In the weeks that followed, Tessa learned to the full the meaning ofhomesickness. No kindness could have exceeded the kindness that she hourly received from uncle and aunt and from the inmates of the cottage over the way; still every night, or rather early every morning, she fell asleep with tears upon her cheeks; she longed for her father, her mother, for Dine and Gus, for Miss Jewett, for Nan Gerard, and even poor, grief-stricken Sue; for Mrs. Towne’s dear face and dear hands she longed inexpressibly, and she longed with a longing to which she would give no sympathy for another presence, an unobtrusive presence that would not push its way, a presence with the aroma of humility, gentleness, and a shy love that persisted with a persistence that neither the darkness of night nor the light of day could dispel.
Lying alone in the darkness in the strange, low room, with a fading glow upon the hearth that lent an air of unreality to the old-fashioned furniture, she congratulated herself upon having beenbrave and true, of having withheld from her lips a draught for which she had so long and so despairingly thirsted; she had been so brave and true that she must needs be strong, wherefore then was she so weak? Sometimes for hours she would lie in perfect quiet thinking of Mr. Hammerton; but thinking of him as calmly as she thought about her father. There was no intensity in her love for him, no thrill, save that of gratitude for his years of brotherly watchfulness; she would have been proud of him had he married Dine; his friendship was a distinction that she had worn for years as her rarest ornament; he was her intellect, as her father was her conscience, but to give up all the others for him, to love him above father, mother, sister—to give up forever the hope of loving Ralph Towne some day—she shuddered and covered her face with her hands there alone in the dark. Cheery enough she was through the days, sewing for Aunt Theresa and falling into her happiest talk of books and people, thoughts and things, reading aloud to Uncle Knox, and every evening reading aloud the pages of manuscript that she had written that day, and every afternoon, laying aside work or writing, to run across to the cottage for a couple of hours with Miss Sarepta.
Miss Sarepta at her window in her wheelchair watched all day the black, brown, or blue figure at her writing or sewing, and when the hour came, saw the pencils dropped into the box, the leaves of manuscript gathered, the figure rise and tossout its arms with a weary motion; then, in a few moments the figure with a bright shawl over its head would run down the path, stand a moment at the gate to look up and down and all around, and then, with the air of a child out of school, run across the street and sometimes around the garden before she brought her bright face into the watcher’s cosy, little world.
Miss Sarepta’s mother described Tessa as “bright, wide awake, and ready for the next thing.”
Miss Sarepta told Tessa that while knowing that good things were laid up for her, she had no thought that such a good thing as Tessa Wadsworth was laid up for this winter’s enjoyment and employment.
It may be that the strain of the day’s living added to the feverishness of the night’s yearnings; for when darkness fell and the wind sounded in the sitting-room chimney, her heart sank, her hands grew cold, her throat ached with repressed tears, and when she could no longer bear it, the daily paper having been read aloud and a letter or two written, she would take her candle and bid the old people as cheery a good night as her lips could utter and hasten up-stairs to her fire on the hearth to reperuse her letters and to dream waking dreams of what might be, and when the fire burned low to lie awake in the darkness, till, spent in flesh and in spirit, she would fall asleep.
At the beginning of the third week, she took herself to hand; with a figurative and mercilessgripe upon each shoulder she thus addressed herself: “Now, Tessa Wadsworth, you and I have had enough of this; we have had enough of freaks and whims for one lifetime; you are to behave and go to sleep.”
Behaving and going to sleep took until midnight with the first attempt, and she dreamed of Dr. Lake and awoke crying. Was Sue crying, too? Sue had loved her husband, his influence would color all her life, she might yet become her ideal of a woman;womanly. Sue’s hand had been in his life; had not his hand with a firmer grasp tightened around her life?
Tessa did not forget to be metaphysical even at midnight with the tears of a dream on her eyelashes.
Was every one she loved asleep, or had some one dreamed of her and awoke to think of her?
“God bless every one I love,” she murmured, “and every one who loves me.”
The next night by sheer force of will she was asleep before the clock struck eleven, and did not dream of home or once awake until Hilda, the Swedish servant, passed her door at dawn.
Her letters through this time were radiant, of course. Mrs. Towne only, with her perfect understanding of Tessa, detected the homesickness, or heartsickness. Tessa was wading in deep waters; she did not need her, else she would have come to her. She had learned that it was her characteristic to fight out her battles alone.
Had Ralph any thing to do with this? He had suddenly grown graver, not more silent; in the morning his eyes would have a sleepless look, the sunshine seemed utterly gone from them; once he said, apropos of nothing, after a long fit of abstraction: “It is right for a man to pay for being a fool and a knave, but it comes terribly hard.”
“I suppose it must,” she had replied, “until he learns how God forgives.”
In her next letter to Tessa, Mrs. Towne had written, “Do you know how God forgives?” and Tessa had replied, “You and I seem to be thinking the same thought nowadays, and nowanights, for last night it came to me that lovingenoughto forgive is the love that makes Him so happy.”
This letter was the only one of all written that winter that Mrs. Towne showed to her son. It was not returned to her. Months afterward he showed it to Tessa, saying that that thought was more to him than all the sermons to which he had ever listened. “Because you didn’t know how to listen,” she answered saucily, adding in a reverent tone, “I did not understand it until Ilivedit.”
The letter had been written with burning cheeks; if he might read it, she would be glad; it would reveal something that she did not dare tell him herself; but she had no hope that he would see it.
“Tessa is not so bright as she was,” observed Miss Sarepta’s mother, “she’s more settled down; I guess that she has found out what she means; it takes a deal of time for young women to do that.”
It was a trial to Sarepta Towne that the sun did not rise and set in the west, for in that case her bay window would have been perfect.
Dinah had named this window “summer time:” on each side ivy was climbing in profusion; on the right side stood a fuchsia six feet in height; opposite this an oleander was bursting into bloom; a rose geranium and a pot of sweet clover were placed on brackets and were Tessa’s special favorites; one hanging basket from which trailed Wandering Jew was filled with oxalis in bloom, another was but a mass of graceful and shining greens.
In the centre of the window on a low table stood a Ward’s case; into this Dinah had never grown tired of looking; Professor Towne had constructed it on his last visit at home, and one of the pleasures of it to Miss Sarepta had consisted in the talks they had while planning it together. Among its ferns, mosses, berries, and trailing arbutus they had formed a grotto of shells and bits of rocks; the floor was bits of looking-glass; tufts of eye-bright were mingled with the mosses and were now in bloom,and Miss Sarepta was sure that the trailing arbutus would flower before Tessa could bring it home to her from the woods.
“This room is full of Philip and Cousin Ralph,” Sarepta had said; “his picture is but one of the things in it and in this house to remind me of Cousin Ralph.”
“Sarepta breathes Philip,” her mother replied.
“We are twin spirits like Blaise and Jacqueline Pascal. Do you know about them, Tessa?”
“I know that he was a monk and she a nun.”
“That is like me, and not like Philip,” said Miss Sarepta; “he shall not be a monk because I am a nun!”
“His wife will be jealous enough of you, though,” said Mrs. Towne; “not a mail comes that he does not send you something. How would she like that?”
“Philip could not love any one that would come between us. Tessa, do you admire my brother as much as I wish you to do?”
“I admire him exceedingly,” said Tessa, looking up from her twenty-fifth block of the basket quilt; “he is my ideal. I knew that I had found my ideal as soon as I saw him; I did not wait to hear him speak.”
And that he was her ideal she became more and more assured, for in February he spent a week at home and she had opportunity to study him at all hours and in any hour of the day. He had lost his fancied resemblance to Dr. Towne, orshehad lost it in thinking of him as only himself. The longtalks, during which she sat, at Miss Sarepta’s side, on a foot cushion, work in hand, the basket blocks, or some more fanciful work for Miss Sarepta, she remembered afterward as one of the times in her life in which shegrew. She told Miss Sarepta that she and her brother were like the men and women that St. Paul in his Epistles sent his love to. “He ought to marry a saint like Madame Guyon; I think that it would be easier to revere him as a saint than to marry him. I can’t imagine any woman forgiving him, or loving him because heneedsher love; he stands so far above me, I could never think of him as at my side and sometimes saying, ‘Help me, Tessa,’ or, ‘What doyouthink?’”
“Now we know your ideal of marriage,” laughed Mrs. Towne. “Philip is a good boy, but he sometimes needs looking after.”
“Stockings and shirt buttons!”
“And other things, too. He is forgetful, and he’s rather careless. How much he is taken up with that reading class!”
“In a monkish way,” smiled Miss Sarepta. “He was full of enthusiasm about Ralph, too, mother.”
“How is it, Miss Tessa, do you admire Dr. Towne as much as you do St. Philip?” inquired the old lady with good-humored sarcasm.
“He is not a saint,” said Tessa, “he needs looking after in several matters besides stockings and shirt buttons.”
“Philip talks about him! What is it that he says he is, Sarepta?”
“In his profession just what he expected that he would be,—quick, quiet, gentle, sympathetic, patient, persevering; he has thrown himself into it heart and soul. Philip used to wonder if he would ever find his vocation; his life always had a promise of good things—”
“But he was slow about it; not quick like Philip; he should have begun practice ten years ago. What has he been doing all this time?”
“We can see the fruit of his doing, mother; it does not much matter as to the doing itself. Don’t you know that six years are given to the perfecting even of a beetle?”
“I don’t know about beetles and things; I know that I used to think that my boy would outstrip Lydia’s boy.”
“Mother! mother!” laughed Sarepta, “you mind earthly things. I shall never run a race with anybody. Can’t you be a little proud of me?”
Sarepta Towne had her brother’s eyes, but her hair was brighter, with not one silver thread among its short curls; her fair, fresh face was certainly ten years younger than his. In summer her wrappers were of white; in winter she kept herself a bird in gay plumage; always the singing-bird, in white or crimson. When Philip Towne said “My sister,” his voice and eyes said “My saint.”
Once, after a silence, Tessa asked about her “Shut-ins.” “How did it come into your heart at first?”
“It is a long story; first tell me what your hearthas been about. It has been painting your eyes darker and darker.”
“It is a very foolish heart then; it was only repeating something that I learned once and did not then understand. I do not know that I can say it correctly, but it is like this:
“‘God’s generous in giving, say I,And the thing which he gives, I denyThat He ever can take back again.He gives what He gives: be content.He resumes nothing given; be sure.God lend? where the usurers lentIn His temple, indignant He wentAnd scourged away all those impure.He lends not, but gives to the end,As He loves to the end. If it seemThat He draws back a gift, comprehend’Tis to add to it rather, amendAnd finish it up to your dream.’”
“Well?” said Miss Sarepta.
“Once,—a long time ago, it seems now,—He gave me something; it was love for somebody; and then He took it—or I let it go, because it was too much trouble to keep it; I did not like His gift, it hurt too much; I was glad to let it go, and yet I missed it so; I was not worthy such a perfect gift as a love that could be hurt in loving; I could love as I loved all beauty and goodness and truth, but when I found that love must hold on and endure, must hope and believe, must suffer shame and loss, I gave it up. God was generous in giving; Hegave me all I could receive, and when He would have given me more, I shrank away from His giving and said, ‘It hurts too much. I am too proud to take love or give love if I must be made humble first. I wanted to give like a queen, not stooping from my full height, and I wanted to give to a king: instead, I was asked to give—just like any common mortal to another common mortal, and that after we had misinterpreted and misunderstood each other, and I had written hard things of him all over my heart, and what he had thought me, nobody knows but himself! And now I think, if I will, that I may have the love again finished up to my dream; finished above any thing that I knew how to ask or think, and it is altogether too good and perfect a gift for me; so good that I can not keep it, I must needs give it away.”
Tessa had told her story with quickened breath, not once lifting the eyes that were growing darker and darker.
Miss Sarepta’s “thank you” held all the appreciation that Tessa wished.
“And now,” after another silence, for these two loved silences together, “you want to know about my dear Shut-ins. Philip named them from the words, ‘And the Lord shut him in.’ It began one day when I was sitting alone thinking! I am often sitting alone thinking; but this day I was thinking sad thoughts about my useless, idle life, and I had planned my life to be such a busy life. There was nothing that I could do to help along; I had to sitstill and be helped; and I shouldn’t wonder if I cried a little. That was five years ago, we were living in the city then; in the middle of my bemoanings and my tears, I spied the postman crossing the street. How Philip laughed when I told him that I loved that postman better than any man in all the world! That day he brought me several lovely things: one of them a book from Cousin Ralph, and a letter from Aunt Lydia; that letter is the beginning of my story. She told me about a little invalid that she had found and suggested that I should write one of my charming letters to her. Of course you know that I write charming letters! So I wiped away my naughty tears and wrote the charming letter! In a few days, my hero, the postman, brought the reply. That was my first Shut-in letter. Bring me the album, I will show you Susie.”
Tessa brought it and Miss Sarepta opened it on her lap to an intelligent, serious, sweet face.
“She has not taken a step for many years; she is among the youngest of many children; her great love is love for children, she teaches daily thirteen little ones. The one thing in her life that strikes me is herfaithfulness. There is nothing too little for her to be faithful in. One of her great longings used to be for letters; oh, if the postman would only bring her a letter! For a year or two I wrote every week, the longest, brightest, most every-day letters I could think of. And one day it came to me that ifwehad such a good time together, why should we not find some other towhom a letter or a book would be as a breath of fresh air. I pondered the matter for a month or two, but I couldn’t advertise for an invalid, and none of my friends knew of any. One morning I glanced through a religious paper, and tossed it aside, then something moved me to pick it up again, and there she was! The one I sought! That was Elsie. Look at her pale, patient face. For fourteen years she has lived in one room. And hasn’t she the brightest, most grateful, happiest heart that ever beat in a frail body or a strong one? Her poems are graceful little things; I will show you some of them. She had been praying six months for a helpful friend, when she received my first letter. Her letters are gems. You shall read a pile of them. And she had a Shut-in friend, to whom I must write, of course. She is Mabel. I have no picture of her. When she was well, they called her the laughing girl; she has lain eleven years in bed!”
“Oh, dear me!” sighed Tessa.
“Don’t sigh, child. She writes in pencil as she can not lift her head. I call her my sunbeam. She often dates her letters ‘In my Corner.’ So another year went on with my three Shut-ins. I forgot to cry about my folded hands and useless life. One day it came into my mind to write a sketch and call it, ‘Our Shut-in Society’; to write all about Mabel and Elsie and Sue, and send it to the paper in which I had found Elsie’s first article.
“And that sketch! How it was read! I received lettersfrom north, south, east, and west concerning it. Was there really such a society, and were there such happy people as Mabel, Elsie, and Susie? One who had not spoken aloud for fourteen years would love to write to them; another who had locked her school-room door one summer day, and come home to rest, had been forced to rest through eight long years, and was so lonely, with her sisters married and away; another, quite an old man, who had lain for six years in the loft of an old log-cabin, was eager for a word or a paper. How his letter touched us all! ‘The others have letters, but when the mail comes naught comes to me,’ he wrote. But you will be tired of hearing my long story; you shall see their letters; you must see Delle’s letters; she sits all day in a wheelchair, and has no hope of ever taking a step; she has a mother and a little boy; the brightest little boy! Her poems have appeared in some of our best periodicals; we are something beside a band of sufferers, Miss Tessa; some of us are literary! My most precious letters are from Elizabeth; her fiftieth birthday came not long since; for ten years her home has been in one room; she has written a book that the Shut-ins cry over.
“And oh, we have a prisoner! A Shut-in shut up in state’s prison. A young man with an innocent, boyish face; he ran away from home when he was a child and ran into state’s prison because no one cared what became of him. His letters are unaffected and grateful; he does want to be a goodboy! Thirty-six are on my list now; I would find more if I had strength to write more; some of them have more and some less than I; many of them have Shut-ins that I know nothing about. We remember each other on holidays and birthdays! The things that postmen and country mail-carriers have in their mail-bags are funny to see: flower seeds, bits of fancy work, photographs, pictures, any thing and every thing!
“They all look forward to mail-time through the night and through the day.
“And, speaking humanly, my share in it, all I receive and the little I give, came out of my self-bemoanings and tears; my longing to be a helper in some small way!
“Now if you want to help me, you may cut some blocks of patch-work for me. One of the Shut-ins is making a quilt to leave as a memorial to her daughter, and I want to send my contribution to the mail to-night; and you may direct several papers for me, and cover that book, ‘Thoughts for Weary Hours.’ I press you into my service, you see.”
“Miss Sarepta, I am ashamed.”
“Shame is an evidence of something; go on.”
“I am ashamed that I am such a dreamer.”
“Philip says that you are a dreamer.”
“I care for my writing.”
“Mowers work while they whet their scythes,” quoted Miss Sarepta.
In March, Tessa found myrtle in bloom, and took a handful of the blue blossoms mingled with sprays of the green leaves to Miss Sarepta.
“Spring has come,” she said dropping them on the open book in Miss Sarepta’s lap.
“If spring has come, then I must lose you.”
“Every hand that I know in Dunellen is beckoning me homewards; my winter’s work is done.”
That evening—it was the sixth of March, that date ever afterward was associated with blue myrtle and Nan Gerard—she was sitting at the table writing letters; in the same chair and at the same place at the table where Dinah had written her letter about Gus and her wonderful John; Aunt Theresa was knitting this evening also, and Uncle Knox was asleep in a chintz-covered wooden rocker with the big cat asleep on his knees.
She had written a letter to Mabel and one to Elsie, lively descriptive letters, making a picture of Miss Sarepta’s book-lined, picture-decorated, flower-scented room and a picture of Miss Sarepta, alsotouching lightly upon her own breezy out-of-door life with its hard work and its beautiful hopes. The third letter was a sheet to Mrs. Towne; the sentence in ending was one that Mrs. Towne had been eagerly and anxiously expecting all through the winter: “My ring reminds me of my promise; a promise that I shall keep some day, perhaps.”
“Tessa, are you unhappy, child?” asked Aunt Theresa with a knitting needle between her lips.
“Unhappy! Why, auntie, what am I doing?”
The tall lamp with its white china shade stood between them. Aunt Theresa took the knitting needle from its place of safety and counted fourteen stitches before she replied.
“Sighing! When young people sigh, something must ail them. What doyouhave to be miserable about?”
“I am not miserable.”
“Tell me, what are you miserable about?”
“Sometimes—I am not satisfied—that is all.”
“I should think that that was enough. What are you dissatisfied about? Haven’t you enough to eat and to drink and clothes enough to wear? Haven’t you a good father and mother who wouldn’t see you want for any thing? What is it that you haven’t enough of, pray?”
“I do not know that I am wishing for any thing—to night. I am learning to wait.”
“Yes, you are! You are wishing for something that isn’t in this world, I know.”
“Then I’ll find it in heaven.”
“People don’t sigh after heaven as a usual thing. You read too many books, that’s what’s the matter with you. Reading too many books affects different people in different ways; I’ve seen a good deal of girls’ reading.”
Tessa’s pen was scribbling initials on a half sheet of paper.
“I know the symptoms. Some girls when they read love-stories become dissatisfied with their looks; they look into the glass and worry over their freckles or their dark skins, or their big mouths or turn-up noses; they fuss over their waists and try to squeeze them slim and slender, and they cripple themselves squeezing their number four feet into number two shoes. But you are not that kind. And some girls despise their fathers and mothers because they can’t speak grammar and pronounce long words, and because they say ‘care’ for carry and ‘empt’ for empty! And they despise their homes and their plain, substantial furniture. But you are not that kind either. Your face is well enough, and your father and mother are well enough, and your home is well enough.”
Tessa was scribbling Dunellen, then she wrote R. T. and Nan Gerard.
“And you are not sighing for a lordly lover,” continued Aunt Theresa, with increasing energy “You don’t want him to wear a cloak or carry a sword. Your trouble is different! You read a higher grade of love-stories, about men that arehonorable and true, who would die before they would tell a lie or say any thing that isn’t so. They are as gentle as zephyrs; they would walk over eggs and not crack them; they are always thinking of something new and startling and deep that it can’t enter a woman’s mind to conceive, and their faces have different expressions enough in one minute to wear one ordinary set of muscles out; and they never think of themselves, they would burn up and not know it, because they were keeping a fly off of somebody else; they are so high and mighty and simple and noble that an angel might take pattern by them. And that is what troubles you. You read about such fine fellows and shut the book and step out into life and break your heart because the real, mannish man, who is usually as good as human nature and all the grace he has got will help him be, isn’t so perfect and noble as this perfect man that somebody has made out of his head. You can’t be satisfied with a real human man who thinks about himself and does wrong when it is too hard to do right, even if he comes on his bended knees and says he’s sorry and that he’ll never do such a thing again. You want to love somebody that you are proud of; you are too proud to love somebody that is as weak as you are. And so you can’t be satisfied at all! Whymustyou be satisfied?”
“Why should I not be?”
“For the best reason in the world; to be satisfied in any man, in his love for you and in your love forhim, would be—do you know what it would be? It would be idolatry.”
Aunt Theresa’s attention was given to her knitting; she did not see the shining of Tessa’s eyes.
“Be satisfied with God, child, and take all the happiness you can get.”
Tessa’s pen was making tremulous capitals.
“Be satisfiedwith, if you can, but notin, some good man who stumbles to-day and stands straight to-morrow; I fought it out on that line once, and so I know all about it.”
This then was the experience that Dr. Towne had said that she must ask for; had he guessed that it would be altogether on his side?
This was it, and this was all. Uncle Knox’s old eyes had a look for his old wife that they never held for any other living thing, and as for Aunt Theresa, how often had Tessa thought, “I want to grow old and love somebody the way you do.”
Mightshe be satisfied with God and love Ralph Towne all she wanted to?
“Why, Theresa,” exclaimed Uncle Knox, opening his eyes and staring at his wife, “I haven’t heard you talk so much sentiment for thirty years.”
“And you will not in another thirty years. But Tessa was in a tangle—I know eggs when I see the shells—and I had to help her out.”
A tap at the window brought Tessa to her feet. A neighbor had brought the mail; she took the papers and letters with a most cordial “thank you” and came to the table with both hands full. Thepapers she opened and glanced through; the letters she took up-stairs to read. The business-looking envelope she opened first; she read it once, twice, then gave an exclamation of delight. Oh, how pleased her father would be! Her manuscript had given such perfect satisfaction that, although written for pictures, the pictures would be discarded and new ones made to illustrate her story. Gus would congratulate her, and Miss Jewett; this appreciation by the publisher was the crown that the winter’s work would always wear for her. With a long breath, she sighed, “Oh, what a blessed winter this has been to me!”
The long, white envelope was from Mrs. Towne, the chocolate from Sue, the cream-colored from Dinah, the pale blue from Miss Jewett, the pink from Nan Gerard, and the square white from Laura Harrison. Mr. Hammerton had not once written; a kind message through her father or Dinah was all evidence he had given of remembrance. Mrs. Towne’s letter was opened before the others. What would Dine or Miss Jewett or Laura think of this? The faint perfume was the lady herself, so real was her presence that Tessa felt her arms about her as she read.
“Sue does not come to me as often as in the winter,” she wrote; “the Gesners, one and all, are proving themselves more alluring. Miss Gesner will be a good friend to her. If you could hear her laugh and talk, you would think of her as Sue Greyson and never as the widowed Mrs. Lake.She is Dr. Lake’s widow, certainly she is not his wife. Ralph growls about it in his kind way, but I think that he did not expect any thing deeper from her. Nan Gerard was with me all day yesterday; she was as sweet and shy as a wild flower. Nan’s heart is awake. Am I a silly old woman? I dream of you every night. I would be a washer-woman and live in Gesner’s Row, if I might have you for my daughter, never to leave me. Now Iama silly old woman and I will go to bed.”
The perfumed sheet was passed to the reader’s lips before the next envelope was torn open.
Dinah’s letter was a sheet of foolscap; it was written as a diary.
The first entry was merely an account of attending a concert with John; the second stated in a few strong words the failure of a bank. Old Mr. Hammerton had lost a large amount of money and had had a stroke of paralysis.
The third contained the history of a call from Sue; how tall and elegant she looked in her rich mourning, and how she had talked about her courtship and marriage all the time.
The fourth day their father had had an attack of pain, but it had not lasted as long as usual.
The last page was filled in Dine’s eager, story-telling style:
“Just to think, Tessa, now I know the end of my romance. It was dark last night just before tea, and I went into the front hall for somethingthat I wanted to get out of the hat-stand drawer. The sitting-room door stood slightly ajar; I did not know that Gus was with father until I heard his voice. I did not listen, truly I did not; after I heard the first sentence I didn’t dare stir for fear of making my presence known. I moved off as easily and swiftly as I could, but I heard every word as plainly as if I had been in the room. It is queer that I should overhear the beginning and the ending of poor Gus’s only romance, isn’t it? I heard him say, ‘Every thing is changed in my plans; father is left with nothing but his good name, my mother is aged and feeble, my sister is a widow with a child;hermoney is gone, too. I am the sole support of four people. I could not marry, even if I desired to do so. And since I have definitely learned that she does not think of me, and never has thought of me, and that she thinks of some one else, the bachelor’s life will be no great hardship.’
“I had got to the parlor door by that time, so, of course, I never can know father’s answer. But isn’t it dreadful? I suppose that he is over the disappointment, for his voice sounded as cool as usual; too cold, I thought. I should have liked him better if he had been in a flutter. I shall never tell any body but John. Poor old, wise old, dear old Gus! He will pursue the even tenor of his unmarried way, and no one will ever guess that he has had a romance. Perhaps Felix Harrison has had one, too. Perhaps every body has.”
So itwasDinah, after all. And she had fought her long, hard fights all for nothing.
ItwasDine, and now her father would understand; he would not think her blind and stupid; he would not be disappointed that she had not chosen his choice!
And that it was herself that Gus Hammerton had loved, the wife of John Woodstock always believed. And that it was herself, Tessa never knew; for not knowing that he had stood at the window that night that Dr. Towne had brought her home, and witnessed their parting at the gate, how could she divine that “definitely learned that she does not think of me,” had referred to her?
Mr. Wadsworth had listened in utter bewilderment, recalling Tessa’s repeated declaration that it was Dinah. “Iamin my dotage,” he thought; “for I certainly understood that he said Tessa.”
“My wish was with your wish,” he said.
“She will be better satisfied,” Mr. Hammerton answered in his most abrupt tone. “He is a fine man; I can understand his attraction for her.”
Mrs. Wadsworth entered at that instant and the conversation was too fraught with pain to both ever to be resumed; therefore it fell out that Mr. Hammerton was the only one in the world who ever knew, beyond a perhaps, which of the sisters he had asked of the father.
That Tessa had not been influenced by his importunate and mistaken urging, was one of thethings that her father was thankful for to the end of his days.
“Poor Gus! The dear, brave boy,” sighed Tessa over her letter. “And my worry has only been to reveal to me that I can not reason myself into loving or not loving.”
A paragraph in Nan Gerard’s letter was dwelt long upon; then the daintily written pink sheet dropped from her fingers and she sat bending forward looking into the glowing brands until the lights were out down-stairs and Hilda’s heavy step had passed her door.
“Oh, Naughty Nan!” she said rousing herself, “I hope that you love him very, very much. Better than I know how to do!”
The paragraph ran in this fashion:
“I have had a very pretty present; I really believe that I like it better than any thing that Robert ever gave me. It is a ring with an onyx: on the stone is engraved two letters in monogram. You shall guess them, my counsellor, and it will not be hard when I whisper that one of them is T. I am very happy and very good. ‘Nan’s Experiment’ is burnt up and with it all my foolishness. ‘Such as I wish it to be.’ I think of that whenever I look at my ring. Tell me all about your lovely Miss Sarepta. I like to know how I shall have to behave before her. We are to be married next month.”
Did Nan know the hurt and the hurt and the hurt of love? No wonder that she was “shy” withMrs. Towne. Why had not Mrs. Towne told her? Must she write and congratulate Naughty Nan whose story was such as she wished it to be?
The letters that she had written that evening were on the bureau; the sudden remembering of the line that she had written in Mrs. Towne’s brought her to her feet with a rush of shame like the old hot flashes from head to foot; she seized the letter and rolling it up tucked it down among the coals; it blazed, burning slowly, the flame curled around the words that she had been saved just in time from sending; the words that would never be written or spoken.
The room was chilly and the candle had burnt out before she went to bed; the lights opposite had long been out. The room was cold and dark and strange; outside in the darkness the night was wild.
It was too late; her conflict had lasted too long; her pride and disdain had killed his love for her; perhaps he felt as she did in that time when she had wanted some one to love her, and he had taken Naughty Nan as she had taken Felix.
She had lived it all through once; she could live it all through again; she could have slept, but would not for fear of the waking. Oh, if it would never come light, and she could lie forever shielded in darkness! But the light crept up higher and higher into the sky, Hilda passed the door, and Uncle Knox’s heavy tread was in the hall below.
Another day had come, and other days would always be coming; every day life must be full ofwork and play, even although Dr. Towne had failed in love that was patience; she had suffered once, because he was slow to understand himself, and plainly he had suffered to the verge of his endurance, because she was slow in understanding herself!
The day wore on to twilight; she had worked listlessly; in the twilight she laid her work aside, and went over to the cottage.
“I have something to show you,” said Miss Sarepta; “guess what my last good gift from Philip is.”
“I did not know that he had any thing left to give you.”
“It is the last and best. A flower of spring!” From a thick envelope in her work-basket, she drew out a photograph, and, with its face upward, laid it in Tessa’s hand.
A piquant face: daring in the eyes, sweetness on the lips.
“Nan Gerard!” cried Tessa, catching her breath with a sound like a sob.
“Naughty Nan! And they are to be married here in this room, that I may be bridesmaid.”
“Oh, how stupid I was!”
“Why, had you an inkling of it?”
“Several of them, if I had had eyes to see!”
“It came last night, and I lay awake all night, thinking of the woman that Philip will love henceforth better than he loves me.”
“Oh, how can you bear it?” Tessa knelt on thecarpet at her side, with her head on the arm of the chair.
“I could not, at first. I could not now, if I did not love Philip better than I love myself.”
So her sorrow had become Miss Sarepta’s! She drew a long breath, and did not speak.
“Don’t feel so sorry for me, dear. I have known that in the nature of things,—which is but another name for God’s will,—this must come. Even after all the years, it has come suddenly. Will she love my brother?”
“I am sure she will; more and more as the years go on!”
“Every heart must choose for itself,” said Miss Sarepta dreamily, “and the choice of the Lord runs through all our choices.”
Tessa’s lips gave a glad assent.
A letter from Dinah that evening ended thus. “Father is not at all well; I think that he grows weaker every day. To-day he said, ‘Isn’t italmosttime for Tessa to come?’”
At noon the next day she was in Dunellen.
May came with blossoms, lilacs, and a birthday, she smiled all to herself over last year’s reverie; the anniversary of the day in which she had walked homewards with Mr. Hammerton and accepted Felix in the evening followed the birthday; a sad anniversary for Felix, she remembered, for he had her habit of retrospection.
The days slipped through his mind, Laura had told her; he would often ask the day of the week or month. He had become quiet and melancholy, seemingly absorbed in the interest of the moment. He had greeted Tessa as he would have greeted any friend, at their last interview, and she had left him believing that his future would not be without happiness. A year ago to-day, Mr. Hammerton had said that a year made a difference, sometimes. And this year! How the events had hurried into each other, jostling against each other like good-humored people in a crowd! A year ago to-day she had thought of Nan Gerard as the wife of Ralph Towne; to-day she was sailing on the sea, Professor Towne’s wife; just as naughty as ever, but rathermore dignified. A year ago to-night she had held herself the promised wife of her old tormentor, Felix Harrison; since that night all his future had become a blank, the strong man had become as a little child; since that day Dine had found her wonderful John; since that day Dr. Lake had had his heart’s desire, and had been called away from Sue, leaving her a widow; the hurrying year had taken from Gus a long hope and had given him a future of hard work with meagre wages. And Dr. Towne! But she could not trust herself to think of him. They met as usual, not less often; he had grown graver since last year, and had thrown himself heart and soul into his work: never demonstrative, his manner towards her, had, if possible, become less and less intrusive; but ever responsive, having nothing to respond to, now, but a gentle deference, a shyness that increased; a stranger would have said, meeting him with Tessa Wadsworth, that he was intensely interested in her, but exceedingly in doubt of finding favor.
But Tessa could not see this; she felt only the restraint and chilliness.
Once they were left suddenly alone together; he excused himself and abruptly left her; clearly, he had no reply to make to her letter; his love was worn out with her freaks and whims.
“I deserve it,” she said, taking stern pleasure in meting out justice to herself.
One afternoon in late May, she found herself on the gnarled seat that the roots had braided forher; she had been gazing down into the brook and watching a robin-redbreast taking his bath in it, canary-fashion; she watched him until he had flown away and perched upon a post of the Old Place meadow fence, then her eyes came back to the water, the stones, and the weeds.
“I always know where to find you!” The exclamation could be in no other loud voice; she recognized Sue before she lifted her eyes to the tall, black-draped figure. If Sue had had a sorrow, there was no trace of it in voice or countenance.
“Isn’t it dusty? How I shall look trailing around in all this black stuff! What do you always come here for? Do you come to meet somebody?”
“It seems that I have come to meet you.”
“Don’t you remember how you talked to me here that day? I did keep my promise; Iwasgood to Gerald. Poor, dear Gerald! I have nothing to reproach myself with.”
“Did mother send you here?”
“She said that I would find you between the end of the planks and Mayfield. Come through the grounds of Old Place with me. I want you to see Mrs. Towne’s flowers and a new arbor that Dr. Towne has been putting up.”
“No, thank you,” said Tessa rising and tossing away a handful of withering wild flowers.
“You don’t know how lovely the place is. Dr. Towne is always thinking of some new thing to do; I asked him if it were for that grand wife that he has been waiting so long for, and, do you believe, hesaid ‘Yes,’ as sincerely as could be. He looked up at his mother and smiled when he said it, too. I believe they know something. Nan Gerard didn’t get him any way! Won’t she have a lovely time travelling! I always did want to go to Europe; Gerald never would have taken me. I can’t believe that he’s dead, can you?”
As Tessa was busy with her veil and did not speak, Sue rattled on.
“Did you know that I’ve been making another visit at Miss Gesner’s? They call their place Blossom Hill, and it has been so sweet with blossoms.”
“Is she as lovely as ever?”
“I don’t know,” said Sue, doubtfully; “sometimes I think that she is stiff and proud; the truth is she doesn’t like to have her old brother pay attention to me. She thinks that he is too old a boy for such nonsense; buthedoesn’t think so! Good for me that he doesn’t. What are you walking so fast for? I went to drive with him every day after business hours; wedidlook stylish!”
“With Miss Gesner, too?” queried Tessa, in a voice that she could not steady.
“No, indeed,” laughed Sue, “and that’s the beauty of it. What did we want her along for? Of course we talked about Gerald; we talked a great deal about him. I told him how kind he had been to me and how I adored him and how I mourned for him. I am sure that I cried myself sick; Dr. Towne gave me something one night to keep me from having hysterics! I should have died ofgrief if Mrs. Towne hadn’t taken me to Old Place; she was like a mother, andhewas as kind as kind could be! It was like the other time before I was engaged to Gerald; I couldn’t believe that it wasn’t that time. The Gesners were kind, too; I thought at first that Miss Gesner really loved me; but she began to be stiff after she saw her brother kiss me. I couldn’t help it; I told him that it was too soon for such goings on.”
“O,Sue!” cried Tessa, wearily. “And he loved you so.”
“Gerald! Of course he did! But that’s all past and gone! He can’t expect me never to have any good times, can he? He didn’t leave me any money to have a good time with! I’m too young to shut myself up and think of his grave all the time. You and father are the most unreasonable people I ever saw! Why, he thinks because he thinks of mother every day, and wouldn’t be married for any thing, that I must be that kind of a mourner, too! It’s very hard; nobody ever had so much trouble as I do. I never used to like John Gesner, but you don’t know how interesting he can be. He took off my wedding ring one day and said it didn’t fit. It always was a little too large. Gerald said that I would grow into it,” she said, slipping it up and down on her finger and letting it drop on the grass.
“There!” with a little laugh as she stooped to look for it, “suppose I could never find it. Is that what you call an omen, Tessa? Help me look!”
“No, let it be. Let it be buried, too.”
“There! I have found it. You needn’t be so cross to me. I wonder why you are cross to me. Gerald Raid once that you would be a good friend to me forever.”
“I will, Susie,” said Tessa, fervently.
“You always liked Gerald. What did you like him for?” asked Sue, curiously.
As the answer was not forthcoming, Sue started off on a new branch of the old topic. “Mr. John Gesner is going to Europe this fall, or in the winter; he is going on business, but he says that if he had a wife to go around with him that he would stay a year or two. Wouldn’t that be grand? Nan Gerard will have to be home when the Seminary opens, anyway. It would be grand to travel for two years.”
“Why does not Miss Gesner go with him?”
“Oh, she wouldn’t leave Lewis. Lewis and Blossom Hill are her two idols. Mr. John says that if he were married, he would build a new house right opposite, and he asked me as we passed the grand houses which style I liked best. There was one with porticoes and columns, I chose that. He said that it could be built while he was away, and be all ready for him to bring his bride home to. But you are not listening; you never think of what I am saying,” Sue said, in a grumbling, tearful voice. “My friends are forever misunderstanding me. Gerald never misunderstood me. What do you think Dr. Towne said to me? He said that when I am old, I shall love Gerald better than any one;that what comes between will fall out and leave that time. Won’t it be queer? He said that women ought to think love the best thing in the world. I cried while he was talking. I can love any body that is kind to me. When I told John Gesner that, he said, ‘I will always be kind to you.’ But you are not listening; I verily believe that you care more for that squirrel than you do for me!”
“See it run,” cried Tessa. “Isn’t it a perfect little creature? If you will come and stay a week with me, we will take a walk every day.”
“I can’t—now,” Sue stumbled over her words. “Say, Tessa, Mr. Gesner has given me a set of pearls. I can wear pearls in mourning, can’t I?”
“With your mourning, you can wear any thing.”
“Can I? I didn’t know it. It’s awful lonesome at home; lonesomer than it ever was.”
“I would come and stay a week with you, but I do not like to leave father; he is not so strong as he was last summer.”
“You wouldn’t let Mr. Gesner come and spend the evening; I haven’t asked him, but I’m going to ask him the next time I see him.”
Dr. Greyson called for Sue late in the evening. “I have the comfort of my old age hard and fast,” he said; “she will never want to run away from me again, will you, Susie?”
“I don’t know,” said Sue, with a hard, uncomfortable laugh; “you must keep a sharp lookout. I may be in Africa by this time next year.”
“Father is very feeble,” said Mrs. Wadsworth one day in June. “I shall persuade him to take a vacation. Lewis Gesner told him yesterday that he must take a rest; do you notice how he spends all his evenings on the sofa? I think that if Gus would come and play chess as he used to that it would rouse him.”
The week of Mr. Wadsworth’s vacation ran into two weeks and into a month; Dr. Greyson fell into a friendly habit of calling daily; Mr. Lewis Gesner and Mr. Hammerton came for a chat with him on the piazza as often as every other day, sometimes one of them would pass the evening beside his lounge in the sitting-room. Mr. Hammerton amused him by talk of people and books with a half hour of politics thrown in; and Mr. Gesner with his genial voice and genial manner helped them all to believe that life had its warm corners, and that an evening all together, with the feeble old man on the lounge an interested listener, was certainly one of the cosiest.
“Father, why have you kept Mr. Gesner to yourself all these years?” Tessa asked after one of these evenings.
“I would have brought him home before, if I had known that you would have found him so charming.”
“He is my ideal of the shadow of a rock in a weary land,” she answered; “I do not wonder that his sister’s heart is bound up in him. How can brothers who live together be so different?”
“John is well enough,” said her father, “there’s nothing wrong about him.”
“He makes mecreep,” said Tessa, vehemently, thinking of a pair of bracelets that Sue had brought to show her that day.
Mr. Wadsworth lay silent for awhile, then opening his eyes gazed long at the figures and faces that were all his world; Mrs. Wadsworth’s chair was at the foot of the lounge, the light from the lamp on the table fell on her busy hands, leaving her face in shadow; Dinah was reading at the table, with one hand pushed in among her curls; Tessa had dipped her pen into the ink and was carelessly holding it between thumb and finger before writing the last page of her three sheets to Miss Sarepta.
“Oh my three girls!” he murmured so low that no one heard.
Mrs. Wadsworth, in these days, was forgetting to be sharp, and hovered over him and lingered around him as lovingly as ever Tessa did.
“Doctor,” said Tessa, standing on the piazza with Dr. Greyson late one evening, “do you think that he may die suddenly?”
“Yes.”
“Any time, when the pain comes?”
“Any hour when the pain comes.”
“Does mother know?”
“I think that she half suspects; she has asked me, and I have evaded the question.”
“Does he know it?”
“He has known it since March.”
Since he had wanted her to come home!
“Perhaps he has told mother.”
“She would only excite him and hasten the end.”
“She can be quiet enough when she chooses. I am glad—oh, I am so glad—”
“Is the doctor gone?” cried Dinah rushing out, “father wants him. He has the pain dreadfully.”
The paroxysm was severe, but it passed away; Dr. Greyson decided to remain through the night; he fell asleep in the sitting-room and was awakened by Tessa’s hand an hour before dawn.
“Thank you, dear,” said Mr. Wadsworth to his wife as she laid an extra quilt across his feet.
They were his last words. Tessa always liked to think of them.
July, August, and September dragged themselves through sunny days and rainy days into October. Tessa had learned that she could live without her father. There was little outward change in their home, the three were busy about their usual workand usual recreations; friends came and went; Tessa wrote and walked; gave two afternoons each week to Mrs. Towne, sometimes in Dunellen and sometimes at Old Place; ran in, as of old, for a helpful talk with Miss Jewett, not forgetting that she must be, what Dr. Lake had said,—a good friend to his wife. These were the busy hours; in the still hours,—but who can know for another the still hours?
Mr. Hammerton and Mr. Lewis Gesner proved themselves to be invaluable friends; Tessa’s warm regard for Mr. Gesner, even with the shock that came to her afterward, never became less; he ever remained her ideal of the rock in the weary land.
Two weeks after her father’s funeral, she had stood alone one evening towards dusk among her flowers: she had been gathering pansies and thinking that her father had always liked them and talked about them.
There was a sound of wheels on the grass and a carriage stood at the opening in the shrubbery; the face into which she looked this time was not worn, or thin, or excited; a dark face, with grave, sympathetic eyes, was bending towards her.
“I wish that I could help you,” he said.
“I know you do. No one can help me. I do not need help. Iamhelped.”
“The air is sweet to-night.”
“And so still! Do you like my pansies?”
“Yes.”
“Will you take them to your mother, and tell her that I will come to-morrow.”
“I will tell her; but I will keep the pansies for myself, if you will give them to me.”
She laid them in his hand with fingers that trembled.
“Do they say something to me?”
“They say a great deal to me!”
“What do they say?”
“I can not find a meaning for you. They must be their own interpreter.”
“But I may think that you gave them to me to keep as long as I live.”
“Yes; to keep as long as you live.”
“When you have something to say to me—something that you know I am waiting to hear—will you say it, freely, of your own accord.”
“Yes, freely, of my own accord.”
“I regret to trouble you; but if you ever waited, you know that it is the hardest of hard work.”
“I know,” said Tessa, her voice breaking; “but you may not like what I say.”
“Perhaps you will say what I like then.”
“I will if Ican.”
What had she to say, freely, of her own accord? I think that it was the knowledge of what she would say by and by when she was fully sure that helped her to bear the loneliness of this summer and autumn.
And thus passed the summer that she had planned for rest. November found her making plans for winter. Her last winter’s work had been sent to her, one volume with its new illustrations, and the other,with but one new picture; her father had looked forward to them; she sent copies to Elsie, Mabel, and Sue, also to Felix Harrison and Mr. Hammerton; Miss Jewett and Mrs. Towne made pretty and loving speeches over theirs; Tessa wondered, why, when she had written them with all her heart, they should seem so little to her now.
“Where is your novel, Lady Blue,” Mr. Hammerton, asked one evening.
“I think that I shall live it first,” she answered, seriously. “I couldn’t love my ideal well enough to put him into a book, and therealhero would only be lovable and commonplace, and no one would care to read about him—no one would care for him but me.”
“It must be something of an experience to learn that one’s ideal can not be loved, and rather humiliating to find one’s self in love with some one below one’s standard.”
“That’s what life is for,—to have an experience, isn’t it?”
“It seems to be some people’s experience,” he said, looking as wise as an owl, and as unsympathetic.
November found Sue making plans, also. Her plans came out in this wise: she called one morning to talk to Tessa; Tessa was sewing in her own chamber, and Sue ran up lightly, as lightly as in the days before Gerald Lake had come to Dunellen.
“Busy!” she said blithely, her flowing crape veil fluttering at the door.
“Not too busy. Come in.”
Sue talked for an hour with her gloves on, then, carelessly, as she described some pretty thing that the Professor’s wife had brought from over the sea, she drew the glove from her left hand, watching Tessa’s face. The quick color—the quick, indignant color—repaid the manœuvre; the wedding ring—the new wedding ring—was gone, and in its stead blazed a cluster of diamonds.
“You might as well say something,” began Sue, moving her hand in the sunlight.
“I have nothing to say. I wonder how you dare come to me.”
“Why shouldn’t I dare? I know it seems soon; but circumstances make a difference, and Mr. Gesner has to go to Europe next month. He took the other ring; I couldn’t help it—I wouldn’t have kept it safe with a lock of his hair in a little box—but he said that I shouldn’t have this unless I gave him that.”
Tessa’s head went down over her work; she had not wept aloud before since she was a little girl, but now the sobs burst through her lips uncontrolled. That ring that Dr. Lake had carried that day in the rain not fourteen months ago!
Sue sprang to her feet, then dropped back into her chair and wept in sympathy, partly with a vague feeling of having done some dreadful thing, partly with the fear that life in a foreign land might not be wholly alluring; Mr. Gesner was kind, but poor Gerald had loved her so!
“O, Tessa! Tessa! don’t,” she cried. “Stop crying and speak to me.”
“Go away from me. Go home. I will not speak to you.”
For a moment Sue waited, then she arose and moved towards the door, standing another moment, but as Tessa did not turn or speak, she went down-stairs, not lightly, hushed by the revelation of a grief that she could not understand.