“Yes,” she said frankly, “I have thought it all over; I intended to tell you that I was sorry; Iamsorry; I will not do so again.”
“Till next time?”
“There shall not be any next time; in my thoughts I have been very unjust to you; I have come nearer hating, reallyhatingyou, than any other person I ever knew. I am sorry; I am always sorry to be unjust.”
One look into the sunshiny eyes satisfied her that she was forgiven. It almost seemed as if they were on the old confidential footing.
“Have you gathered any autumn leaves?” he asked.
“Yes, some beautiful ones. I did not get any last year—” She stopped, confused.
She had lived through her year without him. Was he remembering last October, too?
About sunset it cleared; she was glad for Dr. Lake’s sake; about the bride she did not think; Sue would be thankful if none of her bridal finery were spoiled.
The evening mail brought a letter from Dinah.
There were two pieces of news in it, in both of which Tessa was interested. The school-master was twenty-one years of age, “a lovable fellow, the room grows dark when he goes out of it, and he likes best the books that I do.” This came first, she read on to find that Professor Towne’s mother and sister had come this summer to the house over the way, that Miss Towne was “perfectly lovely” and had been an invalid for fifteen years, not having put her foot to the ground in all that time; she could move about on the first floor, but passed most of her time in a chair, reading, writing, and doing the most beautiful fancy work. She was beautiful, like Professor Towne, but the mother was only a fussy old lady. Her name was Sarepta!
Dinah’s letters were rather apt to be ecstatic and incoherent. Tessa wrote five pages in her book that night and a foolscap sheet to Dinah.
She fell asleep thinking of what Professor Towne had said about her.
All through the month of October she felt cross, sometimes she looked cross, but she did not speak one cross word, not even once; she was not what we call “sweet” in her happiest moods, but she was thoroughly sound in her temper and often a little, just a very little, sharp. Never sharp to her father, however, because she reverenced him, and never to her mother because she was pitiful towards her; she could appreciate so few of life’s best havings and givings, that Tessa could never make her enjoyment less by speaking the thoughts that, at times, almost forced their own utterance; therefore her mood was kept to herself all through the month.
There was no month in the year that she loved as well as she loved October; in any of its days it was a trial to be kept within doors.
She would have phrased her mood as “cross” if she had had the leisure or the inclination to keep a diary; she had kept a journal during the first year of her friendship with Ralph Towne andhad burned it before the year was ended in one of her times of being ashamed of herself.
One of the happenings that irritated her was the finding in her desk a scrap of a rhyme that she had written one summer day after a talk with Ralph Towne; she dropped it into the parlor grate chiding herself for ever having been so nonsensical and congratulating herself upon having outgrown it.
It was calledThe Silent Sideand was the story of a maiden wandering in the twilight up a lane bordered with daisies, somebody didn’t come and her eyes grew tired of watching and her heart beat faint with waiting, so she wandered down the daisy-bordered lane! She did feel a little tender over the last lines even if she were laughing over it:
“‘Father,’ she said, ‘I may not say,But willyounot tell him I love him so?”
Had any one in all the world of maidenhood beside her ever prayed such a prayer? Old words came to her: “Thou knowest my foolishness.”
The rhyme was dated the afternoon that Ralph Towne had said—but what right had she to remember anything that he had said? He had forgotten and despised her for remembering; but he could not despise her as much as she despised herself!
Why was it that understanding him as she certainly did understand him, that she knew that shewould fly to the ends of the earth with him if he should take her hand and say, “Come”; that is, she wasafraidthat she would. It was no marvel that the knowledge gave her a feeling of discomfort, of intense dissatisfaction with herself; how woefully wrong she must be for such a thing to be true!
On the blank side of a sheet of manuscript, she scribbled a stanza that haunted her; it gave expression to the life she had lived during the two years just passed.
“A nightingale made a mistake;She sang a few notes out of tune;Her heart was ready to break,And she hid from the moon.”
In this month her book was accepted; that check for two hundred and six dollars gave pleasure that she and others remembered all their lives; with this check came one for fifteen dollars for Dinah; she almost laughed her crossness away over Dine’s little check.
Dine’s reply was characteristic:
“Thus endeth my first and last venture upon the literary sea; I follow in your wake no longer.
“If it were matrimony now—
“John (isn’t John a grand, strong name?) doesn’t like literary women. He reads Owen Meredith to me, and Miss Mulock. He says that I am like Miss Mulock’sEdna.”
Each letter of Dine’s teemed with praises of John Woodstock; she thought that he was like Adam Bede, or Ninian in “Head of the Family,” or perhapsMax in “A Life for a Life”; she was lonely all day long without him, and as happy as she could be on earth with him all the long evenings.
Tessa frowned over the letters; Dine made no allusion to him in letters written to her father and mother; her whole loving, girlish heart she poured out to Tessa. And Tessa cried over them and prayed over them.
Sue returned from her bridal tour undeniably miserable; even the radiant mood of Dr. Lake was much subdued. Tessa met them together at Mrs. Towne’s one evening, two days after the coming home, and was cut to the heart by their manner towards each other: she was defiant; he, imploring.
“I’m sorry I’m married any way,” she exclaimed.
“Don’t say that,” he remonstrated, his face flushing painfully.
“I will say it—Idosay it! Iamsorry!”
“You know that you don’t mean it.”
“Yes, I do mean it, too.”
Dr. Towne glanced at Tessa and gave an embarrassed laugh. Mrs. Towne’s expression became severe; Tessa could have shaken Sue. Nan Gerard turned on the music stool with her most perfect laugh; Tessa could have shakenherfor the enlightenment that ran through it.
“We will have no more music after that,” said Professor Towne.
Sue bade Tessa good night holding both her hands. “I wish I had married Stacey,” she whispered.
“Don’t tell Dr. Lake, I beg of you.”
“Oh, he knows it. Come and see me.”
“No, I will not. You shall not talk to me about your husband.”
“I will if I want to. You must come.”
“Do come,” urged Dr. Lake coming towards them. But she would not promise.
The last Saturday evening in October found Tessa alone before the fire in Mrs. Towne’s sitting-room; Mrs. Towne was not well, and had sent for her to come; she had gone to her sleeping room immediately after tea, and asked Tessa to come to her in two hours.
She was in a “mood”; so she called it to herself, a mood in which self-analysis held the prominent place; her heart was aching, she knew not for what, she hardly cared, if the aching might be taken away and she could go to sleep and then awake to find the sun shining.
For the last hour she had been curled up in a crimson velvet chair, part of the time with her head bowed upon the arm; there were tears on her eyelashes, on her fingers, and on the crimson velvet. In the low light, she was but a gray figure crowned with chestnut braids, and only that Ralph Towne saw when he entered noiselessly through the half open door.
Tessa thought that no one in the world moved so gently or touched her so lightly as Ralph Towne. He stood an instant beside her before she stirred, then she raised her head slowly, ashamed of herflushed, wet cheeks. She could not hide from the moon.
“Well?” she said, thinking of her eyes and cheeks.
“Are you dreaming dreams alone, here in the dark?”
“I’m afraid so; I dream too many dreams; I want something real; I do not like the stuff that dreams are made of.”
“You are real enough.” He leaned against the low mantel with one elbow resting upon it; she did not lift her eyes; she was afraid. Had he come to say something to her?
“Miss Tessa.”
She did not reply, she was rubbing her fingers over the crimson velvet.
“I have been thinking of something that I wish to say to you.”
“Well, I am approachable,” in a light, saucy voice.
“Think well before you speak; it is a question that, middle-aged as I am, I never asked any woman before; I want to ask you to become my wife.”
She had raised her eyes in surprise, unfeigned surprise.
“You need not look like that,” he said irritably; “you look as if you had never thought of it.”
“I have not—for a long time; perhaps I did once—before I became old and wise. Iamsurprised, I can not understand it; I was so sure that you could never care for me.”
“Why should I not? It is the most natural thing in the world.”
“I do not think so; I can not understand.”
“Accept it upon my testimony, do not try to understand it.”
He betrayed no feeling, except in his quickened tone; she was too bewildered to be conscious of any feeling at all; she listened to the sound of her own voice, as if another were speaking; she remembered afterward, that for once in her life she had heard the sound of her own voice. She was thinking, “My voiceispleasant, only so cold and even.”
“Will you not answer me?”
She was thinking; she had forgotten to answer.
“Why should you like me?” she said at last.
“There’s reason enough, allow me to judge; but you do not come to the point.”
“I do not know how.”
“I thought that coming to the point was one of your excellences.”
“Your question—your assertion rather—is something very new.”
She could see the words; she was reciting them from a printed page.
“Don’t you know whether you like me or not?” he asked in the old assured, boyish way.
“No, I do not know that; if I did I should care for what you are saying, and now I do not care. Once, in that time when I loved you and you did not care, I would have died with joy to hear you say what you have said; my heart would havestopped beating; I should have been too glad to live; but perhaps whenthatyou went away and died, the Tessa that loved you went away and died, too. I think that Ididdie—of shame. Now I hear you speak the words that I used to pray then every night that you might speak to me, and now I do not care! When I was little I cried myself sick once for something I wanted, and when mother gave it to me I was too sick and tired to care. No, I do not want to marry you, Dr. Towne, I am too sick and tired to love you.”
“Why do you not want to marry me?”
“Because—because—” she looked up into his grave eyes—“I do not want to; I am not satisfied with you.”
“Why are you not satisfied with me?”
“I do not know.”
“Are you disappointed in me? Have I changed?”
“Oh, no,” she said sorrowfully, “you have not changed—not since I have known you this time. It is like this, as if I were blind when I knew you before, and I loved you for what you were to me; but as I could not see you, I loved you for what I imagined you to be, and now, I am not blind, my eyes are wide, wide open, and I look at you and wonder ‘where is the one I knew?’ I do not know you; you are a stranger to me; I would love you if I could; I can not sayyesand not love you. I have never told any one, but I may tell you now. While you were away at St. Louis, I promised to marry some one; he had loved me all my life, andI was so heart-broken because of the mistake that I had made about you; and I wanted some one to care for me, so that I might forget how I loved somebody that did not love me. And then I was wild when I knew what I had done! I did not love him; I felt as if I were bound in iron; I shall never forget that. I do not want to feel bound in iron to you. Why did you not ask me last year when you knew how I cared for you?”
He dropped his eyes, the hot color flushing even to his forehead. “I could not—sincerely.”
“Why did you act as if you liked me?”
“I did like you. I did not love you. I did not understand. I can not tell you how unhappy I was when I found that you had misunderstood me. I would not have hurt you for all the universe; I did not dream that you could misunderstand me; I was attracted to you; I did not know that I manifested any stronger feeling. Surely you have forgiven me.”
“Yes, I have forgiven you; I did not really blame you; I knew that you did not understand. You are a stupid fellow about women.—You are only a stupid, dear, big boy.”
“But you do not answer me.”
“Ihaveanswered you. Do you ask me sincerely now?” she asked curiously.
“You know I do,” he said angrily.
“Do you ask me because Miss Gerard has refused you?” with a flash of merriment crossing her face.
“I never asked Miss Gerard.”
“Did you flirt with her?”
“I suppose you give it that name. I was attracted towards her, of course, but I soon found that she had no depth; she would cling to me, I could not shake her off. I took her to Mayfield this morning; she asked to go, I could not refuse the girl. She has made several pretty things for me; I showed my appreciation by buying pieces of jewelry for her; was that flirting? I never kissed her, or said I loved her, or talked any nonsense to her.”
“Of course not. You do not know how.”
“I know how to talk sense, Miss Tessa.”
“Are you asking me because your mother loves me so much?”
“Is it so hard for you to believe that I love you?”
“Yes,” she said, her eyes filling at his tone, “I can not believe it. It is as if you had put both hands around my throat and choked my breath away and then said politely, ‘Excuse me.’”
“Is my love so little to you as that?”
“I have not seen it yet; yousayyou love me, that is all.”
“Is not that enough?”
“It can not be enough, for it does not satisfy me. I have believed so long that you despised me; one word from you can not change it all.”
“Is there something wrong about me?”
“Wrong? Oh, no. How could there be? I do believe that you are agoodman.”
“You think that you can not be happy with me?” he asked patiently.
“I am happy enough always, everywhere; I was as happy as a bird in a tree before I knew you; you set me to crying for something, and then held out your hand empty.”
“I love you; isn’t that full enough?”
“No, that is not full enough. I want you tobeall that I believed you to be. I shall not be satisfied till then. When you think of me you may think of me hungering and thirsting for you to be all that I can dream of your being—all that God is willing to make you.”
The light had died out of his eyes.
“Do you know some one that does satisfy you?”
“I know good people, but they do not satisfy me.”
“Philip Towne?”
“I should as soon think of loving St. John.”
“Tell me,doyou love him?”
“Dr. Towne, I never thought of such a thing!” she said with quick indignation.
“You are a Mystic; Dr. Lake has named you true. Come, be sensible and don’t talk riddles; don’t talk like a book; talk plain, good sense; sayyes, and leave all your whims behind you forever.”
“Loving you was a whim; shall I leave that behind forever?”
“Yes.”
“Then I could not endure your presence; it is that that keeps you near me now. It is not enoughfor you to love me; I should die of hunger if I did not love you.”
“Love me, then.”
Her head went down upon the arm of the chair; she covered her face with both hands; a childish attitude she often assumed when alone.
“I can’t, I can’t! I want to; I would if I could! it’s too late; I can’t go back and see you as you were—”
“I have asked you to forgive me.”
“I do, I do; but I do not love you as I want to love you. I shall never marry any one, you may be sure of that; I do not want to be married. Why must I? Who says I must?”
“I say so.”
“Your authority I do not recognize. The voice must come from God to my own heart.”
“Lift your head. Look at me.”
She obeyed.
“I wish you to understand that I am not to be trifled with; this is definite; this is final; I have asked and you have refused. You need not play with me thinking that I shall ask you again,I never shall. Remember, I never shall.”
“I do not wish you to ask me again.”
“Then this ends the matter.”
“This ends the matter,” she repeated.
“My mother is not well, she will miss you; you will stay with her just the same. She will not surmise any thing. She loves you as I did not know that one woman could love another.”
“Is that why you wish to marry me?”
“No. I know my own mind. I have loved you ever since I knew you, but I was not aware of it; I did not know it until I knew that Miss Gerard was not like you.”
“Oh, I am so sorry! This is the hardest of all. But I might grow not to like you at all; I might rush away from you; it takes so much love and confidence and sympathy to be willing to give one’s self.”
“I am not in a frame of mind to listen to such things; you forget that you have thrown me away for the sake of a whim!”
“I want to tell your mother; I can not bear for her to be so kind to me—”
“It isn’t enough to hurt me, but you must hurt her, also. She would not understand—any more than I do—why you throw me away.”
“I will not tell her, but I shall feel like a hypocrite. You will not utterly despise me.”
“You can not expect me to feel very kindly towards you. Why may I not lose all but the memory ofyou?”
“You may. I am willing,” she answered wearily. “Oh, Iwantedto be satisfied with you.”
He had left the room with his last words, not waiting for reply.
And she could only cry out, with a dry, hard sob, “Oh, Ralph, Ralph, Iwantedto be satisfied with you!”
One afternoon in the reading-room she found two notices of her book; one was inHearth and Home, the other inThe Lutheran Observer; the former ran in this style:
“‘Under the Wings’ by Theresa Louise Wadsworth is the most lifelike representation of a genuine live boy that we have seen for many a day. We are almost tempted to think that the author was once a boy herself she is so heartily in sympathy with a boy’s thoughts and feelings. It is a book that every boy ought to read, and we are confident that no boy can read it without being bettered by it.”
The other she was more pleased with:
“Rob is a genuine boy, with all manner of faults and pranks; but a tender, truthful heart, and a determination for the right that brings him through safely. But specially is he delightful in juxtaposition with Nell, a little girl who says the quaintest things in the most laughable, most lovable manner. Altogether it is a thoroughly enjoyable book, sweetand saintly, too; though not saintly after the cut and dried style of youthful piety.”
She turned the papers with a startled face as if the lady in the black cloak near her had guessed what she had looked for and had found; as if the blonde mustache hidden behind Emerson surmised that she had written a book and wondered why she had not attempted something deeper; as if Mr. Lewis Gesner reading a newspaper with his forehead puckered into a frown knew that she was slightly a blue-stocking, and decided that she might better be learning how to be a good wife for somebody.
“Iamcommonplace,” she soliloquized, running down the long flight of stairs; “ten years ago when my heroines were Rosalie and Viola, and their lovers bandits or princes in disguise, who would have believed that I could have settled down into writing good books for good little children?”
That evening Mr. Hammerton took from his memorandum book three square inches of printed matter, neatly and exactly folded, and dropped it into her hand.
“There’s a feather in your cap, Lady Blue; it is plucked from theEvening Mail.”
She read it, by the light of the shaded lamp, standing at the sitting-room table. Mrs. Wadsworth looked up from her work, regarding her curiously; Tessa did not observe the expression of pride and love that flitted across her face. Mrs. Wadsworth loved Tessa more than she loved any otherhuman being; indeed, with all her capacity for loving; but Tessa would never discover it. Mrs. Wadsworth was not aware of it, herself; Mr. Wadsworth saw it and was glad. Tessa read eagerly:
“‘Under the Wings’ is the title of an excellent book by Theresa Louise Wadsworth issued in neat form by——. The characters of the boyish hero—wilful, merry, irreverent, honest, and bold, and the heroine—happy, serious, inquiring, and lovable, are drawn with no mean skill, while the other personages, the kind and pious grandmother, the snappish, but well-meaning mother, the deacon, and others, are sketched with scarcely less truth and vividness. The development of the Christian faith in the soul of wild Rob is traced easily and naturally, the incidents are numerous and interesting; the whole movement of the story is in helpful sympathy with human hearts.”
“What is it, daughter?” inquired her father arranging the chess-men.
“She is modest as well as famous. I will read it,” said Mr. Hammerton, “and here’s your letter from Dine; I knew that that would insure my welcome. Do you know, I forgot to inquire for myself? I never did such a thing before. Father will go to the mail, however.”
Moving apart from the group, she ran through the long letter; coloring and biting her lips as she read. Mrs. Wadsworth’s little rocker was drawn to the table; the light from the tall lamp fell over her face and hair, touching her hands and her work;the low, white forehead, the wavy hair, the pretty lips and chin were pleasant to look upon; when she was in a happy state of mind, this little lady was altogether kissable.
“What does Dine say?” she asked.
“Not much. No news,” stammered Tessa.
“Hurry then and let me read it.”
“Excuse me, it is purely confidential, every vestige to be consigned to the flames. You are to have a letter in a day or two.”
Mr. Hammerton gave her a quick glance and moved his queen into check. She took the letter into the parlor for a second perusal.
“Oh, Tessa, my dear, big, wise sister, I’ve got something to tell you. What should I do if I hadn’t somebody to tell? At first I thought I wouldn’t tell you or any body, and then I knew I must. Norah knows, but she will never tell. She does not know about Gus. I have never told that, but she knows about my wonderful John! I don’t know how to begin either; I guess I will begin in the middle; all the blanks your own imagination must fill. You know all about John; I’ve told you enough if your head isn’t too full of literary stuff to hold common affairs;I’m in loveand he is, too, of course. I should not be if he were not. I mean I should not tell of it if he were not. I’m glad that you are not the kind of elder sister that can’t be told such things, for I could not tell mother, and I would not dare tell dear, old father.Not that it is so dreadful to be in love, even if I have known him but seven weeks to-night; I fell in love with him the instant he raised his eyes and took hold of my hand. Living under the same roof and eating together three times a day (he eats so nicely), and ciphering and studying and reading together, and going to church and prayer-meeting and singing-school together, make the time seem ten times as long and give twenty times as many opportunities of falling in love decorously as I could have found in Dunellen in a year! But I am not apologizing forthat. It’s too delightfully delicious to have areallover! Not that he has asked meyet! I wouldn’t have him do it for any thing; it would spoil it all. But we both knew it as Adam and Eve knew it! Now the dreadfulness of it is that I have no right to do such a thing. I came here believing that I was lawfully and forever engaged to dear old Gus, spectacles, chess-board, dictionary and all. Not thatheever said a word tome! Don’t you know one night I told you that I had a secret? How glad I was of it then! I couldn’t sleep that night and for days I felt dizzy; for Gus had been my hero ever since he told me stories when I was a wee child. And so of course I thought Ilovedhim. What is love, anyway? Who knows? That secret was this: I heard dear, old, wise Gus tell father that he lovedme(just think,me!) and that he was waiting for me to love him, dear, old boy! He would not try to make me love him, he wanted it to come naturally;he would not speak to me or urge me, he wanted to find me loving him and then he would ask me to give him what belonged to him. Wasn’t it touching? I didn’t know that he could be so lover-like. I didn’t know that he ever would love anybody because he always talks books and politics and only made fun when I told him news about the girls. How could I help loving him when I knew that he loved me. Isn’t that enough to make anybody love anybody?
“Just as soon as I saw my wonderful John, then I knew that I did not love Gus, that I never had loved him, that I nevercouldlove him. No, not to the end of time. If I had married him, I suppose that I should have been satisfied and thought I was as happy as I could be—I don’t know, though. He was wise to let me wait and have a choice: it is cruel to ask girls before they have seen some one else; we do not know what we do want until we see it—or him. I am writing at the sitting-room table; John has not come home from the mail; Aunt Tessa knits a long, blue stocking and Uncle Knox is asleep with the big white and black cat on his knees.
“I never could stay here but for John and Miss Towne. I have toldherabout John; she likes John. Every one does.
“I want you to see my knight; he is not tall, he is broad-shouldered, with the loveliest complexion and blonde mustache, blue eyes, shining blue eyes, and auburn curly hair! that is,ratherauburn; Ithink it is more like reddish gold. I wish that you could hear him talk about making life a glorious success. He makes me feel brave and strong. Oh, isn’t it a beautiful thing to live and have some one love you! I wish that you loved somebody; I do not like to be so happy and have you standing out in the cold. John thinks thatyouare wonderful; I tell him that he will forget me when he has heard you talk.
“Wise old Gus is a thousand miles over my head when he talks to me, but John walks by my side and speaks the thoughts that I have been thinking, only in so much more beautiful language; and he likes all the books I like, and my favorite poems and hymns. How will you break it to Gus? He must be told. He wrote to me two weeks ago, a long, interesting letter all about Dunellen news, which I haven’t dared answer yet. I suppose I must. I showed it to John; he asked how old he was, and now he calls him ‘The Venerable.’ He must not keep on thinking about me, for I never, never can like him, even if I never marry John. Do break it to him in some easy,pleasantway; he will never imagine thatyouknow that he likesme. He never showed it any, I am sure. I always thought that it was you, and mother thinks so; I heard her telling father.
“Be sure to write immediately, for I am as unhappy as I can be. And be sure to tell me what he says and how he takes it. Mary Sherwood wrote me that Sue told her that she and Dr. Lake hadawful quarrels, and that once they didn’t speak to each other for three days only in her father’s presence. I never could quarrel with John. There he comes. I’ll be writing when he comes in and not look up, and then he will come behind my chair and touch my curls when auntie isn’t looking.
“Write soon. Your ever lovingDine.
“P.S.—John calls me Di: he doesn’t likeDine.”
Crumbling the letter in both hands, she laid it upon the coals; then she stood with one foot on the fender, leaning forward with her forehead upon the mantel, thinking, thinking. Before she was aware the door was opened and some one came behind her and put both arms around her.
“Is any thing the matter with Dine?”
“Oh, no,” shaking herself loose from his arms and creeping out of them.
He pushed the ottoman nearer and seated himself upon the parrot and the roses; she stood on the edge of the rug, with her arms folded across her breast to keep herself quiet; how could she tell him the truth? He was not a boy to laugh and cry and fling it off; he had loved Dine as long as Felix Harrison had lovedher! He would take it quietly enough; she had no dread of an outburst; it might be that Dine’s silence in regard to his letter had been a preparation; surely every hard thing that came had its preparation; the heavy blow was never sent before the word of warning.
“She is not sick?” he asked.
“Sick!” She lingered over the word as if help would come before it were ended. “Oh, no, she is well and happy.”
“Does she write you secrets?”
“She always tells me her secrets.”
“Has any phenomenon occurred?”
“It isn’t a phenomenon; it is something as old as Eve and as new as Dinah. She thinks she has found her Adam.”
“Ah!” in a constrained voice.
She saw nothing but the fire; the long poker was laid across the fender, a handful of ashes had fallen through the grate. “Such things have to come, like the measles and mumps; I did hope, however, to keep her out of the contagion. But Mother Nature is wiser than any sister.”
“Why is it to be regretted?”
“Because—oh, because, I have learned that one’s eyes are always wide open afterward—they weep much and see clear; one can never be carelessly happy again; I wanted her to stay a little girl. Selfishly, perhaps. I thought there was time enough.”
“It is settled then—so soon?”
“Nothing is settled, but that two people are in love, or believe themselves to be. Am I not a cynical elder sister?”
“Is this her first experience?”
“Who can say when a first experience is! Tennyson and moonlight walks are aggravating at their age.” At their age! She felt as old as Miss Jewett to-night.
“I hope he is worthy of her. She is a jewel.”
“She would not love him if he were not,” said the elder sister proudly.
“This is a secret?”
“Yes; I know that I can trust you. It will be time enough to tell father and mother when he brings her home and kneels at their feet for their blessing.”
“Who is he?”
“John Woodstock, the school-master. He has neither father nor mother, he is beautiful and good, enthusiastic and fascinating.”
She had not once lifted her eyes to his face; his fingers had clasped and unclasped themselves; his voice was not as steady as usual.
“That notice was a very pretty puff, Lady Blue.”
“Yes, I like it I will paste it into my notebook.”
“Is that all you have seen?”
“No, I saw two in the reading-room, but I like this better.”
“Are you writing now?”
“Yes.”
“You are not on the lookout for Adam.”
“No. I will write and he shall search for me. Haven’t you heard of that bird in Africa, which if you hunt for him, you can not find, but if you stay at home, he will come to you?”
He had risen and stood in his usual uneasy fashion. “My congratulations to Dine.”
“I will tell her.”
He lingered on the hearth-rug, then at the door with his hand upon the knob.
“Good night. I shall be busy for a week or two; do not expect to see me.”
“You will come when you can?”
“Certainly.” He went out and closed the door.
She stood in the same position with her arms folded for the next half hour. How could Dine know what love was? How could she give up a man like Gus Hammerton for a light-haired boy who talked of making life a glorious success? He had his heartache now; it had come at last after all his years of watching Dine growing up: and no one could help him, he must fight it out alone; she remembered what he had said about quoting from a book for Dr. Lake. What “book man” could help him to-night? Would he open a book or fall upon his knees?
Washesorrowful to-night too, Ralph Towne? How gentle he had been with her and how patient! They had met several times since; once, in his mother’s presence, when he had spoken to her as easily as usual; at other times in the street; he had lifted his hat and passed on; the one glimpse of his eyes had been to reveal them very dark and very stern. She could hear Mr. Hammerton’s voice calling back to her father from the gate; they both laughed and then his quick tramp sounded on the planks.
The tramp kept on and on for hours; the moon arose late; he walked out into the country, nowtramping along the wayside and now in the road; it was midnight when he turned his face homeward and something past one when he silently unlocked the door with his night-key and found his way to his room. There was a letter there from Dinah; his sister had laid it on his bureau. It was brief, formal, and ambiguous; she had subscribed herself “Your young, old friend, D.” She did not say that she was glad of his letter, she did not ask him to write again. “She thinks that she must not write to me,” he thought, “darling little Dine! I would like to see that John Woodstock!”
The November sky was full of clouds; Tessa liked a cloudy sky; the dried leaves whirled around her and rustled beneath her feet, fastening themselves to her skirt as she walked through them; she had stepped down into the gutter to walk through the leaves because they reminded her of her childish days when she used to walk through them and soil her stockings and endure a reprimand when her mother discovered the cause of it; then she had liked the sound of the leaves, now she only cared for them, as she did for several other things,—for the sake of the long ago past! She imagined herself a ten-year-old maiden with big blue eyes and long, bright braids hanging down her back and tied together at the ends with brown ribbon; she was coming from school with a Greenleaf’s Arithmetic (she ciphered in long division and had a “table” to learn), “Parker’s Philosophy” and “Magnall’s Questions” in her satchel. The lesson to-morrow in that was about Tilgath-pilneser; she had stumbled over the queer name, so she would be sure to remember it. There were crumbs in thenapkin in the satchel, too, she had had seed cake for lunch; and a lead pencil that Felix Harrison had sharpened for her at noon, when he had come down-stairs to ask Laura for his share of the lunch, and there was a half sheet of note paper with her spelling for to-morrow from “Scholar’s Companion” written on it; perhaps there was a poorly written and ill-spelled note from Gus Hammerton’s cousin, Mary Sherwood, and there might be a crochet needle and a spool of twenty cotton!
She smiled over the inventory, lingering over each article; oh, if she only were going home from school with that satchel, to help her mother a little, play with Dine, and in the evening to look over her lessons sitting close to her father and then to coax him for a story. And then she would go to bed at eight o’clock to awake in the morning to another day. Mr. Hammerton said that it was a premature “Vanitas vanitatem” for her to declare that “growing up” was as bad as any thing a girl could dream!
But then he did not know about poor Felix, and he could never guess what she had dreamed that she had found in Ralph Towne—and how empty life was because of this thing that had mocked her. Empty with all its fulness because of something that never had been; something that never could be in him.
In those satchel-days her greatest trouble had been an interminable scolding from her mother, or the having to give to Dine her own share of cup-custard, when one chanced to be left from tea.
It was a raw day; the wind played roughly with her veil; the fields were bleak, and the long lines of fence, stretching in every direction and running into places that she did not know and would not care for, gave her a feeling of homesickness. Homesickness with the home she had lived in all her life not a mile distant, with every one that she loved or ever had loved within three miles; every one but Dine, and Dine was as blithe and satisfied as any girl could be.
Still she was homesick; she had been homesick since that evening by the fire in Mrs. Towne’s sitting-room. Homesick because she had dreamed a dream that could never come true; now that he had asked her in plain, straightforward, manly words to love him and become his wife, her heart had opened, the light shone in, and she read all that the three years had written; shehadloved him, but the love had been crushed in shame—in shame for her mistake.
“There she isnow,” cried a voice in the distance behind her.
She turned to find Dr. Lake stopping his horse; he sprang out, not lightly, not like himself, and assisted his wife to the ground.
“She prefers your company, it seems,” he said, holding the reins with one hand and giving Tessa the other. “Talk fast now, for I shall not be gone long; I want to get home.”
“You can go home, I’ll come when I like,” replied Sue.
“We stopped at your house,” said Sue, as he drove on; “I asked him to leave me while he goes to Harrison’s; that Felix is always having a fit or something. Do you think Gerald looks so sick?” squeezing her hand under the folds of Tessa’s crimson and gray shawl that she might take her arm.
“He is much changed; I did not like to look at him; has he been ill?”
“Oh, you didn’t hear then! It was day before yesterday! He was thrown out; the horse ran away; he isn’t hurt much; he thinks he is, I do believe. I am not a nurse, I don’t know how to coddle people and fuss over them. The horse is a strange one that father had taken to try, and he threw Gerald out and ran away and smashed the buggy, and a farmer brought him home. He did look as white as a sheet and he hasn’t eaten any thing since; he went out yesterday and insisted upon coming out to-day. Father says that he’s foolhardy; but I guess he knows that he isn’t hurt; I sha’n’t borrow trouble anyway. He mopes and feels blue, but he says nothing ails him; he’s a doctor and he ought to know. Where are you going?”
“Not anywhere in particular; I came out for the air; we will walk on slowly.”
“We might go as far as your seat on the roots. Wasn’t that time an age ago? I didn’t feel married-y one bit. I want to go over to Sherwoods to-night to the Sociable, but Gerald says that I am heartless to want to go. I don’t think I am. I didn’t get married to shut myself up. Gerald neverhas any time to go anywhere with me, and it’s just as stupid and vexatious at home as it ever was. Don’tyouever get married.”
“Are you keeping your word?”
“What word?”
“The promise you made me that day by the brook.”
“About Gerald? Oh, sometimes I keep it and sometimes I don’t. He always makes up first, I will say that for him. He will never let me go to sleep without kissing him good night.”
“Then you did not tell Mary Sherwood that once you did not speak for three days?”
“Bless you, no; Gerald would not let that be true; it was no goodness in me that it wasn’t true, though; perhaps I told her that.”
“Do you talk to her about him?”
“Now, Granny, suppose I do!”
Tessa stood still. “Promise me—you shall not take another step with me till you do—that you will not talk to any one against him.”
“I won’t. Don’t gripe my hand so tight. He is my husband, he isn’t yours! When he’s contrary, I’ll be contrary, too, and I’ll tell people if I like.”
“Then you forfeit my friendship; remember I am not your friend.”
“Tessa Wadsworth! you hateful old thing! you know I shall have to give in, for you are my best friend! There,” laughing, “let me go, and I’ll promise! I’ll say all the ugly things I have to say to his own face.”
They walked on slowly; Sue rambling on and Tessa listening with great interest.
“I had a letter from Stacey last week; Gerald has it in his pocket; he dictated the answer, and I wrote it in my most flourishing style. I’ve got somebody to take good care of me now—if he doesn’t get sick! I don’t like sick people; I made him some gruel yesterday and it was as thick as mush. Oh, the things he promises me when he gets rich! Gets rich! All he wants is for me to love him, poor dear! Whatislove? Do you know?”
“To discover is one of the things I live for; I know that it suffers long.”
“That’s poetry! I don’t want to suffer long and have Gerald sick. I had to get up last night and make him a mustard plaster, and do you believe I was so sleepy that I made it of ginger? He never told me till this morning.”
In half an hour he drove up swiftly behind them.
“Susan, you can get in; I don’t feel like getting out to help you. I feel very bad, I want to get home.”
He laid the reins in her hand. “You may drive; good-by, Mystic; you and I will have our talk another day.”
“Come and see us,” Sue shouted back.
The horse trotted on at good speed; Sue’s blue veil floated backward; Tessa walked on thinking of Dr. Lake’s pain-stricken face and figure.
Her first words to Mary Sherwood that evening were:
“How is Dr. Lake?”
“Sick. Worse. Very sick, I suspect. Their girl told our girl that Mrs. Lake was frightened almost to death.”
“I hope she is,” said Nan Gerard, “she deserves to be.”
Tessa kept herself in a sofa corner all the evening.
Nan said that she was a queen surrounded by courtiers, for first one and then another came for a quiet talk. When she was not talking or listening, she was watching: figures, faces, voices, motions, all held something in them worth her studying; she had been watching under cover of a book of engravings Professor Towne, for some time before he came and stood at the arm of her sofa.
She was shy, at first, as she ever was with strangers, but no one could be shy with him for a longer time than five minutes. Dine’s last letter had contained an account of an afternoon with Miss Towne, with many quotations from her sayings.
“My sister thinks that your sister is a saint,” said Tessa; “she has written me about her beautiful life.”
“All about her invalids, I suppose.Shut-insshe calls them! Invalids are her mania; she had thirty-five on her list at her last writing; she finds them north, south, east, and west.”
“Dine loves to hear about them; Miss Towne gives her some of their letters to read to Aunt Theresa. Dine runs over every morning to hear about last night’s mail. I am looking forward tomy good times with her if she will be as good to me as she is to my little sister.”
“She is looking forward to you; your sister’s enthusiasm never flags when she may talk of you.”
The talk drifted into books; Mr. Hammerton drew nearer, his questions and apt replies added zest to the conversation; Tessa mentally decided that he was more original than the Professor; the Professor’s questions were good, but no one in allherworld could reply like Gus Hammerton; she was proud of him to-night with a feeling of ownership; in loving Dine, had he not become as near as a brother to her?
This feeling of ownership was decidedly pleasant; with it came a safe, warm feeling that she was taken care of; that she had a right to be taken care of and to be proud of him. No one in the world, the most keen-eyed student of human nature, could ever have guessed that he was suffering from a heartache; he had greeted her with the self-possession of ten years ago, had inquired about the “folks at home,” and asked if Dine were up in the clouds still. Could Dine have made a mistake? Had she dreamed it?
Professor Towne moved away to go to Nan Gerard; Tessa listened to Mr. Hammerton, he was telling her about a discovery in science, and half comprehending and not at all replying she watched Professor Towne’s countenance and motions. She could hear about this discovery some other time, but she might not have another opportunity tostudy the Professor. He was her lesson to-night. As he talked, she decided that he did not so much resemble his cousin as her first glance had revealed; his voice was resonant, his manner more courteous; he was not at all the “big boy,” he was dignified, frank, and yet reserved; simple, at times, as his sister might be, and cultured, far beyond any thing she had ever thought of in regard to Dr. Towne; he was as intellectual as Gus Hammerton, as gracious as Felix Harrison, with as much heart as Dr. Lake, a physical presence as fascinating as Dr. Towne, and as pure-hearted and spiritualized as only himself could be. She had found her ideal at last. She had found him and was scrutinizing him as coolly and as critically as if he were one of the engravings in the book in her lap. She would never find a flaw in him; when she wrote her novel he should be her hero.
“Why, doctor! Have the skies fallen? Did you hear that we were all taken with convulsions?”
Nan Gerard’s laugh followed this; the doctor’s reply was cool and commonplace.
“What is the title of your book?” Mr. Hammerton was asking. “‘Hepsey’s Heartache?’ ‘Jennie’s Jumble?’ ‘Dora’s Distress?’ ‘Fannie’s Fancy?’ or it may be ‘Up Top or Down Below,’ ‘Smashed Hopes or Broken Idols.’”
“I will not answer you if you are not serious.”
“I thought that young ladies gloried in sentiment.”
She turned the leaves of her book.
“Lady Blue, I can not be a just critic; I can not take a sentimental standpoint; you take it naturally and truly; you are right to do so; it is your mission, your calling, your election. Do not think that I despise sentiment and the ideal world of feeling—”
“You know that I do not think that,” she interrupted earnestly.
“These questions of feeling can not be tackled like a problem in mathematics, and an answer given in cold, clear cut, adequate words; such a problem I like to tackle; such an answer I like to give; but these sentimental questions in ‘Blighted Hopes’ are many sided, involved, and curvilinear; they are for the theologian, metaphysician, and mystic. What can you and I say about life’s hard questions after Ecclesiastes and Job?”
“Then you think I am presuming?”
“Did I not just say that sentiment is your mission? The story of each human life has a pathos of its own, and each is an enigma of which God only knows the solution.”
She colored and dropped her eyes; he did not dream that she knew any thing of the “pathos” in his life. How kind she would be to him!
“You are living your solution; perhaps you will help me to find mine.”
“I can’t imagine any one in the world knowing you well enough to be of any help to you.”
“Very likely; but I am not on a throne of rocks, in a robe of clouds, crowned with a diadem of snow!”
“It’s a little bit warm at the foot of Mount Blanc,” she replied laughing.
“Then you shall live at the foot.”
“Dine and I,” she answered audaciously.
“Not Dine! She has gone away from us; she would rather listen to a love-ditty from the lips of her new acquaintance than a volume of sober sense from us.”
“I had not thought to be jealous. She is not taking any thing from me.”
“Be careful; never tell her any thing again; if you write to her that Mary wears a black silk to-night, and that Nan has geranium leaves in her hair, she will run and tell him. She will never keep another secret for you.”
Tessa looked grave. She never would be supreme in her little sister’s heart again. Perhaps this evening she had arrayed herself in garnet and gone with him to the mite society, and was laughing and playing games, fox and geese, or ninepins, in somebody’s little whitewashed parlor, forgetting that such a place as Dunellen was down upon the map.
“Gus, we want you,” said Mary Sherwood, approaching them. “The girls are having a quarrel about who wrote something; now, go and tease them to your heart’s content.”
“Wrote what?” asked Tessa.
“Oh, I don’t know. Why are you so still? You are sitting here as stately and grand and pale and intellectual—one must be pale to look intellectual,I suppose—as if you had writtenMiddlemarch. I thought that you never went home without a separate talk with every person in the room, and there you sit like a turtle in a shell. What change has passed over the spirit of your dream?”
“I feel quiet; I feel as if I were afraid that some one would push against me if I should attempt to cross the room.”
Mary was called away and she drew herself into her sofa corner; the two long rooms were crowded; bright colors were flashing before her eyes, the buzz and hum of merry talk filled her ears; a black silk in contrast with a gray or blue cashmere; a white necktie, a head with drooping curls, a low, fair forehead, a pair of square shoulders in broadcloth, an open mouth with fine teeth, sloping shoulders of gray silk, a slender waist of brown, a coat-sleeve with cuff and onyx cuff-button, a small hand with a diamond on the first finger, and dark marks of needle-pricks on the tip of the same finger, a pearl ear-ring in a red, homely ear;—Tessa’s eyes saw them all, as well as the rounded chin, the fretful lip, the humorous lines at the corner of the eye, the manner that was frank and the manner that was intended to be, the lips that were speaking truth and the lips that were dissembling, the eyes that were contented and the eyes that were missing something—a word, perhaps, or a little attention, the eyes that brightened when some one approached, the eyes that dropped because some one was talking nonsense to some one else;—it wasa rest to dwell upon these things and forget that Dr. Lake was suffering and Sue frightened.
The gentlemen’s faces she did not scan; it was fair, matured women like Mrs. Towne and Miss Jewett, and sprightly, sweet girls like Nan Gerard that she loved.
Dr. Towne was hedged in a corner, behind a chair, conversing or seeming to converse with a gentleman; he was not a lady’s man, he could not be himself in the presence of a third or fourth person, that is himself, socially; he could be himself professionally under the gaze of the multitude. Tessa smiled, thinking how uncomfortable he must be and how he must wish himself at home. Was he longing for his leisure at Old Place, where, as a society man, nothing was expected of him? Did he regret that he had come out “into the world”? Was the old life in his “den” with his book a dream that he would fain dream again? Perhaps that book that had loomed up before her as containing the wisdom of the ages was not such a grand affair after all? Who had ever thought so beside herself? Who had ever worshipped him as hero and saint beside herself? He was not looking like either, just now, for his face was flushed with the heat of the room and he was standing in a cramped position.
“The bear is in his corner growling,” said Nan Gerard bending over her. “How ungracious he can be when he wills. Sometimes he is positively rude to me.”
“Is there but one bear?”
“You know well enough whom I mean. I expect that Mrs. Lake is mad enough because she couldn’t come! How prettily she makes up; I have seen her when she really looked elegant. Homely girls have a way of looking prettier than the pretty ones. How grave you are! You don’t like my nonsense, do you?”
“I was thinking of poor Sue.”
“Oh yes; sad, isn’t it? She’ll be married in less than two years, if he dies, see if she isn’t. I can’t understand what her attraction is! She has a thousand little airs, perhaps that is it. I am to sleep with you to-night. May I?”
“Thank you,” said Tessa warmly, “I am very glad.”
“There, the bear is looking at us. He’ll be over here; now I’ll go over to the piano and see if I can make him follow me; I’ve had great fun doing that before now—youdon’t do such things;” Nan shook her curls back with a pretty movement, threw a grave, alluring glance across the heads, and through the lights at the bear, then moved demurely away.
The color touched his eyes; he looked amused and provoked; Tessa saw it while her eyes were busy with the lady in the chair near him; would he follow her? Mr. Hammerton returned.
“‘Why, William, on that old gray stone,Thus for the length of a half a day,Why, William, sit you thus alone,And dream the time away?’