Colonel Falconer, the man whose coming was so anxiously expected by
Mrs. Beach, arrived in ten days at San Diego; but the invalid had died
just a few hours before his arrival.
Poor Pansy was once more alone in the world, for Colonel Falconer,
though full of pity and sympathy for the friendless girl, could not
be to her such a friend as he wished. He was fifty years old, and a
bachelor, therefore if he had offered to divide with her the fortune
that had come to him by Mrs. Beach’s death the world would have caviled.
He was a typical Virginian, generous and true-hearted, and he grieved
that such should be the case, for he would willingly have made ample
provision for the support of the lovely, penniless girl who had been so
dear to his deceased relative.
“It is a deuced shame that my hands are tied in this way. I feel mean,
taking all that money and seeing that beautiful little creature go
out to earn her own living,” he said to himself the day after the
funeral, when Pansy had come to him to tell him, with a pale, sad
little face, that she had been so fortunate as to be offered a place in
a real-estate office as a typewriter.
“I have accepted the place, and will enter on my duties to-morrow,” she
said simply; and then he drew forward a chair, and begged her to be
seated.
“It seems very sad that you should be left alone like this. Have you no
relations, no friends, Miss Wilcox?”
Pansy flushed warmly, then grew pale again, and, after a moment’s
hesitancy, said:
“I came from Louisville to this place with Mrs. Beach because I wished
to work for myself. My father was dead, my mother had married again,
and my stepfather was not kind to me. I prefer to remain in California
alone, rather than to return to my own home.”
“She is a plucky little thing,” thought the colonel admiringly, and he
answered, aloud:
“I don’t know but what you’re right, Miss Wilcox, and I admire your
independence. I want you to promise one thing: You will let me be your
friend? I shall remain in San Diego some time yet, and if you will
permit me to call on you sometimes I shall be very glad.”
He did not mean to lose sight of her if he could help it, for he had
a fancy that if Mrs. Beach had lived to see him again she would have
commended her protégée to his care.
“Hang it all, if I were twenty years younger I’d marry her if she would
have me,” he said to himself, when she had gone out, after giving her
consent to his request and telling him where she should go to board. It
was at a very simple, unpretentious place, for in San Diego, as in all
of the rapidly growing towns of southern California, board and lodging
were very high. It would take all of her salary to support her even in
a simple fashion.
Colonel Falconer knew this well, and his heart ached for the brave,
beautiful girl who had made a stronger impression on him than any woman
he had ever met. When she bade him good-by that afternoon and went away
with Mrs. Beach’s maid, who was also rendered homeless by the death of
her mistress, he felt a strangely tender yearning to take the beautiful
girl in his arms and kiss away the tears that he saw trembling on her
long, curling lashes.
He retained the Chinese servants, and stayed on at the cottage during
the summer, and in that time he managed to see a great deal of
beautiful little Pansy, although he knew that it was unwise, for he
soon found that his ardent admiration for the lovely girl was deepening
into love.
If he had been younger he would have proposed to marry her; but it
seemed to him that Pansy would only laugh at the idea of having such an
old fellow for a husband.
He did not know how Pansy was touched by his kindness and friendship.
She was very lonely, for the few acquaintances she had made during
Mrs. Beach’s life did not trouble themselves about her now that she
was poor and friendless. They were rich, fashionable people, too, who
had no time, if they had had the inclination, to look after any one
not in society. They were very gracious to Colonel Falconer, but that
little typewriter girl to whom he was so attentive--that was altogether
different. Some there were who hinted to him that it was a mistake on
his part to show her so much kindness. It would spoil her for her
humbler lot, awaken in her aspirations for higher things than she could
reasonably expect.
They set Colonel Falconer thinking, and the upshot of it was that he
went away to San Francisco for several months. He did not go to bid
Pansy good-by, but simply sent her a note of farewell, saying that he
would write her sometimes and requesting the favor of a reply.
“Oh, how I miss him! It was like having a kind elder brother,” Pansy
sighed to herself, and now the evenings and Sundays grew very lonely,
indeed.
There were no more pleasant drives Sunday afternoons, spinning over the
sands past the glittering bay; no more books, nor fruits and flowers.
There was a young clerk in the office where she worked who would have
made love to her if she would have noticed him, but she never did, and
in her loneliness her thoughts went back more and more to her lost love
and her dead past.