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Red Wallflower

<h2 id="id02857" style="margin-top: 4em">CHAPTER XXXIII.</h2> <h5 id="id02858"> BETTY.</h5> It was summer again, and on the broad grassy street of Seaforth the sunshine poured in its full power. The place lay silent under the heat of mid-day; not a breath stirred the leaves of the big elms, and no passing wheels stirred the dust of the roadway, which was ready to rise at any provocation. It was very dry, and very hot. Yet at Seaforth those two facts, though proclaimed from everybody's mouth, must be understood with a qualification. The heat and the dryness were not as elsewhere. So near the sea as the town was, a continual freshness came from thence in vapours and cool airs, and mitigated what in other places was found oppressive. However, the Seaforth people said it was oppressive too; and things are so relative in the affairs of life that I do not know if they were more contented than their neighbours. But everybody said the heat was fine for the hay; and as most of the inhabitants had more or less of that crop to get in, they criticised the weather only at times when they were thinking of it in some other connection. At Mrs. Dallas's there was no criticism of anything. In the large comfortable rooms, where windows were all open, and blinds tempering the too ardent light, and cool mats on the floors, and chintz furniture looked light and summery, there was an atmosphere of pure enjoyment and expectation, for Pitt was coming home again, and his mother was looking for him with every day. She was sitting now awaiting him; no one could tell at what hour he might arrive; and his mother's face was beautiful with hope. She was her old self; not changed at all by the four or five years of Pitt's absence; as handsome and as young and as stately as ever. She made no demonstration now; did not worry either herself or others with questions and speculations and hopes and fears respecting her son's coming; yet you could see on her fine face, if you were clever at reading faces, the lines of pride and joy, and now and then a quiver of tenderness. It was seen by one who was sitting with her, whose interest and curiosity it involuntarily moved. This second person was a younger lady. Indeed a young lady, not by comparison, but absolutely. A very attractive person too. She had an exceedingly good figure, which the trying dress of those times showed in its full beauty. Woe to the lady then whose shoulders were not straight, or the lines of her figure not flowing, or the proportions of it not satisfactory. Every ungracefulness must have shown its full deformity, with no possibility of disguise; every angle must have been aggravated, and every untoward movement made doubly fatal. But the dress only set off and developed the beauty that could bear it. And the lady sitting with Mrs. Dallas neither feared nor had need to fear criticism. Something of that fact appeared in her graceful posture and in the brow of habitual superiority, and in the look of the eyes that were now and then lifted from her work to her companion. The eyes were beautiful, and they were also queenly; at least their calm fearlessness was not due to absence of self-consciousness. She was a pretty picture to see. The low-cut dress and fearfully short waist revealed a white skin and a finely-moulded bust and shoulders. The very scant and clinging robe was of fine white muslin, with a narrow dainty border of embroidery at the bottom; and a scarf of the same was thrown round her shoulders. The round white arms were bare, the little tufty white sleeves making a pretty break between them and the soft shoulders; and the little hands were busy with a strip of embroidery, which looked as if it might be destined for the ornamentation of another similar dress. The lady's face was delicate, intelligent, and attractive, rather than beautiful; her eyes, however, as I said, were fine; and over her head and upon her neck curled ringlets of black, lustrous hair. 'You think he will be here to-day?' she said, breaking the familiar silence that had reigned for a while. She had caught one of Mrs. Dallas's glances towards the window. 'He may be here any day. It is impossible to tell. He would come before his letter.' 'You are very fond of him, I can see. What made you send him away from you? England is so far off!' Mrs. Dallas hesitated; put up the end of her knitting-needle under her cap, and gently moved it up and down in meditative fashion. 'We wanted him to be an Englishman, Betty.' 'Why, Mrs. Dallas? Is he not going to live in America?' 'Probably.' 'Then why make an Englishman of him? That will make him discontented with things here.' 'I hope not. He was not changed enough for that when he was here last. Pitt does not change.' 'He must be an extraordinary character!' said the young lady, with a glance at Pitt's mother. 'Dear Mrs. Dallas, how am I to understand that?' 'Pitt does not change,' repeated the other. 'But one ought to change. That is a dreadful sort of people, that go on straight over the heads of circumstances, just because they laid out the road there before the circumstances arose. I have seen such people. They tread down everything in their way.' 'Pitt does not change,' Mrs. Dallas said again. Her companion thought she said it with a certain satisfied confidence. And perhaps it was true; but the moment after Mrs. Dallas remembered that if the proposition were universal it might be inconvenient. 'At least he is hard to change,' she went on; 'therefore his father and I wished him to be educated in the old country, and to form his notions according to the standard of things there. I think a republic is very demoralizing.' 'Is the standard of morals lower here?' inquired the younger lady, demurely. 'I am not speaking of morals, in the usual sense. Of course, that— But there is a little too much freedom here. And besides,—I wanted Pitt to be a true Church of England man.' 'Isn't he that?' 'Oh yes, I have no doubt he is now; but he had formed some associations I was afraid of. With my son's peculiar character, I thought there might be danger. I rely on you, Betty,' said Mrs. Dallas, smiling, 'to remove the last vestige.' The young lady gave a glance of quick, keen curiosity and understanding, in which sparkled a little amusement. 'What can I do?' she asked demurely. 'Bewitch him, as you do everybody.' 'Bewitch him, and hand him over to you!' she remarked. 'No,' said Mrs. Dallas; 'not necessarily. You must see him, before you can know what you would like to do with him.' 'Do I understand, then? He is supposed to be in some danger of lapsing from the true faith'— 'Oh, no, my dear! I did not say that. I meant only, if he had stayed in America. It seems to me there is a general loosening of all bonds here. Boys and girls do their own way.' 'Was it only the general spirit of the air, Mrs. Dallas, or was it a particular influence, that you feared?' 'Well—both,' said Mrs. Dallas, again applying her knitting-needle under her cap. The younger lady was silent a few minutes; going on with her embroidery. 'This is getting to be very interesting,' she remarked. 'It is very interesting to me,' replied the mother, with a thoughtful look. 'For, as I told you, Pitt is a very fast friend, and persistent in all his likings and dislikings. Here he had none but the company of dissenters; and I did not want him to get in with people of that persuasion.' 'Is there much society about here? I fancied not.' 'No society, for him. Country people—farmers—people of that stamp. Nothing else.' 'I should have thought, dear Mrs. Dallas, that you would have been quite a sufficient counteraction to temptation from such a source?' Mrs. Dallas hesitated. 'Boys will be boys,' she said. 'But he is not a boy now?' 'He is twenty-four.' 'Not a boy, certainly. But do you know, that is an age when men are very hard to manage? It is easier earlier, or later.' 'Not difficult to you at any time,' said the other flatteringly. The conversation dropped there; at least there came an interval of quiet working on the young lady's part, and of rather listless knitting on the part of the mother, whose eyes went wistfully to the window without seeing anything. And this lasted till a step was heard at the front door. Mrs. Dallas let fall her needles and her yarn and rose hurriedly, crying out, 'That is not Mr. Dallas!' and so speaking, rushed into the hall. There was a little bustle, a smothered word or two, and then a significant silence; which lasted long enough to let the watcher left behind in the drawing-room conclude on the very deep relations subsisting between mother and son. Steps were heard moving at length, but they moved and stopped; there was lingering, and slow progress; and words were spoken, broken questions from Mrs. Dallas and brief responses in a stronger voice that was low-pitched and pleasant. The figures appeared in the doorway at last, but even there lingered still. The mother and son were looking into one another's faces and speaking those absorbed little utterances of first meeting which are insignificant enough, if they were not weighted with such a burden of feeling. Miss Betty, sitting at her embroidery, cast successive rapid glances of curiosity and interest at the new-comer. His voice had already made her pulses quicken a little, for the tone of it touched her fancy. The first glance showed him tall and straight; the second caught a smile which was both merry and sweet; a third saw that the level brows expressed character; and then the two people turned their faces towards her and came into the room, and Mrs. Dallas presented her son. The young lady rose and made a reverence, according to the more stately and more elegant fashion of the day. The gentleman's obeisance was profound in its demonstration of respect. Immediately after, however, he turned to his mother again; a look of affectionate joy shining upon her out of his eyes and smile. 'Two years!' she was exclaiming. 'Pitt, how you have changed!' 'Have I? I think not much.' 'No, in one way not much. I see you are your old self. But two years have made you older.' 'So they should.' 'Somehow I had not expected it,' said the mother, passing her hand across her eyes with a gesture a little as if there were tears in them. 'I thought I should see my boy again—and he is gone.' 'Not at all!' said Pitt, laughing. 'Mistaken, mother. There is all of him here that there ever was. The difference is, that now there is something more.' 'What?' she asked. 'A little more experience—a little more knowledge—let us hope, a little more wisdom.' 'There is more than that,' said the mother, looking at him fondly. 'What?' 'It is the difference I might have looked for,' she said, 'only, somehow, I had not looked for it.' And the swift passage of her hand across her eyes gave again the same testimony of a few minutes before. Her son rose hereupon and proposed to withdraw to his room; and as his mother accompanied him, Miss Betty noticed how his arm was thrown round her and he was bending to her and talking to her as they went. Miss Betty stitched away busily, thoughts keeping time with her needle, for some time thereafter. Yet she did not quite know what she was thinking of. There was a little stir in her mind, which was so unaccustomed that it was delightful; it was also vague, and its provoking elements were not clearly discernible. The young lady was conscious of a certain pleasant thrill in the view of the task to which she had been invited. It promised her possible difficulty, for even in the few short minutes just passed she had gained an inkling that Mrs. Dallas's words might be true, and Pitt not precisely a man that you could turn over your finger. It threatened her possible danger, which she did not admit; nevertheless the stinging sense of it made itself felt and pricked the pleasure into livelier existence. This was something out of the ordinary. This was a man not just cut after the common work-a-day pattern. Miss Betty recalled involuntarily one trait after another that had fastened on her memory. Eyes of bright intelligence and hidden power, a very frank smile, and especially with all that, the great tenderness which had been shown in every word and look to his mother. The good breeding and ease of manner Miss Betty had seen before; this other trait was something new; and perhaps she was conscious of a little pull it gave at her heartstrings. This was not the manner she had seen at home, where her father had treated her mother as a sort of queen-consort certainly,—co-regent of the house; but where they had lived upon terms of mutual diplomatic respect; and her brothers, if they cared much for anybody but Number One, gave small proof of the fact. What a brother this man would be! what a—something else! Miss Betty sheered off a little from just this idea; not that she was averse to it, or that she had not often entertained it; indeed, she had entertained it not two hours ago about Pitt himself; but the presence of the man and the recognition of what was in him had stirred in her a kindred delicacy which was innate, as in every true woman, although her way of life and some of her associates had not fostered it. Betty Frere was a true woman, originally; alas, she was also now a woman of the world; also, she was poor, and to make a good marriage she had known for some years was very desirable for her. What a very good marriage this would be! Poor girl, she could not help the thought now, and she must not be judged hardly for it. It was in the air she breathed, and that all her associates breathed. Betty had not been in a hurry to get married, having small doubt of her power to do it in any case that pleased her; now, somehow, she was suddenly confronted by a doubt of her power. I am pulling out the threads of what was to Betty only a web of very confused pattern; she did not try to unravel it. Her consciousness of just two things was clear: the pleasant stimulus of the task set before her, and a little sharp premonition of its danger. She dismissed that. She could perform the task and detach Pitt from any imaginary ties that his mother was afraid of, without herself thereby becoming entangled. It would be a game of uncommon interest and entertainment, and a piece of benevolence too. But Betty's pulses, as I said, were quickened a little. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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