth of that which they covered.
Esther interested him. And then, she was so simply upright and honest,
and so noble in all her thoughts, so high-bred by nature as well as
education, that her young teacher's estimation constantly grew, and to
interest was soon added liking. He had half expected that when the
novelty was off the pleasure of study would be found to falter; but it
was no such matter. Esther studied as honestly as if she had been a
fifth form boy at a good school; with a delight in it which boys at
school, in any form, rarely bring to their work. She studied
absorbedly, eagerly, persistently; whatever pleasure she might get by
the way, she was plainly bent on learning; and she learned of course
fast. And in the botanical studies they carried on together, and in the
historical studies which had the coins for an illumination, the child
showed as keen enjoyment as other girls of her age are wont to feel in
a story-book or in games and plays. Of games and plays Esther knew
nothing; she had no young companions, and never had known any; her
intercourse had been almost solely with father and mother, and now only
the father was left to her. She would have been in danger of growing
morbid in her sorrow and loneliness, and her whole nature might have
been permanently and without remedy dwarfed, if at this time of her
life she had been left to grow like the wild things in the woods,
without sympathy or care. For some human plants need a good deal of
both to develop them to their full richness and fragrance; and Esther
was one of these. The loss of her mother had threatened to be an
irreparable injury to her. Colonel Gainsborough was a tenderly
affectionate father: still, like a good many men, he did not understand
child nature, could not adapt himself to it, had no sort of notion of
its wants, and no comprehension that it either needed or could receive
and return his sympathy. So he did not give sympathy to his child, nor
dreamed that she was in danger of starving for want of it. Indeed, he
had never in his life given much sympathy to anybody, except his wife;
and in the loss of his wife, Colonel Gainsborough thought so much of
himself was lost that the remainder probably would not last long. He
thought himself wounded to death. That it might be desirable, and that
it might be duty to live for his daughter's sake, was an idea that had
never entered his very masculine heart. Yet Colonel Gainsborough was a
good man, and even had the power of being a tender one; he had been
that towards his wife; but when she died he felt that life had gone
from him.

All this, more or less, young Dallas came to discern and understand in
the course of his associations with the father and daughter. And now it
was with a little pardonable pride and a good deal of growing
tenderness for the child, that he saw the change going on in Esther.
She was always, now as before, quiet as a mouse in her father's
presence; truly she was quiet as a mouse everywhere; but under the
outward quiet Dallas could see now the impulse and throb of the strong
and sensitive life within; the stir of interest and purpose and hope;
the waking up of the whole nature; and he saw that it was a nature of
great power and beauty. It was no wonder that the face through which
this nature shone was one of rare power and beauty too. Others could
see that, besides him.

'What a handsome little girl that is!' remarked the elder Dallas one
evening. Esther had just left the house, and his son come into the room.

'It seems to me she is here a great deal,' Mrs. Dallas said, after a
pause. The remark about Esther's good looks called forth no response.
'I see her coming and going pretty nearly every day.'

'Quite every day,' her son answered.

'And you go there every day!'

'I do. About that.'

'Very warm intercourse!'

'I don't know; not necessarily,' said young Dallas. 'The classics are
rather cool--and Numismatics refreshing and composing.'

'Numismatics! You are not teaching that child Numismatics, I suppose?'

'She is teaching me.'

Mrs. Dallas was silent now, with a dissatisfied expression. Her husband
repeated his former remark.

'She's a handsome little maid. Are you teaching her, Pitt?'

'A little, sir.'

'What, pray? if I may ask.'

'Teaching her to support existence. It about comes to that.'

'I do not understand you, I confess. You are oracular.'

'I did not understand _her_, until lately. It is what nobody else does,
by the way.'

'Why should not anybody else understand her?' Mrs. Dallas asked.

'Should,--but they do not. That's a common case, you know, mother.'

'She has her father; what's the matter with him?'

'He thinks a good deal is the matter with him.'

'Regularly hipped,' said the elder Dallas. 'He has never held up his
head since his wife died. He fancies he is going after her as fast as
he can go. Perhaps he is; such fancies are often fatal.'

'It would do him good to look after his child,' Mrs. Dallas said.

'I wish you would put that in his head, mother.'

'Does he _not_ look after her?'

'In a sort of way. He knows where she is and where she goes; he has a
sort of outward care of her, and so far it is very particular care; but
there it stops.'

'She ought to be sent to school.'

'There is no school here fit for her.'

'Then she should be sent away, where there _is_ a school fit for her.'

'Tell the colonel so.'

'I shall not meddle in Colonel Gainsborough's affairs,' said Mrs.
Dallas, bridling a little; 'he is able to manage them himself; or he
thinks he is, which comes to the same thing. But I should say, that
child might better be in any other hands than his.'

'Well, she is not shut up to them,' said young Dallas, 'since I have
taken her in hand.'

He strolled out of the room as he spoke, and the two elder people were
left together. Silence reigned between them till the sound of his steps
had quite ceased to be heard.

Mrs. Dallas was working at some wool embroidery, and taking her
stitches with a thoughtful brow; her husband in his easy-chair was
carelessly turning over the pages of a newspaper. They were a contrast.
She had a tall, commanding figure, a gracious but dignified manner, and
a very handsome, stately face. There was nothing commanding, and
nothing gracious, about Mr. Dallas. His figure was rather small, and
his manner insignificant. He was not a handsome man, either, although
he may be said to have but just missed it, for his features were
certainly good; but he did miss it. Nobody spoke in praise of Mr.
Dallas's appearance. Yet his face showed sense; his eyes were shrewd,
if they were also cold; and the mouth was good; but the man's whole air
was unsympathetic. It was courteous enough; and he was careful and
particular in his dress. Indeed, Mr. Dallas was careful of all that
belonged to him. He wore long English whiskers of sandy hair, the head
crop being very thin and kept very close.

'Hildebrand,' said Mrs. Dallas when the sound of her son's footsteps
had died away, 'when are you going to send Pitt to college?'

Mr. Dallas turned another page of his newspaper, and did not hurry his
answer.

'Why?'

'And _where_ are you going to send him?'

'Really,' said Mr. Dallas, without ceasing his contemplation of the
page before him, 'I do not know. I have not considered the matter
lately.'

'Do you remember he is eighteen?'

'I thought you were not ready to let him go yet?'

Mrs. Dallas stopped her embroidery and sighed.

'But he must go, husband.'

Mr. Dallas made no answer. He seemed not to find the question pressing.
Mrs. Dallas sat looking at him now, neglecting her work.

'You have got to make up your mind to it, and so have I,' she went on
presently. 'He is ready for college. All this pottering over the
classics with Colonel Gainsborough doesn't amount to anything. It keeps
him out of idleness,--if Pitt ever could be idle,--but he has got to go
to college after all, sooner or later. He must go!' she repeated with
another sigh.

'No special hurry, that I see.'

'What's gained by delay? He's eighteen. That's long enough for him to
have lived in a place like this. If I had my way, Hildebrand, I should
send him to England.'

'England!'  Mr. Dallas put down his paper now and looked at his wife.
What had got into her head?

'Oxford is better than the things they call colleges in this country.'

'Yes; but it is farther off.'

'That's not a bad thing, in some respects. Hildebrand, you don't want
Pitt to be formed upon the model of things in this country. You would
not have him get radical ideas, or Puritanical.'

'Not much danger!'

'I don't know.'

'Who's to put them in his head? Gainsborough is not a bit of a radical.'

'He is not one of us,' said Mrs. Dallas. 'And Pitt is very independent,
and takes his own views from nobody or from anybody. See his educating
this girl, now.'

'Educating her!'

'Yes, he is with her and her father a great piece of every day; reading
and talking and walking and drying flowers and giving lessons. I don't
know what all they are doing. But in my opinion Pitt might be better
employed.'

'That won't last,' said the father with a half laugh.

'What ought not to last, had better not be begun,' Mrs. Dallas said
sententiously.

There was a pause.

'What are you afraid of, wife?'

'I am afraid of Pitt's wasting his time.'

'You have never been willing to have him go until now. I thought you
stood in the way.'

'He was not wasting his time until lately. He was as well at home. But
there must come an end to that,' the mother said, with another slight
sigh. She was not a woman given to sighing; it meant much from her.

'But England?' said Mr. Dallas. 'What's your notion about England?
Oxford is very well, but the ocean lies between.'

'Where would _you_ send him?'

'I'd send him to the best there is on this side.'

'That's not Oxford. I believe it would be good for him to be out of
this country for a while; forget some of his American notions, and get
right English ones. Pitt is a little too independent.'

The elder Dallas caressed his whiskers and pondered. If the truth were
told, he had been about as unwilling to let his son go away from home
as ever his mother could be. Pitt was simply the delight and pride of
both their hearts; the one thing they lived for; the centre of all
hopes, and the end of all undertakings. No doubt he must go to college;
but the evil day had been pushed far off, as far as possible. Pitt was
a son for parents to be proud of. He had the good qualities of both
father and mother, with some added of his own which they did not share,
and which perhaps therefore increased their interest in him.

'I expect he will have a word to say about the matter himself,' the
father remarked. 'Oh, well! there's no raging hurry, wife.'

'Husband, it would be a good thing for him to see the English Church as
it is in England, before he gets much older.'

'What then?'

'He would learn to value it. The cathedrals, and the noble services in
them, and the bishops; and the feeling that everybody around him goes
the same way; there's a great deal of power in that. Pitt would be
impressed by it.'

'By the feeling that everybody around him goes that way? Not he. That's
quite as likely to stir him up to go another way.'

'It don't work so, Hildebrand.'

'You think he's a likely fellow to be talked over into anything?'

'No; but he would be influenced. Nobody would try to talk him over, and
without knowing it he would feel the influence. He couldn't help it.
All the influence at Oxford would be the right way.'

'Afraid of the colonel? I don't think you need. He hasn't spirit enough
left in him for proselyting.'

'I am not speaking of anybody in particular. I am afraid of the air
here.'

Mr. Dallas laughed a little, but his face took a shade of gravity it
had not worn. Must he send his son away? What would the house be
without him?




CHAPTER VI.

_GOING TO COLLEGE_.


Whatever thoughts were harboured in the elder heads, nothing was spoken
openly, and no steps were taken for some time. All through the summer
the pleasant intercourse went on, and the lessons, and the botanizing,
and the study of coins. And much real work was done; but for Esther one
invaluable and abiding effect of a more general character was gained.
She was lifted out of her dull despondency, which had threatened to
become stagnation, and restored to her natural life and energy and the
fresh spring of youthful spirits. So, when her friend really went away
to college in the fall, Esther did not slip back to the condition from
which he had delivered her.

But the loss of him was a dreadful loss to the child, although Pitt was
not going over the sea, and would be home at Christmas. He tried to
comfort her with this prospect. Esther took no comfort. She sat silent,
tearless, pale, in a kind of despair. Pitt looked at her, half amused,
half deeply concerned.

'And you must go on with all your studies, Esther, you know,' he was
saying. 'I will show you what to do, and when I come home I shall go
into a very searching examination to see whether you have done it all
thoroughly.'

'Will you?' she said, lifting her eyes to him with a gleam of sudden
hope.

'Certainly! I shall give you lessons just as usual whenever I come
home; indeed, I expect I shall do it all your life. I think I shall
always be teaching and you always be learning. Don't you think that is
how it will be, Queen Esther?' he said kindly.

'You cannot give me lessons when you are away.'

'But when I come back!'

There was a very faint yet distinct lightening of the gloom in her
face. Yet it was plain Esther was not cheated out of her perception of
the truth. She was going to lose her friend; and his absence would be
very different from his presence; and the bits of vacation time would
not help, or help only by anticipation, the long stretches of months in
which there would be neither sight nor sound of him. Esther's looks had
brightened for a moment, but then her countenance fell again and her
face grew visibly pale. Pitt saw it with dismay.

'But Esther!' he said, 'this is nothing. Every man must go to college,
you know, just as he must learn swimming and boating; and so I must go;
but it will not last for ever.'

'How long?' said she, lifting her eyes to him again, heavy with their
burden of sorrow.

'Well, perhaps three years; unless I enter Junior, and then it would be
only two. That isn't much.'

'What will you do then?'

'Then? I don't know. Look after you, at any rate. Let us see. How old
will you be in two years?'

'Almost fourteen.'

'Fourteen. Well, you see you will have a great deal to do before you
can afford to be fourteen years old; so much that you will not have
time to miss me.'

Esther made no answer.

'I'll be back at Christmas anyhow, you know; and that's only three
months away, or a little more.'

'For how long?'

'Never mind; we will make a little do the work of a great deal. It will
seem a long time, it will be so good.'

'No,' said Esther; 'that will make it only the shorter.'

'Why, Esther,' said he, half laughing, 'I didn't know you cared so much
about me. I don't deserve all that.'

'I am not crying,' said the girl, rising with a sort of childish
dignity; 'but I shall be alone.'

They had been sitting on a rock, resting and talking, and now set out
again to go home. Esther spoke no more; and Pitt was silent, not
knowing what to say; but he watched her, and saw that if she had not
been crying at the time she had made that declaration, the tears had
taken their revenge and were coming now. Yet only in a calm, repressed
way; now and then he saw a drop fall, or caught a motion of Esther's
hand which could only have been made to prevent a drop from falling.
She walked along steadily, turning neither to the right hand nor the
left; she who ordinarily watched every hedgerow and ran to explore
every group of plants in the corner of a field, and was keen to see
everything that was to be seen in earth or heaven. Pitt walked along
silently too. He was at a careless age, but he was a generous-minded
fellow; and to a mind of that sort there is something exceedingly
attractive and an influence exceedingly powerful in the fact of being
trusted and depended on.

'Mother,' he said when he got home, 'I wish you would look after that
little girl now and then.'

'What little girl?'

'You must know whom I mean; the colonel's daughter.'

'The colonel is sufficient for that, I should say.'

'But you know what sort of a man he is. And she has no mother, nor
anybody else, except servants.'

'Isn't he fond of her?'

'Very fond; but then he isn't well, and he is a reserved, silent man;
the child is left to herself in a way that is bad for her.'

'What do you suppose I can do?'

'A great deal; if you once knew her and got fond of her, mother.'

Mrs. Dallas made no promise; however, she did go to see Esther. It was
about a week after Pitt's departure. She found father and daughter very
much as her son had found them the day he was introduced to the box of
coins. Esther was on the floor, beside the same box, and the colonel
was on his sofa. Mrs. Dallas did take the effect of the picture for
that moment before the colonel sprang up to receive her. Then she had
to do with a somewhat formal but courtly host, and the picture was
lost. The lady sat there, stately in her silks and laces, carrying on a
stiff conversation; for she and Colonel Gainsborough had few points of
sympathy or mutual understanding; and for a while she forgot Esther.
Then her eye again fell upon the child in her corner, sitting by her
box with a sad, uninterested air.

'And how is Esther?' she said, turning herself a little towards that
end of the room. 'Really I came to see Esther, colonel. How does she
do?'

'She is much obliged to you, and quite well, madam, I believe.'

'But she must want playmates, colonel. Why don't you send her to
school?'

'I would, if there were a good school at hand.'

'There are schools at New Haven, and Hartford, and Boston,--plenty of
schools that would suit you.'

'Only that, as you observe, they are at New Haven, and Hartford, and
Boston; out of my reach.'

'You couldn't do without her for a while?'

'I hardly think it; nor she without me. We are all, each of us, that
the other has.'

'Pitt used to give you lessons, didn't he?' the lady went on, turning
more decidedly to Esther. Esther rose and came near.

'Yes, ma'am.'

'What did he teach you?'

Now Esther felt no more congeniality than her father did with this
handsome, stately, commanding woman. Yet it would have been impossible
to the girl to say why she had an instant unwillingness to answer this
simple question. She did not answer it, except under protest.

'It began with the coins,' she said vaguely. 'He said we would study
history with them.'

'And did you?'

'Yes, ma'am.'

'How did you manage it? or how did he? He has original ways of doing
things.'

'Yes, ma'am. We used to take only one or two of the coins at once, and
then Pitt told me what to read.'

'What did he tell you to read?'

'A great many different books, at different times.'

'But tell Mrs. Dallas what books, Esther,' her father put in.

'There were so many, papa. Gibbon's History, and Plutarch's Lives, and
Rollin, and Vertot and Hume, and I--forget some of them.'

'How much of all these did you really read, Esther?'

'I don't know, ma'am. I read what he told me.'

The lady turned to Colonel Gainsborough with a peculiar smile. 'Sounds
rather heterogeneous!' she said.

It was on Esther's lips to justify her teacher, and say how far from
heterogeneous, how connected, and how thorough, and how methodical, the
reading and the study had been; and how enriched with talk and
explanations and descriptions and discussions. How delightful those
conversations were, both to herself and Pitt; how living the truth had
been made; how had names and facts taken on them the shape and
colouring of nature and reality. It rushed back upon Esther, and her
lips opened; and then, an inexplicable feeling of something like
caution came down upon her, and she shut her lips again.

'It was harmless amusement,' remarked the colonel carelessly.

Whether the mother thought that, may be questioned. She looked again at
the child standing before her; a child truly, with childlike innocence
and ignorance in her large eyes and pure lips. But the eyes were eyes
of beauty; and the lips would soon and readily take to themselves the
sweetness and the consciousness of womanhood, and a new bloom would
come upon the cheek. The colonel had never yet looked forward to all
that; but the wise eyes of the matron saw it as well as if already
before her. This little girl might well by and by be dangerous. If Mrs.
Dallas had come as a friend, she went away, in a sort, as an enemy, in
so far, at least, as Esther's further and future relations with her son
were concerned.

The colonel went back to his sofa. Esther sat down again by the coins.
She was not quite old enough to reflect much upon the developments of
human nature as they came before her; but she was conscious of a
disagreeable, troubled sensation left by this visit of Mrs. Dallas. It
had not been pleasant. It ought to have been pleasant: she was Pitt's
mother; she came on a kind errand; but Esther felt at once repelled and
put at a distance.

The child had not gone back to the dull despondency of the time before
Pitt busied himself with her; she was striving to fulfil all his
wishes, and working hard in order to accomplish more than he expected
of her. With the cherished secret hope of doing this, Esther was
driving at her books early and late. She went from the coins to the
histories Pitt had told her would illustrate them; she fagged away at
the dry details of her Latin grammar; she even tried to push her
knowledge of plants and see further into their relations with each
other, though in this department she felt the want of her teacher
particularly. From day to day it was the one pressing desire and
purpose in Esther's mind, to do more, and if possible much more, than
Pitt wanted her to do; so that she might surprise him and win his
respect and approbation. She thought, too, that she was in a fair way
to do this, for she was gaining knowledge fast, she knew; and it was a
great help towards keeping up spirit and hope and healthy action in her
mind. Nevertheless, she missed her companion and friend, with an
intense longing want of him which nobody even guessed. All the more
keen it was, perhaps, because she could speak of it to nobody. It
consumed the girl in secret, and was only saved from being disastrous
to her by the transformation of it into working energy, which
transformation daily went on anew. It did not help her much, or she
thought so, to remember that Pitt was coming home at the end of
December. He would not stay; and Esther was one of those thoughtful
natures that look all round a subject, and are not deceived by a first
fair show. He could not stay; and what would his coming and the delight
of it do, after all, but renew this terrible sense of want and make it
worse than ever? When he went away again, it would be for a long, long
time,--an absence of months; how was it going to be borne?

The problem of life was beginning early for Esther. And the child was
alone. Nobody knew what went on in her; she had nobody to whom she
could open her heart and tell her trouble; and the troubles we can tell
to nobody else somehow weigh very heavy, especially in young years. The
colonel loved his child with all of his heart that was not buried in
his wife's grave; still, he was a man, and like most men had little
understanding of the workings of a child's mind, above all of a girl's.
He saw Esther pale, thoughtful, silent, grave, for ever busy with her
books; and it never crossed his thoughts that such is not the natural
condition and wholesome manner of life for twelve years old. He knew
nothing for himself so good as books; why should not the same be true
for Esther? She was a studious child; he was glad to see her so
sensible.

As for Pitt, he had fallen upon a new world, and was busily finding his
feet, as it were. Finding his own place, among all these other
aspirants for human distinction; testing his own strength, among the
combatants in this wrestling school of human life; earning his laurels
in the race for learning; making good his standing and trying his power
amid the waves and currents of human influence. Pitt found his standing
good, and his strength quite equal to the call for it, and his power
dominating. At least it would have been dominating, if he had cared to
rule; all he cared for, as it happened, in that line, was to be
independent and keep his own course. He had done that always at home,
and he found no difficulty in doing it at college. For the rest, his
abilities were unquestioned, and put him at once at the head of his
fellows.




CHAPTER VII.

_COMING HOME_.


Without being at all an unfaithful friend, it must be confessed Pitt's
mind during this time was full of the things pertaining to his own new
life, and he thought little of Esther. He thought little of anybody; he
was not at a sentimental age, nor at all of a sentimental disposition,
and he had enough else to occupy him. It was not till he had put the
college behind him, and was on his journey home, that Esther's image
rose before his mental vision; the first time perhaps for months. It
smote him then with a little feeling of compunction. He recollected the
child's sensitive nature, her clinging to him, her lonely condition;
and the grave, sad eyes seemed to reproach him with having forgotten
her. He had not forgotten her; he had only not remembered. He might
have taken time to write her one little letter; but he had not thought
of it. Had she ceased to think of _him_ in any corresponding way? Pitt
was very sure she had not. Somehow his fancy was very busy with Esther
during this journey home. He was making amends for months of neglect.
Her delicate, tender, faithful image seemed to stand before
him;--forgetfulness would never be charged upon Esther, nor
carelessness of anything she ought to care for;--of that he was sure.
He was quite ashamed of himself, that he had sent her never a little
token of remembrance in all this time. He recalled the girl's eagerness
in study, her delight in learning, her modest, well-bred manner; her
evident though unconscious loving devotion to himself, and her profound
grief at his going away. There were very noble qualities in that young
girl that would develop--into what might they develop? and how would
those beautiful thoughtful eyes look from a woman's soul by and by? Had
his mother complied with his request and shown any kindness to the
child? Pitt had no special encouragement to think so. And what a life
it must be for such a creature, at twelve years old, to be alone with
that taciturn, reserved, hypochondriac colonel?

It was near evening when the stage-coach brought Pitt to his native
village and set him down at home. There was no snow on the ground yet,
and his steps rang on the hard frozen path as he went up to the door,
giving clear intimation of his approach. Within there was waiting. The
mother and father were sitting at the two sides of the fireplace, busy
with keeping up the fire to an unmaintainable standard of brilliancy,
and looking at the clock; now and then exchanging a remark about the
weather, the way, the distance, and the proper time of the expected
arrival,--till that sharp sound of a step on the gravel came to their
ears, and both parents started up and rushed to the door. There was a
general confusion of kisses and hand-clasps and embraces, from which
Pitt at last emerged.

'Oh, my boy, how late you are!'

'Not at all, mother; just right.'

'A tedious, cold ride, hadn't you?'

'No, mother; not at all. Roads in capital order; smooth as a plank
floor; came along splendidly; but there'll be snow to-morrow.'

'Oh, I hope not, till you get the greens!'

'Oh, I'll get the greens, never fear; and put them up, too.'

Wherewith they entered the brilliantly-lighted room, where the supper
table stood ready, and all eyes could meet eyes, and read tokens each
of the other's condition.

'He looks well,' said Mrs. Dallas, regarding her son.

'Why shouldn't I look well?'

'Hard work,' suggested the mother.

'Work is good for a fellow. I never got hard work enough yet. But home
is jolly, mother. That's the use of going away, I suppose,' said the
young man, drawing a chair comfortably in front of the fire; while Mrs.
Dallas rang for supper and gave orders, and then sat down to gaze at
him with those mother's eyes that are like nothing else in the world.
Searching, fond, proud, tender, devoted,--Pitt met them and smiled.

'I am all right,' he said.

'Looks so,' said the father contentedly. 'Hold your own, Pitt?'

'Yes, sir.'

'Ahead of everybody?'

'Yes, sir,' said the young man, a little more reservedly.

'I knew it!' said the elder man, rubbing his hands; 'I thought I knew
it. I made sure you would.'

'He hasn't worked too hard either,' said the mother, with a careful eye
of examination. 'He looks as he ought to look.'

A bright glance of the eye came to her. 'I tell you I never had enough
to do yet,' he said.

'And, Pitt, do you like it?'

'Like what, mother?'

'The place, and the work, and the people?--the students and the
professors?'

'That's what I should call a comprehensive question! You expect one yes
or no to cover all that?'

'Well, how do you like the people?'

'Mother, when you get a community like that of a college town, you have
something of a variety of material, don't you see? The people are all
sorts. But the faculty are very well, and some of them capital fellows.'

'Have you gone into society much?'

'No, mother. Had something else to do.'

'Time enough for that,' said the elder Dallas contentedly. 'When a man
has the money you'll have, my boy, he may pretty much command society.'

'Some sorts,' said Pitt.

'All sorts.'

'Must be a poor kind of society, I should say, that makes money the
first thing.'

'It's the best sort you can get in this world,' said the elder man,
chuckling. 'There's nothing but money that will buy bread and butter;
and they all want bread and butter. You'll find they all want bread and
butter, whatever else they want,--or have.'

'Of course they want it; but what has that to do with society?'

'You'll find out,' said the other, with an unctuous kind of complacency.

'But there's no society in this country,' said Mrs. Dallas. 'Now, Pitt,
turn your chair round,--here's the supper,--if you want to sit by the
fire, that is.'

The supper was a royal one, for Mrs. Dallas was a good housekeeper; and
the tone of it was festive, for the spirits of them all were in a very
gay and Christmas mood. So it was with a good deal of surprise as well
as chagrin that Mrs. Dallas, after supper, saw her son handling his
greatcoat in the hall.

'Pitt, you are not going out?'

'Yes, mother, for a little while.'

'Where can you be going?'

'I want to run over to Colonel Gainsborough's for a minute or two.'

'Colonel Gainsborough! You don't want to see him to-night?'

'Neither to-night nor any time--at least I can live without it; but
there's somebody else there that would like to see me. I'll be back
soon, mother.'

'But, Pitt, that is quite absurd! That child can wait till morning,
surely; and I want you myself. I think I have a better claim.'

'You have had me a good while already, and shall have me again,' said
Pitt, laughing. 'I am just going to steal a little bit of the evening,
mother. Be generous!'

And he opened the hall door and was off, and the door closed behind
him. Mrs. Dallas went back to the supper room with a very discomfited
face.

'Hildebrand,' she said, in a tone that made her husband look up, 'there
is no help for it! We shall have to send him to England.'

'What now?'

'Just what I told you. He's off to see that child. Off like the North
wind!--and no more to be held.'

'That's nothing new. He never could be held. Pity we didn't name him
Boreas.'

'But do you see what he is doing?'

'No.'

'He is off to see that child.'

'That child to-day, and another to-morrow. He's a boy yet.'

'Hildebrand, I tell you there is danger.'

'Danger of what?'

'Of what you would not like.'

'My dear, young men do not fall dangerously in love with children. And
that little girl is a child yet.'

'You forget how soon she will be not a child. And she is going to be a
very remarkable-looking girl, I can tell you. And you must not forget
another thing, husband; that Pitt is as persistent as he is wilful.'

'He's got a head, I think,' said Mr. Dallas, stroking his whiskers
thoughtfully.

'_That_ won't save him. It never saved anybody. Men with heads are just
as much fools, in certain circumstances, as men without them.'

'He might fancy some other child in England, if we sent him there, you
know.'

'Yes; but at least she would be a Churchwoman,' said Mrs. Dallas, with
her handsome face all cloudy and disturbed.

Meanwhile her son had rushed along the village street, or road rather,
through the cold and darkness, the quarter of a mile to Colonel
Gainsborough's house. There he was told that the colonel had a bad
headache and was already gone to his room.

'Is Miss Esther up?'

'Oh yes, sir,' said Mrs. Barker doubtfully, but she did not invite the
visitor in.

'Can I see her for a moment?'

'I haven't no orders, but I suppose you can come in, Mr. Dallas. It is
Mr. Dallas, ain't it?'

'Yes, it's I, Mrs. Barker,' said Pitt, coming in and beginning at once
to throw off his greatcoat. 'In the usual room? Is the colonel less
well than common?'

'Well, no, sir, not to call less well, as I knows on. It's the time o'
year, sir, I make bold to imagine. He has a headache bad, that he has,
and he's gone off to bed; but Miss Esther's well--so as she can be.'

Pitt got out of his greatcoat and gloves, and waited for no more. He
had a certain vague expectation of the delight his appearance would
give, and was a little eager to see it. So he went in with a bright
face to surprise Esther.

The girl was sitting by the table reading a book she had laid close
under the lamp; reading with a very grave face, Pitt saw too, and it a
little sobered the brightness of his own. It was not the dulness of
stagnation or of sorrow this time; at least Esther was certainly busily
reading; but it was sober, steady business, not the absorption of happy
interest or excitement. She looked up carelessly as the door opened,
then half incredulously as she saw the entering figure, then she shut
her book and rose to meet him. But then she did not show the lively
pleasure he had expected; her face flushed a little, she hardly smiled,
she met him as if he were more or less a stranger,--with much more
dignity and less eagerness than he was accustomed to from her. Pitt was
astonished, and piqued, and curious. However, he followed her lead, in
a measure.

'How do you do, Queen Esther?' he said, holding out his hand.

'How do you do, Pitt?' she answered, taking it; but with the oddest
mingling of reserve and doubt in her manner; and the great grave eyes
were lifted to his face for a moment, with, it seemed to him, something
of inquiry or questioning in them.

'Are you not glad to see me?'

'Yes,' she said, with another glance.

'Then _why_ are you not glad to see me?' he asked impetuously.

'I am glad to see you, of course,' she said. 'Won't you sit down?'

'This won't do, you know,' said the young man, half-vexed and
half-laughing, but wholly determined not to be kept at a distance in
this manner. 'I am not going to sit down, if you are going to treat me
like that.'

'Treat you how?'

'Why, as if I were a stranger, that you didn't care a pin about. What's
the matter, Queen Esther?'

Esther was silent. Pitt was half-indignant; and then he caught the
shimmer of something like moisture in the eyes, which were looking away
from him to the fire, and his mood changed.

'What is it, Esther?' he said kindly. 'Take a seat, your majesty, and
I'll do the same. I see there is some talking to be done here.'

He took the girl's hand and put her in her chair, and himself drew up
another near. 'Now what's the matter, Esther? Have you forgotten me?'

'No,' she said. 'But I thought--perhaps--you had forgotten me.'

'What made you think that?'

'You were gone away,' she said, hesitating; 'you were busy; papa said'--

'What did he say?'

'He said, probably I would never see you much more.'

But here the tears came to view undeniably; welled up, and filled the
eyes, and rolled over. Esther brushed them hastily away.

'And I hadn't the decency to write to you? Had that something to do
with it?'

'I thought--if you _had_ remembered me, you would perhaps have written,
just a little word,' Esther confessed, with some hesitation and
difficulty. Pitt was more touched and sorry than he would have supposed
before that such a matter could make him.

'Look here, Esther,' he said. 'There are two or three things I want you
to take note of. The first is, that you must never judge by
appearances.'

'Why not?' asked Esther, considering him and this statement together.

'Because they are deceptive. They mislead.'

'Do they?'

'Very frequently.'

'What is one to judge by, then?'

'Depends. In this case, by your knowledge of the person concerned.'

Esther looked at him, and a warmer shine came into her eye.

'Yes,' she said, 'I thought it was not like you to forget. But then,
papa said I would not be likely to see much more of you--ever'--(Esther
got the words out with some difficulty, without, however, breaking
down)--'and I thought, I had to get accustomed to doing without
you--and I had better do it.'

'_Why_ should you not see much more of me?' Pitt demanded energetically.

'You would be going away.'

'And coming back again!'

'But going to England, perhaps.'

'Who said that?'

'I don't know. I think Mrs. Dallas told papa.'

'Well, now look here, Queen Esther,' Pitt said, more moderately: 'I
told you, in the first place, you are not to judge by appearances. Do
you see that you have been mistaken in judging me?'

She looked at him, a look that moved him a good deal, there was so much
wistfulness in it; so much desire revealed to find him what she had
found him in times past, along with the dawning hope that she might.

'Yes,' said he, nodding, 'you have been mistaken, and I did not expect
it of you, Queen Esther. I don't think I am changeable; but anyhow, I
haven't changed towards you. I have but just got home this evening; and
I ran away from home and my mother as soon as we had done supper, that
I might come and see you.'

Esther smiled: she was pleased, he saw.

'And in the next place, as to that crotchet of your not seeing much
more of me, I can't imagine how it ever got up; but it isn't true,
anyhow. I expect you'll see an immense deal of me. I may go some time
to England; about that I can't tell; but if I go, I shall come back
again, supposing I am alive. And now, do you see that it would be very
foolish of you to try to get accustomed to doing without me? for I
shall not let you do it.'

'I don't want to do it,' said Esther confidingly; 'for you know I have
nobody else except you and papa.'

'What put such an absurd notion in your head! You a Stoic, Queen
Esther! You look like it!'

'What is a Stoic?'

'The sort of people that bite a nail in two, and smile as if it were a
stick of peppermint candy.'

'I didn't know there were any such people.'

'No, naturally. So it won't do for you to try to imitate them.'

'But I was not trying anything like that.'

'What were you trying to do, then?'

Esther hesitated.

'I thought--I must do without you; and so--I thought I had better not
think about you.'

'Did you succeed?'

'Not very well. But--I suppose I could, in time.'

'See you don't! What do you think in that case _I_ should do?'

'Oh, you!' said Esther; 'that is different. I thought you would not
care.'

'Did you! You did me honour. Now, Queen Esther, let us understand this
matter. I do care, and I am going to care, and I shall always care. Do
you believe it?'

'I always believe what you say,' said the girl, with a happy change in
her face, which touched Pitt again curiously. Somehow, the contrast
between his own strong, varied, rich, and active life, with its
abundance of resources and enjoyments, careless and satisfied,--and
this little girl alone at home with her cranky father, and no variety
or change or outlook or help, struck him painfully. It would hardly
have struck most young men; but Pitt, with all his rollicking
waywardness and self-pleasing, had a fine fibre in him which could feel
things. Then Esther's nature, he knew, was one rich in possibilities;
to which life was likely to bring great joy or great sorrow; more
probably both.

'What book have you got there?' he asked suddenly.

'Book?--Oh, the Bible.'

'The Bible! That's something beyond your comprehension, isn't it?'

'No,' said Esther. 'What made you think it was?'

'Always heard it wasn't the thing for children. What set you at that,
Queen Esther? Reading about your namesake?'

'I have read about her. I wasn't reading about her to-night.'

'What were you after, then?'

'It's mamma's Bible,' said Esther rather slowly; 'and she used to say
it was the best place to go for comfort.'

'Comfort! What do you want comfort for, Esther?'

'Nothing, now,' she said, with a smile. 'I am so glad you are come!'

'What _did_ you want comfort for, then?' said he, taking her hand, and
holding it while he looked into her eyes.

'I don't know--papa had gone to bed, and I was alone--and somehow it
seemed lonesome.'

'Will you go with me to-morrow after Christmas greens?'

'Oh, may I?' cried the girl, with such a flush of delight coming into
eyes and cheeks and lips, that Pitt was almost startled.

'I don't think I could enjoy it unless you came. And then you will help
me dress the rooms.'

'What rooms?'

'Our rooms at home. And now, what have you been doing since I have been
away?'

All shadows were got rid of; and there followed a half-hour of most
eager intercourse, questions and answers coming thick upon one another.
Esther was curious to hear all that Pitt would tell her about his life
and doings at college; and, nothing loath, Pitt gave it her. It
interested him to watch the play of thought and interest in the child's
features as he talked. She comprehended him, and she seemed to take in
without difficulty the strange nature and conditions of his college
world.

'Do you have to study hard?' she asked.

'That's as I please. One must study hard to be distinguished.'

'And you will be distinguished, won't you?'

'What do you think? Do you care about it?'

'Yes, I care,' said Esther slowly.

'You were not anxious about me?'

'No,' she said, smiling. 'Papa said you would be sure to distinguish
yourself.'

'Did he? I am very much obliged to Colonel Gainsborough.'

'What for?'

'Why, for his good opinion.'

'But he couldn't help his opinion,' said Esther.

'Queen Esther,' said Pitt, laughing, 'I don't know about that. People
sometimes hold opinions they have no business to hold, and that they
would not hold, if they were not perverse-minded.'

Esther's face had all changed since he came in. The premature gravity
and sadness was entirely dispersed; the eyes were full of beautiful
light, the mouth taking a great many curves corresponding to as many
alternations and shades of sympathy, and a slight colour of interest
and pleasure had risen in the cheeks. If Pitt had vanity to gratify, it
was gratified; but he had something better, he had a genuine kindness
and liking for the little girl, which had suffered absolute pain, when
he saw how his absence and silence had worked. Now the two were in full
enjoyment of the old relations and the old intercourse, when the door
opened, and Mrs. Barker's head appeared.

'Miss Esther, it's your time.'

'Time for what?' asked Pitt.

'It's my time for going to bed,' said Esther, rising. 'I'll come, Mrs.
Barker.'

'Queen Esther, does that woman say what you are to do and not do?' said
Pitt, in some indignation.

'Oh no; but papa. He likes me not to be up later than nine o'clock.'

'What has Barker to do with it? I think she wants putting in her place.'

'She always goes with me and attends to me. Yes, I must go,' said
Esther.

'But the colonel is not here to be disturbed.'

'He would be disturbed, if I didn't go at the right time. Good-night,
Pitt.'

'Well, till to-morrow,' said the young man, taking Esther's hand and
kissing it. 'But this is what I call a very summary proceeding. Queen
Esther, does your majesty always do what you are expected to do, and
take orders from everybody!'

'No; only from papa and you. Good-night, Pitt. Yes, I'll be ready
to-morrow.'




CHAPTER VIII.

_A NOSEGAY_.


Pitt walked home, half amused at himself that he should take so much
pains about this little girl, at the same time very firmly resolved
that nothing should hinder him. Perhaps his liking for her was deeper
than he knew; it was certainly real; while his kindly and generous
temper responded promptly to every appeal that her affection and
confidence made upon him. Affection and confidence are very winning
things, even if not given by a beautiful girl who will soon be a
beautiful woman; but looking out from Esther's innocent eyes, they went
down into the bottom of young Dallas's heart. And besides, his nature
was not only kind and noble; it was obstinate. Opposition, to him, in a
thing he thought good to pursue, was like blows of a hammer on a nail;
drove the purpose farther in.

So he made himself, it is true, very pleasant indeed to his parents at
home, that night and the next morning; but then he went with Esther
after cedar and hemlock branches. It may be asked, what opposition had
he hitherto found to his intercourse with the colonel's daughter? And
it must be answered, none. Nevertheless, Pitt felt it in the air, and
it had the effect on him that the north wind and cold are said to have
upon timber.

It was a day of days for Esther. First the delightful roving walk, and
cutting the greens, which were bestowed in a cart that attended them;
then the wonderful novelty of dressing the house. Esther had never seen
anything of the kind before, which did not hinder her, however, from
giving very good help. The hall, the sitting-room, the drawing-room,
and even Pitt's particular, out-of-the-way work-room, all were wreathed
and adorned and dressed up, each after its manner. For Pitt would not
have one place a repetition of another. The bright berries of the
winterberry and bittersweet were mingled with the dark shade of the
evergreens in many ingenious ways; but the crowning triumph of art,
perhaps, to Esther's eyes, was a motto in green letters, picked out
with brilliant partridge berries, over the end of the
sitting-room,--'Peace on earth.' Esther stood in delighted admiration
before it, also pondering.

'Pitt,' she said at last, 'those partridge berries ought not to be in
it.'

'Why not?' said Pitt, in astonishment. 'I think they set it off
capitally.'

'Oh, so they do. I didn't mean that. They are beautiful, very. But you
know what you said about them.'

'What did I say?'

'You said they were poison.'

'Poison! What then, Queen Esther? they won't hurt anybody up there. No
partridge will get at them.'

'Oh no, it isn't that, Pitt; but I was thinking--Poison shouldn't be in
that message of the angels.'

Pitt's face lighted up.

'Queen Esther,' said he solemnly, 'are you going to be _that_ sort of
person?'

'What sort of person?'

'One of those whose spirits are attuned to finer issues than their
neighbours? They are the stuff that poets are made of. You are not a
poet, are you?'

'No, indeed!' said Esther, laughing.

'Don't! I think it must be uncomfortable to have to do with a poet. You
may notice, that in nature the dwellers on the earth have nothing to do
with the dwellers in the air.'

'Except to be food for them,' said Esther.

'Ah! Well,--leaving that,--I should never have thought about the
partridge berries in that motto, and my mother would never have thought
of it. For all that, you are right. What shall we do? take 'em down?'

'Oh, no, they look so pretty. And besides, I suppose, Pitt, by and by,
poison itself will turn to peace.'

'What?' said Pitt. 'What is that? What can you mean, Queen Esther?'

'Only,' said Esther a little doubtfully, 'I was thinking. You know,
when the time comes there will be nothing to hurt or destroy in all the
earth; the wild beasts will not be wild, and so I suppose poison will
not be poison.'

'The wild beasts will not be wild? What _will_ they be, then?'

'Tame.'

'Where did you get that idea?'

'It is in the Bible. It is not an idea.'

'Are you sure?'

'Certainly. Mamma used to read it to me and tell me about it.'

'Well, you shall show _me_ the place some time. How do you like it,
mother?'

This question being addressed to Mrs. Dallas, who appeared in the
doorway. She gave great approval.

'Do you like the effect of the partridge berries?' Pitt asked.

'It is excellent, I think. They brighten it up finely.'

'What would you say if you knew they were poison?'

'That would not make any difference. They do no hurt unless you swallow
them, I suppose.'

'Esther finds in them an emblem of the time when the message of peace
shall have neutralized all the hurtful things in the world, and made
them harmless.'

Mrs. Dallas's eye fell coldly upon Esther. 'I do not think the Church
knows of any such time,' she answered, as she turned away. Pitt
whistled for some time thereafter in silence.

The decorations were finished, and most lovely to Esther's eyes; then,
when they were all done, she went home to tea. For getting the greens
and putting them up had taken both the morning and the afternoon to
accomplish. She went home gaily, with a brisk step and a merry heart,
at the same time thinking busily.

Home, in its dull uniformity and stillness, was a contrast after the
stir and freshness and prettiness of life in the Dallases's house. It
struck Esther rather painfully. The room where she and her father took
their supper was pleasant and homely indeed; a bright fire burned on
the hearth, or in the grate, rather, and a bright lamp shone on the
table; Barker had brought in the tea urn, and the business of preparing
tea for her father was one that Esther always liked. But, nevertheless,
the place approached too nearly a picture of still life. The urn hissed
and bubbled, a comfortable sound; and now and then there was a falling
coal or a jet of gas flame in the fire; but I think these things
perhaps made the stillness more intense and more noticeable. The
colonel sat on his sofa, breaking dry toast into his tea and
thoughtfully swallowing it; he said nothing, unless to demand another
cup; and Esther, though she had a healthy young appetite, could not
quite stay the mental longing with the material supply. Besides, she
was pondering something curiously.

'Papa,' she said at last, 'are you busy? May I ask you something?'

'Yes, my dear. What is it?'

'Papa, what is Christmas?'

The colonel looked up.

'What is Christmas?' he repeated. 'It is nothing, Esther; nothing at
all. A name--nothing more.'

'Then, why do people think so much of Christmas?'

'They do not. Sensible people do not think anything of it. Christmas is
nothing to me.'

'But, papa, why then does anybody make much of it? Mrs. Dallas has her
house all dressed up with greens.'

'You had better keep away from Mrs. Dallas's.'

'But it looks so pretty, papa! Is there any harm in it?'

'Harm in what?'

'Dressing the house so? It is all hemlock wreaths, and cedar branches,
and bright red berries here and there; and Pitt has put them up so
beautifully! You can't think how pretty it all is. Is there any harm in
that, papa?'

'Decidedly; in my judgment.'

'Why do they do it then, papa?'

'My dear, they have a foolish fancy that it is the time when Christ was
born; and so in Romish times a special Popish mass was said on that
day; and from that the twenty-fifth of December got its present
name--Christ-mass; that is what it is.'

'Then He was not born the twenty-fifth of December?'

'No, nor in December at all. Nothing is plainer than that spring was
the time of our Lord's coming into the world. The shepherds were
watching their flocks by night; that could not have been in the depth
of winter; it must have been in the spring.'

'Then why don't they have Christmas in springtime?'

'Don't ask _me_, my dear; I don't know. The thing began in the ages of
ignorance, I suppose; and as all it means now is a time of feasting and
jollity, the dead of winter will do as well as another time. But it is
a Popish observance, my child; it is a Popish observance.'

'There's no harm in it, papa, is there? if it means only feasting and
jollity, as you say.'

'There is always harm in superstition. This is no more the time of
Christ's birth than any other day that you could choose; but there is a
superstition about it; and I object to giving a superstitious reverence
to what is nothing at all. Reverence the Bible as much as you please;
you cannot too much; but do not put any ordinance of man, whether it be
of the Popish church or any other, on a level with what the Bible
commands.'

The colonel had finished his toast, and was turning to his book again.

'Pitt has been telling me of the way they keep Christmas in England,'
Esther went on. 'The Yule log, and the games, and the songs, and the
plays.'

'Godless ways,' said the colonel, settling himself to his
reading,--'godless ways! It is a great deal better in this country,
where they make nothing of Christmas. No good comes of those things.'

Esther would disturb her father no more by her words, but she went on
pondering, unsatisfied. In any question which put Mrs. Dallas and her
father on opposite sides, she had no doubt whatever that her father
must be in the right; but it was a pity, for surely in the present case
Mrs. Dallas's house had the advantage. The Christmas decorations had
been so pretty! the look of them was so bright and festive! the walls
she had round her at home were bare and stiff and cold. No doubt her
father must be right, but it was a pity!

The next day was Christmas day. Pitt being in attendance on his father
and mother, busied with the religious and other observances of the
festival, Esther did not see him till the afternoon. Late in the day,
however, he came, and brought in his hands a large bouquet of hothouse
flowers. If the two had been alone, Esther would have greeted him and
them with very lively demonstrations; as it was, it amused the young
man to see the sparkle in her eye, and the lips half opened for a cry
of joy, and the sudden flush on her cheek, and at the same time the
quiet, unexcited demeanour she maintained. Esther rose indeed, but then
stood silent and motionless and said not a word; while Pitt paid his
compliments to her father. A new fire flashed from her eye when at last
he approached her and offered her the flowers.

'Oh, Pitt! Oh, Pitt!' was all Esther with bated breath could say. The
colonel eyed the bouquet a moment and then turned to his book. He was
on his sofa, and seemingly gave no further heed to the young people.

'Oh, Pitt, where _could_ you get these?' The girl's breath was almost
taken away.

'Only one place where I could get them. Don't you know old Macpherson's
greenhouse?'

'But he don't let people in, I thought, in winter?'

'He let _me_ in.'

'Oh, Pitt, how wonderful! What is this? Now you must tell me all the
names. This beautiful white geranium with purple lines?'

'It's a _Pelargonium;_ belongs to the Geraniaceae; this one they call
Mecranthon. It's a beauty, isn't it? This little white blossom is
myrtle; don't you know myrtle?'

'And this geranium--this purple one?'

'That is Napoleon, and this Louise, and this Belle. This red
magnificence is a _Metrosideros;_ this white flower, is--I forget its
name; but _this_, this sweet one, is Daphne. Then here are two heaths;
then this thick leaf is _Laurustinus_, and this other, with the red
bud, _Camellia japonica_.'

'Oh, how perfectly beautiful!' exclaimed the delighted child. 'Oh, how
perfectly beautiful! And this yellow flower?'

'_Coronilla_.'

'And this, is it a _red_ wallflower?'

'A red wallflower; you are right.'

'How lovely! and how sweet! And these blue?'

'These little blue flowers are _Lobelia;_ they are cousins of the
cardinal flower; _that_ is _Lobelia cardinalis;_ these are _Lobelia
erinus_ and _Lobelia gracilis_.'

He watched the girl, for under the surprise and pleasure of his gift
her face was itself but a nobler flower, all glowing and flashing and
fragrant. With eyes dewy with delight she hung over the bouquet, almost
trembling in her eagerness of joy. She set the flowers carefully in a
vase, with tender circumspection, lest a leaf might be wronged by
chance crowding or inadvertent handling. Pitt watched and read it all.
He felt a great compassion for Esther. This creature, full of life and
sensibility, receptive to every influence, at twelve years old shut up
to the company of a taciturn and melancholy father and an empty house!
What would ever become of her? There was the colonel now, on the sofa,
attending only to his book; caring nothing for what was so moving his
child. Nobody cared, or was anywhere to sympathize with her. And if she
grew up so, shut up to herself, every feeling and desire repressed for
want of expression or of somebody to express it to, how would her
nature ever develop? would it not grow stunted and poor, compared with
what it might be? He was sorry for his little playmate and friend; and
it did the young fellow credit, I think, for at his age boys are not
wont to be tenderly sympathetic towards anything, unless it be a
beloved mother or sister. Pitt silently watched the putting the flowers
in water, speculating upon the very unhopeful condition of this little
human plant, and revolving schemes in his mind.

After he had gone, Colonel Gainsborough bade Esther show him her
flowers. She brought the dish to his sofa. The colonel reviewed them
with a somewhat jealous eye, did not seem to perceive their beauty, and
told her to take them away again. But the next day, when Esther was not
in the room, he examined the collection carefully, looking to see if
there were anything that looked like contraband 'Christmas greens.'
There were some sprigs of laurel and holly, that served to make the
hues of the bouquet more varied and rich. _That_ the colonel did not
think of; all he saw was that they were bits of the objectionable
'Christmas.' Colonel Gainsborough carefully pulled them out and threw
them in the fire; and nothing, I fear, saved the laurustinus and
japonica from a like fate but their exquisite large blossoms. Esther
was not slow to miss the green leaves abstracted from her vase.

'Papa,' she said, in some bewilderment, 'I think somebody has been at
my flowers; there is some green gone.'

'I took out some sprigs of laurel and holly,' said her father. 'I
cannot have any Christmas decorations here.'

'Oh, papa, Pitt did not mean them for any such thing!'

'Whether he meant it or no, I prefer not to have them there.'

Esther was silenced, but she watched her vase with rather anxious eyes
after that time. However, there was no more meddling; the brilliant
blossoms were allowed to adorn the place and Esther's life as long as
they would, or could. She cherished them to the utmost of her
knowledge, all the rather that Pitt was gone away again; she gave them
fresh water, she trimmed off the unsightly dry leaves and withered
blossoms; but all would not do; they lasted for a time, and then
followed the law of their existence and faded. What Esther did then,
was to fetch a large old book and lay the different sprigs, leaves or
flowers, carefully among its pages and put them to dry. She loved every
leaf of them. They were associated in her mind with all that pleasant
interlude of Christmas: Pitt's coming, his kindness; their going after
greens together, and dressing the house. The bright interlude was past;
Pitt had gone back to college; and the little girl cherished the faded
green things as something belonging to that good time which was gone.
She would dry them carefully and keep them always, she thought.

A day or two later, her father noticed that the vase was empty, and
asked Esther what she had done with her flowers?

'They were withered, papa; they were spoilt; I could not keep them.'

'What did you do with them?'

'Papa, I thought I would try to dry them.'

'Yes, and what did you do with them?'

'Papa, I put them in that old, odd volume of the Encyclopaedia.'

'Bring it here and let me see.'

Much wondering and a little discomfited, Esther obeyed. She brought the
great book to the side of the sofa, and turned over the pages
carefully, showing the dried and drying leaves. She had a great love to
them; what did her father want with them?

'What do you propose to do with those things, when they are dry? They
are staining the book.'

'It's an old book, papa; it is no harm, is it?'

'What are you going to do with them? Are they to remain here
permanently?'

'Oh, no, sir; they are only put here to dry. I put a weight on the
book. They will be dry soon.'

'And what then?'

'Then I will take them out, papa. It's an old book.'

'And what will you do with them?'

'I will keep them, sir.'

'What is the use of keeping the flowers after their beauty is gone? I
do not think that is worth while.'

'_Some_ of their beauty is gone,' said Esther, with a certain
tenderness for the plants manifested in her manner,--'but I love them
yet, papa.'

'That is not wise, my child. Why should you love a parcel of dry
leaves? Love what is worthy to be loved. I think I would throw them all
in the fire.'

'Oh, papa!'

'That's the best, my dear. They are only rubbish. I object to the
hoarding of rubbish. It is a poor habit.'

The colonel turned his attention again to his book, and perhaps did not
even remark how Esther sat with a disconsolate face on the floor,
looking at her condemned treasures. He would not have understood it if
he had seen. In his nature there was no key to the feeling which now
was driving the tears into Esther's eyes and making her heart swell.
Like many men, and many women, for the matter of that, Colonel
Gainsborough had very little power of association. He would indeed have
regarded with sacred reverence anything that had once belonged to his
wife, down to her shoe; in that one instance the tension of feeling was
strong enough to make the chords tremble under the lightest touch. In
other relations, what did it matter? They were nothing to him; and if
Colonel Gainsborough made his own estimate the standard of the worth of
things, he only did what I am afraid we all do, more or less. At any
rate, his was not one of those finer strung natures which recognise the
possibility of worlds of knowledge and feeling not open to themselves.
It is also just possible that he divined his daughter's sentiment in
regard to the flowers enough to be jealous of it.

But Esther did not immediately move to obey his order. She sat on the
floor with the big book before her, the open page showing a half dry
blossom of the Mecranthon geranium which was still to her eyes very
beautiful. And all the associations of that pleasant Christmas
afternoon when Pitt had brought it and told her what its name was, rose
up before her. She was exceedingly unwilling to burn it. The colonel
perhaps had a guess that he had given a hard command; for he did not
look again at Esther or speak to her, or take any notice of her delay
of obedience. That she would obey he knew; and he let her take her
time. So he did not see the big tears that filled her eyes, nor the
quiet way in which she got rid of them; while the hurt, sorrowful,
regretful look on her face would have certainly moved Pitt to
indignation if he had been where he could see it. I am afraid, if the
colonel had seen it, _he_ would have been moved quite in a different
way. Not to anger, indeed; Colonel Gainsborough was never angry with
his child, as truly she never gave him cause; but I think he would
privately have applauded the wisdom of his regulation, which removed
such objects of misplaced sentiment out of the way of doing further
harm. And Esther sat and looked at the Mecranthon, brushed away her
tears softly, swallowed her regrets and unwillingness, and finally rose
up, carried her book to the fire, and one by one, turning the leaves,
took out her drying favourites and threw them into the glowing grate.
It was done; and she carried the book away and put it in its old place.

But a week later it happened that Esther bethought her to open the
Encyclopaedia again, to look at _the marks her flowers had left_ on the
pages. For they _had_ stained the book a little, and here and there she
could discern the outline of a sprig, and trace a faint dash of colour
left behind by the petals of some flower rich in its dyes. If it
appears from this that the colonel was right in checking the feeling
which ran to such extremes, I cannot help that; I am reporting the
facts. Esther turned over the book from one place to another where her
flowers had lain. Here had been heath; there coronilla; here--oh, here
was _still_ the wallflower! Dried beautifully; delicate and unbroken,
and perfect and sweet. There was nothing else left, but here was the
wallflower. A great movement of joy filled Esther's heart; then came a
doubt. Must this be burned too? Would this one little sprig matter? She
had obeyed her father, and destroyed all the rest of the bouquet; and
this wallflower had been preserved without her knowledge. Since it had
been saved, might it not be saved? Esther looked, studied, hesitated;
and finally could not make up her mind without further order to destroy
this last blossom. She never thought of asking her father's mind about
it. The child knew instinctively that he would not understand her; a
sorrowful thing for a child to know; it did not occur to her that if he
_had_ understood her feeling, he would have been still less likely to
favour it. She kept the wallflower, took it away from its exposed
situation in the Encyclopaedia, and put it in great safety among her
own private possessions.




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 be
_very_ 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.

'I know, of course, you cannot stay here always.'

'Of course. But then I shall always be coming back.'

Esther sighed. She was thinking that the absences were long and the
times of being at home short; but what was the use of talking about it?
That lesson, that words do not change the inevitable, she had already
learned. Pitt was concerned.

'Where did you say your highness went to look for comfort?'

'In the Bible. Oh, yes, that was what I wanted your help about. I did
not know how to look; and papa said he didn't; or I don't know if he
_said_ exactly that, but it came to the same thing. And then I asked
Barker.'

'Was she any wiser?'

'No. She said her way of finding anything was to begin at one end and
go through to the other; so I tried that. I began at the beginning; and
I read on; but I found nothing until--I'll show you,' she said,
suddenly breaking off and darting away; and in two minutes more she
came back with her Bible. She turned over the leaves eagerly.

'Here, Pitt,--I came to this. Now what does it mean?'

She gave him the volume open at the sixth chapter of Numbers; in the
end of which is the prescribed form for the blessing of the children of
Israel. Pitt read the words to himself.


'The Lord bless thee, and keep thee. 'The Lord make His face shine upon
thee, and be gracious unto thee. 'The Lord lift up His countenance upon
thee, and give thee peace.'


Esther waited till she saw he had read them through.

'Now, Pitt, what does that mean?'

'Which?'

'That last: "The Lord lift up His countenance upon thee, and give thee
peace." What does "lift up his countenance upon thee" mean?'

What _did_ it mean? Pitt asked himself the question for the first time
in his life. He was quite silent.

'You see,' said Esther quaintly, after a pause,--'you see, _that_ would
be comfort.'

Pitt was still silent.

'Do you understand it, Pitt?'

'_Understand_ it, Esther!' he said, knitting his brows, 'No. Nobody
could do that, except--the people that had it. But I think I see what
it means.'

'The people "that had it"? That had what?'

'This wonderful thing.'

'What wonderful thing?'

'Queen Esther, you ought to ask your father.'

'I can't ask papa,' said the little girl. 'If ever I speak to him of
comfort, he thinks directly of mamma. I cannot ask him again.'

'And I am all your dependence?' he said half lightly.

'I mustn't depend upon you either. Only, now you are here, I thought I
would ask you.'

'You ought to have a better counsellor. However, perhaps I can tell
what you want to know, in part. Queen Esther, was your mother, or your
father, ever seriously displeased with you?'

Esther reflected, a little astonished, and then said no.

'I suppose not!' said Pitt. 'Then you don't know by experience what it
would be, to have either of them refuse to look at you or smile upon
you?--hide their face from you, in short?'

'Why, no! never.'

'You're a happy girl.'

'But what has that to do with it?'

'Nothing to do with it; it is the very contrast and opposite, in fact.
Don't you see? "Lift up the light of thy countenance;"--you know what
the "light" of a smiling, loving face of approval is? You know _that_,
Queen Esther?'

'That?' repeated Esther breathlessly. 'Yes, I know; but this is God.'

'Yes, and I do not understand; but that is what it means.'

'You don't understand!'

'No. How should I? But that is what it means. Something that answers to
what among us a bright face of love is, when it smiles upon us. That is
"light," isn't it?'

'Yes,' said Esther. 'But how can this be, Pitt?'

'I cannot tell. But that is what it means. "The Lord make His face to
shine upon thee." They are very fine words.'

'Then I suppose,' said Esther slowly, 'if anybody had _that_, he
wouldn't want comfort?'

'He wouldn't be without it, you mean? Well, I should think he would
not. "The Lord lift up His countenance upon thee, and give thee peace."'

'But I don't understand, Pitt.'

'No, Queen Esther. This is something beyond you and me.'

'How can one come to understand?'

Pitt was silent a minute, looking down at the words. 'I do not know,'
he said. 'That is a question. It is a look of favour and love described
here; but of course it would not give peace, unless the person
receiving it knew he had it. How that can be, I do not see.'

Both were silent a little while.

'Well,' said Esther, 'you have given me a great deal of help.'

'How?'

'Oh, you have told me what this means,' said the child, hanging over
the words, which Pitt still held.

'That does not give it to you.'

'No; but it is a great deal, to know what it means,' said Esther, in a
tone which Pitt felt had a good element of hopefulness in it.

'What are you going to do about it?'

Esther lifted her head and looked at him. It was one of those looks
which were older than her years; far-reaching, spiritual, with an
intense mixture of pathos and hope in her eyes.

'I shall go on trying to get it,' she said. 'You know, Pitt, it is
different with you. You go out into the world, and you have everything
you want; but I am here quite alone.'




CHAPTER XI.

_DISSENT_.


The summer months were very rich in pleasure, for all parties; even
Colonel Gainsborough was a little roused by the presence of his young
friend, and came much more than usual out of his reserve. So that the
conversations round the tea-table, when Pitt made one of their number,
were often lively and varied; such as Esther had hardly known in her
life before. The colonel left off his taciturnity; waked up, as it
were; told old campaigning stories, and gave out stores of information
which few people knew he possessed. The talks were delightful, on
subjects natural and scientific, historical and local and picturesque.
Esther luxuriated in the new social life which had blossomed out
suddenly at home, perhaps with even an intensified keen enjoyment from
the fact that it was so transient a blossoming; a fact which the child
knew and never for a moment forgot. The thought was always with her,
making only more tender and keen the taste of every day's delights. And
Pitt made the days full. With a mixture of motives, perhaps, which his
own mind did not analyze, he devoted himself very much to the lonely
little girl. She went with him in his walks and in his drives; he sat
on the verandah with her daily and gave her lessons, and almost daily
he went in to tea with her afterwards, and said that Christopher grew
the biggest raspberries in 'town.' Pitt professed himself very fond of
raspberries. And then would come one of those rich talks between him
and the colonel; and when Pitt went home afterwards he would reflect
with satisfaction that he had given Esther another happy day. It was
true; and he never guessed what heart-aches the little girl went
through, night after night, in anticipation of the days that were
coming. She did not shed tears about it, usually; tears might have been
more wholesome. Instead, Esther would stand at her window looking out
into the moonlit garden, or sit on the edge of her bed staring down at
the floor; with a dry ache at her heart, such as we are wont to say a
young thing like her should not know. And indeed only one here and
there has a nature deep and fine-strung enough to be susceptible of it.

The intensification of this pain was the approaching certainty that
Pitt was going to England. Esther did not talk of it, rarely asked a
question; nevertheless she heard enough now and then to make her sure
what was corning. And, in fact, if anything had been wanting to sharpen
up Mrs. Dallas's conviction that such a step was necessary, it would
have been the experience of this summer. She wrought upon her husband,
till himself began to prick up his ears and open his eyes; and between
them they agreed that Pitt had better go. Some evils are easier nipped
in the bud; and this surely was one, for Pitt was known to be a
persistent fellow, if once he took a thing in his head. And though Mr.
Dallas laughed, at the same time he trembled. It was resolved that Pitt
should make his next term at Oxford. The thought was not for a moment
to be entertained, that all Mr. Dallas's money, and all the pretensions
properly growing out of it, should be wasted on the quite penniless
daughter of a retired army officer. For in this world the singular rule
obtaining is, that the more you have the more you want.

One day Pitt came, as he still often did, to read with the colonel;
more for the pleasure of the thing, and for the colonel's own sake,
than for any need still existing. He found the colonel alone. It was
afternoon of a warm day in August, and Esther had gone with Mrs. Barker
to get blackberries, and was not yet returned. The air came in faintly
through the open windows, a little hindered by the blinds which were
drawn to moderate the light.

'How do you do, sir, to-day?' the young man asked, coming in with
something of the moral effect of a breeze. 'This isn't the sort of
weather one would like for going on a forlorn-hope expedition.'

'In such an expedition it doesn't matter much what weather you have,'
said the colonel; 'and I do not think it matters much to me. I am much
the same in all weathers; only that I think I am failing gradually.
Gradually, but constantly.'

'You do not show it, colonel.'

'No, perhaps not; but I feel it.'

'You do not care about hearing me read to-day, perhaps?'

'Yes, I do; it distracts me; but first there is a word I want to say to
you, Pitt.'

He did not go on at once to say it, and the young man waited
respectfully. The colonel sighed, passed his hand over his brow once or
twice, sighed again.

'You are going to England, William?'

'They say so, sir. My father and mother seem to have set their minds on
it.'

'Quite right, too. There's no place in the world like Oxford or
Cambridge for a young man. Oxford or Cambridge,--which, William?'

'Oxford, sir, I believe.'

'Yes; that would suit your father's views best. How do you expect to
get there? Will you go this year?'

'Oh yes, sir; that seems to be the plan. My father is possessed with
the fear that I may grow to be not enough of an Englishman--or too much
of an American; I don't know which.'

'I think you will be a true Englishman. Yet, if you live here
permanently, you will have to be the other thing too. A man owes it to
the country of his adoption; and I think your father has no thought of
returning to England himself?'

'None at all, sir.'

'How will you go? You cannot take passage to England.'

'That can be managed easily enough. Probably I should take passage in a
ship bound for Lisbon; from there I could make my way somehow to
London.'

For, it may be mentioned, the time was the time of the last American
struggle with England, early in the century; and the high seas were not
safe and quiet as now.

The colonel sighed again once or twice, and repeated that gesture with
his hand over his brow.

'I suppose there is no telling how long you will be gone, if you once
go?'

'I cannot come home every vacation,' said Pitt lightly. 'But since my
father and mother have made up their minds to that, I must make up
mine.'

'So you will be gone years,' said the colonel thoughtfully. 'Years. I
shall not be here when you return, William.'

'You are not going to change your habitation, sir?' said the young man,
though he knew what the other meant well enough.

'Not for any other upon earth,' said the colonel soberly. 'But I shall
not be here, William. I am failing constantly. Slowly, if you please,
but constantly. I am not as strong as I look, and I am far less well
than your father believes. I should know best; and I know I am failing.
If you remain in England three years, or even two years, when you come
back I shall not be here.'

'I hope you are mistaken, colonel.'

'I am not mistaken.'

There was silence a few minutes. Pitt did not place unqualified trust
in this judgment, even although, as he could not deny, the colonel
might be supposed to know best. He doubted the truth of the
prognostication; yet, on the other hand, he could not be sure that it
was false. What if it were not false?

'I hope you are mistaken, colonel,' he said again; 'but if you are
right--if it should be so as you fear'--

'I do not fear it,' put in the colonel, interrupting him.

'Not for yourself; but if it should be so,--what will become of Esther?'

'It was of her I wished to speak. She will be here.'

'Here in this house? She would be alone.'

'I should be away. But Mrs. Barker would look after her.'

'Barker!' Pitt echoed. 'Yes, Mrs. Barker could take care of the house
and of the cooking, as she does now; but Esther would be entirely
alone, colonel.'

'I have no one else to leave her with,' said the colonel gloomily.

'Let my mother take charge of her, in such a case. My mother would take
care of her, as if Esther were her own. Let her come to my mother,
colonel!'

'No,' said the colonel quietly, 'that would not be best. I am sure of
Mrs. Dallas's kindness; but I shall leave Esther under the care of
Barker and her brother. Christopher will manage the place, and keep
everything right outside; and Barker will do her part faithfully.
Esther will be safe enough so, for a while. She is a child yet. But
then, William, I'll take a promise from you, if you will give it.'

'I will give any promise you like, sir. What is it?' said Pitt, who had
never been in a less pleasant mood towards his friend. In fact he was
entirely out of patience with him. 'What promise do you want, colonel?'
he repeated.

'When you come back from England, Will, if I am no longer here, I want
you to ask Esther for a sealed package of papers, which I shall leave
with her. Then open the package; and the promise I want from you is
that you will do according to the wishes you will find there expressed.'

Pitt looked at the colonel in much astonishment. 'May I not know what
those wishes regard, sir?'

'They will regard all I leave behind me.'

There was in the tone of the colonel's voice, and the manner of
utterance of his words, something which showed Pitt that further
explanations were not to be had from him. He hesitated, not liking to
bind himself to anything in the dark; but finally he gave the promise
as required. He went home, however, in a doubtful mood as regarded
himself, and a very impatient one as concerned the colonel. What
ridiculous, precise notion was this that had got possession of him? How
little was he able to comprehend the nature or the needs of his little
daughter; and what disagreeable office might he have laid upon Pitt in
that connection? Pitt revolved these things in a fever of impatience
with the colonel, who had demanded such a pledge from him, and with
himself, who had given it. 'I have been a fool for once in my life!'
thought he.

Mr. and Mrs. Dallas were in the sitting-room, where Pitt went in. They
had been watching for his return, though they took care not to tell him
so.

'How's your friend the colonel to-day?' his father asked, willing to
make sure where his son had been.

'He thinks he is dying,' Pitt answered, in no very good humour.

'He has been thinking that for the last two years.'

'Do you suppose there is anything in it?'

'Nothing but megrims. He's hipped, that's all. If he had some work to
do--that he _must_ do, I mean--it's my belief he would be a well man
to-day; and know it, too.'

'He honestly thinks he's dying. Slowly, of course, but surely.'

'Pity he ever left the army,' said Mrs. Dallas. 'He is one of those men
who don't bear to be idle.'

'That's all humankind!' said her husband. 'Nobody bears to be idle.
Can't do it without running down.'

'Still,' said Pitt thoughtfully, 'you cannot tell. A man ought to be
the best judge of his own feelings; and perhaps Colonel Gainsborough is
ill, as he says.'

'What are you going to do about it?' said his father with a half sneer.

'Nothing; only, _if_ he should turn out to be right,--if he should die
within a year or two, what would become of his little daughter?'

Mr. and Mrs. Dallas exchanged a scarcely perceptible glance.

'Send her home to his family,' answered the former.

'Has he a family in England?'

'So he says. I judge, not a small one.'

'Not parents living, has he?'

'I believe not; but there are Gainsboroughs enough without that.'

'What ever made him come over here?'

'Some property quarrel, I gather, though the colonel never told me in
so many words.'

'Then he might not like to send Esther to them. Property quarrels are
embittering.'

'Do you know any sort of quarrel that isn't? It is impossible to say
beforehand what Colonel Gainsborough might like to do. He's a fidgety
man. If there's a thing I hate, in the human line, it's a fidget. You
can't reason with 'em.'

'Then what would become of that child, mother, if her father were
really to die?'

Pitt spoke now with a little anxiety; but Mrs. Dallas answered coolly.

'He would make the necessary arrangements.'

'But they have no friends here, and no relations. It would be
dreadfully forlorn for her. Mother, if Colonel Gainsborough _should_
die, wouldn't it be kind if you were to take her?'

'Too kind,' said Mr. Dallas. 'There is such a thing as being too kind,
Pitt. Did you never hear of it?'

'I do not comprehend, sir. What objection could there be? The child is
not a common child; she is one that anybody might like to have in the
house. I should think you and my mother might enjoy it very much,
especially with me away.'

'Especially,' said the elder man drily. 'Well, Pitt, perhaps you are
right; but for me there is this serious objection, that she is a
dissenter.'

'A dissenter!' echoed Pitt in unfeigned astonishment. 'What is a
"dissenter," here in the new country?'

'Very much the same thing that he is in the old country, I suspect.'

'And what is that, sir?'

'Humph!--well, don't you know? Narrow, underbred, and pig-headed, and
with that, disgustingly radical. That is what it means to be a
dissenter; always did mean.'

'Underbred! You cannot find, old country or new country, a better-bred
man than Colonel Gainsborough; and Esther is perfect in her manners.'

'I haven't tried _her_,' said the other; 'but isn't he pig-headed? And
isn't he radical, think you? They all are; they always were, from the
days of Cromwell and Ireton.'

'But the child?--Esther knows nothing of politics.'

'It's in the blood,' said Mr. Dallas stroking unmoveably his long
whiskers. 'It's in the blood. I'll have no dissenters in my house. It
is fixed in the blood, and will not wash out.'

'I don't believe she knows what a dissenter means.'

'Your father is quite right,' put in Mrs. Dallas. 'I should not like a
dissenter in my family. I should not know how to get on with her. In
chance social intercourse it does not so much matter--though I feel the
difference even there; but in the family-- It is always best for like
to keep to like.'

'But these are only differences of form, mother.'

'Do you think so?' said Mrs. Dallas, drawing up her handsome person. 'I
believe in form, Pitt, for my part; and when you get to England you
will find that it is only the nobodies who dispense with it. But the
Church is more than form, I should think. You'll find the Archbishop of
Canterbury is something besides a form. And is our Liturgy a form?'

Pitt escaped from the discussion, half angry and half amused, but
seriously concerned about Esther. And meanwhile Esther was having her
own thoughts. She had come home from her blackberrying late, after Pitt
had gone home; and a little further on in the afternoon she had
followed him, to get her daily lesson. As the weather was warm all
windows were standing open; and the talkers within the house, being
somewhat eager and preoccupied in their minds, did not moderate their
voices nor pay any attention to what might be going on outside; and so
it happened that Esther's light step was not heard as it came past the
windows; and it followed very easily that one or two half sentences
came to her ear. She heard her own name, which drew her attention, and
then Mr. Dallas's declaration that he would have no dissenters in his
house. Esther paused, not certainly to listen, but with a sudden check
arising from something in the tone of the words. As she stood still in
doubt whether to go forward or not, a word or two more were spoken and
also heard; and with that Esther turned short about, left all thought
of her lesson, and made her way home; walking rather faster than she
had come.

She laid off her hat, went into the room where her father was, and sat
down in the window with a book.

'Home again, Esther?' said he. 'You have not been long away.'

'No, papa.'

'Did you have your lesson?'

'No, papa.'

'Why not?'

'Pitt was talking to somebody.'

The colonel made no further remark, and the room was very still for
awhile. Until after au hour or more the colonel's book went down; and
then Esther from her window spoke again.

'Papa, if you please, what is a "dissenter"?'

'A _what?_' demanded the colonel, rousing himself.

'A "dissenter," papa.'

'What do you know about dissenters?'

'Nothing, papa. What is it?'

'What makes you ask?'

'I heard the word, papa, and I didn't know what it meant.'

'There is no need you should know what it means. A dissenter is one who
dissents.'

'From what, sir?'

'From something that other people believe in.'

'But, papa, according to that, then, everybody is a dissenter; and that
is not true, is it?'

'What has put the question into your head?'

'I heard somebody speaking of dissenters.'

'Whom?'

'Mrs. Dallas.'

'Ah!' The colonel smiled grimly. 'She might be speaking of you and me.'

Esther knew that to have been the fact, but she did not say so. She
only asked,

'What do we dissent from, papa?'

'We dissent from the notion that form is more than substance, and the
kernel less valuable than the shell.'

This told Esther nothing. She was mystified; at the same time, her
respect for her father did not allow her to press further a question he
seemed to avoid.

'Is Pitt a dissenter, papa?'

'There is no need you should trouble your head with the question of
dissent, my child. In England there is an Established Church; all who
decline to come into it are there called Dissenters.'

'Does it tire you to have me ask questions, papa?'

'No.'

'Who established the Church there?'

'The Government.'

'What for?'

'Wanted to rule men's consciences as well as their bodies.'

'But a government cannot do that, papa?'

'They have tried, Esther. Tried by fire and sword, and cruelty, and
persecution; by fines and imprisonments and disqualifications. Some
submitted, but a goodly number dissented, and our family has always
belonged to that honourable number. See you do it no discredit. The
Gainsboroughs were always Independents; we fought with Cromwell, and
suffered under the Stuarts. We have an unbroken record of striving for
the right. Keep to your traditions, my dear.'

'But why should a Government wish to rule people's consciences, papa?'

'Power, my dear. As long as men's minds are free, there is something
where power does not reach.'

'I should think everybody would _like_ Dissenters, papa?' was Esther's
simple conclusion.

'Mrs. Dallas doesn't,' said the colonel grimly.




CHAPTER XII.

_THE VACATION_.


The days went too fast, as the last half of Pitt's vacation passed
away. Ay, there was no holding them, much as Esther tried to make each
one as long as possible. I think Pitt tried too; for he certainly gave
his little friend and playmate all he could of pleasure, and all he
could of himself. Esther shared everything he did, very nearly, that
was not done within his own home. Nothing could have been more
delightful than those days of August and September, if only the vision
of the end of them had not been so near. That vision did not hinder the
enjoyment; it intensified it; every taste of summer and social delight
was made keen with that spice of coming pain; even towards the very
last, nothing could prevent Esther's enjoyment of every moment she and
Pitt spent together. Only to be together was such pleasure. Every word
he spoke was good in her ears; and to her eyes, every feature of his
appearance, and every movement of his person was comely and admirable.
She gave him, in fact, a kind of grave worship, which perhaps nobody
suspected in its degree, because it was not displayed in the manner of
childish effusiveness. Esther was never effusive; her manner was always
quiet, delicate, and dignified, such as a child's can well be. And so
even Pitt himself did not fully know how his little friend regarded
him, though he had sometimes a queer approach to apprehension. It
struck him now and then, the grave, absorbed look of Esther's beautiful
eyes; occasionally he caught a flash of light in them, such as in
nature only comes from heavily-charged clouds. Always she liked to do
what he liked, and gave quick regard to any expressed wish of his;
always listened to him, and watched his doings, and admired his
successes, with the unconditional devotion of an unquestioning faith.
Pitt was half-aware of all this; yet he was at an age when speculation
is apt to be more busy with matters of the head than of the heart; and
besides, he was tolerably well accustomed to the same sort of thing at
home, and took it probably as very natural and quite in order. And he
knew well, and did not forget, that to the little lonely child his
going away would be, even more than it might be to his mother, the loss
of a great deal of brightness out of her daily life. He did even dread
it a little. And as the time drew near, he saw that his fears were
going to be justified.

Esther did not lament or complain; she never, indeed, spoke of his
going at all; but what was much more serious, she grew pale. And when
the last week came, the smile died out of her eyes and from her lips.
No tears were visible; Pitt would almost rather have seen her cry, like
a child, much as with all other men he hated tears; it would have been
better than this preternatural gravity with which the large eyes opened
at him, and the soft mouth refused to give way. She seemed to enter
into everything they were doing with no less interest than usual; she
was not abstracted; rather, Pitt got the impression that she carried
about with her, and brought into everything, the perfect recollection
that he was going away. It began to oppress him.

'I wish I could feel, mother, that you would look a little after that
motherless child,' he said, in a sort of despairing attempt one evening.

'She is not fatherless,' Mrs. Dallas answered composedly.

'No, but a girl wants a mother.'

'She is accustomed to the want now.'

'Mother, it isn't kind of you!'

'How would you have me show kindness?' Mrs. Dallas asked calmly. Now
that Pitt was going away and safe, she could treat the matter without
excitement. 'What would Colonel Gainsborough like me to do for his
daughter, do you think?'

Pitt was silent, and vexed.

'What do you want me to do for her?'

'I'd like you to be a friend to her. She will need one.'

'If her father dies, you mean?'

'If he lives. She will be very lonely when I am gone away.'

'That is because you have accustomed her so much to your company. I
never thought it was wise. She will get over it in a little while.'

Would she? Pitt studied her next day, and much doubted his mother's
assertion. All the months of his last term in college had not been
enough to weaken in the least Esther's love for him. It was real,
honest, genuine love, and of very pure quality; a diamond, he was ready
to think, of the first water. Only a child's love; but Pitt had too
fine a nature himself to despise a child's love; and full as his head
was of novelties, hopes and plans and purposes, there was space in his
heart for a very tender concern about Esther beside.

It came to the last evening, and he was sitting with her on the
verandah. It was rather cool there now; the roses and honeysuckles and
the summer moonshine were gone; the two friends chose to stay there
because they could be alone, and nobody overhear their words. Words for
a little while had ceased to flow. Esther was sitting very still, and
Pitt knew how she was looking; something of the dry despair had come
back to her face which had been in it when he was first moved to busy
himself about her.

'Esther, I shall come back,' he said suddenly, bending down to look in
her face.

'When?' she said, half under her breath. It was not a question; it was
an answer.

'Well, not immediately; but the years pass away fast, don't you know
that?'

'Are you sure you will come back?'

'Why, certainly! if I am alive I will. Why, if I came for nothing else,
I would come to see after you, Queen Esther.'

Esther was silent. Talking was not easy.

'And meanwhile, I shall be busy, and you will be busy. We have both a
great deal to do.'

'You have.'

'And I am sure you have. Now let us consult. What have you got to do,
before we see one an other again?'

'I suppose,' said Esther, 'take care of papa.'

She said it in a quiet, matter-of-course tone, and Pitt started a
little. It was very likely; but it had not just occurred to him before,
how large a part that care might play in the girl's life for some time
to come.

'Does he need so much care?' he asked.

'It isn't real _care_,' said Esther, in the same tone; 'but he likes to
have me about, to do things for him.'

'Queen Esther, aren't you going to carry on your studies for me, all
the same?'

'For you!' said she, lifting her heavy eyes to him. It hurt him to see
how heavy they were; weighted with a great load of sorrow, too mighty
for tears.

'For me, certainly. I expect everything to go on just as if I were here
to look after it. I expect everything to go on so, that when I come
again I may find just what I want to find. You must not disappoint me.'

Esther did not say. She made no answer at all, and after a minute put a
question which was a diversion.

'Where are you going first, Pitt?'

'To Lisbon.'

'Yes, I know that; but when you get to England?'

'London first. You know that is the great English centre?'

'Do you know any people there?'

'Not I. But I have a great-uncle there, living at Kensington. I believe
that is part of London, though really I don't know much about it. I
shall go to see him, of course.'

'Your great-uncle! That is, Mr. Dallas's own uncle?'

'No, my mother's. His name is Strahan.'

'And then you are going to Oxford? Why do you go there? Are not the
colleges in America just as good?'

'I can tell better after I've seen Oxford. But no, Queen Esther; that
is larger and older and richer than any college in America can be;
indeed it is a cluster of colleges--it is a University.'

'Will you study in them all?'

'No,' said Pitt, laughing, 'not exactly! But it is a fine place, by all
accounts--a noble place. And then, you know, we are English, and my
father and mother wish me to be as English as possible. That is
natural.'

'We are English too,' said Esther, sighing.

'Therefore you ought to be glad I am going.'

But Esther's cheek only grew a shade paler.

'Will you keep up your studies, like a good girl?'

'I will try.'

'And send me a drawing now and then, to let me see how you are getting
on?'

She lifted her eyes to him again, for one of those grave, appealing
looks. 'How could I get it to you?'

'Your father will have my address. I shall write to him, and I shall
write to you.'

She made no answer. The things filling her heart were too many for it,
and too strong; there came no tears, but her breathing was laboured;
and her brow was dark with what seemed a mountain of oppression. Pitt
was half-glad that just now there came a call for Esther from the room
behind them. Both went in. The colonel wanted Esther to search in a
repository of papers for a certain English print of some months back.

'Well, my boy,' said he, 'are you off?'

'Just off, sir,' said Pitt, eyeing the little figure that was busy in
the corner among the papers. It gave him more pain than he had thought
to leave it. 'I wish you would come over, colonel. Why shouldn't you?
It would do you good. I mean, when there is peace again upon the high
seas.'

'I shall never leave this place again till I leave all that is
earthly,' Colonel Gainsborough answered.

'May I take the liberty sometimes of writing to you, sir?'

'I should like it very much, William.'

'And if I find anything that would amuse Esther, sir, may I tell her
about it?'

'I have no objection. She will be very much obliged to you. So you are
going? Heaven be with you, my boy. You have lightened many an hour for
me.'

He rose up and shook Pitt's hand, with a warm grasp and a dignified
manner of leave-taking. But when Pitt would have taken Esther's hand,
she brushed past him and went out into the hall. Pitt followed, with
another bow to the colonel, and courteously shutting the door behind
him, wishing the work well over. Esther, however, made no fuss, hardly
any demonstration. She stood there in the hall and gave him her hand
silently, I might say coldly, for the hand was very cold, and her face
was white with suppressed feeling. Pitt grasped the hand and looked at
the face; hesitated; then opened his arms and took her into them and
kissed her. Was she not like a little sister? and was it possible to
let this heartache go without alleviation? No doubt if the colonel had
been present he would not have ventured such a breach of forms; but as
it was Pitt defied forms. He clasped the sorrowing little girl in his
arms and kissed her brow and her cheek and her lips.

'I'm coming back again,' said he. 'See that you have everything all
right for me when I come.'

Then he let her out of his arms and went off without another word. As
he went home, he was ready to smile and shake himself at the warmth of
demonstration into which he had been betrayed. He was not Esther's
brother, and had no particular right to show himself so affectionate.
The colonel would have been, he doubted, less than pleased, and it
would not have happened in his dignified presence. But Esther was a
child, Pitt said to himself, and a very tender child; and he could not
be sorry that he had shown her the feeling was not all on her side.
Perhaps it might comfort the child. It never occurred to him to
reproach himself with showing more than he felt, for he had no
occasion. The feeling he had given expression to was entirely genuine,
and possibly deeper than he knew, although he shook his head,
figuratively, at himself as he went home.

Esther, when the door closed upon Pitt, stood still for some minutes,
in the realization that now it was all over and he was gone. The hall
door was like a grim kind of barrier, behind which the light of her
life had disappeared. It remained so stolidly closed! Pitt's hand did
not open it again; the hand was already at a distance, and would maybe
never push that door open any more. He was gone, and the last day of
that summer vacation was over. The feeling absorbed Esther for a few
minutes and made her as still as a stone. It _did_ comfort her that he
had taken such a kindly leave of her, and at the same time it sealed
the sense of her loss. For he was the only one in the world in whose
heart it was to give her good earnest kisses like that; and he was
away, away! Her father's affection for her was undoubted, nevertheless
it was not his wont to give it that sort of expression. Esther was not
comparing, however, nor reflecting; only filled with the sense of her
loss, which for the moment chilled and stiffened her. She heard her
father's voice calling her, and she went in.

'My dear, you stay too long in the cold. Is William gone?'

'Oh yes, papa.'

'This is not the right paper I want; this is an August paper. I want
the one for the last week in July.'

Esther went and rummaged again among the pile of newspapers,
mechanically, finding it hard to command her attention to such an
indifferent business. She brought the July paper at last.

'Papa, do you think he will ever come back?' she asked, trembling with
pain and the effort not to show it.

'Come back? Who? William Dallas? Why shouldn't he come back? His
parents are here; if he lives, he will return to them, no doubt.'

Esther sat down and said no more. The earth seemed to her dreadfully
empty.




CHAPTER XIII.

_LETTERS_.


And so life seemed for many days to the child. She could not shake off
the feeling, nor regain any brightness of spirit. Dull, dull,
everything in earth and heaven seemed to be. The taste and savour had
gone out of all her pleasures and occupations. She could not read,
without the image of Pitt coming between her and the page; she could
not study, without an unendurable sense that he was no longer there nor
going to be there to hear her lessons. She had no heart for walks,
where every place recalled some memory of Pitt, and what they had done
or said there together; she shunned the box of coins, and hardly cared
to gather one of the few lingering fall flowers. And the last of them
were soon gone, for the pleasant season was ended. Then came rains and
clouds and winds, and Esther was shut up to the house.

I can never tell how desolate she was. Truly she was only a girl of
thirteen; she ought not to have been desolate, perhaps, for any no
greater matter. She had her father, and her books, and her youth. Bat
Esther had also a nature delicate and deep far beyond what is common;
and then she was unduly matured by her peculiar life. Intercourse with
light-hearted children like herself had not kept her thoughtless and
careless. At thirteen Esther was looking into life, and finding it
already confused and dark. At thirteen also she was learning and
practising self-command. Her father, not much of an observer unless in
the field of military operations, had no perception that she was
suffering; it never occurred to him that she might be solitary; he
never knew that she needed his tenderest care and society and guidance.
He might have replaced everything to Esther, so that she would have
found no want at all. He did nothing of the kind. He was a good man;
just and upright and highly honourable; but he was selfish, like most
men. He lived to himself in his own deprivation and sorrow, and never
thought but that Esther would in a few days get over the loss of her
young teacher and companion. He hardly thought about it at all. The
idea of filling Pitt's place, of giving her in his own person what left
her when Pitt went away, did not enter his head. Indeed, he had no
knowledge of what Pitt had done for her. If he had known it, there is
little doubt it would have excited his jealousy. For it is quite in
some people's nature to be jealous of another's having what they do not
want themselves.

And so Esther suffered in a way and to a degree that was not good for
her. Her old dull spiritless condition was creeping upon her again. She
realized, more than it is the way of thirteen years old to realize,
that something more than an ocean of waters--an ocean of
circumstances--had rolled itself between her and the one friend and
companion she had ever had. Pitt said he would return; but four or five
years, for all present purposes, is a sort of eternity at her age; hope
could not leap over it, and expectation died at the brink. Her want of
comfort came back in full force; but where was the girl to get it?

The sight of Mr. and Mrs. Dallas used to put her in a fever. Once in a
while the two would come to make an evening call upon her father; and
then Esther used to withdraw as far as possible into a corner of the
room and watch and listen; watch the looks of the pair with a kind of
irritated fascination, and listen to their talk with her heart jumping
and throbbing in pain and anxiety and passionate longing. For they were
Pitt's father and mother, and only the ocean of waters lay between him
and them, which they could cross at any time; he belonged to them, and
could not be separated from them. All which would have drawn Esther
very near to them and made them delightful to her, but that she knew
very well they desired no such approach. Whether it were simply because
she and her father were 'dissenters' Esther could not tell; whatever
the reason, her sensitive nature and discerning vision saw the fact.
They made visits of neighbourly politeness to the one English family
that was within reach; but more than politeness they desired neither to
give nor receive. I suppose it was this perception which made the sight
of the pair so irritating to Esther. _They_ were near Pitt, but they
did not wish that _she_ should be. Esther kept well at a distance. But
with all this they talked of their son perpetually: of his voyage, of
his prospects, of his grand-uncle at Kensington, of his career in
college, or at the University rather, and of his possible permanent
remaining in the old country; at any rate, of his studying there for a
profession. The colonel was only faintly interested, and would take up
his book with a sigh of relief when they were gone; but Esther would
sit in passionate misery, not shedding any tears; only staring with her
big eyes at the lire in a sort of fixed gravity most unfit for her
years.

The months went heavily. Winters were rather severe and very long at
Seaforth; Esther was much shut up to the house. It made things all the
harder for her. To the colonel it made no difference. He lay upon his
couch, summer or winter, and went on with his half-hearted
reading,--half a heart was all he brought to it; while Esther would
stand at the window, watching the snow drive past, or the beating down
of the rain, or the glitter of the sunbeams upon a wide white world,
and almost wonder at the thought that warm lights and soft airs and
flowers and walks and botanizing had ever been out there, where now the
glint of the sunbeams on the snow-crystals was as sharp as diamonds,
and all vegetable life seemed to be gone for ever.

Pitt had sailed in November, various difficulties having delayed his
departure to a month later than the time intended for it. Therefore
news from him could not be looked for until the new year was on its
way. Towards the end of January, however, as early as could possibly be
hoped, a letter came to Colonel Gainsborough, which he immediately knew
to be in Pitt's hand.

'No postmark,' he said, surveying it. 'I suppose it came by private
opportunity.'

'Papa, you look a long while at the outside!' said Esther, who stood by
full of excited impatience which she knew better than to show.

'The outside has its interest too, my dear,' said her father. 'I was
looking for the Lisbon postmark, but there is none whatever. It must
have come by private hand.'

He broke the seal, and found within an enclosure directed to Esther,
which he gave her. And Esther presently left the room. Her father, she
saw, was deep in the contents of his letter, and would not notice her
going, while if she stayed in the room she knew she would be called
upon to read her own letter or to show it before she was ready. She
wanted to enjoy the full first taste of it, slowly and thoroughly.
Meanwhile, the colonel never noticed her going. Pitt's letter was dated
'Lisbon, Christmas Day, 1813,' and ran as follows:--


'MY DEAR COLONEL,--I have landed at last, as you see, in this dirtiest
of all places I ever was in. I realize now why America is called the
New world; for everything here drives the consciousness upon me that
the world on this side is very old--so old, I should say, that it is
past cleansing. I do suppose it is not fair to compare it with
Seaforth, which is as bright in comparison as if it were an ocean shell
shining with pure lights; but I certainly hope things will mend when I
get to London.

'But I did not mean to talk to you about Lisbon, which I suppose you
know better than I do. My hope is to give you the pleasure of an early
piece of news. Probably the papers will already have given it to you,
but it is just possible that the chances of weather and ships may let
my letter get to you first, and in that case my pleasure will be gained.

'There is great news. Napoleon has been beaten, beaten! isn't that
great? He has lost a hundred thousand men, and is driven back over the
Rhine. Holland has joined the Allies, and the Prince of Orange; and
Lord Wellington has fought such a battle as history hardly tells of;
seven days' fighting; and the victory ranks with the greatest that ever
were gained.

'That is all I can tell you now, but it is so good you can afford to
wait for further details. It is now more difficult than ever to get
into France, and I don't know yet how I am going to make my way to
England; it is specially hard for Americans, and I must be reckoned an
American, you know. However, money will overcome all difficulties;
money and persistence. I have written to Esther something about my
voyage, which will, I hope, interest her. I will do myself the pleasure
of writing again when I get to London. Meanwhile, dear sir, I remain

'Ever your grateful and most obedient,

'WILM. PITT DALLAS.'


Esther, while her father was revelling in this letter, was taking a
very different sort of pleasure in hers. There was a fire up-stairs in
her room; she lit a candle, and, in the exquisite sense of having her
enjoyment all to herself, went slowly over the lines; as slowly as she
could.


'Lisbon, _Christmas Day_, 1813. 'MY DEAR LITTLE ESTHER,--If you think a
voyage over the sea is in anything like a journey by land, you are
mistaken. The only one thing in which they are alike, is that in both
ways you _get on_. But wheels go smoothly, even over a jolty road; and
waves do nothing but toss you. It was just one succession of rollings
and pitchings from the time we left New Bedford till we got sight of
the coast of Portugal. The wind blew all the time _almost_ a gale,
rising at different points of our passage to the full desert of the
name. One violent storm we had; and all the rest of the voyage we were
pitching about at such a rate that we had to fight for our meals;
tables were broken, and coffee and chocolate poured about with a
reckless disregard of economy. For about halt the way it rained
persistently; so altogether you may suppose, Queen Esther, that my
first experience has not made me in love with the sea. But it wasn't
bad, after all. The wind drove us along, that was one comfort; and it
would have driven us along much faster, if our sails had been good for
anything; but they were a rotten set, a match for the crew, who were a
rascally band of Portuguese. However, we drove along, as I said, seeing
nobody to speak to all the way except ourselves; not a sail in sight
nearer than eight or ten miles off.

'Well, the 23rd we sighted land, to everybody's great joy, you may
suppose. The wind fell, and that night was one of the most beautiful
and delicious you can imagine. A smooth sea without a ripple, a clear
sky without a cloud, stars shining down quietly, and air as soft as May
at Seaforth. I stood on deck half the night, enjoying, and thinking of
five hundred thousand things one after another. Now that I was almost
setting my foot on a new world, my life, past and future, seemed to
rise up and confront me; and I looked at it and took counsel with it,
as it were. Seaforth on one side, and Oxford on the other; the question
was, what should William Pitt be between them? The question never
looked so big to me before. Somehow, I believe, the utter perfection of
the night suggested to me the idea of perfection generally; what a
mortal may come to when at his best. Such a view of nature as I was
having puts one out of conceit, I believe, with whatever is out of
order, unseemly, or untrue, or what for any reason misses the end of
its existence. _Then_ rose the question, what is the end of
existence?--but I did not mean to give you my moralizings, Queen
Esther; I have drifted into it. I can tell you, though, that my
moralizing got a sharp emphasis the next day.

'I turned in at last, leaving the world of air and water a very image
of peace. I slept rather late, I suppose; was awakened by the hoarse
voice of the captain calling all hands on deck, in a manner that showed
me there must be urgent cause. I tumbled up as soon as possible. What
do you think I saw?

'The morning was as fair as the night had been. The sea was smooth, the
sun shining brilliantly. I suppose the colonel would tell you, that
seas may be _too_ smooth; anyhow I saw the fact now. There had been not
wind enough during the night to make our sails of any use; a current
had caught us, and we had been drifting, drifting, till now it appeared
we were drifting straight on to a line of rocks which we could see at a
little distance; made known both to eye and ear: to the former by a
line of white where the waves broke upon the rocks, and to the latter
by the thundering noise the breakers made. Now you know, where waves
break, a ship would stand very little chance of holding together; but
what were we to do? The only thing possible we did,--let out our
anchors; but the question was, would they hold? They did hold, but none
too soon; for we were left riding only about three times our ship's
length from the threatening danger. You see, we had a drunken crew; no
proper watch was kept; the captain was first roused by the thunder of
the waves dashing upon the rocks; and then nothing was ready or in
order, and before the anchors could be got out we were where I tell
you. The anchors held, but we could not tell how long they would hold,
nor how soon the force of the waves would drag us, cables and all, to
the rocks. There we sat and looked at the view and situation. We
hoisted a signal and fired guns of distress; but we were in front of a
rocky shore that gave us little hope of either being of avail. At last,
after three hours of this, the captain and some of the passengers got
into the yawl and went off to find help. We, left behind, stared at the
breakers. After three more hours had gone, I saw the yawl coming back,
followed by another small boat, and further off by four royal pilot
boats with sails. I saw them with the glass, that is, from my station
in the rigging. When they came up, all the passengers except half a
dozen, of whom I was one, were transferred to the pilot boats. You
should have heard the jabber of the Portuguese when they came on board!
But the captain had determined to try to save his brig, as by this time
a slight breeze had sprung up, and I stayed with some of the others to
help in the endeavour. When the rest of the passengers were safe on
board the pilot boats, we set about our critical undertaking. Sails
were spread, one anchor hoisted, the cable of the other cut, and we
stood holding our breath, to see whether wind or water would prove
strongest. But the sails drew; the brig slowly fell off before the
wind, and we edged away from our perilous position. Then, when we were
fairly off, there rose a roar of shouts that rent the air; for the
boats had all waited, lying a few rods off, to see what would become of
us. Queen Esther, I can tell you, if I had been a woman, I should have
sat down and cried; what _I_ did I won't say. As I looked back to the
scene of our danger, there was a most lovely rainbow spanning it,
showing in the cloud of spray that rose above the breakers.

'At six o'clock on Christmas eve I landed at Lisbon, where I got
comfortable quarters in an English boarding-house. When I can get to
London, I do not yet know. I am here at a great time, to see history as
it is taking shape in human life and experience; something different
from looking at it as cast into bronze or silver in former ages and
packed up in a box of coins; hey, Queen Esther? But that's good too in
its way. Your father will tell you the news.

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