The blade snapped. If she had seen but his face she would have supposed
that he had cut himself. She hastened to speak: "Some one says that we
must change our minds three times before we can be sure."
"But I do not want to wait until you are sure."
"I am sure now."
"No doubt. Tell me now."
How many times his irresistibly boyish manner had forced from her words
that she had afterward sorely regretted!
"You will not be pleased. You will dislike me forever after."
"Much you will care for that."
"Shall I not?" smiling at the humor in his eyes. "I think that I do not
care as I once did for what people think of me; the question nowadays is
what I think of them."
"I will remember," he said urgently, "that I brought it all upon my own
head."
How could he guess that in her heart was lodged one unpleasant thought
of him? Had she not a little while--such a little while since--cared so
much for him that he was grieved for her?
"You must promise not to be cross."
"I promise," taking out his watch. "You may hammer at me for twenty
minutes. I have an engagement at half past three."
Did Nan Gerard care as she had cared once? Would the sound of his wheels
be to Naughty Nan what they were to her a year ago? A blue and gold
edition of Longfellow was laid open on its face on the broad
window-sill; she ran her forefinger the length of both covers before she
could temper her voice; she did not wish to speak coldly, and yet her
heart was very cold towards him.
"I think that you took me by surprise at first; I thought you were the
handsomest man in the world--"
"You have changed that opinion?" he said, laughing.
"Yes; I should not think of describing you as handsome now; I should
simply say that you were tall, dark, with deep-set, not remarkable,
brown eyes, a quiet manner, given to few words--not at all remarkable,
you are aware."
"Go on, I am not demolished yet."
"Your spirit I created out of my own fancies; I gave you in those
enthusiastic days a heart like a woman's heart, and a perfect intellect.
You were my Sir Galahad, until I knew that some things you said were
not--quite true?"
"Not quite true!" he repeated huskily.
Her eyes as well as her fingers were on the blue covers.
"Not true as I meant truth. Your words did not mean to you what they
meant to me--I beg your pardon; do not let me savor of strong-mindedness,
but I speak from my heart to your heart. You asked me a question
frankly, I have answered it frankly. You said some things to Sue that
you ought not to have said and that hurt me; I began to feel that you
are not sincere through and through and through. At first I believed
wholly in you and then I believed not at all. I was very bitter. And it
hurt me so that I would rather have died."
Her tone was as cold and even as if she were reciting a theorem in
_Legendre_.
"So you died because you were not true, but you did not go to heaven
because you had never lived, and therefore I can not expect to find you
again. I did not know before how sad such a burial is."
"Why can not you expect to find me again?"
"To find what? That fancy? If there is any one in the world as good, as
true, as strong, gentle and sympathetic as my ideal, I surely hope to
find that he is in the world."
"You thought that his name was Ralph Towne, and now you know that his
name is not Ralph Towne."
"I do not know what his name may be."
"You think the real Ralph Towne is a stranger not worth knowing?"
"He is a stranger, certainly; whether or not he is worth knowing you
know best."
She laughed, but not the suspicion of a smile gleamed in his eyes; she
had forgotten that they could be as dark and stern as this.
"Time will show you, Miss Tessa," he said humbly.
"I _am_ sharp. I did not mean to be. But it cuts me so when I think that
you can flirt with girls like Sue and Miss Gerard. Do you know of what
it reminds me? Once the enemy fell upon the rear of an army and smote
all that were feeble, when they were faint and weary; it was an army of
women and little children, as well as men, and they did not go forth to
war; all they asked was a peaceable passage through the land."
The door was pushed softly open; Tessa lifted her eyes to behold the
rare vision of shining gray silk, and real lace, a fine face crowned
with white braids and lighted by the softest and brownest of brown eyes.
"My dear." All her motherhood was concentrated in the two worn-out
words.
"Now you may run away, Ralph."
"I am very glad to," he said. "Good afternoon, Miss Tessa."
Tessa could not trust her voice to speak; raising her eyes she met his
fully as he turned at the door to speak to his mother; a long searching
look on both sides; neither smiled.
"Tessa, have you been quarrelling with my boy?"
"No, ma'am."
"Has he been quarrelling with you?"
"No, ma'am."
Mrs. Towne seated herself in the chair that Dr. Towne had vacated,
arranged her dress and folded her hands in her lap.
"It is Nan Gerard again! What a flirt that girl is! She called yesterday
and Ralph chanced to come in while she was here; she gave him such an
invitation to invite her to drive with him that he could not--that is, he
did not--refuse. I wish that he wouldn't, sometimes; but he says that he
is amused and no one is harmed. I am not so sure of that. I do not
understand Miss Gerard. I think that I do not understand girls of this
generation. But I understand you."
"I wish that you would teach me to be as wise."
"You will be by and by. Do you know what I would like to ask you to
promise?"
"I can not imagine."
"I have studied you. If you will give yourself five years to think, to
grow, you will marry at thirty the man that you would refuse to-day. You
are impetuous to-day, you form your judgments rashly, you despise what
you can not understand, and you are not yet capable of the love that
hopeth all things, endureth all things, that suffereth long and is
_kind_."
"That is true; I am not capable of it. I have no patience with myself,
nor with others."
"If you will wait these five years, your life and another life might be
more blessed."
"Mrs. Towne! No one loves me. There is no occasion for me not to wait. I
could promise without the least difficulty for the happiness or
unhappiness of marriage is as unattainable to me to-day as the happiness
or unhappiness of old age."
"I will not ask you to promise, my daughter, but I will ask you to
promise this; before you say to any man, 'Yes,' will you come to me and
talk it all out to me? As if I were really your mother!"
Tessa promised with misty eyes.
"I promised to show you an old jewel-case this afternoon," said Mrs.
Towne in a lighter tone. "I wish that I might tell you the history of
each piece." She brought the box from a small table and pushed her chair
nearer Tessa that she might open it in her lap. "This emerald is for
you," she said, slipping a ring containing an emerald in old-fashioned
setting upon the first finger of Tessa's left hand; "and it means what
you have promised. All that your mother will permit me, I give to you
this hour."
"You are very kind to me."
"I am very kind to myself. All my life I have wanted a daughter like
you: a girl with blue eyes and a pure heart; one who would not care to
flirt and dress, but who would love me and talk to me as you talk to me.
I am proud of my boy, but I want a daughter."
"I am not very good; you may be disappointed in me."
"I do not fear that. This, my mother gave me," lifting pin and ear-rings
from the box. A diamond set in silver formed the centre of the pin; the
diamond was surrounded by pearls of different sizes. "I was very proud
of this pin. I did not know then that I could not have every thing in
the world and out of it. This pin my father gave me."
Tessa laid it in her hand and counted the diamonds; it was a diamond
with nine opals radiating from it, between each opal a small diamond.
"It looks like a dahlia," she said. "I love pretty things. This ring is
the first ring that I ever had."
"People say that the emerald means success in love," replied Mrs. Towne.
"I did not remember it when I chose that for you. Perhaps you would
prefer a diamond."
"I like best what you chose," said Tessa, taking from among the jewels,
bracelet, pin, ear-rings and chatelaine of turquoises and pearls, and
examining each piece with interested eyes. "These are old, too."
"Every thing in this box is old. Some day you shall see my later jewels.
You will like this," she added, placing in her hands a bracelet formed
of a network of iron wire, clasped with a medallion of Berlin iron on a
steel plate; the necklace that matched it was also of medallions; the
one in the centre held a bust of Psyche; upon the others were busts of
men and women whom Tessa did not recognize; to this set belonged comb,
pin, and ear-rings.
"These belonged to my mother. How old they are I do not know. See this
ring, a portrait of Washington, painted on copper, and covered with
glass. It is said to be one of the finest portraits in the country. I
used to wear it a great deal. My father gave it to me on my fifteenth
birthday. Have I told you that Lafayette kissed me when I was an infant
in my mother's arms?"
While Tessa replaced the treasures with fingers that lingered over them,
with the new weight of the emerald upon her finger, and the new weight
of a promise upon her heart, Mrs. Towne related the story of the kiss
from Lafayette.
Tessa was a perfect listener, Mrs. Towne thought; the lighting or
darkening of her eyes, a flush rising to her cheeks now and then, the
curving of the mobile lips, an exclamation of surprise or appreciation,
were most grateful to the old heart that had found after long and
intense waiting the daughter that she could love and honor.
In the late twilight Dr. Towne returned; Tessa was still listening, with
the jewel-case in her lap.
"I have missed my husband with all the old loneliness since we came into
Dunellen," she was saying when her tall son entered and stood at her
side.
"Mother," he said, in the shy way that Tessa knew, "you forget that you
have me."
"No, son, I do not forget; but your life is full of new interests.
Yesterday I did not have ten minutes alone with you."
"It shall not happen again."
"I have persuaded Tessa to stay and hear Philip to-night; she says that
he is like a west wind to her."
"He would not fall upon the hindmost in your army, Miss Tessa."
"I am sure that he would not."
"Not if they coaxed him to?"
"He should have manliness enough to resist all their pretty arts, and
enticing ways."
"Mother, can't you convince her? She has been rating me soundly for
flirting, when it is the girls that are flirting with me."
"It takes two to flirt," replied his mother.
Dr. Towne was sent for as they were rising from the dinner table; Mrs.
Towne and Tessa crossed the Park alone; at the entrance of the Lecture
Room Sue Greyson met them.
"I _had_ to come," Sue whispered, seizing Tessa's arm. "Father is so
horrid and hateful, and said awful things to me just because I asked
_him_ to write to Stacey. The letter is written anyhow, and I'm thankful
it's over. Father says that he won't give me the house, and that I
sha'n't be married under his roof. He is mad with Gerald, too, and told
him to leave his house. So Gerald left and went to see a patient. He is
so happy that he don't care what father says."
As they passed down the aisle, Tessa's dress brushed against Felix
Harrison; he was sitting alone with his father.
"Why! Felix Harrison! Did you ever?" whispered irrepressible Sue.
The Lecture Room was well-lighted, and well-filled. Professor Towne was
the fashion in Dunellen. During the opening prayer there was a stir in
one of the pews behind Tessa; she did not lift her head, her heart beat
so rapidly that she felt as if she were suffocating.
"Poor fellow," came in Sue's loud whisper close to her ear. "They have
taken him out! I should think that he would know better than to go among
folks."
Tessa could not follow the speaker for some minutes; the lights went
out, she could not catch her breath; Mrs. Towne took her hand and held
it firmly, then the lights came dim, through a misty and waving
distance, her breath was drawn more easily, she could discern the
outline of the preacher, and then his dark face was brought fully into
view, his voice sounded loud in her ears; for some time longer she could
not catch and connect his words; then, clear and strong, the words fell
from his lips, and she could listen and understand--
"Good is the will of the Lord concerning me."
If Felix could have listened and understood, would he have been
comforted, too?
His voice held her when her attention wavered; afterward, that one
sentence was all that had fastened itself; and was not that enough for
one life time?
At the door, Dr. Towne stood waiting for his mother, and Mr. Hammerton
and Dinah were moving towards the group.
"I knew that you would be here," said Dinah, "so I coaxed Gus away from
father. I couldn't wait to tell you that your books have come. Two
splendid dozens in all colors; I had to open them. You don't mind? Gus
and I each read a brown one; we think the crimson and blue ones must be
splendid."
Sue drew Tessa aside to coax in her plaintively miserable voice, "Come
home with me; father will say things, and I shall be afraid."
"I can't help you, Sue."
"You mean you _won't_. I'll elope with Dr. Lake, and then Dunellen will
be on fire, and you don't care."
"I'm not afraid. He has good sense, if you haven't."
"I'll come and see you to-morrow, then."
"Well, that will do."
"Nobody ever had so much trouble before," sighed Sue as she went off.
Mr. Hammerton was in high glee and teased Tessa all the way home about
her book.
"The milk pails were on the fence twice, Lady Blue, that is tautology."
"Oh, they kept them there."
"And the grandmother was always knitting."
"She always did knit."
"Lady Blue, you are on the road to Poverty; he who walks the streets of
Literature will stop at the house of Starvation. Homer was a beggar;
Terence was a slave; Tasso was a poor man; Bacon was as poor as a church
mouse; Cervantes died of nothing to eat. Are you not beginning to feel
the pangs of hunger? Breath and memory fail me, or I would convince you.
Collins died of neglect; Milton was an impecunious genius; every body
knows how wretchedly poor Goldsmith was; and wasn't poor old prodigious
Sam Johnson hungry half his life? Chatterton destroyed himself. I
tremble for you, child of Genius! Author of 'Under the Wings,' what hast
thou to say in defence of thy mad career?"
"Don't mind him, Tessa," consoled Dinah, "he does like your book; he
said that he had no idea that you could do so well; that there was great
promise in it, that it revealed a thoughtful mind--he said it to
father--that the delineation of character was fine, and that it had the
real thing in it. What is the real thing?"
"Read it and you will know."
"If it isn't asking too much," began Tessa, timidly, "I wish that _you_
would write me a criticism, Gus. I like the way that you talk about
books. Not many know how to read a book, and still fewer know how to
talk about it. Will you, please?"
"You overrate my judgment; sentiment is not in my line; I have done my
share in reading books; I do not know that I have got much out of them
all. My own literary efforts would be like this:
"'Here lies--and more's the pity!
All that remains of Thomas New-city.'
"His name was Newtown."
Dinah gave her little shout.
"Then you will not promise," said Tessa, disappointedly. "I'm not afraid
of sharp criticism; I want to do my poor little best; I do not expect to
do as much as the girls in books who write stories. I do not expect any
publisher to fall in love with me as he did in _St. Elmo_, wasn't it?"
"What _do_ you expect to do?"
"I hope--perhaps that is the better word--to give others all the good that
is given me; I believe that if one has the 'gift of utterance' even in
so small a fashion as I have it, that experiences will be given to
utter; the Divine Biographer writes the life for the human heart to
read, interpret and put into words! And to them is given a peculiar
life, or, it may be, a peculiar appreciation of life; heartaches go hand
in hand with headaches.
"I was born into my home that I may write my books; my poor little
books, my little, weak, crooked-backed children! Would Fredrika Bremer
have written her books without her exceptional home-training, or Sara
Coleridge, or any other of the lesser lights shine as they do shine, if
the spark had not been blown upon by the breath of their home-fires?
When I am sorry sometimes that I can not do what I would and go where I
would, I think that I have not gathered together all the fragments that
are around loose between the plank walk and the soldiers' monument! Said
mother, '_How_ do you make a book? Do you take a little from this book
and a little from that?'"
"What did you say?" asked Dine.
"Oh, I said that I took a tone from her voice, an expression from
father's eyes, a curl from your head, a word from Gus's lips, a laugh
from Sue Greyson, a sigh from Dr. Lake, an apple blossom from Mr. Bird's
orchard, a spray of golden rod from the wayside, a chat from loungers in
the Park, a wise saying from Miss Jewett--"
"That's rather a conglomeration," said Dinah.
"That is life, as I see it and live it."
"What do you take from yourself?" asked Mr. Hammerton.
"I have all my life from the time that I cried over my first lie and
prayed that I might have curly hair, to the present moment, when I am
glad and sorry about a thousand things."
"What did mother say?"
"She said that any one could write a book, then."
"Let her try, then! It's awful hard about the grammar and spelling and
the beginning a chapter and ending it and introducing people!"
"Yes, it's awful hard or awful easy," replied Mr. Hammerton. "Which is
it, Lady Blue?"
"Ask me when I have written my novel! Did you hear from the afternoon
mail, Dine?"
"Yes," said Dine, grimly, "I should think I _did_ hear. Mother and I
have had a fight! Father took care of the wounded and we are all
convalescing. Aunt Theresa has written for one of us to come next week;
kindly says that she will take me if mother can not spare you; I said
right up and down that _I_ wouldn't go, and mother said right down and
up that I _should_ go, that she couldn't and wouldn't spare you! Aunt
Theresa has the rheumatism, and it's horrid dull on a farm! I was there
when I was a little girl, and she sent me to bed before dark; I'm afraid
that she will do it again; if she does I'll frighten her out of her
rheumatics. Mother will not let you have a voice in the matter, Tessa;
who knows but you might meet your fate? The school-teacher boards with
them; he is just out of college. Mother sha'n't make me go!"
"I do not choose to go; but I could have all my time to myself. A low,
cosy chamber and a fire on the hearth, no one to intrude or hinder."
"But the school-master!" added Mr. Hammerton.
"He's only a boy; I could put him into my book."
"We'll draw lots; shall we?"
"If mother is determined, the lot is drawn."
"And father wants you, I know; he had an attack of pain before tea. I
wish that I was useful and couldn't be spared."
"May I not have a vote; I am a naturalized member of the family?"
"You would want Tessa, too," said Dinah.
"Would I?" he returned, squeezing the gloved fingers on his arm,
whereupon Dinah became confused and silent.
Tessa found her books upon the hall table; her father, Mr. Hammerton,
and Dinah followed her into the hall to watch her face and laugh over
her exclamations.
"Your secret is out," cried her father; "at Christmas there will be a
placard in Runyon's with the name of the book and author in flaming red
letters! You can not remain the Great Unknown."
"I feel so ashamed of trying," said Tessa, with a brown cover, a red
cover, and a green cover in her hands, "but I had to. I'll be too humble
to be ashamed. 'Humility's so good when pride's impossible.'"
Several copies were taken up-stairs; Miss Jewett's name was written in
one, Mrs. Towne's in another, Mr. Hammerton's in one that he had
selected, and in one, bound in a sober gray, she wrote,
"Felix Harrison. In memory of the old school days when he helped me
with my compositions.
"T. L. W."
She never knew of his sudden, sharp cry over it: "Oh, my life! my lost
life! my wasted life!"