A Red Wallflower. Warner Susan
child. 'Oh, how perfectly beautiful! And this yellow flower?'
'Coronilla.'
'And this, is it a red wallflower?'
'A red wallflower; you are right.'
'How lovely! and how sweet! And these blue?'
'These little blue flowers are Lobelia; they are cousins of the cardinal flower; that is Lobelia cardinalis; these are Lobelia erinus and Lobelia gracilis.'
He watched the girl, for under the surprise and pleasure of his gift her face was itself but a nobler flower, all glowing and flashing and fragrant. With eyes dewy with delight she hung over the bouquet, almost trembling in her eagerness of joy. She set the flowers carefully in a vase, with tender circumspection, lest a leaf might be wronged by chance crowding or inadvertent handling. Pitt watched and read it all. He felt a great compassion for Esther. This creature, full of life and sensibility, receptive to every influence, at twelve years old shut up to the company of a taciturn and melancholy father and an empty house! What would ever become of her? There was the colonel now, on the sofa, attending only to his book; caring nothing for what was so moving his child. Nobody cared, or was anywhere to sympathize with her. And if she grew up so, shut up to herself, every feeling and desire repressed for want of expression or of somebody to express it to, how would her nature ever develop? would it not grow stunted and poor, compared with what it might be? He was sorry for his little playmate and friend; and it did the young fellow credit, I think, for at his age boys are not wont to be tenderly sympathetic towards anything, unless it be a beloved mother or sister. Pitt silently watched the putting the flowers in water, speculating upon the very unhopeful condition of this little human plant, and revolving schemes in his mind.
After he had gone, Colonel Gainsborough bade Esther show him her flowers. She brought the dish to his sofa. The colonel reviewed them with a somewhat jealous eye, did not seem to perceive their beauty, and told her to take them away again. But the next day, when Esther was not in the room, he examined the collection carefully, looking to see if there were anything that looked like contraband 'Christmas greens.' There were some sprigs of laurel and holly, that served to make the hues of the bouquet more varied and rich. That the colonel did not think of; all he saw was that they were bits of the objectionable 'Christmas.' Colonel Gainsborough carefully pulled them out and threw them in the fire; and nothing, I fear, saved the laurustinus and japonica from a like fate but their exquisite large blossoms. Esther was not slow to miss the green leaves abstracted from her vase.
'Papa,' she said, in some bewilderment, 'I think somebody has been at my flowers; there is some green gone.'
'I took out some sprigs of laurel and holly,' said her father. 'I cannot have any Christmas decorations here.'
'Oh, papa, Pitt did not mean them for any such thing!'
'Whether he meant it or no, I prefer not to have them there.'
Esther was silenced, but she watched her vase with rather anxious eyes after that time. However, there was no more meddling; the brilliant blossoms were allowed to adorn the place and Esther's life as long as they would, or could. She cherished them to the utmost of her knowledge, all the rather that Pitt was gone away again; she gave them fresh water, she trimmed off the unsightly dry leaves and withered blossoms; but all would not do; they lasted for a time, and then followed the law of their existence and faded. What Esther did then, was to fetch a large old book and lay the different sprigs, leaves or flowers, carefully among its pages and put them to dry. She loved every leaf of them. They were associated in her mind with all that pleasant interlude of Christmas: Pitt's coming, his kindness; their going after greens together, and dressing the house. The bright interlude was past; Pitt had gone back to college; and the little girl cherished the faded green things as something belonging to that good time which was gone. She would dry them carefully and keep them always, she thought.
A day or two later, her father noticed that the vase was empty, and asked Esther what she had done with her flowers?
'They were withered, papa; they were spoilt; I could not keep them.'
'What did you do with them?'
'Papa, I thought I would try to dry them.'
'Yes, and what did you do with them?'
'Papa, I put them in that old, odd volume of the Encyclopaedia.'
'Bring it here and let me see.'
Much wondering and a little discomfited, Esther obeyed. She brought the great book to the side of the sofa, and turned over the pages carefully, showing the dried and drying leaves. She had a great love to them; what did her father want with them?
'What do you propose to do with those things, when they are dry? They are staining the book.'
'It's an old book, papa; it is no harm, is it?'
'What are you going to do with them? Are they to remain here permanently?'
'Oh, no, sir; they are only put here to dry. I put a weight on the book. They will be dry soon.'
'And what then?'
'Then I will take them out, papa. It's an old book.'
'And what will you do with them?'
'I will keep them, sir.'
'What is the use of keeping the flowers after their beauty is gone? I do not think that is worth while.'
'Some of their beauty is gone,' said Esther, with a certain tenderness for the plants manifested in her manner—'but I love them yet, papa.'
'That is not wise, my child. Why should you love a parcel of dry leaves? Love what is worthy to be loved. I think I would throw them all in the fire.'
'Oh, papa!'
'That's the best, my dear. They are only rubbish. I object to the hoarding of rubbish. It is a poor habit.'
The colonel turned his attention again to his book, and perhaps did not even remark how Esther sat with a disconsolate face on the floor, looking at her condemned treasures. He would not have understood it if he had seen. In his nature there was no key to the feeling which now was driving the tears into Esther's eyes and making her heart swell. Like many men, and many women, for the matter of that, Colonel Gainsborough had very little power of association. He would indeed have regarded with sacred reverence anything that had once belonged to his wife, down to her shoe; in that one instance the tension of feeling was strong enough to make the chords tremble under the lightest touch. In other relations, what did it matter? They were nothing to him; and if Colonel Gainsborough made his own estimate the standard of the worth of things, he only did what I am afraid we all do, more or less. At any rate, his was not one of those finer strung natures which recognise the possibility of worlds of knowledge and feeling not open to themselves. It is also just possible that he divined his daughter's sentiment in regard to the flowers enough to be jealous of it.
But Esther did not immediately move to obey his order. She sat on the floor with the big book before her, the open page showing a half dry blossom of the Mecranthon geranium which was still to her eyes very beautiful. And all the associations of that pleasant Christmas afternoon when Pitt had brought it and told her what its name was, rose up before her. She was exceedingly unwilling to burn it. The colonel perhaps had a guess that he had given a hard command; for he did not look again at Esther or speak to her, or take any notice of her delay of obedience. That she would obey he knew; and he let her take her time. So he did not see the big tears that filled her eyes, nor the quiet way in which she got rid of them; while the hurt, sorrowful, regretful look on her face would have certainly moved Pitt to indignation if he had been where he could see it. I am afraid, if the colonel had seen it, he would have been moved quite in a different way. Not to anger, indeed; Colonel Gainsborough was never angry with his child, as truly she never gave him cause; but I think he would privately have applauded the wisdom of his regulation, which removed such objects of misplaced sentiment out of the way of doing further harm. And Esther sat and looked at the Mecranthon, brushed away her tears softly, swallowed