Would she wish to run away? Run away from whom? Although her Ralph Towne
had died and been buried, that old, sharp, sweet, memory was wrapped
around her still; it would always be sweet although so sharp--and
bitterly, bitterly sharp although so sweet; if it might become wholly
the one or wholly the other, but it could never be that; never unless
she learned Love's lesson as Mrs. Towne had laid it before her. But that
was so utterly and hopelessly beyond her present growth!
Would he despise her if he could know how much that happy time was in
her thoughts? Was she tenacious where stronger minds would forget? He
would think her weak and romantic like the heroine of a story paper
novel; that is, if he could think weak any thing so wholly innocent.
She trusted the emerald ring on her finger; at times it burned into her
flesh; sometimes she tore it off that she might forget her promise, and
then--oh, foolish, incomprehensible, womanly Tessa!--she would take it
again and slip it on with a reverence and love for the old memory that
she could not be ashamed of although she tried.
Had she been too hard upon Ralph Towne in their latest interview? Why
need she have given shape to her hitherto unspoken thoughts concerning
his life; she could not tell him of her prayers that he might change and
yet become--for it was not too late--the good, good man that she had once
believed him to be. He had taken away her faith in himself; he might
give it back, grown stronger, if he would. If he only would!
Dr. Greyson's step was in the hall; Sue's voice was less excited, her
father was speaking quietly to her. Sue, poor Sue! She would never be
again the free, wild Sue Greyson that she was to-night.
Tessa felt Dr. Lake's mood; she could have written out his thoughts, as
he drove homeward in the rain; she dreaded his hilarious entrance, how
his eyes would shine, with tears close behind them!
Her reverie was interrupted by the entrance that she dreaded. "Ah,
Mystic, praying for my happiness here alone! I know you are. I come to
be congratulated."
"I congratulate you," she said rising and taking his hand. Not so very
long afterward, when she saw his cold, dead hands folded together and
touched them, she remembered with starting tears this soft, hot,
clinging clasp.
"You didn't dream of this two months ago, did you?" he cried, dropping
into the chair that Sue had been sitting in. "You didn't know that I was
born under a lucky star despite all my woeful past. I have turned over a
new leaf; I turned it over to-night in the rain; it is chapter first.
Such a white page, Mystic. Don't you want to write something on it for
me?"
"I wouldn't dare."
"Oh, yes, you would! What do you wish for me? Write that."
"I wish for you--" she rolled the white wool over her hand.
"Well, go on! Something that must come true!"
"--The love that suffers long and is _kind_."
"Whew!" He drew a long breath. "There is no place for that in me."
Sue entered noisily. She did every thing noisily.
"Come here, Susan." Dr. Lake caught her in his arms, but she slipped
through them, moving to Tessa's side, seating herself upon the rug, and
resting both hands in Tessa's lap.
"I was reading the other day"--he stooped to smooth Sue's flounce--"of a
fellow who fell dead upon his wedding day, as soon as the knot was tied.
Perhaps it was tied too tight and choked him. Suppose I drop dead,
Susan, will you like to be a bewitching young widow so soon? Whom would
you find to flirt with before night?"
"Gerald, you are wicked!"
"Probably this bridegroom had heart disease. I haven't heart disease,
except for you, my Shrine, my Heart's Desire."
"Isn't he wretched, Tessa? He tells me all kinds of stories about people
dying of joy!"
He bent forward, drawing her towards him backward, and with both arms
around her, kissed the top of her head and her forehead.
"You mustn't do so before folks," said Sue shaking herself free.
"Mystic isn't folks! She is my guardian angel."
"I know that you would rather have married her."
"But she wouldn't rather have married me, would you, Mystic?"
"I can't imagine it," returned Tessa, as seriously as he had spoken.
"Set your jealous heart at rest, Sue."
"I never thought of it, but once in my life," he continued, musingly,
"and that was when I was down in the deeps about you, Susan; I did think
that she might drag me out--a drowning man, you know, will catch at a
straw. It was one night when she was weeding her pansies and refused to
ride with me. I'm glad that you never _did_ refuse me, Mystic, you
couldn't be setting there so composedly."
"Oh, yes, I would; I should have known that you were insane."
"I was insane--all one week."
"I believe that," said Sue.
"I wonder what we shall all be thinking about the next time that we
three sit here together! It will be too late for us to go back then,
Susan; the die will be cast, the Rubicon crossed, another poor man
undone forever. Are you regretting it, child?" drawing her again towards
him backward and gazing down into her face. "Shall we quit at this last
last minute? Speak the word! You never shall throw it up at me, that I
urged you into it. It will be a mess for us if we do hate each other
after awhile."
"I will never hate you, Gerald."
"But I might hate you, though, who knows?" smoothing her hair with his
graceful, weak hands.
"Then Tessa shall be peacemaker," said Sue straightening herself.
"No; I will not," replied Tessa, gathering her work and rising. "Sue,
you will find me up-stairs."
"Then I'm coming, too; I don't want to stay and be sentimental. Gerald
will talk--I know him--and I will cry, and how I would look to-morrow! I
want you to do a little fixing for me and to try my hair low and then
high."
"I like it high," said Dr. Lake.
"I don't. I like it low. Tessa you shall try it low, like Nan Gerard's.
Say, Gerald, shall I put on my dress after she has fixed my hair and
come down and let you see it."
"I think I have seen it. Didn't you try it on for me and tell me that
that fellow liked it? I hate that dress; if you dress to please me, you
will wear the one you have on now."
"This old thing! I see myself. No, I shall wear my wedding dress. It
fits to perfection. I want to look pretty once in my life."
"You will never look prettier than you do this minute! Come here,"
opening his arms towards her.
"No, I won't. Let me alone, Dr. Lake."
Tessa was already on the stairs; Sue ran towards her laughing and
screaming, the parlor door was closed with a bang.
"Now he's angry," cried Sue, tripping on the stairs. "I don't care; he
wants me to stay and talk sentiment, and I _hate_ being sentimental.
And, Tessa, you sha'n't talk to me, either."
"Where is your father?" inquired Tessa, standing on the threshold of
Sue's chamber.
"In the dining-room drying his feet and drinking a cup of coffee."
"Don't you want to go down and say good night? He will lose every thing
when he loses you."
Sue hesitated. "I don't know how to be tender and loving, I should make
a fool of myself; he isn't over and above pleased with this thing
anyway; he never did pet me as your father has petted you. Your father
is like a mother. He said once when I was a little girl that he wished
that I had died and Freddie had lived; Freddie was two years older and
as bright as a button. Father loved him. I shall never forget that; I
shall never forgive him no matter how kind he is to me. And he swears at
me when he is angry with me; he used to, but Gerald told him that he
should not swear at _his_ wife! Father said that he didn't mean any
thing by it. Gerald will be kinder to me than father has been; father
swears at me in one breath and calls me the comfort of his old age in
the next. You can't turn him into your father if you talk about him all
night."
"But he will be glad if you go down; he will think of it some day and so
will you."
"He isn't sentimental and I can't be. Besides I have some things to put
into my trunk, and I want to put a ruffle into my wrapper that I may
have it all ready. It's eleven o'clock now; we shall not be asleep
to-night."
Tessa urged no more; it was not her father who was drying his feet and
drinking his coffee down-stairs alone on the night before her wedding
day. How he would look at her and take her into his arms with tears.
Sue opened her trunk. "Gerald's things are all in. It does seem queer to
have his things packed up with mine. And when we come home every thing
will go on just the same only I shall be Mrs. Lake instead of Miss
Greyson."
As Tessa stood behind her arranging her hair, She said, "There, I like
that. I almost look like Nan Gerard. What do you think she said to-day?
She was here with Mary Sherwood to see father and they saw Mr. Ralph in
my album. 'That's the man I intend to marry,' she said, 'eyes, money,
and all.' Mary scolded her but she only laughed. She said that if she
couldn't get him, she should take the professor, for he was just as
handsome and could talk about something beside paregoric and postmortem
examinations."
Tessa said nothing. How she had pitied Nan Gerard, and how harshly she
had misjudged Dr. Towne. She was awakened in the night by Sue's voice--
"Put your arm around me, Tessa."
The long night ended at last in the dull dawn, for it was raining still.
Tessa had slept fitfully; Sue had lain perfectly quiet, not speaking
again or moving.
At eleven o'clock Sue and Dr. Lake were married. Dr. Greyson sat with
his head in his hands, turned away from them, his broad frame shaking
from head to foot; Tessa did not look at Dr. Lake: she sat on a sofa
beside Mrs. Towne, with her eyes fixed on the carpet. Sue cried and
laughed together when her father kissed her; she drew herself to the
full height of Mrs. Gerald Lake, when Dr. Towne shook hands with her. At
half past twelve the bride and bridegroom were driven to the depot;
Tessa remained to give a few orders to the servants, and was then taken
home in Dr. Towne's carriage.
"It seems to me as lonely as a funeral," she said; "and Sue is laughing
and eating chocolate cream drops this very minute. Marriage should be a
leap into the sunshine."
"I hope that yours will be," her companion said in his gravest tone.
"If it ever _is_, you may rest assured that it will be. It will be the
very happiest sunshine that ever shone out of heaven."
She was learning to talk to Dr. Towne as easily as she talked to her
father, for he was the one man in the world that she was sure that she
would never marry; she knew that he desired it as little as she did
herself.
"Why will it be so happy?"
"Because I shall wait till I am _satisfied_."
"Satisfied with him? You will never be that."
"Then I shall wither in single blessedness; I shall be unhappily not
married instead of unhappily married."
"Philip Towne is your ideal."
"I know it," she said. "I like to think that he is in the world. He
makes me as happy as a pansy."
"Women are never happy with their ideals."
"They seldom have an opportunity of testing it; Professor Towne has a
pure heart and he has brains."
Dr. Towne answered in words that she never forgot, "That is what he says
of you."
"Oh, I am so glad! I like to have that said of me better than any
thing."
She remembered, but she would not tell him, that a lady had said of him,
having seen him but a few moments, and not having heard him speak, that
he was a "rock."
"And I love rocks and know all about them," she had added.
"They give shadow in a weary land," Tessa had thought. "I have been in a
weary land and he has _not_ been a shadow to me."
After a silent moment he spoke, "Don't you think that you were rather
hard on me last week?"
"Yes," she said frankly, "I have thought it all over; I intended to tell
you that I was sorry; I _am_ sorry; I will not do so again."
"Till next time?"
"There shall not be any next time; in my thoughts I have been very
unjust to you; I have come nearer hating, really _hating_ you, than any
other person I ever knew. I am sorry; I am always sorry to be unjust."
One look into the sunshiny eyes satisfied her that she was forgiven. It
almost seemed as if they were on the old confidential footing.
"Have you gathered any autumn leaves?" he asked.
"Yes, some beautiful ones. I did not get any last year--" She stopped,
confused.
She had lived through her year without him. Was he remembering last
October, too?
About sunset it cleared; she was glad for Dr. Lake's sake; about the
bride she did not think; Sue would be thankful if none of her bridal
finery were spoiled.
The evening mail brought a letter from Dinah.
There were two pieces of news in it, in both of which Tessa was
interested. The school-master was twenty-one years of age, "a lovable
fellow, the room grows dark when he goes out of it, and he likes best
the books that I do." This came first, she read on to find that
Professor Towne's mother and sister had come this summer to the house
over the way, that Miss Towne was "perfectly lovely" and had been an
invalid for fifteen years, not having put her foot to the ground in all
that time; she could move about on the first floor, but passed most of
her time in a chair, reading, writing, and doing the most beautiful
fancy work. She was beautiful, like Professor Towne, but the mother was
only a fussy old lady. Her name was Sarepta!
Dinah's letters were rather apt to be ecstatic and incoherent. Tessa
wrote five pages in her book that night and a foolscap sheet to Dinah.
She fell asleep thinking of what Professor Towne had said about her.