Kitobni o'qish: «A Red Wallflower», sahifa 3

CHAPTER V
CONTAMINATION

The lessons went on, and the interest on both sides knew no flagging. Dallas had begun by way of experiment, and he was quite contented with his success. In his room, over Latin and botany, at her own home, over history and the boxes of coins, he and Esther daily spent a good deal of time together. They were pleasant enough hours to him; but to her they were sources of life-giving nourishment and delight. The girl had been leading a forlorn existence; mentally in a desert and alone; and, added to that, with an unappeased longing for her departed mother, and silent, quiet, wearing grief for the loss of her. Even now, her features often settled into the dulness which had so struck Dallas; but gradually there was a lightening and lifting of the cloud: when studying she was wholly intent on her business, and when talking or reciting or examining flowers there was a play of life and thought and feeling in her face which was a constant study to her young teacher, as well as pleasure, for the change was his work. He read indications of strong capacity; he saw the tokens of rare sensitiveness and delicacy; he saw there was a power of feeling as well as a capacity for suffering covered by the quiet composure and reserve of manner and habit which, he knew, were rather signs of the depth of that which they covered. Esther interested him. And then, she was so simply upright and honest, and so noble in all her thoughts, so high-bred by nature as well as education, that her young teacher's estimation constantly grew, and to interest was soon added liking. He had half expected that when the novelty was off the pleasure of study would be found to falter; but it was no such matter. Esther studied as honestly as if she had been a fifth form boy at a good school; with a delight in it which boys at school, in any form, rarely bring to their work. She studied absorbedly, eagerly, persistently; whatever pleasure she might get by the way, she was plainly bent on learning; and she learned of course fast. And in the botanical studies they carried on together, and in the historical studies which had the coins for an illumination, the child showed as keen enjoyment as other girls of her age are wont to feel in a story-book or in games and plays. Of games and plays Esther knew nothing; she had no young companions, and never had known any; her intercourse had been almost solely with father and mother, and now only the father was left to her. She would have been in danger of growing morbid in her sorrow and loneliness, and her whole nature might have been permanently and without remedy dwarfed, if at this time of her life she had been left to grow like the wild things in the woods, without sympathy or care. For some human plants need a good deal of both to develop them to their full richness and fragrance; and Esther was one of these. The loss of her mother had threatened to be an irreparable injury to her. Colonel Gainsborough was a tenderly affectionate father: still, like a good many men, he did not understand child nature, could not adapt himself to it, had no sort of notion of its wants, and no comprehension that it either needed or could receive and return his sympathy. So he did not give sympathy to his child, nor dreamed that she was in danger of starving for want of it. Indeed, he had never in his life given much sympathy to anybody, except his wife; and in the loss of his wife, Colonel Gainsborough thought so much of himself was lost that the remainder probably would not last long. He thought himself wounded to death. That it might be desirable, and that it might be duty to live for his daughter's sake, was an idea that had never entered his very masculine heart. Yet Colonel Gainsborough was a good man, and even had the power of being a tender one; he had been that towards his wife; but when she died he felt that life had gone from him.

All this, more or less, young Dallas came to discern and understand in the course of his associations with the father and daughter. And now it was with a little pardonable pride and a good deal of growing tenderness for the child, that he saw the change going on in Esther. She was always, now as before, quiet as a mouse in her father's presence; truly she was quiet as a mouse everywhere; but under the outward quiet Dallas could see now the impulse and throb of the strong and sensitive life within; the stir of interest and purpose and hope; the waking up of the whole nature; and he saw that it was a nature of great power and beauty. It was no wonder that the face through which this nature shone was one of rare power and beauty too. Others could see that, besides him.

'What a handsome little girl that is!' remarked the elder Dallas one evening. Esther had just left the house, and his son come into the room.

'It seems to me she is here a great deal,' Mrs. Dallas said, after a pause. The remark about Esther's good looks called forth no response. 'I see her coming and going pretty nearly every day.'

'Quite every day,' her son answered.

'And you go there every day!'

'I do. About that.'

'Very warm intercourse!'

'I don't know; not necessarily,' said young Dallas. 'The classics are rather cool – and Numismatics refreshing and composing.'

'Numismatics! You are not teaching that child Numismatics, I suppose?'

'She is teaching me.'

Mrs. Dallas was silent now, with a dissatisfied expression. Her husband repeated his former remark.

'She's a handsome little maid. Are you teaching her, Pitt?'

'A little, sir.'

'What, pray? if I may ask.'

'Teaching her to support existence. It about comes to that.'

'I do not understand you, I confess. You are oracular.'

'I did not understand her, until lately. It is what nobody else does, by the way.'

'Why should not anybody else understand her?' Mrs. Dallas asked.

'Should, – but they do not. That's a common case, you know, mother.'

'She has her father; what's the matter with him?'

'He thinks a good deal is the matter with him.'

'Regularly hipped,' said the elder Dallas. 'He has never held up his head since his wife died. He fancies he is going after her as fast as he can go. Perhaps he is; such fancies are often fatal.'

'It would do him good to look after his child,' Mrs. Dallas said.

'I wish you would put that in his head, mother.'

'Does he not look after her?'

'In a sort of way. He knows where she is and where she goes; he has a sort of outward care of her, and so far it is very particular care; but there it stops.'

'She ought to be sent to school.'

'There is no school here fit for her.'

'Then she should be sent away, where there is a school fit for her.'

'Tell the colonel so.'

'I shall not meddle in Colonel Gainsborough's affairs,' said Mrs. Dallas, bridling a little; 'he is able to manage them himself; or he thinks he is, which comes to the same thing. But I should say, that child might better be in any other hands than his.'

'Well, she is not shut up to them,' said young Dallas, 'since I have taken her in hand.'

He strolled out of the room as he spoke, and the two elder people were left together. Silence reigned between them till the sound of his steps had quite ceased to be heard.

Mrs. Dallas was working at some wool embroidery, and taking her stitches with a thoughtful brow; her husband in his easy-chair was carelessly turning over the pages of a newspaper. They were a contrast. She had a tall, commanding figure, a gracious but dignified manner, and a very handsome, stately face. There was nothing commanding, and nothing gracious, about Mr. Dallas. His figure was rather small, and his manner insignificant. He was not a handsome man, either, although he may be said to have but just missed it, for his features were certainly good; but he did miss it. Nobody spoke in praise of Mr. Dallas's appearance. Yet his face showed sense; his eyes were shrewd, if they were also cold; and the mouth was good; but the man's whole air was unsympathetic. It was courteous enough; and he was careful and particular in his dress. Indeed, Mr. Dallas was careful of all that belonged to him. He wore long English whiskers of sandy hair, the head crop being very thin and kept very close.

'Hildebrand,' said Mrs. Dallas when the sound of her son's footsteps had died away, 'when are you going to send Pitt to college?'

Mr. Dallas turned another page of his newspaper, and did not hurry his answer.

'Why?'

'And where are you going to send him?'

'Really,' said Mr. Dallas, without ceasing his contemplation of the page before him, 'I do not know. I have not considered the matter lately.'

'Do you remember he is eighteen?'

'I thought you were not ready to let him go yet?'

Mrs. Dallas stopped her embroidery and sighed.

'But he must go, husband.'

Mr. Dallas made no answer. He seemed not to find the question pressing.

Mrs. Dallas sat looking at him now, neglecting her work.

'You have got to make up your mind to it, and so have I,' she went on presently. 'He is ready for college. All this pottering over the classics with Colonel Gainsborough doesn't amount to anything. It keeps him out of idleness, – if Pitt ever could be idle, – but he has got to go to college after all, sooner or later. He must go!' she repeated with another sigh.

'No special hurry, that I see.'

'What's gained by delay? He's eighteen. That's long enough for him to have lived in a place like this. If I had my way, Hildebrand, I should send him to England.'

'England!' Mr. Dallas put down his paper now and looked at his wife.

What had got into her head?

'Oxford is better than the things they call colleges in this country.'

'Yes; but it is farther off.'

'That's not a bad thing, in some respects. Hildebrand, you don't want Pitt to be formed upon the model of things in this country. You would not have him get radical ideas, or Puritanical.'

'Not much danger!'

'I don't know.'

'Who's to put them in his head? Gainsborough is not a bit of a radical.'

'He is not one of us,' said Mrs. Dallas. 'And Pitt is very independent, and takes his own views from nobody or from anybody. See his educating this girl, now.'

'Educating her!'

'Yes, he is with her and her father a great piece of every day; reading and talking and walking and drying flowers and giving lessons. I don't know what all they are doing. But in my opinion Pitt might be better employed.'

'That won't last,' said the father with a half laugh.

'What ought not to last, had better not be begun,' Mrs. Dallas said sententiously.

There was a pause.

'What are you afraid of, wife?'

'I am afraid of Pitt's wasting his time.'

'You have never been willing to have him go until now. I thought you stood in the way.'

'He was not wasting his time until lately. He was as well at home. But there must come an end to that,' the mother said, with another slight sigh. She was not a woman given to sighing; it meant much from her.

'But England?' said Mr. Dallas. 'What's your notion about England?

Oxford is very well, but the ocean lies between.'

'Where would you send him?'

'I'd send him to the best there is on this side.'

'That's not Oxford. I believe it would be good for him to be out of this country for a while; forget some of his American notions, and get right English ones. Pitt is a little too independent.'

The elder Dallas caressed his whiskers and pondered. If the truth were told, he had been about as unwilling to let his son go away from home as ever his mother could be. Pitt was simply the delight and pride of both their hearts; the one thing they lived for; the centre of all hopes, and the end of all undertakings. No doubt he must go to college; but the evil day had been pushed far off, as far as possible. Pitt was a son for parents to be proud of. He had the good qualities of both father and mother, with some added of his own which they did not share, and which perhaps therefore increased their interest in him.

'I expect he will have a word to say about the matter himself,' the father remarked. 'Oh, well! there's no raging hurry, wife.'

'Husband, it would be a good thing for him to see the English Church as it is in England, before he gets much older.'

'What then?'

'He would learn to value it. The cathedrals, and the noble services in them, and the bishops; and the feeling that everybody around him goes the same way; there's a great deal of power in that. Pitt would be impressed by it.'

'By the feeling that everybody around him goes that way? Not he. That's quite as likely to stir him up to go another way.'

'It don't work so, Hildebrand.'

'You think he's a likely fellow to be talked over into anything?'

'No; but he would be influenced. Nobody would try to talk him over, and without knowing it he would feel the influence. He couldn't help it. All the influence at Oxford would be the right way.'

'Afraid of the colonel? I don't think you need. He hasn't spirit enough left in him for proselyting.'

'I am not speaking of anybody in particular. I am afraid of the air here.'

Mr. Dallas laughed a little, but his face took a shade of gravity it had not worn. Must he send his son away? What would the house be without him?

CHAPTER VI
GOING TO COLLEGE

Whatever thoughts were harboured in the elder heads, nothing was spoken openly, and no steps were taken for some time. All through the summer the pleasant intercourse went on, and the lessons, and the botanizing, and the study of coins. And much real work was done; but for Esther one invaluable and abiding effect of a more general character was gained. She was lifted out of her dull despondency, which had threatened to become stagnation, and restored to her natural life and energy and the fresh spring of youthful spirits. So, when her friend really went away to college in the fall, Esther did not slip back to the condition from which he had delivered her.

But the loss of him was a dreadful loss to the child, although Pitt was not going over the sea, and would be home at Christmas. He tried to comfort her with this prospect. Esther took no comfort. She sat silent, tearless, pale, in a kind of despair. Pitt looked at her, half amused, half deeply concerned.

'And you must go on with all your studies, Esther, you know,' he was saying. 'I will show you what to do, and when I come home I shall go into a very searching examination to see whether you have done it all thoroughly.'

'Will you?' she said, lifting her eyes to him with a gleam of sudden hope.

'Certainly! I shall give you lessons just as usual whenever I come home; indeed, I expect I shall do it all your life. I think I shall always be teaching and you always be learning. Don't you think that is how it will be, Queen Esther?' he said kindly.

'You cannot give me lessons when you are away.'

'But when I come back!'

There was a very faint yet distinct lightening of the gloom in her face. Yet it was plain Esther was not cheated out of her perception of the truth. She was going to lose her friend; and his absence would be very different from his presence; and the bits of vacation time would not help, or help only by anticipation, the long stretches of months in which there would be neither sight nor sound of him. Esther's looks had brightened for a moment, but then her countenance fell again and her face grew visibly pale. Pitt saw it with dismay.

'But Esther!' he said, 'this is nothing. Every man must go to college, you know, just as he must learn swimming and boating; and so I must go; but it will not last for ever.'

'How long?' said she, lifting her eyes to him again, heavy with their burden of sorrow.

'Well, perhaps three years; unless I enter Junior, and then it would be only two. That isn't much.'

'What will you do then?'

'Then? I don't know. Look after you, at any rate. Let us see. How old will you be in two years?'

'Almost fourteen.'

'Fourteen. Well, you see you will have a great deal to do before you can afford to be fourteen years old; so much that you will not have time to miss me.'

Esther made no answer.

'I'll be back at Christmas anyhow, you know; and that's only three months away, or a little more.'

'For how long?'

'Never mind; we will make a little do the work of a great deal. It will seem a long time, it will be so good.'

'No,' said Esther; 'that will make it only the shorter.'

'Why, Esther,' said he, half laughing, 'I didn't know you cared so much about me. I don't deserve all that.'

'I am not crying,' said the girl, rising with a sort of childish dignity; 'but I shall be alone.'

They had been sitting on a rock, resting and talking, and now set out again to go home. Esther spoke no more; and Pitt was silent, not knowing what to say; but he watched her, and saw that if she had not been crying at the time she had made that declaration, the tears had taken their revenge and were coming now. Yet only in a calm, repressed way; now and then he saw a drop fall, or caught a motion of Esther's hand which could only have been made to prevent a drop from falling. She walked along steadily, turning neither to the right hand nor the left; she who ordinarily watched every hedgerow and ran to explore every group of plants in the corner of a field, and was keen to see everything that was to be seen in earth or heaven. Pitt walked along silently too. He was at a careless age, but he was a generous-minded fellow; and to a mind of that sort there is something exceedingly attractive and an influence exceedingly powerful in the fact of being trusted and depended on.

'Mother,' he said when he got home, 'I wish you would look after that little girl now and then.'

'What little girl?'

'You must know whom I mean; the colonel's daughter.'

'The colonel is sufficient for that, I should say.'

'But you know what sort of a man he is. And she has no mother, nor anybody else, except servants.'

'Isn't he fond of her?'

'Very fond; but then he isn't well, and he is a reserved, silent man; the child is left to herself in a way that is bad for her.'

'What do you suppose I can do?'

'A great deal; if you once knew her and got fond of her, mother.'

Mrs. Dallas made no promise; however, she did go to see Esther. It was about a week after Pitt's departure. She found father and daughter very much as her son had found them the day he was introduced to the box of coins. Esther was on the floor, beside the same box, and the colonel was on his sofa. Mrs. Dallas did take the effect of the picture for that moment before the colonel sprang up to receive her. Then she had to do with a somewhat formal but courtly host, and the picture was lost. The lady sat there, stately in her silks and laces, carrying on a stiff conversation; for she and Colonel Gainsborough had few points of sympathy or mutual understanding; and for a while she forgot Esther. Then her eye again fell upon the child in her corner, sitting by her box with a sad, uninterested air.

'And how is Esther?' she said, turning herself a little towards that end of the room. 'Really I came to see Esther, colonel. How does she do?'

'She is much obliged to you, and quite well, madam, I believe.'

'But she must want playmates, colonel. Why don't you send her to school?'

'I would, if there were a good school at hand.'

'There are schools at New Haven, and Hartford, and Boston, – plenty of schools that would suit you.'

'Only that, as you observe, they are at New Haven, and Hartford, and

Boston; out of my reach.'

'You couldn't do without her for a while?'

'I hardly think it; nor she without me. We are all, each of us, that the other has.'

'Pitt used to give you lessons, didn't he?' the lady went on, turning more decidedly to Esther. Esther rose and came near.

'Yes, ma'am.'

'What did he teach you?'

Now Esther felt no more congeniality than her father did with this handsome, stately, commanding woman. Yet it would have been impossible to the girl to say why she had an instant unwillingness to answer this simple question. She did not answer it, except under protest.

'It began with the coins,' she said vaguely. 'He said we would study history with them.'

'And did you?'

'Yes, ma'am.'

'How did you manage it? or how did he? He has original ways of doing things.'

'Yes, ma'am. We used to take only one or two of the coins at once, and then Pitt told me what to read.'

'What did he tell you to read?'

'A great many different books, at different times.'

'But tell Mrs. Dallas what books, Esther,' her father put in.

'There were so many, papa. Gibbon's History, and Plutarch's Lives, and

Rollin, and Vertot and Hume, and I – forget some of them.'

'How much of all these did you really read, Esther?'

'I don't know, ma'am. I read what he told me.'

The lady turned to Colonel Gainsborough with a peculiar smile. 'Sounds rather heterogeneous!' she said.

It was on Esther's lips to justify her teacher, and say how far from heterogeneous, how connected, and how thorough, and how methodical, the reading and the study had been; and how enriched with talk and explanations and descriptions and discussions. How delightful those conversations were, both to herself and Pitt; how living the truth had been made; how had names and facts taken on them the shape and colouring of nature and reality. It rushed back upon Esther, and her lips opened; and then, an inexplicable feeling of something like caution came down upon her, and she shut her lips again.

'It was harmless amusement,' remarked the colonel carelessly.

Whether the mother thought that, may be questioned. She looked again at the child standing before her; a child truly, with childlike innocence and ignorance in her large eyes and pure lips. But the eyes were eyes of beauty; and the lips would soon and readily take to themselves the sweetness and the consciousness of womanhood, and a new bloom would come upon the cheek. The colonel had never yet looked forward to all that; but the wise eyes of the matron saw it as well as if already before her. This little girl might well by and by be dangerous. If Mrs. Dallas had come as a friend, she went away, in a sort, as an enemy, in so far, at least, as Esther's further and future relations with her son were concerned.

The colonel went back to his sofa. Esther sat down again by the coins. She was not quite old enough to reflect much upon the developments of human nature as they came before her; but she was conscious of a disagreeable, troubled sensation left by this visit of Mrs. Dallas. It had not been pleasant. It ought to have been pleasant: she was Pitt's mother; she came on a kind errand; but Esther felt at once repelled and put at a distance.

The child had not gone back to the dull despondency of the time before Pitt busied himself with her; she was striving to fulfil all his wishes, and working hard in order to accomplish more than he expected of her. With the cherished secret hope of doing this, Esther was driving at her books early and late. She went from the coins to the histories Pitt had told her would illustrate them; she fagged away at the dry details of her Latin grammar; she even tried to push her knowledge of plants and see further into their relations with each other, though in this department she felt the want of her teacher particularly. From day to day it was the one pressing desire and purpose in Esther's mind, to do more, and if possible much more, than Pitt wanted her to do; so that she might surprise him and win his respect and approbation. She thought, too, that she was in a fair way to do this, for she was gaining knowledge fast, she knew; and it was a great help towards keeping up spirit and hope and healthy action in her mind. Nevertheless, she missed her companion and friend, with an intense longing want of him which nobody even guessed. All the more keen it was, perhaps, because she could speak of it to nobody. It consumed the girl in secret, and was only saved from being disastrous to her by the transformation of it into working energy, which transformation daily went on anew. It did not help her much, or she thought so, to remember that Pitt was coming home at the end of December. He would not stay; and Esther was one of those thoughtful natures that look all round a subject, and are not deceived by a first fair show. He could not stay; and what would his coming and the delight of it do, after all, but renew this terrible sense of want and make it worse than ever? When he went away again, it would be for a long, long time, – an absence of months; how was it going to be borne?

The problem of life was beginning early for Esther. And the child was alone. Nobody knew what went on in her; she had nobody to whom she could open her heart and tell her trouble; and the troubles we can tell to nobody else somehow weigh very heavy, especially in young years. The colonel loved his child with all of his heart that was not buried in his wife's grave; still, he was a man, and like most men had little understanding of the workings of a child's mind, above all of a girl's. He saw Esther pale, thoughtful, silent, grave, for ever busy with her books; and it never crossed his thoughts that such is not the natural condition and wholesome manner of life for twelve years old. He knew nothing for himself so good as books; why should not the same be true for Esther? She was a studious child; he was glad to see her so sensible.

As for Pitt, he had fallen upon a new world, and was busily finding his feet, as it were. Finding his own place, among all these other aspirants for human distinction; testing his own strength, among the combatants in this wrestling school of human life; earning his laurels in the race for learning; making good his standing and trying his power amid the waves and currents of human influence. Pitt found his standing good, and his strength quite equal to the call for it, and his power dominating. At least it would have been dominating, if he had cared to rule; all he cared for, as it happened, in that line, was to be independent and keep his own course. He had done that always at home, and he found no difficulty in doing it at college. For the rest, his abilities were unquestioned, and put him at once at the head of his fellows.