A Red Wallflower

'Must have two or three, at least. It will swallow up a week.'

'Out of your little vacation!' said his mother reproachfully. She was angry and hurt, as near tears as she often came; but Mrs. Dallas was not wont to show her discomfiture in that way.

'Yes, mother; I am very sorry.'

'Why do you care about seeing them? – care so much, I mean,' his father inquired, with a keen side-glance at his son.

'I have made a promise, sir. I am bound to keep it.'

'What promise?' both parents demanded at once.

'To look after the daughter, in case of the father's death.'

'But he is not dead. He is well enough; as likely to live as I am.'

'How can I be sure of that? You have not heard from him for months, you say.'

'I should have heard, if anything had happened to him.'

'That is not certain, either,' said Pitt, thinking that Esther's applying to his father and mother in case of distress was more than doubtful.

'How can you look after the daughter in the event of her father's death? You are not the person to do it,' said his mother.

'I am the person who have promised to do it,' said Pitt quietly. 'Never mind, mother; you see I must go, and the sooner the better. I will take the stage to-morrow morning.'

'You might wait and try first what a letter might do,' suggested his father.

'Yes, sir; but you remember Colonel Gainsborough had very little to do with the post office. He never received letters, and he had ceased taking the London Times. My letter might lie weeks unclaimed. I must go myself.'

And he went, and stayed a week away. It was a busy week; at least the days in the city were busily filled. Pitt inquired at the post office; but, as he more than half expected, nobody knew anything of Colonel Gainsborough's address. One official had an impression he had heard the name; that was all. Pitt beleaguered the post office, that is, he sat down before it, figuratively, for really he sat down in it, and let nobody go out or come in without his knowledge. It availed nothing. Either Christopher did not at all make his appearance at the post office during those days, or he came at some moment when Pitt was gone to get a bit of luncheon; if he came, a stupid clerk did not heed him, or a busy clerk overlooked him; all that is certain is, that Pitt saw and heard nothing which led to the object of his quest. He made inquiries elsewhere, wherever he could think it might be useful; but the end was, he heard nothing. He stayed three days; he could stay no longer, for his holiday was very exactly and narrowly measured out, and he felt it not right to take any more of it from his father and mother.

The rest of the time they had him wholly to themselves, for Miss Frere was hindered by some domestic event from keeping her promise to Mrs. Dallas. She did not come. Pitt was glad of it; and, seeing they were now free from the danger of Esther, his father and mother were glad of it too. The days were untroubled by either fear or anxiety, while their son made the sunshine of the house for them; and when he went away he left them without a wish concerning him, but that they were going too. For it was to be another two years before he would come again.

The record of those same summer months in the house on the bank of the Hudson was somewhat different. Esther had her vacation too, which gave her opportunity to finish everything in the arrangements at home for which time had hitherto been lacking. The girl went softly round the house, putting a touch of grace and prettiness upon every room. It excited Mrs. Barker's honest admiration. Here it was a curtain; there it was a set of toilet furniture; in another place a fresh chintz cover; in a fourth, a rug that matched the carpet and hid an ugly darn in it. Esther made all these things and did all these things herself; they cost her father nothing, or next to nothing, and they did not even ask for Mrs. Barker's time, and they were little things, but the effect of them was not so. They gave the house that finished, comfortable, home-like air, which nothing does give but the graceful touch of a woman's fingers. Mrs. Barker admired; the colonel did not see what was done; but Esther did not work for admiration. She was satisfying the demand of her own nature, which in all things she had to do with called for finish, fitness, and grace; her fingers were charmed fingers, because the soul that governed them had itself such a charm, and worked by its own standard, as a honey bee makes her cell. Indeed, the simile of the honey bee would fit in more points than one; for the cell of the little winged worker is not fuller of sweetness than the girl made all her own particular domicile. If the whole truth must be told, however, there was another thought stirring in her, as she hung her curtains and laid her rugs; a half recognised thought, which gave a zest to every additional touch of comfort or prettiness which she bestowed on the house. She thought Pitt would be there, and she wanted the impression made upon him to be the pleasantest possible. He would surely be there; he was coming home; he would never let the vacation go by without trying to find his old friends. It was a constant spring of pleasure to Esther, that secret hope. She said nothing about it; her father, she knew, did not care so much for Pitt Dallas as she did; but privately she counted the days and measured the time, and went into countless calculations for which she possessed no sufficient data. She knew that, yet she could not help calculating. The whole summer was sweetened and enlivened by these calculations, although indeed they were a little like some of those sweets which bite the tongue.

But the summer went by, as we know, and nothing was seen of the expected visitor. September came, and Esther almost counted the hours, waking up in the morning with a beat of the heart, thinking, to-day he may come! and lying down at night with a despairing sense that the time was slipping away, and her only consolation that there was some yet left. She said nothing about it; she watched the days of the vacation all out, and went to school again towards the end of the month with a heart very disappointed, and troubled besides by that feeling of unknown and therefore unreachable hindrances, which is so tormenting. Something the matter, and you do not know what and therefore you cannot act to mend matters. Esther was sadly disappointed. Three years now, and she had grown and he had changed, – must have changed, – and if the old friendship were at all to be preserved, the friends ought to see each other before the gap grew too wide, and before too many things rushed in to fill it which might work separation and not union. Esther's feelings were of the most innocent and childlike, but very warm. Pitt had been very good to her; he had been like an elder brother, and in that light she remembered him and wished for him. The fact that she was a child no longer did not change all this. Esther had lived alone with her father, and kept her simplicity.

Going to school might have damaged the simplicity, but somehow it did not. Several reasons prevented. For one thing, she made no intimate friends. She was kind to everybody, nobody was taken into her confidence. Her nature was apart from theirs; one of those rare and few whose fate it is for the most part to stand alone in the world; too fine for the coarseness, too delicate for the rudeness, too noble for the pettiness of those around them, even though they be not more coarse or rude or small-minded than the generality of mankind. Sympathy is broken, and full communion impossible. It is the penalty of eminence to put its possessor apart. I have seen a lily stand so in a bed of other flowers; a perfect specimen; in form and colouring and grace of carriage distinguished by a faultless beauty; carrying its elegant head a little bent, modest, but yet lofty above all the rest of the flower bed. Not with the loftiness of inches, however, for it was of lower stature than many around it; the elevation of which I speak was moral and spiritual. And so it was alone. The rest of the flowers were more or less fellows; this one in its apart elegance owned no social communion with them. Esther was a little like that among her school friends; and though invariably gracious and pleasant in her manners, she was instinctively felt to be different from the rest. Only Esther was a white lily; the one I tried to describe, or did not try to describe, was a red one.

Besides this element of separateness, Esther was very much absorbed in her work. Not seeking, like most of the others, to pass a good examination, but studying in the love of learning, and with a far-off ideal of attainment in her mind with which she hoped one day to meet Pitt, and satisfy if not equal him. I think she hardly knew this motive at work; however, it was at work, and a powerful motive too.

And lastly, Esther was a 'favourite.' No help for it; she was certainly a favourite, the girls pronounced, and some of them had the candour to add that they did not see how she could help it, or how Miss Fairbairn could help it either.

'Girls, she has every right to be a favourite,' one of them set forth.

'Nobody has a right to be a favourite!' was the counter cry.

'But think, she never does anything wrong.'

'Stupid!'

'Well, she never breaks rules, does she?'

'No.'

'And she always has her lessons perfect as perfect can be.'

'So do some other people.'

'And her drawings are capital.'

'That's her nature; she has a talent for drawing; she cannot help it.

She just cannot help it, Sarah Simpson. That's no credit.'

'Then she is the best Bible scholar in the house, except Miss Fairbairn herself.'

'Ah! There you've got it. That's just it. She is one of Miss Fairbairn's kind. But everybody can't be like that!' cried the objector. 'I, for instance. I don't care so much for the Bible, you see; and you don't if you'll tell the truth; and most of us don't. It's an awful bore, that's what it is, all this eternal Bible work! and I don't think it's fair. It isn't what I came here for, I know. My father didn't think he was sending me to a Sunday school.'

'Miss Fairbairn takes care you should learn something else besides

Bible, Belle Linders, to do her justice.'

'Well, she's like all the rest, she has favourites, and Esther Gainsborough is one of 'em, and there ought to be no favourites. I tell you, she puts me out, that's what she does. If I am sent out of the room on an errand, I am sure to hit my foot against something, just because she never stumbles; and the door falls out of my hand and makes a noise, just because I am thinking how it behaves for her. She just puts me out, I give you my word. It confuses me in my recitations, to know that she has the answer ready, if I miss; and as for drawing, it's no use to try, because she will be sure to do it better. There ought to be no such thing as favourites!'

There was some laughter at this harangue, but no contradiction of its statements. Perhaps Esther was more highly gifted than any of her fellows; beyond question she worked harder. She had motives that wrought upon none of them; the idea of equalling or at least of satisfying Pitt, and the feeling that her father was sacrificing a great deal for her sake, and that she must do her very utmost by way of honouring and rewarding his kindness. Besides still another and loftier feeling, that she was the Lord's servant, and that less than the very best she could do was not service good enough for him.

'Papa,' she said one evening in October, 'don't you think Pitt must have come and gone before now?'

'William Dallas? If he has come, he is gone, certainly.'

'Papa, do you think he can have come?'

'Why not?'

'Because he has not been to see us.'

'My dear, that is nothing; there is no special reason why he should come to see us.'

'Oh, papa!' cried Esther, dismayed.

'My dear, you have put too much water in my tea; I wish you would think what you are about.'

Now Esther had thought what she was about, and the tea was as nearly as possible just as usual.

'Shall I mend it, papa?'

'You cannot mend it. Tea must be made right at first, if it is ever to be right. And if it is not right, it is not fit to be drunk.'