A Red Wallflower Part 19

'This wonderful thing.'

'What wonderful thing?'

'Queen Esther, you ought to ask your father.'

'I can't ask papa,' said the little girl. 'If ever I speak to him of comfort, he thinks directly of mamma. I cannot ask him again.'

'And I am all your dependence?' he said half lightly.

'I mustn't depend upon you either. Only, now you are here, I thought I would ask you.'

'You ought to have a better counsellor. However, perhaps I can tell what you want to know, in part. Queen Esther, was your mother, or your father, ever seriously displeased with you?'

Esther reflected, a little astonished, and then said no.

'I suppose not!' said Pitt. 'Then you don't know by experience what it would be, to have either of them refuse to look at you or smile upon you?--hide their face from you, in short?'

'Why, no! never.'

'You're a happy girl.'

'But what has that to do with it?'

'Nothing to do with it; it is the very contrast and opposite, in fact.

Don't you see? "Lift up the light of thy countenance;"--you know what the "light" of a smiling, loving face of approval is? You know _that_, Queen Esther?'

'That?' repeated Esther breathlessly. 'Yes, I know; but this is G.o.d.'

'Yes, and I do not understand; but that is what it means.'

'You don't understand!'

'No. How should I? But that is what it means. Something that answers to what among us a bright face of love is, when it smiles upon us. That is "light," isn't it?'

'Yes,' said Esther. 'But how can this be, Pitt?'

'I cannot tell. But that is what it means. "The Lord make His face to s.h.i.+ne upon thee." They are very fine words.'

'Then I suppose,' said Esther slowly, 'if anybody had _that_, he wouldn't want comfort?'

'He wouldn't be without it, you mean? Well, I should think he would not. "The Lord lift up His countenance upon thee, and give thee peace."'

'But I don't understand, Pitt.'

'No, Queen Esther. This is something beyond you and me.'

'How can one come to understand?'

Pitt was silent a minute, looking down at the words. 'I do not know,'

he said. 'That is a question. It is a look of favour and love described here; but of course it would not give peace, unless the person receiving it knew he had it. How that can be, I do not see.'

Both were silent a little while.

'Well,' said Esther, 'you have given me a great deal of help.'

'How?'

'Oh, you have told me what this means,' said the child, hanging over the words, which Pitt still held.

'That does not give it to you.'

'No; but it is a great deal, to know what it means,' said Esther, in a tone which Pitt felt had a good element of hopefulness in it.

'What are you going to do about it?'

Esther lifted her head and looked at him. It was one of those looks which were older than her years; far-reaching, spiritual, with an intense mixture of pathos and hope in her eyes.

'I shall go on trying to get it,' she said. 'You know, Pitt, it is different with you. You go out into the world, and you have everything you want; but I am here quite alone.'

CHAPTER XI.

_DISSENT_.

The summer months were very rich in pleasure, for all parties; even Colonel Gainsborough was a little roused by the presence of his young friend, and came much more than usual out of his reserve. So that the conversations round the tea-table, when Pitt made one of their number, were often lively and varied; such as Esther had hardly known in her life before. The colonel left off his taciturnity; waked up, as it were; told old campaigning stories, and gave out stores of information which few people knew he possessed. The talks were delightful, on subjects natural and scientific, historical and local and picturesque.

Esther luxuriated in the new social life which had blossomed out suddenly at home, perhaps with even an intensified keen enjoyment from the fact that it was so transient a blossoming; a fact which the child knew and never for a moment forgot. The thought was always with her, making only more tender and keen the taste of every day's delights. And Pitt made the days full. With a mixture of motives, perhaps, which his own mind did not a.n.a.lyze, he devoted himself very much to the lonely little girl. She went with him in his walks and in his drives; he sat on the verandah with her daily and gave her lessons, and almost daily he went in to tea with her afterwards, and said that Christopher grew the biggest raspberries in 'town.' Pitt professed himself very fond of raspberries. And then would come one of those rich talks between him and the colonel; and when Pitt went home afterwards he would reflect with satisfaction that he had given Esther another happy day. It was true; and he never guessed what heart-aches the little girl went through, night after night, in antic.i.p.ation of the days that were coming. She did not shed tears about it, usually; tears might have been more wholesome. Instead, Esther would stand at her window looking out into the moonlit garden, or sit on the edge of her bed staring down at the floor; with a dry ache at her heart, such as we are wont to say a young thing like her should not know. And indeed only one here and there has a nature deep and fine-strung enough to be susceptible of it.

The intensification of this pain was the approaching certainty that Pitt was going to England. Esther did not talk of it, rarely asked a question; nevertheless she heard enough now and then to make her sure what was corning. And, in fact, if anything had been wanting to sharpen up Mrs. Dallas's conviction that such a step was necessary, it would have been the experience of this summer. She wrought upon her husband, till himself began to p.r.i.c.k up his ears and open his eyes; and between them they agreed that Pitt had better go. Some evils are easier nipped in the bud; and this surely was one, for Pitt was known to be a persistent fellow, if once he took a thing in his head. And though Mr.

Dallas laughed, at the same time he trembled. It was resolved that Pitt should make his next term at Oxford. The thought was not for a moment to be entertained, that all Mr. Dallas's money, and all the pretensions properly growing out of it, should be wasted on the quite penniless daughter of a retired army officer. For in this world the singular rule obtaining is, that the more you have the more you want.

One day Pitt came, as he still often did, to read with the colonel; more for the pleasure of the thing, and for the colonel's own sake, than for any need still existing. He found the colonel alone. It was afternoon of a warm day in August, and Esther had gone with Mrs. Barker to get blackberries, and was not yet returned. The air came in faintly through the open windows, a little hindered by the blinds which were drawn to moderate the light.

'How do you do, sir, to-day?' the young man asked, coming in with something of the moral effect of a breeze. 'This isn't the sort of weather one would like for going on a forlorn-hope expedition.'

'In such an expedition it doesn't matter much what weather you have,'

said the colonel; 'and I do not think it matters much to me. I am much the same in all weathers; only that I think I am failing gradually.

Gradually, but constantly.'

'You do not show it, colonel.'

'No, perhaps not; but I feel it.'

'You do not care about hearing me read to-day, perhaps?'

'Yes, I do; it distracts me; but first there is a word I want to say to you, Pitt.'