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Red Wallflower

<h2 id="id02166" style="margin-top: 4em">CHAPTER XXV.</h2> <h5 id="id02167"> A HEAD OF LETTUCE.</h5> One afternoon in the end of October, Esther, who had just come home from school was laid hold of by Mrs. Barker with a face of grave calculation. 'Miss Esther, will ye approve that I send Christopher over to that market woman's to get a head o' lettuce for the colonel's supper? There's nought in the house but a bit o' cold green tongue, savin', of course, the morrow's dinner. I thought he might fancy a salad.' 'Tongue?' said Esther. 'Haven't you a quail, or a sweetbread, or something of that sort?' 'I haven't it, Miss Esther; and that's the truth.' 'Forgotten?' said Esther, smiling. 'Mum, I couldn't forget the likes o' that,' Barker said solemnly. 'Which I mean, as I haven't that to own up to. No, mum, I didn't forget.' 'What's the matter, then? some carelessness of Christopher's. Yes, have a salad; that will do very well.' 'Then, mum,' said Barker still more constrainedly, 'could you perhaps let me have a sixpence? I don't like to send and ask a stranger like that to wait for what's no more'n twopence at home.' 'Wait?' repeated Esther. 'Didn't papa give you money for the housekeeping this week?' 'Miss Esther, he did; but—I haven't a cent.' 'Why? He did not give you as much as usual?' The housekeeper hesitated, with a troubled face. 'Miss Esther, he did give me as much as usual,—I would say, as much as he uses to give me nowadays; but that ain't the old sum, and it ain't possible to do the same things wi' it.' And Mrs. Barker looked anxiously and doubtfully at her young mistress. 'I wouldn't like to tell ye, mum; but in course ye must know, or ye'd maybe be doubtful o' me.' 'Of course I should know!' repeated Esther. 'Papa must have forgotten. I will see about it. Give me a basket, Barker, and I will go over to the garden myself and get a head of lettuce,—now, before I take my things off. I would like to go.' Seeing that she spoke truth, Mrs. Barker's scruples gave way. She furnished the basket, and Esther set forth. There was but a field or two to cross, intervening between her own ground and the slopes where the beds of the market garden lay trim and neat in the sun. Or, rather, to-day, in the warm, hazy, soft October light; the sun's rays could not rightly get through the haze. It was one of the delicious times of October weather, which the unlearned are wont to call Indian summer, but which is not that, and differs from it essentially. The glory of the Indian summer is wholly ethereal; it belongs to the light and the air; and is a striking image and eloquent testimony of how far spirit can overmaster matter. The earth is brown, the trees are bare; the drapery and the colours of summer are all gone; and then comes the Indian summer, and makes one forget that the foregoing summer had its glories at all, so much greater is the glory now. There is no sense of bareness any longer, and no missing of gay tints, nor of the song of birds, nor of anything else in which June revelled and August showed its rich maturity; only the light and the air, filling the world with such unearthly loveliness that the looker-on holds his breath, and the splendour of June is forgotten. This October day was not after such a fashion; it was steeped in colour. Trees near at hand showed yellow and purple and red; the distant Jersey shore was a strip of warm, sunburnt tints, merged into one; over the river lay a sunny haze that was, as it were, threaded with gold; as if the sun had gone to sleep there and was in a dream; and mosses, and bushes, and lingering asters and golden-rod, on rocks or at the edges of the fields near at hand, gave the eye a welcome wherever it turned. Not a breath of air was stirring; the landscape rested under a spell of peace. Esther walked slowly, every step was so full of pleasure. The steps were few, however, and her pleasure was mingled with an odd questioning in her mind, what all this about money could mean? A little footpath worn in the grass led her over the intervening fields to Mrs. Blumenfeld's garden. Christopher must have worn that path, going and coming; for the family had been supplied through the summer with milk from the dairy of the gardener's wife. Mrs. Blumenfeld was out among her beds of vegetables, Esther saw as she drew near; she climbed over the fence, and in a few minutes was beside her. 'Wall, ef you ain't what I call a stranger!' said the woman good-humouredly. 'I don't see you no more'n the angels, for all you're so near!' 'I am going to school, Mrs. Blumenfeld; and that keeps me away from home almost all the week. How do you do?' 'Dear me, I dursn't be anything but well,' said the gardener's widow. 'Ef I ain't at both ends o' everything, there ain't no middle to 'em. There ain't a soul to be trusted, 'thout it's yourself. It's kind o' tedious. I get to the wrong end o' my patience once in a while. Jest look at them rospberry canes! and I set a man only yesterday to tie 'em up. They ain't done nohow!' 'But your garden always looks beautiful.' 'Kin you see it from your windows? I want to know!' 'Not very much of it; but it always looks so bright and trim. It does now.' 'Wall, you see,' said Mrs. Blumenfeld, 'a garden ain't nothin' ef it ain't in order. I do despise shiftless ways! Now jes' see them rospberry canes!' 'What's the matter with them?' 'I don't suppose you'd know ef I showed you,' said the good woman, checking herself with a half laugh; 'and there ain't no need, as I know, why I should bother you with my bothers. But it's human natur', ain't it?' 'Is what human nature?' 'Jes' that same. Or don't you never want to tell no one your troubles? Maybe ye don't hev none?' she added, with an inquiring look into Esther's face. 'Young folks!—the time for trouble hain't come yet.' 'Oh yes,' said Esther. 'I have known what trouble is.' 'Hev ye?' said the woman with another inquisitive look into the fair face. 'Mebbe. There is folks that don't show what they goes through. I guess I'm one o' that sort myself.' 'Are you?' said Esther, smiling. 'Certainly, to look at you, I never should think your life had been very crooked or very rough. You always seem bright and peaceful.' It was true. Mrs. Blumenfeld had a quiet steady way with her, and both face and voice partook of the same calm; though energy and activity were at the same time as plainly manifested in every word and movement. Esther looked at her now, as she went among her beds, stooping here and there to remove a weed or pull off a decayed leaf, talking and using her eyes at the same time. Her yellow hair was combed smooth and flat at both sides of her head and knotted up firmly in a tight little business knot behind. She wore a faded print dress and a shawl, also faded, wrapped round her, and tied by the ends at the back; but both shawl and gown were clean and whole, and gave her a thoroughly respectable appearance. At Esther's last remark she raised herself up and stood a moment silent. 'Wall,' she said, 'that's as fur as you kin see. It's ben both crooked and rough. I mayn't look it,—where's the use? And I don't talk of it, for I've nobody to talk to; but, as I said, human natur' 'd like to, ef it had a chance. I hain't a soul in the world to speak to; and sometimes I feel as ef I'd give all I've got in the world to talk. Then, mostly, I go into the garden and rout out the weeds. I tell you they has to fly, those times!—But I believe folks was made to hev company.' 'Have you no children?' 'Five of 'em, over there,' the woman said, pointing away, Esther could only guess where, as it was not to the house. She was sorry she had asked, and stood silent. 'Five of 'em,' Mrs. Blumenfeld repeated slowly. 'I had 'em,—and I haven't 'em. And now, there is times when the world seems to me that solitary that I'm a'most scared at myself.' Esther stood still, with mute sympathy, afraid to speak. 'I s'pose, to you now, the world is all full o' friends?' the other went on more lightly, turning from her own troubles, as it were. 'No,' said Esther gently; 'not at all. I am very much alone, and always have been.' 'Mebbe you like it?' 'No, I do not like it. I sometimes wish very much for one or two friends who are not here.' There came a sigh from the bosom of the other woman, unwonted, and tale-telling, and heavy. 'My marriage warn't happy,' she said, lower than her usual tone. 'I kin manage the garden alone; and I'd jes' as lieve. Two minds about a thing makes unpeace; and I set a great deal by peace. But it's awful lonely, life is, now and then!' 'It is not that to me,' said Esther sympathizingly; she was eager to speak, and yet doubtful just what to say. She fell back upon what perhaps is the safest of all, her own experience. 'Life used to be like that to me—at one time,' she went on after a little pause. 'I was very lonely and sad, and didn't know how I could live without comfort. And then I got it; and as I got it, I think so may you.' The woman looked at her, not in the least understanding what she would be at, yet fascinated by the sympathy—which she read plainly enough—and held by the beauty. By something besides beauty, too, which she saw without being able to fathom it. For in Esther's eyes there was the intense look of love and the fire of joy, and on her lips the loveliest lines of tenderness were trembling. Mrs. Blumenfeld gazed at her, but would almost as soon have addressed an angel, if one had stood beside her with wings that proclaimed his heavenly descent. 'I'll tell you how I got comfort,' Esther went on, keeping carefully away from anything that might seem like preaching. 'I was, as I tell you, dark and miserable and hopeless. Then I came to know the Lord Jesus; and it was just as if the sun had risen and filled all my life with sunlight.' The woman did not remove her eyes from Esther's face. 'I want to know!' she said at last. 'I've heerd tell o' sich things;—but I never see no one afore that hed the knowledge of 'em, like you seem to hev. I've heerd parson talk.' 'This is not parson talk.' 'I see 'tain't. But what is it then? You see, I'm as stupid as a bumble bee; I don't understand nothin' without it's druv into me—unless it's my garden. Ef you ask me about cabbages, or early corn, I kin tell you. But I don't know no more'n the dead what you are talkin' of.' Esther's eyes filled with tender tears. 'I want you to know,' she said. 'I wish you could know!' 'How am I goin' to?' 'Do what I did. I prayed the Lord Jesus to let me know Him; I prayed and prayed; and at last He came, and gave me what I asked for. And now, I tell you, my life is all sunlight, because He is in it. Don't you know, the Bible calls Him the Sun of righteousness! You only want to see Him.' 'See Him!' echoed the woman. 'There's only one sun I kin see; and that's the one that rises over in the east there and sets where he is goin' to set now,—over the Jersey shore, across the river.' 'But when this other Sun rises in the heart, He never sets any more; and we have nothing to do with darkness any more, when once we know Him.' 'Know Him?' Mrs. Blumenfeld again repeated Esther's words. 'Why, you're speaking of God, ain't you? You kin know a human critter like yourself; but how kin you know Him?' 'I cannot tell,' said Esther; 'but He will come into your heart and make you know Him. And when once you know Him, then, Mrs. Blumenfeld, you'll not be alone any more, and life will not be dark any more; and you will just grow happier and happier from day to day. And then comes heaven.' Mrs. Blumenfeld still gazed at her. 'I never heerd no sich talk in all my life!' she said. 'An' that's the way you live now?' Esther nodded. 'An' all you did was to ask for it?' 'Yes. But of course I studied the Bible, to find out what the Lord says of Himself, and to find out what He tells me to do and to be. For of course I must do His will, if I want Him to hear my prayers. You see that.' 'I expect that means a good deal, don't it?' 'Yes.' 'Mebbe somethin' I wouldn't like to do.' 'You will like to do it, when once you know Him,' Esther said eagerly. 'That makes all the difference. You know, we always love to please anybody that we love.' The gardener's wife had become very thoughtful. She went along her garden bed, stooping here to strip a decayed leaf from a cabbage, and there to pick up a dry bean that had fallen out of its pod, or to pull out a little weed from among her lettuces. 'I'm much obliged to you,' she said suddenly. 'You see,' said Esther, 'it is as free to you as to me. And why shouldn't we be happy if we can?' 'But there's those commandments! that's what skeers me. You see, I'm a kind o' self-willed woman.' 'It is nothing but joy, when once you know Him.' 'But you say I must begin with doin' what's set down?' 'Certainly; as far as you know; or the Lord will not hear our prayers.' 'Wouldn't it do after?' said Mrs. Blumenfeld, raising herself up, and again looking Esther in the face. There was an odd mixture in the expression of her own, half serious, half keenly comic. 'It is not the Lord's way,' said Esther gravely. 'Seek Him and obey Him, and you shall know. But if you cannot trust the Lord's word for so much, there is no doing anything. Without faith it is impossible to please Him.' 'I don't suppose you come here jes' fur to tell me all this,' said Mrs. Blumenfeld, after again a pause, 'but I'm real obleeged to ye. What's to go in that basket?' 'I brought it to see if you could let us have a head of lettuce. I see you have some.' 'Yes; and crisp, and cool, and nice they be—just right. Wall, I guess we kin. See here, that basket won't hold no more'n a bite for a bird; mayn't I get you a bigger one?' As Esther refused this, Mrs. Blumenfeld looked out her prettiest head of lettuce, skillfully detached it from the soil, and insinuated it into the little basket. But to the enquiry, how much was to pay, Mrs. Blumenfeld returned a slight shake of the head. 'I should like to see myself takin' a cent from you! Jes' you send over—or come! that's better—whenever you'd like a leaf o' salad, or anythin' else; and if it's here, you shall hev it, and glad.' 'You are very kind!' 'Wall, no; I don't think that's my character. They'll all tell you I'm honest. Wall, good-bye. An' come agin!' she cried after Esther. 'It's more 'n likely I'll want some more talkin' to.' Esther went home slowly and musing. The beauty around her, which she had but half noticed at first coming out, now filled her with a great delight. Or, rather, her heart was so full of gladness that it flowed over upon all surrounding things. Sunny haze, and sweet smells of dry leaves and moss, and a mass of all rich neutral tints in browns and purples, just touched here and there for a painter's eye with a spot of clear colour, a bit of gold, or a flare of flame—it all seemed to work its way into Esther's heart and make it swell with pleasure. She stood still to look across the river, which lay smooth like a misty mirror, and gave only a rich, soft, indeterminate reflection of the other shore. But the thoughts in Esther's mind were clear and distinct. Lonely? Had she ever been lonely? What folly! How could any one be lonely who had the knowledge of Christ and His presence? What sufficient delight it was to know Him, and to love Him, and to be always with Him, and always doing His will! If poor Mrs. Blumenfeld only knew! <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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