The day lilies were in bloom, and that meant August; it meant also that
her book was written, rewritten, and ready to be copied.
"Oh, that my poor little book were as perfect as you," she sighed one
morning as she arranged them with their broad, green leaves for the
vases in parlor and sitting-room. "But God made you with His own
fingers, and He made my book through my own fancies."
She had worked early and late, not flagging, through all the sultry
days. "You will make yourself sick," her mother had warned, "and it will
cost you all you earn to buy beef tea and pay the doctor; so where is
the good of it?"
She had read her manuscript aloud to her father, and he had laughed and
wiped his eyes and given sundry appreciative exclamations.
"That writing takes a precious sight of time," her mother had
remonstrated.
"That is because I am human." Tessa had answered soberly.
"Suppose it is refused."
"Then I'll be like William Howitt; his book was refused four times and
he stood on London bridge ready to toss it over. I do not think that I
will do as Charlotte Bronte did; she sent a rejected manuscript to a
publisher wrapped in the wrapper in which the first publisher had rolled
it. I suppose that his address was printed on it."
She had run on merrily as she had placed the cool, pure lilies in the
vase; but her heart was sinking, nevertheless. It had always taken so
little to exhilarate or depress her.
"Must you write to-day?" inquired her mother one morning in an
unsatisfied tone.
"Several hours."
"I wanted you to make calls with me and to help me with the currant
jelly and to put those button-holes into my linen wrapper."
"I can do it all, but I must write while I am fresh."
The first hour she wrote wearily; then she lost the small struggles in
her own life and became comforted through the comfort wherewith she
comforted others. Not one thing was forgotten, not one household duty
shirked, the jelly was made to perfection, the button-holes worked while
her mother was taking her afternoon nap, the calls were pushed through,
and then Mrs. Wadsworth proposed a call upon Mrs. Towne.
"I promised your Aunt Dinah that I would call."
Tessa demurred although she remembered her promise; she much preferred
calling some time when Aunt Dinah should be with her; Mrs. Wadsworth
insisted and Tessa yielded more graciously in manner than in mind.
Mrs. Towne received them most cordially and gracefully; an expression
flitted over her eyes as Tessa looked up into them that she never
forgot; it touched her as Dr. Lake's eyes did, sometimes; what could
this beautiful old mother need in her? Whatever it might be, she felt
fully prepared to give it.
Mrs. Wadsworth was as effusively talkative as usual; Tessa replied when
spoken to; lively, fussy, pretty little Mrs. Wadsworth did not compare
to her own advantage with her womanly daughter. Mrs. Towne looked at
Tessa and thought of the picture that she had seen; it was certainly
excellent only that the picture was rather too intellectual; in the
picture she might have written "Mechanism of the Heavens" but sitting
there in the crimson velvet chair with a pale blue bow among her braids
and her soft gray veil shading her cheek she was more like the daughter
that she had ever dreamed of--simple, sweet, and thoroughly lovable Mrs.
Towne was a trifle afraid of a woman who looked _too_ intellectual.
Would she forgive Ralph and trust him again? She was sure that she would
until Tessa unbuttoned her glove and drew it off; the slight, strong
hand was a revelation; the girl had a will of her own. But might not her
will be towards him? "I wish that I knew nothing," thought the mother,
"the suspense will weary me, the disappointment will be nearly as much
for me as for the boy."
Meanwhile, unconscious Tessa, with the glove in her fingers, was far
away in the Milan cathedral on the wall opposite her, looking into the
arches of the choir, feeling the sunlight through the glimmering painted
windows, thinking about the procession of the scarlet-robed priests, and
wondering about the hidden chancel; if the picture were upon her wall
how it would glow and become alive in the western light, the drooping
banners would stir with the breath of the evening, the censers would
swing and the notes of the organ would bear her up and away. Away!
Where? Was not all her world in this little Dunellen?
"My son is always busy; he rushes into every thing that he undertakes."
The mother had a voice like the son's; the soul of sincerity was in it;
the sincere, sympathetic voice, the rush of feeling, love, regret, and
sense of loss that it brought filled her eyes too full to be raised. At
that instant Mrs. Towne was observing her; her heart grew lighter,
hoping for the thing that might be.
Mrs. Towne held Tessa's hand at parting. "I am an old woman, so I may
ask a favor of a young one, will you come soon again?"
"Thank you, yes."
"And often?"
Then she had to promise again. Dr. Towne was seldom at home; she thought
of this when she promised. She was thinking of it that evening in the
early twilight as she weeded among her pansies. Dine said that it was a
wonder that she had not turned into a pansy herself by this time.
"Daughter, why do you sigh?"
Her father was seated in a rustic chair on the piazza with a copy of
_Burns_ unopened upon his knee; he had left the store earlier than usual
that afternoon, complaining of the old pain in his side.
"My sigh must be very loud or your ears very sharp," she replied,
lifting her head. "I will bring you some perfect pansies."
He took them and looked down at them; she stood at his side smoothing
the straggling locks on his bald forehead with her perfumed, soiled
fingers. "I think that if I knew nothing about God but that He made
pansies, I should love Him for that," she said at last.
"Is _that_ what you were sighing over?"
"The sigh came out of the heart of the pansy. I wish I knew how to love
somebody."
"Is that what you were sighing over?"
"I do not know how," rubbing the soil from her fingers, "to love when I
lose faith. I do not know how and it worries me."
"You mean that you do not know how to honor and trust when you lose
faith. Are you so far on the journey of life as that? Must I
congratulate you, daughter?"
"No; teach me."
"No human teaching can teach you to love where you have lost faith."
"Well; nobody asks me to!"
"If any body ever does, look at your own failings; that pulls me
through."
"I understand that," still speaking in a troubled voice, "but all the
love and patience do no good; people do not change because we love
them."
"No, they do not change, but _we_ change."
"That is not enough for me; I am not satisfied with the blessing of
giving, I want the other somebody to have the blessing of receiving."
"We do not know the end."
"You two people do find queer things to talk about," cried a lively
voice behind them. "If I knew what mystical meant, I should say that it
was you and Tessa. Don't you want to hear all about Mrs. Towne, and what
a _lovely_ room we were taken into?"
"Yes, dear, and how her hair was fixed and just how she was dressed."
Tessa ran back to her pansies; Mrs. Wadsworth had found a theme to
enlarge upon for the next half hour. As Tessa worked among the flowers,
a poem that she had learned that day while making the button-holes sang
itself through and through her heart.
"Oh the hurt and the hurt and the hurt of love!
Wherever the sun shines, the waters go,
It hurts the snowdrop, it hurts the dove,
God on His throne, and man below.
But sun would not shine nor waters go,
Snowdrop tremble nor fair dove moan,
God be on high, nor man below,
But for love--the love with its hurt alone.
Thou knowest, O, Saviour, its hurt and its sorrows,
Didst rescue its joy by the might of Thy pain;
Lord of all yesterdays, days, and to-morrows,
Help us love on in the hope of Thy gain!
Hurt as it may, love on, love forever;
Love for love's sake like the Father above,
But for whose brave-hearted Son we had never
Known the sweet hurt of the sorrowful love."
"I am not sincere in repeating that," she mused. "I _don't_ love on,
love forever--and I don't want to! If I were in a book, every thing would
make no difference, nothing would make a difference--would love on, love
forever--and I don't know how. I wish I did. It would not change _him_,
but it would make _me_ very glad and very good! I can not attain to it."
The grazing sound of wheels brought her back to the pansies, then to Dr.
Lake; he had driven up close to the opening in the lilac shrubbery.
"Ah, Mystic."
"Good evening, doctor."
It was the first time that they had been alone together since Sue's
engagement. She had been dreading this first time. She arose and brushed
her hands against each other, moving towards the opening in the lilacs.
"I saw you, and could not resist the temptation of stopping to speak to
you."
"Thank you," she said warmly. "Will you have a lily?"
"No, lilies are not for me. Briers and thorns grow for me."
"Where are you riding to now?"
"Felix Harrison came home yesterday worse than ever. I was there in the
night and am going again. Why don't he die now that he has a chance?
Catch me throwing away such an opportunity."
"I hope that you will never have such an opportunity," she answered, not
thinking of what she was saying.
"That's always the way; the lucky ones die, the unlucky ones live."
"Can you not resist the temptation to tell me any thing so trite as
that?"
"Don't be sharp, Mystic."
She was leaning against the low fence, her hands folded over each other,
a breath of air stirring the wavy hair around her temples, and touching
the pale blue ribbon at her throat, a white, graceful figure, speaking
in her animated way with the flush of the pink rose tinting her cheeks
and a misty veil shadowing her eyes.
"A very pretty picture in a frame-work of brown and green," thought the
old man in the rustic chair on the piazza.
But she never thought of making a picture of herself, she left such
small coquetries to girls who had nothing better to do or to think of.
She had her life to live and her books to write! Nevertheless two pairs
of eyes found her pleasant to look upon. Dr. Lake's experiences had
opened his eyes to see that Tessa Wadsworth was unlike any woman that he
had ever known; she was to him the calm of the moonlight, the fragrance
of the spring, and the restfulness of trust.
In these weeks of his trouble, had she been like some other of the
Dunellen girls, she would have found her way without pushing into his
heart by the wide door that shallow Sue had left ajar.
His heart was open to any attractive woman who would sympathize with
him; to any woman who would be glad of what Sue Greyson had thrown away;
she might have become aware of this but for her instinctive habit of
looking upward to love; even the tenderest compassion mingled with some
admiration could not grow into love with her in her present moods; she
was too young and asked too much of life for such a possibility.
In these days every man was too far below George Macdonald and Frederick
Robertson, unless indeed it might be the new Greek professor; in her
secret heart she had begun to wonder if Philip Towne were not something
like them both; perhaps because in his sermon that Sunday twilight in
the Park he had quoted a "declaration of Robertson's"--"I am better
acquainted with Jesus Christ than I am with any man on earth."
The words came to her as she stood, to-night, talking with Dr Lake; she
was wishing that she might repeat them to him; instead she only replied,
"Why shouldn't I be sharp? You are a man and therefore able to bear it."
"Not much of a man--or wholly a man. I reckon that is nearer right. I
never saw a man yet that a blow from a woman's little finger wouldn't
knock him over."
"Not any woman's finger."
"Any thing would blow me over to-night. Why do women have to make so
many things when they are married?" he asked earnestly.
"To keep the love they have won," she said with a mischievous laugh.
"Don't you know how soon roses fade after they are rudely torn from the
protection and nourishment of the parent stem?"
"Rudely! They flutter, they pant, they struggle to tear themselves
loose! Why do you suppose that she prefers Stacey to me?"
"I don't know all things."
"You know that. Answer."
"She does not prefer _him_. He is the smallest part of her calculations.
Marriage with you would make no change in her life; she seeks change;
she has never been married and lived in Philadelphia--therefore to be
married and live in Philadelphia must be glorious."
"Then if I had money to take her anywhere and everywhere she would have
married me. I'll turn highwayman to get rich then. She shows me every
pretty thing she makes; dresses up in all her new dresses and asks me if
I feel like the bridegroom lends me her engagement ring when she is
tired of it. I'd bite it in two if I dared--reads me his letters and asks
me to help her answer them for she can only write a page and a half out
of her own head."
Tessa laughed; it was better to laugh than to be angry, and Sue could
not be any body but Sue Greyson.
"She says that her only objection to him is his name and age; she likes
my name better, and scribbles Sue Greyson Lake over his old envelopes. I
would like to send him one of them. I was reading in the paper this
morning of a man who shot the girl that refused him; if I don't shoot
her it will not be her fault, she is driving me mad. If I can't have her
myself, _he_ sha'n't!"
She dropped her hands and turned away from him.
"Mystic." But she was among the pansies again.
"Mystic," with the tone in his voice that she would never forget, "come
back. Don't _you_ throw me over; I shall go to destruction if you do."
"I can not help you. You do not try to help yourself."
"I know it. I don't want to be helped. I drift. I have no will to
struggle. She plays with me like a cat with a mouse. I do not know what
I am about half the time. I will take a double dose of morphine some
night. I wonder if she would cry if she saw me dead. Men have done such
things with less provocation; men of my temperament, too. Would _you_ be
sorry, Mystic?"
She stretched out her hands to take his hand in both hers: "Don't talk
so," she said brokenly. "You know you do not mean it; why can't you be
brave and good? I didn't know that men were so weak."
"I _am_ weak--I have strayed, I have wandered away--but I can go back."
Long afterward she remembered these words; they, with his last "good-by,
Mystic," were all that she cared to remember among all the words that he
had ever spoken to her.
She did not speak; she moved her fingers caressingly over his hand,
thinking how pliant and feminine, how characteristic, it was.
"I know a woman's heart," he ran on lightly; "she is not a sacred
mystery to me, as the fellows say in books. I dissected an old negro
woman's heart once; she died of enlargement of the heart, so that it was
as much a study as the largest heart of her kind. Sue is going out
to-night with Towne and his mother--it's a pity that _he_ wouldn't step
in now--she might let us all have a fair fight, and old Gesner, too, with
his simpering voice! She would take Gesner only he doesn't propose.
'Thirty days hath September.' I wish it had thirty thousand. When I was
a youngster, and got a beating for not learning that, I little thought
that one day I _would_ learn it and count the days every night. Oh, that
rare and radiant first of October! Do you know," bending forward and
lowering his tone, "that she is more than half inclined to throw him
over?"
"She is never more than half inclined to do anything," answered Tessa
indignantly. "I wish that he were here to keep her out of mischief. Why
do you stay so much with her? Surely you have business enough to keep
you out of her presence."
He laughed excitedly. "Keep a starving man away from bread when he has
only to stretch out his hand and snatch it."
"You have found that your doll is stuffed with sawdust, can't you toss
it aside?"
"I love sawdust," he answered, comically.
"Then I'm ashamed of you."
"You haven't seen other men tried."
"It is no honor to you to be thinking of her under existing
circumstances."
"I would run away with her to-night if she would run with me."
"Then I despise you."
"You love like a woman, Mystic; I love like a man."
"I hope that no man will ever dishonor himself or dishonor me with love
like that."
As he stooped to pick up his glove, his breath swept her cheek; she
started, almost exclaiming as she drew back, flushed and bewildered. He
colored angrily, then laughed an excited, reckless laugh, and gathered
the reins which had been hanging loose.
"Dr. Lake," in a hurried, tremulous voice, "please don't do that. Oh,
why must you? Why can't you be brave?" Her voice was choking with tears.
"I did not _think_ such a thing of you."
"Of course you didn't! But I will not do it again--I really will not. I
am half mad as I told you. Good night, Mystic."
"Good night," she said sadly.
He held the reins still lingering.
"Will you ride with me again some day?"
"No, I don't like to hear you talk."
Again she went back to her pansies; the innocent pansies with their
faint, pure breath were more congenial. As he drove under the maples, he
muttered words that would have startled her as much as his tainted
breath.
"Do you like it in this world, little pansies?" she sighed.
Her father laid his book within a window on the sill, and came down to
her to talk about the buds of the day-lilies; her mother fanned herself
with a palm-leaf fan and complained of the heat; Dinah ran down-stairs,
fresh and airy in green muslin with a scarlet geranium among her curls,
and after standing still to ask if she looked pretty, ran across to the
planks to walk up and down with Norah Bird with their arms linked and
their heads close together.
Tessa sighed again, remembering the old confidential talks with Laura
when they both cared for the same things before she had outgrown Laura.
There were so many things in her world to be sighed about to-night; the
thought of Felix threw all her life into shadow; Norah and Dinah were
laughing over some silly thing, and her mother was vigorously waving the
fan and vigorously fretting at the heat and the dust in this same hour
in which Felix--her bright, good Felix--was moaning out his feeble
strength. She had not dared to ask Dr. Lake how he was; what comfort
would it be to know that he was a little better or a little worse? How
could she talk to him of her busy life and take him a copy of her book?
She was counting the days, also; for in October her book would surely be
out.
"You think more of that than you would of being married," Dinah had said
that day.
"So I do--than to be married to any one I know."
"Do you expect to find somebody _new_?"
"Perhaps I do not expect to find any one at all," she had answered.
"Oh, don't be so dreary," laughed Dinah.
_Was_ that dreary? Once it might have seemed dreary; a year ago with
what a smiting pain she would have echoed the word, but it was not a
dreary prospect to-night as she stood with her father's arm about her.
A new thing had happened to disturb her; Dinah was becoming shy and
constrained in the presence of Mr. Hammerton; last summer she would run
out to meet him, hang on his arm and chatter like a magpie; this summer
she would oftener avoid him than move forward to greet him; this
shamefacedness was altogether new and very becoming, yet the elder
sister did not like it. There was no change in Mr. Hammerton, why should
there be change in Dinah or in herself? He came no oftener than he had
come last summer, he manifested no preference, sometimes she thought
that this non-manifestation was too studied; gifts were brought to each,
were it books or flowers. Did poor little Dine care for him, and was she
so afraid of revealing it? Or, had she decided that it was for _her_
sake that he came, and did she leave them so often together alone that
it might be pleasanter for both? More than once or twice when he was
expected, she had pleaded an engagement with Norah, and had not appeared
until late in the evening.
"I wonder what's got Dine," their mother had remarked, "she seems
possessed to run away from Gus."
Their father had looked annoyed and exclaimed, "Nonsense, mother,
nonsense."
Tessa's reverie was ended by Mr. Hammerton's quick step upon the planks.
"He was here last night," commented Mrs. Wadsworth as he crossed the
street.
"Good evening, good people," he said opening the gate. "You make quite a
picture! If you had fruit and wine I should rub up my French or Spanish.
I think that I am not too late; I did not hear until after tea that
Professor Towne is to read tonight in Association Hall; some of your
favorites, Lady Blue. Will you go, you and Dine?"
"Oh, yes, indeed; that is just what I want."
"It is to be selections from 'Henry V.,' 'The High Tide,' 'Locksley
Hall,' I think, and a few lighter things. You will think that you would
rather elocute 'The High Tide' than even to have written it."
"That is impossible. Did you tell Dine?"
"No, but I will. It was proper to ask the elder sister was it not?"
"I am not Leah," said Tessa seriously, "call Rachel."
"Rachel! Rachel!" he called, beckoning to Dinah. Dinah whistled by way
of reply and dropped Norah's arm.
"Have you brought me Mother Goose or a sugar-plum?" she asked lightly.
"And why do you call me Rachel?"
"Don't talk nonsense, children," said Mr. Wadsworth very gravely. The
color deepened in Mr. Hammerton's cheeks and forehead as he met the old
man's grave eyes. "Mother, let's you and I go too," proposed Mr.
Wadsworth, "we will imagine it to be twenty-seven years ago."
"I only wish it was," was the dissatisfied reply.
That evening was an event in Tessa's quiet life: she heard no sound but
the reader's voice, she saw no face but his; she drew a long breath when
the last words were uttered.
"Was it so good as all that?" whispered Mr. Hammerton. "You shall go to
the Chapel with me next Sunday and hear him preach about 'Meditation.'"
Dr. Towne, his mother, and Sue Greyson were seated near them; she did
not observe the group until she arose to leave the hall.
"Wasn't it stupid?" muttered Sue, catching at her sleeve. "And isn't he
perfectly elegant? Almost as elegant as the doctor."
"You will not forget your promise?" Mrs. Towne said as Tessa turned
towards her.
"Has Miss Tessa been making you a promise? She does not know how to
break her word," said Dr. Towne.
"You do not need to tell me that; her eyes are promise-keepers."
Mrs. Towne kept her at her side until they reached the entrance and
would have detained her until Professor Towne had made his way to them,
had not Mr. Hammerton understood by the moving of her lips that she was
not pleased and hurried her away.
"I hope that I shall never become acquainted with Professor Towne,"
exclaimed Tessa nervously, as Mr. Hammerton drew her hand within his
arm.
"Why not? I thought that you were wrapped up in him as the young ladies
say."
"Suppose I make a hole in him and find him stuffed with sawdust."
"You could immediately retire into a convent."
Dinah had mischievously fallen behind with her father and mother.
"Then I could never find my _good_ man?"
"Must you find him or die forlorn?"
For several moments she found no answer: then the words came
deliberately; "Perhaps I _need_ not; I wonder why I thought there was a
_must_ in the matter; why may I not be happy and helpful without ending
as good little girls do in fairy stories? I need not live or die
forlorn--and yet--Gus, you are the only person in the whole world to whom
I would confess that I would rather be like the good little girl in the
fairy story! Please forget it."
"It is too pleasant to forget," he answered. "I do not want you to be
too ambitious or too wise for the good old fashions of wife and mother!"
"How can any woman be that!" she exclaimed indignantly.
"May you never know."
"What an easy time Eve had! All she had to do was to be led to Adam. She
would not have chosen him a while afterward; he was altogether too much
under her influence."
"That weakness has become a part of our original sin."
"It isn't yours," she retorted.
"Am I so different from other men?" he asked in a constrained voice.
"Most assuredly. I should as soon think of a whole row of encyclopedias
falling in love."
Mr. Hammerton was silent, for once repartee failed him.