A Red Wallflower

'It is only necessary to believe, in the present.'

'Believe what?'

'The word of the King, who promised, – "Whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die." The love that came down here to die for us will never let slip any poor creature that trusts it.'

'Yes; but suppose one cannot trust so?' objected Betty.

'Then there is probably a reason for it. Disobedience, even partial disobedience, cannot perfectly trust.'

'How can sinful creatures do anything perfectly, Pitt?' his mother asked, almost angrily.

'Mamma,' said he gravely, 'you trust me so.'

Mrs. Dallas made no reply to that; and they moved on, surveying the chapels. The good lady bowed her head in solemn approbation when shown the place whence the bodies of Cromwell and others of his family and friends were cast out after the Restoration. 'They had no business to be there,' she assented.

'Where were they removed to?' Betty asked.

'Some of them were hanged, as they deserved,' said Mr. Dallas.

'Cromwell, Ireton, and Bradshaw, at Tyburn,' Pitt added. 'The others were buried, not honourably, not far off. One of Cromwell's daughters, who was a Churchwoman and also a royalist, they allowed to remain in the Abbey. She lies in one of the other chapels, over yonder.'

'Noble revenge!' said Betty quietly.

'Very proper,' said Mrs. Dallas. 'It seems hard, but it is proper. People who rise up against their kings should be treated with dishonour, both before and after death.'

'How about the kings who rise up against their people?' asked Betty.

She could not help the question, but she was glad that Mrs. Dallas did not seem to hear it. They passed on, from one chapel to another, going more rapidly; came to a pause again at the tomb of Mary, Queen of Scots.

'I am beginning to think,' said Betty, 'that the history of England is one of the sorrowfullest things in the world. I wonder if all other countries are as bad? Think of this woman's troublesome, miserable life; and now, after Fotheringay, the honour in which she lies in this temple is such a mockery! I suppose Elizabeth is here somewhere?'

'Over there, in the other aisle. And below, the two Tudor queens, Elizabeth and Mary, lie in a vault together, alone. Personal rivalries, personal jealousies, political hatred and religious enmity, – they are all composed now; and all interests fade away before the one supreme, eternal; they are gone where "the honour that cometh from God" is the only honour left. Well for them if they have that! Here is the Countess of Richmond, the mother of Henry VII. She was of kin or somehow connected, it is said, with thirty royal personages; the grand-daughter of Catharine of Valois, grandmother of Henry VIII., Elizabeth's great-grandmother. She was, by all accounts, a noble old lady. Now all that is left is these pitiful folded hands.'

Mrs. Dallas passed on, and they went from chapel to chapel, and from tomb to tomb, with unflagging though transient interest. But for Betty, by and by the brain and sense seemed to be oppressed and confused by the multitude of objects, of names and stories and sympathies. The novelty wore off, and a feeling of some weariness supervened; and therewith the fortunes and fates of the great past fell more and more into the background, and her own one little life-venture absorbed her attention. Even when going round the chapel of Edward the Confessor and viewing the grand old tombs of the magnates of history who are remembered there, Betty was mostly concerned with her own history; and a dull bitter feeling filled her. It was safe to indulge it, for everybody else had enough beside to think of, and she grew silent.

'You are tired,' said Pitt kindly, as they were leaving the Confessor's chapel, and his mother and father had gone on before.

'Of course,' said Betty. 'There is no going through the ages without some fatigue – for a common mortal.'

'We are doing too much,' said Pitt. 'The Abbey cannot be properly seen in this way. One should take part at a time, and come many times.'

'No chance for me,' said Betty. 'This is my first and my last.' She looked back as she spoke towards the tombs they were leaving, and wished, almost, that she were as still as they. She felt her eyes suffusing, and hastily went on. 'I shall be going home, I expect, in a few days – as soon as I find an opportunity. I have stayed too long now, but Mrs. Dallas has over-persuaded me. I am glad I have had this, at any rate.'

She was capable of no more words just then, and was about to move forward, when Pitt by a motion of his hand detained her.

'One moment,' said he. 'Do you say that you are thinking of returning to America?'

'Yes. It is time.'

'I would beg you, if I might, to reconsider that,' he said. 'If you could stay with my mother a while longer, it would be, I am sure, a great boon to her; for I am going away. I must take a run over to America – I have business in New York – must be gone several weeks at least. Cannot you stay and go down into Westmoreland with her?'

It seemed to Betty that she became suddenly cold, all over. Yet she was sure there was no outward manifestation in face or manner of what she felt. She answered mechanically, indifferently, that she 'would see'; and they went forward to rejoin their companions. But of the rest of the objects that were shown them in the Abbey she simply saw nothing. The image of Esther was before her; in New York, found by Pitt; in Westminster Abbey, brought thither by him, and lingering where her own feet now lingered; in the house at Kensington, going up the beautiful staircase, and standing before the cabinet of coins in the library. Above all, found by Pitt in New York. For he would find her; perhaps even now he had news of her; she would be coming with hope and gladness and honour over the sea, while she herself would be returning, crossing the same sea the other way, – in every sense the other way, – in mortification and despair and dishonour. Not outward dishonour, and yet the worst possible; dishonour in her own eyes. What a fool she had been, to meddle in this business at all! She had done it with her eyes open, trusting that she could exercise her power upon anybody and yet remain in her own power. Just the reverse of that had come to pass, and she had nobody to blame but herself. If Pitt was leaving his father and mother in England, to go to New York, it could be on only one business. The game, for her, was up.

There were weeks of torture before her, she knew, – slow torture, – during which she must show as little of what she felt as an Indian at the stake. She must be with Mrs. Dallas, and hear the whole matter talked of, and from point to point as the history went on; and must help talk of it. For if Pitt was going to New York now, Betty was not; that was a fixed thing. She must stay for the present where she was.

She was a little pale and tired, they said on the drive home. And that was all anybody ever knew.

CHAPTER XLVI

A VISIT

Pitt sailed for America in the early days of Autumn; and September had not yet run out when he arrived in New York. His first researches, as on former occasions, amounted to nothing, and several days passed with no fruit of his trouble. The intelligence received at the post office gave him no more than he had been assured of already. They believed a letter did come occasionally to a certain Colonel Gainsborough, but the occasions were not often; the letters were not called for regularly; and the address, further than that it was 'New York,' was not known. Pitt was thrown upon his own resources, which narrowed down pretty much to observation and conjecture. To exercise the former, he perambulated the streets of the city; his brain was busy with the latter constantly, whenever its energies were not devoted to seeing and hearing.

He roved the streets in fair weather and foul, and at all hours. He watched keenly all the figures he passed, at least until assured they had no interest for him; he peered into shops; he reviewed equipages. In those days it was possible to do this to some purpose, if a man were looking for somebody; the streets were not as now filled with a confused and confusing crowd going all ways at once; and no policeman was needed, even for the most timid, to cross Broadway where it was busiest. What a chance there was then for the gay part of the world to show itself! A lady would heave in sight, like a ship in the distance, and come bearing down with colours flying; one all alone, or two together, having the whole sidewalk for themselves. Slowly they would come and pass, in the full leisure of display, and disappear, giving place to a new sail just rising to view. No such freedom of display and monopoly of admiration is anywhere possible any longer in the city of Gotham.

Pitt had been walking the streets for days, and was weary of watching the various feminine craft which sailed up and down in them. None of them were like the one he was looking for, neither could he see anything that looked like the colonel's straight slim figure and soldierly bearing. He was weary, but he persevered. A man in his position was not open to the charge of looking for a needle in a haystack, such as would now be justly brought to him. New York was not quite so large then as it is now. It is astonishing to think what a little place it was in those days; when Walker Street was not yet built on its north side, and there was a pond at the corner of Canal Street, and Chelsea was in the country; when the 'West End' was at State Street, and St. George's Church was in Beekman Street, and Beekman Street was a place of fashion. The city was neither so dingy nor so splendid as it is now, and the bright sun of our climate was pouring all the gold it could upon its roofs and pavements, those September days when Pitt was trying to be everywhere and to see everything.

One of those sunny, golden days he was sauntering as usual down Broadway, enjoying the clear aether which was troubled by neither smoke nor cloud. Sauntering along carelessly, yet never for a moment forgetting his aim, when his eye was caught by a figure which came up out of a side street and turned into Broadway just before him. Pitt had but a cursory glance at the face, but it was enough to make him follow the owner of it. He walked behind her at a little distance, scrutinizing the figure. It was not like what he remembered Esther. He had said to himself, of course, that Esther must be grown up before now; nevertheless, the image in his mind was of Esther as he had known her, a well-grown girl of thirteen or fourteen. This was no such figure. It was of fair medium height, or rather more. The dress was as plain as possible, yet evidently that of a lady, and as unmistakeable was the carriage. Perhaps it was that more than anything which fixed Pitt's attention; the erect, supple figure, the easy, gliding motion, and the set of the head. For among all the multitude that walk, a truly beautiful walk is a very rare thing, and so is a truly fine carriage. Pitt could not take his eye from this figure. A few swift strides brought him near her, and he followed, watching; balancing hopes and doubts. That was not Esther as he remembered her; but then years had gone by; and was not that set of the head on the shoulders precisely Esther's? He was meditating how he could get another sight of her face, when she suddenly turned and ran up a flight of steps and went in at a door, without ever giving him the chance he wanted. She had a little portfolio under her arm, like a teacher, and she paused to speak to the servant who opened the door to her; Pitt judged that it was not her own house. The lady was probably a teacher. Esther could not be a teacher. But at any rate he would wait and get another sight of her. If she went in, she would probably come out again.

But Pitt had a tiresome waiting of an hour. He strolled up and down or stood still leaning against a railing, never losing that door out of his range of vision. The hour seemed three; however, at the end of it the lady did come out again, but just when he was at his farthest, and she turned and went up the street again the way she had come, walking with a quick step. Pitt followed. Where she had turned into Broadway she turned out of it, and went down an unattractive side street; passing from that into another and another, less and less promising with every corner she turned, till she entered the one which we know was not at all eligible where Colonel Gainsborough lived. Pitt's hopes had been gradually falling, and now when the quarry disappeared from his sight in one of the little humble houses which filled the street, he for a moment stood still. Could she be living here? He would have thought she had come merely to visit some poor protégé, but that she had certainly seemed to take a latch-key from her pocket and let herself in with it. Pitt reviewed the place, waited a few minutes, and then went up himself the few steps which led to that door, and knocked. Bell there was none. People who had bells to their doors did not live in that street.

But as soon as the door was opened Pitt knew where he was; for he recognised Barker. She was not the one, however, with whom he wished first to exchange recognitions; so he contented himself with asking in an assured manner for Colonel Gainsborough.

'Yes, sir, he's in,' said Barker doubtfully; as he stood in the doorway she could not see the visitor well. 'Who will I say wants to see him, sir?'

'A gentleman on business.'

Another minute or two, and Pitt stood in the small room which was the colonel's particular room, and was face to face with his old friend. Esther was not there; and without looking at anything Pitt felt in a moment the change that must have come over the fortunes of the family. The place was so small! There did not seem to be room in it for the colonel and him. But the colonel was like himself. They stood and faced each other.

'Have I changed so much, colonel?' he said at last. 'Do you not know me?'

'William Dallas?' said the colonel. 'I know the voice! But yes, you have changed, – you have changed, certainly. It is the difference between the boy and the man. What else it is, I cannot see in this light, – or this darkness. It grows dark early in this room. Sit down. So you have got back at last!'

The greeting was not very cordial, Pitt felt.

'I have come back, for a time; but I have been home repeatedly before this.'

'So I suppose,' said the colonel drily. 'Of course, hearing nothing of you, I could not be sure how it was.'

'I have looked for you, sir, every time, and almost everywhere.'

'Looked for us? Ha! It is not very difficult to find anybody, when you know where to look.'

'Pardon me, Colonel Gainsborough, that was precisely not my case. I did not know where to look. I have been here for days now, looking, till I was almost in despair; only I knew you must be somewhere, and I would not despair. I have looked for you in America and in England. I went down to Gainsborough Manor, to see if I could hear tidings of you there. Every time that I came home to Seaforth for a visit I took a week of my vacation and came here and hunted New York for you; always in vain.'

'The shortest way would have been to ask your father,' said the colonel, still drily.

'My father? I asked him, and he could tell me nothing. Why did you not leave us some clue by which to find you?'