A Red Wallflower

'Yes, and could not find – most happily.'

Miss Betty mused. Certainly Pitt was 'persistent.' And now he had got this religious idea in his head, would there be any managing it, or him? It did not frighten Miss Betty, so far as the religious idea itself was concerned; she reflected sagely that a man might be worse things than philanthropic, or even than pious. She had seen wives made unhappy by neglect, and others made miserable by the dissipated habits or the ungoverned tempers of their husbands; a man need not be unendurable because he was true and thoughtful and conscientious, or even devout. She could bear that, quite easily; the only thing was, that in thoughts which possessed Pitt lately he had passed out of her influence; beyond her reach. All she could do was to follow him into this new and very unwonted sphere, and seem to be as earnest as he was. He met her, he reasoned with her, he read to her, but Betty did not feel sure that she got any nearer to him, nevertheless. She was shrewd enough to divine the reason.

'Mr. Pitt,' she said frankly to him one day, when the talk had been eager in the same line it had taken that first day on the verandah, and both parties had held the same respective positions with regard to each other, – 'Mr. Pitt, are you fighting me, or yourself?'

He paused and looked at her, and half laughed.

'You are right,' said he. And then he went off, and for the present that was all Miss Betty gained by her motion.

Nobody saw much of Pitt during the rest of the day. The next morning, after breakfast, he came out to the two ladies where as usual they were sitting at work. It was another September day of sultry heat, yet the verandah was also in the morning a pleasant place, sweet with the honeysuckle fragrance still lingering, and traversed by a faint intermittent breeze. Both ladies raised their heads to look at the young man as he came towards them, and then, struck by something in his face, could not take their eyes away. He came straight to his mother and stood there in front of her, looking down and meeting her look; Miss Frere could not see how, but evidently it troubled Mrs. Dallas.

'What is it now, Pitt?' she asked.

'I have come to tell you, mother. I have come to tell you that I have given up fighting.'

'Fighting!?'

'Yes. The battle is won, and I have lost, and gained. I have given up fighting, mother, and I am Christ's free man.'

'What?' exclaimed Mrs. Dallas bewilderedly.

'It is true, mother. I am Christ's servant. The things are the same. How should I not be the servant, the bond-servant, of Him who has made a free man of me?'

His tone was not excited; it was quiet and sweet; but Mrs. Dallas was excited.

'A free man? My boy, what are you saying? Were you not always free?'

'No, mother. I was in such bonds, that I have been struggling for years to do what was right – what I knew was right – and was unable.'

'To do what was right? My boy, how you talk! You always did what was right.'

'I was never Christ's servant, mamma.'

'What delusion is this!' cried Mrs. Dallas. 'My son, what do you mean? You were baptized, you were confirmed, you were everything that you ought to be. You cannot be better than you have always been.'

He smiled, stooped down and kissed her troubled face.

'I was never Christ's servant before,' he repeated. 'But I am His servant now at last, all there is of me. I wanted you to know at once, and Miss Frere, I wanted her to know it. She asked me yesterday whom I was fighting? and I saw directly that I was fighting a won battle; that my reason and conscience were entirely vanquished, and that the only thing that held out was my will. I have given that up, and now I am the Lord's servant.'

'You were His servant before.'

'Never, in any true sense.'

'My dear, what difference?' asked Mrs. Dallas helplessly.

'It was nominal merely.'

'And now?'

'Now it is not nominal; it is real. I have come to know and love my Master. I am His for life and death; and now His commands seem the pleasantest things in the world to me.'

'But you obeyed them always?'

'No, mamma, I did not. I obeyed nothing, in the last resort, but my own supreme will.'

'But, Pitt, you say you have come to know; what time has there been for any such change?'

'Not much time,' he replied; 'and I cannot tell how it is; but it seemed as if, so soon as I had given up the struggle and yielded, scales fell from my eyes. I cannot tell how it was; but all at once I seemed to see the beauty of Christ, which I never saw before; and, mamma, the sight has filled me with joy. Nothing now to my mind is more reasonable than His demands, or more delightful than yielding obedience to them.'

'Demands? what demands?' said Mrs. Dallas.

Her son repeated the words with which the twelfth chapter of Romans begins.

'"I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service; and be not conformed to this world."'

'But, my dear, that means' —

'It means all.'

'How all?'

'There is nothing more left to give, when this sacrifice is presented. It covers the whole ground. The sacrifice is a living sacrifice, but it gives all to God as entirely as the offering that imaged it went up in smoke and flame.'

'What sacrifice imaged it?'

'The burnt-sacrifice of old. That always meant consecration.'

'How do you know? You are not a clergyman.'

Pitt smiled again, less brightly. 'True, mother, but I have been studying all this for years, in the Bible and in the words of others who were clergymen; and now it is all plain before me. It became so as soon as I was willing to obey it.'

'And what are you going to do?'

'Do? I cannot say yet. I am a soldier but just enlisted, and do not know where my orders will place me or what work they will give me. Only

I have enlisted; and that is what I wanted you to know at once.

Mother, it is a great honour to be a soldier of Christ.'

'I should think, – if I did not see you and hear your voice, – I should certainly think I heard a Methodist talking. I suppose that is the way they do.'

'Did you ever hear one talk, mother?'

'No, and do not want to hear one, even if it were my own son!' she answered angrily.

'But in all that I have been saying, if they say it too, the Methodists are right, mother. A redeemed sinner is one bought with a price, and thenceforth neither his spirit nor his body can be his own. And his happiness is not to be his own.'

Mrs. Dallas was violently moved, yet she had much self-command and habitual dignity of manner, and would not break down now. More pitiful than tears was the haughty gesture of her head as she turned it aside to hide the quivering lips. And more tender than words was the air with which her son presently stooped and took her hand.