The afternoon sun was shining down hot on the head of the soldier on his
tall pedestal in the Park; he stood leaning on his gun, his eyes
intently peering from under the broad visor of his cap; at his feet a
group of children were playing soldiers marching to the war; at the
pump, several yards distant, a small boy was pumping for the others to
drink, a tall boy was lifting the rusty dipper to his lips while a
ragged little girl was wistfully awaiting her turn; nurses in white caps
were rolling infants' chaises along the smooth, wide paths; ladies in
shopping attire were sauntering with brown parcels in their hands;
half-grown boys were lolling on the green benches with cigars and lazy
words in their mouths; girls in twos and threes were strolling along
with linked arms mingling gay talk with gay laughter; in the arbor seven
little girls and three little boys were playing school: a little boy who
stammered was trying to spell Con-stan-ti-no-ple, a rosy child in white
was noisily repeating "Thirty days hath September," a black-eyed boy was
shouting "The boy stood on the burning deck," and a naughty child was
being vigorously scolded by the teacher, who held a threatening willow
switch above her head. "You are the dreadfulest child that ever
breathed," she was declaring. "You are the essence of stupidity, you are
the dumbest of the dumb."
A serious voice arrested the willow switch: "I didn't like to be scolded
when I was a little girl, it used to make me cry."
The willow switch dropped; the various recitations came to a sudden
pause. "But she is such a dreadful bad girl," urged the teacher.
Tessa Wadsworth lingered with her reticule, three parcels, a parasol,
and _Sartor Resartus_ in her hands.
"_You_ come and be teacher and tell us a story," coaxed the naughty
child.
But Tessa laughed and moved on, to be stopped, however, by a quick call.
"Tessa Wadsworth! I declare that you are a pedestrian."
The voice belonged to a pair of blue eyes, and a slight figure in drab.
"Well, now that you have caught me what will you have?"
"I'll be satisfied with a walk across the Park. Didn't you know that I
was home? Gus said that he would tell you."
"Have you had a pleasant time?"
"Oh, I always manage to enjoy myself. How is it that you always stay
poking at home?"
"I seem to have found my niche at home. Every one needs me."
"Dunellen is a poky little place, but Nan thinks it is splendid."
"I expect to spend the winter away from home and I don't want to go. I
don't see why I must. Mother has been promising for years that the first
winter that Dine was out of school I should go for three months, more or
less, to an old aunt of hers for whom I was named; she has lost all her
seven boys and lives on a farm down in the country with the dearest old
husband that ever breathed. If I had such a dear old husband I should
always want to be alone with him."
"That sounds just like you. I wanted Naughty Nan to come home with me,
but she wouldn't or couldn't. You can't think how thin she has grown,
and she mopes like an old woman. I had to coax her to laugh just once
for me before I came away. I suppose that I oughtn't to tell, but I will
tell you; you are as deep as the sea. You know Dr. Towne?"
"Yes."
"Well it is all _his_ fault," said Mary Sherwood in a mysterious low
voice.
"Did he give her something to take outwardly and she took it inwardly?"
asked Tessa gravely.
"That's like you, too. You are always laughing at somebody. How he
flirted with poor little Naughty Nan nobody knows!"
"How she flirted with him, you mean."
"No, I don't. She was in earnest this time. He made her presents and
took her everywhere; he always treated her as if--"
"--She were his mother."
"I won't talk to you," cried Mary indignantly, "you don't know any thing
about it. You haven't seen how white and thin she is! It's just another
Sue Greyson affair; and every body talks about how he flirted with her.
I comforted Nan by saying that he had done the same thing before and
would again."
"Did _that_ comfort her?"
"It made her angry. I don't see how she can mourn over a man with a
false heart, do you?"
"She would have no occasion to mourn over a man with a true heart."
"Do you think that he changes his mind?" asked Mary anxiously.
"No, I think that he does not have any mind to change; he has no mind to
flirt or not to flirt; he simply enjoys himself, not caring for the
consequences."
"H'm! What do you call _that_?"
"I do not call it any thing; it would be as well for you not to talk
about your cousin."
"So Gus said; I had to tell him. I'm afraid that Nan will die."
"No, she will not. It will make her bitter, or it will make her true."
"Nan is so cut because people talk."
"When is she coming to Dunellen?"
"She wouldn't come with me! How I did coax her! She will come in
September. She says that she will stay with me until she is married."
"Then she doesn't intend to take the veil because of this?"
"She did say so--seriously--that she would enter a convent--"
"A monastery!" suggested Tessa.
"Where the monks are," laughed Mary, "I think that would suit her
better."
"And believe me--Dr. Towne is not capable of doing a cruel or a mean
thing--don't talk to your cousin about him."
"Oh, me! there he is now coming towards us! On our path, too. I'll break
the rules and run across the grass if you will."
It was certainly Ralph Towne. He was walking slowly with his eyes bent
upon the ground.
"He looks like a monk himself," whispered Mary, "he wouldn't look at us
for any thing."
"Halt!" commanded the small military voice near the monument. He turned
to look at the children; Tessa was close enough to feel the sunshine in
his eyes although his face was not towards her; he stood watching the
soldiers as they tramped on at the word of command; her dress brushed
against him, she could have laid her hand on his arm; lifting her eyes
with all her grief and disappointment at his indifference she met his
fully; they were grave and very dark, not one gleam of recognition; how
greatly he had changed! His eyes appeared larger, not so deep set as she
remembered them, and there were many, many white threads running through
his hair. Had Naughty Nan effected all this? With a slight inclination
of his head he passed on.
"He does look as if he had a 'mind to do or not do' something," said
Mary! "I hope that he can't sleep nights. He almost slew me with his
eyes; I can't see why such naughty hearts should look through such
eyes!"
"They don't," said Tessa, "a good heart was looking through those eyes."
"H'm! I believe it!"
Tessa had walked three blocks in a reverie, scolding herself for her
sympathy with the changed face, trying to feel indignant that he had
passed her by so coolly, and trying to despise him for so soon
forgetting what she could never forget, when, lo! there he stood again,
face to face with her, speaking eagerly, his hand already touching hers.
"Miss Tessa, what has happened to your eyes?"
"Excuse me," she stammered, "I did not see you."
"How do you do?" he asked more coolly as she withdrew her hand.
"Did you not just pass me in the Park?"
"I have not crossed the Park to-day."
"Then I met your ghost."
"Can you not be a little glad to meet me in the flesh?"
"Mary Sherwood was with me and _she_ recognized you; she saw you before
I did."
He laughed the low amused laugh that she had heard so often. "My cousin
Philip will believe now that he might be my brother--my twin brother--but
that he appears older than he is. He has come to Dunellen to take a
professorship. He is to be Greek teacher at the Seminary instead of
Professor Grey. Philip is a rare linguist; he is a rare scholar. It is
the Comedy of Errors over again. I suppose that he did not talk to you
and say that he was glad to see you again."
"He bowed, he could not but do it. I expect that he thought I recognized
him, as I certainly did. You will look like him some day, but he will
never look like you."
"Your distinction is not flattering. May I ask a kindness of you?"
"Do you need to ask that?" she answered hurriedly.
"My mother is homesick in Dunellen. Will you call upon her?"
She colored, hesitating. After a second, during which she felt his eyes
upon her, she said, "Yes."
"Philip's father and mine were twins; it is not the first time that we
have been taken for each other. He has a twin sister."
"And he is like his sister."
"Yes, he _is_ like his sister. Imagine me teaching Greek or preaching in
the Park--Phil is a preacher, of course, and an elocutionist. You will
hear of him; he does not live in a cloister; he is always doing
something for somebody."
"He is a _disciplined_ man; I never saw a person to whom that word could
be so fitly applied."
"And you never thought of applying it to me."
"I confess that I never did," she said laughing.
"You can see a great deal at a glance."
"That is why I glance."
"Probably you know that I have come to Dunellen to work."
"I congratulate Dunellen," she answered prettily.
"I hope that you may have reason to do so. May I tell my mother that you
will call?"
"Yes--if you wish," she said, doubtfully, buttoning a loose button on her
glove. "Good afternoon, Dr. Towne."
She passed on at a quickened pace, her cheeks glowing, her eyes alight.
A stranger, meeting her, turned for a second look. "She has heard good
news," he said to himself.
_Had_ she heard good news? She had seen the man that she had so
foolishly and fondly believed Ralph Towne to be; she had learned that
she could not create out of the longings of her own heart a man too
noble and true for God to make out of His heart. Her ideal had not been
too good to be true; just then it was enough for her to know that her
ideal existed. Her heart could not break because she was disappointed in
Ralph Towne, but it would have broken had she found that God did not
care to make men good and true. And Ralph Towne would become good and
true some day. And then she would be glad and not ashamed that she had
trusted in him; she could not be glad and not ashamed yet. She did not
love the man that could trifle with Sue or flirt with Nan Gerard. She
had loved the ideal in her heart, and not the soul in his flesh. He
could not understand that; he would call it a fancy, and say that she
could make rhyme to it, but that she could not live the poem. Perhaps
not; if she had loved him she might have lived a different poem; her
living and loving, her doing and giving, would be a poem, anyway; she
did not love Ralph Towne to-day, she was only afraid that she did. He
could not understand the woman who would prefer Philip Towne's
saintliness; he was assured that his money would outweigh it with any
maiden in Dunellen--with any maiden but Tessa Wadsworth; he was beginning
to understand her. "She did not ask me to call," he soliloquized. The
stranger passing him also, gave him also a second glance, but he did not
say to himself, "He has heard good news." _Was_ it good news that the
woman that he had thoughtlessly deceived held herself aloof from him and
above him?
"She loved me once," he soliloquized, "and love with her must die a hard
death."
How hard a death even Tessa herself could not comprehend; she understood
years afterward when she said: "I thought once that I never could be as
glad as I had been sorrowful; but I learned that the power to be glad
was infinitely greater than the power of being sorrowful."
That evening her father called her to say: "The new professor is to
preach Sunday evening before church service in the Park; you and I will
go to hear him."