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Tessa Wadsworth's Discipline: A Story of the Development of a Young Girl's Life

by Mrs. Nathaniel Conklin · English · Gutenberg #37003 · 530,706 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Tessa Wadsworth's Discipline: A Story of the Development of a Young Girl's Life

Author: Mrs. Nathaniel Conklin


        
Release date: August 7, 2011 [eBook #37003]
                Most recently updated: January 8, 2021

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TESSA WADSWORTH'S DISCIPLINE: A STORY OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF A YOUNG GIRL'S LIFE ***




Produced by Katherine Ward, Roger Frank and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net






[Illustration: Nan drew Tessa's cheek down to her lips. (_Page 329_)]




                           Tessa Wadsworth's
                               Discipline

           A Story of the Development of a Young Girl's Life

                        By Jennie M. Drinkwater

             Author of "Growing Up," "Bek's First Corner,"
                      "Miss Prudence," etc., etc.

                      "The people that stood below
                       She knew but little about;
                   And this story's a moral, I know,
                     If you'll try to find it out."

                     A. L. Burt Company, Publishers
                                New York




                            Copyright 1879,
                      By Robert Carter & Brothers.




                              Dedication.

                                   TO
                               MY FRIEND
                            Mary V. Childs.




                                CONTENTS

             CHAPTER                                       PAGE
                  1. Hearts that Seemed to Differ             9
                  2. The Silent Side                         20
                  3. The Last Night of the Old Year          31
                  4. Somebody New                            55
                  5. Hearts that were Waiting                65
                  6. Another Opportunity                     81
                  7. The Long Day                            90
                  8. A Note out of Tune                     101
                  9. The New Morning                        140
                 10. Forgetting the Bread                   156
                 11. On the Highway                         162
                 12. Good Enough to be True                 178
                 13. The Heart of Love                      188
                 14. Wheat, not Bread                       211
                 15. September                              217
                 16. A Tangle                               244
                 17. The Night Before                       258
                 18. Moods                                  280
                 19. The Old Story                          293
                 20. Several Things                         305
                 21. Through                                330
                 22. Several Other Things                   338
                 23. What She Meant                         362
                 24. Shut in                                367
                 25. Blue Myrtle                            377
                 26. Another May                            390
                 27. Sunset                                 397
                 28. Hearts Alike                           405




TESSA WADSWORTH'S DISCIPLINE.




I.--HEARTS THAT SEEMED TO DIFFER.


She was standing one afternoon on the broad piazza, leaning against the
railing, with color enough in her usually colorless cheeks as she
watched the tall figure passing through the low gateway; he turned
towards the watching eyes, smiled, and touched his hat.

"You will be in again this week," she said coaxingly, "you can give me
ten minutes out of your busy-ness."

"Twice ten, perhaps."

The light that flashed into her eyes was her only reply; she stood
leaning forward, playing with the oleander blossoms under her hand until
he had seated himself in his carriage and driven away; not until the
brown head and straw hat had disappeared behind the clump of willows at
the corner did she stir or move her eyes, then the happy feet in the
bronze slippers tripped up-stairs to her own chamber. Dinah had left her
slate on a chair, and dropped her algebra on the carpet, at the sound of
Norah's voice below the window.

Tessa was glad to be alone; she was always glad to be alone after Ralph
Towne had left her, to think over all that he had said, and to feel
again the warm shining of his brown eyes; to thank God with a few, low,
joyful exclamations that He had brought this friend into her life; and
then, as foolish women will, she must look into her own face and try to
see it as he saw it,--cheeks aglow, tremulous lips, and such a light in
the blue eyes!

She did not know that her eyes could look like that. She had thought
them pale, cold, meaningless, and now they were like no eyes that she
had ever looked into; a dancing, tender, blue delight.

Had he read her secret in them?

Her enthusiasm with its newness, sweetness, and freshness,--for it was as
fresh as her heart was pure,--was moulding all her thoughts,
strengthening her desire to become in all things true and womanly, and
making her as blithe all day long as the birds that twittered in the
apple-tree near her chamber window.

It mattered not how her hands were busied so long as her heart could be
full of him. And he, Ralph Towne, blind and obtuse as any man would be
who lived among books and not in the world at all, and more than a
trifle selfish, as men sometimes find themselves to be, little thinking
of the effect of his chance visits and fitful attentions, had in the
last two months come to a knowledge that grieved him; for he was an
honorable man, he loved God and reverenced womankind. He had not time
now to think of any thing but the book for which he was collecting
material. It was something in the natural history line, he had once told
her, but he never cared to speak of it; indeed Ralph Towne cared to talk
but of few things; but she loved to talk and he loved to listen. He
loved to listen to her, but he did not love her (so he assured himself),
he only loved her presence, as he loved the sunshine, and he did not
love the sunshine well enough to fret when the day was gloomy; in these
days he did not love any body or any thing but himself, his books, and
his mother.

Dunellen said that he was proud of his money and proud of a
great-great-grandmother who had been cousin to one of the president's
wives; but Tessa knew that he was not proud of any thing but his
beautiful white-haired mother.

Not understanding the signs of love, how could he know that Tessa
Wadsworth was growing to love _him_; he had never thought of himself as
particularly worth loving. Surely she knew a dozen men who were
handsomer (if that were what she cared for), and another dozen who could
talk and tell stories and say pretty things to women (if _that_ were
what attracted her); still he knew to-day that his presence and light
talk (he did not remember that he had said any thing to be treasured)
had moved her beyond her wont. She was usually only self-contained and
dignified; but to-day there must have been some adequate cause for her
changing color, for the lighting and deepening of her eyes as they met
his so frankly; he was sure to-day of what he had only surmised
before,--that this sensitive, high-spirited, pure-hearted woman loved him
as it had never entered his preoccupied mind or selfish heart to love
her or indeed any human being.

"I have been a fool!" he ejaculated. "Well, it is done, and, with a
woman like her, it can not be undone! Miserable bungler that I am, I
have been trying to make matters better, and I have made them a thousand
times worse! Why did I promise to call again this week? Why did I give
her a right to ask me? I wish that I had _never_ seen her! God
knows,"--she would never have forgotten his eyes could she have seen them
at this instant, penitent and self-reproachful,--"that I did not _mean_
to trifle with her."

Meanwhile, resting in Dinah's chair, with the algebra and slate at her
feet, she was thinking over and over the words he had spoken that
afternoon; very few they were, but simple and sincere; at least so they
sounded to her. She smiled as "I _do_ care very much" repeated itself to
her, with the tone and the raising of the eyes.

"Very much!" as much as she did? It was about a trifle, some little
thing that she had put into rhyme for him; how many rhymes she had
written for him this summer! He so often said, "Write this up for me,"
and she had so intensely enjoyed the doing it, and so intensely enjoyed
his appreciation--his over-appreciation, she always thought.

O, Tessa, Tessa, pick up that algebra, and go to work with it. Life's
problems are too complex for your unworldliness.

She stooped to pick up Dinah's slate, and, instead of finishing the work
upon it, she wrote out rapidly a thought that had tinged her cheeks
while Ralph Towne had been with her. _The silent side_ she called it.
Was it the silent side? If it were, how was it that he understood? She
_knew_ that he understood; she knew that he had understood when he
answered, "Twice ten, perhaps."

Her mother's voice below broke in upon her reverie; fancy, sentiment, or
delicate feeling of any kind died a hard and sudden death under Mrs.
Wadsworth's influence, yet she read more novels than did either of her
daughters, and would cry her lovely eyes red and swollen over a story
that Tessa would not deign to skip through. It was one of her mother's
plaints that Tessa had no feeling.

Ralph Towne did not give the promised "twice ten" minutes that week, nor
for weeks afterward; she met him several times driving with his mother,
or with his mother and Sue Greyson: her glad, quick look of recognition
was acknowledged by a lifting of the hat and a "good afternoon, Miss
Tessa." Once she met him alone with Sue Greyson. Sue's saucy,
self-congratulatory toss of the head stung her so that she could have
cried out. "I am ashamed"--no, I am not ashamed to tell you that she
cried herself to sleep that night, as she asked God to bless Ralph Towne
and make him happy and good. She could not have loved Ralph Towne if she
might not have prayed for him. Her mother would have been inexpressibly
shocked at such a mixture of "love and religion."

"How long have you loved Christ?" asked the minister, when Tessa was
"examined" for admission to the church.

"Ever since I have known Him," was the timid reply.

And Ralph Towne, in these miserable days, for he _was_ miserable, as
miserable in his fashion as she was in hers, was blaming her and
excusing himself. What _had_ he ever said to her? Was every one of a
man's words to be counted? There was Sue Greyson, why didn't she turn
sentimental about him? True, he had said one day when they were talking
about friendship--what had he said that day? Was she remembering that? If
she had studied his words--but of course, she had forgotten! What had
possessed him to say such things? But how could he look at her and not
feel impelled to say something warm? It could not be his fault; it must
be hers, for leading him on and for remembering every trivial word. And
of that she was equally sure, for how could he do any man or any woman
wrong, this sincere and honorable Christian gentleman?

In her imagination there was no one in a book or out of a book like
Ralph Towne. Gus Hammerton was a scholar and a gentleman, but she had
known him all her life; Felix Harrison was gracious and good, but he was
not like Ralph Towne. Ralph Towne was not her ideal, he was something
infinitely better than she could think; how beautiful it was to find
some one nobler and grander than her ideal! Far away in some wonderful,
unknown region he had grown up and had been made ready for her, and now
he had come to meet her; bewildered and grateful, she had loved him and
believed in him--almost as if that unknown region were heaven.

It was her wildest dream come true; that is, it had come true, until
lately. Some strange thing was happening; it was happening and almost
breaking her heart.

"Tessa, you look horrid nowadays," exclaimed Dinah, one afternoon, as
Tessa came up on the piazza, returning from her usual walk. "You are
white, and purple, and all colors, and you never sing about the house or
talk to me or to any body. You actually ran away while Mrs. Bird was
over here yesterday, and you don't even go to see Miss Jewett! She asked
me yesterday if you had gone away. When Laura was talking to you
yesterday, you looked as if you did not hear one word she said."

"I was listening."

"And you used to have such fun talking to Gus; I believe that you went
up-stairs while he was here last night."

"I had a headache; I excused myself."

"You always go down the road. Why don't you go through Dunellen?"

"I want to get into the country; I never walk through a street simply
for the pleasure of it. I like to be alone."

"Do you ever walk as far as Old Place?"

"That isn't far, only three miles; sometimes I go to Mayfield, that is a
mile beyond Old Place."

"Isn't Old Place splendid? Next to Mr. Gesner's it is the handsomest
place around."

"It is more home-like than Mr. Gesner's."

"Sue likes Mr. Gesner's better. I told her that I would take Old Place
and she could have Mr. Gesner's. Mr. Gesner's is stone; Old Place is all
wood. Do you ever see any of the Townes?"

"There are not many to be seen."

"Counting Sue, there are three. Sue thinks that she is stylish, driving
around with Mrs. Towne. She stayed a week with Miss Gesner once, too.
Why don't you and I get invited around to such places? Mrs. Towne ought
to invite you. Mr. Towne used to come here often enough."

"Used to come!" Tessa shivered standing in the sunlight. "Yes, it was
'used to come,'" she was thinking. "I have been dreaming, now I am
awake. I wish that I had died while I was dreaming."

"Now you look pale again! I guess you are growing up," laughed
unconscious Dinah; "it's hateful and horrid to grow up; I never shall.
Remember that I am always to be fifteen."

"I hope that you never will grow up," said Tessa, earnestly, "every
thing is just as bad as you can dream."

"Mr. Towne has given Sue coral ear-rings," Dinah ran on. Tessa had gone
down to her flower-bed to pull a few weeds that had pushed themselves in
among her pansies. "He gave his mother several groups in stone for the
dining-room; they are all funny, Sue says. In one, some children are
playing doctor; in another, they are playing school. He gave his cousin
a silk dress, and he bought himself a set of books for his birthday; he
was thirty-two. Did you think he was so old?"

"Yes."

"I say, Tessa, Sue thinks that she is going to marry him."

"Does she?" The voice was away down in the flowers.

"You are always among those flowers. Don't you wish that we had a
conservatory? They have a grand one at Old Place. I wonder why they have
so little company."

"Mrs. Towne is feeble; she likes a quiet house."

"Yes, Sue says that. But Grace Geer, his cousin, is there! Mrs. Towne is
to give Old Place and all its treasures to Mr. Towne upon his
wedding-day; she wants a daughter more than any thing, Sue says. I wish
she would take me. Sue thinks that she will take _her_. Every other word
that she speaks is 'Mr. Ralph.' She talks about him everywhere. Do _you_
believe it?"

"Believe what?"

Tessa had returned to the piazza with a bunch of pansies.

"Believe that she will marry him! She has real pretty manners when she
is with them, and really tries not to talk slang. But I don't believe
it. He treats her as he would treat any one else; I have seen them
together."

"Perhaps she will. People say so," said Tessa.

Poor motherless, sisterless Sue! Was she making a disappointment for
herself out of nothing? Or was it out of a something like hers?

It was certainly true that Sue Greyson had taken a summer tour with Mrs.
Towne and Mr. Ralph Towne, and that she had spent more of her time
during the last year at Old Place than in her own small, unlovely home.
She loved her father "well enough," she would have told you; but after
the months at Old Place, she found the cottage in Dunellen a stale and
prosaic affair; her father had old Aunt Jane to keep house for him, why
did he need her? He would have to do without her some day. Doctor Lake
was great fun, why could he not be interested in him?

"He is a stranger, not my only daughter," her father had once replied.

"Your father will be glad enough and proud enough that he let you come
to Old Place," comforted Grace Geer, when Sue told her that he missed
her at home. "Ralph Towne's wife will be a happy woman for more reasons
than one; and he is interested in you, as one can see at a glance. He
told his mother to-day that he should always be glad that they had come
to Old Place."




II.--THE SILENT SIDE.


It was nearly six weeks after the day that she had watched him as far as
the clump of willows that he came again. Sue Greyson had driven him into
Dunellen that morning and had stopped at the gate on her return to tell
her about her "grand splendid, delightful times" at Old Place.

"Cousin Grace has gone away; how we miss her music! Mr. Ralph did not
care for it, but Mrs. Towne and I cared. Mrs. Towne says that I ought to
have a music teacher; but I never did practice when I had one. I can't
apply my mind to any thing; Mr. Ralph says that I learn by observation.
I wonder why wise men choose silly wives always," she added consciously,
playing with the reins.

"Do they?" asked Tessa, picking a lilac leaf from the shrubbery.

[Illustration: "Is not this what we usually call the Indian summer?"
said Tessa, as she extended her hand.]

"Cousin Grace says so. I wish I knew what ails Mr. Ralph. His mother
says that he is having a worry; she always knows when he is having a
worry by his eyes; they do look very melancholy, and last night I
overheard him say to Mrs. Towne, 'A man has to keep his eyes pretty wide
open not to step on peoples' toes.' I didn't think much of that, but he
said afterward, 'A man may do in an hour what he can't _undo_ in a
lifetime.' He never talks much, so I know that something is on his mind,
or he would not have talked so long. She said that he must be patient
and do right."

"Why, Sue, you did not listen!"

"Of course not. They were in the library, and I was on the balcony
outside the window. I heard his voice--he was walking up and down, and, I
confess, I _did_ want to know what it was all about! I thought that it
might be about me, you know. But I can't stay here all day; Mrs. Towne
is to take me to spend the day with the Gesners. It is splendid there.
Mr. John Gesner I don't like, but Mr. Lewis Gesner treats me so
respectfully and talks to me as if he liked to hear me talk. And Miss
Gesner is loveliness personified! Mr. Towne said that he had a call to
make this afternoon, and would walk home. He will be up in the four
o'clock train."

"A call to make!"

The words were in her ears all day; she dressed for her walk, then
concluded to stay at home. How could he undo what he had so
thoughtlessly, so mercilessly, done? Would he come and talk to her as he
had talked to his mother? Would he say, "I am sorry that you have
misinterpreted my words?" Misinterpreted! Did they not both speak
English? Sincere, straightforward, frank English? It was the only
language that she knew. In what tongue had he spoken to her?

Her fluttering reverie was brought to a sudden and giddy end; the sound
of a firm tread on the dried leaves under the maple-trees outside the
gate, a tall figure in plain, elegant black,--the startled color in her
eyes told the rest; she sprang to her feet, dropped her long, white
work, shook off all outward nervousness, brushed her hair, fastened a
bow of blue ribbon down low on her braids, questioned her eyes and lips
to ascertain if they were _safe_, and then passed down the stair-way
with a light, sure tread, and stood on the piazza to welcome Ralph
Towne; her own composed, womanly self, rather more self-repressed than
usual, and with a slight stateliness that she had never assumed with
him. But he only noted that she appeared well and radiant; he understood
her no more--than he understood several other things. Ralph Towne had
been called "slow" from his babyhood.

"Is not this what we usually call the Indian summer? We have not had
frost yet, I think," she said easily.

His dark face crimsoned, he answered briefly, and dropped her hand.

If he had ever prided himself upon his tact, he was aware that to-day it
would be a most miserable failure. How could he say, "You have
misunderstood me," when perhaps it was he who had misunderstood her? He
had come to her to-day by sheer force of will, not daring to stay away
longer--and what had he come for? To assure her--perhaps he did not intend
to assure her any thing; perhaps it was not necessary to assure her any
thing. Not very long ago he _had_ assured her that he could become to
her her "ideal of a friend," if she would "show" him how. Poor Tessa!
This showing him how was weary work. "Yes," he replied, wheeling a chair
nearer the open window, "the country is beautiful."

That look about her flexible lips was telling its own story; she was
just the woman, he reasoned, to break her heart about such a fellow as
he was.

"I have very little time for any thing outside my work," he said,
running on with his mental comments. All a man had to do to make himself
a hero was to let a woman like this fall in love with him.

"What have _you_ been doing?" he asked in his tone of sincere interest.

"All my own doings," she said lightly. "Mr. Hammerton and I have been
writing a criticism upon a novel and comparing notes, and I have sewed,
as all ladies do, and walked."

"You are an English girl about walking."

"I know every step of the way between Dunellen and Mayfield. Do _you_
walk?"

"No, I drive. My life has a lack. My book is falling through. I do not
find much in life."

"Our best things are nearest to us, close about our feet," she answered.

He did not reply. Ralph Towne never replied unless he chose.

He opened his watch; he had been with her exactly ten minutes.

"I have an engagement at six," he said.

The flexible lips stiffened. "Do not let me detain you."

He was regarding her with a smile in his eyes that she could not
interpret; her graceful head was thrown back against the mass of fluffy
white upon the chair, the white softening the outlines of a face that
surely needed not softening; the clear, unshrinking eyes meeting his
with all her truth in them; the blue ribbon at her throat, the gray
cashmere falling around her, touched him with a sense of fitness; the
slight hands clasping each other in her lap, slight even with their
strength, partly annoyed, partly baffled him. Mr. Hammerton had told her
that she had wilful hands.

Regarding Tessa Wadsworth as regarding some other things, Ralph Towne
thought because he felt; he could not think any further than he thought
to-day, because he had not felt any further.

There was another friend in her life who with Tessa Wadsworth as with
some other things felt because he thought, and he could not feel any
further than he felt to-day because he had not thought any further.

For the first time since she had known Ralph Towne, she was wishing that
he were like Gus Hammerton. It had never occurred to her before to wish
that he would change.

Each smiled under the survey. He was thinking, "I wish I loved you." She
was thinking, "You are a dear, big boy; I wish you were more manly."

"You did not send me the poem you promised."

"You said you would come soon."

"Did you expect me?"

"Had I any reason to doubt your word?"

"You must not take literally all I say," he answered with irritation.

"I have learned that. I have studied the world's arithmetic, but I do
not use it to solve any word of yours, any more than I have supposed
that you would use it to find the meaning of any problem you might
discover in my attitude towards you."

"It is best not to dig and delve for a meaning, Miss Tessa; society
sanctions many phrases that you would not speak in sincerity."

"Society!" she repeated in a tone that brought the color to his
forehead. "Is society my law-giver?"

It was very pleasant to be loved by a woman like this woman; he could
not understand her, but she touched him like the perfume of the white
rose, or the note of the thrush. His next words were sincere and abrupt.
"You asked me some time since to burn the package of poems you have
written for me. If I had done as much for you, would you destroy them?"

A flush, a dropping of the eyes, and a low laugh answered him.

He arose quickly, with a motion of tossing off an ugly sensation. "I am
very much engaged; I do not know when I can come again. We are going
west for the winter."

She could not lift her eyes, or speak, or catch her breath. She arose,
slowly, as if the movement were almost too great an effort, and stood
leaning against the tall chair, her fingers fumbling with the fringe of
the tidy; the room had become so darkened that the white fringe was but
a dark outline of something that she could feel.

"Sue Greyson is to accompany my mother; I shall be much away, and I do
not like to leave her with strangers."

"Sue is pleasant and lively." She had spoken, and now she could, not
quite clearly yet, but a glance revealed the blood surging to his
forehead, the veins swollen in his temples, even through the heavy
mustache she discerned the twitching of his lips. The pain in her heart
had opened her eyes wide. Had he come to make the parting final? What
had she done that he should thus thrust her away outside of all the
interests in his life? Did he know how she cared, and was he so sorry?
Was he trying to be "patient," as his mother had advised--patient with
her for taking him at his word?

Dunellen had called her proud; this instant she was as humble as a
child.

Slowly and sorrowfully she said, "Come again--some time."

"Yes," he said, as slowly and as sorrowfully, "I will."

He was very sorry for this woman who had been so foolish as to think
that his words had meant so much.

She had closed the street door and was on the first step of the stairs
when her mother called to her from the sitting-room.

"What did Sir Dignified Undemonstrative have to say for himself?"

"He does not talk about himself."

"It is your turn to get tea! It is Bridget's afternoon out."

Mrs. Wadsworth was a little lady something less than five feet in
height, as slight as a girl of twelve, and prettier than either of her
daughters; with brown hair, brown eyes, and the sprightliest manner
possible.

"Young enough to be Tessa's sister," Dunellen declared.

But she was neither sister nor mother as her elder daughter defined the
words.

"If you get him, Tessa, you'll get a catch," remarked Mrs. Wadsworth
watching the effect of her words.

The first sound of her mother's voice had brought her to herself, her
self-contained, cautious and, oftentimes, sarcastic self.

"Have you any order about tea?"

Her studied respect toward her mother, was pitiful sometimes. It was
hard that she could not attain somewhat of her ideal of daughterhood.

"No, but I want you to do an errand for me after tea. I forgot to ask
Dine to do it on her way from school."

"Very well," she assented obediently.

She stumbled on the basement stairs, and found the kitchen so dark that
she groped her way to a chair and sank into it, dropping her head on the
table. She could hear nothing, see nothing, feel nothing--the whole earth
was empty!

Where was God? Had He gone, too?

Through the open windows floated the sound of girls' voices, as Norah
and Dinah chatted and laughed in the garden. But the sound was far off;
the engine whistled and screamed, but the sound was not in her world;
carriages rolled past, the front gate swung to, her father's step was on
the piazza over her head, and he was calling, her dear old father,
"Where are you all, my three girls?"

His fulfilled hope was bitterer than all her disappointments ever could
be.

"I don't wonder," she said with a sob in her throat, as she arose and
pushed her hair back, "I don't wonder that he can not love me; but oh, I
wish that he had not told me a lie!"

October passed; the days hurried into November; there was no more
leaf-hunting for her, no more long walks down the beautiful country
road, no more tripping up and down stairs with a song or a hymn on her
lips, no more of life, she would have said, for every thing seemed like
death. She did not die with shame, as at first she was sure that she
would do; she could not run away to the far end of the earth where she
would never again see his face; where every face would be a new face,
where no voice would speak his name; she could not dig a hole in the
earth and creep into it; she could not lie down at night and shut her
tired eyes, with both hands under her cheek, as she always fell asleep,
and never awake again, as she would love best of all to do; she could
cry out, but she could not hear the answer, "Oh, please tell me when I
_meant_ to be so good, why it had to be so hard."

No; she had to live in a world where people would laugh at her if they
only knew; how she would shiver and freeze if her mother should once
begin to harp upon the sudden break. She could not bemoan herself all
the time; she was compelled to live because she had been born, and she
was compelled to thrive and grow cheery; there were even moments when
she forgot to be ashamed, for her mother's winter cough set in with the
cold winds, and beside being nurse, she was in reality the head of the
small household. Dinah was preparing to be graduated in the summer and
was no help at all; instead, an hour or two every evening Tessa was
asked to study with her, for she did not love study and was not quick
like her sister.

And then she had her own special work to do, for she was a scribbler in
prose and rhyme; the half dozen weeklies that came to the house
contained more than once or twice during the year sprightly or pathetic
articles under the initials T. L. W.

But few knew of this her "literary streak," as her mother styled it, for
she dreaded any publicity.

Miss Jewett, her father, and Mr. Hammerton were her sole encouragers and
advisers; Mr. Towne was not aware that she dipped her pen in ink for any
one's pleasure but his own. Beside this work there were friends to
entertain, half the girldom in Dunellen were her friends or had been at
some time.

Ralph Towne often wondered how she was "taking" it; he could have found
no sign of it in her face or in her life. Her father feared that she was
being overworked. Mr. Hammerton's short-sighted eyes noticed a shadow
flit across her eyes, sometimes, when she was talking to him, and said
to himself, "I see her often; I see a change that is not a change; there
is something happening that no one knows."




III.--THE LAST NIGHT OF THE OLD YEAR.


All her life she had longed for personal beauty; she loved every
beautiful thing and she wanted to love her own face. It was Ralph
Towne's perfect face that had drawn her to him, his voice, and his eyes,
like the woods in October.

She had studied her face times enough by lamplight and sunlight to know
it thoroughly, but she could not discover the sweetness that Miss Jewett
saw, or the intelligence that delighted her father; she could find
without much searching the freckles on her nose, the shortness of her
upper lip, the two slight marks that infantile chicken-pox had dented
into her forehead, the upward tendency of her nose, and the dimple that
was only half a dimple in her chin.

She was as pretty and as homely as any of the fair, blue-eyed girls in
Dunellen or elsewhere: with lips that shaped themselves with every
passing feeling; with eyes that could grow so bright and dark that one
could forget how bright they were; with the palest of chestnut hair,
worn high or low, as the little world of Dunellen demanded; with hands
slight and characteristic; a figure neither tall nor slender, but
perfectly proportioned, rounded and graceful; arrayed as neatly and
becomingly as she could be on her limited allowance, usually in plain
colors, often in black of a soft texture with a ribbon of some pale tint
at her throat and among her braids. A stranger might have taken her for
any one of the twenty-three girls in Miss Jewett's Bible class; that is
any one of the blue-eyed ones who wore gray vails and gray walking
suits.

But you and I know better.

With her self-depreciation she was one thing that she was not likely to
guess--the prettiest talker in the world.

Felix Harrison had told Miss Jewett so years ago.

"I haven't any accomplishments," she often sighed.

"You do not need any," Mr. Hammerton had once said.

One morning in December she chanced upon a bundle of old letters in one
of Dinah's drawers, they were written during the winter that she had
spent in the city two years ago.

She drew one from its envelope; it was dated December 22, just two years
ago to-day; she ran through it eagerly. How often she had remembered
that day as an era; the beginning of the best things in her uneventful
life! The second perusal was more slow. "I have seen somebody new; he is
a friend of Aunt Dinah's, or his mother is, or was. Don't you remember
that handsome house near Mayfield, just above Laura's? When they were
building it, Laura and I used to speculate as to whom it belonged, and
wonder if it would make any difference to us. She said she would marry
the son (for of course there would be a handsome and learned son) and
that I should come to live with her forever; and Felix said that he
would buy it for me, some day; you and I used to play that we owned it
but that we preferred to live nearer Dunellen and had left it in charge
of our housekeeper! How often when the former owner was in Europe, I
have stood outside the gates and peered in and planned how happy we
would all be there. Father should rest and read, and enjoy all the
beautiful walks and the woods and the streams in the meadow with the
rustic bridge, and mother should have a coach and four, and you and Gus
and I would have it all.

"All this preamble is to introduce the fact that the somebody new is the
owner of Old Place. Isn't that an odd name? I don't like it; I should
call it Maplewood; in the autumn it is nothing but one glory of maple.
His mother named it and they have become accustomed to its queerness.
His mother is wintering with a relative, an invalid, I believe; I think
that she has taken the invalid to Florida and the son (the father died
long ago) has come to spend the winter in the city. They say he is wise
and learned (I do not see any evidence of it, however), but he certainly
is a veritable Tawwo Chikwo, the beauty of the world. Get out my old
Lavengro and read about him.

"He is almost as dark as a gypsy, too, his eyes are the brownest and
sunniest. I never saw such eyes (a sunbeam was lost one day and crept
into his eyes for a home), his hair, beard, and mustache are as brown as
his eyes; as brown, but not at all bright.

"He looks like a big boy, but Aunt Dinah says that he is in the
neighborhood of thirty; his life has left no trace in his face, or
perhaps all that brown hair covers the traces of discipline. His manner
is gentleness and dignity united. But he can't talk. Or perhaps he
won't.

"His replies (he ventures nothing else) are simple, good, kind, and
above all, _sincere_. I have a feeling that I shall believe every word
he says. That is something new for me, too. He doesn't think much of me.
He likes to hear me talk though; I have made several bright remarks for
the pleasure of the sunbeam in his eyes.

"If I were his mother I should be sorry to do or say any thing to
frighten it away.

"I know that he has never been in love; he could not be such a dear,
grave, humorous, gentle, dignified, stupid big boy if some girl had
shaken him up.

"If he were the talker that Gus Hammerton is, I should go into raptures
over him. He is a doctor, too, but he has not begun practice; he has
been travelling with his mother. Is it not lovely to be rich enough to
do just what you like?

"Tell Gus that I will answer his letter sometime; you may let him read
this if you like."

This letter she tore into atoms; she glanced over the others to find
Ralph Towne's name; not once did she find it.

"I will do something to commemorate this anniversary," she thought. "I
will drop his photograph into the fire, and tear the fly-leaf out of the
Mrs. Browning he gave me."

Her name and his initials were all that was written in the book; very
carefully she cut out the entire page.

"Why, child! have you seen a ghost?" her mother exclaimed, meeting her
in the hall.

"Yes, but it was only a ghost; there was nothing real about it."

That afternoon, having some sewing to do for her father, she betook
herself to the chilliness of the parlor grate; her mother was in a
fault-find frame of mind and Tessa's nerves were ready to be set on edge
at the least provocation.

That parlor! She would have wept over its shabbiness had she ever been
able to find tears for such purposes. Wheeling an arm-chair near enough
to the grate to be made comfortable by all the heat there was, she
placed her feet on the fender and folded her hands over the work in her
lap. It was a raw day, the sky over Mr. Bird's house was unsympathetic,
the bare branches in the apple orchard stretched out in all directions
stiff and dry as if they were never to become green again; the outlook
was not cheering, the inlook was little more so; but how could she wish
for any thing more than her father was able to give his three dear
girls!

This room had seemed pretty to her in the summer when the windows were
open and she could have flowers everywhere; Ralph Towne always spoke of
her flowers, and he had more than once leaned back in that worn green
arm-chair opposite hers, as if that stiff, low room were the place of
all places that he loved to be in. In dreary contrast with his own home,
how poor and tasteless this home must be! How the carpet must stare up
at him with its bunches of flowers and leaves upon its faded gray
ground; how plain the white shades must appear after curtains of real
lace; how worn and yellowish the green rep of the black-walnut
furniture; how few the books in the small bookcase; and the photographs
and engravings upon the walls, how they must shock him! How meagre and
coarse her dress must be to him after his mother's rich attire!

She despised herself for pitying herself!

Sue Greyson said that Old Place was fairy-land, but in her catalogue of
its attractions she had omitted the spacious library; his "den," Mr.
Towne called it. In Tessa's imagination he was ever in that room buried
among its treasures.

Was her photograph in that room? What had he done with it? Where was he
keeping it? How he had coaxed for it! She had had it taken unwillingly;
it was altogether too much like giving herself away; but when she could
refuse no longer she had given it to him. A vignette with all herself in
it; too much of herself for him to understand; what would he do with it
now? Burn it, perhaps, as she had burned his; but he would not be
burning a ghost, it was her own self, that he had thrown away.

"I should have despised myself forever if I had not believed in him and
been true," she reasoned. "I would rather trust in a lie than not
believe the truth. And how could I know that he was not true!"

She took up her work and began to sew, her reverie running on and
running away with her; an ottoman stood near her, she had laid
needlework and scissors upon it: how many associations there were
clustering around it! It was an ugly looking thing, too; her mother had
worked the cover one winter years ago when she was kept in by a cough;
the wreath of roses was so unlike roses, and the parrot that was poised
in the centre of the wreath, on a brown twig, was so ungainly! One
night--how long ago it was--before she had ever seen Ralph Towne, Felix
Harrison had been seated upon it while he told her with such a warm, shy
glance that he never slept without praying for her. And Ralph Towne had
scattered his photographs over it, and asked her to choose from among
them, saying, "I should not have had them taken but for you."

The ugly old parrot was dear after all.

"I wonder," she soliloquized, taking slow stitches, "if having lost
faith in a person, it can ever be brought back again? If he should come
and say that he has been wrong--"

The gate clicked, in an instant she was on her feet, _had_ he come to
confess himself in the wrong? Oh, how she would forgive and forget! And
trust him?

The tall thin figure had a stoop in its shoulders, Ralph Towne was
erect; the overcoat was carelessly worn, revealing a threadbare vest and
loose black necktie; it was only Dr. Lake, Dr. Greyson's new partner.

She had been drawn to him the first moment of their meeting. As soon as
he had left after his first call, she had said to Dinah: "I never felt
so towards any one before; I shall be so sorry for him to go away where
I can not follow him; I want to put my arms around him and coax him to
be good."

"How do you know that he isn't good?"

"I do know it. I do not know how I know. He hasn't any 'women folks'
either. He is as sensitive to every change in one's voice as the
thermometer is to changes in the atmosphere. I never saw any one like
him before. When I make a collection of curiosities I find in Human
Nature, I shall certainly take him for one of the rarest and most
interesting. It would not take two minutes to convert him from the
inquisitor to the martyr at the stake. I feel as if he were a little
child crying with a thorn in his finger, and he had no mother to take it
out."

"He was only here fifteen minutes and he was as full of fun as he could
be; he ran down the piazza, and he whistled while he was unhitching his
horse, and began to sing as he drove off. Oh, you are so funny! you hear
a man talk slang--he is equal to Sue Greyson for that--ask mother about
her cough, tell a funny story, and then think his heart is breaking with
a thorn in his finger."

Tessa would not laugh. "I want him to stay; I don't want ever to lose
him."

"Isn't he ugly? Such a tall, square forehead. Did you ever see such a
forehead?"

"My first thought of him was, 'oh, how homely you are.'"

But that first thought never recurred; she was too much attracted by his
rapid, easy utterance and sensitive voice to remember his plain face and
careless attire.

She resumed her sewing with a new train of thought and had forgotten Dr.
Lake's entrance, when Bridget came to the door with a request from Mrs
Wadsworth; opening the door of the sitting-room, she found her mother
leaning back in her sewing chair with a plaintive and childish
expression, and Dr. Lake playing with her spools of silk, sitting in a
careless attitude of perfect grace at her side. Tessa was sorry to have
the picture spoiled by his rising to greet her.

"Ralph Towne, M.D.," he was replying, "he was born with a gold spoon in
his pretty mouth! It would have been better for him if it had been
silver-plated like mine. Quit? He's a mummy, a cloister, a tomb! I do
not quarrel with any man's calling," he continued, winding the black
silk around his fingers, "circumstances have made me a physician.
Calling! It means something only when circumstances have nothing to do
with it."

"Read the lives of the world's best workers," said Tessa.

"A glass of water, an empty glass, and a spoon, if you please, Miss
Tessa. Do you remember--I have forgotten his name--but I assure you that I
am not concocting the story--he rose to eminence in the medical
profession, several rounds higher in the ladder of fame than I expect to
climb--and his mind was drawn towards medicine when he was a youngster by
the display of gold lace that his father's physician flung into the eyes
of the world. Gold lace made that boy a famous doctor." Tessa brought
the glasses and the water; in a leisurely manner he counted a certain
number of spoonfuls of water into the empty glass. "I'm a commonplace
fellow! I'm not one of the world's workers! Neither is Ralph Towne! To
have an easy life and not do _much_ harm is the most I hope for in this
world; as for the next, who knows anything about that? I say, 'Your
tongue, please,' and drop medicine and make powders all day long for my
bread and butter. I have no faith in medicine."

"Then you are an impostor! You shall never see even the tip of my
tongue."

He laughed as if it were such fun to laugh.

"What is medicine to you?" he asked after counting forty drops from a
vial into the water. "A woman in a crowd once touched the border of a
certain garment and through faith was healed; so I take the thing that
He has ordained for healing, all created things are His garment; through
His garment I come nearer to Him and am healed."

Mrs. Wadsworth looked annoyed. "So I may take cream instead of cod liver
oil, doctor."

"If you prefer it," he answered carelessly. "Miss Tessa, you are a
Mystic."

Tessa liked to watch the motion of his fingers; his hands were small,
shapely, and every movement of them struck her as an apt quotation. She
was learning as much of himself from his hands as from his face.

"Now I must go and scold Felix Harrison," he said rising. "A teaspoonful
in a wineglass of water three times a day, Mrs. Wadsworth! He had an
attack last night and cheated me out of my dreams. Do you know him,
Mystic? If he do not leave off brain work he will make a fool of
himself. A gold spoon would not have hurt him."

He turned suddenly facing Tessa as they stood alone in the hall; he was
seriousness itself now; a look of care had settled over his features. He
was not a "big boy," he was a man, undisciplined, it is true, but a man
to whom life meant many disappointments and hard work.

"What is the matter with you? Do you ever go to sleep? If you do not
give up thinking and take to nonsense and novels, I shall be called to
take you through a nervous fever. Mind, I am in earnest. Don't spend too
much time in washing the disciples' feet either; it is very charming to
be St. Theresa, but you are not strong enough."

"Thank you. I am well. Is Sue at home?"

"No, she stays at Old Place until her knight departs. He had better go
soon or I shall meet him in the woods. Alone. At midnight. What is he
trifling with her for? Does he intend to marry her?"

Was this his thorn? Could he love a shallow girl like Sue Greyson?

"Ought we to talk about her?" she asked gently.

"You are her friend. You are older than she is. She will not listen to
me. Her father takes no more care of her than he does of you."

"She has not cared for me lately."

"She does care for you. You must pull her through this. Towne made a
fool of a girl I know--she is married, though; it didn't smash her
affections very deep; married rich, too. But it will be a pity for Sue
to have a heartache all for nix; she is a guileless piece; I would be
sorry for her to have a disappointment."

"Motherless children are always taken care of," she answered trying to
speak lightly.

In the twilight she sat alone at the parlor grate; it was beginning to
rain; through the mist the lights in kitchen and parlor opposite were
gleaming; Dinah and Bridget were laughing in the basement; a quick, hard
cough, then her father's voice in a concerned tone sounded through the
stillness.

Why was she feeling lonely and as if her heart would break, unless
somebody should come, or unless somebody gave her something, or unless
something happened? In story-books, when one was in such a mood, in a
misty twilight something always happened.

Why were there not such strong helpers in her life as women in books
always found? Compared with the grand, good, winning lover in books,
what were the men she knew? Why, Dr. Lake was frivolous, Felix Harrison
weak, Gus Hammerton practical and pedantic, and Mr. Towne heartless and
stupid!

"Gus is here," said Dinah, her head appearing at the door, "and he has
brought you a book! But I'm going to read it first."

"Well, I'll come," she answered. But she did not go for half an hour;
Mr. Hammerton took the new book to her immediately and talked to her
until her pale cheeks were in a glow.

The last day of the year, what a day it was!

It was like a mellow day in October; in the afternoon Tessa found
herself wandering through Mayfield; as she sauntered past the
school-house a voice arrested her, one of the voices that she knew best
in the world. She stood near the entrance listening.

That thrilling pathetic voice; it had never touched her as it touched
her to-day.

  "Old year, you shall not die;
  We did so laugh and cry with you,
  I've half a mind to die with you,
  Old year, if you must die."

She stood but a moment, the voice read on, but she did not care to
listen; she went on at a slow pace, enjoying each step of the way past
the barren fields lying warm and brown in the sunlight, past the
farm-houses, past the low-eaved homestead of the Harrisons, past the
iron gates of the Old Place with the voice in her ears and the sigh for
the old year in her heart. She almost wished that she could love Felix
Harrison; she had refused him five times since her seventeenth birthday
and in May she would be twenty-five! He had said that he would never ask
her again. Why should she wish for any change to come into her life? If
she might always live in the present, she would be content; she had her
father and mother and Dine and Gus; her world was broad enough.

The sound of wheels had been pursuing her; a sudden stoppage, then
another voice that she knew called to her, "Miss Tessa, will you ride
with me?"

"Perhaps you are not going my way," she said lightly.

"I am going to Dunellen." He answered her words only.

As soon as they were seated in the carriage, she said very gravely, "I
wrote you a letter last night, but I burned it this morning."

"I am sorry for that."

The words came out with a gasp and a jerk; she did not know that words
_could_ choke like that, but she was glad as soon as she had spoken.
"Mr. Towne, are you engaged to Sue Greyson?"

"Engaged! And to Sue Greyson!"

"I did not ask to be saucy--I did not believe it--but don't be
heartless--don't be cruel--don't be stupid, do think about her, and don't
let her die of shame."

"Excuse me, Miss Tessa. Why should you talk to me about Sue Greyson?"

"I knew that you would not understand."

"Perhaps you can explain."

"I can't explain; you ought to know."

"What ought I to know?" he queried, looking down at her with the
sunshine in his eyes.

"It seems mean in me to tell you such a thing, but I do not know of any
other way for your sake and hers. I would do any thing to keep you from
doing a heartless thing."--Another heartless thing, she almost said.--"I
would do any thing for Sue, as I would for Dine if _she_ had been led
into trusting in a lie."

His face became perplexed, uncomprehending.

"Are you trying to tell me that Sue Greyson thinks that I am intending
to marry her and that I have given her an occasion to believe it? You
are warning me against trifling with Sue?"

"Yes."

"How do you know that she thinks so?"

"Nonsense! How do I know any thing?"

"I should as soon have thought--" he ended with a laugh.

"A woman's heart is not made of grains of sand to be blown hither and
thither by a man's breath," she said very earnestly.

"Miss Tessa, you accuse me wrongfully. I have been kind to Sue--I have
intended to be kind. Her life at home is too quiet for her, she has few
friends and no education; you call me heartless. I thought that I was
most brotherly and thoughtful."

His sincerity almost reassured her. Had she misjudged him?

"I beg your pardon," she said, after an uncomfortable pause. "I did not
know that Old Place was a monastery and that you were a monk. If you are
speaking sincerely, you are the most stupid human being that ever
breathed; if you are not sincere, you are too wily for me to
understand."

The color rose to his forehead, but he was silent.

"Mr. Towne! Excuse me. I am apt to speak too strongly; but I care so
much for Sue. She is only a child in her experiences; she has no
fore-thought, she trusts every body, and she thinks that you are so good
and wonderful. She does not understand any thing but sincerity. Will you
think about her?"

"I will."

She was almost frightened, was he angry?

"Are you angry with me?" she asked, laying her hand on his arm. "You can
not misinterpret me; I don't want Sue to be hurt, and I do not want you
to be capable of hurting her."

"I understand you, Miss Tessa."

He spoke gently; her heart was at rest again.

"You say that you can not understand whether I am wily or sincere?"

"I can not understand."

"Neither can I. But I _think_ that I am sincere!"

"And please be careful how you change your attitude towards her; you are
unconventional enough to refuse a woman upon the slightest pretext. I
know that you will say 'I regret exceedingly, Miss Sue, that you have
misinterpreted my friendly attentions.'"

"I would like to; I think many things that I do not speak, Miss Tessa."

"Your head and heart would echo a perpetual silence if you did not," she
laughed. "The Sphinx is a chatterbox compared to you."

As they drove up under the maple-trees before the low iron gate, he
said, "Has this year been a happy year to you? Do you sleep well?"

"Wouldn't you like to look at my tongue and feel my pulse?" she returned
in her lightest tone.

"Will you not answer me?" he asked gravely.

"This year has been the best year of my life."

"So has it been my best year. This winter I shall decide several things
pertaining to my future; it is my plan to practice for awhile--and not
marry!"

Were those last words for her? Discomfited and wounded--oh, how
wounded!--her lips refused to speak.

"Good-by," she said, just touching his hand.

He turned as he was driving off and lifted his hat, the sunshine of his
eyes fell full upon her; her smile was but a pitiful effort; what right
had he to say such a thing to her?

"I hope," she said, as she walked up the path, "that I shall never see
you again."

"I wish that I had never seen her," he ejaculated, touching his horse
with the whip.

And thus a part of the old year died and was buried.

Shaking with cold, not daring to go away by herself, she irresolutely
turned the knob of the sitting-room door; her face, she was aware, was
not in a state to be taken before her mother's critical eyes; but her
heart was so crushed, she pitied herself with such infinite compassion,
that she longed for some one to speak to her kindly, to touch her as if
they loved her; any thing to take some of the aching away from that
place in her heart where the tears were frozen.

When she needed any mothering she gave it to herself; with her arms
around her shivering, shrinking self, she was beseeching, "Be brave;
it's almost over."

In the old days, the impulsive little Tessa had always chided herself;
the sensitive little Tessa had always comforted herself; the truthful,
eager, castle-building little Tessa had always been her own refuge,
shield, adviser, and best comforter.

With more bosom friends than she knew how to have confidences with, with
more admiring girl friends than she could find a place for, with more
hearts open to her than to any one girl at school, Tessa the child,
Tessa the maiden, and Tessa the woman had always lived within herself,
leaned upon herself.

Mr. Hammerton said that she was a confutation of the oak and vine
theory, that he had stood and stood to be entwined about, but that she
would never entwine.

In this moment, standing at the door, with her hand upon the knob, a ray
of comfort shone into her heart and nestled there like a gleam of
sunlight peering through an opening in an under-growth, and the ray of
comfort was, that, perhaps Gus Hammerton would come to-night and talk to
her in his kindly, practical, unsentimental fashion, sympathizing with
her unspoken thoughts, and tender towards the feelings of whose
existence he was unaware.

Perhaps--but of late, did she fancy, or was it true? that he was rather
shy with her, and dropped into the chair nearest to Dinah.

Well! she could be alone by and by and go to sleep!

So relentless was she, in that instant toward Ralph Towne that it would
have been absolute relief could she have looked into his dead face: to
see the cold lids shut down fast over the sunshiny eyes, to know that
the stiff lips could never open to speak meaningless words, to touch his
head and feel assured that, warm and soft, his fingers could never hold
hers again.

"Why, Tessa, you look frozen to death," exclaimed her mother. "How far
did you go and where did you meet Mr. Towne?"

"I went to Mayfield," she closed the door and moved towards the gay
little figure reading "The Story of Elizabeth" upon the lounge. "Mr.
Towne overtook me after I had passed Old Place."

"O, Tessa," cried Dinah, dropping her book, "Dr. Lake was here. What a
pity you were out! He asked where 'Mystic' was. I made a list on the
cover of my book of the things that he talked about. Just hear them. One
ought to understand short-hand to keep up with him. Now listen."

Tessa stood and listened.

  "'The Valley of the Dog,
  "'The Car of Juggernaut,
  "'Insanity,
  "'Intemperance,
  "'Tobacco,
  "'Slavery,
  "'Church and State,
  "'Conceit,
  "'Surgery,
  "'The English Government,
  "'Marriage,
  "'Flirtations,
  "'Ladies as Physicians,
  "'The Wicked World,
  "'A Quotation from Scott.'

"And that isn't half. I began to grow interested there, and forgot to
write."

"Where did the professional call come in?"

"Oh, that doesn't take a second. He watches his patient while he talks!
Oh, and he told two hospital stories, a story of his school life, and
about being lost in the woods, and about a camp-meeting! He is from
Mississippi. Your Mr. Towne couldn't say so much in ten years."

"He says that the disease in my lungs is not progressive, but that I
should protect my health! I ought to spend every winter in the West
Indies or in the south of Europe! South of Europe, indeed! On your
father's business! Now if I had married John Gesner I might have spent
my winters in any part of the civilized world."

"Would you have taken us?" asked Dinah.

"The future is veiled from us mercifully."

Dinah laughed. "Mother, you forget about love."

"_Love!_" exclaimed Mrs. Wadsworth scornfully, "I should like to know
what love is."

"Father knows," said Dinah. "Have you read 'Elizabeth,' Tessa?"

"Yes."

"I'd _die_ before I'd act as she did, wouldn't you? I'd die before I'd
let any body know that I cared for him more than he cared for me,
wouldn't you?"

"It isn't so easy to die."

"Did Mr. Towne speak of Sue Greyson?" inquired Mrs. Wadsworth.

"Yes."

"What did he say?"

"Nothing--much?"

"He must have said something. Couldn't you judge of his feelings towards
her?"

"I am not a detective."

"H'm," ejaculated Mrs. Wadsworth, glancing up at the uneasy lips, "if he
can't talk or sing, he can say something."

"Possibly."

Standing alone at one of the windows in her chamber, she watched the sun
go down the last night of the old year.

In her young indignation, she had called Ralph Towne some harsh names;
while under the fascination of his presence, she had thought that she
did not blame him for any thing; but standing alone with the happy,
false old year behind her, and the new, empty year opening its door into
nowhere, she cried, with a voiceless cry: "You are not true; you are not
sincere; you are shallow and selfish."

At this moment, watching the same sunset, for he had an appreciation of
pretty things, he was driving homeward almost as nerve-shaken as Tessa
herself; according to his measure, he was regretting that these two
trusting women were suffering because of his--he did not call it
selfishness--he had been merely thoughtless.

Tessa's heart could kindle and glow and burn itself out into white ashes
before his would feel the first tremor of heat; she had prided herself
upon being a student of human nature, but this man in his selfishness,
his slowness, his simplicity, had baffled her.

How could she be a student of human nature if she understood nothing but
truth?

She was in a bitter mood to-night, not sparing Ralph Towne as she would
not have spared herself. The crimson and gold faded! the gray shut down
over her world: "How alone I shall be to live in a year without him!"

"O, Tessa! Tessa!" cried Dinah, running up-stairs, "here's Gus, and he
has brought us something good and funny I know, for he's so provokingly
cool."

How could she think thoughts about the old year and the sunset with this
practical friend down-stairs and a mysterious package that must mean
books! She had expected to cry herself to sleep; instead she read
Dickens with Mr. Hammerton until the new year was upon them.

"Gus," she said severely, with the volumes of Dickens piled in her arms
up to her chin, "if I become matter-of-fact, practical, and commonplace
there will be no one in the world to thank but you. I had a poem at my
finger tips about the old year that would have forever shattered the
fame of Tennyson and Longfellow."

"As we have lost it, we'll be content with them," he said. "Drop your
books and let us read them."

Before the dawn she was dreaming and weeping in her sleep, for a voice
was repeating, not the voice in the school-house, nor the voice that had
read Longfellow, but the voice that had spoken the cold good-by at the
gate:

  "The leaves are falling, falling,
    Solemnly and slow;
  Caw! Caw! the rooks are calling,
    It is a sound of woe,
      A sound of woe!"




IV.--SOMEBODY NEW.


There was the faintest streak of sunshine on the dying verbenas in her
garden; the dead leaves, twigs, and sprays looked as if some one who did
not care had trampled on them. She was glad that the plants were in,
that there was a warm place for them somewhere.

The school children were jostling against each other on the planks, on
the opposite side of the street, laughing and shouting. Nellie Bird was
provokingly chanting:

    "Freddie's mad,
     And I am glad,
  And I know what will please him."

and there were two little girls in red riding hoods, plaid cloaks, and
gay stockings, skipping along with their hands joined. It was a hard
world for little girls to grow up in. She had run along the planks from
school once, not so very long ago, swinging her lunch-basket and teasing
Felix Harrison just as at this minute Nellie Bird was teasing Freddie
Stone.

Her needle was taking exquisite stitches; Dinah liked white aprons for
school wear, and this was the last of the dainty half-dozen. Her
mother's voice and step broke in upon her reverie.

"Tessa, I wouldn't have believed it, but six of my cans of tomatoes have
all sizzled up! Not one was last year, though. Mrs. Bird never has such
good luck with hers as we have with ours."

"That's too bad. But we have so many that we sha'n't miss them."

"That isn't the question. I remember how my side ached that day. Bridget
was so stupid and you and Dine had gone up to West Point with Gus; he
always is coming and taking you and Dine off somewhere! You are not
attending to a word I say."

"Yes, I am; I am thinking how you took us all three to look at your cans
of tomatoes."

"But you don't care about the tomatoes. You never do take an interest in
house-work. I would rather have Sue Greyson's skin stuffed with straw
than to have you around the house. And _she_ is going to marry Ralph
Towne: she passed with him this morning; they were in the phaeton with
that pair of little grays! And Sue was driving! I believe that you have
taken cold in some way, you must see the doctor the next time he comes;
your face is the color of chalk, and your eyes are as big as saucers
with dark rims under them! You sat here writing altogether too late last
night."

"It was only eleven when I went up-stairs."

"That was just an hour too late. What good does your writing do you or
any body, I'd like to know."

"It is rather too early in my life to judge."

"Your father spoils you about writing; I suppose that he thinks you are
a feather in _his_ cap; I tell him that you are none of my bringing up."

"I am not 'up' yet, perhaps."

"You may as well drop that work and take a run into Dunellen; the air
will do you good. You had color enough in the summer. I want a spool of
red silk, two pieces of crimson dress braid, and a spool of fifty
cotton. Don't get scarlet braid, I want crimson; and run into the
library and get me something exciting; you might have known better than
to bring me that volume of essays!"

She folded the apron and laid it on the pile in the willow work-basket,
wrapped herself in a bright shawl, covered her braids with a brown
velvet hat, and started for her walk, drawing on her gloves as she went
down the path.

Her mother stood at the window watching her. "She is too deep for me,"
she soliloquized; "there is more in her than I shall ever make out. She
is so full of nonsense that I expect she has refused Ralph Towne, and
what for, I can't see--there's no one else in the way."

In Tessa's pocket was a long and wide envelope containing the article
that she had sat up last night to write; the lessons gathered from her
old year she had told in her simple, quaint, forcible style. The title
was as simple as the article: "Making Mistakes."

"Tessa, you are not brilliant," Miss Jewett had once remarked, "but you
do go right to the spot."

The fresh air tinged her cheeks, she breathed more freely away from her
work and her reveries; there was life and light somewhere, she need not
suffocate in the dark.

It was not a long walk into the little city of Dunellen; fifteen minutes
of brisk stepping along the planks brought her to the corner that turned
into the broad, paved, maple-lined street. As she turned the corner, a
lame child in a calico dress and torn hood staggered past her bent with
the weight of a heavy basket. She stopped and would have spoken, but the
shy eyes were not encouraging.

Two years ago all the world might have knocked at her gate and she would
not have heard.

"Will you ride?" She lifted her eyes, with their color deepening, to
find Mr. Towne sitting alone in his carriage looking down at her.

"You are going the wrong way."

"Because I am not going _your_ way?" he asked somewhat sternly.

"I thought that you had gone away," she said uncomfortably.

"We go on the seventeenth."

"You have not told me where?"

"Have I not? You have forgotten. Sue will stay at home and learn to be
sensible."

"I don't like you when you speak in that tone."

"Then I will never do it again."

"Good-by," she said cheerily, passing on.

His thoughts ran on--"How bright she is! She has a sweet heart, if ever a
woman had! I wonder if I _am_ letting slip through my fingers one of the
opportunities that come to a man but once in a lifetime! A year or two
hence will do; she cares too much to forget me."

Her thoughts ran on-"How _can_ you look so good and so handsome and not
be true!"

With a quickened step she crossed the Park. Miss Jewett's large fancy
store was opposite the Park.

Miss Jewett was never too tired or too busy to live again her young
life. Sue Greyson was sure that she had broken somebody's heart, else
she never was so eloquent in warning her about Stacey Rheid. Laura
Harrison had decided that she had once lived in constant dread of having
a step-mother. Mary Sherwood wondered if she had ever been a busybody,
and in that experience had learned to warn her to keep quiet her busy
tongue; and Tessa Wadsworth knew that she must have learned her one word
of advice: "Wait," through years that she would not talk about.

Miss Jewett was seldom alone; Tessa was glad to find the clerks absent
and no one bending over the counter but Sue Greyson.

"O, Tessa," she cried in her loud, laughing voice. "I haven't seen you
in an age."

Miss Jewett's greeting was a hand-clasp; among all her girls (and all
the girls in Dunellen were hers) Tessa Wadsworth was the elected one.

"Mrs. Towne has every thing so delicious," Sue was rattling on; "such
perfumes and such silks and such jewels. Oh, how Old Place makes my
mouth water! I wish you could go over the place, Tessa; you were never
even through the grounds, were you? Mr. Ralph takes great pride in
keeping it nice; of course, it is really his. I'd marry any body to live
there and have plenty of money and do just as I please; not that Mr.
Ralph isn't something out of the common, though. People say that he
never means any thing by his attentions; Dr. Lake says--"

"I hear that you are going to St. Louis," interrupted Miss Jewett.

"No, I'm not. And I'm as provoked as I can be and live! Something has
happened; Mr. Ralph is an uneasy mortal; he never knows what he will do
next, and he has changed his mind about taking me. My cake is all dough
about my winter's fun. How I cried the night she told me! The last night
of the year, too, when I ought to have been full of fun. Mrs. Towne
wants me to write to her, but I'd never dare, unless you would help me,
Tessa, about the spelling and punctuation. Mr. Ralph would laugh until
he died over my letters.

"I don't write to Stacey now, Miss Jewett. I wrote him a letter one
Sunday from Old Place and told him that he might as well cease. Mr.
Ralph and I had been walking through the wood and he asked me if I were
engaged to Stacey! I thought it was about time to stop that."

"Perhaps if you had been home you wouldn't have written that letter.
Stacey is a fine fellow."

"Oh, I had thought of it, but that day I decided! Stacey can hardly
support one, let alone two. Father says that I was born to have a rich
husband because I have such luxurious tastes! I know that I shall die
cooped up at home. I have to go out to see the sons and daughters of the
land. Tessa, I don't see how you live."

"I do, nevertheless," said Tessa, selecting her spool of silk.

"I shall have Dr. Lake this winter or I couldn't exist. He says that he
will take me everywhere if father will only give him the time. He is
great fun, only he does get so moody and serious; sits for two hours in
the office with his head in his hands. Mr. Ralph doesn't have moods; he
is always pleasant. I am going to stay these last few days at Old Place.
Tessa, I am coming to stay all night with you and have a long talk."

"I shall be very glad; I have been wishing that you would."

"Oh, I'll come. I have a whole budget to tell you."

"Sue, you look thin," said Miss Jewett, rolling up her purchases.

"I _am_ thin. Since the night before New Years I have lost three
pounds."

The night before New Years! Tessa's veil shaded her face falling between
her and Sue.

"Mr. Ralph lectured me; oh, _how_ he talked! When he will, he will,
that's the truth. His mother says that her will is nothing compared to
his, and I believe it." Sue's face grew troubled. "He told me that I
ought to read travels and histories, and throw away novels; that I ought
to marry Stacey, if he is a good man and can take care of me--" Her voice
sounded as if she were crying; she laughed instead and ran off.

"Something at Old Place has hurt Sue; I didn't like the idea of Mrs.
Towne taking her up; Mr. Towne--I do not know about him! Do you?"

"No."

"Ah, here comes Sarah! Rachel has a sore throat, and Mary has gone to
the city to buy to-day. Light the gas, Sarah."

The light flashed over the faces: Miss Jewett's almost as fair as a
child's, and sweeter than any child's that Tessa had ever seen, with a
mouth in the lines of which her whole history was written, with just a
suspicion of dimples in the tinted cheeks, with brown rings of soft hair
touching the smooth forehead; the younger face was hurried, anxious,
with a trembling of the lips, and a nervous gleam in the eyes that were
so dark, to-night, that they might have been mistaken for hazel.

The door was pushed open; a crowd of girls giggled in; Tessa bowed to
Mary Sherwood and moved aside. She was turning over a pile of wools,
selecting colors for a sacque for Dinah, when a laugh from the group
thrilled her; low, deep, full, in all her life she had never heard a
sound like it.

It was as sweet as the note of a thrush and as jubilant as a thoughtless
girl.

"Now, Naughty Nan, you are laughing at me. But I will forgive you,
because you are going away so soon. When are you coming back?"

"Never. I will allure the black bear to take me around the world."

Naughty Nan stepped back, tossing her curls away from her face; Tessa
looked down into her face, for she was a little thing; it was not a
remarkable face: a broad forehead, deep set brown eyes, a passable
complexion, a saucy mouth. If she would only laugh again; but she would
not even speak.

How surprised Tessa would have been had she known that Naughty Nan had
been studying her and wishing, "I want to be like you."

The group of girls giggled out.

"I have fallen in love," said Tessa.

"With Nan Gerard? Every body does. She is one of those lovable little
creatures that every body spoils! It's strange that you haven't met her;
she is Mary Sherwood's cousin."

"I do remember now--Mr. Hammerton told me that I must hear her laugh."

"Her home is in St. Louis; she had never been in Dunellen until a month
since; she was her father's pet and lived abroad with him until he died
a year ago! He named her Naughty Nan. She has plenty of money and plenty
of lovers! She is going home under the escort of Mr. Towne and his
mother. Perhaps it is her laugh that has stolen his heart from Sue!
Naughty Nan was to be married, but the gentleman died in consumption."

"And she can laugh as lightly as that! If my father should die I would
never laugh again."




V.--HEARTS THAT WERE WAITING.


On the evening of the eighteenth of January, Tessa was sitting alone in
her chamber, wrapped in her shawl, writing. She was keeping a secret,
for she was writing a book and no one knew it but Mr. Hammerton; he
would not have known it had not several questions arisen to which she
could find no answer.

"I can not do without my encyclopedia," she had said.

She had written the title lovingly--"Under the Wings."

This chamber was her sanctuary; she was born in this room, she had lived
in it ever since; her little battles had been fought on this consecrated
ground, her angry tears, her wilful tears, and the few later grateful
tears had fallen while kneeling at the side of the white-draped bed or
sitting at the window with her head in her hands or on the window-sill.
A stranger would have thought it a plain, low room with its cottage set
of pale green and gold trimmings, its ingrain carpet of oak leaves on a
green ground, its gray paper with scarlet border, and three white shades
with scarlet tassels.

The high mantel was piled with books, the gifts of her father, Mr.
Hammerton, and Miss Jewett; on the walls were photographs in oval
black-walnut frames of Miss Jewett, sitting at a table with her elbow
upon it and one hand resting on a book in her lap, of her father and
mother, she sitting and he standing behind her, and one of herself and
Dinah, taken when they were fifteen and twenty-one; there were also a
large photograph taken from a painting of the Mater Dolorosa, which Mr.
Hammerton had given her on her fourteenth birthday and a chromo of Red
Riding Hood that he had given to Dinah upon her fourteenth birthday.
Upon the table at which she was writing, books were piled, and a package
of old letters that she had been sorting, and choosing some to burn,
among which were two from Felix Harrison. The package contained several
from Mr. Hammerton, but his were never worth burning; they were only
worth keeping because they were so like himself. Pages of manuscript
were scattered among the books, and a long envelope contained two
rejected articles that she had planned to rewrite after a consultation
with Mr. Hammerton and to send elsewhere. She had cried over her first
rejected article (when she was eighteen), and two years afterward had
revised it, changed the title, and her father had been proud of it in
print.

She was writing and thinking of Sue when a noisy entrance below
announced her presence.

"Go right up," said Mrs. Wadsworth's voice. "Tessa is star-gazing in her
room. Don't stay if you are chilly. Tessa likes to be cold."

Tessa met her at the head of the stairs.

"I've come to stay all night. Do you want me?"

"I want you more than I want any one in the world."

"That's refreshing. I wanted to see you and that's why I came. Norah
Bird said that Dine was to stay all night with her and I knew I should
have you all to myself. Dr. Lake brought me. I believe that he wanted me
to come. What do you stay up here for? It's lovely down-stairs with your
father and mother; she is sewing and he is reading to her. Put away that
great pile of foolscap and talk to me; I'm as full of talk as an egg is
full of meat."

"Must I break the shell?"

"Your room always looks pretty and there isn't much in it, either."

"Of course not, after Old Place."

"Old Place _is_ enchanting!" Sue tossed her gloves and hat to the bed.
"I'll keep on my sacque; I want to stay up here."

Tessa had reseated herself at the table. Sue dropped down on the carpet
at her feet.

"Have they gone?"

"Oh, yes! I stayed to see them off and drove to the depot with them. We
called for Nan Gerard. What a flirt that girl is! Any one would think
that she had known Mr. Ralph all his life."

Sue leaned backward against Tessa; her face was feverish and excited,
her thin cheeks would have looked hollow but for their high color, her
eyes as she raised them revealed something new; something new and not
altogether pleasant.

Tessa touched her hair and then bent over and kissed her. It was so
seldom that Sue was kissed.

"You know that night--" Sue began with an effort, "the night before New
Years. Mr. Ralph found me in his den, I was arranging one of his tables,
and he said that he wanted to talk to me. And I should think he _did_! I
didn't know that he had so much tongue in his head. His mother calls him
Ralph the Silent. Grace Geer calls him Ralph the Wily when nobody hears.
He is Ralph the Hateful when he wants to be. How he went on! Fury!
There! I promised him not to talk slang or to use 'unlady-like
exclamations.' I was as high and mighty as he was, but I wanted to cry
all the time. He said that I ought to live for something, that I am not
a child but a woman. And I promised him that I wouldn't read novels
until he says that I may! He said that I didn't know what trouble is!
_He_ has had trouble, Grace Geer says. I don't see how. Some girl I
suppose. Perhaps she flirted with him. I hope she did. But I have had
trouble. Did _he_ ever wait and wait and wait for a thing till he almost
died with waiting, and then find that he didn't get it and never
_could_? Did you ever feel so?"

The appealing eyes were looking into hers; she could not speak
instantly.

"I don't believe that you ever did. You are quiet. You have a nice home
and people to love you; your mother and father are so proud of you; your
mother is always talking to people about you as if she couldn't live
without you! And you don't have beaux and such horrid things! I
shouldn't think that you would like Dine to have a lover before you have
one."

"Dine?" said Tessa, looking perplexed.

"Why, yes, Mr. Hammerton."

"Oh, I forgot him," replied Tessa, almost laughing.

"I wish that I had _never_ seen Old Place. I never should have thought
any thing if it hadn't been for Grace Geer. Before I went to Old Place I
expected to marry Stacey. She put things into my head. She used to call
me Mrs. Ralph, and tell me how splendidly I could dress after I was
married! And she used to ask me what he said to me and explain that it
meant something. I didn't know that it meant any thing. He was so old
and so wise that I thought he could never think of me. Once she went
home with me and she told father and Aunt Jane and Dr. Lake that they
were going to lose me. He told me himself that night that he was more
interested in me than in any body."

"Did he say that?" asked Tessa, startled.

"Yes, he did."

"So am I interested in your life. I want to see what becomes of you."

"Oh, he didn't mean _that_. He meant in me. But I suppose he didn't mean
any thing, or he wouldn't have told his mother not to take me to St.
Louis. You think I like him because he's rich and handsome, but I don't.
I like him because he was so kind to me; nobody was ever so kind to me
before; I can love any one who is kind to me. He gave me his photograph
a year ago. It's elegant. I'll show it to you some time. I know he had
six taken, for I saw them and counted them; he didn't know it, though.
And I heard him tell his mother that he had _five_ taken. I never could
find out where that sixth one went to. I know that his mother had one,
and Grace Geer, and Miss Sarepta Towne, that's three! And mine was four,
and Philip Towne's was five. I asked him where the other was."

"What did he say?" asked Tessa, gravely.

"He said nothing. I know that Aunt Jane thinks my not going the queerest
thing in nature, and father looked rather nonplussed and asked me what I
had been doing. I am as ashamed as I can be."

Tessa arranged her papers thoughtfully; she was pondering Grace Geer's
name for Mr. Towne.

"Perhaps he will change his mind and come home and like me," said Sue,
brightening.

"O, Sue, Sue, don't make a disappointment for yourself! When there are
so many good and beautiful things in the world, why do you see only this
that is being withheld?"

"Because--" with a drooping head, "I want it so."

"There are good men and good women in the world, Sue; men and women
whose word is pure gold."

"Whose, I'd like to know?"

"Miss Jewett's."

"Oh, of course!"

"And Gus Hammerton's."

"Oh, he's as wise and stupid as an owl!"

"Dr. Johnson could think in Latin and I should not wonder if Gus could."

"But he's awkward and never talks nonsense, and he wears spectacles and
has a tiny bald spot on the top of his head, the place where the wool
ought to grow! The girls don't run after him."

"They are not wise enough."

"He's so old, too."

"He's younger than Mr. Towne."

"He doesn't look so. And he's poor."

"He has a good salary in the bank."

"Mr. Ralph has the pure gold, but it is not in his word. I only wish it
was. I always pray over my love affairs; they ought to come out all
right."

"How do you know what 'all right' is?"

"I know what I want."

"I'll say to you what Miss Jewett always says _Wait_."

"What for? I don't know what I'm waiting for. Do you?"

"Yes."

"What? Tell me."

"_The will of God_."

"Oh!" Sue drew nearer as if she were frightened. After a while she
spoke: "I'm so sorry for dear Mrs. Towne. She has every thing in the
world but the thing she wants most. She said one day that she would be
willing to be the poorest woman in Dunellen if she might have a
daughter. She said it one day after we had passed you; you were alone,
picking up leaves near the corner by the brook. 'A daughter like that,'
she said, and she turned to look back at you; you were standing still
with the leaves in your hand. Mr. Ralph didn't say anything, but he
looked back, too. I said, 'That's Tessa Wadsworth.' Mrs. Towne said, 'Do
you know her, Ralph?' and he said, 'I have met her several times.'"

Tessa had wiped her gold pen and slipped it into its morocco case; she
closed her writing-desk as she said cheerily: "Now about this winter,
Sue; what do you intend to do?"

"You don't know how horrid it is at home! Father always has his pockets
full of bottles and he doesn't care for the things that interest me; all
he talks about is his 'cases,' and all Aunt Jane cares for is house-work
and the murders in the newspapers; Dr. Lake is splendid, but he's so
poor and he's low-spirited when he isn't full of fun; and when his
engagement with father is ended he'll set up for himself, and it will
take him a century to afford to be married."

"Sue, look up at me and listen."

Sue looked up and listened.

"I pray you don't flirt with Dr. Lake."

Sue laughed a conscious laugh.

"Men flirt; they haven't any hearts."

"He has. You do not know the influence for evil that you may become in
his life."

Sue's eyes grew wild, she clung to Tessa with both hands. "You sha'n't
talk so to me. You sha'n't. You make me afraid. I'll try to be good. I
_will_ try."

"How will you try?"

"I won't try to make him like me. I am sure that he would if I should
try a little. I'll tell him about Stacey. Tessa, _I don't want to be an
old maid._"

Tessa's eyes and lips kept themselves grave.

"I wouldn't think about that. I'd do good and be good; I'd help Aunt
Jane, and go with your father on his long drives--"

"I'd rather go with Dr. Lake."

"Let your father see what a delightful daughter you can be. My father
and I can talk for hours about books and places and people."

"Hateful! I hate books. And I don't know about places and book-people."

"And don't wait for Dr. Lake to come in at night."

"I do. I made him a cup of coffee last night."

"Who makes coffee for your father?"

"Oh father thought that I made it for him. But Dr. Lake knew!"

"I will read history with you this winter. Dine and I intend to study
German with Gus Hammerton; you can study with us, if you will."

"Ugh!" groaned Sue, "as if that were as much fun as getting married."

"It may help along. Who knows?" laughed Tessa.

"I'm going to make Miss Gesner a visit next month. She asked me to-day.
But they are such old men? Mr. John Gesner is an old beau! Mr. Lewis is
lovely, so kind and polite. And Miss Gesner is charming when she doesn't
try to educate me. Their house is grander than Old Place and they keep
more servants. I'll forget all about Old Place before spring. Mr. John
Gesner likes girls."

"Sue."

"Well! Don't be so solemn."

"If I were to die and leave a little girl in the world as your mother
left you, I would hope that some one would watch over her, and if the
time came, through her own foolishness, or in the way of God's
discipline, for a disappointment to come to her, I would hope that this
friend would love her as I love you to-night. She would warn her, advise
her, and encourage her! Don't go to visit Miss Gesner; she is selfish to
ask you; you are bright and lively and she likes to have you to help
entertain her friends--but you will not be so good a daughter to your
father if your heart is drawn away from his home; the best home that he
can afford to give you."

"There's danger at home and danger abroad," laughed Sue. "Don't you wish
that you could put me in a glass case?"

"I don't know what to do with you."

"Oh, something will happen to me before long. I'll get married or die or
something. I'm glad I had my things ready to go with the Townes, for now
I have them ready to go to Miss Gesner's. I wish I had a mother and my
little brother hadn't died. I'd like to have a _real_ home like yours! I
wouldn't mind if it were as plain as this; but I'd rather have it like
Old Place. Won't Nan Gerard have a lovely time? Such a long journey, and
Mr. Ralph will be so attentive, and she'll be so proud to be with such a
handsome fellow! Don't you like to be proud of people that belong to
you? I am always proud enough to go out with Mr. Ralph."

"There is some one else to be proud of somewhere! Sue, can't you be
brave?"

"Somebody will have what I want," said Sue. "I can't bear to think of
that. I shall have to drive past Old Place in father's chaise with one
horse, and I hate to drive with one horse! and see somebody in _my_
place in silks and velvets and diamonds and emeralds! And _she_ will
have visitors from all over and Old Place will be full of good times and
Mr. Ralph will let her do it all and be so kind to her! And she will be
so proud and happy and handsome. Would _you_ like that? You know you
wouldn't. Do you think that I really must give him up?"

Sue did not see the distressed face above her; she felt that the fingers
that touched her hair and forehead were loving and pitiful.

"Don't talk so; don't _think_ so! Forget all about Old Place. Do you not
remember Mrs. Towne's kindness? That is a happier thing to think of than
the grounds and the house and handsome furniture."

"I wish I had told you about it before," sobbed Sue. "You would have
made it right for me; then I wouldn't have thought and thought about it
until it was _real_. And now I can't believe that it isn't true and the
house is shut up with only Mr. and Mrs. Ryerson and the boy to look
after things and Mr. Ralph gone not to come back--ever, perhaps. If Mrs.
Towne should die, perhaps he won't come back but go off and be a doctor;
for he doesn't want to be married, he said so; he told his mother so. I
don't want him to be a doctor and have bottles in all his pockets and
smell of medicine like father and Dr. Lake. He wouldn't be Mr. Ralph any
more."

"So much the better for you."

"Then you don't think that he's so grand."

She answered quietly, surprising herself with the truth that she had not
dared to confess to herself, "No. I do not think he is so grand."

"Who is?"

"Who is? George Macdonald and George Eliot and Shakespeare and St. Paul
and my father and your father," laughed Tessa.

"Hark. They are singing over the way."

"There's a child's party there to-night."

Tessa went to the window.

Loud and merry were the voices:

  "Little Sally Waters sitting in the sun,
  Weeping and crying for a man."

Sue laughed. "Oh, how that carries me back."

"That's good advice," said Tessa, as the children shouted--

  "Rise, Sally, rise, and wipe off your eyes."

"I wish that I were a little girl over there in the fun," said Sue.
"Suppose we go."

"I intended to go. Perhaps we can teach them some new games."

No one among the children was merrier than Sue; not one any more a
child.

"I think I'll stay little," said Sue, coming to Tessa, half out of
breath. "I'm never going to grow up; it's hateful being a woman, isn't
it?"

"You will never know," said Tessa laughing. "There's little Harry
Sherwood calling for Sue Greyson now."

Towards midnight, when Tessa was asleep, Sue awakened her with, "Put
your arm around me, I can't go to sleep."

Sue lay still not speaking or moving.

The clock in the sitting-room struck three.

"Tessa, Tessa," whispered a startled voice, "are you awake?"

"Yes," rousing herself, "what is it? Is any thing the matter?"

"Oh, no," wearily, "but it has struck one, and two, and three, and I'm
afraid it will strike four."

"I suppose it will unless the clock stops or time ceases to be."

"What will be when time ceases to be? What comes next?"

"Forever comes next. Don't you want it to be forever?"

"You sha'n't talk so and frighten me. I can't go to sleep. I thought
somebody was dying or dead."

"You were dreaming." Tessa put a loving arm around her. "Didn't you ever
say the multiplication table in the night?"

"No, nor any other time."

The moonlight shone in through the open window, making a golden track
across the carpet.

"The moon shines on Red Riding Hood," said Sue. "Tell me a story,
Tessa."

"Don't you like the moonlight? Some one had a lovely little room once
and she said that the moonlight came in and swept it clean of foolish
thoughts."

"What else?" in an interested voice.

"It is a long story; it is in blank verse, too, and you like rhymes."

"I've been trying to say Mother Goose and Old Mother Hubbard."

"I will tell you a story," said Tessa, as wide awake as if the sun were
shining. "I will rhyme it as I run along, and when I hesitate and can
not make good sense and a perfect rhyme, we'll go to sleep."

"Well, but you must do your best."

"I always do my best. I tell Gus and Dine stories in rhyme."

So she began with a description of a little girl who was fair and a boy
who was brave, who grew up and grew together, but cruel fate in the
shape of a step-mother separated them, and he travelled all over the
world, and she stayed at home and made tatting, until a hundred years
went by and he came to the door a worn-out traveller and found her a
withered maiden sitting alone feeding her cat. Afterward in trying to
recall this, she only remembered one couplet:

  "He was covered with snow, his hat with fur,
  He took it off and bowed to her."

Once or twice Sue gave a hysterical laugh.

The story was brought to a proper and blissful conclusion; still Sue was
sleepless.

"How far on their journey do you suppose they are now?"

"I'm not a time-table."

Sue lay too still to be asleep; when she _was_ still she was a marvel of
stillness.

Daylight and breakfast found her in high spirits, asking advice of Mrs.
Wadsworth about making a wrapper out of an old brown cashmere, and
talking to Tessa about the drive that she had promised to take with Dr.
Lake, saying the last thing as she ran down the steps, "I'll come and
study German if I can't find any thing better to do."

In all the talks afterward, Sue never alluded to this night; it was the
only part of her life that she wished Tessa to forget; she herself
forgot every thing except that she was miserable about Mr. Ralph and two
of the lines in the story that she had laughed about and called as
"stupid" as her own life:

  "The room in which she lived alone, was carpeted with matting;
  She spent the hours, she spent the days, in making yards of
    tatting."




VI.--ANOTHER OPPORTUNITY.


"Miss Jewett."

"Well, dear."

Tessa was sitting on the carpet in Miss Jewett's little parlor with her
head in Miss Jewett's lap; Miss Jewett had been smoothing the girl's
hair for several minutes, neither speaking.

"I have lost something; I don't dare try to find it for fear that God
has taken it away from me."

"How did you lose it?"

Tessa raised her head, paused, then spoke impressively: "I lost it
through _carefulness_."

"Ah! I have heard of such a thing before."

"Oh, have you? Is any one in the world like me? I thought that no one
ever made such mistakes as I do, or needed the discipline that I need!"

"My dear, all hearts are fashioned alike."

"But all lives are not alike."

"Not so different as you imagine; in my girls I live over my old
struggles, longings, mistakes; in the history of lives lived ages ago I
find the same struggles, longings, mistakes, the same need of the same
discipline."

"Oh, if you can help me; if you can only help me! You study the Bible,
isn't every thing in the Bible? Didn't Paul mean that every thing was in
it when he said that through the comfort of the Scriptures we have hope?
I can not find any thing to suit me; _you_ find something."

The gaslight was more than she could bear, she dropped her head again,
covering her face with both hands.

"Suppose you tell me all about it."

"_All about it_," repeated Tessa in a muffled tone. "I could not if I
wanted to; but I can tell you where the despair comes in."

"That is all I want to know."

"Well," raising her head again and speaking clearly and slowly. "It was
an opportunity to get something that I wanted. I thought I had it, I
thought it was laid in my hand and I had but to clasp my fingers tightly
over it to keep it forever and forever; I cared so much that I hardly
cared for any thing else. I do not think that I would lose it again
through caring too much. Do you think that it is just as hard for God to
see us too careful as too careless?"

"How were you too careful?"

"Oh, in being wise and doing things in my own way. What I want to know
is this: did He ever give any body another opportunity? If He ever did,
I will hope that He will be just as tender towards me."

"Christ came down to earth to seek the lost; a lost opportunity is one
of the things that He came to find. I think if you seek it for His sake,
and not for your own, that He will find it for you."

"For His sake, not for mine," repeated Tessa, wonderingly. "How can I
ever attain to that? I am very selfish."

"Do you remember about David, whose heart was fashioned like yours, how
careful he was once and what happened?"

Miss Jewett was speaking in her brisk, working voice; the troubled face
had become alight.

"Now we will read about one who made a sorry mistake by being so careful
that he forgot to find out God's way of doing a certain thing. He did
the thing that he wanted to do after a style of his own."

Tessa arose and went into Miss Jewett's bedroom; she knew that the Bible
she loved best, the one pencilled and interlined, was always kept on a
stand near the head of her bed. While Miss Jewett was opening it, Tessa
said hurriedly and earnestly "I knew that if it were anywhere in the
Bible--that if any one in the world had suffered like me--that you would
know where to find them. You said last Sunday that God had written
something to help us in every perplexity; but I studied and studied and
could not find any thing about second opportunities. Perhaps mine is
only a foolish little trouble; not a grand one like David's."

"Do you think that God likes to hear you say that?"

"No," confessed Tessa. "I will not even think it again."

"Have you forgotten how David attempted to bring the Ark into the city
of David, and how he failed? What a mortifying and distressing failure
it was, too. Now I'll read it to you."

One of Tessa's pleasures was to listen to her reading the Bible; she
read as if David lived across the Park, and as if the city of David were
not a mile away.

Tessa kept her head in its old position and listened with intent and
longing eyes.

"'And David consulted with the captains of thousands and hundreds and
every leader. And David said unto all the congregation of Israel, If it
seem good unto you, and that it be of the Lord our God, let us send
abroad unto our brethren everywhere, that are left in all the land of
Israel, and with them also to the priests and Levites which are in their
cities and suburbs, that they may gather themselves together unto us:
and let us bring again the Ark of our God to us: for we inquired not at
it in the days of Saul. And all the congregation said that they would do
so: for the thing was right in the eyes of all the people. So David
gathered all Israel together from Shihor of Egypt even unto the entering
of Hemath, to bring the Ark of God from Kirjath-jearim. And David went
up and all Israel to Baalah, that is to Kirjath-jearim, which belonged
to Judah, to bring up thence the Ark of God the Lord, that dwelleth
between the cherubim whose name is called on it. And they carried the
Ark of God in a new cart--' In a _new_ cart, Tessa; see how careful he
was!"

"Yes."

"'--Out of the house of Abinadab; and Uzza and Ahir drave the cart.' That
was all right and proper, wasn't it?"

"It seems so to me."

"'And David and all Israel played before God with all their might, and
with singing, and with harps, and with timbrels, and with cymbals, and
with trumpets.' They were joyful with all their might. Were you as
joyful as that?"

"Yes: fully as joyful as that."

"Now see the confusion, the shame, and the fear that followed those
harps and timbrels and trumpets. 'And when they came unto the
threshing-floor of Chidon, Uzza put forth his hand to hold the Ark; for
the oxen stumbled. And the anger of the Lord was kindled against Uzza,
and He smote him, because he put his hand to the Ark: and he died before
God. And David was displeased, because the Lord had made a breach upon
Uzza: wherefore that place is called Perez-uzza, to this day. And David
was afraid of God that day, saying, How shall I bring the Ark of God
home to me?'"

"I should think that he _would_ have been afraid," said Tessa; "and
after he had been so sure and joyful, too."

Miss Jewett read on: "'So David brought not the Ark home to himself to
the city of David, but carried it aside to the house of Obed-edom the
Gittite.'"

Tessa raised her head to speak. "I can not understand where his mistake
was; how could he have been too careful of such a treasure. Oh, how
terrible and humiliating his disappointment must have been! How ashamed
he was before all the people! I can bear any thing better than to be
humiliated."

"My poor, proud Tessa."

Tessa's tears started at the tone; these first words of sympathy
overcame her utterly; she dropped her head again and cried like a child,
like the little child Tessa who had had so many fits of crying.

The eyes above her were as wet as her own; once or twice warm lips
touched her forehead and cheek.

"Did _he_ have another opportunity?" asked Tessa, at last. "I can
understand how afraid he was. I was troubled because I gave thanks for
the thing that was taken away from me. Did he find an answer to his
'How'?"

"He was thankful, sincere, and careful."

"I should think that was enough," exclaimed Tessa, almost indignantly;
"but I know that there was sin somewhere, else the anger of the Lord
would not have been kindled. They went home without the Ark. That is
saddest of all."

"It was kept three months in the house of Obed-edom, and during those
three months humbled David studied the law and found that his cart, new
as it was, was not according to the will of God.

"'Then David said, None ought to carry the Ark of God but the Levites;
for them hath the Lord chosen to carry the Ark of God, and to minister
unto Him forever.'"

"And he _could_ have known that before," cried Tessa.

"'And David gathered all Israel together to Jerusalem, to bring up the
Ark of the Lord unto his place, which he had prepared for it, and David
assembled the children of Aaron and the Levites and said unto them, Ye
are the chief of the fathers of the Levites: sanctify yourselves, both
ye and your brethren, that ye may bring up the Ark of the Lord God of
Israel unto the place that I have prepared for it. For because ye did it
not at the first, the Lord our God made a breach upon us, for that we
sought Him not after the due order."

"Oh, how can we know every thing to do at the first?"

"How could David have known? Now he had found the right way to do the
right thing. 'So the priests and the Levites sanctified themselves to
bring up the Ark of the Lord God of Israel. And the children of the
Levites bare the Ark of God upon their shoulders with the staves thereon
as Moses commanded, according to the word of the Lord. And David spake
to the chief of the Levites to appoint their brethren to be the singers
with instruments of music, psalteries and harps and cymbals, sounding,
by lifting up the voice with joy. So David, and the elders of Israel,
and the captains over thousands, went to bring up the Ark of the
covenant of the Lord out of the house of Obed-edom with joy.'"

"He was not afraid now," said Tessa. "I think that he was all the more
joyful because he had been so humiliated and afraid. I will think about
that new cart."

"And those three months in which he was finding out the will of God.
'And it came to pass, when God helped the Levites that bare the Ark of
the covenant of the Lord that they offered seven bullocks and seven
rams.' He could not help them the first time because their way was not
according to His law; their joy, their thankfulness, their sincerity,
their carefulness availed them nothing because they kept not His law.
Uzza was a priest and should have known the law; David was king and he
should have known the law."

"But he had his second opportunity, despite his mistake."

"And so, if your desire be according to His will may you have yours; it
may be months or years, half your lifetime, but if you study His word
and ask for your second opportunity through the intercession of Christ,
I am sure that you will have it."

"Sometimes I am angry, sometimes bewildered, sometimes there is hatred
in my heart because I have been deceived and humiliated--sometimes I do
not want it back--"

"My dear," said Miss Jewett, gravely, "discipline is better than our
heart's desire."

"Is it? I don't like to think so."

When the clock in the church-tower struck midnight Tessa lay awake
wondering if she could ever choose discipline before any heart's desire.

Then she crept closer to Miss Jewett and kissed her.




VII.--THE LONG DAY.


With the apple blossoms came Tessa's birthday. She had lived twenty-five
years up-stairs and down-stairs in that white house with the lilac
shrubbery and low iron fence. Twenty-five years with her father and
mother, nineteen with her little sister, and almost as many with her old
friend, Mr. Hammerton; twenty years with Laura and Felix and Miss
Jewett, and not quite three years with the latest friend, the latest and
the one that she had most believed in, Ralph Towne.

She was counting these years and these friends as she brushed out her
long, light hair and looked into the reflection of the fair, bright,
thoughtful face that had come to another birthday.

Nothing would ever happen to her again, she was sure; nothing ever did
happen after one were as old as twenty-five. In novels, all the
wonderful events occurred in earlier life, and then--a blank or bliss or
misery, any thing that the reader might guess.

Would her life henceforth be a blank because she was so old and was
growing older?

In one of her stories, Miss Mulock had stated that the experience of
love had been given to her heroine "later than to most" and _she_ was
twenty-four!

"Not that that experience is all one's life," she mused; "but it is just
as much to me as it is to any man or woman that ever lived; as much as
to Cornelia, the matron with her jewels, or Vittoria Colonna, or Mrs.
Browning, or Hypatia,--if she ever loved any body,--or Miss Jewett,--if she
ever did,--or Sue Greyson, or Queen Victoria, or Ralph Towne's mother! I
wonder if his father were like him, so handsome and gentle. I have a
right to the pain and the blessedness of loving; perhaps I _have_ been
in love--perhaps I am now! He shut the door that he had opened and he has
gone out; I would not recall him if I could do it with one breath--

  "'No harm from him can come to me
     On ocean or on shore.'

"Well," smiling into the sympathetic eyes, "if nothing new ever happen
to me, I'll find out all the blessedness of the old."

For she must always find something to be glad of before she could be
sorrowful about any thing.

She ran down-stairs in her airiest mood to be congratulated by her
father in a humorous speech that ended with an unfinished sentence and a
quick turning of the head, to be squeezed and hugged and kissed by
Dinah, and dubbed Miss Twenty-Five, and then to have her mood changed,
all in the past made dreary, and all in the future desolate, by one of
her mother's harangues.

Mr. Wadsworth had kissed his three girls and hurried off to his
business, as he had done in all the years that Tessa could remember;
Dinah had pushed her plate away and was leaning forward with her elbows
on the table-cloth, her face alight with the mischief of teasing Tessa
about being "stricken in years." Tessa's repartees were sending Dinah
off into her little shouts of laughter when their mother's voice broke
in:

"I had been married eight years when I was your age, Tessa."

"It will be nine years on my next birthday," said Tessa.

"Yes, just nine; for I was married on my seventeenth birthday; your
father met me one day coming from school and said that he would call
that evening; I curled my hair over and put on my garnet merino and
waited for him an hour. I expected John Gesner, too. But your father
came first and we set the wedding-day that night. I was seventeen and he
was thirty-seven!"

"I congratulate you," said Tessa. "I congratulate the woman who married
my father."

"Girls are so different," sighed Mrs. Wadsworth. "Now _I_ had two offers
that year! Aunt Theresa wanted me to take John Gesner because he was two
years younger than your father; but John was only a clerk in the Iron
Works then, and so was Lewis. Lewis is just my age. How could I tell
that he would make a fortune buying nails?"

"You would have hit the nail on the head if you had known it," laughed
Dinah.

"And here's Dine, now, _she_ is like me. You are a Wadsworth through and
through! Young men like some life about a girl; how many beaux Sue
Greyson has! All you think of is education! There was Cliff Manning, you
turned the cold shoulder to him because he couldn't talk grammar. What's
grammar? Grammar won't make the pot boil."

"Enough of them would," suggested Dinah.

"Mr. Towne came and came till he was tired, I suppose. I hope you didn't
refuse him."

"No, he refused me."

Her tone was so gravely in earnest that her mother was staggered. Dinah
shouted.

Mrs. Wadsworth went on in a voice that was gathering indignation: "You
may laugh now; you will not always laugh. 'He that will not when he may,
when he will he shall have nay.' Mrs. Sherwood told me yesterday that
she hoped to have Nan Gerard back here for good, and Mary looked as if
it were all settled. Mr. Towne did not do much _last_ winter, Mary said,
beside run around with Naughty Nan. I'm hearing all the time of somebody
being married or engaged, and you are doing nothing but shilly-shally
over some book or trotting around after poor folks with Miss Jewett."

"She will find a prince in a hovel some day," said Dinah. "He will be
struck with her attitude as she is choking some bed-ridden woman with
beef-tea and fall down on his knees and propose on the spot. 'Feed me,
seraph,' he will cry."

"He wouldn't talk grammar, or he couldn't spell or read Greek, and she
will turn away," laughed Mrs. Wadsworth. "Tessa, you are none of my
bringing up."

"That is true," replied Tessa, the sorrowfulness of the tone softening
its curtness.

"You always _did_ care for something in a book more than for what I
said! You never do any thing to please people; and yet, somehow,
somebody always _is_ running after you. I wish that you _could_ go out
into the world and get a little character; you are no more capable of
self-denial and heroism than an infant baby; for getting along in the
world and making a good match, I would rather have Sue Greyson's skin--"

"Her father understands anatomy, perhaps you can get it, mother."

"_She_ knows how to look out for number one. Her children will be
settled in life before Tessa is engaged. You needn't laugh, Dine, it's
her birthday, and I'm only doing a mother's duty to her."

Tessa's eyes laughed although her lips were still. Her sense of humor
helped her to bear many things in her life.

"You have never had a trial in your life, Tessa, and here you are old
enough to be a wife and mother!"

"If she lived in China she could be a grandmother," said Dinah.

"I have always kept trouble from you; that is why, at your mature age,
you have so little character. In an emergency you would have no more
responsibility than Nellie Bird. If you had studied arithmetic instead
of always writing poetry and compositions, you might have been teaching
now and have been independent."

"Father isn't tired of taking care of her," said Dinah, spiritedly.
"It's mean for you to say that."

"Why don't you write a novel and make some money?"

"I don't know how."

"Can't you learn?"

"I study all the time."

"Why don't you write flowery language?"

"I don't know how."

"It is Gus that has spoiled you; he has nipped your genius in the bud.
What does he know, a clerk in a bank? I know that he tells you to leave
out the long words; and it is the long words that take. I shouldn't have
had my dreadful cough winter after winter if I hadn't worked hard to
spare your time that winter you wrote those three little books for the
Sunday School Union; I lay all my sickness and pain to that winter."

Mrs Wadsworth had brought this charge against Tessa several times
before, but she had never shivered over it as she did this birthday
morning.

"And what did you get for them? Only a hundred dollars for the three.
Your father made a great fuss over them, and he really cried (his tears
come very easy) over that piece you called 'Making Mistakes.' I couldn't
see any thing to cry over; I thought you made out that making mistakes
was a very fine thing."

"Four people from away off have written to thank her, any way," exulted
Dinah.

"People like your father I suppose."

Dinah sprang up and began to rattle the cups and saucers; she could not
bear the look in Tessa's eyes another second.

"Dinah, I can't talk if you make so much noise. You are very rude."

"Oh, I forgot to tell you," cried Dinah, standing still with two cups in
her hands. "It's great fun! Nan Gerard refused Mr. John Gesner while she
was here."

"I don't believe it," exclaimed Mrs Wadsworth. "Those brothers are worth
nearly a million."

"Naughty Nan didn't care."

"She'll jump out of the frying-pan into the fire, then; for the Townes,
mother and son, are not worth a quarter of it."

"What does she care? Mr. Lewis Gesner is a gentleman, and he knows
something."

"He said once that I was only a little doll," said Mrs. Wadsworth. "I
never liked him afterward."

"I like him," said Dinah; "he doesn't flirt with the girls; he always
talks to the old ladies."

"What are you going to do to-day, Tessa?" inquired Mrs. Wadsworth,
ignoring Dinah's remark.

"Oh, I don't know," she answered, "and don't care" was the unspoken
addition.

There was one thing she was sure to do. On her way to the ten o'clock
mail she would take a moment with Miss Jewett for a word, a look; for
something to set her heart to beating to a cheerier tune. Ten minutes
before mail time she found Miss Jewett as busy as a bee.

"Oh, Tessa," glancing up from her desk, "I knew you would come. I had a
good crying spell on my twenty-fifth birthday and I've looked through
clear eyes ever since. I wish for you that your second quarter may be as
full of hard work as mine."

Tessa felt as if the sun were shining warm again. At the office she
received her birthday present; the one thing that she most wished for;
if ever birthday face were in a glow and birthday heart set to dancing,
hers were when her fingers held the check for one hundred and
sixty-eight dollars and fifty cents, and when her eyes ran through the
brief, friendly letter, with its two lines of praise.

"I am taken with your book. It gives me a humbling-down feeling. I
hardly know why."

"Oh, it's too good! it's too good," she cried, with her head close to
Miss Jewett's at the desk over the large day-book. "I was feeling as if
nobody cared, and now he wants another book. As good as this, he says."

Tessa lived in fairy-land for the next two hours. No, she lived in
Dunellen on a happy birthday.

"Well! well! well!" exclaimed her father, taking off his spectacles to
wipe his eyes, "this is what I call fine. So this is what you grew pale
over last winter," he added, looking down into a face as rosy and wide
awake as a child's waking out of sleep.

"What shall you do with so much money?"

"Spend it, of course. I have spent it already a hundred times."

"You must return receipt and reply to the letter."

"I had forgotten that."

"You will find every thing on my desk. Write your name on the back of
the check and I will give you the money."

"I don't want to do that. I want to take it into the bank and surprise
Gus with it. His face will be worth another check."

She wrote her name upon the check, her father standing beside her.
Theresa L. Wadsworth. He was very proud of this name among his three
girls.

"And you expect to do this thing again?"

"I do. Many times. All I want is a nook and a lead pencil."

"Daughter, I would like something else better."

"I wouldn't. Nothing else. I shall not change my mind even for a knight
in helmet and helmet feather."

Mr. Hammerton's face _was_ worth another check; he looked down at her
from his high stool in a grave, paternal fashion. She remained
decorously silent.

"How women _do_ like to spend money," he said. "At six o'clock you will
not have a penny left."

"How can I? Father is to have a farm in Mayfield, mother is to go to
Europe, and Dine is to have diamond ear-rings!"

"And I?"

"I will buy you a month to go fishing! And myself brains enough to write
a better book. Isn't it comical for me to get more for my book than
Milton got for Paradise Lost?"

Tessa laughed as she counted her money at tea-time; there was a twenty
dollar bill and seventy-five cents! But in her mother's chamber stood a
suite of black-walnut with marble tops, in one of Dine's drawers,
materials for a black and white striped silk, on the sitting-room table
a copy of Shakespeare in three Turkey morocco volumes, for her father;
she had also sent a gold thimble to Sue Greyson, several volumes of
Ruskin to Mr. Hammerton, Barnes on _Job_ to Miss Jewett, and had
purchased a ream of foolscap, a pint of ink, a pair of gloves, and _The
Scarlet Letter_ for herself!

"Is there any thing left in the world that you want?" her father asked.

"Yes, but twenty dollars will not buy it," she replied, thinking of Dr.
Lake's anxious face as she had seen it that day.

At night, alone in the darkness, there were a few tears that no one
would ever know about. Her joy in her accepted work was nothing to Ralph
Towne. He did not know about her book and if he knew--would he care?




VIII.--A NOTE OUT OF TUNE.


The blossom storm came and blew away the apple blossoms, the heavy
fragrance of the lilacs died, and the shrubbery became again only a mass
of green leaves and ugly, crooked stems; but amid this, something
happened to Tessa; something that was worth as much to her as any
happenings that came before it; something that had its beginning when
she was a little school-girl running along the planks and teasing Felix
Harrison. How much certain jarring words spoken that day and how much a
certain bit of news influenced this happening, she, in her rigid
self-analysis, could not determine!

She arose from the breakfast table at the same instant with her father,
saying: "Father, I will walk to the corner with you."

"We were two souls with one thought," he replied. "I intended to ask you
for a few minutes."

They crossed the street to the planks. She slipped her arm through his,
and as he took the fingers on his arm with a warm grasp, she said; "I
never want any lover but you, my dear old father."

"Nonsense, child! Only girls who have had a heart-break say such things
to their old fathers, and your heart is as good as new, I am sure.
Tessa, I want to see you married before I die."

"May you live till you see me married," she answered merrily. "What an
old mummy you will be!"

"I have been thinking of something that I want to say to you. I am an
old man and I am not young for my age--"

"Now, father."

"I may live a hundred years, of course, and grow heartier each year, and
like the 'frisky old girl,' die at the age of one hundred and ten, and
'die by a fall from a cherry-tree then,' but, still there's a chance
that I may not. And now, Daughter Tessa"--his voice became as grave as
her eyes, "I want you to promise me that you will always take care of
your poor little mother; poor little mother! You are never sharp to her
like saucy Dine, and she rests in you like an acorn in an acorn cup,
although she would be the last to confess it."

"I promise to do my best," Tessa said very earnestly.

"But that is only a part of it. Promise me that if she wishes to marry
again, and her choice be one that _you_ approve--"

"Approve!"

"Approve," he repeated, "that you will not hinder but rather further it,
and keep Dine from making her unhappy about it."

"I will not promise. You shall not die," she cried passionately. "How
can you talk so and break my heart?"

"Dr. Watts says that we all begin to die as soon as we are born, so I
have had to do it pretty thoroughly; but he was a theologian and not a
medical man. Have you promised?"

"Yes, sir," speaking very quietly, "I have promised."

With her hand upon his arm, they kept even step for ten silent minutes.

"Are you writing again?"

"Yes, sir."

"Then you must walk every day."

"Oh, I do, rain or shine. I am going down the road this afternoon to
look at the wheat fields and the oat fields and to see the boys and
girls dropping corn!"

"And to wish that you were a little girl dropping corn?"

"No, indeed," she said earnestly and solemnly. "I like my own life
better than any life I ever knew in a book or out of a book."

"When I count up my mercies I'll remember that."

She was dwelling upon those words of her father late that afternoon as
she sauntered homeward with her hands full of wild flowers and grasses.

"Mystic, will you ride with me?"

A feeling of warmth and of tenderness ever crept into her heart at the
sound of this voice.

She loved Dr. Lake.

"No, sir, thank you; I am out for a walk and when I walk I never ride."

"But I want to talk to you--to tell you something." She stepped nearer
and stood at the carriage wheel; his voice was sharp and his white
temples hollow. "Sue has refused me," he began with a laugh. "I proposed
last night, and what do you think she said? 'Why, Dr. Lake, you are
poor, and you smell of medicine.'"

"They are both true," she said, not conscious of what reply she was
making.

"Yes," he answered bitterly, "they are both true and will _be_ true
until the end of time. Don't you think that you could reason with her
and change her mind; you have influence." He laid his gloved hand on the
hand that rested on the wheel. "It will kill me, Mystic, if she doesn't
marry me."

So weak, so pitiful! She could have cried. And all for love of flighty
Sue Greyson!

"I was sure that she would accept me. She has done every thing _but_
accept me. I did not know that a woman would permit a man to take her
day after day into his arms and kiss her unless she intended to marry
him. Would _you_ permit that?" he asked.

"You know that I would not," she answered proudly; "but Sue doesn't know
any better; all she cares for is the 'fun' of the moment."

"I have been hoping so long; since Towne went away; I can't bear this."

"There is as much strength for you as for any of us," she said gently.

"But I am too weak to hold it."

And he looked too weak to hold it. She could not lift her full eyes. "I
am so sorry," was all she could speak.

"There isn't any thing worth living for anyway; I, for one, am not
thankful for my 'creation.' I wish I was dead and buried and out of
sight forever. Sue Greyson has another offer to whisper to all Dunellen.
I would not stay here, I would go back to that wretched hospital, but my
engagement with her father extends through another year. Well, you won't
ride home with me?"

"Not to-day, I want to be out in this air."

"And you don't want to be shut in here with my growling. I don't blame
you; I'd run away from myself if I could. I'll kill half Dunellen and
all Mayfield with overdoses before another night, and then take a big
dose myself. Say, Mystic, you are posted in these things, where would be
the harm?"

"Take it and see."

"Not yet awhile. I am not sure of many things, but I _am_ sure that a
man's life in this world will stare in his face in the next. And my life
has not been fit even for your eyes."

Homely, shabby, old, worn, excited, with a sharp ring in his voice and a
stoop in his shoulders. What was there in him to touch Sue Greyson?
Where was the first point of sympathy?

Tessa could have taken him into her arms and cared for him as she would
have cared for a child.

"I have just seen an old man die; a good old man; he was over ninety; he
prayed to the last; that is his lips moved and his old wife laid his
hands together; he liked to clasp his hands when he prayed, she said.
She put her ear down close to his mouth, but she could not distinguish
the words. I was wishing that I could go in his place, and that he could
take up my life and live it through for me. He would do better with it
than I shall."

"Is not that rather selfish?"

"Life is such a sham. I don't believe in the transmigration of souls; I
don't want to come back and pull through another miserable existence."

"I want you to stay this soul in this body; I do not want to lose you."

"If every woman in the world were like you--"

"And every man were as tired and hungry as you--"

"What would he do?"

"He would hurry home to a good, hot dinner."

"I have not eaten or drank since yesterday morning. Sue has a hot dinner
waiting for me. She will sit with me while I eat, and tell me, perhaps,
that she has had a letter from that fellow in Philadelphia, or that that
well-preserved specimen of manhood, old John Gesner, has asked her to
drive with him. Some flirtation of hers is sauce to every dish."

"Poor Sue," sighed Tessa.

"She might be happy if she would; I would take care of her."

"Good-by," squeezing his fingers through his glove. "Go home and eat."

"Give me a good word before I go."

"Wait."

"Is that the best word you know?"

"It is good enough."

"Well, good day, Mystic," he said, lifting his hat.

She went back to the grassy wayside, thinking. What right had Sue
Greyson's light fingers to meddle with a life like Dr. Lake's? They had
not one taste in common. How could he find her attractive? She disliked
every thing in which he was interested; it was true that she could sing,
sing like one of the wild birds down in the woods, and he loved music.

She paused and stood leaning against the rails of a fence, and looked
across the green acres of winter wheat; one day in September she had
stood there watching the men as they were drilling the wheat; afterward
she had seen the tender, green blades springing up in straight rows, and
once she had seen the whole field green beneath a light snow. The wind
moved her veil slightly, both hands were drooping as her elbows leaned
upon the upper rail, her cheeks were tinged with the excitement of Dr.
Lake's words, and her eyes suffused with a mist that was too sorrowful
to drop with tears. A quick step on the grass at her side did not
startle her; she did not stir until a voice propounded gravely: "If a
man should be born with two heads, on which forehead must he wear the
phylactery?"

She turned with a laugh. "Gus, I would know that was you if I heard the
voice and the question in the Great Desert."

"Can't you decide?"

"My thoughts were not nonsense."

"Of course not, you were labelling and pigeon holing all that you have
thought of since sunrise! I've been sitting on a stone waiting for your
conference to end. Are you in the habit of meeting strange men and
conversing with them."

"Yes, I came out to meet you."

"I only wish you did! I wish that you would make a stranger of me and be
polite to me. It is nothing new for you to be wandering on a Saturday
afternoon, and nothing new for you to find me."

"I didn't find you."

"I intended to give you the honor of the discovery; now we will share
the glory. Shall we go on?"

"I have been to my roots; do you know my roots? Do you know the corner
above Old Place and the tiny stream?"

"I know every corner, and every root, and every stream. Shall I carry
your flowers for you? I never can see why I should relieve a maiden of a
burden when her avoirdupois equals mine. You will not give them to me? I
have something to read to you--something of my own composing--I composed
it in one brilliant wakeful moment--you will appreciate it."

"I do not believe it."

"Wait until you hear it. Lady Blue, are you going to be literary and
never be married! Woe to the day when I taught you all you know."

They went on, slowly, for she liked to talk to Mr. Hammerton. "Father
said something like that this morning and it troubled me; why may I not
do as I like best? Why should he care to see me married before he dies?"

"Why should he not?"

"Nonsense. I can take good care of myself; beside," with a mischievous
glance into his serious eyes, "I really don't know whom to marry."

"Oh, you could easily find some one. If all else fail, come to me, and
if I am not too busy I will take you into consideration."

"Thanks, good friend! But you will always be too busy. What have you to
read to me?"

"Something that you will appreciate. I wrote it for you. Stay, sit down,
while I read it."

"I don't want to. You can read and walk. The mother of Mrs. Hemans could
read aloud while walking up hill."

Mr. Hammerton's voice was not pleasant to a stranger, but Tessa liked it
because it belonged to him; it was a part of him like his big nose, his
spectacles, and the tiny bald spot over which, every day, he carefully
brushed his hair. The color in his cheeks was as pretty as a girl's, and
so was the delicate whiteness of his forehead; the bushy mustache,
however, made amends for the complexion that he sometimes regretted;
Tessa had once told him that his big nose, his mustache, and his
awkwardness were all that kept him from being as pretty as his sister.

"I am not the mother of Mrs. Hemans." He took a sheet of paper from his
pocket-book, and showed her the poem written in his peculiarly plain,
upright hand.

"Excuse my singing and I will read. You must not think of any thing
else."

"I will not."

"You are walking too fast."

She obediently took slower steps.

He cleared his throat and, holding the paper near his eyes, began to
read. A shadow gathered in his listener's eyes at the first four lines.

  "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.

  "She wrung her claws, poor thing,
    But was far too proud to speak;
  She tucked her head under her wing,
    And pretended to be asleep.

  "A lark arm in arm with a thrush,
    Came sauntering up to the place;
  The nightingale felt herself blush,
    Though feathers hid her face.

  "She knew they had heard her song,
    She felt them snicker and sneer.
  She thought this life was too long,
    And wished she could skip a year.

  "'O, nightingale!' cooed a dove,
    O, nightingale, what's the use;
  You bird of beauty and love,
    Why behave like a goose?

  "'Don't skulk away from our sight,
    Like a common, contemptible fowl;
  You bird of joy and delight,
    Why behave like an owl?

  "'Only think of all you have done;
    Only think of all you can do;
  A false note is really fun
    From such a bird as you.

  "'Lift up your proud little crest:
    Open your musical beak;
  Other birds have to do their best,
    You need only to speak.'

  "The nightingale shyly took
    Her head from under her wing,
  And giving the dove a look,
    Straightway began to sing.

  "There was never a bird could pass;
    The night was divinely calm;
  And the people stood on the grass,
    To hear that wonderful psalm!

  "The nightingale did not care,
    She only sang to the skies;
  Her song ascended there,
    And there she fixed her eyes.

  "The people that stood below
    She knew but little about;
  And this story's a moral, I know,
    If you'll try to find it out."

"How did you know that I need that?" she asked, taking it from his hand.
"Who wrote it?"

"I did."

"Don't you know?"

"No. I don't know. I copied it for you."

"Thank you. I thank you very much. You could not have brought me any
thing better."

"I brought you a piece of news, too."

"As good as the poem?"

"Nan Gerard thinks so. She is to be married and to live at Old Place;
our castle in the air."

"Old Place isn't my castle in the air. Who told you?"

"A woman's question. I never told a woman a secret yet that she did not
reply, 'Who told you?' Mary Sherwood told me, of course. Do you
congratulate Naughty Nan?"

"Must I?"

"It's queer that I do not know that man. I have missed an introduction a
thousand times. Do you congratulate her?"

"I am supposed to congratulate _him_. He is very lovable."

"I thought that only women were that."

"That's an admission," laughed Tessa, "you cross old bachelor."

"You learned that from Dine."

"No, I learned it from you."

Tessa talked rapidly and lightly, perhaps, because she did not feel like
talking at all.

Would he marry Nan Gerard? Why could she not be glad for Nan Gerard? Why
must she be just a little sorry for herself? Why must it make a
difference to her? Why must the weight of the flowers be too heavy for
her hand, and why must she give them that toss over a fence across a
field?

"Your pretty flowers," expostulated Mr. Hammerton.

"I do not care for them; they were withering."

"I have a thought; I wonder why it should come to me; I am wondering if
you and I walk together here a year from to-day what we shall be talking
about. My prophetic soul reveals to me that a year makes a difference
sometimes."

"I remember a year ago to-day," she answered. "A year _has_ made a
difference."

"Not to you or me?"

"To Nan Gerard?" she answered seriously.

"But that does not affect us."

Did it not? A year ago to-day Ralph Towne had brought her some English
violets, and she had pressed them and thrown a thought about him and
about them into a poem. To-day had he taken violets to Nan Gerard?

"Lady Blue; you are absent-minded."

"Am I? I was only labelling and pigeon-holing a thought; it is to be
laid away to moulder with the dust of ages."

"A thought that can not be spoken?"

"A thought that it was folly to think, and that would be worse than
folly to speak."

If he replied she did not hear; they sauntered on, she keeping the path
and he walking on the grass.

A carriage passed, driving slowly. The two ladies within watched the
pedestrians,--a fair-faced girl with thoughtful eyes, and a tall man with
an intellectual face,--as if they were a part of the landscape of the
spring.

  "'In the spring a young man's fancy--'"

laughingly quoted one of them.

"Will she accept or refuse him?" asked the other.

"If she do either it will be once and forever," was the reply seriously
given. "Did you notice her mouth? She has been very much troubled, but
she can be made very glad."

After the carriage had passed, Mr. Hammerton spoke, "I am glad we amused
those people; they failed to decide whether or not we are lovers."

"They have very little penetration, then," said Tessa. "I am too languid
and you are too unconscious."

"There is nothing further to be said; you do not know what you have
nipped in the bud."

"I suppose we never know that."

Dinah met them at the gate, her wind-blown curls and laughing eyes in
striking contrast to the older face that had lost all its color. Tessa
did not see that Mr. Hammerton's eyes were studying the change in her
face; she had no more care of the changes in her face with him than with
Dinah.

"I'll be in about eight," he said to Dinah, as Tessa brushed past him to
enter the gate.

Another thing that influenced impressible Tessa this day, was a talk at
the tea-table. They were sitting around the tea-table cozily, the four
people who, in her mother's thought, constituted all Tessa's world. Mr.
Wadsworth in an easy position in his arm-chair was listening to his
three girls and deciding that his little wife was really the handsomest
and sprightliest woman that he had ever seen, that happy little Dine was
as bewitching as she could well be, and that Tessa, the light of his
eyes, was like no one else in all the world. Not that any stranger
sitting in his arm-chair would have looked through his eyes, but he was
an old man, disappointed in his life, and his three girls were all of
earth and a part of heaven to him. They were all talking and he was
satisfied to listen. "I believe that some girls are born without a
mother's heart," Mrs. Wadsworth said in reply to a story of Dine's about
a young mother in Dunellen who had slapped her baby, saying that she
hated it and was nothing but a slave to it! "Now, here's Tessa. _She_
has no motherliness. Only this morning Freddie Stone fell down near the
gate and hurt his head; his screams were terrifying, but she went on
working and let him scream. As I said it is all as girls are born."

"Yes," answered Tessa, in the deliberate way in which she had schooled
herself to reply to her mother, "I know that your last assertion is
true. There was a lady in school, a teacher of mathematics, she
acknowledged that she did not love her own little girls as other mothers
seemed to do. She stated it as she would have stated any fact in
geometry; perhaps she thought that she was no more responsible for one
than for the other. The mere fact of motherhood does not bring mother
love within; any mother that does not give to her child a true idea of
the mother-heart of God fails utterly in being a mother. She may be a
nurse, a paid nurse, or a nurse upon compulsion; any hired nurse can
wash a child's face, can tie its sash and make pretty things for it to
wear, and _any_ nurse, who was never mother to a child, can teach it
what God means when He says, 'as a mother comforteth.' Miss Jewett could
not be happier in her Bible class girls if they were all her own
children; she says so herself. Mary Sherwood said to her one day, 'If my
mother were like you, how different I should have been!'"

"Such a case is an exception," returned Mrs. Wadsworth excitedly.

"Nineteen out of her twenty-three girls tell her their troubles when
they would not tell their own mothers," said Dinah. "She has
twenty-three secret drawers to keep their secrets in."

"She has time to listen to fol-de-rol. She advises them all to marry for
some silly notion and let a good home slip, I've no doubt."

"I expect that twenty-one of her girls have refused John Gesner,"
laughed Mr. Wadsworth. "He will have to bribe Miss Jewett to let them
alone."

"Only twenty, father," said Dine. "Tessa and Sue and I are waiting to do
it."

"I will make this house too uncomfortable for the one of you that does
refuse him."

"Mother! mother!" remonstrated Mr. Wadsworth gently.

"He'll never have the honor," said Dine. "Mr. Lewis Gesner is the
gentleman; I have always admired him. Haven't you, Tessa?"

"Yes; I like to shake hands with him; he has a trustworthy face."

"So much for the mothers of Dunellen, Tessa; how about the fathers?
Would the girls like to have Miss Jewett for a father, too?"

"Oh, the fathers have the bread-winning to do. If the mothers do not
understand, we can not expect the fathers to understand. There was a
girl at school who had had a hard home experience; she told me that she
never repeated the second word of the Lord's prayer; that she said
instead: Our Lord, who art in heaven?"

"Oh, deary me! How dreadful!" cried Dinah, moving nearer the arm-chair
and dropping her head on her father's shoulder. "Didn't she _ever_ learn
to say it?"

"Not while we were at school."

"Tessa, you can talk," said her mother.

"Yes," said Tessa, humbly, "I can talk."

"She was a very wicked girl," continued Mrs. Wadsworth. "I don't see how
she dared; I should think that she would have been afraid of dying in
her sleep as a judgment sent upon her."

"Perhaps she did not repeat the prayer as a charm," answered Tessa, in
her clearest tones.

Dinah lifted her head to laugh.

"You upheld her, no doubt," declared Mrs. Wadsworth.

"I sympathized with her as they who never had a pain can feel for the
sick," said Tessa, smiling into her father's eyes.

"How did you talk to her?" asked Dine.

"What is talk? I only told her to wait and she would know."

"It's easy to talk," said Mrs. Wadsworth uncomfortably. "You can talk an
hour about sympathy, but you didn't run out to Freddie Stone."

"Why didn't you?" inquired her father seriously.

Tessa laughed, while Dine answered.

"Mother was there talking as fast as she could talk, Bridget was there
with a basin of water and a sponge, Mrs. Bird had run over, a carriage
with two ladies, a coachman and a footman had stopped to look on, and
oh, I was there too. He was somewhat bloody."

"You are excused, daughter. Save your energies for a time of greater
need."

"Energies! Need!" tartly exclaimed Mrs. Wadsworth. "If she begins to be
literary, she will care for nothing else."

"I see no evidence of a lessening interest yet," replied her father.

"Oh, I might know that you would encourage her. She might as well have
the small-pox as far as her prospects go! A needle is a woman's weapon."

"You forget her tongue, mother," suggested Dine. "Oh, Tessa, what is
that about a needle; Mrs. Browning says it."

Tessa repeated:

  "'A woman takes a housewife from her breast,
  And plucks the delicatest needle out
  As 'twere a rose, and pricks you carefully
  'Neath nails, 'neath eyelids, in your nostrils,--say,
  A beast would roar so tortured--but a man,
  A human creature, must not, shall not flinch,
  No, not for shame.'"

"Some woman wrote that when she'd have done better to be sewing for her
husband, I'll warrant," commented Mrs. Wadsworth. Mr. Wadsworth looked
grave.

"Oh she had a literary husband," replied Tessa, mischievously. "A word
that rhymed with supper would do instead of bread and butter; and he
cared more for one of her poems than he did for his buttons."

"Literary men don't grow on every bush; and they don't take to literary
women, either," said her mother.

"Mother, you forget the Howitts, William and Mary; what good, good times
they have taking long walks and writing; like you and Gus, Tessa, and
Mr. and Mrs. Browning--"

"You don't find such people in Dunellen; _we_ live in Dunellen. Gus will
choose a woman that doesn't care for books, and so will Mr. Towne, mark
my words! And so will Felix Harrison, even if he is killing himself with
study."

"He is improving greatly," said Mr. Wadsworth, pulling one of Dine's
long curls straight. "He is going away Monday to finish his studies."

"I honor him," said Tessa, flushing slightly.

"Don't," said Dine, "he sha'n't have you, Tessa. Don't honor him."

"That's all you and your father think of--keeping Tessa. She needs the
wear and tear of married life to give her character."

"It's queer about that," rejoined Tessa in a perplexed tone, playing
with her napkin ring. "If such discipline _be_ the best, why is any
woman permitted to be without it? Why does not the fitting husband
appear as soon as the girl begins to wish for him? In the East, where it
is shameful for a girl not to be married at eleven, I have yet to learn
that the wives are noted for strength or beauty of character."

"You may talk," said her mother, heatedly, "but two years hence _you_
will dance in a brass kettle."

"I hope that I shall work in it," answered Tessa, coloring painfully,
however. Whether her lips were touched with a slight contempt, or
tremulous because she was very, very much hurt, Dinah could not decide;
she was silent because she could not think of any thing sharp enough to
reply; she never liked to be _too_ saucy.

Mr. Wadsworth spoke in his genial voice: "It's a beautiful thing,
daughters, to help a good man live a good life."

Dinah thought: "I would love to do such a beautiful thing." Tessa was
saying to herself, "Oh, what should I do if my father were to die!"

Mr. Wadsworth pushed back his chair, went around to his wife and kissed
her. Tessa loved him for it.

"You have helped a good man, a good old man, haven't you, fairy?" he
said, smoothing the hair that was as pretty as Dinah's.

"Yes," answered his wife, and Tessa shivered from head to foot. "People
all said that you were a different man after you were married."

"I'm going over to Norah's," cried Dinah. "I told her that I would come
to write our French together. And, oh, father! I forgot to tell you, Gus
will be in about eight."

"I don't know that I care for chess; I can not concentrate my attention
as I could a year ago."

"Why do you run off if he is coming?" asked Mrs. Wadsworth.

"He comes too often to be attended to," Dine answered. "Won't you be
around, Tessa?"

"Perhaps."

Tessa had resolved to give the evening to writing letters, and was
passing through the dining-room with a china candlestick in her hand,
when her father, reading Shakespeare at the round table, on which stood
a shaded lamp, detained her by catching at her dress.

"Set your light down, daughter, and stay a moment."

With her hand upon his shoulder, she looked down over the page he was
reading:

  "'Heaven doth with us as we with torches do;
     Not light them for themselves--'"

she read aloud.

"I made my will to-day," he said quietly; "that is, I changed it. Lewis
Gesner and Gus Hammerton, my tried friends, were in the office at the
time. If you ever need a friend, daughter, any thing done for you that
Gus can not do--I count on him as the friend of my girls for life--go to
Lewis Gesner."

"I don't want a friend; I have you."

"If I should tell your mother about the will she would go into
hysterics, and Dine would be sure that I am going to die; I have divided
my little all equally among my three. That is, all but this house and
garden, which I have given to my elder daughter, Theresa Louise. It is
to be hers solely, without any gainsaying. Your mother will fume when
the fact is made known to her, but I give it to you that my three girls
may always have a roof, humble though it be, over their heads. The old
man did not know how to make money, but he left them enough to be
comfortable all their lives there was never any need that his wife
should worry and work, or that his daughter should marry for a home.
Very good record for the old man; eh, daughter?"

She laid her cheek against the bald forehead and put both arms around
his neck.

"And, Tessa, child, your mother is half right about you; don't have any
notions about marriage; promise me that you will marry--for you will,
some day--but for the one best reason."

"What is that?" she asked roguishly. "How am I to know?"

"What do you think?"

"Because somebody needs me and I can do him good."

"A Hottentot might urge that; you will find the reason in time. Don't
make an idol; that is your temperament."

"I know it."

"And above all things don't sacrifice yourself; few men appreciate being
done good to! I know men, they are terribly human. Gus Hammerton is a
fine fellow."

"_He_ is terribly human," she answered with a little laugh.

"Am I harsh towards your mother ever, do you think?" he asked in a
changed tone.

"Why, _no_," she exclaimed in surprise.

"I used to be. I tried to mould her. Don't _you_ ever try to mould any
body; now run away to your work or to your book! Don't sigh over me, I
am 'well and hearty.' How short my life seems when I look back. Such
dreams as I had. It's all right, though."

She could not run away, for the door-bell, in answer to a most decided
pull, detained her; she opened it, expecting to see Mr. Hammerton, but
to her surprise, and but slightly to her pleasure, Felix Harrison stood
there in broad-shouldered health.

"Good evening," she said with some bewilderment.

"Do I startle you?" he asked in the old gracious, winning manner. "May I
come in?"

"I am very glad to see you. Will you walk into my parlor, Mr. Fly?"

The one tall candle in the china candlestick was the only light in the
room. She set it upon the table, saying, "Excuse me, and I will bring a
light, that we may the better look at each other. The light of other
days is hardly sufficient."

"It is enough for me," he said, pushing the ottoman towards one of the
low arm-chairs. "Sit down and I will take the ottoman. The parrot
recognizes me."

Her hand moved nervously on the arm of her chair; the hand was larger
now than when it had spilled ink on his copy-book, larger even than when
it had written her first, shy, proud, indignant refusal.

"You are not the tempest you used to be," he said smiling after a survey
of her face.

"_Wasn't_ I a tempest? I have outgrown my little breezes. In time I may
become as gentle as a zephyr."

"You always were gentle enough."

"Not to you."

"Not to me when I tormented you."

"Probably I should not be gentle if I were tormented now."

She had never decided to which of the five thousand shades of green
Felix Harrison's eyes belonged; they were certainly green; one of the
English poets had green eyes, she wondered if they were like Felix
Harrison's. To-night they glittered as if they were no color at all.
This face beside her was a spiritualized face; a strong mouth as sweet
as a woman's, a round benevolent chin; a low, square forehead; hair as
light as her own; his side face as he turned at least five years younger
than the full face; she had often laughed at his queer fashion of
growing old and growing young. At times, in the years when they were
more together than of late, he had changed so greatly that, after not
having seen him for several days she had passed him in the street
without recognition; these times had been in those indignant times after
she had refused him; that they were more than indignant times to him she
was made painfully aware by these changes in his rugged face.

"I have been thinking over those foolish times," she said, breaking the
silence. "I am glad that you came in to-night; I am in a mood for
confessing my wrong-doings; I have said many quick words; you know you
always had the talent for irritating me."

"Yes, I always worried you."

"You did not intend to," she said hastily, watching the movement of his
lips; "we did not understand, that is all. It takes longer than a summer
and a winter for heart to answer to heart."

"We have known each other many summers and many winters."

"And now we are old, sensible, hard-working people; having given up all
nonsense we are discovering the sense there is in sense."

He turned his face with a listening look in his eyes.

"Did not some one come in? Shall we be disturbed?"

"Not unless we wish to be. It is only Mr. Hammerton, he is a great
friend of father's. He renews his youth in him."

"Is he not _your_ friend?"

How well she remembered his suspicious, exacting questions!

"He is my best friend," she said proudly.

"I wish I was in heaven," he said, his voice grown weak. "Every thing
goes wrong with me; every thing has gone wrong all my life. Father is in
a rage because I will not stay home; he offered me to-day the deed for
two hundred acres as a bribe. I should be stronger to-day but that he
worked my life out when I was a growing boy."

"A country life is best for you. Your old homestead is the loveliest
place around, with its deep eaves and dormer-windows and vines. That
wide hall is one of my pleasant recollections, and the porch that looks
into the garden, the blue hills away off, and the cool woods, the
thrushes and the robins and the whip-poor-will at twilight; that
solitary note sets me to crying, or it used to when I dreamed dreams and
told them to Laura! I hope that Laura will love the place too well to
leave it; it is my ideal of a home; much more than splendid Old Place
is."

"I will stay if you will come and live in it with me," he said quietly.

"I like my own home better," she answered as quietly. "Are you stronger
than you were?"

"Much stronger. I have not had one of those attacks since March. Lake
warns me; but I am twice the man that he is! How he coughed last winter!
I haven't any thing to live for, anyway."

"It is very weak for you to say that."

"Whose fault is it that I am so weak? Whose fault is it that my life is
spoiled? You have spoiled every thing for me by playing fast and loose
with me."

"I never did that," she answered indignantly. "You accuse me
wrongfully."

"Every time you speak to me or look at me you give me hope; an hour with
you I live on for months. O, Tessa," dropping his head in both hands, "I
have loved you all my life."

"I know it," she said solemnly. "Can't you be brave and bear it?"

"I _am_ bearing it. I am bearing it and it is killing me. You never had
the water ebb and flow, ebb and flow when you were dying of thirst.
Women can not suffer; they are heartless, all their heart is used in
causing men to suffer. A touch of your hand, the color in your cheek, a
dropping of your eyes, talks to me and tells me a lie; and then you go
up-stairs and kneel down to Him, who is the truth-maker! You are a
covenant-breaker. You have looked at me scores of times as if you loved
me; you have told me that you like to be with me; and when I come to you
and ask you like a man to become my wife, you blush and falter, and
answer like a woman--_no_. I beg your pardon--"

The tears stood in her eyes but would not fall.

"I did not come here to upbraid you. I did not start from home with the
intention of coming; but I saw you through the window with your arms
around your father's neck and I thought, 'Her heart is soft to-night;
she will listen to me.' I was drawn in, as you always draw me, against
my better judgment. I shall not trouble you again; I am going away.
Tessa," suddenly snatching both hands, "if you are so sorry for me, why
can't you love me?"

"I don't know," not withdrawing her hands, "something hinders. I honor
you. I admire you. Your love for me is a great rest to me; I want to
wrap myself up in it and go to sleep; I do not want to give it up--no one
else loves me, and I _do_ want somebody to love me."

"I will love you; only let me. Marry me and I will stay at home; I will
do for you all that a human heart and two human hands can do; I will
_be_ to you all that you will help me to be."

"But I do not want to marry you," she said perplexed. "I should have to
give up too much. I love my home and the people in it better than I love
you."

"I will not take you away; you shall have them all; you shall come to
them and they shall come to you; remember that I have never loved any
one but you--" the great tears were rolling down his cheeks. "I am not
worth it; I am not worthy to speak to you, or even to hold your hands
like this." He broke down utterly, sobbing wearily and excitedly.

"Don't, oh, don't," she cried hurriedly. "I may grow to love you if you
want me to so much, and you are good and true, I can believe every word
you say--not soon--in two or three years perhaps."

His tears were on her hands, and he had loved her all her life; no one
else loved her, no one else ever would love her like this; he was good
and true, and she wanted some one to love her; she wanted to be sure of
love somewhere and then to go to sleep. Her father should see her
married before he died; her mother would never--

"You have promised," he cried, in a thick voice. "You have promised and
you never break your word."

"I have promised and I never break my word; but you must not speak of it
to any one, not even to Laura, and I will not tell father, or Gus, or
Miss Jewett, or Dine; no one must guess it for one year--it is so sudden
and strange! I couldn't bear to hear it spoken of; and if you are very
gentle and do not _try_ to make me love you--you must not kiss me, or put
your arms around me, you know I never did like that, and perhaps that is
one reason why I never liked you before--you must let me alone, let love
come of itself and grow of itself."

"I will," he uttered brokenly, and rose up trembling from head to foot.
"May God bless you!--bless you!--bless you!"

It was better for him to leave her; the strain had been too great for
both.

"I must be alone; I must go out under the stars and thank God."

She lifted her face to his and kissed him. How unutterably glad and
thankful she was in all her life afterward that she gave that kiss
unasked.

"God bless you, my darling," he said tenderly, "and He _will_ bless you
for this."

Bewildered, not altogether unhappy, she sat alone while he went out
under the stars.

Was this the end of all her girlhood's dreams?

Only Felix Harrison! Must she pass all her life with him? Must her
father and mother and Gus and Dine be not so much to her because Felix
Harrison had become more--had become most? And Ralph Towne? Ought she to
love Felix as she had loved him?

The hurried questions were answerless. She did not belong to herself;
not any more to her father as she had belonged to him half an hour since
with both her arms around his neck. Love constituted ownership, and she
belonged to Felix through this mighty right of love; did he belong to
her through the same divine right?

He was thanking God and so must she thank Him.

"Tessa," called her father, "come here, daughter!"

With the candle in her hand, she stood in the door-way of the
sitting-room. "Well," she said.

"With whom were you closeted?" asked Mr. Hammerton, looking up from the
chess-board.

The effort to speak in her usual tone lent to her voice a sharpness that
startled herself.

"Felix Harrison."

"Your old tormentor!" suggested Mr. Hammerton.

"Who ever called him that?" She came to the table, set the candlestick
down and looked over the chess-board.

"She has refused him again," mentally decided Mr. Hammerton, carefully
moving his queen.

"I called you, daughter, because Gus withstood me out and out about
'Heaven doth with us as we with torches do.' Find it and let his
obstinate eyes behold!"

She opened the volume, turning the leaves with fingers that trembled.
"Truly enough," she was thinking, "a year from to-day will find a
difference."

"Now I am going over for Dine," she said, after Mr. Hammerton had
acknowledged himself in the wrong.

"Permit me to accompany you," he said. Even with Tessa Wadsworth, Gus
Hammerton was often formal. They found Dinah bidding Norah good-by at
Mr. Bird's gate; they were laughing at nothing, as usual.

"Let us walk to the end of the planks," suggested Mr. Hammerton. "On a
night like this I could tramp till sunrise." He drew Tessa's arm through
his, saying, "Now, Dine, take the other fin."

The end of the planks touched a piece of woods; at the entrance of the
wood stood an old building, windowless, doorless, chimneyless; the
school children knew that it was haunted.

"We're afraid," laughed Dine; "the old hut looks ghostly."

"It _is_ ghostly, I will relate its history. Once upon a time, upon a
dark night, so dark that I could not see the white horse upon which I
rode--"

"Oh, that's splendid," cried Dinah, hanging contentedly upon his arm.
"Listen, Tessa."

But Tessa could not listen. She was feeling the peace that rested over
the woods, the fields; that was enwrapping Old Place, and further down
the dim road the low-eaved homestead that must thenceforth be home to
her. There could be no more air-castles; her future was decided. She had
turned the leaf and discovered a name that hitherto had meant so little:
Felix Harrison. Not Ralph Towne; a year ago to-night it was English
violets and Ralph Towne. The peace that brooded over all might be hers,
if only she would be content.

At this moment,--while she was trying to be content, trying to believe
that she could interpret the peace of the shining stars, and while she
was hearing the sound of her companion's words, a solemn, even tone that
rolled on in unison with her thoughts,--two people far away were thinking
of her; thinking of her, but not wishing and not daring to speak her
name.

"I can not understand, Ralph. I was sure that we would bring Naughty Nan
away with us."

"Truly, mother, I would have pleased you, if I could."

"You are too serious for her; with all her mischievous advances,--like a
white kitten provokingly putting out its paw,--she was more than half
afraid of you."

"It does not hurt her to be afraid."

"She is most bewitching."

"Now, mother! But it is too late; she will understand by my parting
words that I do not expect to see her soon again. In my mind is a memory
that has kept me from loving that delicious Naughty Nan."

"Is the memory a fancy?"

"No; it is too real for my ease of mind. If I were a poet, which I am
not, I should think that her spirit haunted me."

"Can you tell me no more of her? That daughter that I might have had!"

"I do not understand her: she is beyond me, she baffles me."

"I read of a man once who loved a woman too well to marry any one else,
and yet he did not love her well enough to marry her."

"Was he a fool?"

"Answer the question for yourself. Are _you_ a fool?"

"Yes, I am. I do not know my own mind. I should call another man a
fool."

"It may not be too late," she gently urged.

"Too late for what?" he asked irritably.

"To be wise."

In a few moments he spoke in an abrupt, changed tone--

"Mother! I have decided at last. I shall hang out my shingle in
Dunellen. It is a picturesque little city, and the climate is as good
for you as the south of France."

"I am very glad," she answered cordially. "You are a born physician, you
are cool, you are quick, you are gentle; you can keep your feelings
under perfect control. You are not quite a Stoic, but you will do very
well for one."

"But you will not be happy at Old Place without me."

"Why should I be without you?"

"You have noticed that large, wide brick house on the opposite side of
the Park from Miss Jewett's? It has a garden and stable; it is just the
house for us; you may have two rooms thrown into one for your
sitting-room and any other changes that you please."

"I remember it, I like the situation; there are English sparrows in the
trees."

"We will take that for the present. John Gesner owns it; he will make
his own price if he sees that I want it, I suppose. I _do_ want it.
There are not many things that I desire more. You and I will have a
green old age at Old Place."

"You forget that I am thirty years older than you, my son."

By accident, one day, Mrs. Towne had come across, in one of the drawers
of her son's writing-table, a large photograph of Tessa Wadsworth, a
vignette, and she had gazed long upon her; the face was not beautiful,
one would not even think of it as pretty, but it was fine, intellectual,
sensitive, and sweet. In searching for an old letter not long before
leaving home, she had discovered this picture, defaced and torn into
several pieces.

"Ralph, you will not be angry with your white-headed old mother, but
were you ever refused?"

"No," he said, laughing. "A dozen women may have been ready to refuse
me, but not one ever did."

"Nor accepted you, either," she continued, shrewdly.

He arose and began to pace the floor; after some turns of excited
movement, he came to her and stood behind her chair. "I know that I have
been accepted; I know that I asked when I did not intend to ask--that
is--I was carried beyond myself; I asked when I did not know that I was
asking."

"What shall you do now?"

"I shall ask in reality; I shall confess myself in the wrong."

"And she?"

"And she? She has the tenderest heart in the world. She has forgiven me
long ago."

"Do not trust her eyes and forget her lips," warned his mother. "Love is
slain sometimes."

He resumed his walk with a less confident air. He _had_ forgotten her
lips.

Would Tessa have cared to hear this? Would she have forgotten Felix, his
blessing and the quiet of the holy stars?

"Oh," cried Dinah, with her little shout (she would not have been Dinah
without that little shout), "Oh, Tessa, did you hear?"

"She is star-gazing," said Mr. Hammerton.

"It isn't a true story," pleaded Dinah. "You didn't really see him
hanging by the rope and the woman looking on."

"My young friend, it is an allegory; that is what you will drive some
man to some day."

"You know I won't. What is the name of that bright star?"

"It isn't a star, it's a planet."

"How do I know the difference?"

"Lady Blue knows."

"Do you call her that because her eyes are so blue or because she is a
blue-stocking?"

"She is not a blue-stocking; I will not allow it. It is for her eyes."

"Gus," said Dinah, "I can't understand things."

"What things?"

"Tennyson's Dream of Fair Women."

"I shouldn't think you could. I have spent hours on it trying to make it
out. You look up Marc Antony and Cleopatra--"

"As if I had to."

"Well, look up the daughter of the warrior Gileadite, and fair Rosamond,
and angered Eleanor, and Fulvia, and Joan of Arc."

"And will you read it to us, and talk all about it?" cried Dinah in
delight. "I like King Lear when father reads it, but I can't understand
Shakespeare; he is all conversations."

Mr. Hammerton laughed, and patted her head. "I will bring you the
stories that Charles and Mary Lamb gathered from Shakespeare."

"Shall we turn?" asked Tessa, slipping her hand through his arm; he
instantly imprisoned her fingers. Felix would be troubled and angry she
knew, even at this clasp of an old friend's hand. Jealousy was his one
strong passion; he was jealous of the books she read, of the letters she
received, of every word spoken to her that he did not hear; she wondered
as her fingers drew themselves free, if he would ever become jealous of
her prayers.

She drew a long breath as the weight of her bondage fell heavier and
heavier; and then, he was so demonstrative, so lavish of his caresses,
and her ideal of a lover was one who held himself aloof, who kept his
hands and his lips to himself. She sighed more than once as she kept
even pace with the others.

"Has the nightingale made a mistake?" asked Mr. Hammerton, as they were
crossing to the gate.

"She only made one mistake. I wonder how many I _can_ make if I do my
best to make them."

Dinah opened the gate; her father's light streamed through the windows
over the garden, down the path.

"Good night," said Mr. Hammerton. "Oh, I just remember, what shall I do?
I asked my cousin Mary to go to a lecture on Burns with me to-night, and
I declare! I never thought of it until this minute."

"Mary Sherwood will give it to you," said Dinah. "I wonder what your
wife will do with you."

"A wife's first duty is obedience," he answered.

"I'd like to see the man I'd promise to obey," said Dinah, quickly.

"I expect you would," he said gravely.

Dine darted after him to box his ears, words being impotent, and Tessa
went into the house. "I think I'll pigeon-hole _this_ day and then go to
bed," she said, a merry gleam crossing her eyes; "between my two walks
on the planks to-day, I have lived half a lifetime. I hope Dr. Lake is
asleep; I will never hurt Felix as he is hurt."




IX.--THE NEW MORNING.


Her eyes were wide open an hour before the dawn; as the faint light
streamed through the east and glowed brighter and brighter along the rim
of the south that she could see from her position on the pillow, she
arose, wrapped a shawl about her, and went to the window to watch the
new morning. On the last night of the old year she had watched the
sunset standing at her western window, then the light had gone out of
her life and all the world was dark; now, in the new year, her private
and personal new year, the light was rising, creeping up slowly into the
sky, the gold, the faint rose and the bright rose running into each
other, softening, blending, glowing deeper and deeper as she watched.
This new morning that was an old morning to so many other eyes that were
looking out upon it; this new morning that would be again for Dinah,
perhaps, and for all the other girls that were growing up into God's
kingdom on the earth! The robins in Mr. Bird's apple orchard were awake,
too, and chanticleer down the road had proclaimed the opening of another
new day with all his lusty might. She wondered, as she listened and
looked, if Felix were standing in the light of the morning on the porch,
or he might be walking up and down the long garden path. And thanking
God? She wished that she were thanking God. She was thanking Him for the
light, the colors, the refreshing, misty air, the robins and the white
and pink wealth of apple blossoms; but she was not thanking Him because
Felix Harrison loved her.

"And that night they caught nothing."

The words repeated themselves with startling clearness. What connection
could they possibly have with the sunrise? Oh, now she knew; it was
because the fishermen had seen the Lord upon the shore in the morning.

_She_ had caught nothing; all her night of toil had been fruitless; she
had striven and hoped and dreamed, oh, how she had dreamed of all that
she would do and become! And now she could not be glad of any thing.

The years had ended in having Felix Harrison love her; that was all. She
had lived her childhood and girlhood through for such a time as this.

This new year had brought more hard things to bear than any of the old
years; if she could only tell some one who would care and sympathize
with her and help her not only to bear but to do and to become; but her
father would be justly angry and exclaim, "Madness, daughter," her
mother would laugh and look perplexed, Miss Jewett would say, "O, Tessa,
Tessa, I didn't think such a thing of you," and Mr. Towne--but she had no
right to think of him! And Gus! He would look at her steadily and say
nothing; he would be disappointed in her if he knew that she could
promise with her lips, with no love in her heart save the love of
regret, compassion, and contrition for all that she had so unconsciously
caused him to suffer. And how could she reveal to Felix, poor Felix! the
plain, cold truth! how she shrank from him as soon as she was alone and
could think! how as the morning grew brighter and her world more real
she shrank from him yet more and more! how the very thought of his
presence, of his tight arms around her, and his smooth face close to
hers gave her a feeling of repulsion that she had never felt towards any
human being before! She felt that she must flee to the ends of the earth
rather than to endure him. But it was done; she must keep her word; he
should never guess; she would write a note and slip it into his hand
to-day, he would be sure to press through the crowd towards her as she
came out of church. She would write it now and be at rest. Her
writing-desk stood open, pages of manuscript were laid upon it. She
selected a sheet of lemon-colored note paper, and wrote a message,
hurriedly, in pencil. Never afterward would she write a word upon
lemon-colored paper.

"Do not come to me, dear Felix--" she hesitated over the adjective,
erased the words, and dropped the sheet into her waste paper basket and
found another: "Do not come to me, Felix, until I send for you, please.
I am not strong. I want to be alone. Do not think me unkind, you know
that I always did like to be alone. Do not expect too much of me; I am
not what you think; I am a weak, impulsive woman, too tender-hearted to
be wise, or to be just towards myself or towards you. If you want me to
love you, ask it of Him, who is love; do not ask it of me, I am not
love. But do not be troubled, I have given my word, I am not a
covenant-breaker, _I will be true_."

She folded it, not addressing it, and placed it in the pocket of the
dress that she would wear to church; as she passed the window she saw
Dr. Lake driving towards home. Shivering, although the sun was high
enough to shine on the apple blossoms, she crept back to bed, nestling
close to sleepy Dine who loved her morning nap better than the sunrise.
Her confused thoughts ran hither and thither; she found herself
repeating something that she and Mr. Hammerton had learned together
years ago,

  "'Yes,' I answered you last night;
    'No,' this morning, sir, I say;
  Colors seen by candlelight
    Do not look the same by day."

Mr. Hammerton said that he and the Wadsworth girls had learned "miles"
of poetry together. The Harrisons were not at church. When had such a
thing happened before? Her fingers were on the note in her pocket as she
passed down the aisle.

"Tessa, Tessa," whispered a loud whisper behind her, and Sue's
irrepressible lips were close to her ear; "come home to dinner with me;
you won't want to go to Bible class, for Miss Jewett is down to
Harrison's. Father sent for her to go early this morning."

"Why is she there?"

"Oh, somebody is sick. Felix. Dr. Lake was there in the night and father
was going this morning. He was taken crazy, I believe. Come home with
me, will you?"

"Very well."

She found Dine waiting for Norah, and told her that she was going home
with Sue, then rejoined Sue at one of the gates.

"I'm awful lonesome Sundays," began Sue; "Aunt Jane has gone, I told
you, didn't I? A cousin of hers died and left some dozens of young ones
and she had to go and take care of them and console the widower. 'The
unconsolable widder of Deacon Bedott will never get married again!' but
she went all the same. She said that she had brought _me_ up far enough
to take care of father."

Sue's lightness grated all along her nerves.

"Did you like Mary Sherwood's hat? Too many flowers, don't you think so?
And she _will_ wear light blue with her sallow face! Wasn't it a queer
sermon, too? Don't you think it is wicked for ministers to frighten
people so? He said that we make our own lives, that we choose every day,
and that every choice has an influence. You think that I don't listen
because I stare around, don't you? I sha'n't forget that ever, because I
have just had a choice that will influence my life; and I chose _not_ to
do it. It's hateful to have Miss Jewett away; I won't go to Bible class,
and I won't let you, either. I have a book to read, or I can go to
sleep."

"Yes, you can go to sleep."

"I have something to tell you," said Sue, shyly, hesitating as she
glanced into Tessa's quiet, almost stern, face.

"Not now--in the street."

"Oh, no, when we are by ourselves. Our parlors are lovely now; you will
see how I have fixed up things. Father is so delighted to have me home
that he will let me do any thing I like."

Voices behind them and voices before them, now and then a soft, Sunday
laugh; through the pauses of Sue's talk Tessa listened, catching at any
thing to keep herself from thinking.

"A rare sermon."

"It will do me good all the week."

"The most becoming spring hat I've seen."

"He is very handsome in the pulpit."

"Come over to tea."

"I expect to do great things this summer."

"If I could talk like that I'd set people to thinking."

"We sha'n't get out of trouble in _this_ world."

"When I can't forgive myself, I just let go of myself, and let God
forgive me."

She wished that she could see that face; the voice sounded familiar, the
reply was in a man's voice; she felt as if she were listening, but she
would have liked to hear the reply, all the more when she discovered
that the talkers were Mr. Lewis Gesner and his sister.

"_Isn't_ she handsomely dressed?" exclaimed Sue in admiration. "She
passed me without seeing me. He is so wrapped up in that sister that he
will never be married."

The crowd became thinner; couples and threes and fours, sometimes only
one, entered at each gate as they moved on; they passed down the long
street almost alone; Dr. Greyson's new house stood nearly a mile from
the Park; there was a grass plot in front and stables in the rear.

Dr. Lake was driving around to the stables.

"I hoped that he wouldn't be home to lunch; he's awful cross," said Sue,
with a pout and a flush. Fifteen minutes later the lunch bell rang; Dr.
Greyson hurried in as they were seating themselves at the table.

Tessa's quickened heart-beats would not allow her to ask about Felix;
she knew that her voice would betray her agitation; Dr. Lake had shaken
hands and had not stopped to speak to her; his miserable face was but a
repetition of yesterday.

Dr. Greyson seldom talked of anything but his patients and he was
interested in Felix Harrison, she knew that she had but to wait
patiently.

"Susie is a perfect housekeeper, isn't she? Somebody will find it out,
I'm afraid."

"That's all I am," said Sue. "Father, why didn't you educate me?"

"Educate a kitten!"

"How is Felix Harrison?" inquired Dr. Lake.

"Bad! Bad enough. That fellow has been walking around with a brain
fever. He'll pull through with care. Miss Jewett will stay until they
can get a nurse; I would rather keep _her_, though. I warned him months
ago. I told him that it would come to this. He has thrown away his life;
he'll never be good for any thing again. I am glad that he has a father
to take care of him; lucky for him, and not so lucky for his father. I
wouldn't care to see my son such a wreck as he'll be. Why a man born
with brains will deliberately make a fool of himself, I can't
understand. Teaching and studying law and what not? He will have fits as
long as he lives coming upon him any day any hour; he will be as much
care as an infant. More, for an infant does grow up, and he will only
become weaker and weaker mentally and physically. He has been under some
great excitement, I suspect. _They_ don't know what it is. He came home
late last night; his father heard a noise in his room and went in to
find him as crazy as a loon. He said that he had heard him talking in
his sleep all night long for two or three nights. I hope that he isn't
engaged. I know a case like his, and that poor fellow _was_ engaged."

"Of course that ended it," said Sue. "A sick husband of all things. I
would drown myself, if I had a sick husband."

"Of course it ended it. It almost broke her heart, though; broke it for
a year, and then a dashing cousin of his mended it."

"Perhaps Felix hasn't any cousin. Dr. Lake, will you have more coffee?"
Sue spoke carelessly, not meeting his glance.

"Thank you, no."

Dr. Greyson ran on talking and eating: "I told the old man the whole
truth; he begged so hard to know the worst. He cried like a baby. He was
proud of Felix. Felix was a fine fellow,--a noble fellow. But he's dead
now; dead, _and_ buried."

"Does Laura know?" inquired Sue, helping herself to sweet pickled
peaches. Tessa was tasting the peaches, her throat so full of sobs that
she swallowed the fruit with pain.

"No, of course not. I told Miss Jewett to tell her any thing, but be
sure to keep her up. He won't die. Why should he? It will come gradually
to her. The very saddest case I know. And to think that it might have
been avoided. I didn't tell his father _that_, though. Felix has no one
but himself to thank. I warned him a year ago. Brains _without_ common
sense is a very poor commodity. What did the minister tell you Miss
Tessa? I haven't been to church since Sue was a baby."

"No wonder that I'm a heathen, then; any body would be with such a
father," retorted Sue.

Dr. Lake excused himself abruptly, and crossing the hall went into the
office.

"That foolish boy has taught me a lesson. I would take a vacation this
summer, only if I leave Sue at home she would run off and marry Lake
before a week."

"You needn't be afraid," answered Sue, scornfully. "I look higher than
Gerald Lake."

The office door stood ajar. Sue colored with vexation as the words in
her high voice left her lips.

"Shall we go into the parlor?" she said rising. "You can find a book and
I'll go to sleep."

The parlors had been refurnished in crimson and brown. Standing in the
centre of the front parlor, Tessa exclaimed, "Oh, how pretty!"

"Isn't it? All my taste. Dr. Lake did advise me, though; he went with
me. Now, you shall sit in the front or back just as you please, in the
most comfortable of chairs, and I will sit opposite you and snooze,--that
is," rather doubtfully, for she was afraid of Tessa, "unless you will
let me tell you my secret."

In passing through the rooms, Tessa had taken a volume of Josephus from
a table; she settled herself at one of the back windows in a pretty
crimson and brown chair, smoothed the folds of her black dress, folded
her hands in her lap over the green volume, and looked up at Sue. Sue
and a book in brown paper were in another crimson and brown chair at
another window; flushed and vexed she played with the edges of her book.

"Do you think that he heard what I said?" she asked anxiously.

"You know as well as I."

She did not feel in a gentle mood towards Sue; her voice and words had
rasped her nerves for the last hour.

"I didn't intend it for him," she was half crying, "but father provoked
me. He does bother me so. I didn't flirt with him, I was real good and
sisterly. I told him to call me Sister Sue. But after it all, he asked
me to marry him, and was as mad as a hornet, and said dreadful things to
me when I refused him."

She nibbled the edge of her book; Tessa had nothing to say.

"I couldn't help it now, could I?" in a tearful voice.

"You know best."

"I _know_ I couldn't. I like him. I can't help liking him; a cat or a
dog would like him. In some things, I like him better than Stacey, and
I'm sure I like him better than old John Gesner."

Tessa opened her book and looked into the handsome face of Flavius
Josephus.

"Haven't you any thing to say to me?"

"No."

"You might sympathize with me."

"I don't know how."

Sue nibbled the edge of her book, with her eyes filled with tears. She
had no friend except Tessa, and now she had deserted her!

Tessa turned the leaves and thought that she was reading; she did read
the words: "The family from which I am derived is not an ignoble one,
but hath descended all along from the priests; and as nobility among
several people is of a different origin, so with us to be of the
sacerdotal dignity is an indication of the splendor of a family."

"Yes," she tried to think, her eyes wandering out of the window towards
the rear of Gesner's Row, "and that is why the promise, to be made kings
and priests--"

"Tessa, I think you are real mean," said Sue, in a pathetic voice.

Tessa met her eyes and smiled. She did not like to be hard towards Sue.

"Do you think that I've been so wicked?"

"I think that you have been so wicked that you must either be forgiven
or punished."

"Oh, dear! Oh, dear _me_," dropping her head on the arm of her chair.

Tessa turned another leaf. "Moreover when I was a child and about
fourteen years of age, I was commended by all for the love I had to
learning; on which account the high priests and principal men of the
city came then frequently to me together, in order to know my opinion
about the accurate understanding of points of the law."

Her eyes wandered away from the book and out the open window towards the
rows of open windows in the houses behind the stables. At one window was
seated an old man reading; in the same room, for he raised his head to
speak to her, at another window, a woman was sitting reading also. She
was glad that there were two. She wondered if they had been kind to each
other as long as they had known each other. If the old man should die
to-night would the old woman have need to say, "Forgive me." Through the
windows above came the heavy, steady whirr of a sewing-machine, with now
and then a _click_, as if the long seam had come to its end; the bushy,
black head of a German Jew was bent over it; the face that he raised was
not at all like that of the refined Flavius Josephus. No one ever went
to him with knotty points in the law! There were plants in the other
window of the room; she was glad of the plants. It was rather mournful
to be seeking things to be glad about. A child was crying, sharply,
rebelliously; a woman's sharper voice was breaking in upon it.

There was a voice in the stable speaking to a horse, "Quiet, old boy." A
horse was brought out and harnessed to a buggy without a top. Dr.
Greyson climbed into the buggy and drove off. Another horse was brought
out and harnessed to a buggy with a top. She persuaded herself that she
was very much interested in watching people and things; she had not had
time to think of Felix yet. Dr. Lake came out, sprang into the buggy,
and drove slowly out, not looking towards the windows where sat the two
figures, each apparently absorbed in a book.

"Tessa," in a broken voice, like the appeal of a naughty child with the
naughtiness all gone, "what shall I do?"

"I don't know," said Tessa.

"You don't think that I ought to marry him. He smells of medicine so."

"I do not think any thing. If I did think any thing, it would be my
thinking and not yours."

"Do you believe that he cares so _very_ much?"

The exultant undertone was too much for Tessa's patience.

"I hope that he has too much good sense to care long; some day when he
can see how heartless you are, he will despise himself for having
fancied that he loved you."

"You don't care how you hurt my feelings."

"I am not sure that you have any to be hurt."

"You are a mean thing; I don't like you; I wish that I hadn't asked you
to come."

Tessa's eyes were on _Josephus_ again.

After a long, silent hour, during which Sue looked out the window, and
nibbled the edge of her book, and during which Tessa thought of every
body and every thing except Felix Harrison, Sue spoke: "I'm going
up-stairs for a while; excuse me, please."

Tessa nodded, closed her book and leaned back in the pretty crimson and
brown chair. Sue came to her and stood a moment; her heart _was_ sore.
If Tessa would only say something kind! But Tessa would not; she only
said coolly, "Well?"

"You don't believe that I am sorry."

"I don't believe any thing about it, but that you are heartless and
wicked."

Sue stood waiting for another word, but Tessa looked tired, and as if
she had forgotten her presence. Why should she look so, Sue asked
herself resentfully; _she_ had nothing to trouble her? Sue went away,
her arms dropped at her side, her long green dress trailing on the
carpet; tenderness gathered in Tessa's eyes as the green figure
disappeared. "I don't like to be hard to her," she murmured.

The terrible thought of Felix pressed heavier and heavier. She took the
note from her pocket and pondered each word; the cruel, truthful words!
If he had read them she might have had to believe all her life that she
had hastened this illness! The sunshine grew warmer, beating down upon
the paving stones in the yard, the faces kept their places in the
windows, the child's shrill, rebellious cry burst out again and the
woman's sharper voice.

Sue's steps were moving overhead; suddenly, so suddenly as to break in
upon the current of her thoughts, Sue's voice rang out in her clear
soprano, "Rock of Ages, cleft for me."

The voice grated, the words coming from the thoughtless lips grated on
her ear and on her heart, grated more harshly than the woman's sharp
voice in taunting rebuke.

  "Nothing in my hand I bring,
  Simply to Thy cross I cling."

As soon as she had decided that she could not bear it another instant,
the singing ceased. It ceased and left her in tears.




X.--FORGETTING THE BREAD.


Again Tessa was spending the night with Miss Jewett; Sue Greyson had
chatted away half the evening, and it was nearly eleven before Tessa
could put both arms around her friend and squeeze her.

"I am hungry for a talk with you, you dear little woman, every thing is
getting to be criss-cross with me nowadays; I'm so troubled and so
wicked that I almost want to die. You wouldn't love me any more if you
could know how false I am. All my life I have been so proud of being
true," she added bitterly, "I despise myself."

"Is that all?"

Miss Jewett was leaning back in her little rocker. Almost before she
knew it herself, Tessa had dropped upon the carpet at her feet.

"I have come to learn of you, my saint."

"What have you come to learn, my sinner?"

"I'm confused--I'm bewildered--I'm all in a tangle. People say, 'pray
about it'; you say that yourself; and I do pray about all the trials in
my life and yet--I can not understand--I am groping my way, I am blind,
walking in the dark. Do you know that I believe that praying for a thing
is the hardest way in the world to get it? I would rather earn it a
thousand times over; I know that you think me dreadfully wicked, but do
not stop me, let me pour it all out; hard praying, never ceasing, night
and day, is enough to wear one out soul and body, because you _must_
expect to get what you ask for, and if you do not after praying so long
the disappointment is heart-breaking. There now! I have said it and I
feel better. I have no one except you to talk to and I wouldn't dare
tell you how wicked I am. About something I have prayed with all my
strength--I will not be ashamed to tell you--I know you will understand;
it is about loving somebody. I have been so ashamed and shocked at
girls' love-stories and I wanted one so true and pure and unselfish and
beautiful, and I have prayed that mine might be that, and I have tried
so hard to make it that, and yet I get into trouble and break my own
heart, which is nothing at all, and more than break some one else's
heart and do as much harm as Sue Greyson does, who is as flighty as a
witch! I would rather go without things than pray years and years and be
disappointed every day, or go farther and farther into wrong-doing as I
do; I don't believe that the flightiest and flirtiest of your girls does
as much harm as I do, or is as false to herself as I am! And I have been
so proud of being true!"

"My _dear_ child."

"Is that all you can say to comfort me?"

"Why do you pray?"

"Why do I pray?" repeated Tessa in surprise. "To get what I want, I
suppose."

"I thought so."

"Isn't that what you pray for?"

"Hardly. I pray that I may get what God wants."

"Oh," said Tessa with a half startled, little cry.

"I fear that you are having a hard time over something, child."

"If you only knew--but you wouldn't believe in me any longer; neither
would father, or Dine, or Gus, or any one who trusts me; I will not tell
you; I have lost all faith in myself."

"Thank God for that!" exclaimed the little woman brightly.

"I am too sore and bruised to be thankful; I feel, sometimes, as if I
could creep into a dark corner and cry my heart out. I could bear it if
I were the only one, but to think that I must make somebody's heart ache
as mine does! I thought all my prayers would prevail to keep me from
making mistakes."

"Perhaps you have been trying to _earn_ your heart's desire by heaping
up prayers, piling them up higher and higher, morning, noon, and night,
and you have held them up to God thinking that He must be glad to take
them; I shouldn't wonder if you had even supposed that you were paying
Him overmuch--you had prayed enough to get what you want some time ago."

"That is true," answered Tessa, emphatically. "I have felt as if He were
wronging me by taking my prayers and giving me so little in return. I
believe that I have thought my prayers precious enough to pay for any
thing. I paid my prayers, and I am disappointed that I have not my
purchases."

"Then your faith has been all in your _prayers_."

"Yes; I was sure that I could not go wrong because I prayed so much."

"And your faith has been in your _faith_."

"And neither my faith nor my prayers have kept me from being false. Oh,
it has been such hard work!"

Tessa's face was drawn as if by physical pain.

"I was thinking in the night last night that I did not believe that
Hannah, or Elizabeth, or Huldah, or Persis, or Dorcas ever prayed more
fervently or unceasingly than I have; I have builded on my _faith_, no
wonder that the first rough wind has shaken my foundation! Ever since
Felix Harrison years ago called me a flirt, I have prayed that I might
be true; and to-night I am as false as Sue Greyson."

"Through an experience once, long ago, I learned to pray that the will
of God might be done in me, even although I must be sifted as wheat."

"I am not brave enough for that. Oh, Miss Jewett, I am afraid that God
is angry with me; and I have meant to be so true."

"Do you remember the time that the disciples forgot to take bread?"

"Yes, but that is not like me."

"I think it is--just like you."

"Then tell me."

"It was one time when Jesus and the disciples were alone on board the
ship; He had been deeply grieved with the Pharisees, sighing in His
spirit over them, for they had tempted Him with asking of Him a sign
from heaven. A sign from heaven! And He had just filled four thousand
hungry people with seven loaves and a few small fishes!

"By and by He began to talk to the disciples; speaking with authority,
perhaps, it even sounded severe to them as He charged them to beware of
the leaven of the Pharisees.

"Then they began to talk among themselves: what had they done to be thus
bidden to beware of the leaven of the Pharisees? _Leaven_ reminded them
of bread! Oh, now they knew! They had but one loaf in the ship; they had
forgotten to bring bread with them; perhaps the Lord was hungry and knew
that they had not enough for Him and for themselves. It may be that He
overheard them reasoning among themselves, or perhaps, forward Peter
asked Him if He were rebuking them for forgetting the bread; for as soon
as He knew what was troubling their simple hearts, how He talked to
them! Seven questions, one after another, He asked them, ending with:
_How is it_ that ye do not understand?

"And you are like them, child. The Lord has suffered you to be led into
trouble that He may teach you something about Himself and you fall down
at His feet bemoaning yourself; you forget Him and the great lessons He
has to teach you and think only of yourself and some little thing that
you missed doing; you missed it, blinded with tears in your eagerness to
do right, you _meant_ to be so good and true, and because you made a
mistake in your blindness and eagerness, you think Him such a harsh,
unloving Father that all He cares to do is to punish you! Trust Him,
Tessa! Don't moan over a loaf of bread forgotten before Him who has love
enough, and power enough to give you and somebody beside a thousand
thousand loaves. Do not grieve Him by crying out any longer, 'Do not
punish me; I _meant_ to be so good?'"

Tessa's head kept its position. When she raised it, after a long
silence, she said: "I will not think so any more; you don't know what I
suffered in thinking that He is punishing me."

"'How is it that ye do not understand?'"

"Because I think about my own troubles and not of what He is teaching
me," said Tessa humbly.




XI.--ON THE HIGHWAY.


In June, Tessa gathered roses for Miss Jewett, and every evening filled
the tall glass vase with white roses for the tea-table; in June,
Dunellen Institute closed for the season and Dinah was graduated;
henceforth she would be a young lady of leisure, or a young lady seeking
a vocation. In June, Mrs. Wadsworth scolded Tessa for "taking it so
coolly about the dreadful thing that had come upon young Harrison."

"How many times have you called to see Laura since her poor brother has
been so poorly?"

"I have called every two days," answered Tessa in her quietest tones.

"Oh, you have! Why didn't you say so? You are so still that people think
you do nothing but pick roses. Anxious as I am, you might have told me
how he was getting on. How was he yesterday?"

"Comfortable."

"Did you see him?"

"Yes."

"Was he sitting up?"

"Yes, he had been sitting up half an hour."

"How does he look?"

"His eyes are deep in his head, his voice is as weak as a child's, he
burst into tears because Laura did not come when he touched his bell for
her."

"Was he cheerful?"

"He smiled and talked."

"Are you going to-day?"

"Yes; Dr. Lake will call for me about five."

"You and Dr. Lake are getting to be great friends."

"Are we?"

"Do you know what he says about Felix?"

"He can say nothing but that he may never be himself again."

"Yes, he did; but you mustn't repeat it; promise me."

"There is no need for me to promise."

"He said that his mind will grow weaker and weaker. Do you know that he
has been having _fits_ for two years?"

"Yes, I am aware of it."

"Isn't it a dreadful, horrible thing? But he always was a little wild
and queer, not quite like other folks. I was sure that he would die; he
may yet, he may have a relapse. I should think that they would rather
have him dead than grow silly. I suppose that Laura will never be
married now; he will never be fit to be left alone. His father can marry
though, and that would leave her free. I never object to second
marriages, do you?"

"That depends upon several things."

"My father was married three times. I had two stepmothers, and might
have had four if he had lived longer. Some people think, but I never
did, that an engagement is as good as a marriage, do you?"

"Yes."

"Of course, I knew that you would think so. But I never had any
high-flown ideas about engagements. I was engaged to John Gesner--your
father doesn't know it to this day--he has high and mighty ideas about
things like you. _You_ ought to have some feeling about Felix Harrison,
then, for he always wanted you. Professional men are always poor; Dr.
Lake is not much of a 'catch.'"

"I think he is--or will be--to the woman who can appreciate him."

"I beseech you don't you go to appreciate him."

"I do now--sufficiently," she answered, smiling.

Two weeks later, having seen Felix several times during the interval,
Dine brought her a letter late in the afternoon.

Felix always had written her name in full, saying that it was prettier
than the one that she had given herself in baby-days; the penmanship
appeared like a child's imitation of his bold strokes.

Not daring and not caring to open it immediately, she put on her hat and
went out to walk far past the end of the planks down into the green
country. She thought that she knew every tree and every field all the
long way to the Harrison Homestead.

Opening the letter at last, she read:

"My Friend,--I suppose you know all the truth. I wrung it out of Dr.
Greyson to-day after you left me. You may have known it all the time.
Father has known it, but not Laura. I shall never be what I once was; I
know it better than any physician can tell me. If I live to forget every
thing else (and I may), I think that I shall never forget that night.
But I shall not let my mind go without a struggle; I shall read, I shall
write, I shall travel, when I am able. I have been reading Macaulay
to-day. I shall be a burden to father and Laura, and to any who may
nurse me for wages. But I shall not be a burden to you. I know that you
meant that _you_ would never break our covenant, when you said:
'Promises are made to be kept,' but _I_ will break it. I am breaking it
now. You did belong to me when you last said good-by and laid your
young, strong hand over my poor fingers; but you do not belong to me as
you read this. As I can not know the exact moment when you read it, I
can never know when you cease to belong to me. Laura and father intend
to take me away; do not come to me until I return. No one knows. In all
my ravings, I never spoke your name; it was on my mind that I had
promised not to speak of it, and I never once forgot. But your presence
was in every wild and horrible dream; you were being scalped and drowned
and burned alive, and often and often you sat beside me holding my hand;
many many times you came to me and said, 'I will keep my word,' but
something took you away; you never went of your own accord. I have asked
them all what I raved about and every name that I spoke, but no one has
answered 'Tessa.' Write to me this once, and never again, and tell me
that you agree, that you are willing to break the bond that held us
together such a little while. I am a man, and a selfish one at that,
therefore I rejoice that you _were_ mine. You can have but one answer to
give. I will not accept any devotion from you that may hinder your
becoming the happy wife of a good man. Do not be too sorry for me. Laura
will expect you to write to her, but I pray you, do not write; I should
look for your letters and they would take away the little fortitude I
have. Be a good girl; love somebody by and by. You have bur

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