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."