“I wish that I had never seen her,” he ejaculated, touching his horse with the whip.
And thus a part of the old year died and was buried.
Shaking with cold, not daring to go away by herself, she irresolutely turned the knob of the sitting-room door; her face, she was aware, was not in a state to be taken before her mother’s critical eyes; but her heart was so crushed, she pitied herself with such infinite compassion, that she longed for some one to speak to her kindly, to touch her as if they loved her; any thing to take some of the aching away from that place in her heart where the tears were frozen.
When she needed any mothering she gave it to herself; with her arms around her shivering, shrinkingself, she was beseeching, “Be brave; it’s almost over.”
In the old days, the impulsive little Tessa had always chided herself; the sensitive little Tessa had always comforted herself; the truthful, eager, castle-building little Tessa had always been her own refuge, shield, adviser, and best comforter.
With more bosom friends than she knew how to have confidences with, with more admiring girl friends than she could find a place for, with more hearts open to her than to any one girl at school, Tessa the child, Tessa the maiden, and Tessa the woman had always lived within herself, leaned upon herself.
Mr. Hammerton said that she was a confutation of the oak and vine theory, that he had stood and stood to be entwined about, but that she would never entwine.
In this moment, standing at the door, with her hand upon the knob, a ray of comfort shone into her heart and nestled there like a gleam of sunlight peering through an opening in an under-growth, and the ray of comfort was, that, perhaps Gus Hammerton would come to-night and talk to her in his kindly, practical, unsentimental fashion, sympathizing with her unspoken thoughts, and tender towards the feelings of whose existence he was unaware.
Perhaps—but of late, did she fancy, or was it true? that he was rather shy with her, and dropped into the chair nearest to Dinah.
Well! she could be alone by and by and go to sleep!
So relentless was she, in that instant toward Ralph Towne that it would have been absolute relief could she have looked into his dead face: to see the cold lids shut down fast over the sunshiny eyes, to know that the stiff lips could never open to speak meaningless words, to touch his head and feel assured that, warm and soft, his fingers could never hold hers again.
“Why, Tessa, you look frozen to death,” exclaimed her mother. “How far did you go and where did you meet Mr. Towne?”
“I went to Mayfield,” she closed the door and moved towards the gay little figure reading “The Story of Elizabeth” upon the lounge. “Mr. Towne overtook me after I had passed Old Place.”
“O, Tessa,” cried Dinah, dropping her book, “Dr. Lake was here. What a pity you were out! He asked where ‘Mystic’ was. I made a list on the cover of my book of the things that he talked about. Just hear them. One ought to understand short-hand to keep up with him. Now listen.”
Tessa stood and listened.
“‘The Valley of the Dog,“‘The Car of Juggernaut,“‘Insanity,“‘Intemperance,“‘Tobacco,“‘Slavery,“‘Church and State,“‘Conceit,“‘Surgery,“‘The English Government,“‘Marriage,“‘Flirtations,“‘Ladies as Physicians,“‘The Wicked World,“‘A Quotation from Scott.’
“And that isn’t half. I began to grow interested there, and forgot to write.”
“Where did the professional call come in?”
“Oh, that doesn’t take a second. He watches his patient while he talks! Oh, and he told two hospital stories, a story of his school life, and about being lost in the woods, and about a camp-meeting! He is from Mississippi. Your Mr. Towne couldn’t say so much in ten years.”
“He says that the disease in my lungs is not progressive, but that I should protect my health! I ought to spend every winter in the West Indies or in the south of Europe! South of Europe, indeed! On your father’s business! Now if I had married John Gesner I might have spent my winters in any part of the civilized world.”
“Would you have taken us?” asked Dinah.
“The future is veiled from us mercifully.”
Dinah laughed. “Mother, you forget about love.”
“Love!” exclaimed Mrs. Wadsworth scornfully, “I should like to know what love is.”
“Father knows,” said Dinah. “Have you read ‘Elizabeth,’ Tessa?”
“Yes.”
“I’ddiebefore I’d act as she did, wouldn’t you? I’d die before I’d let any body know that I cared for him more than he cared for me, wouldn’t you?”
“It isn’t so easy to die.”
“Did Mr. Towne speak of Sue Greyson?” inquired Mrs. Wadsworth.
“Yes.”
“What did he say?”
“Nothing—much?”
“He must have said something. Couldn’t you judge of his feelings towards her?”
“I am not a detective.”
“H’m,” ejaculated Mrs. Wadsworth, glancing up at the uneasy lips, “if he can’t talk or sing, he can say something.”
“Possibly.”
Standing alone at one of the windows in her chamber, she watched the sun go down the last night of the old year.
In her young indignation, she had called Ralph Towne some harsh names; while under the fascination of his presence, she had thought that she did not blame him for any thing; but standing alone with the happy, false old year behind her, and the new, empty year opening its door into nowhere, she cried, with a voiceless cry: “You are not true; you are not sincere; you are shallow and selfish.”
At this moment, watching the same sunset, for he had an appreciation of pretty things, he wasdriving homeward almost as nerve-shaken as Tessa herself; according to his measure, he was regretting that these two trusting women were suffering because of his—he did not call it selfishness—he had been merely thoughtless.
Tessa’s heart could kindle and glow and burn itself out into white ashes before his would feel the first tremor of heat; she had prided herself upon being a student of human nature, but this man in his selfishness, his slowness, his simplicity, had baffled her.
How could she be a student of human nature if she understood nothing but truth?
She was in a bitter mood to-night, not sparing Ralph Towne as she would not have spared herself. The crimson and gold faded! the gray shut down over her world: “How alone I shall be to live in a year without him!”
“O, Tessa! Tessa!” cried Dinah, running up-stairs, “here’s Gus, and he has brought us something good and funny I know, for he’s so provokingly cool.”
How could she think thoughts about the old year and the sunset with this practical friend down-stairs and a mysterious package that must mean books! She had expected to cry herself to sleep; instead she read Dickens with Mr. Hammerton until the new year was upon them.
“Gus,” she said severely, with the volumes of Dickens piled in her arms up to her chin, “if I become matter-of-fact, practical, and commonplace there will be no one in the world to thank but you.I had a poem at my finger tips about the old year that would have forever shattered the fame of Tennyson and Longfellow.”
“As we have lost it, we’ll be content with them,” he said. “Drop your books and let us read them.”
Before the dawn she was dreaming and weeping in her sleep, for a voice was repeating, not the voice in the school-house, nor the voice that had read Longfellow, but the voice that had spoken the cold good-by at the gate:
“The leaves are falling, falling,Solemnly and slow;Caw! Caw! the rooks are calling,It is a sound of woe,A sound of woe!”
There was the faintest streak of sunshine on the dying verbenas in her garden; the dead leaves, twigs, and sprays looked as if some one who did not care had trampled on them. She was glad that the plants were in, that there was a warm place for them somewhere.
The school children were jostling against each other on the planks, on the opposite side of the street, laughing and shouting. Nellie Bird was provokingly chanting:
“Freddie’s mad,And I am glad,And I know what will please him.”
and there were two little girls in red riding hoods, plaid cloaks, and gay stockings, skipping along with their hands joined. It was a hard world for little girls to grow up in. She had run along the planks from school once, not so very long ago, swinging her lunch-basket and teasing Felix Harrison just as at this minute Nellie Bird was teasing Freddie Stone.
Her needle was taking exquisite stitches; Dinah liked white aprons for school wear, and this was the last of the dainty half-dozen. Her mother’s voice and step broke in upon her reverie.
“Tessa, I wouldn’t have believed it, but six of my cans of tomatoes have all sizzled up! Not one was last year, though. Mrs. Bird never has such good luck with hers as we have with ours.”
“That’s too bad. But we have so many that we sha’n’t miss them.”
“That isn’t the question. I remember how my side ached that day. Bridget was so stupid and you and Dine had gone up to West Point with Gus; he always is coming and taking you and Dine off somewhere! You are not attending to a word I say.”
“Yes, I am; I am thinking how you took us all three to look at your cans of tomatoes.”
“But you don’t care about the tomatoes. You never do take an interest in house-work. I would rather have Sue Greyson’s skin stuffed with straw than to have you around the house. Andsheis going to marry Ralph Towne: she passed with him this morning; they were in the phaeton with that pair of little grays! And Sue was driving! I believe that you have taken cold in some way, you must see the doctor the next time he comes; your face is the color of chalk, and your eyes are as big as saucers with dark rims under them! You sat here writing altogether too late last night.”
“It was only eleven when I went up-stairs.”
“That was just an hour too late. What good does your writing do you or any body, I’d like to know.”
“It is rather too early in my life to judge.”
“Your father spoils you about writing; I suppose that he thinks you are a feather inhiscap; I tell him that you are none of my bringing up.”
“I am not ‘up’ yet, perhaps.”
“You may as well drop that work and take a run into Dunellen; the air will do you good. You had color enough in the summer. I want a spool of red silk, two pieces of crimson dress braid, and a spool of fifty cotton. Don’t get scarlet braid, I want crimson; and run into the library and get me something exciting; you might have known better than to bring me that volume of essays!”
She folded the apron and laid it on the pile in the willow work-basket, wrapped herself in a bright shawl, covered her braids with a brown velvet hat, and started for her walk, drawing on her gloves as she went down the path.
Her mother stood at the window watching her. “She is too deep for me,” she soliloquized; “there is more in her than I shall ever make out. She is so full of nonsense that I expect she has refused Ralph Towne, and what for, I can’t see—there’s no one else in the way.”
In Tessa’s pocket was a long and wide envelope containing the article that she had sat up last night to write; the lessons gathered from her old year she had told in her simple, quaint, forcible style. Thetitle was as simple as the article: “Making Mistakes.”
“Tessa, you are not brilliant,” Miss Jewett had once remarked, “but you do go right to the spot.”
The fresh air tinged her cheeks, she breathed more freely away from her work and her reveries; there was life and light somewhere, she need not suffocate in the dark.
It was not a long walk into the little city of Dunellen; fifteen minutes of brisk stepping along the planks brought her to the corner that turned into the broad, paved, maple-lined street. As she turned the corner, a lame child in a calico dress and torn hood staggered past her bent with the weight of a heavy basket. She stopped and would have spoken, but the shy eyes were not encouraging.
Two years ago all the world might have knocked at her gate and she would not have heard.
“Will you ride?” She lifted her eyes, with their color deepening, to find Mr. Towne sitting alone in his carriage looking down at her.
“You are going the wrong way.”
“Because I am not goingyourway?” he asked somewhat sternly.
“I thought that you had gone away,” she said uncomfortably.
“We go on the seventeenth.”
“You have not told me where?”
“Have I not? You have forgotten. Sue will stay at home and learn to be sensible.”
“I don’t like you when you speak in that tone.”
“Then I will never do it again.”
“Good-by,” she said cheerily, passing on.
His thoughts ran on—“How bright she is! She has a sweet heart, if ever a woman had! I wonder if Iamletting slip through my fingers one of the opportunities that come to a man but once in a lifetime! A year or two hence will do; she cares too much to forget me.”
Her thoughts ran on-“Howcanyou look so good and so handsome and not be true!”
With a quickened step she crossed the Park. Miss Jewett’s large fancy store was opposite the Park.
Miss Jewett was never too tired or too busy to live again her young life. Sue Greyson was sure that she had broken somebody’s heart, else she never was so eloquent in warning her about Stacey Rheid. Laura Harrison had decided that she had once lived in constant dread of having a step-mother. Mary Sherwood wondered if she had ever been a busybody, and in that experience had learned to warn her to keep quiet her busy tongue; and Tessa Wadsworth knew that she must have learned her one word of advice: “Wait,” through years that she would not talk about.
Miss Jewett was seldom alone; Tessa was glad to find the clerks absent and no one bending over the counter but Sue Greyson.
“O, Tessa,” she cried in her loud, laughing voice. “I haven’t seen you in an age.”
Miss Jewett’s greeting was a hand-clasp; amongall her girls (and all the girls in Dunellen were hers) Tessa Wadsworth was the elected one.
“Mrs. Towne has every thing so delicious,” Sue was rattling on; “such perfumes and such silks and such jewels. Oh, how Old Place makes my mouth water! I wish you could go over the place, Tessa; you were never even through the grounds, were you? Mr. Ralph takes great pride in keeping it nice; of course, it is really his. I’d marry any body to live there and have plenty of money and do just as I please; not that Mr. Ralph isn’t something out of the common, though. People say that he never means any thing by his attentions; Dr. Lake says—”
“I hear that you are going to St. Louis,” interrupted Miss Jewett.
“No, I’m not. And I’m as provoked as I can be and live! Something has happened; Mr. Ralph is an uneasy mortal; he never knows what he will do next, and he has changed his mind about taking me. My cake is all dough about my winter’s fun. How I cried the night she told me! The last night of the year, too, when I ought to have been full of fun. Mrs. Towne wants me to write to her, but I’d never dare, unless you would help me, Tessa, about the spelling and punctuation. Mr. Ralph would laugh until he died over my letters.
“I don’t write to Stacey now, Miss Jewett. I wrote him a letter one Sunday from Old Place and told him that he might as well cease. Mr. Ralphand I had been walking through the wood and he asked me if I were engaged to Stacey! I thought it was about time to stop that.”
“Perhaps if you had been home you wouldn’t have written that letter. Stacey is a fine fellow.”
“Oh, I had thought of it, but that day I decided! Stacey can hardly support one, let alone two. Father says that I was born to have a rich husband because I have such luxurious tastes! I know that I shall die cooped up at home. I have to go out to see the sons and daughters of the land. Tessa, I don’t see how you live.”
“I do, nevertheless,” said Tessa, selecting her spool of silk.
“I shall have Dr. Lake this winter or I couldn’t exist. He says that he will take me everywhere if father will only give him the time. He is great fun, only he does get so moody and serious; sits for two hours in the office with his head in his hands. Mr. Ralph doesn’t have moods; he is always pleasant. I am going to stay these last few days at Old Place. Tessa, I am coming to stay all night with you and have a long talk.”
“I shall be very glad; I have been wishing that you would.”
“Oh, I’ll come. I have a whole budget to tell you.”
“Sue, you look thin,” said Miss Jewett, rolling up her purchases.
“Iamthin. Since the night before New Years I have lost three pounds.”
The night before New Years! Tessa’s veil shaded her face falling between her and Sue.
“Mr. Ralph lectured me; oh,howhe talked! When he will, he will, that’s the truth. His mother says that her will is nothing compared to his, and I believe it.” Sue’s face grew troubled. “He told me that I ought to read travels and histories, and throw away novels; that I ought to marry Stacey, if he is a good man and can take care of me—” Her voice sounded as if she were crying; she laughed instead and ran off.
“Something at Old Place has hurt Sue; I didn’t like the idea of Mrs. Towne taking her up; Mr. Towne—I do not know about him! Do you?”
“No.”
“Ah, here comes Sarah! Rachel has a sore throat, and Mary has gone to the city to buy to-day. Light the gas, Sarah.”
The light flashed over the faces: Miss Jewett’s almost as fair as a child’s, and sweeter than any child’s that Tessa had ever seen, with a mouth in the lines of which her whole history was written, with just a suspicion of dimples in the tinted cheeks, with brown rings of soft hair touching the smooth forehead; the younger face was hurried, anxious, with a trembling of the lips, and a nervous gleam in the eyes that were so dark, to-night, that they might have been mistaken for hazel.
The door was pushed open; a crowd of girls giggled in; Tessa bowed to Mary Sherwood and movedaside. She was turning over a pile of wools, selecting colors for a sacque for Dinah, when a laugh from the group thrilled her; low, deep, full, in all her life she had never heard a sound like it.
It was as sweet as the note of a thrush and as jubilant as a thoughtless girl.
“Now, Naughty Nan, you are laughing at me. But I will forgive you, because you are going away so soon. When are you coming back?”
“Never. I will allure the black bear to take me around the world.”
Naughty Nan stepped back, tossing her curls away from her face; Tessa looked down into her face, for she was a little thing; it was not a remarkable face: a broad forehead, deep set brown eyes, a passable complexion, a saucy mouth. If she would only laugh again; but she would not even speak.
How surprised Tessa would have been had she known that Naughty Nan had been studying her and wishing, “I want to be like you.”
The group of girls giggled out.
“I have fallen in love,” said Tessa.
“With Nan Gerard? Every body does. She is one of those lovable little creatures that every body spoils! It’s strange that you haven’t met her; she is Mary Sherwood’s cousin.”
“I do remember now—Mr. Hammerton told me that I must hear her laugh.”
“Her home is in St. Louis; she had never been in Dunellen until a month since; she was her father’spet and lived abroad with him until he died a year ago! He named her Naughty Nan. She has plenty of money and plenty of lovers! She is going home under the escort of Mr. Towne and his mother. Perhaps it is her laugh that has stolen his heart from Sue! Naughty Nan was to be married, but the gentleman died in consumption.”
“And she can laugh as lightly as that! If my father should die I would never laugh again.”
On the evening of the eighteenth of January, Tessa was sitting alone in her chamber, wrapped in her shawl, writing. She was keeping a secret, for she was writing a book and no one knew it but Mr. Hammerton; he would not have known it had not several questions arisen to which she could find no answer.
“I can not do without my encyclopedia,” she had said.
She had written the title lovingly—“Under the Wings.”
This chamber was her sanctuary; she was born in this room, she had lived in it ever since; her little battles had been fought on this consecrated ground, her angry tears, her wilful tears, and the few later grateful tears had fallen while kneeling at the side of the white-draped bed or sitting at the window with her head in her hands or on the window-sill. A stranger would have thought it a plain, low room with its cottage set of pale green and gold trimmings, its ingrain carpet ofoak leaves on a green ground, its gray paper with scarlet border, and three white shades with scarlet tassels.
The high mantel was piled with books, the gifts of her father, Mr. Hammerton, and Miss Jewett; on the walls were photographs in oval black-walnut frames of Miss Jewett, sitting at a table with her elbow upon it and one hand resting on a book in her lap, of her father and mother, she sitting and he standing behind her, and one of herself and Dinah, taken when they were fifteen and twenty-one; there were also a large photograph taken from a painting of the Mater Dolorosa, which Mr. Hammerton had given her on her fourteenth birthday and a chromo of Red Riding Hood that he had given to Dinah upon her fourteenth birthday. Upon the table at which she was writing, books were piled, and a package of old letters that she had been sorting, and choosing some to burn, among which were two from Felix Harrison. The package contained several from Mr. Hammerton, but his were never worth burning; they were only worth keeping because they were so like himself. Pages of manuscript were scattered among the books, and a long envelope contained two rejected articles that she had planned to rewrite after a consultation with Mr. Hammerton and to send elsewhere. She had cried over her first rejected article (when she was eighteen), and two years afterward had revised it, changed the title, and her father had been proud of it in print.
She was writing and thinking of Sue when a noisy entrance below announced her presence.
“Go right up,” said Mrs. Wadsworth’s voice. “Tessa is star-gazing in her room. Don’t stay if you are chilly. Tessa likes to be cold.”
Tessa met her at the head of the stairs.
“I’ve come to stay all night. Do you want me?”
“I want you more than I want any one in the world.”
“That’s refreshing. I wanted to see you and that’s why I came. Norah Bird said that Dine was to stay all night with her and I knew I should have you all to myself. Dr. Lake brought me. I believe that he wanted me to come. What do you stay up here for? It’s lovely down-stairs with your father and mother; she is sewing and he is reading to her. Put away that great pile of foolscap and talk to me; I’m as full of talk as an egg is full of meat.”
“Must I break the shell?”
“Your room always looks pretty and there isn’t much in it, either.”
“Of course not, after Old Place.”
“Old Placeisenchanting!” Sue tossed her gloves and hat to the bed. “I’ll keep on my sacque; I want to stay up here.”
Tessa had reseated herself at the table. Sue dropped down on the carpet at her feet.
“Have they gone?”
“Oh, yes! I stayed to see them off and droveto the depot with them. We called for Nan Gerard. What a flirt that girl is! Any one would think that she had known Mr. Ralph all his life.”
Sue leaned backward against Tessa; her face was feverish and excited, her thin cheeks would have looked hollow but for their high color, her eyes as she raised them revealed something new; something new and not altogether pleasant.
Tessa touched her hair and then bent over and kissed her. It was so seldom that Sue was kissed.
“You know that night—” Sue began with an effort, “the night before New Years. Mr. Ralph found me in his den, I was arranging one of his tables, and he said that he wanted to talk to me. And I should think hedid! I didn’t know that he had so much tongue in his head. His mother calls him Ralph the Silent. Grace Geer calls him Ralph the Wily when nobody hears. He is Ralph the Hateful when he wants to be. How he went on! Fury! There! I promised him not to talk slang or to use ‘unlady-like exclamations.’ I was as high and mighty as he was, but I wanted to cry all the time. He said that I ought to live for something, that I am not a child but a woman. And I promised him that I wouldn’t read novels until he says that I may! He said that I didn’t know what trouble is!Hehas had trouble, Grace Geer says. I don’t see how. Some girl I suppose. Perhaps she flirted with him. I hope she did. But I have had trouble. Didheever wait and wait and wait for a thing till he almost died with waiting, andthen find that he didn’t get it and nevercould? Did you ever feel so?”
The appealing eyes were looking into hers; she could not speak instantly.
“I don’t believe that you ever did. You are quiet. You have a nice home and people to love you; your mother and father are so proud of you; your mother is always talking to people about you as if she couldn’t live without you! And you don’t have beaux and such horrid things! I shouldn’t think that you would like Dine to have a lover before you have one.”
“Dine?” said Tessa, looking perplexed.
“Why, yes, Mr. Hammerton.”
“Oh, I forgot him,” replied Tessa, almost laughing.
“I wish that I hadneverseen Old Place. I never should have thought any thing if it hadn’t been for Grace Geer. Before I went to Old Place I expected to marry Stacey. She put things into my head. She used to call me Mrs. Ralph, and tell me how splendidly I could dress after I was married! And she used to ask me what he said to me and explain that it meant something. I didn’t know that it meant any thing. He was so old and so wise that I thought he could never think of me. Once she went home with me and she told father and Aunt Jane and Dr. Lake that they were going to lose me. He told me himself that night that he was more interested in me than in any body.”
“Did he say that?” asked Tessa, startled.
“Yes, he did.”
“So am I interested in your life. I want to see what becomes of you.”
“Oh, he didn’t meanthat. He meant in me. But I suppose he didn’t mean any thing, or he wouldn’t have told his mother not to take me to St. Louis. You think I like him because he’s rich and handsome, but I don’t. I like him because he was so kind to me; nobody was ever so kind to me before; I can love any one who is kind to me. He gave me his photograph a year ago. It’s elegant. I’ll show it to you some time. I know he had six taken, for I saw them and counted them; he didn’t know it, though. And I heard him tell his mother that he hadfivetaken. I never could find out where that sixth one went to. I know that his mother had one, and Grace Geer, and Miss Sarepta Towne, that’s three! And mine was four, and Philip Towne’s was five. I asked him where the other was.”
“What did he say?” asked Tessa, gravely.
“He said nothing. I know that Aunt Jane thinks my not going the queerest thing in nature, and father looked rather nonplussed and asked me what I had been doing. I am as ashamed as I can be.”
Tessa arranged her papers thoughtfully; she was pondering Grace Geer’s name for Mr. Towne.
“Perhaps he will change his mind and come home and like me,” said Sue, brightening.
“O, Sue, Sue, don’t make a disappointment foryourself! When there are so many good and beautiful things in the world, why do you see only this that is being withheld?”
“Because—” with a drooping head, “I want it so.”
“There are good men and good women in the world, Sue; men and women whose word is pure gold.”
“Whose, I’d like to know?”
“Miss Jewett’s.”
“Oh, of course!”
“And Gus Hammerton’s.”
“Oh, he’s as wise and stupid as an owl!”
“Dr. Johnson could think in Latin and I should not wonder if Gus could.”
“But he’s awkward and never talks nonsense, and he wears spectacles and has a tiny bald spot on the top of his head, the place where the wool ought to grow! The girls don’t run after him.”
“They are not wise enough.”
“He’s so old, too.”
“He’s younger than Mr. Towne.”
“He doesn’t look so. And he’s poor.”
“He has a good salary in the bank.”
“Mr. Ralph has the pure gold, but it is not in his word. I only wish it was. I always pray over my love affairs; they ought to come out all right.”
“How do you know what ‘all right’ is?”
“I know what I want.”
“I’ll say to you what Miss Jewett always saysWait.”
“What for? I don’t know what I’m waiting for. Do you?”
“Yes.”
“What? Tell me.”
“The will of God.”
“Oh!” Sue drew nearer as if she were frightened. After a while she spoke: “I’m so sorry for dear Mrs. Towne. She has every thing in the world but the thing she wants most. She said one day that she would be willing to be the poorest woman in Dunellen if she might have a daughter. She said it one day after we had passed you; you were alone, picking up leaves near the corner by the brook. ‘A daughter like that,’ she said, and she turned to look back at you; you were standing still with the leaves in your hand. Mr. Ralph didn’t say anything, but he looked back, too. I said, ‘That’s Tessa Wadsworth.’ Mrs. Towne said, ‘Do you know her, Ralph?’ and he said, ‘I have met her several times.’”
Tessa had wiped her gold pen and slipped it into its morocco case; she closed her writing-desk as she said cheerily: “Now about this winter, Sue; what do you intend to do?”
“You don’t know how horrid it is at home! Father always has his pockets full of bottles and he doesn’t care for the things that interest me; all he talks about is his ‘cases,’ and all Aunt Jane cares for is house-work and the murders in the newspapers; Dr. Lake is splendid, but he’s so poor and he’s low-spirited when he isn’t full of fun; and when hisengagement with father is ended he’ll set up for himself, and it will take him a century to afford to be married.”
“Sue, look up at me and listen.”
Sue looked up and listened.
“I pray you don’t flirt with Dr. Lake.”
Sue laughed a conscious laugh.
“Men flirt; they haven’t any hearts.”
“He has. You do not know the influence for evil that you may become in his life.”
Sue’s eyes grew wild, she clung to Tessa with both hands. “You sha’n’t talk so to me. You sha’n’t. You make me afraid. I’ll try to be good. Iwilltry.”
“How will you try?”
“I won’t try to make him like me. I am sure that he would if I should try a little. I’ll tell him about Stacey. Tessa,I don’t want to be an old maid.”
Tessa’s eyes and lips kept themselves grave.
“I wouldn’t think about that. I’d do good and be good; I’d help Aunt Jane, and go with your father on his long drives—”
“I’d rather go with Dr. Lake.”
“Let your father see what a delightful daughter you can be. My father and I can talk for hours about books and places and people.”
“Hateful! I hate books. And I don’t know about places and book-people.”
“And don’t wait for Dr. Lake to come in at night.”
“I do. I made him a cup of coffee last night.”
“Who makes coffee for your father?”
“Oh father thought that I made it for him. But Dr. Lake knew!”
“I will read history with you this winter. Dine and I intend to study German with Gus Hammerton; you can study with us, if you will.”
“Ugh!” groaned Sue, “as if that were as much fun as getting married.”
“It may help along. Who knows?” laughed Tessa.
“I’m going to make Miss Gesner a visit next month. She asked me to-day. But they are such old men? Mr. John Gesner is an old beau! Mr. Lewis is lovely, so kind and polite. And Miss Gesner is charming when she doesn’t try to educate me. Their house is grander than Old Place and they keep more servants. I’ll forget all about Old Place before spring. Mr. John Gesner likes girls.”
“Sue.”
“Well! Don’t be so solemn.”
“If I were to die and leave a little girl in the world as your mother left you, I would hope that some one would watch over her, and if the time came, through her own foolishness, or in the way of God’s discipline, for a disappointment to come to her, I would hope that this friend would love her as I love you to-night. She would warn her, advise her, and encourage her! Don’t go to visit Miss Gesner; she is selfish to ask you; you are bright and lively and she likes to have you to help entertain her friends—but you will not be so gooda daughter to your father if your heart is drawn away from his home; the best home that he can afford to give you.”
“There’s danger at home and danger abroad,” laughed Sue. “Don’t you wish that you could put me in a glass case?”
“I don’t know what to do with you.”
“Oh, something will happen to me before long. I’ll get married or die or something. I’m glad I had my things ready to go with the Townes, for now I have them ready to go to Miss Gesner’s. I wish I had a mother and my little brother hadn’t died. I’d like to have arealhome like yours! I wouldn’t mind if it were as plain as this; but I’d rather have it like Old Place. Won’t Nan Gerard have a lovely time? Such a long journey, and Mr. Ralph will be so attentive, and she’ll be so proud to be with such a handsome fellow! Don’t you like to be proud of people that belong to you? I am always proud enough to go out with Mr. Ralph.”
“There is some one else to be proud of somewhere! Sue, can’t you be brave?”
“Somebody will have what I want,” said Sue. “I can’t bear to think of that. I shall have to drive past Old Place in father’s chaise with one horse, and I hate to drive with one horse! and see somebody inmyplace in silks and velvets and diamonds and emeralds! Andshewill have visitors from all over and Old Place will be full of good times and Mr. Ralph will let her do it all and beso kind to her! And she will be so proud and happy and handsome. Wouldyoulike that? You know you wouldn’t. Do you think that I really must give him up?”
Sue did not see the distressed face above her; she felt that the fingers that touched her hair and forehead were loving and pitiful.
“Don’t talk so; don’tthinkso! Forget all about Old Place. Do you not remember Mrs. Towne’s kindness? That is a happier thing to think of than the grounds and the house and handsome furniture.”
“I wish I had told you about it before,” sobbed Sue. “You would have made it right for me; then I wouldn’t have thought and thought about it until it wasreal. And now I can’t believe that it isn’t true and the house is shut up with only Mr. and Mrs. Ryerson and the boy to look after things and Mr. Ralph gone not to come back—ever, perhaps. If Mrs. Towne should die, perhaps he won’t come back but go off and be a doctor; for he doesn’t want to be married, he said so; he told his mother so. I don’t want him to be a doctor and have bottles in all his pockets and smell of medicine like father and Dr. Lake. He wouldn’t be Mr. Ralph any more.”
“So much the better for you.”
“Then you don’t think that he’s so grand.”
She answered quietly, surprising herself with the truth that she had not dared to confess to herself, “No. I do not think he is so grand.”
“Who is?”
“Who is? George Macdonald and George Eliot and Shakespeare and St. Paul and my father and your father,” laughed Tessa.
“Hark. They are singing over the way.”
“There’s a child’s party there to-night.”
Tessa went to the window.
Loud and merry were the voices:
“Little Sally Waters sitting in the sun,Weeping and crying for a man.”
Sue laughed. “Oh, how that carries me back.”
“That’s good advice,” said Tessa, as the children shouted—
“Rise, Sally, rise, and wipe off your eyes.”
“I wish that I were a little girl over there in the fun,” said Sue. “Suppose we go.”
“I intended to go. Perhaps we can teach them some new games.”
No one among the children was merrier than Sue; not one any more a child.
“I think I’ll stay little,” said Sue, coming to Tessa, half out of breath. “I’m never going to grow up; it’s hateful being a woman, isn’t it?”
“You will never know,” said Tessa laughing. “There’s little Harry Sherwood calling for Sue Greyson now.”
Towards midnight, when Tessa was asleep, Sue awakened her with, “Put your arm around me, I can’t go to sleep.”
Sue lay still not speaking or moving.
The clock in the sitting-room struck three.
“Tessa, Tessa,” whispered a startled voice, “are you awake?”
“Yes,” rousing herself, “what is it? Is any thing the matter?”
“Oh, no,” wearily, “but it has struck one, and two, and three, and I’m afraid it will strike four.”
“I suppose it will unless the clock stops or time ceases to be.”
“What will be when time ceases to be? What comes next?”
“Forever comes next. Don’t you want it to be forever?”
“You sha’n’t talk so and frighten me. I can’t go to sleep. I thought somebody was dying or dead.”
“You were dreaming.” Tessa put a loving arm around her. “Didn’t you ever say the multiplication table in the night?”
“No, nor any other time.”
The moonlight shone in through the open window, making a golden track across the carpet.
“The moon shines on Red Riding Hood,” said Sue. “Tell me a story, Tessa.”
“Don’t you like the moonlight? Some one had a lovely little room once and she said that the moonlight came in and swept it clean of foolish thoughts.”
“What else?” in an interested voice.
“It is a long story; it is in blank verse, too, and you like rhymes.”
“I’ve been trying to say Mother Goose and Old Mother Hubbard.”
“I will tell you a story,” said Tessa, as wide awake as if the sun were shining. “I will rhyme it as I run along, and when I hesitate and can not make good sense and a perfect rhyme, we’ll go to sleep.”
“Well, but you must do your best.”
“I always do my best. I tell Gus and Dine stories in rhyme.”
So she began with a description of a little girl who was fair and a boy who was brave, who grew up and grew together, but cruel fate in the shape of a step-mother separated them, and he travelled all over the world, and she stayed at home and made tatting, until a hundred years went by and he came to the door a worn-out traveller and found her a withered maiden sitting alone feeding her cat. Afterward in trying to recall this, she only remembered one couplet:
“He was covered with snow, his hat with fur,He took it off and bowed to her.”
Once or twice Sue gave a hysterical laugh.
The story was brought to a proper and blissful conclusion; still Sue was sleepless.
“How far on their journey do you suppose they are now?”
“I’m not a time-table.”
Sue lay too still to be asleep; when shewasstill she was a marvel of stillness.
Daylight and breakfast found her in high spirits, asking advice of Mrs. Wadsworth about making a wrapper out of an old brown cashmere, and talking to Tessa about the drive that she had promised to take with Dr. Lake, saying the last thing as she ran down the steps, “I’ll come and study German if I can’t find any thing better to do.”
In all the talks afterward, Sue never alluded to this night; it was the only part of her life that she wished Tessa to forget; she herself forgot every thing except that she was miserable about Mr. Ralph and two of the lines in the story that she had laughed about and called as “stupid” as her own life:
“The room in which she lived alone, was carpeted with matting;She spent the hours, she spent the days, in making yards oftatting.”
“Miss Jewett.”
“Well, dear.”
Tessa was sitting on the carpet in Miss Jewett’s little parlor with her head in Miss Jewett’s lap; Miss Jewett had been smoothing the girl’s hair for several minutes, neither speaking.
“I have lost something; I don’t dare try to find it for fear that God has taken it away from me.”
“How did you lose it?”
Tessa raised her head, paused, then spoke impressively: “I lost it throughcarefulness.”
“Ah! I have heard of such a thing before.”
“Oh, have you? Is any one in the world like me? I thought that no one ever made such mistakes as I do, or needed the discipline that I need!”
“My dear, all hearts are fashioned alike.”
“But all lives are not alike.”
“Not so different as you imagine; in my girls I live over my old struggles, longings, mistakes; in the history of lives lived ages ago I find the same struggles, longings, mistakes, the same need of the same discipline.”
“Oh, if you can help me; if you can only help me! You study the Bible, isn’t every thing in the Bible? Didn’t Paul mean that every thing was in it when he said that through the comfort of the Scriptures we have hope? I can not find any thing to suit me;youfind something.”
The gaslight was more than she could bear, she dropped her head again, covering her face with both hands.
“Suppose you tell me all about it.”
“All about it,” repeated Tessa in a muffled tone. “I could not if I wanted to; but I can tell you where the despair comes in.”
“That is all I want to know.”
“Well,” raising her head again and speaking clearly and slowly. “It was an opportunity to get something that I wanted. I thought I had it, I thought it was laid in my hand and I had but to clasp my fingers tightly over it to keep it forever and forever; I cared so much that I hardly cared for any thing else. I do not think that I would lose it again through caring too much. Do you think that it is just as hard for God to see us too careful as too careless?”
“How were you too careful?”
“Oh, in being wise and doing things in my own way. What I want to know is this: did He ever give any body another opportunity? If He ever did, I will hope that He will be just as tender towards me.”
“Christ came down to earth to seek the lost; alost opportunity is one of the things that He came to find. I think if you seek it for His sake, and not for your own, that He will find it for you.”
“For His sake, not for mine,” repeated Tessa, wonderingly. “How can I ever attain to that? I am very selfish.”
“Do you remember about David, whose heart was fashioned like yours, how careful he was once and what happened?”
Miss Jewett was speaking in her brisk, working voice; the troubled face had become alight.
“Now we will read about one who made a sorry mistake by being so careful that he forgot to find out God’s way of doing a certain thing. He did the thing that he wanted to do after a style of his own.”
Tessa arose and went into Miss Jewett’s bedroom; she knew that the Bible she loved best, the one pencilled and interlined, was always kept on a stand near the head of her bed. While Miss Jewett was opening it, Tessa said hurriedly and earnestly “I knew that if it were anywhere in the Bible—that if any one in the world had suffered like me—that you would know where to find them. You said last Sunday that God had written something to help us in every perplexity; but I studied and studied and could not find any thing about second opportunities. Perhaps mine is only a foolish little trouble; not a grand one like David’s.”
“Do you think that God likes to hear you say that?”
“No,” confessed Tessa. “I will not even think it again.”
“Have you forgotten how David attempted to bring the Ark into the city of David, and how he failed? What a mortifying and distressing failure it was, too. Now I’ll read it to you.”
One of Tessa’s pleasures was to listen to her reading the Bible; she read as if David lived across the Park, and as if the city of David were not a mile away.
Tessa kept her head in its old position and listened with intent and longing eyes.
“‘And David consulted with the captains of thousands and hundreds and every leader. And David said unto all the congregation of Israel, If it seem good unto you, and that it be of the Lord our God, let us send abroad unto our brethren everywhere, that are left in all the land of Israel, and with them also to the priests and Levites which are in their cities and suburbs, that they may gather themselves together unto us: and let us bring again the Ark of our God to us: for we inquired not at it in the days of Saul. And all the congregation said that they would do so: for the thing was right in the eyes of all the people. So David gathered all Israel together from Shihor of Egypt even unto the entering of Hemath, to bring the Ark of God from Kirjath-jearim. And David went up and all Israel to Baalah, that is to Kirjath-jearim, which belonged to Judah, to bring up thence the Ark of God the Lord, that dwelleth betweenthe cherubim whose name is called on it. And they carried the Ark of God in a new cart—’ In anewcart, Tessa; see how careful he was!”
“Yes.”
“‘—Out of the house of Abinadab; and Uzza and Ahir drave the cart.’ That was all right and proper, wasn’t it?”
“It seems so to me.”
“‘And David and all Israel played before God with all their might, and with singing, and with harps, and with timbrels, and with cymbals, and with trumpets.’ They were joyful with all their might. Were you as joyful as that?”
“Yes: fully as joyful as that.”
“Now see the confusion, the shame, and the fear that followed those harps and timbrels and trumpets. ‘And when they came unto the threshing-floor of Chidon, Uzza put forth his hand to hold the Ark; for the oxen stumbled. And the anger of the Lord was kindled against Uzza, and He smote him, because he put his hand to the Ark: and he died before God. And David was displeased, because the Lord had made a breach upon Uzza: wherefore that place is called Perez-uzza, to this day. And David was afraid of God that day, saying, How shall I bring the Ark of God home to me?’”
“I should think that hewouldhave been afraid,” said Tessa; “and after he had been so sure and joyful, too.”
Miss Jewett read on: “‘So David brought notthe Ark home to himself to the city of David, but carried it aside to the house of Obed-edom the Gittite.’”
Tessa raised her head to speak. “I can not understand where his mistake was; how could he have been too careful of such a treasure. Oh, how terrible and humiliating his disappointment must have been! How ashamed he was before all the people! I can bear any thing better than to be humiliated.”
“My poor, proud Tessa.”
Tessa’s tears started at the tone; these first words of sympathy overcame her utterly; she dropped her head again and cried like a child, like the little child Tessa who had had so many fits of crying.
The eyes above her were as wet as her own; once or twice warm lips touched her forehead and cheek.
“Didhehave another opportunity?” asked Tessa, at last. “I can understand how afraid he was. I was troubled because I gave thanks for the thing that was taken away from me. Did he find an answer to his ‘How’?”
“He was thankful, sincere, and careful.”
“I should think that was enough,” exclaimed Tessa, almost indignantly; “but I know that there was sin somewhere, else the anger of the Lord would not have been kindled. They went home without the Ark. That is saddest of all.”
“It was kept three months in the house of Obed-edom, and during those three months humbled David studiedthe law and found that his cart, new as it was, was not according to the will of God.
“‘Then David said, None ought to carry the Ark of God but the Levites; for them hath the Lord chosen to carry the Ark of God, and to minister unto Him forever.’”
“And hecouldhave known that before,” cried Tessa.
“‘And David gathered all Israel together to Jerusalem, to bring up the Ark of the Lord unto his place, which he had prepared for it, and David assembled the children of Aaron and the Levites and said unto them, Ye are the chief of the fathers of the Levites: sanctify yourselves, both ye and your brethren, that ye may bring up the Ark of the Lord God of Israel unto the place that I have prepared for it. For because ye did it not at the first, the Lord our God made a breach upon us, for that we sought Him not after the due order.”
“Oh, how can we know every thing to do at the first?”
“How could David have known? Now he had found the right way to do the right thing. ‘So the priests and the Levites sanctified themselves to bring up the Ark of the Lord God of Israel. And the children of the Levites bare the Ark of God upon their shoulders with the staves thereon as Moses commanded, according to the word of the Lord. And David spake to the chief of the Levites to appoint their brethren to be the singers withinstruments of music, psalteries and harps and cymbals, sounding, by lifting up the voice with joy. So David, and the elders of Israel, and the captains over thousands, went to bring up the Ark of the covenant of the Lord out of the house of Obed-edom with joy.’”
“He was not afraid now,” said Tessa. “I think that he was all the more joyful because he had been so humiliated and afraid. I will think about that new cart.”
“And those three months in which he was finding out the will of God. ‘And it came to pass, when God helped the Levites that bare the Ark of the covenant of the Lord that they offered seven bullocks and seven rams.’ He could not help them the first time because their way was not according to His law; their joy, their thankfulness, their sincerity, their carefulness availed them nothing because they kept not His law. Uzza was a priest and should have known the law; David was king and he should have known the law.”
“But he had his second opportunity, despite his mistake.”
“And so, if your desire be according to His will may you have yours; it may be months or years, half your lifetime, but if you study His word and ask for your second opportunity through the intercession of Christ, I am sure that you will have it.”
“Sometimes I am angry, sometimes bewildered, sometimes there is hatred in my heart because Ihave been deceived and humiliated—sometimes I do not want it back—”
“My dear,” said Miss Jewett, gravely, “discipline is better than our heart’s desire.”
“Is it? I don’t like to think so.”
When the clock in the church-tower struck midnight Tessa lay awake wondering if she could ever choose discipline before any heart’s desire.
Then she crept closer to Miss Jewett and kissed her.
With the apple blossoms came Tessa’s birthday. She had lived twenty-five years up-stairs and down-stairs in that white house with the lilac shrubbery and low iron fence. Twenty-five years with her father and mother, nineteen with her little sister, and almost as many with her old friend, Mr. Hammerton; twenty years with Laura and Felix and Miss Jewett, and not quite three years with the latest friend, the latest and the one that she had most believed in, Ralph Towne.
She was counting these years and these friends as she brushed out her long, light hair and looked into the reflection of the fair, bright, thoughtful face that had come to another birthday.
Nothing would ever happen to her again, she was sure; nothing ever did happen after one were as old as twenty-five. In novels, all the wonderful events occurred in earlier life, and then—a blank or bliss or misery, any thing that the reader might guess.
Would her life henceforth be a blank because she was so old and was growing older?
In one of her stories, Miss Mulock had stated that the experience of love had been given to her heroine “later than to most” andshewas twenty-four!
“Not that that experience is all one’s life,” she mused; “but it is just as much to me as it is to any man or woman that ever lived; as much as to Cornelia, the matron with her jewels, or Vittoria Colonna, or Mrs. Browning, or Hypatia,—if she ever loved any body,—or Miss Jewett,—if she ever did,—or Sue Greyson, or Queen Victoria, or Ralph Towne’s mother! I wonder if his father were like him, so handsome and gentle. I have a right to the pain and the blessedness of loving; perhaps Ihavebeen in love—perhaps I am now! He shut the door that he had opened and he has gone out; I would not recall him if I could do it with one breath—
“‘No harm from him can come to meOn ocean or on shore.’
“Well,” smiling into the sympathetic eyes, “if nothing new ever happen to me, I’ll find out all the blessedness of the old.”
For she must always find something to be glad of before she could be sorrowful about any thing.
She ran down-stairs in her airiest mood to be congratulated by her father in a humorous speech that ended with an unfinished sentence and a quick turning of the head, to be squeezed and hugged and kissed by Dinah, and dubbed Miss Twenty-Five, and then to have her mood changed,all in the past made dreary, and all in the future desolate, by one of her mother’s harangues.
Mr. Wadsworth had kissed his three girls and hurried off to his business, as he had done in all the years that Tessa could remember; Dinah had pushed her plate away and was leaning forward with her elbows on the table-cloth, her face alight with the mischief of teasing Tessa about being “stricken in years.” Tessa’s repartees were sending Dinah off into her little shouts of laughter when their mother’s voice broke in:
“I had been married eight years when I was your age, Tessa.”
“It will be nine years on my next birthday,” said Tessa.
“Yes, just nine; for I was married on my seventeenth birthday; your father met me one day coming from school and said that he would call that evening; I curled my hair over and put on my garnet merino and waited for him an hour. I expected John Gesner, too. But your father came first and we set the wedding-day that night. I was seventeen and he was thirty-seven!”
“I congratulate you,” said Tessa. “I congratulate the woman who married my father.”
“Girls are so different,” sighed Mrs. Wadsworth. “NowIhad two offers that year! Aunt Theresa wanted me to take John Gesner because he was two years younger than your father; but John was only a clerk in the Iron Works then, and so was Lewis. Lewis is just my age. How couldI tell that he would make a fortune buying nails?”
“You would have hit the nail on the head if you had known it,” laughed Dinah.
“And here’s Dine, now,sheis like me. You are a Wadsworth through and through! Young men like some life about a girl; how many beaux Sue Greyson has! All you think of is education! There was Cliff Manning, you turned the cold shoulder to him because he couldn’t talk grammar. What’s grammar? Grammar won’t make the pot boil.”
“Enough of them would,” suggested Dinah.
“Mr. Towne came and came till he was tired, I suppose. I hope you didn’t refuse him.”
“No, he refused me.”
Her tone was so gravely in earnest that her mother was staggered. Dinah shouted.
Mrs. Wadsworth went on in a voice that was gathering indignation: “You may laugh now; you will not always laugh. ‘He that will not when he may, when he will he shall have nay.’ Mrs. Sherwood told me yesterday that she hoped to have Nan Gerard back here for good, and Mary looked as if it were all settled. Mr. Towne did not do muchlastwinter, Mary said, beside run around with Naughty Nan. I’m hearing all the time of somebody being married or engaged, and you are doing nothing but shilly-shally over some book or trotting around after poor folks with Miss Jewett.”
“She will find a prince in a hovel some day,”said Dinah. “He will be struck with her attitude as she is choking some bed-ridden woman with beef-tea and fall down on his knees and propose on the spot. ‘Feed me, seraph,’ he will cry.”
“He wouldn’t talk grammar, or he couldn’t spell or read Greek, and she will turn away,” laughed Mrs. Wadsworth. “Tessa, you are none of my bringing up.”
“That is true,” replied Tessa, the sorrowfulness of the tone softening its curtness.
“You alwaysdidcare for something in a book more than for what I said! You never do any thing to please people; and yet, somehow, somebody alwaysisrunning after you. I wish that youcouldgo out into the world and get a little character; you are no more capable of self-denial and heroism than an infant baby; for getting along in the world and making a good match, I would rather have Sue Greyson’s skin—”
“Her father understands anatomy, perhaps you can get it, mother.”
“Sheknows how to look out for number one. Her children will be settled in life before Tessa is engaged. You needn’t laugh, Dine, it’s her birthday, and I’m only doing a mother’s duty to her.”
Tessa’s eyes laughed although her lips were still. Her sense of humor helped her to bear many things in her life.
“You have never had a trial in your life, Tessa, and here you are old enough to be a wife and mother!”
“If she lived in China she could be a grandmother,” said Dinah.
“I have always kept trouble from you; that is why, at your mature age, you have so little character. In an emergency you would have no more responsibility than Nellie Bird. If you had studied arithmetic instead of always writing poetry and compositions, you might have been teaching now and have been independent.”
“Father isn’t tired of taking care of her,” said Dinah, spiritedly. “It’s mean for you to say that.”
“Why don’t you write a novel and make some money?”
“I don’t know how.”
“Can’t you learn?”
“I study all the time.”
“Why don’t you write flowery language?”
“I don’t know how.”
“It is Gus that has spoiled you; he has nipped your genius in the bud. What does he know, a clerk in a bank? I know that he tells you to leave out the long words; and it is the long words that take. I shouldn’t have had my dreadful cough winter after winter if I hadn’t worked hard to spare your time that winter you wrote those three little books for the Sunday School Union; I lay all my sickness and pain to that winter.”
Mrs Wadsworth had brought this charge against Tessa several times before, but she had never shivered over it as she did this birthday morning.
“And what did you get for them? Only a hundreddollars for the three. Your father made a great fuss over them, and he really cried (his tears come very easy) over that piece you called ‘Making Mistakes.’ I couldn’t see any thing to cry over; I thought you made out that making mistakes was a very fine thing.”