A Red Wallflower

'I won't have it, either.'

'Then we shall do well to think how we can prevent it. If we could have somebody here to take up his attention at least' —

'Preoccupy the ground,' said Mr. Dallas. 'The colonel would say that is good strategy.'

'I do not mean strategy,' said Mrs. Dallas. 'I want Pitt to fancy a woman proper for him, in every respect.'

'Exactly. Have you one in your eye? Here in America it is difficult.'

'I was thinking of Betty Frere.'

'Humph! If she could catch him, – she might do.'

'She has no money; but she has family, and beauty.'

'You understand these things better than I do,' said Mr. Dallas, half amused, half sharing his wife's anxiety. 'Would she make a comfortable daughter-in-law for you?'

'That is secondary,' said Mrs. Dallas, still with a raised brow, knitting her scarlet and blue with out knowing what colour went through her fingers. Perhaps her husband's tone had implied doubt.

'If she can catch him,' Mr. Dallas repeated. 'There is no calculating on these things. Cupid's arrows fly wild – for the most part.'

'I will ask her to come and spend the summer here,' Mrs. Dallas went on. 'There is nothing like propinquity.'

In those days the crossing of the Atlantic was a long business, done solely by the help or with the hindrance of the winds. And there was no telegraphing, to give the quick notice of a loved one's arrival as soon as he touched the shore. So Mr. and Mrs. Dallas had an anxious time of watching and uncertainty, for they could not tell when Pitt might be with them. It lasted, this time of anxiety, till Seaforth had been in its full summer dress for some weeks; and it was near the end of a fair warm day in July that he at last came. The table was set for tea, and the master and mistress of the house were seated in their places on either side the fireplace, where now instead of a fire there was a huge jar full of hemlock branches. The slant sunbeams were stretching across the village street, making that peaceful alternation of broad light and still shadows which is so reposeful to the eye that looks upon it. Then Mrs. Dallas's eye, which was not equally reposeful, saw a buggy drive up and stop before the gate, and her worsteds fell from her hands and her lap as she rose.

'Husband, he is come' she said, with the quietness of intensity; and the next moment Pitt was there.

Yes, he had grown to be a man; he was changed; there was the conscious gravity of a man in his look and bearing; the cool collectedness that belongs to maturer years; the traces of thought and the lines of purpose. It had been all more or less to be seen in her boy before, but now the mother confessed to herself the growth and increase of every manly and promising trait in the face and figure she loved. That is, as soon as the first rush of delight had had its due expression, and the first broken and scattering words were spoken, and the three sat down to look at each other. The mother watched the broad brow, which was whiter than it used to be; the fine shoulders, which were even straighter and broader than of old; and the father noticed that his son overtopped him. And Mrs. Dallas's eyes shone with an incipient moisture which betrayed a soft mood she had to combat with; for she was not a woman who liked sentimental scenes; while in her husband's grey orbs there flashed out every now and then a fire of satisfied pride, which was touching in one whose face rarely betrayed feeling of any kind. Pitt was just the fellow he had hoped to see him; and Oxford had been just the right place to send him to. He said little; it was the other two who did most of the talking. The talking itself for some time was of that disjointed, insignificant character which is all that can get out when minds are so full, and enough when hearts are so happy. Indeed, for all that evening they could not advance much further. Eyes supplemented tongues sufficiently. It was not till a night's sleep and the light of a new day had brought them in a manner to themselves that anything less fragmentary could be entered upon. At breakfast all parties seemed to have settled down into a sober consciousness of satisfied desire. Then Mr. Dallas asked his son how he liked Oxford?

Pitt exhausted himself in giving both the how and the why. Yet no longer like a boy.

'Think you'll end by settling in England, eh?' said his father, with seeming carelessness.

'I have not thought of it, sir.'

'What's made old Strahan take such a fancy to you? Seems to be a regular love affair.'

'He is a good friend to me,' Pitt answered seriously. 'He has shown it in many ways.'

'He'll put you in his will, I expect.'

'I think he will do nothing of the kind. He knows I will have enough.'

'Nobody knows it,' said the older Dallas drily. 'I might lose all mymoney, for anything you can tell.'

The younger man's eyes flashed with a noble sparkle in them. 'What I say is still true, sir. What is the use of Oxford?'

'Humph!' said his father. 'The use of Oxford is to teach young men of fortune to spend their money elegantly.'

'Or to enable young men who have no fortune to do elegantly without it.'

'There is no doing elegantly without money, and plenty of it,' said the elder man, looking from under lowered eyelids, in a peculiar way he had, at his son. 'Plenty of it, I tell you. You cannot have too much.'

'Money is a good dog.'

'A good what?'

'A good servant, sir, I should say. You may see a case occasionally where it has got to be the master.'

'What do you mean by that?'

'A man unable to be anything and spoiled for doing anything worth while, because he has so much of it; a man whose property is so large that he has come to look upon money as the first thing.'

'It is the first thing and the last thing, I can tell you. Without it, a man has to play second fiddle to somebody else all his life.'

'Do you think there is no independence but that of the purse, sir?'

'Beggarly little use in any other kind. In fact, there is not any other kind, Pitt. What passes for it is just fancy, and struggling to make believe. The really independent man is the man who need not ask anybody else's leave to do anything.'

Pitt let the question drop, and went on with his breakfast, for which he seemed to have a good appetite.

'Your muffins are as good as ever, mother,' he remarked.

Mrs. Dallas, to judge by her face, found nothing in this world so pleasant as to see Pitt eat his breakfast, and nothing in the world so important to do as to furnish him with satisfactory material. Yet she was not a foolish woman, and preserved all the time her somewhat stately presence and manner; it was in little actions and words now and then that this care for her son's indulgence and delight in it made itself manifest. It was manifest enough to the two who sat at breakfast with her; Mr. Dallas observing it with a secret smile, his son with a grateful swelling of the heart, which a glance and a word sometimes conveyed to his mother. Mrs. Dallas's contentment this morning was absolute and unqualified. There could be no doubt what Betty Frere would think, she said to herself. Every quality that ought to grace a young man, she thought she saw embodied before her. The broad brow, and the straight eyebrow, and the firm lips, expressed what was congenial to Mrs. Dallas's soul; a mingling of intelligence and will, well defined, clear and strong; but also sweet. There was thoughtfulness but no shadow in the fine hazel eyes; no cloud on the brow; and the smile when it came was frank and affectionate. His manner pleased Mrs. Dallas infinitely; it had all the finish of the best breeding, and she was able to recognise this.

'What are you going to be, Pitt?' his father broke in upon some laughing talk that was going on between mother and son.

'To be, sir? I beg your pardon!'

'After you have done with Oxford, or with your college course. You know I intend you to study for a profession. Which profession would you choose?'

Pitt was silent.

'Have you ever thought about it?'

'Yes, sir. I have thought about it.'

'What conclusion did you come to?'

'To none, yet,' the young man answered slowly. 'It must depend.'

'On what?

'Partly, – on what conclusion I come to respecting something else,' Pitt went on in the same manner, which immediately fastened his mother's attention.

'Perhaps you will go on and explain yourself,' said his father. 'It is good that we should understand one another.'

Yet Pitt was silent.

'Is it anything private and secret?' his father asked, half laughing, although with a touch of sharp curiosity in his look.

'Private – not secret,' Pitt answered thoughtfully, too busy with his own thoughts to regard his father's manner. 'At least the conclusion cannot be secret.'

'It might do no harm to discuss the subject,' said his father, still lightly.

'I cannot see how it would do any good. It is my own affair. And I thought it might be better to wait till the conclusion was reached. However, that may not be for some time; and if you wish' —

'We wish to share in whatever is interesting you, Pitt,' his mother said gently.

'Yes, mother, but at present things are not in any order to please you.

You had better wait till I see daylight.'

'Is it a question of marriage?' asked his father suddenly.

'No, sir.'

'A question of Uncle Strahan's wishes?' suggested Mrs. Dallas.

'No, mother.' And then with a little hesitation he went on: 'I have been thinking merely what master I would serve. Upon that would depend, in part, what service I would do; – of course.'

'What master? Mars or Minerva, to wit? or possibly Apollo? Or what was the god who was supposed to preside over the administration of justice? I forget.'

'No, sir. My question was broader.'

'Broader!'

'It was, briefly, the question whether I would serve God or Mammon.'

'I profess I do not understand you now!' said his father.

'You are aware, sir, the world is divided on that question; making two parties. Before going any farther, I had a mind to determine to which of them I would belong. How can a navigator lay his course, unless he knows his goal?'

'But, my boy,' said his mother, now anxiously and perplexedly, 'what do you mean?'

'It amounts to the question, whether I would be a Christian, mother.'

Mr. Dallas slued his chair round, so as to bring his face somewhat out of sight; Mrs. Dallas, obeying the same instinctive impulse, kept hers hidden behind the screen of her coffee-urn, for she would not her son should see in it the effect of his words. Her answer, however, was instantaneous:

'But, my dear, you are a Christian.'

'Am I? Since when, mother?'

'Pitt, you were baptized in infancy, – you were baptized by that good and excellent Bishop Downing, as good a man, and as holy, as ever was consecrated, here or anywhere. He baptized you before you were two months old. That made you a Christian, my boy.'

'What sort of a one, mother?'

'Why, my dear, you were taught your catechism. Have you forgotten it? In baptism you were made "a member of Christ, a child of God, and an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven." You have learned those words, often enough, and said them over.'

'That will do to talk about, mother,' said Pitt slowly; 'but in what sense is it true?'

'My dear! – in every sense. How can you ask? It is part of the

Prayer-Book.'

'It is not part of my experience. Up to this time, my life and conscience know nothing about it. Mother, the Bible gives certain marks of the people whom it calls "disciples" and "Christians." I do not find them in myself.'

Pitt lifted his head and looked at his mother as he spoke; a grave, frank, most manly expression filling his face. Mrs. Dallas met the look with one of intense worry and perplexity. 'What do you mean?' she said helplessly; while a sudden shove of her husband's chair spoke for hismood of mind, in its irritated restlessness. 'Marks?' she repeated. 'Christians are not marked from other people.'

'As I read the Bible, it seems to me they must be.'

'I do not understand you,' she said shortly. 'I hope you will explain yourself.'

'I owe it to you to answer,' the young man said thoughtfully; 'it is better, perhaps, you should know where I am, that you may at least be patient with me if I do not respond quite as you would wish to your expectations. Mother, I have been studying this matter a great while; but as to the preliminary question, whether I am already what the Bible describes Christians to be, I have been under no delusion at all. The marks are plain enough, and they are not in me.'

'What marks?'

'It is a personal matter,' Pitt went on a little unwillingly; 'it must be fought through somehow in my own mind; but some things are plain enough. Mother, the servants of Christ "follow" Him; it is the test of their service; I never did, nor ever thought or cared what the words meant. The children of God are known by the fact that they love Him and keep his commandments. So the Bible says. I have not loved Him, and have not asked about His commandments. I have always sought my own pleasure. The heirs of the kingdom of heaven have chosen that world instead of this; and between the two is just the choice I have yet to make. That is precisely where I am.'

'But, my dear Pitt,' said Mrs. Dallas, while her husband kept an ominous silence, 'you have always led a most blameless life. I think you judge yourself too hardly. You have been a good son, always!' and her eyes filled, partly with affection and partly with chagrin. To what was all this tending? 'You have always been a good son,' she repeated.

'To you, mother. Yes, I hope so.'

'And, my dear, you were confirmed. What did that mean?'

'It meant nothing, mother, so far as I was concerned. It amounted to nothing. I did not know what I was doing. I did not think of the meaning the words might bear. It was to me a mere form, done because you wished it, and because it was said to be proper; the right thing to do; I attached no weight to it, and lived just the same after as before. Except that for a few days I went under a little feeling of constraint, I remember, and also carried my head higher with a sense of added dignity.'

'And what is your idea of a Christian now, then?' Mrs. Dallas asked, between trouble and indignation.

'I am merely taking what the Bible says about it, mother.'

'Which every man interprets for himself,' added Mr. Dallas drily.

'Where words are so plain, there can hardly be any question of interpretation. For instance' —

'Let that be,' said Mr. Dallas; 'and tell us, if you can, what is your idea of the "choice" you say you have to make. A choice between what?'

'The one thing runs into the other,' said Pitt; 'but it does not signify at which end we begin. The question is, I suppose, in short, which world I will live for.'

'Live for both! That is the sensible way.'

'But, if you will pardon me, sir, impracticable.'

'How impracticable?'

'It has been declared so by the highest authority, and it has been found so in practice. I see it to be impracticable.'

'I do not. Where's the impracticability?' Mr. Dallas had wheeled round now and was regarding his son attentively, with a face of superior, cold, rather scornful calm. Mr. Dallas's face was rarely anything else but calm, whatever might be going on beneath the calm. Pitt's face was not exactly so quiet; thought was working in it, and lights and shades sometimes passed over it, which his father carefully studied. 'Where's the impossibility?' he repeated, as Pitt's answer tarried.

'The impossibility of walking two ways at once.'

'Will you explain yourself? I do not see the application.'

He spoke with clear coldness, perhaps expecting that his son would be checked or embarrassed by coming against that barrier to enthusiasm, a cold, hard intellect. Pitt, however, was quite as devoid of enthusiasm at the moment as his father, and far more sure of his ground, while his intellect was full as much astir. His steadiness was not shaken, rather gained force, as he went on to speak, though he did not now lift his eyes, but sat looking down at the white damask which covered the breakfast table, having pushed his plate and cup away from him.

'Father and mother,' he said, 'I have been looking at two opposite goals. On one side there is – what people usually strive for – honour, pleasure, a high place in the world's regard. If I seek that, I know what I have to do. I suppose it is what you want me to do. I should distinguish myself, if I can; climb the heights of greatness; make myself a name, and a place, and then live there, as much above the rest of the world as I can, and enjoying all the advantages of my position. That is about what I thought I would do when I went to Oxford. It is a career bounded by this world, and ended when one quits it. You ask why it is impossible to do this and the other thing too? Just look at it. If I become a servant of Christ, I give up seeking earthly honour; I do not live for my own pleasure; I apply all I have, of talents or means or influence, to doing the will of a Master whose kingdom is not of this world, and whose ways are not liked by the world. I see very plainly what His commands are, and they bid one be unlike the world and separate from it. Do you see the impossibility I spoke of?'

'But, my dear,' said Mrs. Dallas eagerly, 'you exaggerate things.'

'Which things, mother?'

'It is not necessary for you to be unlike the world; that is extravagance.'

Pitt rose, went to the table, where a large family Bible and Book of Common Prayer lay, and fetched the Bible to the breakfast-table. During which procedure Mr. Dallas shoved his chair round again, to gain his former position, and Mrs. Dallas passed her hand over her eyes once or twice, with her a gesture of extreme disturbance. Pitt brought his book, opened it on the table before him, and after a little turning of the leaves stopped and read the following:

'"If ye were of the world, the world would love his own; but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you."'

'Yes, at that time,' said Mrs. Dallas eagerly, – 'at that time. Then the heathen made great opposition. All that is past now.'

'Was it only the heathen, mother?'

'Well, the Jews, of course. They were as bad.'

'Why were they? Just for this reason, that they loved the praise of men more than the praise of God. They chose this world. But the apostle James, – here it is, – he wrote:

'"Whosoever will be a friend of the world, is the enemy of God."'

'Wouldn't you then be a friend of the world, Pitt?' his mother asked reprovingly.

'I should say,' Mr. Dallas remarked with an amused, indifferent tone, – 'I should say that Pitt had been attending a conventicle; only at Oxford that is hardly possible.'

The young man made no answer to either speaker; he remained with his head bent down over the Bible, and a face almost stern in its gravity. Mrs. Dallas presently repeated her question.

'Pitt, would you not be a friend to the world?'

'That is the question, mother,' he said, lifting his face to look at her. 'I thought it right to tell you all this, that you may know just where I stand. Of course I have thought of the question of a profession; but this other comes first, and I feel it ought first to be decided.'

With which utterance the young man rose, put the big Bible in its place, and left the room.

CHAPTER XXIII

A DEBATE

The two who were left sat still for a few moments, without speaking.

Mrs. Dallas once again made that gesture of her hand across her brow.

'You need not disturb yourself, wife,' said her husband presently. 'Young men must have a turn at being fools, once in a way. It is not much in Pitt's way; but, however, it seems his turn has come. There are worse types of the disorder. I would rather have this Puritan scruple to deal with than some other things. The religious craze passes off easier than a fancy for drinking or gambling; it is hot while it lasts, but it is easier to cure.'

'But Pitt is so persistent!'

'In other things. You will see it will not be so with this.'

'He's very persistent,' repeated the mother. 'He always did stick to anything he once resolved upon.'

'He is not resolved upon this yet. Distraction is the best thing, not talk. Where's Betty Frere? I thought she was coming.'

'She is coming. She will be here in a few days. I cannot imagine what has set Pitt upon this strange way of thinking. He has got hold of some Methodist or some other dreadful person; but where? It couldn't be at Oxford; and I am certain it was never in Uncle Strahan's house; where could it be?'

'Methodism began at Oxford, my dear.'

'It is one mercy that the Gainsboroughs are gone.'

'Yes,' said her husband; 'that was well done. Does he know?'

'I have never told him. He will be asking about them directly.'

'Say as little as you can, and get Betty Frere here.'

Pitt meanwhile had gone to his old room, his work-room, the scene of many a pleasant hour, and where those aforetime lessons to Esther Gainsborough had been given. He stood and looked about him. All was severe order and emptiness, telling that the master had been away; his treasures were safe packed up, under lock and key, or stowed away upon cupboard shelves; there was no pleasant litter on tables and floor, alluring to work or play. Was that old life, of work and play which mixed and mingled, light-hearted and sweet, gone for ever? Pitt stood in the middle of the floor looking about him, gathering up many a broken thread of association; and then, obeying an impulse which had been on him all the morning, he turned, caught up his hat, and went out.

He loitered down the village street. It was mid-morning now, the summer sun beating down on the wide space and making every big tree shadow grateful. Great overarching elms, sometimes an oak or a maple, ranged along in straight course and near neighbourhood, making the village look green and bowery, and giving the impression of an easy-going thrift and habit of pleasant conditions, which perhaps was not untrue to the character of the people. The capital order in which everything was kept confirmed the impression. Pitt, however, was not thinking of this, though he noticed it; the village was familiar to him from his childhood, and looked just as it had always done, only that the elms and maples had grown a little more bowery with every year. He walked along, not thinking of that, nor seeing the roses and syringa blossoms which gave him a sweet breath out of some of the gardens. He was not in a hurry. He was going back in mind to that which furnished the real answer to his mother's wondering query, – whence Pitt could have got his new ideas? It was nobody at Oxford or in London, neither conventicle nor discourse; but a girl's letter. He went on and on, thinking of it and of the writer. What would she say to his disclosures, which his father and mother could do nothing with? Would she be in condition to give him the help he knew he must not expect from them? She, a girl? who did not know the world? Yet she was the goal of Pitt's present thoughts, and her house the point his footsteps were seeking, slowly and thoughtfully.

He was not in a hurry. Indeed, he was too absorbedly busy with his own cogitations and questions to give full place to the thought of Esther and the visit he was about to make. Besides, it was not as in the old time. He had no image before him now of a forlorn, lonely child, awaiting his coming as the flowers look for the sun. Things were rather turned about; he thought of Esther as the one in the sunlight, and himself as in need of illumination. He thought of her as needing no comfort that he could give; he half hoped to find the way to peace through her leading. But yes, she would be glad to see him; she would not have forgotten him nor lost her old affection for her old playfellow, though the entire cessation of letters from either her or her father had certainly been inexplicable. Probably it might be explained by some crankiness of the colonel. Esther would certainly be glad to see him. He quickened his steps to reach the house.

He hardly knew it when he came to it, the aspect of things was so different from what he remembered. Truly it had been always a quiet house, with never a rush of company or a crowd of voices; but there had been life; and now? – Pitt stood still at the little gate and looked, with a sudden blank of disappointment. There could be nobody there. The house was shut up and dead. Not a window was open; not a door. In the little front garden the flowers had grown up wild and were struggling with weeds; the grass of the lawn at the side was rank and unmown; the honeysuckle vines in places were hanging loose and uncared-for, waving in the wind in a way that said eloquently, 'Nobody is here.' There was not much wind that summer day, just enough to move the honeysuckle sprays. Pitt stood and looked and queried; then yielding to some unconscious impulse, he went in through the neglected flowers to the deserted verandah, and spent a quarter of an hour in twining and securing the loose vines. He was thinking hard all the time. This was the place where he remembered sitting with Esther that day when she asked help of him about getting comfort. He remembered it well; he recalled the girl's subdued manner, and the sorrowful craving in the large beautiful eyes. Now Esther had found what she sought, and to-day he was nearly as unable to understand her as he had been to help her then. He fastened up the honeysuckles, and then he went and sat down on the step of the verandah and took Esther's letter out of his breast pocket, and read it over. He had read it many times. He did not comprehend it; but this he comprehended – that to her at least there was something in religion more heartfelt than a form, and more satisfying than a profession. To her it was a reality. The letter had set him thinking, and he had been thinking ever since. He had come here this morning, hoping that in talking with her she might perhaps give him some more light, and now she had disappeared. Strange that his mother should not have told him! What could be the explanation of this sudden disappearance? Disaster or death it could not be, for that she certainly would have told him.