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Red Wallflower

<h2 id="id02249" style="margin-top: 4em">CHAPTER XXVI.</h2> <h5 id="id02250"> WAYS AND MEANS.</h5> Esther walked slowly home, delivered her basket to Barker, and went to her father. After the usual kiss and inquiry about how the week had been, he relapsed into his book; and she had to wait for a time to talk of anything else. Esther sat down with a piece of fancy work, and held her tongue till tea-time. The house was as still as if nobody lived in it. The colonel occasionally turned a leaf; now and then a puff of gas or a sudden jet of flame in the Liverpool coal fire gave a sort of silent sound, rebuking the humanity that lived there. No noise was heard from below stairs; the middle-aged and well-trained servants did their work with the regularity and almost with the smoothness of machines. It occurred to Esther anew that her life was excessively quiet; and a thought of Pitt, and how good it would have been to see him, arose again, as it had risen so many times. And then came the thoughts of the afternoon. With Christ,—was not that enough? Doing His will and having it—could she want anything more? Esther smiled to herself. She wanted nothing more. Barker came in with the tea-kettle, and the cold tongue and the salad made the supper-table look very comfortable. She made the tea, and the colonel put down his book. 'Do you never get tired of reading, papa?' 'Yes, my dear. One gets tired of everything!' This was said with a discouraging half breath of a sigh. 'Then you might talk a little, for a change, papa.' 'Humph! Whom should I talk to?' 'Me, papa, for want of somebody else.' This suggestion fell dead. The colonel took his toast and tried the salad. 'Is it good, papa?' Esther asked, in despair at the silence. 'Yes, my dear, it is good. Vegetable salads are a little cold at this time of year.' 'Papa, we were driven to it. Barker had not money enough this week to get you a partridge. And she says it has happened several times lately that you have forgotten to give her the usual amount for the week's housekeeping.' 'Then she says wrong.' 'She told me, several times she has not had enough, sir.' 'In that she may be right.' Esther paused, questioning what this might mean. She must know. 'Papa, do you mean you gave her insufficient money and knew it at the time?' 'I knew it at the time.' There was another interval, of greater length. Esther felt a little chill creeping over her. Yet she must come to an understanding with her father; that was quite indispensable. 'Papa, do you mean that it was inadvertence? Or was it necessity?' 'How could it be inadvertence, when I tell you I knew what I did?' 'But, papa'— Esther's breath almost failed her. 'Papa, we are living just as we always have lived?' 'Are we?'—somewhat drily. 'There is my schooling, of course'— 'And rent, and a horse to keep, and a different scale of market prices from that which we had in Seaforth. Everything costs more here.' 'There was the money for the sale of the place,' said Esther vaguely. 'That was not a great deal, after all. It was a fair price, perhaps, but less than the house and ground were worth. The interest of that does not cover the greater outlay here.' This was very dismayful, all the more because Colonel Gainsborough did not come out frankly with the whole truth. Esther was left to guess it,—to fear it,—to fancy it more than it was, perhaps. She felt that she could not have things left in this in indeterminate way. 'Papa, I think it would be good that I should know just what the difference is; so that I might know how to bring in our expenses within the necessary limits.' 'I have not cyphered it out in figures. I cannot tell you precisely how much my income is smaller than it used to be.' 'Can you tell me how much we ought to spend in a week, papa?—and then we will spend no more.' 'Barker will know when I give it to her.' The colonel had finished his tea and toast, which this evening he certainly did not enjoy; and went back to his book and his sofa. Though, indeed, he had not left his sofa, he went back to a reclining position, and Esther moved the table away from him. She was bewildered. She forgot to ring for Barker; she sat thinking how to bring the expenses of the family within narrower limits. Possible things alternated with impossible in her mind. She mused a good while. 'Papa,' she said, breaking the silence at last, 'do you think the air suits you here?' 'No, I do not. I have no cause.' 'You were better at Seaforth?' 'Decidedly. My chest always feels here a certain oppression. I suppose there is too much sea air.' 'Was not the sea quite as near them at Seaforth, and salt air quite as much at hand?' Esther thought. However, as she did not put entire faith in the truth of her father's conclusions, it was no use to question his premises. 'Papa,' she said suddenly, 'suppose we go back to Seaforth?' 'Suppose nonsense!' 'No, sir; but I do not mean it as nonsense. I have had one year's schooling—that will be invaluable to me; now with books I can go on by myself. I can, indeed, papa, and will. You shall not need to be ashamed of me.' 'You are talking foolishly, Esther.' 'I do not mean it foolishly, papa. If we have not the means to live here, and if the Seaforth air is so much better for you, then there is nothing to keep us here but my schooling; and that, as I tell you, I can manage without. And I can manage right well, papa; I have got so far that I can go on alone now. I am seventeen; I am not a child any longer.' There was a few minutes' silence, but probably that fact, that Esther was a child no longer, impelled the colonel to show her a little more consideration. 'Where would you go?' he asked, a trifle drily. 'Surely we could find a place, papa. Couldn't you, perhaps, buy back the old house—the dear old house!—as Mr. Dallas took it to accommodate you? I guess he would give it up again.' 'My dear, do not say "guess" in that very provincial fashion! I shall not ask Mr. Dallas to play at buying and selling in such a way. It would be trifling with him. I should be ashamed to do it. Besides, I have no intention of going back to Sea forth till your education is ended; and by that time—if I live to see that time—I shall have so little of life left that it will not matter where I spend it.' Esther did not know how to go on. 'Papa, could we not do without Buonaparte? I could get to school some other way?' 'How?' Esther pondered. 'Could I not arrange to go in Mrs. Blumenfeld's waggon, when it goes in Monday morning?' 'Who is Mrs. Blumenfeld?' 'Why, papa, she is the woman that has the market garden over here. You know.' 'Do I understand you aright?' said the colonel, laying his book down for the moment and looking over at his daughter. 'Are you proposing to go into town with the cabbages?' 'Papa, I do not mind. I would not mind at all, if it would be a relief to you. Mrs. Blumenfeld's waggon is very neat.' 'My dear, I am surprised at you!' 'Papa, I would do anything, rather than give you trouble. And, after all, I should be just as much myself, if I did go with the cabbages.' 'We will say no more about it, if you please,' said the colonel, taking up his book again. 'One moment, papa! one word more. Papa, I am so afraid of doing something I ought not. Can you not give me a hint, what sort of proportion our expenditures ought to bear to our old ways?' 'There is the rent, and the keeping of the horse, to be made good. Those are additions to our expenses; and there are no additions to my income. You know now as much as I can tell you.' The discussion was ended, and left Esther chilled and depressed. The fact itself could be borne, she thought, if it were looked square in the face, and met in the right spirit. As it was, she felt involved in a mesh of uncertainty. The rent,—she knew how much that was,—no such great matter; how much Buonaparte's keep amounted to she had no idea. She would find out. But how to save even a very few hundred dollars, even one or two hundred, by retrenchment of the daily expenses, Esther did not see. Better, she thought, make some great change, cut off some larger item of the household living, and so cover the deficit at once, than spare a partridge here and a pound of meat there. That was a kind of petty and vexing care which revolted her. Far better dispense with Buonaparte at once, and go into town with the cabbages. It will be seen that Esther as yet was not possessed of that which we call knowledge of the world. It did not occur to her that the neighbourhood of the cabbages would hurt her, though it might hurt her fastidious taste. It would not hurt her, Esther thought; and what did the rest matter? Anything but this pinching and sparing penny by penny. But if she drove into town with the cabbages, that would only dispose of Buonaparte; the other item—the rent—would remain unaccounted for. How should that be made up? Esther pondered, brooded, tired herself with thinking. She could not talk to Barker about it, and there was no one else. Once more she felt a little lonely and a good deal helpless, though energies were strong within her to act, if she had known how to act. She mounted the stairs to her room with an unusual slow step, and shut her door, but she had brought her trouble in with her. Esther went to her window to look out, as we all are so apt to do when some trouble seems too big for the house to hold. There is a vague counsel-taking with nature, to which one is impelled at such times; or is it sympathy-seeking? The sweet October afternoon had passed into as sweet an evening, the hazy stillness was unchanged, and through the haze the silver rays of a half moon high in the heavens came with the tenderest touch and the most gracious softness upon all earthly things. There was a vapourous glitter on the water of the broad river, a dewy or hazy veil on the land; the scene could not be imagined more witching fair or more removed from any sort of discordance. Esther stood looking, and her heart calmed down. She had been feeling distressed under the question of ways and means; now it occurred to her, 'Take no thought for the morrow, what ye shall eat or what ye shall drink; your Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things.' And as the words came, Esther shook off the trouble they condemn; shook it off her shoulders, as it were, and left it lying. Still she felt alone, she wished for Pitt Dallas, or for somebody; she had no one but her father in all the world, nor the hope of any one. And happy as she really was, yet the human instinct would stir in Esther—the instinct that longs for intercourse, sympathy, affection; somebody to talk to, to counsel with, to share in her joys and sorrows and experiences generally. It is a perfectly natural and justifiable desire; stronger, perhaps, in the young than in the old, for the old know better how much and how little society amounts to, and are not apt to have such violent longings in general for anything. But also to the old, loving companionship is inexpressibly precious; the best thing by far that this world contains or this life knows. And Esther longed for it now, even till tears rose and dimmed her sight, and made all the moonshiny landscape swim and melt and be lost in the watery veil. But then, as the veil cleared and the moonlight came into view again, came also other words into Esther's mind,—'Be content with such things as ye have; for He hath said, I will never leave thee nor forsake thee.' She cleared away her tears and smiled to herself, in happy assurance and wonder that she should have forgotten. And with that, other words still came to her; words that had never seemed so exceeding sweet before. 'None of them that trust in Him shall be desolate.'—That is a sure promise. 'Fear not, Abraham; I am thy shield, and thine exceeding great reward.'—Probably, when this word was given, the father of the faithful was labouring under the very same temptation, to think himself alone and lonely. And the answer to his fears must be sufficient, or He who spoke it would never have spoken it to him just at that time. Esther stood a while at her window, thinking over these things, with a rest and comfort of heart indescribable; and finally laid herself down to rest with the last shadow gone from her spirit. It could not be, however, but that the question returned the next day, what was to be done? Expenses must not outrun incomings; that was a fixed principle in Esther's mind, resting as well on honour as honesty. Evidently, when the latter do not cover the former, one of two things must be done; expenses must be lessened, or income increased. How to manage the first, Esther had failed to find; and she hated the idea, besides, of a penny-ha'penny economy. Could their incomings be added to? By teaching! It flashed into Esther's mind with a disagreeable illumination. Yes, that she could do, that she must do, if her father would not go back to Seaforth. There was no other way. He could not earn money; she must. If they continued to live in or near New York, it must be on her part as a teacher in a school. The first thought of it was not pleasant. Esther was tempted to wish they had never left Seaforth, if the end of it was to be this. But after the first start of revulsion she gathered herself together. It would put an end to all their difficulties. It would be honourable work, and good work; and, after all, work in some sort is what everybody should have; nobody is put here to be idle. Perhaps this pressure of circumstances was on purpose to push her into the way that was meant for her; the way in which it was the Lord's pleasure she should serve Him and the world. And having got this view of it, Esther's last reluctance was gone. For, you see, what was the Lord's pleasure was also hers. Her heart grew quite light again. She saw what she had to do. But for the first, the thing was, to go as far in her learning as her father desired her to go. She must finish her own schooling. And if Esther had studied hard before, she studied harder now; applied herself with all the power of her will to do her utmost in every line. It was not a vague thought of satisfying Pitt Dallas that moved her now; but a very definite purpose to take care of her father, and a ready joy to do the will of Him whom Esther loved even better than her father. The thought of Pitt Dallas, indeed, went into abeyance. Esther had something else to do. And the summer had passed and he had not come; that hope was over; and two years more must go by, according to the plan which Esther knew, before he would come again. Before that time, who could tell? Perhaps he would have forgotten them entirely. It happened one day, putting some drawers in order, that Esther took up an old book and carelessly opened it. Its leaves fell apart at a place where there lay a dry flower. It was the sprig of red Cheiranthus; not faded; still with its velvety petals rich tinted, and still giving forth the faint sweet fragrance which belongs to the flower. It gave Esther a thrill. It was the remaining fragment of Pitt's Christmas bouquet, which she had loved and cherished to the last leaf as long as she could. She remembered all about it. Her father had made her burn all the rest; this blossom only had escaped, without her knowledge at the time. The sight of it went to her heart. She stood still by her chest of drawers with the open book in her hand, gazing at the wallflower in its persistent beauty. All came back to her: Seaforth, her childish days, Pitt and her love for him, and his goodness to her; the sorrow and the joy of that old time; and more and more the dry flower struck her heart. Why had her father wanted her to burn the others? why had she kept this? And what was the use of keeping it now? When anything, be it a flower, be it a memory, which has been fresh and sweet, loses altogether its beauty and its savour, what is the good of still keeping it to look at? Truly the flower had not lost either beauty or savour; but the memory that belonged to it? what had become of that? Pitt let himself no more be heard from; why should this little place-keeper be allowed to remain any longer? Would it not be wiser to give it up, and let the wallflower go the way of its former companions? Esther half thought so; almost made the motion to throw it in the fire; but yet she could not. She could not quite do it. Maybe there was an explanation; perhaps Pitt would come next time, when another two years had rolled away, and tell them all about it. At any rate, she would wait. She shut up the book again carefully, and put it safely away. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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