In the weeks that followed, Tessa learned to the full the meaning of
_homesickness_. No kindness could have exceeded the kindness that she
hourly received from uncle and aunt and from the inmates of the cottage
over the way; still every night, or rather early every morning, she fell
asleep with tears upon her cheeks; she longed for her father, her
mother, for Dine and Gus, for Miss Jewett, for Nan Gerard, and even
poor, grief-stricken Sue; for Mrs. Towne's dear face and dear hands she
longed inexpressibly, and she longed with a longing to which she would
give no sympathy for another presence, an unobtrusive presence that
would not push its way, a presence with the aroma of humility,
gentleness, and a shy love that persisted with a persistence that
neither the darkness of night nor the light of day could dispel.
Lying alone in the darkness in the strange, low room, with a fading glow
upon the hearth that lent an air of unreality to the old-fashioned
furniture, she congratulated herself upon having been brave and true, of
having withheld from her lips a draught for which she had so long and so
despairingly thirsted; she had been so brave and true that she must
needs be strong, wherefore then was she so weak? Sometimes for hours she
would lie in perfect quiet thinking of Mr. Hammerton; but thinking of
him as calmly as she thought about her father. There was no intensity in
her love for him, no thrill, save that of gratitude for his years of
brotherly watchfulness; she would have been proud of him had he married
Dine; his friendship was a distinction that she had worn for years as
her rarest ornament; he was her intellect, as her father was her
conscience, but to give up all the others for him, to love him above
father, mother, sister--to give up forever the hope of loving Ralph Towne
some day--she shuddered and covered her face with her hands there alone
in the dark. Cheery enough she was through the days, sewing for Aunt
Theresa and falling into her happiest talk of books and people, thoughts
and things, reading aloud to Uncle Knox, and every evening reading aloud
the pages of manuscript that she had written that day, and every
afternoon, laying aside work or writing, to run across to the cottage
for a couple of hours with Miss Sarepta.
Miss Sarepta at her window in her wheelchair watched all day the black,
brown, or blue figure at her writing or sewing, and when the hour came,
saw the pencils dropped into the box, the leaves of manuscript gathered,
the figure rise and toss out its arms with a weary motion; then, in a
few moments the figure with a bright shawl over its head would run down
the path, stand a moment at the gate to look up and down and all around,
and then, with the air of a child out of school, run across the street
and sometimes around the garden before she brought her bright face into
the watcher's cosy, little world.
Miss Sarepta's mother described Tessa as "bright, wide awake, and ready
for the next thing."
Miss Sarepta told Tessa that while knowing that good things were laid up
for her, she had no thought that such a good thing as Tessa Wadsworth
was laid up for this winter's enjoyment and employment.
It may be that the strain of the day's living added to the feverishness
of the night's yearnings; for when darkness fell and the wind sounded in
the sitting-room chimney, her heart sank, her hands grew cold, her
throat ached with repressed tears, and when she could no longer bear it,
the daily paper having been read aloud and a letter or two written, she
would take her candle and bid the old people as cheery a good night as
her lips could utter and hasten up-stairs to her fire on the hearth to
reperuse her letters and to dream waking dreams of what might be, and
when the fire burned low to lie awake in the darkness, till, spent in
flesh and in spirit, she would fall asleep.
At the beginning of the third week, she took herself to hand; with a
figurative and merciless gripe upon each shoulder she thus addressed
herself: "Now, Tessa Wadsworth, you and I have had enough of this; we
have had enough of freaks and whims for one lifetime; you are to behave
and go to sleep."
Behaving and going to sleep took until midnight with the first attempt,
and she dreamed of Dr. Lake and awoke crying. Was Sue crying, too? Sue
had loved her husband, his influence would color all her life, she might
yet become her ideal of a woman; _womanly_. Sue's hand had been in his
life; had not his hand with a firmer grasp tightened around her life?
Tessa did not forget to be metaphysical even at midnight with the tears
of a dream on her eyelashes.
Was every one she loved asleep, or had some one dreamed of her and awoke
to think of her?
"God bless every one I love," she murmured, "and every one who loves
me."
The next night by sheer force of will she was asleep before the clock
struck eleven, and did not dream of home or once awake until Hilda, the
Swedish servant, passed her door at dawn.
Her letters through this time were radiant, of course. Mrs. Towne only,
with her perfect understanding of Tessa, detected the homesickness, or
heartsickness. Tessa was wading in deep waters; she did not need her,
else she would have come to her. She had learned that it was her
characteristic to fight out her battles alone.
Had Ralph any thing to do with this? He had suddenly grown graver, not
more silent; in the morning his eyes would have a sleepless look, the
sunshine seemed utterly gone from them; once he said, apropos of
nothing, after a long fit of abstraction: "It is right for a man to pay
for being a fool and a knave, but it comes terribly hard."
"I suppose it must," she had replied, "until he learns how God
forgives."
In her next letter to Tessa, Mrs. Towne had written, "Do you know how
God forgives?" and Tessa had replied, "You and I seem to be thinking the
same thought nowadays, and nowanights, for last night it came to me that
loving _enough_ to forgive is the love that makes Him so happy."
This letter was the only one of all written that winter that Mrs. Towne
showed to her son. It was not returned to her. Months afterward he
showed it to Tessa, saying that that thought was more to him than all
the sermons to which he had ever listened. "Because you didn't know how
to listen," she answered saucily, adding in a reverent tone, "I did not
understand it until I _lived_ it."
The letter had been written with burning cheeks; if he might read it,
she would be glad; it would reveal something that she did not dare tell
him herself; but she had no hope that he would see it.
"Tessa is not so bright as she was," observed Miss Sarepta's mother,
"she's more settled down; I guess that she has found out what she means;
it takes a deal of time for young women to do that."