A Red Wallflower

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

'So you do not want my services!'

'Not to fight an enemy that is nowhere in sight. Perhaps he is your enemy, and I might be helpful in another way.'

It occurred to him that he had been charged to make Miss Frere's sojourn in Seaforth pleasant; and some vague sense of what this mutual charge might mean dawned upon him, with a rising light of amusement.

'I don't know!' said the young lady. 'You did once propose a drive. If you would propose it again, perhaps I would go. We cannot help its being hot?'

So they went for a drive. The roads were capital, the evening was lovely, the horses went well, and the phaeton was comfortable; if that were not enough, it was all. Miss Frere bore it for a while patiently.

'Do you dislike talking?' she asked at length meekly, when a soft bit of road and the slow movement of the horses gave her a good opportunity.

'I? Not at all!' said Pitt, rousing himself as out of a muse.

'Then I wish you would talk. Mrs. Dallas desires that I should entertain you; and how am I to do that unless I know you better?'

'So you think people's characters come out in talking?'

'If not their characters, at least something of what is in their heads – what they know – and don't know; what they can talk about, in short.'

'I do not know anything – to talk about.'

'Oh, fie, Mr. Dallas! you who have been to Oxford and London. Tell me, what is London like? An overgrown New York, I suppose.'

'No, neither. "Overgrown" means grown beyond strength or usefulness.

London is large, but not overgrown, in any sense.'

'Well, like New York, only larger?'

'No more than a mushroom is like a great old oak. London is like that; an old oak, gnarled and twisted and weather-worn, with plenty of hale life and young vigour springing out of its rugged old roots.'

'That sounds – poetical.'

'If you mean, not true, you are under a mistake.'

'Then it seems you know London?'

'I suppose I do; better than many of those who live in it. When I am there, Miss Frere, I am with an old uncle, who is an antiquary and an enthusiast on the subject of his native city. From the first it has been his pleasure to go with me all over London, and tell me the secrets of its old streets, and show me what was worth looking at. London was my picture-book, my theatre, where I saw tragedy and comedy together; my museum of antiquities. I never tire of it, and my Uncle Strahan is never tired of showing it to me.'

'Why, what is it to see?' asked Miss Frere, with some real curiosity.

'For one thing, it is an epitome of English history, strikingly illustrated.'

'Oh, you mean Westminster Abbey! Yes, I have heard of that, of course.

But I should think that was not interminable.'

'I do not mean Westminster Abbey.'

'What then, please?'

'I cannot tell you here,' said Pitt smiling, as the horses, having found firm ground, set off again at a gay trot. 'Wait till we get home, and I will show you a map of London.'

The young lady, satisfied with having gained her object, waited very patiently, and told Mrs. Dallas on reaching home that the drive had been delightful.

Next day Pitt was as good as his word. He brought his map of London into the cool matted room where the ladies were sitting, rolled up a table, and spread the map out before Miss Frere. The young lady dropped her embroidery and gave her attention.

'What have you there, Pitt?' his mother inquired.

'London, mamma.'

'London?' Mrs. Dallas drew up her chair too, where she could look on; while Pitt briefly gave an explanation of the map; showed where was the 'City' and where the fashionable quarter.

'I suppose,' said Miss Frere, studying the map, 'the parts of London that delight you are over here?' indicating the West End.

'No,' returned Pitt, 'by no means. The City and the Strand are infinitely more interesting.'

'My dear,' said his mother, 'I do not see how that can be.'

'It is true, though, mother. All this,' drawing his finger round a certain portion of the map, 'is crowded with the witnesses of human life and history; full of remains that tell of the men of the past, and their doings, and their sufferings.'

Miss Frere's fine eyes were lifted to him in inquiry; meeting them, he smiled, and went on.

'I must explain. Where shall I begin? Suppose, for instance, we take our stand here at Whitehall. We are looking at the Banqueting House of the Palace, built by Inigo Jones for James I. The other buildings of the palace, wide and splendid as they were, have mostly perished. This stands yet. I need not tell you the thoughts that come up as we look at it.'

'Charles I was executed there, I know. What else?'

'There is a whole swarm of memories, and a whole crowd of images, belonging to the palace of which this was a part. Before the time you speak of, there was Cardinal Wolsey' —

'Oh, Wolsey! I remember.'

'His outrageous luxury and pomp of living, and his disgrace. Then comes Henry VIII., and Anne Boleyn, and their marriage; Henry's splendours, and his death. All that was here. In those days the buildings of Whitehall were very extensive, and they were further enlarged afterwards. Here Elizabeth held her court, and here she lay in state after death. James I comes next; he built the Banqueting House. And in his son's time, the royal magnificence displayed at Whitehall was incomparable. All the gaieties and splendours and luxury of living that then were possible, were known here. And here was the scaffold where he died. The next figure is Cromwell's.'

'Leave him out!' said Mrs. Dallas, with a sort of groan of impatience.

'What shall I do with the next following, mamma? That is Charles II.'

'He had a right there at least.'

'He abused it.'

'At least he was a king, and a gentleman.'

'If I could show you Whitehall as it was in his day, mother, I think you would not want to look long. But I shall not try. We will go on to Charing Cross. The old palace extended once nearly so far. Here is the place.' He pointed to a certain spot on the map.

'What is there now?' asked Betty.

'Not the old Cross. That is gone; but, of course, I cannot stand there without in thought going back to Edward I. and his queen. In its place is a brazen statue of Charles I. And in fact, when I stand there the winds seem to sweep down upon me from many a mountain peak of history. Edward and his rugged greatness, and Charles and his weak folly; and the Protectorate, and the Restoration. For here, where the statue stands, stood once the gallows where Harrison and his companions were executed, when "the king had his own again." Sometimes I can hardly see the present, when I am there, for looking at the past.'

'You are enthusiastic,' said Miss Frere. 'But I understand it. Yes, that is not like New York; not much!'

'What became of the Cross, Pitt?'

'Pulled down, mother – like everything else in its day.'

'Who pulled it down?'

'The Republicans.'

'The Republicans! Yes, it was like them!' said Mrs. Dallas. 'Rebellion, dissent, and a want of feeling for whatever is noble and refined, all go together. That was the Puritans!'

'Pretty strong!' said Pitt. 'And not quite fair either, is it? How much feeling for what is noble and refined was there in the court of the second Charles? – and how much of either, if you look below the surface, was in the policy or the character of the first Charles?'

'He did not destroy pictures and pull down statues,' said Mrs. Dallas.

'He was at least a gentleman. But the Puritans were a low set, always.

I cannot forgive them for the work they did in England.'

'You may thank heaven for some of the work they did. But for them, you would not be here to-day in a land of freedom.'

'Too much freedom,' said Mrs. Dallas. 'I believe it is good to have a king over a country.'

'Well, go on from Charing Cross, won't you,' said Miss Frere. 'I am interested. I never studied a map of London before. I am not sure I ever saw one.'

'I do not know which way to go,' said Pitt. 'Every step brings us to new associations; every street opens up a chapter of history. Here is Northumberland House; a grand old building, full of its records. Howards and Percys and Seymours have owned it and built it; and there General Monk planned the bringing back of the Stuarts. Going along the Strand, every step is full of interest. Just here used to be the palace of Sir Nicholas Baron and his son; then James the First's favourite, the Duke of Buckingham, lived in it; and the beautiful water-gate is yet standing which Inigo Jones built for him. All the Strand was full of palaces which have passed away, leaving behind the names of their owners in the streets which remain or have been built since. Here Sir Walter Raleigh lived; here the Dudleys had their abode, and Lady Jane Grey was married; here was the house of Lord Burleigh. But let us go on to the church of St. Mary-le-Strand. Here once stood a great Maypole, round which there used to be merry doings. The Puritans took that down too, mother.'

'What for?'

'They held it to be in some sort a relic of heathen manners. Then under

Charles II. it was set up again. And here, once, four thousand children were gathered and sang a hymn, on some public occasion of triumph in

Queen Anne's reign.'

'It is not there now?'

'Oh, no! It was given to Sir Isaac Newton, and made to subserve the uses of a telescope.'

'How do you know all these things, Mr. Pitt.'

'Every London antiquary knows them, I suppose. And I told you, I have an old uncle who is a great antiquary; London is his particular hobby.'

'He must have had an apt scholar, though.'

'Much liking makes good learning, I suppose,' said the young man. 'A little further on is the church of St. Clement Danes, where Dr. Johnson used to attend divine service. About here stands Temple Bar.'

'Temple Bar!' said Miss Frere. 'I have heard of Temple Bar all my life, and never connected any clear idea with the name. What is Temple Bar?'

'It is not very much of a building. It is the barrier which marks the bound of the city of London.'

'Isn't it London on both sides of Temple Bar?'

'London, but not the City. The City proper begins here. On the west of this limit is Westminster.'

'There are ugly associations with Temple Bar, I know,' said Miss Frere.

'There are ugly associations with everything. Down here stood Essex House, where Essex defended himself, and from which he was carried off to the Tower. There, in Lincoln's Inn fields, Thomas Babington and his party died for high treason, and there Russell died. And just up here is Smithfield. It is all over, the record of violence, intolerance, and brutality. It meets you at every turn.'

'It is only what would be in any other place as old as London,' said Mrs. Dallas. 'In old times people were rough, of course, but they were rough everywhere.'

'I was thinking' – said Miss Frere. 'Mr. Dallas gives a somewhat singular justification of his liking for London.'

'Is it?' said Pitt. 'It would be singular if the violence were there now; but to read the record and look on the scene is interesting, and for me fascinating. The record is of other things too. See, – in this place Milton lived and wrote; here Franklin abode; here Charles Lamb; from an inn in this street Bishop Hooper went away to die. And so I might go on and on. At every step there is the memorial of some great man's life, or some noted man's death. And with all that, there are also the most exquisite bits of material antiquity. Old picturesque houses; old crypts of former churches, over which stands now a modern representative of the name; old monuments many; old doorways, and courts, and corners, and gateways. Come over to London, and I will take you down into the crypt of St. Paul's, and show you how history is presented to you there.'

'The crypt?' said Miss Frere, doubting somewhat of this invitation.

'Yes, the old monuments are in the crypt.'

'My dear,' said Mrs. Dallas, 'I do not understand how all these things you have been talking about should have so much charm for you. I should think the newer and handsomer parts of the city, the parks and the gardens, and the fine squares, would be a great deal more agreeable.'

'To live in, mother.'

'And don't you go to the British Museum, and to the Tower, and to Hyde

Park?'

'I have been there hundreds of times.'

'And like these old corners still?'

'I am very fond of the Museum.'

'There is nothing like that is this country,' said Mrs. Dallas, with an accent of satisfaction.

CHAPTER XXXVI

INTERPRETATIONS

Miss Betty hereupon begged to be told more distinctly what was in the British Museum, that anybody should go there 'hundreds of times.' Pitt presently got warm in his subject, and talked long and well; as many people will do when they are full of their theme, even when they can talk upon nothing else. Pitt was not one of those people; he could talk well upon anything, and now he made himself certainly very entertaining. His mother thought so, who cared nothing for the British Museum except in so far that it was a great institution of an old country, which a young country could not rival. She listened to Pitt. Miss Betty gave him even more profound interest and unflagging attention; whether she too were not studying the speaker full as much as the things spoken, I will not say. They had a very pleasant morning of it; conversation diverging sometimes to Assyria and Egypt, and ancient civilizations and arts, and civilization in general. Mrs. Dallas gradually drew back from mingling in the talk, and watched, well pleased, to see how eager the two other speakers became, and how they were lost in their subject and in each other.

In the afternoon there was another drive, to which Pitt did not need to be stimulated; and all the evening the two young people were busy with something which engaged them both. Mrs. Dallas breathed freer.

'I think he is smitten,' she said privately to her husband. 'How could he help it? He has seen nobody else to be smitten with.'

But Betty Frere was not sure of any such thing; and the very fact of Pitt's disengagedness made him more ensnaring to her. There was nobody else in the village to divert his attention, and the two young people were thrown very much together. They went driving, they rode, and they talked, continually. The map of London was often out, and Mrs. Dallas saw the two heads bent over it, and interested faces looking into each other; and she thought things were going on very fairly. If only the vacation were not so short! For only a little time more, and Pitt must be back at his chambers in London. The mother sighed to herself. She was paying rather a heavy price to keep her son from Dissenters!

Betty Frere too remembered that the vacation was coming to an end, and drew her breath rather short. She was depending on Pitt too much for her amusement, she told herself, and to be sure there were other young men in the world that could talk; but she felt a sort of disgust at the thought of them all. They were not near so interesting. They all flattered her, and some of them were supposed to be brilliant; but Betty turned from the thought of them to the one whose lips never condescended to say pretty things, nor made any effort to say witty things. They behaved towards her with a sort of obsequious reverence, which was the fashion of that day much more than of this; and Betty liked far better a manner which never made pretence of anything, was thoroughly natural and perfectly well-bred, but which frankly paid more honour to his mother than to herself. She admired Pitt's behaviour to his mother. Even to his mother it had less formality than was the custom of the day; while it gave her every delicate little attention and every possible graceful observance. The young beauty had sense enough to see that this promised more for Pitt's future wife than any amount of civil subserviency to herself. Perhaps there is not a quality which women value more in a man, or miss more sorely, than what we express by the term manliness. And she saw that Pitt, while he was enthusiastic and eager, and what she called fanciful, always was true, honest, and firm in what he thought right. From that no fancy carried him away.

And Miss Betty found the days pass with almost as much charm as fleetness. How fleet they were she did not bear to think. She found herself recognising Pitt's step, distinguishing his voice in the distance, and watching for the one and the other. Why not? He was so pleasant as a companion. But she found herself also starting when he appeared suddenly, thrilled at the unexpected sound of his voice, and conscious of quickened pulses when he came into the room. Betty did not like these signs in herself; at the same time, that which had wrought the spell continued to work, and the spell was not broken. In justice to the young lady, I must say that there was not the slightest outward token of it. Betty was as utterly calm and careless in her manner as Pitt himself; so that even Mrs. Dallas – and a woman in those matters sees far – could not tell whether either or both of the young people had a liking for the other more than the social good-fellowship which was frank and apparent. It might be, and she confessed also to herself that it might not be.

'You must give that fellow time,' said her husband. Which Mrs. Dallas knew, if she had not been so much in a hurry.

'If he met those Gainsboroughs by chance, I would not answer for anything,' she said.

'How should he meet them? They are probably as poor as rats, and have drawn into some corner, out of the way. He will never see them.'

'Pitt is so persistent!' said Mrs. Dallas uneasily.

'He'll be back in England in a few weeks.'

'But when he comes again!'

'He shall not come again. We will go over to see him ourselves next year.'

'That is a very good thought,' said Mrs. Dallas.

And, comforted by this thought and the plans she presently began to weave in with it, she looked now with much more equanimity than Betty herself towards the end of Pitt's visit. Mrs. Dallas, however, was not to get off without another shock to her nerves.

It was early in September, and the weather of that sultry, hot, and moist character which we have learned to look for in connection with the first half of that month. Miss Frere's embroidery went languidly; possibly there might have been more reasons than one for the slow and spiritless movement of her fingers, which was quite contrary to their normal habit. Mrs. Dallas, sitting at a little distance on the verandah, was near enough to hear and observe what went on when Pitt came upon the scene, and far enough to be separated from the conversation unless she chose to mix in it. By and by he came, looking thoughtful, as Betty saw, though she hardly seemed to notice his approach. There was no token in her quiet manner of the quickened pulses of which she was immediately conscious. Something like a tremulous thrill ran through her nerves; it vexed her to be so little mistress of them, yet the pleasure of the thrill at the moment was more than the pain. Pitt threw himself into a chair near her, and for a few moments watched the play of her needle. Betty's eyelashes never stirred. But the silence lasted too long. Nerves would not bear it.

'What can you find to do in this weather, Mr. Pitt?' she asked languidly.

'It is good weather,' he answered absently. 'Do you ever read the

Bible?'

Miss Betty's fine eyes were lifted now with an expression of some amusement. They were very fine eyes; Mrs. Dallas thought they could not fail of their effect.

'The Bible?' she repeated. 'I read the lessons in the Prayer-book; that is the same.'

'Is it the same? Is the whole Bible contained in the lessons?'

'I don't know, I am sure,' she answered doubtfully. 'I think so. There is a great deal of it.'

'But you read it piecemeal so.'

'You must read it piecemeal any way,' returned the young lady. 'You can read only a little each day; a portion.'

'You could read consecutively, though, or you could choose for yourself.'

'I like to have the choice made for me. It saves time; and then one is sure one has got hold of the right portion, you know. I like the lessons.'

'And then,' remarked Mrs. Dallas, 'you know other people and your friends are reading that same portion at the same time, and the feeling is very sacred and sweet.'

'But if the Bible was intended to be read in such a way, how comes it that we have no instruction to that end?'

'Instruction was given,' said Mrs. Dallas. 'The Church has ordered it.'

'The Church' said Pitt thoughtfully. 'Who is the Church?'

'Why, my dear,' said Mrs. Dallas, 'don't ask such questions. You know as well as I do.'

'As I understand it, mother, what you mean is simply a body of

Christians who lived some time ago.'

'Yes. Well, what then?'

'I do not comprehend how they should know what you and I want to read to-day. I am not talking of Church services. I am talking of private reading.'

'But it is pleasant and convenient,' said Betty.

'May be very inappropriate.'

'Pitt,' said his mother, 'I wish you would not talk so! It is really very wrong. This comes of your way of questioning and reasoning about everything. What we have to do with the Church is to obey.'

'And that is what we have to do with the Bible, isn't it?' he said gravely.

'Undoubtedly.'

'Well, mother, I am not talking to you; I am attacking Miss Frere. I can talk to her on even terms. Miss Frere, I want to know what you understand by obeying, when we are speaking of the demands of the Bible?'

'Obeying? I understand just what I mean by it anywhere.'

'Obeying what?'

'Why, obeying God, of course.'

'Of course! But how do we know what His commands are?'

'By the words – how else?' she asked, looking at him. He was in earnest, for some reason, she saw, and she forbore from the light words with which at another time she would have given a turn to the subject.

'Then you think, distinctly, that we ought to obey the words of the

Bible?'

'Ye-s,' she said, wondering what was coming.

'All the words?'

'Yes, I suppose so. All the words, according to their real meaning.'

'How are we to know what that is?'

'I suppose – the Church tells us.'

'Where?'

'I do not know – in books, I suppose.'

'What books? But we are going a little wild. May I bring you an instance or two? I am talking in earnest, and mean it earnestly.'

'Do you ever do anything in any other way?' asked the young lady, with a charming air of fine raillery and recognition blended. 'Certainly; I am in earnest too.'

Pitt went away and returned with a book in his hand.

'What have you there? the Prayer-book?' his mother asked, with a doubtful expression.

'No, mamma; I like to go to the Fountain-head of authority as well as of learning.'

'The Fountain-head!' exclaimed Mrs. Dallas, in indignant protest; and then she remembered her wisdom, and said no more. It cost her an effort; however, she knew that for her to set up a defence of either Church or Prayer-book just then would not be wise, and that she had better leave the matter in Betty's hands. She looked at Betty anxiously. The young lady's face showed her cool and collected, not likely to be carried away by any stream of enthusiasm or overborne by influence. It was, in fact, more cool than she felt. She liked to get into a good talk with Pitt upon any subject, and so far was content; at the same time she would rather have chosen any other than this, and was a little afraid whereto it might lead. Religion had not been precisely her principal study. True, it had not been his principal study either; but Betty discerned a difference in their modes of approaching it. She attributed that to the Puritan or dissenting influences which had at some time got hold of him. To thwart those would at any rate be a good work, and she prepared herself accordingly.

Pitt opened his book and turned over a few leaves.

'To begin with,' he said, 'you admit that whatever this book commands we are bound to obey?'