CHAPTER XII.
BEGINNING OVER AGAIN.
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.