_A DEBATE_.
The two who were left sat still for a few moments, without speaking.
Mrs. Dallas once again made that gesture of her hand across her brow.
'You need not disturb yourself, wife,' said her husband presently.
'Young men must have a turn at being fools, once in a way. It is not
much in Pitt's way; but, however, it seems his turn has come. There are
worse types of the disorder. I would rather have this Puritan scruple
to deal with than some other things. The religious craze passes off
easier than a fancy for drinking or gambling; it is hot while it lasts,
but it is easier to cure.'
'But Pitt is so persistent!'
'In other things. You will see it will not be so with this.'
'He's very persistent,' repeated the mother. 'He always did stick to
anything he once resolved upon.'
'He is not resolved upon this yet. Distraction is the best thing, not
talk. Where's Betty Frere? I thought she was coming.'
'She is coming. She will be here in a few days. I cannot imagine what
has set Pitt upon this strange way of thinking. He has got hold of some
Methodist or some other dreadful person; but where? It couldn't be at
Oxford; and I am certain it was never in Uncle Strahan's house; where
could it be?'
'Methodism began at Oxford, my dear.'
'It is one mercy that the Gainsboroughs are gone.'
'Yes,' said her husband; 'that was well done. Does he know?'
'I have never told him. He will be asking about them directly.'
'Say as little as you can, and get Betty Frere here.'
Pitt meanwhile had gone to his old room, his work-room, the scene of
many a pleasant hour, and where those aforetime lessons to Esther
Gainsborough had been given. He stood and looked about him. All was
severe order and emptiness, telling that the master had been away; his
treasures were safe packed up, under lock and key, or stowed away upon
cupboard shelves; there was no pleasant litter on tables and floor,
alluring to work or play. Was that old life, of work and play which
mixed and mingled, light-hearted and sweet, gone for ever? Pitt stood
in the middle of the floor looking about him, gathering up many a
broken thread of association; and then, obeying an impulse which had
been on him all the morning, he turned, caught up his hat, and went out.
He loitered down the village street. It was mid-morning now, the summer
sun beating down on the wide space and making every big tree shadow
grateful. Great overarching elms, sometimes an oak or a maple, ranged
along in straight course and near neighbourhood, making the village
look green and bowery, and giving the impression of an easy-going
thrift and habit of pleasant conditions, which perhaps was not untrue
to the character of the people. The capital order in which everything
was kept confirmed the impression. Pitt, however, was not thinking of
this, though he noticed it; the village was familiar to him from his
childhood, and looked just as it had always done, only that the elms
and maples had grown a little more bowery with every year. He walked
along, not thinking of that, nor seeing the roses and syringa blossoms
which gave him a sweet breath out of some of the gardens. He was not in
a hurry. He was going back in mind to that which furnished the real
answer to his mother's wondering query,--whence Pitt could have got his
new ideas? It was nobody at Oxford or in London, neither conventicle
nor discourse; but a girl's letter. He went on and on, thinking of it
and of the writer. What would _she_ say to his disclosures, which his
father and mother could do nothing with? Would she be in condition to
give him the help he knew he must not expect from them? She, a girl?
who did not know the world? Yet she was the goal of Pitt's present
thoughts, and her house the point his footsteps were seeking, slowly
and thoughtfully.
He was not in a hurry. Indeed, he was too absorbedly busy with his own
cogitations and questions to give full place to the thought of Esther
and the visit he was about to make. Besides, it was not as in the old
time. He had no image before him now of a forlorn, lonely child,
awaiting his coming as the flowers look for the sun. Things were rather
turned about; he thought of Esther as the one in the sunlight, and
himself as in need of illumination. He thought of her as needing no
comfort that he could give; he half hoped to find the way to peace
through her leading. But yes, she would be glad to see him; she would
not have forgotten him nor lost her old affection for her old
playfellow, though the entire cessation of letters from either her or
her father had certainly been inexplicable. Probably it might be
explained by some crankiness of the colonel. Esther would certainly be
glad to see him. He quickened his steps to reach the house.
He hardly knew it when he came to it, the aspect of things was so
different from what he remembered. Truly it had been always a quiet
house, with never a rush of company or a crowd of voices; but there had
been life; and now?--Pitt stood still at the little gate and looked,
with a sudden blank of disappointment. There could be nobody there. The
house was shut up and dead. Not a window was open; not a door. In the
little front garden the flowers had grown up wild and were struggling
with weeds; the grass of the lawn at the side was rank and unmown; the
honeysuckle vines in places were hanging loose and uncared-for, waving
in the wind in a way that said eloquently, 'Nobody is here.' There was
not much wind that summer day, just enough to move the honeysuckle
sprays. Pitt stood and looked and queried; then yielding to some
unconscious impulse, he went in through the neglected flowers to the
deserted verandah, and spent a quarter of an hour in twining and
securing the loose vines. He was thinking hard all the time. This was
the place where he remembered sitting with Esther that day when she
asked help of him about getting comfort. He remembered it well; he
recalled the girl's subdued manner, and the sorrowful craving in the
large beautiful eyes. _Now_ Esther had found what she sought, and
to-day he was nearly as unable to understand her as he had been to help
her then. He fastened up the honeysuckles, and then he went and sat
down on the step of the verandah and took Esther's letter out of his
breast pocket, and read it over. He had read it many times. He did not
comprehend it; but this he comprehended--that to her at least there was
something in religion more heartfelt than a form, and more satisfying
than a profession. To her it was a reality. The letter had set him
thinking, and he had been thinking ever since. He had come here this
morning, hoping that in talking with her she might perhaps give him
some more light, and now she had disappeared. Strange that his mother
should not have told him! What could be the explanation of this sudden
disappearance? Disaster or death it could not be, for that she
certainly would have told him.
Sitting there and musing over many things, his own great question ever
and again, he heard a mower whetting his scythe somewhere in the
neighbourhood. Pitt set about searching for the unseen labourer, and
presently saw the man, who was cutting the grass in an adjoining field.
Dismissing thought for action, in two minutes he had sprung over the
fence and was beside the man; but the mower did not intermit the long
sweeps of his scythe, until he heard Pitt's civil 'Good morning.' Then
he stopped, straightened himself up, and looked at his visitor--looked
him all over.
'Good mornin',' he replied. 'Guess you're the young squoire, ain't ye?'
If Pitt's appearance had been less supremely neat and faultless, I
think the honest worker would have offered his hand; but the white
linen summer suit, the polished boots, the delicate gloves, were too
much of a contrast with his own dusty and rough exterior. It was no
feeling of inferiority, be it well understood, that moved him to this
bit of self-denial; only a self-respecting feeling of fitness. He
himself would not have wanted to touch a dusty hand with those gloves
on his own. But he spoke his welcome.
'Glad to see ye hum, squoire. When did ye come?'
'Last night, thank you. Whom am I talking to? I have been so long away,
I have forgotten my friends.'
'I guess there's nobody hain't forgotten you, you'll find,' said the
man, wiping his scythe blade with a wisp of grass; needlessly, for he
had just whetted it; but it gave him an opportunity to look at the
figure beside him.
'More than I deserve,' said Pitt. 'But I seem not to find some of my
old friends. Do you know where is the family that used to live here?'
'Gone away, I guess.'
'I see they have gone away; but where have they gone?'
'Dunno, no more'n the dead,' said the man, beginning to mow again.
'You know whom I am speaking of?--Colonel Gainsborough.'
'I know. He's gone--that's all I kin tell ye.'
'Who takes care of the place?'
'The place? If you mean the house, nobody takes keer of it, I guess.
There ain't nobody in it. The land hez as good keer as it ever hed. The
squoire, he sees to that.'
'My father, do you mean?'
'Who else? It belongs to the squoire now, and he takes good keer o' all
_he_ sees to. He bought it, ye know, when the cunnel went away,' said
the man, stopping work and resting on his scythe to look at Pitt again.
'He'd ha' let it, I guess, ef he could; but you see there ain't nobody
that wants it. The folks in Seaforth all hez their own houses, and
don't want nobody else's. There _is_ folks, they say, as 'd like to
live in two houses to once, _ef_ they could manage it; but I never
heerd o' no one that could.'
'Do you know at all why the colonel went away?'
'Hain't an idee. Never knowed him particular, ye see, and so never
heerd tell. The cunnel he warn't a sociable man by no means, and kep'
himself mostly shut up. I think it's a man's loss; but there's
different opinions, I suppose, on that p'int. As on every other! Folks
du say, the cunnel warn't never to hum in Seaforth. Anyway, he ain't
now.'
With which utterance he went to mowing again, and Pitt, after a
courteous 'Good day,' left him.
Where could they be gone? And why should they have gone? And how was it
that his mother in her many letters had never said a word about it?
Nay, had let him go out this very morning to look for what she knew he
would not find? And his father had bought the ground! There was
something here to be inquired into. Meanwhile, for the present, he must
do his thinking without Esther.
He walked on and on, slowly, under the shade of the great trees, along
the empty, grassy street. He had plucked one or two shoots from the
honeysuckles, long shoots full of sweetness; and as he went on and
thought, they seemed to put in a word now and then. A word of reminder,
not distinct nor logical, but with a blended meaning of Esther and
sweetness and truth. Not _her_ sweetness and truth, but that which she
testified to, and which an inner voice in Pitt's heart kept declaring
to be genuine. That lured him and beckoned him one way; and the other
way sounded voices as if of a thousand sirens. Pleasure, pride,
distinction, dominion, applause, achievement, power, and ease. Various
forms of them, various colours, started up before his mind's eye;
vaguely discerned, as to individual form, but every one of them, like
the picadors in a bull-fight, shaking its little banner of distraction
and allurement. Pitt felt the confusion of them, and at the same time
was more than vaguely conscious on the other side of a certain steady
white light which attracted towards another goal. He walked on in
meditative musing, slowly and carelessly, not knowing where he was
going nor what he passed on the way; till he had walked far. And then
he suddenly stopped, turned, and set out to go back the road he had
come, but now with a quick, measured, steady footfall which gave no
indication of a vacillating mind or a laboured question.
He went into the breakfast-room when he got home, which was also the
common sitting-room and where he found, as he expected, his mother
alone. She looked anxious; which was not a usual thing with Mrs. Dallas.
'Pitt, my dear!--out all this time? Are you not very hot?'
'I do not know, mother; I think not. I have not thought about the heat,
I believe.'
He had kept the honeysuckle sprays in his hand all this while, and he
now went forward to stick them in the huge jar which occupied the
fireplace, and which was full of green branches. Turning when he had
done this, he did not draw up a chair, but threw himself down upon the
rug at his mother's feet, so that he could lay back his head upon her
knees. Presently he put up his two hands behind him and found her
hands, which he gently drew down and laid on each side of his head,
holding them there in caressing fashion. Caresses were never the order
of the day in this family; rarely exchanged even between mother and
son, who yet were devoted faithfully to each other. The action moved
Mrs. Dallas greatly; she bent down over him and kissed her son's brow,
and then loosening one of her hands thrust it fondly among the thick
brown wavy locks of hair that were such a pride to her. She admired him
unqualifiedly, with that blissful delight in him which a good mother
gives to her son, if his bodily and mental properties will anyway allow
of it. Mrs. Dallas's pride in this son had always been satisfied and
unalloyed; all the more now was the chagrin she felt at the first jar
to this satisfaction. Her face showed both feelings, the pride and the
trouble, but for a time she kept silence. She was burning to discuss
further with him the subject of the morning; devoured with restless
curiosity as to how it could ever have got such a lodgment in Pitt's
mind; at the same time she did not know how to touch it, and was afraid
of touching it wrong. Her husband's counsel, _not to talk_, she did not
indeed forget; but Mrs. Dallas had her own views of things, and did not
always take her husband's advice. She was not minded to follow it now,
but she was uncertain how best to begin. Pitt was busy with his own
thoughts.
'I have invited somebody to come and make your holiday pass
pleasantly,' Mrs. Dallas said at last, beginning far away from the
burden of her thoughts.
'Somebody?--whom?' asked Pitt a little eagerly, but without changing
his attitude.
'Miss Betty Frere.'
'Who is she, that she should put her hand on my holiday? I do not want
any hands but yours, mother. How often I have wanted them!'
'But Miss Frere _will_ make your time pass more pleasantly, my boy.
Miss Frere is one of the most admired women who have appeared in
Washington this year. She is a sort of cousin of your father's, too;
distant, but enough to make a connection. You will see for yourself
what she is.'
'Where did you find her out?'
'In Washington, last winter.'
'And she is coming?'
'She said she would come. I asked her to come and help me make the time
pass pleasantly for you.'
'Which means, that I must help you make the time pass pleasantly for
her.'
'That will be easy.'
'I don't know; and _you_ do not know. When is she coming?'
'In a few days, I expect her.'
'Young, of course. Well, mother, I really do not want anybody but you;
but we'll do the best we can.'
'She is handsome, and quick, and has excellent manners. She would have
made a good match last winter, at once,--if she had not been poor.'
'Are men such cads as that on this side the water too?'
'_Cads_, my dear!'
'I call that being cads. Don't you?'
'My boy, everybody cannot afford to marry a poor wife.'
'Anybody that has two hands can. Or a head.'
'It brings trouble, Pitt.'
'Does not the other thing bring trouble? It would with me! If I knew a
woman had married me for money, or if I knew I had married _her_ for
money, there would be no peace in my house.'
Mrs. Dallas laughed a little. 'You will have no need to do the latter
thing,' she said.
'Mother, nobody has any need to do it.'
'You, at any rate, can please yourself. Only'--
'Only what?' said Pitt, now laughing in his turn, and twisting his head
round to look up into her face. 'Go on, mother.'
'I am sure your father would never object to a girl because she was
poor, if you liked her. But there are other things'--
'Well, what other things?'
'Pitt, a woman has great influence over her husband, if he loves her,
and that you will be sure to do to any woman whom you make your wife. I
should not like to have you marry out of your own Church.'
Pitt's head went round, and he laughed again.
'In good time!' he said. 'I assure you, mother, you are in no danger
yet.'
'I thought this morning,' said his mother, hesitating,--'I was afraid,
from what you said, that some Methodist, or some other Dissenter, might
have got hold of you.'
Pitt was silent. The word struck him, and jarred a little. Was his
mother not grazing the truth? And a vague notion rose in his mind,
without actually taking shape, which just now he had not time to attend
to, but which cast a shadow, like a young cloud. He was silent, and his
mother after a little pause went on.
'Methodists and Dissenters are not much in Mr. Strahan's way, I am
sure; and you would hardly be troubled by them at Oxford. How was it,
Pitt? Where did you get these new notions?'
'Do they sound like Dissent, mother?'
'I do not know what they sound like. Not like you. I want to know what
they mean, and how you came by them?'
He did not immediately answer.
'I have been thinking on this subject a good while,' he said
slowly,--'a good while. You know, Mr. Strahan is a great antiquary, and
very full of knowledge about London. He has taken pleasure in going
about with me, and instructing me, and he is capital company; but at
last I learned enough to go by myself sometimes, without him; and I
used to ramble about through the places where he had taken me, to
review and examine and ponder things at my leisure. I grew very fond of
London. It is like an immense illustrated book of history.
'One day I was wandering in one of the busy parts of the city, and
turned aside out of the roar and the bustle into a little chapel, lying
close to the roar but separate from it. I had been there before, and
knew there were some fine marbles in the place; one especially, that I
wanted to see again. I was alone that day, and could take my time; and
I went in. It is the tomb of some old dignitary who lived several
centuries ago. I do not know what he was in life; but in death, as this
effigy represents him, it is something beautiful to look upon. I forget
at this minute the name of the sculptor; his work I shall never forget.
It is wonderfully fine. The gravity, and the sweetness, and the
ineffable repose of the figure, are beyond praise. I stood looking,
studying, thinking, I cannot tell for how long--or rather feeling than
thinking, at the moment. When I left the chapel and came out again into
the glare and the rush and the confusion, then I began to think,
mother. I went off to another quiet place, by the bank of the river,
and sat down and thought. I can hardly tell you how. The image of that
infinite repose I carried with me, and the rush of human life filled
the streets I had just come through behind me, and I looked at the
contrast of things. There, for ages already, that quiet; here, for a
day or two, this driving and struggling. Even suppose it be successful
struggling, what does it amount to?'
'It amounts to a good deal while you live,' said Mrs. Dallas.
'And after?'--
'And after too. A man's name, if he has struggled successfully, is held
in remembrance--in honour.'
'What is that to him after he is gone?'
'My dear, you would not advocate a lazy life?--a life without effort?'
'No, mother. The question is, what shall the effort be for?'
Mrs. Dallas was in the greatest perplexity how to carry on this
conversation. She looked down on the figure before her,--Pitt was still
sitting at her feet, holding her two hands on either side of his head;
and she could admire at her leisure the well-knit, energetic frame,
every line of which showed power and life, and every motion of which
indicated also the life and vigour of the spirit moving it. He was the
very man to fight the battle of life with distinguished success--she
had looked forward to his doing it, counted upon it, built her pride
upon it; what did he mean now? Was all that power and energy and
ability to be thrown away? Would he decline to fill the place in the
world which she had hoped to see him fill, and which he could so well
fill? Young people do have foolish fancies, and they pass over; but a
fancy of this sort, just at Pitt's age, might be fatal. She was glad it
was _herself_ and not his father who was his confidant, for Pitt, she
well knew, was one neither to be bullied nor cajoled. But what should
she say to him?
'My dear, I think it is duty,' she ventured at last. 'Everybody must be
put here to do something.'
'What is he put here to do, mamma? That is the very question.'
Pitt was not excited, he showed no heat; he spoke in the quiet, calm
tones of a person long familiar with the thoughts to which he gave
utterance; indeed, alarmingly suggestive that he had made up his mind
about them.
'Pitt, why do you not speak to a clergyman? He could set you right
better than I can.'
'I have, mamma.'
'To what clergyman?'
'To Dr. Calcott of Oxford, and to Dr. Plympton, the rector of the
church to which Uncle Strahan goes.'
'What did they say?'
'Dr. Calcott said I had been studying too hard, and wanted a little
distraction; he thought I was morbid, and warned me against possible
listening to Methodists. Said I was a good fellow, only it was a
mistake to try to be _too_ good; the consequence would be a break-down.
Whether physical or moral, he did not say; I was left to apprehend
both.'
'That is very much as I think myself, only not the fear of break-downs.
I see no signs of that in you, my boy. What did the other, Dr.--whom
did you say?--what did he tell you?'
'Dr. Plympton. He said he did not understand what I would be at.'
'I agree with him too,' said Mrs. Dallas, laughing a little. Pitt did
not laugh.
'I quoted some words to him out of the Bible, and he said he did not
know what they meant.'
'I should think he ought to know.'
'So I thought. But he said it was for the Church to decide what they
meant.'
Mrs. Dallas was greatly at a loss, and growing more and more uneasy.
Pitt went on in such a quiet, meditative way, not asking help of her,
and, she fancied, not intending to ask it of anybody. Suddenly,
however, he lifted his head and turned himself far enough round to
enable him to look in her face.
'Mother,' said he, 'what do you think those words mean in one of the
psalms,--"Thou hast made me exceeding glad with thy countenance"?'
'Are they in the Psalms? I do not know.'
'You have read them a thousand times! In the psalter translation the
wording is a little different, but it comes to the same thing.'
'I never knew what they meant, my boy. There are a great many things in
the Bible that we cannot understand.'
'But is this one of them? "Exceeding glad--_with thy countenance_."
David knew what he meant.'
'The Psalmist was inspired. Of course he understood a great many things
which we do not.'
'We ought to understand some things that he did not, I should think.
But this is a bit of personal experience--not abstruse teaching. David
was "exceeding glad"--and what made him glad? that I want to know.'
Pitt's thoughts were busy with the innocent letter he had once
received, in which a young and unlearned girl had given precisely the
same testimony as the inspired royal singer. Precisely the same. And
surely what Esther had found, another could find, and he might find.
But while he was musing, Mrs. Dallas grew more and more uneasy. She
knew better than to try the force of persuasion upon her son. It would
not avail; and Mrs. Dallas was a proud woman, too proud to ask what
would not be granted, or to resist forcefully what she might not resist
successfully. She never withstood her husband's plans, or asked him to
change them, except in cases when she knew her opposition could be made
effective; so it did not at all follow that she was pleased where she
made no effort to hinder. It was the same in the case of her son,
though rarely proved until now. In the consciousness of her want of
power she was tempted to be a little vexed.
'My dear,' she said, 'what you say sounds to me very like Methodist
talk! They say the Methodists are spreading dreadfully.'
Pitt was silent, and then made a departure.
'How often I have wanted just the touch of these hands!' he said,
giving those he held a little squeeze. 'Mother, there is nothing in all
the world like them.'