A Red Wallflower

'Miss Frere,' Pitt then began again, 'did you ever see a person whose happiness rested on a lasting foundation?'

The young lady looked at her companion anew as if he were to her a very odd character.

'What do you mean?' she said.

'I mean, a person who was thoroughly happy, not because of circumstances, but in spite of them?'

'To begin with, I never saw anybody that was "thoroughly happy." I do not believe in the experience.'

'I am obliged to believe in it. I have known a person who seemed to be clean lifted up out of the mud and mire of troublesome circumstances, and to have got up to a region of permanent clear air and sunshine. I have been envying that person ever since.'

'May I ask, was it a man or a woman?'

'Neither; it was a young girl.'

'It is easy to be happy at that age.'

'Not for her. She had been very unhappy.'

'And got over it?'

'Yes; but not by virtue of her youth or childishness, as you suppose. She was one of those natures that are born with a great capacity for suffering, and she had begun to find it out early; and it was from the depths of unhappiness that she came out into clear and peaceful sunshine; with nothing to help her either in her external surroundings.'

'Couldn't you follow her steps and attain her experience?' asked Miss

Frere mockingly.

Pitt rose up from the mat where he had been lying, laughed, and shook himself.

'As you will not go to drive,' he said, 'I believe I will go alone.'

But he went on horseback, and rode hard.

CHAPTER XXXV

ANTIQUITIES

As Pitt went off, Mrs. Dallas came on the verandah. 'You would not go to drive?' she said to Betty.

'It is so hot, dear Mrs. Dallas! I had what was much better than a drive – a good long talk.'

'What do you think of my boy?' asked the mother, with an accent of happy confidence in which there was also a vibration of pride.

'He puzzles me. Has he not some peculiar opinions?'

'Have you found that out already?' said Mrs. Dallas, with a change of tone. 'That shows he must like you very much, Betty; my son is not given to letting himself out on those subjects. Even to me he very seldom speaks of them.'

'What subjects do you mean, dear Mrs. Dallas?' inquired the young lady softly.

'I mean,' said Mrs. Dallas uneasily and hesitating, 'some sort of religious questions. I told you he had had to do at one time with dissenting people, and I think their influence has been bad for him. I hoped in England he would forget all that, and become a true Churchman. What did he say?'

'Nothing about the Church, or about religion. I do not believe it would be easy for any one to influence him, Mrs. Dallas.'

'You can do it, Betty, if any one. I am hoping in you.'

The young lady, as I have intimated, was not averse to the task, all the rather that it promised some difficulty. All the rather, too, that she was stimulated by the idea of counter influence. She recalled more than once what Pitt had said of that 'young girl,' and tried to make out what had been in his tone at the time. No passion certainly; he had spoken easily and frankly; too easily to favour the supposition of any very deep feeling; and yet, not without a certain cadence of tenderness, and undoubtedly with the confidence of intimate knowledge. Undoubtedly, also, the influence of that young person, whatever its nature, had not died out. Miss Betty had little question in her own mind that she must have been one of the persons referred to and dreaded by Mrs. Dallas as dissenters; and the young lady determined to do what she could in the case. She had a definite point of resistance now, and felt stronger for the fray.

The fray, however, could not be immediately entered upon. Pitt departed to New York, avowedly to look up the Gainsboroughs. And there, as two years before, he spent unwearied pains in pursuit of his object; also, as then, in vain. He returned after more than a week of absence, a baffled man. His arrival was just in time to allow him to sit down to dinner with the family; so that Betty heard his report.

'Have you found the Gainsboroughs?' his father asked.

'No, sir.'

'Where did you look?'

'Everywhere.'

'What have you done?' his mother asked.

'Everything.'

'I told you, I thought they were gone back to England.'

'If they are, there is no sign of it, and I do not believe it. I have spent hours and hours at the shipping offices, looking over the lists of passengers; and of one thing I am certain, they have not sailed from that port this year.'

'Not under the name by which you know them.'

'And not under any other. Colonel Gainsborough was not a man to hide his head under an alias. But they know nothing of any Colonel Gainsborough at the post office.'

'That is strange.'

'They never had many letters, you know, sir; and the colonel had given up his English paper. I think I know all the people that take the London Times in New York; and he is not one of them.'

'He is gone home,' said Mr. Dallas comfortably.

'I can find that out when I go back to England; and I will.'

Miss Betty said nothing, and asked never a word, but she lost none of all this. Pitt was becoming a problem to her. All this eagerness and painstaking would seem to look towards some very close relations between the young man and these missing people; yet Pitt showed no annoyance nor signs of trouble at missing them. Was it that he did not really care? was it that he had not accepted failure, and did not mean to fail? In either case, he must be a peculiar character, and in either case there was brought to light an uncommon strength of determination. There is hardly anything which women like better in the other sex than force of character. Not because it is a quality in which their own sex is apt to be lacking; on the contrary; but because it gives a woman what she wants in a man – something to lean upon, and somebody to look up to. Miss Betty found herself getting more and more interested in Pitt and in her charge concerning him; how it was to be executed she did not yet see; she must leave that to chance. Nothing could be forced here. Where liking begins to grow, there also begins fear.

She retreated to the verandah after dinner, with her embroidery. By and by Mrs. Dallas came there too. It was a pleasant place in the afternoon, for the sun was on the other side of the house, and the sea breeze swept this way, giving its saltness to the odours of rose and honeysuckle and mignonette. Mrs. Dallas sat down and took her knitting; then, before a word could be exchanged, they were joined by Pitt. That is, he came on the verandah; but for some time there was no talking. The ladies would not begin, and Pitt did not. His attention, wherever it might be, was not given to his companions; he sat thoughtful, and determinately silent. Mrs. Dallas's knitting needles clicked, Miss Betty's embroidering thread went noiselessly in and out. Bees hummed and flitted about the honeysuckle vines; there was a soft, sweet, luxurious atmosphere to the senses and to the mind. This went on for a while.

'Mr. Pitt,' said Miss Betty, 'you are giving me no help at all.'

He brought himself and his attention round to her at once, and asked how he could be of service.

'Your mother,' began Miss Betty, stitching away, 'has given me a commission concerning you. She desires me to see to it that ennuidoes not creep upon you during your vacation in this unexciting place. How do I know but it is creeping upon you already? and you give me no chance to drive it away.'

Pitt laughed a little. 'I was never attacked by ennui in my life,' he said.