A Red Wallflower

by Susan Warner

'My dear, that arch-usurper and mischief-maker, Napoleon Buonaparte, has been beaten by the allied armies at Leipzig—driven back over the Rhine. It's glorious news! I wish I was with Lord Wellington.'

'To fight, papa?'

'Certainly. I would like to have a hand in what is going on. If I could,' he added with a sigh.

'But papa, I should think fighting was not pleasant work?'

'Women's fighting is not.'

'Is men's fighting, papa? Pleasant?'

'It is pleasant to have a blow at a rascal. Ah, well! my fighting days are over. What does Pitt tell you?'

'About his voyage, papa; nothing else.'

'Are you going to let me hear it?'

Esther would a little rather have kept it to herself, simply because it was so precious to her. However, this question was a command, and she read the letter aloud to her father. With that the matter was disposed of, in all but her own mind. For the final result of the letter was to stir up all the pain the writer's absence had caused, and to add to it some new elements of aggravation. Esther had not realized, till those letters came, how entirely the writer of them had gone out of her world. In love and memory she had in a sort still kept him near; without vision she had yet been not fully separated from him. Now these pictures of the other world and of Pitt's life in it came like a bright, sheer blade severing the connection which had until then subsisted between her life and his. Yes, he was in another world! and there was no connection any longer. He had not forgotten her yet, but he would forget; how should he not? how could he help it? In the rich sweep of variety and change and eager action which filled his experience, what thought could he have any more for that quiet figure on the sofa, or this lonely little child, whose life contained no interest whatever! or how could his thoughts return at all to this dull room, where everything remained with no change from morning to night and from one week to another? Always Colonel Gainsborough there on the sofa; always that same green cloth covering the table in the middle of the floor, and the view of the snow-covered garden and road and fields outside the windows, with those everlasting pollard poplars along the fence. While Europe was in commotion, and armies rolling their masses over it, and Napoleon fleeing and Lord Wellington chasing, and every breath was full of eagerness and hope and triumph and purpose in that world without.