A Red Wallflower. Warner Susan
or even two years, when you come back I shall not be here.'
'I hope you are mistaken, colonel.'
'I am not mistaken.'
There was silence a few minutes. Pitt did not place unqualified trust in this judgment, even although, as he could not deny, the colonel might be supposed to know best. He doubted the truth of the prognostication; yet, on the other hand, he could not be sure that it was false. What if it were not false?
'I hope you are mistaken, colonel,' he said again; 'but if you are right – if it should be so as you fear' —
'I do not fear it,' put in the colonel, interrupting him.
'Not for yourself; but if it should be so, – what will become of Esther?'
'It was of her I wished to speak. She will be here.'
'Here in this house? She would be alone.'
'I should be away. But Mrs. Barker would look after her.'
'Barker!' Pitt echoed. 'Yes, Mrs. Barker could take care of the house and of the cooking, as she does now; but Esther would be entirely alone, colonel.'
'I have no one else to leave her with,' said the colonel gloomily.
'Let my mother take charge of her, in such a case. My mother would take care of her, as if Esther were her own. Let her come to my mother, colonel!'
'No,' said the colonel quietly, 'that would not be best. I am sure of Mrs. Dallas's kindness; but I shall leave Esther under the care of Barker and her brother. Christopher will manage the place, and keep everything right outside; and Barker will do her part faithfully. Esther will be safe enough so, for a while. She is a child yet. But then, William, I'll take a promise from you, if you will give it.'
'I will give any promise you like, sir. What is it?' said Pitt, who had never been in a less pleasant mood towards his friend. In fact he was entirely out of patience with him. 'What promise do you want, colonel?' he repeated.
'When you come back from England, Will, if I am no longer here, I want you to ask Esther for a sealed package of papers, which I shall leave with her. Then open the package; and the promise I want from you is that you will do according to the wishes you will find there expressed.'
Pitt looked at the colonel in much astonishment. 'May I not know what those wishes regard, sir?'
'They will regard all I leave behind me.'
There was in the tone of the colonel's voice, and the manner of utterance of his words, something which showed Pitt that further explanations were not to be had from him. He hesitated, not liking to bind himself to anything in the dark; but finally he gave the promise as required. He went home, however, in a doubtful mood as regarded himself, and a very impatient one as concerned the colonel. What ridiculous, precise notion was this that had got possession of him? How little was he able to comprehend the nature or the needs of his little daughter; and what disagreeable office might he have laid upon Pitt in that connection? Pitt revolved these things in a fever of impatience with the colonel, who had demanded such a pledge from him, and with himself, who had given it. 'I have been a fool for once in my life!' thought he.
Mr. and Mrs. Dallas were in the sitting-room, where Pitt went in. They had been watching for his return, though they took care not to tell him so.
'How's your friend the colonel to-day?' his father asked, willing to make sure where his son had been.
'He thinks he is dying,' Pitt answered, in no very good humour.
'He has been thinking that for the last two years.'
'Do you suppose there is anything in it?'
'Nothing but megrims. He's hipped, that's all. If he had some work to do – that he must do, I mean – it's my belief he would be a well man to-day; and know it, too.'
'He honestly thinks he's dying. Slowly, of course, but surely.'
'Pity he ever left the army,' said Mrs. Dallas. 'He is one of those men who don't bear to be idle.'
'That's all humankind!' said her husband. 'Nobody bears to be idle.
Can't do it without running down.'
'Still,' said Pitt thoughtfully, 'you cannot tell. A man ought to be the best judge of his own feelings; and perhaps Colonel Gainsborough is ill, as he says.'
'What are you going to do about it?' said his father with a half sneer.
'Nothing; only, if he should turn out to be right, – if he should die within a year or two, what would become of his little daughter?'
Mr. and Mrs. Dallas exchanged a scarcely perceptible glance.
'Send her home to his family,' answered the former.
'Has he a family in England?'
'So he says. I judge, not a small one.'
'Not parents living, has he?'
'I believe not; but there are Gainsboroughs enough without that.'
'What ever made him come over here?'
'Some property quarrel, I gather, though the colonel never told me in so many words.'
'Then he might not like to send Esther to them. Property quarrels are embittering.'
'Do you know any sort of quarrel that isn't? It is impossible to say beforehand what Colonel Gainsborough might like to do. He's a fidgety man. If there's a thing I hate, in the human line, it's a fidget. You can't reason with 'em.'
'Then what would become of that child, mother, if her father were really to die?'
Pitt spoke now with a little anxiety; but Mrs. Dallas answered coolly.
'He would make the necessary arrangements.'
'But they have no friends here, and no relations. It would be dreadfully forlorn for her. Mother, if Colonel Gainsborough shoulddie, wouldn't it be kind if you were to take her?'
'Too kind,' said Mr. Dallas. 'There is such a thing as being too kind,
Pitt. Did you never hear of it?'
'I do not comprehend, sir. What objection could there be? The child is not a common child; she is one that anybody might like to have in the house. I should think you and my mother might enjoy it very much, especially with me away.'
'Especially,' said the elder man drily. 'Well, Pitt, perhaps you are right; but for me there is this serious objection, that she is a dissenter.'
'A dissenter!' echoed Pitt in unfeigned astonishment. 'What is a "dissenter," here in the new country?'
'Very much the same thing that he is in the old country, I suspect.'
'And what is that, sir?'
'Humph! – well, don't you know? Narrow, underbred, and pig-headed, and with that, disgustingly radical. That is what it means to be a dissenter; always did mean.'
'Underbred! You cannot find, old country or new country, a better-bred man than Colonel Gainsborough; and Esther is perfect in her manners.'
'I haven't tried her,' said the other; 'but isn't he pig-headed? And isn't he radical, think you? They all are; they always were, from the days of Cromwell and Ireton.'
'But the child? – Esther knows nothing of politics.'
'It's in the blood,' said Mr. Dallas stroking unmoveably his long whiskers. 'It's in the blood. I'll have no dissenters in my house. It is fixed in the blood, and will not wash out.'
'I don't believe she knows what a dissenter means.'
'Your father is quite right,' put in Mrs. Dallas. 'I should not like a dissenter in my family. I should not know how to get on with her. In chance social intercourse it does not so much matter – though I feel the difference even there; but in the family – It is always best for like to keep to like.'
'But these are only differences of form, mother.'
'Do you think so?' said Mrs. Dallas, drawing up her handsome person. 'I believe in form, Pitt, for my part; and when you get to