A Red Wallflower

'You may write, and I will enclose it in a letter of mine.'

'Thank you, papa.'

A day or two passed, and then Esther brought her letter. It was closed and sealed. The colonel took it and turned it over.

'There's a good deal of it,' he remarked. 'Was it needful to use so many words?'

'Papa,' said Esther, hesitating, 'I didn't think about how many words I was using.'

'You should have had thinner paper. Why did you seal it up?'

'Papa, I didn't think about that either. I only thought it had got to be sealed.'

'You did not wish to hinder my seeing what you had written?'

'No, papa,' said Esther, a little slowly.

'That will do.' And he laid the letter on one side, and Esther supposed the matter was disposed of. But when she had kissed him and gone off to bed, the colonel brought the letter before him again, looked at it, and finally broke the seal and opened it. There was a good deal of it, as he had remarked.

'Seaforth, May 11, 1815. 'MY DEAR PITT, – Papa has given me leave to write a letter to you; and I wanted to write, because I have something to tell you that I think you will be glad to hear. I am afraid I cannot tell it very well, for I am not much accustomed to writing letters; but I will do as well as I can.

'I am afraid it will take me some time to say what I want to say. I cannot put it in two or three sentences. You must have patience with me.

'Do you remember my telling you once that I wanted comfort? And do you remember my asking you once about the meaning of some words in the Bible, where I was looking for comfort, because mamma said it was the best place? We were sitting in the verandah, one afternoon. You had been away, to New Haven, and were home for vacation.

'Well, I partly forgot about it that summer, I was so happy. You know what a good time we had with everything, and I forgot about wanting comfort. But after you went away that autumn to Lisbon and to England, then the want came back. You were very good about writing, and I enjoyed your letters very much; and yet, somehow, every one seemed to make me feel a little worse than I did before. That is, after the first bit, you know. For an hour, perhaps, while I was reading it, and reading it the second time, and thinking about it, I was almost perfectly happy; the letters seemed to bring you near; but when just that first hour was passed, they made you seem farther off than ever; farther off every time. And then the want of comfort came back, and I did not know where to get it. There was nobody to ask, and no help at all, if I could not find it in the Bible. All that winter, and all the summer, last summer that was, and all the first part of this last winter, I did not know what to do, I wanted comfort so. I thought maybe you would never come back to Seaforth again; and you know there is nobody else here, and I was quite alone. I never do see anybody but papa, except Mr. and Mrs. Dallas, who come here once in a while. So I went to the Bible. I read, and I thought.

'Do you remember those words I once asked you about? Perhaps you do not, so I will write them down here. "The Lord make His face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee. The Lord lift up His countenance upon thee, and give the peace." Those are the words.

'Do you remember what you said at that time, about the pleasure of seeing a face that looks brightly and kindly upon one? only you did not know how that could be true of God, because we cannot really see His face? Well, I thought a great deal about that. You see, there are the words; and so, I thought, the thing must be possible somehow, and there must be some way in which they can be true, or the Bible would not say so. I began to pray that the Lord would make His face shine upon me. Then I remembered another thing. It is only the faces we love that we care about seeing – I mean, that we care about so very much; and it is only the faces that love us that can "shine" upon us. But I did not love God, for I did not know Him; and I knew He could not love me, for He knew me too well. So I began to pray a different prayer. I asked that God would teach me to love Him, and make me such a person that He could love me. It was all very dark and confused before my mind; I think I was like a person groping about and feeling for things he cannot see. It was very miserable, for I had no comfort at all; and the days and the nights were all sad and dark, only I kept a little bit of hope.

'Then I must tell you another thing. I had been doing nothing but praying and reading the Bible. But one day I came to these words, which struck me very much. They are in the fourteenth chapter of John: —

'"He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me; and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father; and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him."

'Do you notice those last words? That is like making the face shine, or lifting up the countenance upon a person. But then I saw that to get that, which I wanted. I must keep His commandments. I hardly knew what they were, and I began to read to find out. I had been only looking for comfort before. And as fast as I found out one of His commands, I began to do it, as far as I could. Pitt, His commandments are such beautiful things!

'And then, I don't know how it came or when it came, exactly, but I began to see His face. And it began to shine upon me. And the darkness began to go away, And now, Pitt, this is what I wanted to tell you: I have found comfort. I am not dark, and I don't feel alone any more. The promise is all true. I think He has manifested Himself to me; for I am sure I know Him a little, and I love Him a great deal; and everything seems changed. It is so changed, Pitt. I am happy now, and contented, and things seem beautiful to me again, as they used to do when you were here, only even more, I think.

'I thought you would be glad to know it, and so I have written all this long letter, and my fingers are really tired.

'Your loving friend,

    'ESTHER GAINSBOROUGH.'

The colonel read this somewhat peculiar document with wondering attention. He got to the end, and began again, with his mind in a good deal of confusion. A second reading left him more confused than the first, and he began the third time. What did Esther mean by this want of comfort? How could she want comfort? And what was this strange thing that she had found? And how came she to be pouring out her mind in this fashion to Pitt, to him of all people? The colonel was half touched, half jealous, half awed. What had his child learned in her strange solitary Bible study? He had heard of religious ecstasies and religious enthusiasts; devotees; people set apart by a singular experience; was his Esther possibly going to be anything like that? He did not wish it. He wanted her certainly to be a good woman, and a religious woman; he did not want her to be extravagant. And this sounded extravagant, even visionary. How had she got it? What had Pitt Dallas to do with it? Was it for want of him that Esther had set up such a cry for comfort? The colonel liked nothing of all the questions that started up in his mind; and the only satisfactory thing was that in some way Esther seemed to be feeling happy. But her father did not want her to be given over to a visionary happiness, which in the end would desert her. He sat up a long time reading and brooding over the letter. Finally he closed it and sealed it again, and resolved to let it go off, and to have a talk with his daughter.

CHAPTER XVI

REST AND UNREST

It cost the colonel a strange amount of trouble to get to that talk. For an old soldier and man of the world to ask a little innocent girl about her meaning of words she had written, would seem a simple matter enough; but there was something about it that tied the colonel's tongue. He could not bring himself to broach the subject at breakfast, with the clear homely daylight streaming upon the breakfast table, and Esther moving about and attending to her usual morning duties; all he could do was to watch her furtively. This creature was growing up out of his knowledge; he looked to see what outward signs of change might be visible. He saw a fair, slim girl, no longer a little girl certainly, with a face that still was his child's face, he thought. And yet, as he looked, he slowly came to the conviction that it was the face of something more than a child. The old simplicity and the old purity were there indeed; but now there was a blessed calm upon the brow, and the calmness had a certain lofty quality; and the sweetness, which was more than ever, was refined and deep. It was not the sweetness of hilarious childhood, but something that had a more distant source than childhood draws from. The colonel ate his breakfast without knowing what he was eating; however, he could not talk to Esther at that time. He waited till evening had come round again, and the lamp was lit, and he was taking his toast and tea, with Esther ministering to him in her wonted course.

'How old are you, Esther?' he began suddenly.

'Near fifteen, papa.'

'Fifteen! Humph!'

'Why, papa? Had you forgotten?'

'At the moment.' Then he began again. 'I sent your letter off.'

'Thank you, papa.'

'It was sealed up. Why did you seal it? Did you mean me not to read it?'

Esther's eyes opened. 'I never thought about it, papa. I didn't know you would care to read it. I thought it must be sealed, and I sealed it.'

'I did care to read it, so I opened it. Had you any objection?'

'No, papa!' said Esther, wondering.

'And having opened it, I read it. I did not quite understand it,

Esther.'

Esther made no reply.

'What do you want comfort so much for, my child? I thought you were happy – as happy as other children.'

'I am happy now, papa; more happy than other children.'

'But you were not?'

'No, papa; for a while I was not.'

'Why? What did you want, that you had not? – except your mother,' the colonel added, with a sigh of consciousness that there might be a missing something there.

'I was not thinking of her, papa,' Esther said slowly.

'Of what, then?' The colonel was intensely curious.

'I was very happy, as long as Pitt was at home.'

'William Dallas! But what is he to you? he's a collegian, and you are a little girl.'

'Papa, the collegian was very kind to the little girl,' Esther said, with a smile that was very bright, and also merry with a certain sense of humour.