Mrs. Wadsworth's strong will triumphed, as it usually did, and Dinah was
sent into the country early in the last week of September, with a
promise from Tessa that she would release her from her durance as soon
as one of her books was finished and herself spend the remainder of the
winter with the childless old people who had been looking forward to
this pleasure from winter to winter ever since Tessa was ten years old.
Half Dunellen had pacified Dinah with the promise of long weekly
letters, and she knew that Tessa and her father would write often. "I am
not strong enough to write letters," her mother had said. "Tessa will
tell you every thing." "I will add a postscript whenever Tessa will
permit," said Mr. Hammerton, which queerly enough consoled homesick
Dinah more than all the other promises combined.
Sue had not come to talk to Tessa and she dared not go to Dr. Greyson's
for fear of influencing her. She had met Dr. Lake once; he had lifted
his hat with a flourish, but would not stop to speak to her.
And now it was Wednesday and Sue's wedding day had been set for Friday.
At noon, among other letters, her father brought her a note from Felix
Harrison:
"I must see you; I want to talk to you. Come Wednesday afternoon."
How she shrank from this interview she did not understand until she
could think it over years afterward. In those after years when she said,
"I do not want to live my life over again," she remembered her
experiences with Felix Harrison; more than all, the feeling of those
weeks when she had felt _bound_. It was also in her mind when she said,
as she often did say, in later life, "I could never influence any one to
marry." How often an expression in the mature years of a woman's life
would reveal a long story, if one could but read it.
Another word of hers in her middle age, "I love to help little girls to
be happy," was the expression to years of longing that no one had ever
guessed; her mother least of all.
But she had not come to this settled time yet; it was weary years before
she was at leisure from herself. It was Wednesday noon now and Felix had
sent for her; she shrank from him with a shrinking amounting to terror;
he would touch her hand, most certainly, and he might put his arm around
her and kiss her; she would faint and fall at his feet if he did; he
might say that she had promised him, that she was bound to him, that he
would never let her go; that he was gaining strength and that she must
become his wife or he would die!
Why could he not write his message? What could he have to say to her?
Was it not all said and laid away to be remembered, perhaps, and that
was all? Then the memory of the old Felix swept over her, and she bowed
her head and wept for him! She had held herself in her heart as his
promised wife for six long weeks, how could she shrink from him? Was he
not to her what no other man would ever become? Was she not to him the
one best and dearest?
"I wonder," she sobbed, "why _he_ had to be the one to love me; why was
not the love given to one whom I could love? Why must such a good and
perfect gift as love be a burden to him and to me? If some one I know--"
The cheeks that were wet for Felix Harrison burned at the thought of one
she knew!
"Oh, I wonder--but I must not wonder--I must be submissive; I must bow
before the Awful Will."
In that hour it was harder to bear for Felix Harrison to love her than
for Ralph Towne to be indifferent.
"What are you going to do this afternoon?" inquired her mother at the
dinner table.
"Take my walk! And then the thing that comes first"
"You never have any plan about any thing; any one with so little to do
ought to have a plan."
"My plan is this--_do the next thing_! I find that it keeps me busy."
"The next thing, hard or easy," said Mr. Wadsworth.
"Hard! Easy!" repeated Mrs. Wadsworth in her ironical voice. "Tessa
never had a hard thing to do in her life. It will be my comfort in my
last hours, Tessa, that you have been kept from troubles and
disappointments."
"You might as well take the comfort of it now," said Tessa.
"Not many young women of your age have your easy life," her mother
continued; "you have no thought where your next meal will come from, or
where you will live in your old age, or where--"
"I know where all my good things come from," interrupted Tessa,
reverently; "the how, the when, and the what that I do not know--that I
am waiting to know."
"That is like you! Not a thought, not a care; it will come dreadful hard
to you if you ever _do_ have trouble."
Tessa's tears ever left in her heart a place for sweet laughter; so
light, so soft, so submissive, and withal so happy was the low laugh of
her reply that her father's eyes filled at the sound. Somebody
understood her.
Mrs. Wadsworth looked annoyed. Her elder daughter's words baffled her.
Tessa _was_ shallow and she sighed and asked her if she would take apple
pie.
Tessa ate her pie understanding how she was a trial to her mother, but
not understanding how she could hinder it. Could she change herself? or
could her mother change herself?
"I wish that it were easier for me to love people," she said coming out
of a reverie, "then I would not need to trouble myself about not
understanding them."
"I thought that you were a student of human nature," said her father.
"I always knew that she couldn't see through people," exclaimed her
mother.
"I do not; I never know when I am deceived."
"My rule is," Mr. Wadsworth arose and stood behind his chair, "to judge
people by themselves and not by _myself_."
"Oh, the heartaches that would save," thought Tessa. At the hour when
she was walking slowly towards Felix, her black dress brushing the
grass, her eyes upon the harvested fields lying warm in the mellow
sunlight, and on her lips the sorrowful wonder, he was sitting alone in
the summer-house, his head dropped within his hands. He was wondering,
too, as all his being leaped forward at the thought of her coming, and
battling with the strong love that was too strong for his feeble
strength.
When her hand unlatched the gate, he was not in the summer-house; she
walked up the long path, and around to the latticed porch where Laura
liked to sew or read in the afternoons; there was no one there; the
work-basket had been pushed over, cotton and thimble had rolled to the
edge of the floor, the white work had been thrown over a chair, she
stood a moment in the oppressive silence, trembling and half leaning
against a post; the tall clock in the hall ticked loudly and evenly:
forever--never, never--forever! Her heart quickened, every thing grew dark
like that night in the lecture-room, she was possessed with a terror
that swept away breath and motion. A groan, then another and another,
interrupted the never--forever, of the clock, then a step on the
oil-cloth of the hall, and she dimly discerned Laura's frightened face,
and heard as if afar off her surprised voice: "Why, Tessa! O, Tessa, I
am so glad!"
The frightened face was held up to be kissed and arms were clinging
around her.
"I'm always just as frightened every time--he was in the summer-house and
father found him--he can speak now--it doesn't last very long."
"I will not stay, he needs you."
"Not now, no one can help him; father is with him. If this keeps on Dr.
Greyson says that some day he will have to be undressed and dressed just
like an infant. He has been nervous all day, as if he were watching for
something. O, Tessa, I want to die, I want him to die, I can't bear it
any longer."
Tessa's only reply was her fast dropping tears.
"If he only had a mother," said Laura; "I want him to have a mother now
that he can never have a wife! If he only had been married, his wife
would have clung to him, and loved him, and taken care of him. Don't you
think that God might have waited to bring this upon him until he was
married?"
"Oh, no, no, _no!_" shivered Tessa; "we do not know the best times for
trouble to come. I shall always believe that after this."
"He always liked you better than any one; do you know that he has a
picture of you taken when we went to the Institute? You have on a hat
and sacque, and your school books are in your hand."
"I remember that picture! Has he kept it all this time?"
"If he asks for you--he will hear your voice--will you go in?"
"No, I can not see him," she answered nervously.
"Then I will walk down to the gate with you. He will be sure to ask, and
I do not like to refuse him."
Walking slowly arm in arm as they used to walk from school years ago,
they passed down the path, at first, speaking only of Felix, and then as
they neared the gate, falling into light talk about Laura's work, the
new servant who was so kind to Felix, the plants that Laura had taken
into the sitting-room, "to make it cosy for Felix this winter," the
shirts that she had cut out for him and their father, and intended to
make on the machine; about the sewing society that was to meet
to-morrow, a book that Felix was reading aloud evenings while their
father dozed and she sewed, some Mayfield gossip about Dr. Towne, and
their plan of taking Felix travelling next summer. Tessa listened and
replied. She never had any thing to say about herself. Laura thought
with Mrs. Wadsworth that Tessa had never had any "experiences." Miss
Jewett and Tessa's father knew; but it was not because she had told
them. What other people chattered about to each other she kept for her
prayers.
Laura cried a little when Tessa kissed her at the gate. "I wish that you
wouldn't go; I want you to stay and help me. Will you come again soon?"
"I can't," she answered hurriedly.
"Did Felix know that you were coming to-day?"
Tessa's eyes made answer enough; too much, for Laura understood.
"I will not tell him that I know--but I had guessed it--I heard him
praying once while we were away, and I knew that he was giving up
_you_."
Tessa kissed her again, and without a word hurried away, walking with
slower steps as she went on with her full eyes bent upon the ground.
Was it so much to give up Tessa Wadsworth? What _was_ she that she could
make such a difference in a man's life? Was she lovable, after all,
despite her quick words and sharp speeches? She was not pretty like
Dinah, or "taking" like Sue; it was very pleasant to be loved for her
own sake; "my own unattractive self," she said. It would be very
pleasant in that far-off time, when she reviewed her life, to remember
that some one had loved her beside her father and Dine and Miss Jewett!
And a good man, too; a man with brains, and a pure heart!
Her ideal was a man with brains, and a pure heart; then why had she not
loved Felix Harrison?
"Oh, I don't know," she sighed. "I can't understand." Slowly, slowly,
with her full eyes on the ground she went on, not heeding the sound of
wheels, or gay voices, as a carriage passed her now and then; but as she
went on, with her eyes still full for Felix, a light sound of wheels set
her heart to beating, and she lifted her eyes to bow to Dr. Towne.
In that instant her heart bowed before the Awful Will in acceptance of
the love that had been given to her, even as other things in her lot had
been given her, without any seeking or asking.
"I can bear it," she felt, filling the words with Paul's thought, when
he wrote, "I can do all things."
Dr. Towne drew the reins: she stood still on the edge of the foot-path.
"My mother misses you, Miss Tessa."
"Does she? I am sorry, but I have to be so busy at home."
His sympathetic eyes were on her face. "I thought, that you were never
troubled about any thing," he said.
"I am not--when I can help it."
"I left Sue Greyson up the road looking for you; I could not bring her
to meet you, as my carriage holds but one; there was news in her face."
"Then I will go to hear."
The light sound of his wheels had died away before she espied Sue's tall
figure coming quickly towards her.
"Oh, Tessa! How _could_ you go so far? Your mother said that you were
here on this road, and that I should find you either up a tree or in the
brook; I've got splendid news! guess! Did you meet Dr. Towne? He stopped
and talked to me, but I wouldn't tell him. He and his mother will know
in time. Now, guess."
"Let me sit down and think. It will take time."
They had met near the brook at the corner of the road that turned past
Old Place; on the corner stood a tall, bare walnut-tree, the gnarled
roots covered a part of the knoll under which a slim thread of water
trickled over moss and jagged flat stones, and then found its clear way
into a broader channel and thence into the brook that crossed one of the
Old Place meadows.
These roots had been Tessa's resting-place all summer; how many times
she had looked up to read the advertisement of the clothier in Dunellen
painted in black letters on a square board nailed to the trunk; how many
times had she leaned back and looked down into the thread of water at
the moss, and the pebbles, the tiny ferns and the tall weeds, turning to
look down the road towards May field where the school-house stood, and
then across the fields--the wheat fields, the corn fields--to the peach
orchard beyond them, and beyond that the green slope of the fertile
hill-side with its few dwellings, and above the slope the crooked green
edge that met the sky--sometimes a blue sky, sometimes a sky of clouds,
and sometimes gray with the damp clouds hanging low; thinking, as her
eyes roved off her book, of some prank of Rob's or some quaint saying of
Sadie's, of some little comforting thought that swelled in grandma's
patient, gentle heart, or of something sharp that Sadie's snappish
mother should say; sometimes she would take the sky home for her book
and sometimes the weeds and the pebbles and the brook; and when it was
not her book it was Felix--poor Felix!--or Dr. Lake, whom she loved more
and more every day with the love that she would have loved a naughty,
feeble, winsome child; or Mr. Towne, of his face that was ever with her
like the memory of a picture that she had lingered before and could
never forget, or of his voice and some words that he had spoken; or of
her father and his failing strength and brave efforts to conceal it;
sometimes a kind little thing that her mother had done for her, some
self-denial or shame-faced demonstration of her love for her elder
daughter, sometimes of Dine's changeful moods, and often of the book of
George Eliot's that she was reading, or the latest of Charles Kingsley's
that she was discussing with Mr. Hammerton; thinking, musing, feeling,
planning while she picked up a pebble or tore a weed into bits, or wrote
a sentence in her pocket notebook! It was no wonder that this gnarled
seat was so much to her that she lost herself and lost the words that
Sue was speaking so rapidly.
"You are not listening to me at all," cried Sue at last "I might as well
talk to the tree as to talk to you!"
"I am listening; what is it?"
"It's all settled--splendidly settled--and I'm as happy as Cinderella when
she found the Prince! Now guess!"
"Well, then," stooping to pick a weed that had gone to seed, "I guess
that you have come to your right mind, that you will marry Stacey on
Friday and all will go as merry as a marriage bell should."
"What a thing to guess! That's too horrid! Guess again."
"You have grown good and 'steady,' you will keep house for your father
and be what he is always calling you,--the comfort of his old age,--and
forego lovers and such perplexities forever."
"That's horrider still! Do guess something sensible."
"You are going to marry Dr. Lake. Your father has stormed and stormed,
but now he has become mild and peaceable; you are to be married Friday
morning and start off immediately in the sober certainty of waking
bliss."
"Yes," said Sue very seriously, "that is it. Every thing is as grand as
a story-book, except that father will not give me the house for a
wedding present. Oh, those wretched days since I saw you last! I did
think that I would take laudanum or kill myself with a penknife. You
don't know what I have been through. Old Blue Beard is pious to what
father has been; Gerald, _he_ kept out of the house. I should have run
away before this, only I knew that father would come around and beg my
pardon. He always does."
Tessa stooped to dip her fingers in the water.
"And _this_ is your idea of marriage," she said quietly.
"No, it isn't. I never looked forward to any thing like this; I always
wanted something better. I am not doing very well, although I suppose
there _are_ girls in Dunellen who would think Gerald a catch."
"Oh, Sue, Sue! when he loves you so! If he could hear you, it would
break his heart!"
"Take him yourself then, if you think he's so much," laughed Sue. "Nan
Gerard will get the catch!"
"Sue, I am ashamed of you!" exclaimed Tessa rising. "I am glad if you
are happy--as happy as you know how to be. I want you to be happy--and
_do_ be good to Dr. Lake."
How Sue laughed!
"Oh, you dear old Goody Goody," she cried, springing to her feet and
throwing her arms around Tessa. "What else should I be to my own wedded
husband? But it does seem queer so near to Old Place to be talking about
marrying Dr. Lake."
"We'll remember this place always, Sue, and that you promised to be kind
to Dr. Lake."
"Yes, I'll remember," with a shadow passing over her face. "The next
time you and I sit here it will be all over with me. I shall be out of
lovers for the rest of my natural life." She laughed and chatted all the
way home; her listener was silent and sore at heart.
"You will come to-morrow night and see the last of me, won't you? This
is what I came to ask you, 'the last sad office' isn't that it? Sue
Greyson will never ask you another favor."
"Yes, I will come." She had always loved Sue Greyson. She did not often
kiss her, but she kissed her now.
"Don't look so. Laugh, can't you? If it is something terrible, it isn't
happening to you."
"The things that happen to me are the easiest to bear."
Sue crossed over to the planks and went on pondering this, then gave it
up to wonder how she would wear her hair on her wedding morning; Tessa
would make it look pretty any way, for she was born a hair-dresser.
And Tessa went in and up-stairs, thinking of a remark of Miss Jewett's:
"I should not understand my life at all, it would be all in a tangle, if
it were not for my prayers."