Tessa promised with misty eyes.
“I promised to show you an old jewel-case this afternoon,” said Mrs. Towne in a lighter tone. “I wish that I might tell you the history of each piece.” She brought the box from a small table and pushed her chair nearer Tessa that she might open it in her lap. “This emerald is for you,” she said, slipping a ring containing an emerald in old-fashioned setting upon the first finger of Tessa’s left hand; “and it means what you have promised. All that your mother will permit me, I give to you this hour.”
“You are very kind to me.”
“I am very kind to myself. All my life I have wanted a daughter like you: a girl with blue eyes and a pure heart; one who would not care to flirt and dress, but who would love me and talk to me as you talk to me. I am proud of my boy, but I want a daughter.”
“I am not very good; you may be disappointed in me.”
“I do not fear that. This, my mother gave me,” lifting pin and ear-rings from the box. A diamond set in silver formed the centre of the pin; the diamond was surrounded by pearls of different sizes. “I was very proud of this pin. I did not know then that I could not have every thing in the world and out of it. This pin my father gave me.”
Tessa laid it in her hand and counted the diamonds; it was a diamond with nine opals radiating from it, between each opal a small diamond. “It looks like a dahlia,” she said. “I love pretty things. This ring is the first ring that I ever had.”
“People say that the emerald means success in love,” replied Mrs. Towne. “I did not remember it when I chose that for you. Perhaps you would prefer a diamond.”
“I like best what you chose,” said Tessa, taking from among the jewels, bracelet, pin, ear-rings and chatelaine of turquoises and pearls, and examining each piece with interested eyes. “These are old, too.”
“Every thing in this box is old. Some day you shall see my later jewels. You will like this,” she added, placing in her hands a bracelet formed of a network of iron wire, clasped with a medallion of Berlin iron on a steel plate; the necklace that matched it was also of medallions; the one in the centre held a bust of Psyche; upon the others were busts of men and women whom Tessa did not recognize;to this set belonged comb, pin, and ear-rings.
“These belonged to my mother. How old they are I do not know. See this ring, a portrait of Washington, painted on copper, and covered with glass. It is said to be one of the finest portraits in the country. I used to wear it a great deal. My father gave it to me on my fifteenth birthday. Have I told you that Lafayette kissed me when I was an infant in my mother’s arms?”
While Tessa replaced the treasures with fingers that lingered over them, with the new weight of the emerald upon her finger, and the new weight of a promise upon her heart, Mrs. Towne related the story of the kiss from Lafayette.
Tessa was a perfect listener, Mrs. Towne thought; the lighting or darkening of her eyes, a flush rising to her cheeks now and then, the curving of the mobile lips, an exclamation of surprise or appreciation, were most grateful to the old heart that had found after long and intense waiting the daughter that she could love and honor.
In the late twilight Dr. Towne returned; Tessa was still listening, with the jewel-case in her lap.
“I have missed my husband with all the old loneliness since we came into Dunellen,” she was saying when her tall son entered and stood at her side.
“Mother,” he said, in the shy way that Tessa knew, “you forget that you have me.”
“No, son, I do not forget; but your life is full of new interests. Yesterday I did not have ten minutes alone with you.”
“It shall not happen again.”
“I have persuaded Tessa to stay and hear Philip to-night; she says that he is like a west wind to her.”
“He would not fall upon the hindmost in your army, Miss Tessa.”
“I am sure that he would not.”
“Not if they coaxed him to?”
“He should have manliness enough to resist all their pretty arts, and enticing ways.”
“Mother, can’t you convince her? She has been rating me soundly for flirting, when it is the girls that are flirting with me.”
“It takes two to flirt,” replied his mother.
Dr. Towne was sent for as they were rising from the dinner table; Mrs. Towne and Tessa crossed the Park alone; at the entrance of the Lecture Room Sue Greyson met them.
“Ihadto come,” Sue whispered, seizing Tessa’s arm. “Father is so horrid and hateful, and said awful things to me just because I askedhimto write to Stacey. The letter is written anyhow, and I’m thankful it’s over. Father says that he won’t give me the house, and that I sha’n’t be married under his roof. He is mad with Gerald, too, and told him to leave his house. So Gerald left and went to see a patient. He is so happy that he don’t care what father says.”
As they passed down the aisle, Tessa’s dress brushed against Felix Harrison; he was sitting alone with his father.
“Why! Felix Harrison! Did you ever?” whispered irrepressible Sue.
The Lecture Room was well-lighted, and well-filled. Professor Towne was the fashion in Dunellen. During the opening prayer there was a stir in one of the pews behind Tessa; she did not lift her head, her heart beat so rapidly that she felt as if she were suffocating.
“Poor fellow,” came in Sue’s loud whisper close to her ear. “They have taken him out! I should think that he would know better than to go among folks.”
Tessa could not follow the speaker for some minutes; the lights went out, she could not catch her breath; Mrs. Towne took her hand and held it firmly, then the lights came dim, through a misty and waving distance, her breath was drawn more easily, she could discern the outline of the preacher, and then his dark face was brought fully into view, his voice sounded loud in her ears; for some time longer she could not catch and connect his words; then, clear and strong, the words fell from his lips, and she could listen and understand—
“Good is the will of the Lord concerning me.”
If Felix could have listened and understood, would he have been comforted, too?
His voice held her when her attention wavered; afterward, that one sentence was all that had fasteneditself; and was not that enough for one life time?
At the door, Dr. Towne stood waiting for his mother, and Mr. Hammerton and Dinah were moving towards the group.
“I knew that you would be here,” said Dinah, “so I coaxed Gus away from father. I couldn’t wait to tell you that your books have come. Two splendid dozens in all colors; I had to open them. You don’t mind? Gus and I each read a brown one; we think the crimson and blue ones must be splendid.”
Sue drew Tessa aside to coax in her plaintively miserable voice, “Come home with me; father will say things, and I shall be afraid.”
“I can’t help you, Sue.”
“You mean youwon’t. I’ll elope with Dr. Lake, and then Dunellen will be on fire, and you don’t care.”
“I’m not afraid. He has good sense, if you haven’t.”
“I’ll come and see you to-morrow, then.”
“Well, that will do.”
“Nobody ever had so much trouble before,” sighed Sue as she went off.
Mr. Hammerton was in high glee and teased Tessa all the way home about her book.
“The milk pails were on the fence twice, Lady Blue, that is tautology.”
“Oh, they kept them there.”
“And the grandmother was always knitting.”
“She always did knit.”
“Lady Blue, you are on the road to Poverty; he who walks the streets of Literature will stop at the house of Starvation. Homer was a beggar; Terence was a slave; Tasso was a poor man; Bacon was as poor as a church mouse; Cervantes died of nothing to eat. Are you not beginning to feel the pangs of hunger? Breath and memory fail me, or I would convince you. Collins died of neglect; Milton was an impecunious genius; every body knows how wretchedly poor Goldsmith was; and wasn’t poor old prodigious Sam Johnson hungry half his life? Chatterton destroyed himself. I tremble for you, child of Genius! Author of ‘Under the Wings,’ what hast thou to say in defence of thy mad career?”
“Don’t mind him, Tessa,” consoled Dinah, “he does like your book; he said that he had no idea that you could do so well; that there was great promise in it, that it revealed a thoughtful mind—he said it to father—that the delineation of character was fine, and that it had the real thing in it. What is the real thing?”
“Read it and you will know.”
“If it isn’t asking too much,” began Tessa, timidly, “I wish thatyouwould write me a criticism, Gus. I like the way that you talk about books. Not many know how to read a book, and still fewer know how to talk about it. Will you, please?”
“You overrate my judgment; sentiment is not in my line; I have done my share in reading books; Ido not know that I have got much out of them all. My own literary efforts would be like this:
“‘Here lies—and more’s the pity!All that remains of Thomas New-city.’
“His name was Newtown.”
Dinah gave her little shout.
“Then you will not promise,” said Tessa, disappointedly. “I’m not afraid of sharp criticism; I want to do my poor little best; I do not expect to do as much as the girls in books who write stories. I do not expect any publisher to fall in love with me as he did inSt. Elmo, wasn’t it?”
“Whatdoyou expect to do?”
“I hope—perhaps that is the better word—to give others all the good that is given me; I believe that if one has the ‘gift of utterance’ even in so small a fashion as I have it, that experiences will be given to utter; the Divine Biographer writes the life for the human heart to read, interpret and put into words! And to them is given a peculiar life, or, it may be, a peculiar appreciation of life; heartaches go hand in hand with headaches.
“I was born into my home that I may write my books; my poor little books, my little, weak, crooked-backed children! Would Fredrika Bremer have written her books without her exceptional home-training, or Sara Coleridge, or any other of the lesser lights shine as they do shine, if the spark had not been blown upon by the breath of their home-fires? When I am sorry sometimes that Ican not do what I would and go where I would, I think that I have not gathered together all the fragments that are around loose between the plank walk and the soldiers’ monument! Said mother, ‘Howdo you make a book? Do you take a little from this book and a little from that?’”
“What did you say?” asked Dine.
“Oh, I said that I took a tone from her voice, an expression from father’s eyes, a curl from your head, a word from Gus’s lips, a laugh from Sue Greyson, a sigh from Dr. Lake, an apple blossom from Mr. Bird’s orchard, a spray of golden rod from the wayside, a chat from loungers in the Park, a wise saying from Miss Jewett—”
“That’s rather a conglomeration,” said Dinah.
“That is life, as I see it and live it.”
“What do you take from yourself?” asked Mr. Hammerton.
“I have all my life from the time that I cried over my first lie and prayed that I might have curly hair, to the present moment, when I am glad and sorry about a thousand things.”
“What did mother say?”
“She said that any one could write a book, then.”
“Let her try, then! It’s awful hard about the grammar and spelling and the beginning a chapter and ending it and introducing people!”
“Yes, it’s awful hard or awful easy,” replied Mr. Hammerton. “Which is it, Lady Blue?”
“Ask me when I have written my novel! Did you hear from the afternoon mail, Dine?”
“Yes,” said Dine, grimly, “I should think Ididhear. Mother and I have had a fight! Father took care of the wounded and we are all convalescing. Aunt Theresa has written for one of us to come next week; kindly says that she will take me if mother can not spare you; I said right up and down thatIwouldn’t go, and mother said right down and up that Ishouldgo, that she couldn’t and wouldn’t spare you! Aunt Theresa has the rheumatism, and it’s horrid dull on a farm! I was there when I was a little girl, and she sent me to bed before dark; I’m afraid that she will do it again; if she does I’ll frighten her out of her rheumatics. Mother will not let you have a voice in the matter, Tessa; who knows but you might meet your fate? The school-teacher boards with them; he is just out of college. Mother sha’n’t make me go!”
“I do not choose to go; but I could have all my time to myself. A low, cosy chamber and a fire on the hearth, no one to intrude or hinder.”
“But the school-master!” added Mr. Hammerton.
“He’s only a boy; I could put him into my book.”
“We’ll draw lots; shall we?”
“If mother is determined, the lot is drawn.”
“And father wants you, I know; he had an attack of pain before tea. I wish that I was useful and couldn’t be spared.”
“May I not have a vote; I am a naturalized member of the family?”
“You would want Tessa, too,” said Dinah.
“Would I?” he returned, squeezing the glovedfingers on his arm, whereupon Dinah became confused and silent.
Tessa found her books upon the hall table; her father, Mr. Hammerton, and Dinah followed her into the hall to watch her face and laugh over her exclamations.
“Your secret is out,” cried her father; “at Christmas there will be a placard in Runyon’s with the name of the book and author in flaming red letters! You can not remain the Great Unknown.”
“I feel so ashamed of trying,” said Tessa, with a brown cover, a red cover, and a green cover in her hands, “but I had to. I’ll be too humble to be ashamed. ‘Humility’s so good when pride’s impossible.’”
Several copies were taken up-stairs; Miss Jewett’s name was written in one, Mrs. Towne’s in another, Mr. Hammerton’s in one that he had selected, and in one, bound in a sober gray, she wrote,
“Felix Harrison. In memory of the old school days when he helped me with my compositions.
“T. L. W.”
She never knew of his sudden, sharp cry over it: “Oh, my life! my lost life! my wasted life!”
Mrs. Wadsworth’s strong will triumphed, as it usually did, and Dinah was sent into the country early in the last week of September, with a promise from Tessa that she would release her from her durance as soon as one of her books was finished and herself spend the remainder of the winter with the childless old people who had been looking forward to this pleasure from winter to winter ever since Tessa was ten years old. Half Dunellen had pacified Dinah with the promise of long weekly letters, and she knew that Tessa and her father would write often. “I am not strong enough to write letters,” her mother had said. “Tessa will tell you every thing.” “I will add a postscript whenever Tessa will permit,” said Mr. Hammerton, which queerly enough consoled homesick Dinah more than all the other promises combined.
Sue had not come to talk to Tessa and she dared not go to Dr. Greyson’s for fear of influencing her. She had met Dr. Lake once; he had lifted his hat with a flourish, but would not stop to speak to her.
And now it was Wednesday and Sue’s wedding day had been set for Friday.
At noon, among other letters, her father brought her a note from Felix Harrison:
“I must see you; I want to talk to you. Come Wednesday afternoon.”
How she shrank from this interview she did not understand until she could think it over years afterward. In those after years when she said, “I do not want to live my life over again,” she remembered her experiences with Felix Harrison; more than all, the feeling of those weeks when she had feltbound. It was also in her mind when she said, as she often did say, in later life, “I could never influence any one to marry.” How often an expression in the mature years of a woman’s life would reveal a long story, if one could but read it.
Another word of hers in her middle age, “I love to help little girls to be happy,” was the expression to years of longing that no one had ever guessed; her mother least of all.
But she had not come to this settled time yet; it was weary years before she was at leisure from herself. It was Wednesday noon now and Felix had sent for her; she shrank from him with a shrinking amounting to terror; he would touch her hand, most certainly, and he might put his arm around her and kiss her; she would faint and fall at his feet if he did; he might say that she had promised him, that she was bound to him, that he would never let her go; that he was gaining strength and that she must become his wife or he would die!
Why could he not write his message? Whatcould he have to say to her? Was it not all said and laid away to be remembered, perhaps, and that was all? Then the memory of the old Felix swept over her, and she bowed her head and wept for him! She had held herself in her heart as his promised wife for six long weeks, how could she shrink from him? Was he not to her what no other man would ever become? Was she not to him the one best and dearest?
“I wonder,” she sobbed, “whyhehad to be the one to love me; why was not the love given to one whom I could love? Why must such a good and perfect gift as love be a burden to him and to me? If some one I know—”
The cheeks that were wet for Felix Harrison burned at the thought of one she knew!
“Oh, I wonder—but I must not wonder—I must be submissive; I must bow before the Awful Will.”
In that hour it was harder to bear for Felix Harrison to love her than for Ralph Towne to be indifferent.
“What are you going to do this afternoon?” inquired her mother at the dinner table.
“Take my walk! And then the thing that comes first”
“You never have any plan about any thing; any one with so little to do ought to have a plan.”
“My plan is this—do the next thing! I find that it keeps me busy.”
“The next thing, hard or easy,” said Mr. Wadsworth.
“Hard! Easy!” repeated Mrs. Wadsworth in her ironical voice. “Tessa never had a hard thing to do in her life. It will be my comfort in my last hours, Tessa, that you have been kept from troubles and disappointments.”
“You might as well take the comfort of it now,” said Tessa.
“Not many young women of your age have your easy life,” her mother continued; “you have no thought where your next meal will come from, or where you will live in your old age, or where—”
“I know where all my good things come from,” interrupted Tessa, reverently; “the how, the when, and the what that I do not know—that I am waiting to know.”
“That is like you! Not a thought, not a care; it will come dreadful hard to you if you everdohave trouble.”
Tessa’s tears ever left in her heart a place for sweet laughter; so light, so soft, so submissive, and withal so happy was the low laugh of her reply that her father’s eyes filled at the sound. Somebody understood her.
Mrs. Wadsworth looked annoyed. Her elder daughter’s words baffled her. Tessawasshallow and she sighed and asked her if she would take apple pie.
Tessa ate her pie understanding how she was a trial to her mother, but not understanding how she could hinder it. Could she change herself? or could her mother change herself?
“I wish that it were easier for me to love people,” she said coming out of a reverie, “then I would not need to trouble myself about not understanding them.”
“I thought that you were a student of human nature,” said her father.
“I always knew that she couldn’t see through people,” exclaimed her mother.
“I do not; I never know when I am deceived.”
“My rule is,” Mr. Wadsworth arose and stood behind his chair, “to judge people by themselves and not bymyself.”
“Oh, the heartaches that would save,” thought Tessa. At the hour when she was walking slowly towards Felix, her black dress brushing the grass, her eyes upon the harvested fields lying warm in the mellow sunlight, and on her lips the sorrowful wonder, he was sitting alone in the summer-house, his head dropped within his hands. He was wondering, too, as all his being leaped forward at the thought of her coming, and battling with the strong love that was too strong for his feeble strength.
When her hand unlatched the gate, he was not in the summer-house; she walked up the long path, and around to the latticed porch where Laura liked to sew or read in the afternoons; there was no one there; the work-basket had been pushed over, cotton and thimble had rolled to the edge of the floor, the white work had been thrown over a chair, she stood a moment in the oppressive silence, trembling and half leaning against a post; the tallclock in the hall ticked loudly and evenly: forever—never, never—forever! Her heart quickened, every thing grew dark like that night in the lecture-room, she was possessed with a terror that swept away breath and motion. A groan, then another and another, interrupted the never—forever, of the clock, then a step on the oil-cloth of the hall, and she dimly discerned Laura’s frightened face, and heard as if afar off her surprised voice: “Why, Tessa! O, Tessa, I am so glad!”
The frightened face was held up to be kissed and arms were clinging around her.
“I’m always just as frightened every time—he was in the summer-house and father found him—he can speak now—it doesn’t last very long.”
“I will not stay, he needs you.”
“Not now, no one can help him; father is with him. If this keeps on Dr. Greyson says that some day he will have to be undressed and dressed just like an infant. He has been nervous all day, as if he were watching for something. O, Tessa, I want to die, I want him to die, I can’t bear it any longer.”
Tessa’s only reply was her fast dropping tears.
“If he only had a mother,” said Laura; “I want him to have a mother now that he can never have a wife! If he only had been married, his wife would have clung to him, and loved him, and taken care of him. Don’t you think that God might have waited to bring this upon him until he was married?”
“Oh, no, no,no!” shivered Tessa; “we do notknow the best times for trouble to come. I shall always believe that after this.”
“He always liked you better than any one; do you know that he has a picture of you taken when we went to the Institute? You have on a hat and sacque, and your school books are in your hand.”
“I remember that picture! Has he kept it all this time?”
“If he asks for you—he will hear your voice—will you go in?”
“No, I can not see him,” she answered nervously.
“Then I will walk down to the gate with you. He will be sure to ask, and I do not like to refuse him.”
Walking slowly arm in arm as they used to walk from school years ago, they passed down the path, at first, speaking only of Felix, and then as they neared the gate, falling into light talk about Laura’s work, the new servant who was so kind to Felix, the plants that Laura had taken into the sitting-room, “to make it cosy for Felix this winter,” the shirts that she had cut out for him and their father, and intended to make on the machine; about the sewing society that was to meet to-morrow, a book that Felix was reading aloud evenings while their father dozed and she sewed, some Mayfield gossip about Dr. Towne, and their plan of taking Felix travelling next summer. Tessa listened and replied. She never had any thing to say about herself. Laura thought with Mrs. Wadsworth that Tessa had never had any “experiences.” Miss Jewettand Tessa’s father knew; but it was not because she had told them. What other people chattered about to each other she kept for her prayers.
Laura cried a little when Tessa kissed her at the gate. “I wish that you wouldn’t go; I want you to stay and help me. Will you come again soon?”
“I can’t,” she answered hurriedly.
“Did Felix know that you were coming to-day?”
Tessa’s eyes made answer enough; too much, for Laura understood.
“I will not tell him that I know—but I had guessed it—I heard him praying once while we were away, and I knew that he was giving upyou.”
Tessa kissed her again, and without a word hurried away, walking with slower steps as she went on with her full eyes bent upon the ground.
Was it so much to give up Tessa Wadsworth? Whatwasshe that she could make such a difference in a man’s life? Was she lovable, after all, despite her quick words and sharp speeches? She was not pretty like Dinah, or “taking” like Sue; it was very pleasant to be loved for her own sake; “my own unattractive self,” she said. It would be very pleasant in that far-off time, when she reviewed her life, to remember that some one had loved her beside her father and Dine and Miss Jewett! And a good man, too; a man with brains, and a pure heart!
Her ideal was a man with brains, and a pure heart; then why had she not loved Felix Harrison?
“Oh, I don’t know,” she sighed. “I can’t understand.”Slowly, slowly, with her full eyes on the ground she went on, not heeding the sound of wheels, or gay voices, as a carriage passed her now and then; but as she went on, with her eyes still full for Felix, a light sound of wheels set her heart to beating, and she lifted her eyes to bow to Dr. Towne.
In that instant her heart bowed before the Awful Will in acceptance of the love that had been given to her, even as other things in her lot had been given her, without any seeking or asking.
“I can bear it,” she felt, filling the words with Paul’s thought, when he wrote, “I can do all things.”
Dr. Towne drew the reins: she stood still on the edge of the foot-path.
“My mother misses you, Miss Tessa.”
“Does she? I am sorry, but I have to be so busy at home.”
His sympathetic eyes were on her face. “I thought, that you were never troubled about any thing,” he said.
“I am not—when I can help it.”
“I left Sue Greyson up the road looking for you; I could not bring her to meet you, as my carriage holds but one; there was news in her face.”
“Then I will go to hear.”
The light sound of his wheels had died away before she espied Sue’s tall figure coming quickly towards her.
“Oh, Tessa! Howcouldyou go so far? Yourmother said that you were here on this road, and that I should find you either up a tree or in the brook; I’ve got splendid news! guess! Did you meet Dr. Towne? He stopped and talked to me, but I wouldn’t tell him. He and his mother will know in time. Now, guess.”
“Let me sit down and think. It will take time.”
They had met near the brook at the corner of the road that turned past Old Place; on the corner stood a tall, bare walnut-tree, the gnarled roots covered a part of the knoll under which a slim thread of water trickled over moss and jagged flat stones, and then found its clear way into a broader channel and thence into the brook that crossed one of the Old Place meadows.
These roots had been Tessa’s resting-place all summer; how many times she had looked up to read the advertisement of the clothier in Dunellen painted in black letters on a square board nailed to the trunk; how many times had she leaned back and looked down into the thread of water at the moss, and the pebbles, the tiny ferns and the tall weeds, turning to look down the road towards May field where the school-house stood, and then across the fields—the wheat fields, the corn fields—to the peach orchard beyond them, and beyond that the green slope of the fertile hill-side with its few dwellings, and above the slope the crooked green edge that met the sky—sometimes a blue sky, sometimes a sky of clouds, and sometimes gray with the damp clouds hanging low; thinking, as her eyesroved off her book, of some prank of Rob’s or some quaint saying of Sadie’s, of some little comforting thought that swelled in grandma’s patient, gentle heart, or of something sharp that Sadie’s snappish mother should say; sometimes she would take the sky home for her book and sometimes the weeds and the pebbles and the brook; and when it was not her book it was Felix—poor Felix!—or Dr. Lake, whom she loved more and more every day with the love that she would have loved a naughty, feeble, winsome child; or Mr. Towne, of his face that was ever with her like the memory of a picture that she had lingered before and could never forget, or of his voice and some words that he had spoken; or of her father and his failing strength and brave efforts to conceal it; sometimes a kind little thing that her mother had done for her, some self-denial or shame-faced demonstration of her love for her elder daughter, sometimes of Dine’s changeful moods, and often of the book of George Eliot’s that she was reading, or the latest of Charles Kingsley’s that she was discussing with Mr. Hammerton; thinking, musing, feeling, planning while she picked up a pebble or tore a weed into bits, or wrote a sentence in her pocket notebook! It was no wonder that this gnarled seat was so much to her that she lost herself and lost the words that Sue was speaking so rapidly.
“You are not listening to me at all,” cried Sue at last “I might as well talk to the tree as to talk to you!”
“I am listening; what is it?”
“It’s all settled—splendidly settled—and I’m as happy as Cinderella when she found the Prince! Now guess!”
“Well, then,” stooping to pick a weed that had gone to seed, “I guess that you have come to your right mind, that you will marry Stacey on Friday and all will go as merry as a marriage bell should.”
“What a thing to guess! That’s too horrid! Guess again.”
“You have grown good and ‘steady,’ you will keep house for your father and be what he is always calling you,—the comfort of his old age,—and forego lovers and such perplexities forever.”
“That’s horrider still! Do guess something sensible.”
“You are going to marry Dr. Lake. Your father has stormed and stormed, but now he has become mild and peaceable; you are to be married Friday morning and start off immediately in the sober certainty of waking bliss.”
“Yes,” said Sue very seriously, “that is it. Every thing is as grand as a story-book, except that father will not give me the house for a wedding present. Oh, those wretched days since I saw you last! I did think that I would take laudanum or kill myself with a penknife. You don’t know what I have been through. Old Blue Beard is pious to what father has been; Gerald,hekept out of the house. I should have run away beforethis, only I knew that father would come around and beg my pardon. He always does.”
Tessa stooped to dip her fingers in the water.
“Andthisis your idea of marriage,” she said quietly.
“No, it isn’t. I never looked forward to any thing like this; I always wanted something better. I am not doing very well, although I suppose therearegirls in Dunellen who would think Gerald a catch.”
“Oh, Sue, Sue! when he loves you so! If he could hear you, it would break his heart!”
“Take him yourself then, if you think he’s so much,” laughed Sue. “Nan Gerard will get the catch!”
“Sue, I am ashamed of you!” exclaimed Tessa rising. “I am glad if you are happy—as happy as you know how to be. I want you to be happy—anddobe good to Dr. Lake.”
How Sue laughed!
“Oh, you dear old Goody Goody,” she cried, springing to her feet and throwing her arms around Tessa. “What else should I be to my own wedded husband? But it does seem queer so near to Old Place to be talking about marrying Dr. Lake.”
“We’ll remember this place always, Sue, and that you promised to be kind to Dr. Lake.”
“Yes, I’ll remember,” with a shadow passing over her face. “The next time you and I sit here it will be all over with me. I shall be out of loversfor the rest of my natural life.” She laughed and chatted all the way home; her listener was silent and sore at heart.
“You will come to-morrow night and see the last of me, won’t you? This is what I came to ask you, ‘the last sad office’ isn’t that it? Sue Greyson will never ask you another favor.”
“Yes, I will come.” She had always loved Sue Greyson. She did not often kiss her, but she kissed her now.
“Don’t look so. Laugh, can’t you? If it is something terrible, it isn’t happening to you.”
“The things that happen to me are the easiest to bear.”
Sue crossed over to the planks and went on pondering this, then gave it up to wonder how she would wear her hair on her wedding morning; Tessa would make it look pretty any way, for she was born a hair-dresser.
And Tessa went in and up-stairs, thinking of a remark of Miss Jewett’s: “I should not understand my life at all, it would be all in a tangle, if it were not for my prayers.”
Two of the pretty crimson and brown chairs were drawn to the back parlor grate; Sue had kindled a fire in the back parlor because she felt “shivery,” beside, it had rained all day; the wedding morning promised to be chilly and rainy.
Early after tea Dr. Greyson had been called away; Dr. Lake had not returned from a long drive, the latest Irish girl was singing lustily in the kitchen; Sue and Tessa were alone together before the fire. The white shades were down, the doors between the rooms closed, they were altogether cozy and comfortable. Almost as comfortable, Tessa was thinking, as if there were no dreaded to-morrow; but then she was the only person in the world who could see any thing to be dreaded in the to-morrow. Tessa’s fingers were moving in and out among the white wool that she was crocheting into a long comforter for her father; Sue sat idly restless looking into Tessa’s face or into the fire.
Now and then Tessa spoke, now and then Sue ejaculated or laughed or sighed.
“Life is too queer for any thing,” she said reflectively. “Don’t you know the minister said that Sunday that we helped to make our own lives? I have often thought of that.”
Tessa’s wool was tangled, she unknotted it without replying.
The rain plashed against the windows, a coal fell through the grate and dropped upon the fender.
“I wonder how Stacey feels,” said Sue. “Perhaps he is taking out another girl to-night. That ring was large, it will not fit a small hand; perhaps he sold it, you can always get three quarters the worth of a diamond, I have heard people say.”
Tessa’s lips were not encouraging, but Sue was not looking at her.
“Gerald has the wedding ring in his pocket; I tried it on this noon. I wanted to wear it to get used to it, but he wouldn’t let me. He is sentimental like you. I expect that he is really enjoying carrying it around in his pocket. S. G. L. is written in it.”
The rain plashed and Tessa worked; suddenly the door-bell gave a sharp clang, a moment later little Miss Jewett, in a waterproof, was ushered in.
“I had to come, girls. I hope I don’t intrude.”
“Intrude!” Both of Sue’s affectionate arms were around the wet figure. “Tessa is thinking of glum things to say to me, do sit down and say something funny.”
The long waterproof was unbuttoned and hungupon the hat-stand in the hall, the rubbers were placed upon the hearth to dry, and the plump little woman pressed into Tessa’s arm-chair. Moving an ottoman to her side, Tessa sat with her arm upon the arm of her chair.
“I’msoglad to see you,” Sue cried, dropping into her own chair. “What a long walk you have had in the rain just to give me some good advice. Don’t you wish that Tessa was going off, too?”
“Tessa will not go off till she is good and ready,” replied Miss Jewett, “and then she will go off to some purpose.”
“Make a good match, do you mean?”
“If she can find her match,” caressing the hand on the arm of the chair.
“Oh, Miss Jewett, tell us a story! A real love story! Humor me just this once, this last time! I don’t like advice and I do like love stories.”
“Do you, too, Tessa?”
“Yes, I shall write one some day! They shall both be perfect and love each other perfectly. It shall not be an earthly story, but a heavenly one.”
“That would be too tame,” said Sue. “I should want it to be a little wicked.”
“That would be more like life—”
“And then get good in the end! That is like life, too,” interrupted Sue. “Now, go on, please.”
“Very well. To-night is an event, I suppose I may as well celebrate it. I will tell you about apresent I had once, the most perfect gift I ever received.”
“But I wanted a love story.”
“And you think thatmystory can not be that? Sometimes I think that unmarried people live the most perfect love stories.”
Lifting the mass of white wool from Tessa’s lap and taking the needle, she worked half a minute before she spoke; Sue’s curious, bright eyes were on her face, Tessa’s were on the wool she was playing with.
“Twenty-five years ago, when I was younger than I am now, and as intense and as full of aspirations as Tessa here, and as full of fun, asyou, Sue Greyson, I boarded one winter with a widow. She was quite middle-aged and lived alone with her chickens and cat, very comfortably off, but she wanted a boarder or two for company. My store was a little affair then, but I was a busy body; I used to study and sew evenings. Ah, those evenings! I often think them over now as I sit alone. I shall never forget that winter. Igrew. The widow and I were not alone; before I had been there a week a young man came, he was scarcely older than I—”
Sue laughed and looked at Tessa.
“He was to sail away in the spring to some dreadful place,—that sounds like you, Sue,—to be a missionary!”
“Amissionary!” exclaimed Sue.
“Every evening he read aloud to us, usuallypoetry or the Bible. Poetry meant something to me then—that sounds like you, Tessa. One evening he read Esther, one evening Ruth, and when he read Nehemiah, oh, how enthusiastic we were! He talked and talked and talked, and I listened and listened and listened till all my heart went out to meet him.”
“Ah,” cried Sue, “to think of you being in love, Miss Jewett. I didn’t know that you were ever so naughty!”
“At last the time came that he must go—the very last evening. I thought that those evenings could never end, but they did. I could hardly see my stitches for tears; I was making over a black bombazine for the widow, and the next evening I had to rip my work out! He read awhile,—he was readingRasselasthat night,—and then he dropped the book and talked of his work and the life he expected to lead.
“‘You ought to take a wife,’ said the widow.
“‘No woman will ever love me well enough to go to such a place with me,’ he said.
“Just then I dropped the scissors and had to bend down to pick them up. The widow went out into the kitchen to set the sponge for her bread and clear out the stove for morning, and we stayed alone and talked. We talked about whether he would be homesick and seasick, and how glad he would be of letters from home; not that he had many friends to write to him, though; and I sewed on and on, and threaded my needle, and dropped my scissors, andalmost cried because all I cared for in the wide world would sail away with him, and he would never know!
“‘The best of friends must part,’ he said when she brought in his candle and lighted it for him.
“In the morning, we all arose early and took our last breakfast together by lamplight. She shook hands with him twice, and wished him all sorts of good wishes, and then he held out his hand to me and said, ‘Good-by.’ I said, ‘Good-by.’ And then he said, ‘You have given me a very pleasant winter; I shall often think of it.’ And I said, ‘Thank you,’ and ran away up-stairs to cry by myself. That was five and twenty years ago—before you were born, Sue, and before Tessa could creep; there were wet eyes in the world, before you were born, girls, and there will be wet eyes long after we are all dead; and always for the same reason—because somebody loves somebody.
“He is a hard worker—I rejoice in his life. Five years ago he came home, but not to Dunellen; he had no friends here; after resting awhile he returned to his field of labor, and died before he reached it, but was buried in the place he loved better than home.
“I thought of him and loved him and prayed for him through those twenty years. I think of him and love him and give thanks for him now, and shall till I die and afterwards!”
“Why didn’t you go with him?” asked Sue.
“He did not ask me.”
“Would you if he had?”
“I certainly should.”
“Couldn’t you bring him to the point? It would have been easy enough.”
“The gentleman did the asking in those days,” Sue laughed. “And wasn’t he ever married?”
“No.”
“What a pity! I thought that every thing always went right for people like you and Tessa. But I don’t see where the perfect gift comes in, do you, Tessa?”
“Yes, but I’m afraid that I don’t want such a perfect gift. I couldn’t bear it—twenty years.”
“Tell me—I can’t guess. Did he give you something?”
“No,hedid not.”
“Didn’t he loveyou?”
“No, he did not love me.”
“Where is the gift then?”
“My love for him was my perfect gift. It was given by One in whom there is no shadow of turning.”
“I am not strong enough to receive such a gift,” said Tessa looking troubled.
“Oh, dear me, I hope not. Oh, dear me, horrid! What a story to tell the night before my wedding! All I care about is aboutbeing loved!I didn’t know that the loving made any difference or did any good! That story is too sorrowful. Gerald would like that.”
The long ivory needle moved in and out; thefair face, half a century old, was full of loveliness.
“That is for you to remember all your life, Sue.”
“I sha’n’t. I shall forget it. I only remember pleasant things.”
“I wonder if Fredrika Bremer were as happy as you, Miss Jewett. She says that a gentleman inspired her with a ‘pure and warm feeling,’ that it was never responded to, and yet it had a powerful influence upon her development.”
“Was shereal?” inquired Sue. “I thought that she only wrote books.”
“It takes very real people to write,” answered Tessa. “The more real you are, the more you are called to write.”
Slipping off the low chair, down to the rug, Sue laid her head in Miss Jewett’s lap, the white wool half concealing the braids and curls and frizzes, the thin, excited face was turned toward the fire, the brown eyes, wild and yet timid, were misty with tears.
Miss Jewett and Tessa Wadsworth were the only people in the world who had ever seen this phase of Sue Greyson.
Dr. Lake had never seen her subdued or frightened. At this instant she was both. There were some things that Sue could feel; there were not any that she could understand.
“Sometimes,” said Sue, in a hollow whisper, “I’m so afraid, I want to run away; I was afraid I might run away and so I asked Tessa to come to-night.”
“My dear!” Miss Jewett’s warm lips touched her forehead.
“Oh, it isn’t any thing! I like Gerald; I adore him. I wouldn’t marry him if I didn’t! I am always afraid of a leap into the dark, and I am always jumping into dark places.”
“It is a leap forhim, too, Sue; you seem to forget that,” suggested Tessa.
“You always think of him, you never think of me.”
“It is a pity for no one to think of him; if I were to be married to-morrow, I should cry all night, out of pity for the hapless bridegroom.”
“Tessa, you ridiculous child,” exclaimed Miss Jewett.
“In books,” Sue went on, still with her face turned from them, “girls choose the one they are to marry out of all the world. Why don’t we?”
“We do,” said Tessa.
“We don’t. We take somebody because he asks us and nobody else asks.”
“Iwill not. I do not believe that God means it so. He chooses that we shall satisfy the best and hungriest part of ourselves, and the best part is the hungriest, and the hungriest the best; we may not have opportunity in one year, or two years, or ten years, but if we wait He will give us the things we most need! He did not give us any longing simply to make us go crying through the universe; the longing is His message making known to us that the good thingis. I will not be falseto myself, cheating myself by shutting my eyes and saying, ‘Ah,thisis good! I have found my choice,’ when my whole soul protests, knowing that it is a lie. I can wait.”
“Oh, Tessa!” laughed Sue. “Doesn’t she talk like a book? I never half know what she means when she goes into such hysterics. Do you expect to get all your good things?”
“Allmygood things! Yes, every single one; it is only a question of time. God can not forget, nor can He die. I shall not be discouraged until I am sure that He is dead.”
“O, Tessa, you are wicked,” cried Sue.
“You remind me of something,” said Miss Jewett. “‘Blessed are all they that waitfor Him.’”
“I can’t wait for my blessings,” said Sue; “I want to snatch them.”
Gently pushing aside Sue’s head, Tessa found her work and her needle; she worked silently while Sue laughed and grumbled and Miss Jewett talked, not over Sue’s head as Tessa’s habit was, but into her heart.
“Sue, I shall lose you in Bible class.”
“I never answered any questions or studied any lesson, you will not care for my empty place. Gerald is getting awfully good; he reads the Bible and Prayer-book every night; every morning when I go in to fix up his room, I find them on a little table by his bed; I suppose he reads in bed nights. He used to be bad and talk dreadful things when he first came; did you ever hear him, Tessa?”
“Yes.”
“But he’s awful good now; he thinks that people ought to go to church, and say their prayers; I hope he will keep it up;Iwill not hinder him. I want to be good, too.”
Tessa’s needle moved in and out; she did not hear Sue’s voice, or see the kneeling, green figure; her eyes were looking upon the face she had looked down into that evening in January, such a little time since; and she was hearing her voice as she heard it in the night. Had she forgotten so soon? Or was it the remembrance that gave her the unrest to-night? Was she conscious without understanding? And hadherRalph Towne done this? After having withdrawn himself from Sue, was he keeping her from seeing the good and the happiness of marriage with Dr. Lake? Would the thought of him come between her and the contentment that she might have had?
But no, she was putting herself into Sue’s position; that would not do; it was Sue’s self and not her own self that she must analyze! If she could tell Ralph Towne her fears to-night, his eyes would grow dark and grave, and then he would toss the feeling away with his amused laugh and say, “Sue is not deep enough for that! She did not care for me. Why must you think a romance about her?”
Was she not deep enough for that? Who could tell that?
She listened to Sue’s lively talk and tried to believe that his reply would be just; the one mostbitter thought of all was, that if she were suffering it was through his selfishness or stupidity. Why must he be so stupid about such things? Had he no heart himself?
Sue was laughing again. “Oh, dear! I must be happy; if I am not I shall be unhappy! It would kill me to be unhappy! I never think of unpleasant things five minutes.”
The sound of wheels near the windows, and a call to “Jerry” in a loud, quick voice, brought them all to a startling sense of the present.
“There he is,” cried Sue, springing lightly to her feet.
Tessa was relieved that she said “he” instead of “Gerald” or “Dr. Lake.”
“If you will not stay all night, too, Miss Jewett, he shall take you home.”
“I can not, dear. I only came because I wanted to talk with Sue Greyson once more before I lost her.”
Rubbers and waterproof were hurried on, and Tessa was left alone with the fire, the rain, and her work.
Suppose that it were herself who was to be married to-morrow—
Would she wish to run away? Run away from whom? Although her Ralph Towne had died and been buried, that old, sharp, sweet, memory was wrapped around her still; it would always be sweet although so sharp—and bitterly, bitterly sharp although so sweet; if it might become wholly the oneor wholly the other, but it could never be that; never unless she learned Love’s lesson as Mrs. Towne had laid it before her. But that was so utterly and hopelessly beyond her present growth!
Would he despise her if he could know how much that happy time was in her thoughts? Was she tenacious where stronger minds would forget? He would think her weak and romantic like the heroine of a story paper novel; that is, if he could think weak any thing so wholly innocent.
She trusted the emerald ring on her finger; at times it burned into her flesh; sometimes she tore it off that she might forget her promise, and then—oh, foolish, incomprehensible, womanly Tessa!—she would take it again and slip it on with a reverence and love for the old memory that she could not be ashamed of although she tried.
Had she been too hard upon Ralph Towne in their latest interview? Why need she have given shape to her hitherto unspoken thoughts concerning his life; she could not tell him of her prayers that he might change and yet become—for it was not too late—the good, good man that she had once believed him to be. He had taken away her faith in himself; he might give it back, grown stronger, if he would. If he only would!
Dr. Greyson’s step was in the hall; Sue’s voice was less excited, her father was speaking quietly to her. Sue, poor Sue! She would never be again the free, wild Sue Greyson that she was to-night.
Tessa felt Dr. Lake’s mood; she could have writtenout his thoughts, as he drove homeward in the rain; she dreaded his hilarious entrance, how his eyes would shine, with tears close behind them!
Her reverie was interrupted by the entrance that she dreaded. “Ah, Mystic, praying for my happiness here alone! I know you are. I come to be congratulated.”
“I congratulate you,” she said rising and taking his hand. Not so very long afterward, when she saw his cold, dead hands folded together and touched them, she remembered with starting tears this soft, hot, clinging clasp.
“You didn’t dream of this two months ago, did you?” he cried, dropping into the chair that Sue had been sitting in. “You didn’t know that I was born under a lucky star despite all my woeful past. I have turned over a new leaf; I turned it over to-night in the rain; it is chapter first. Such a white page, Mystic. Don’t you want to write something on it for me?”
“I wouldn’t dare.”
“Oh, yes, you would! What do you wish for me? Write that.”
“I wish for you—” she rolled the white wool over her hand.
“Well, go on! Something that must come true!”
“—The love that suffers long and iskind.”
“Whew!” He drew a long breath. “There is no place for that in me.”
Sue entered noisily. She did every thing noisily.
“Come here, Susan.” Dr. Lake caught her inhis arms, but she slipped through them, moving to Tessa’s side, seating herself upon the rug, and resting both hands in Tessa’s lap.
“I was reading the other day”—he stooped to smooth Sue’s flounce—“of a fellow who fell dead upon his wedding day, as soon as the knot was tied. Perhaps it was tied too tight and choked him. Suppose I drop dead, Susan, will you like to be a bewitching young widow so soon? Whom would you find to flirt with before night?”
“Gerald, you are wicked!”
“Probably this bridegroom had heart disease. I haven’t heart disease, except for you, my Shrine, my Heart’s Desire.”
“Isn’t he wretched, Tessa? He tells me all kinds of stories about people dying of joy!”
He bent forward, drawing her towards him backward, and with both arms around her, kissed the top of her head and her forehead.
“You mustn’t do so before folks,” said Sue shaking herself free.
“Mystic isn’t folks! She is my guardian angel.”
“I know that you would rather have married her.”
“But she wouldn’t rather have married me, would you, Mystic?”
“I can’t imagine it,” returned Tessa, as seriously as he had spoken. “Set your jealous heart at rest, Sue.”
“I never thought of it, but once in my life,” he continued, musingly, “and that was when I wasdown in the deeps about you, Susan; I did think that she might drag me out—a drowning man, you know, will catch at a straw. It was one night when she was weeding her pansies and refused to ride with me. I’m glad that you neverdidrefuse me, Mystic, you couldn’t be setting there so composedly.”
“Oh, yes, I would; I should have known that you were insane.”
“I was insane—all one week.”
“I believe that,” said Sue.
“I wonder what we shall all be thinking about the next time that we three sit here together! It will be too late for us to go back then, Susan; the die will be cast, the Rubicon crossed, another poor man undone forever. Are you regretting it, child?” drawing her again towards him backward and gazing down into her face. “Shall we quit at this last last minute? Speak the word! You never shall throw it up at me, that I urged you into it. It will be a mess for us if we do hate each other after awhile.”
“I will never hate you, Gerald.”
“But I might hate you, though, who knows?” smoothing her hair with his graceful, weak hands.
“Then Tessa shall be peacemaker,” said Sue straightening herself.
“No; I will not,” replied Tessa, gathering her work and rising. “Sue, you will find me up-stairs.”
“Then I’m coming, too; I don’t want to stay andbe sentimental. Gerald will talk—I know him—and I will cry, and how I would look to-morrow! I want you to do a little fixing for me and to try my hair low and then high.”
“I like it high,” said Dr. Lake.
“I don’t. I like it low. Tessa you shall try it low, like Nan Gerard’s. Say, Gerald, shall I put on my dress after she has fixed my hair and come down and let you see it.”
“I think I have seen it. Didn’t you try it on for me and tell me that that fellow liked it? I hate that dress; if you dress to please me, you will wear the one you have on now.”
“This old thing! I see myself. No, I shall wear my wedding dress. It fits to perfection. I want to look pretty once in my life.”
“You will never look prettier than you do this minute! Come here,” opening his arms towards her.
“No, I won’t. Let me alone, Dr. Lake.”
Tessa was already on the stairs; Sue ran towards her laughing and screaming, the parlor door was closed with a bang.
“Now he’s angry,” cried Sue, tripping on the stairs. “I don’t care; he wants me to stay and talk sentiment, and Ihatebeing sentimental. And, Tessa, you sha’n’t talk to me, either.”
“Where is your father?” inquired Tessa, standing on the threshold of Sue’s chamber.
“In the dining-room drying his feet and drinking a cup of coffee.”
“Don’t you want to go down and say good night? He will lose every thing when he loses you.”
Sue hesitated. “I don’t know how to be tender and loving, I should make a fool of myself; he isn’t over and above pleased with this thing anyway; he never did pet me as your father has petted you. Your father is like a mother. He said once when I was a little girl that he wished that I had died and Freddie had lived; Freddie was two years older and as bright as a button. Father loved him. I shall never forget that; I shall never forgive him no matter how kind he is to me. And he swears at me when he is angry with me; he used to, but Gerald told him that he should not swear athiswife! Father said that he didn’t mean any thing by it. Gerald will be kinder to me than father has been; father swears at me in one breath and calls me the comfort of his old age in the next. You can’t turn him into your father if you talk about him all night.”
“But he will be glad if you go down; he will think of it some day and so will you.”
“He isn’t sentimental and I can’t be. Besides I have some things to put into my trunk, and I want to put a ruffle into my wrapper that I may have it all ready. It’s eleven o’clock now; we shall not be asleep to-night.”
Tessa urged no more; it was not her father who was drying his feet and drinking his coffee down-stairs alone on the night before her wedding day. How he would look at her and take her into his arms with tears.
Sue opened her trunk. “Gerald’s things are all in. It does seem queer to have his things packed up with mine. And when we come home every thing will go on just the same only I shall be Mrs. Lake instead of Miss Greyson.”
As Tessa stood behind her arranging her hair, She said, “There, I like that. I almost look like Nan Gerard. What do you think she said to-day? She was here with Mary Sherwood to see father and they saw Mr. Ralph in my album. ‘That’s the man I intend to marry,’ she said, ‘eyes, money, and all.’ Mary scolded her but she only laughed. She said that if she couldn’t get him, she should take the professor, for he was just as handsome and could talk about something beside paregoric and postmortem examinations.”
Tessa said nothing. How she had pitied Nan Gerard, and how harshly she had misjudged Dr. Towne. She was awakened in the night by Sue’s voice—
“Put your arm around me, Tessa.”
The long night ended at last in the dull dawn, for it was raining still. Tessa had slept fitfully; Sue had lain perfectly quiet, not speaking again or moving.
At eleven o’clock Sue and Dr. Lake were married. Dr. Greyson sat with his head in his hands, turned away from them, his broad frame shaking from head to foot; Tessa did not look at Dr. Lake: she sat on a sofa beside Mrs. Towne, with her eyes fixed on the carpet. Sue cried and laughed togetherwhen her father kissed her; she drew herself to the full height of Mrs. Gerald Lake, when Dr. Towne shook hands with her. At half past twelve the bride and bridegroom were driven to the depot; Tessa remained to give a few orders to the servants, and was then taken home in Dr. Towne’s carriage.
“It seems to me as lonely as a funeral,” she said; “and Sue is laughing and eating chocolate cream drops this very minute. Marriage should be a leap into the sunshine.”
“I hope that yours will be,” her companion said in his gravest tone.
“If it everis, you may rest assured that it will be. It will be the very happiest sunshine that ever shone out of heaven.”
She was learning to talk to Dr. Towne as easily as she talked to her father, for he was the one man in the world that she was sure that she would never marry; she knew that he desired it as little as she did herself.
“Why will it be so happy?”
“Because I shall wait till I amsatisfied.”
“Satisfied with him? You will never be that.”
“Then I shall wither in single blessedness; I shall be unhappily not married instead of unhappily married.”
“Philip Towne is your ideal.”
“I know it,” she said. “I like to think that he is in the world. He makes me as happy as a pansy.”
“Women are never happy with their ideals.”
“They seldom have an opportunity of testing it; Professor Towne has a pure heart and he has brains.”
Dr. Towne answered in words that she never forgot, “That is what he says of you.”
“Oh, I am so glad! I like to have that said of me better than any thing.”
She remembered, but she would not tell him, that a lady had said of him, having seen him but a few moments, and not having heard him speak, that he was a “rock.”
“And I love rocks and know all about them,” she had added.
“They give shadow in a weary land,” Tessa had thought. “I have been in a weary land and he hasnotbeen a shadow to me.”
After a silent moment he spoke, “Don’t you think that you were rather hard on me last week?”