Part 10

"I'll be satisfied with a walk across the Park. Didn't you know that I was home? Gus said that he would tell you."

"Have you had a pleasant time?"

"Oh, I always manage to enjoy myself. How is it that you always stay poking at home?"

"I seem to have found my niche at home. Every one needs me."

"Dunellen is a poky little place, but Nan thinks it is splendid."

"I expect to spend the winter away from home and I don't want to go. I don't see why I must. Mother has been promising for years that the first winter that Dine was out of school I should go for three months, more or less, to an old aunt of hers for whom I was named; she has lost all her seven boys and lives on a farm down in the country with the dearest old husband that ever breathed. If I had such a dear old husband I should always want to be alone with him."

"That sounds just like you. I wanted Naughty Nan to come home with me, but she wouldn't or couldn't. You can't think how thin she has grown, and she mopes like an old woman. I had to coax her to laugh just once for me before I came away. I suppose that I oughtn't to tell, but I will tell you; you are as deep as the sea. You know Dr. Towne?"

"Yes."

"Well it is all _his_ fault," said Mary Sherwood in a mysterious low voice.

"Did he give her something to take outwardly and she took it inwardly?" asked Tessa gravely.

"That's like you, too. You are always laughing at somebody. How he flirted with poor little Naughty Nan nobody knows!"

"How she flirted with him, you mean."

"No, I don't. She was in earnest this time. He made her presents and took her everywhere; he always treated her as if--"

"--She were his mother."

"I won't talk to you," cried Mary indignantly, "you don't know any thing about it. You haven't seen how white and thin she is! It's just another Sue Greyson affair; and every body talks about how he flirted with her. I comforted Nan by saying that he had done the same thing before and would again."

"Did _that_ comfort her?"

"It made her angry. I don't see how she can mourn over a man with a false heart, do you?"

"She would have no occasion to mourn over a man with a true heart."

"Do you think that he changes his mind?" asked Mary anxiously.

"No, I think that he does not have any mind to change; he has no mind to flirt or not to flirt; he simply enjoys himself, not caring for the consequences."

"H'm! What do you call _that_?"

"I do not call it any thing; it would be as well for you not to talk about your cousin."

"So Gus said; I had to tell him. I'm afraid that Nan will die."

"No, she will not. It will make her bitter, or it will make her true."

"Nan is so cut because people talk."

"When is she coming to Dunellen?"

"She wouldn't come with me! How I did coax her! She will come in September. She says that she will stay with me until she is married."

"Then she doesn't intend to take the veil because of this?"

"She did say so--seriously--that she would enter a convent--"

"A monastery!" suggested Tessa.

"Where the monks are," laughed Mary, "I think that would suit her better."

"And believe me--Dr. Towne is not capable of doing a cruel or a mean thing--don't talk to your cousin about him."

"Oh, me! there he is now coming towards us! On our path, too. I'll break the rules and run across the grass if you will."

It was certainly Ralph Towne. He was walking slowly with his eyes bent upon the ground.

"He looks like a monk himself," whispered Mary, "he wouldn't look at us for any thing."

"Halt!" commanded the small military voice near the monument. He turned to look at the children; Tessa was close enough to feel the sunshine in his eyes although his face was not towards her; he stood watching the soldiers as they tramped on at the word of command; her dress brushed against him, she could have laid her hand on his arm; lifting her eyes with all her grief and disappointment at his indifference she met his fully; they were grave and very dark, not one gleam of recognition; how greatly he had changed! His eyes appeared larger, not so deep set as she remembered them, and there were many, many white threads running through his hair. Had Naughty Nan effected all this? With a slight inclination of his head he passed on.

"He does look as if he had a 'mind to do or not do' something," said Mary! "I hope that he can't sleep nights. He almost slew me with his eyes; I can't see why such naughty hearts should look through such eyes!"

"They don't," said Tessa, "a good heart was looking through those eyes."

"H'm! I believe it!"

Tessa had walked three blocks in a reverie, scolding herself for her sympathy with the changed face, trying to feel indignant that he had passed her by so coolly, and trying to despise him for so soon forgetting what she could never forget, when, lo! there he stood again, face to face with her, speaking eagerly, his hand already touching hers.

"Miss Tessa, what has happened to your eyes?"

"Excuse me," she stammered, "I did not see you."

"How do you do?" he asked more coolly as she withdrew her hand.

"Did you not just pass me in the Park?"

"I have not crossed the Park to-day."

"Then I met your ghost."

"Can you not be a little glad to meet me in the flesh?"

"Mary Sherwood was with me and _she_ recognized you; she saw you before I did."

He laughed the low amused laugh that she had heard so often. "My cousin Philip will believe now that he might be my brother--my twin brother--but that he appears older than he is. He has come to Dunellen to take a professorship. He is to be Greek teacher at the Seminary instead of Professor Grey. Philip is a rare linguist; he is a rare scholar. It is the Comedy of Errors over again. I suppose that he did not talk to you and say that he was glad to see you again."

"He bowed, he could not but do it. I expect that he thought I recognized him, as I certainly did. You will look like him some day, but he will never look like you."

"Your distinction is not flattering. May I ask a kindness of you?"

"Do you need to ask that?" she answered hurriedly.

"My mother is homesick in Dunellen. Will you call upon her?"

She colored, hesitating. After a second, during which she felt his eyes upon her, she said, "Yes."

"Philip's father and mine were twins; it is not the first time that we have been taken for each other. He has a twin sister."

"And he is like his sister."

"Yes, he _is_ like his sister. Imagine me teaching Greek or preaching in the Park--Phil is a preacher, of course, and an elocutionist. You will hear of him; he does not live in a cloister; he is always doing something for somebody."

"He is a _disciplined_ man; I never saw a person to whom that word could be so fitly applied."

"And you never thought of applying it to me."

"I confess that I never did," she said laughing.

"You can see a great deal at a glance."

"That is why I glance."

"Probably you know that I have come to Dunellen to work."

"I congratulate Dunellen," she answered prettily.

"I hope that you may have reason to do so. May I tell my mother that you will call?"

"Yes--if you wish," she said, doubtfully, buttoning a loose button on her glove. "Good afternoon, Dr. Towne."

She passed on at a quickened pace, her cheeks glowing, her eyes alight. A stranger, meeting her, turned for a second look. "She has heard good news," he said to himself.

_Had_ she heard good news? She had seen the man that she had so foolishly and fondly believed Ralph Towne to be; she had learned that she could not create out of the longings of her own heart a man too noble and true for God to make out of His heart. Her ideal had not been too good to be true; just then it was enough for her to know that her ideal existed. Her heart could not break because she was disappointed in Ralph Towne, but it would have broken had she found that God did not care to make men good and true. And Ralph Towne would become good and true some day. And then she would be glad and not ashamed that she had trusted in him; she could not be glad and not ashamed yet. She did not love the man that could trifle with Sue or flirt with Nan Gerard. She had loved the ideal in her heart, and not the soul in his flesh. He could not understand that; he would call it a fancy, and say that she could make rhyme to it, but that she could not live the poem. Perhaps not; if she had loved him she might have lived a different poem; her living and loving, her doing and giving, would be a poem, anyway; she did not love Ralph Towne to-day, she was only afraid that she did. He could not understand the woman who would prefer Philip Towne's saintliness; he was assured that his money would outweigh it with any maiden in Dunellen--with any maiden but Tessa Wadsworth; he was beginning to understand her. "She did not ask me to call," he soliloquized. The stranger passing him also, gave him also a second glance, but he did not say to himself, "He has heard good news." _Was_ it good news that the woman that he had thoughtlessly deceived held herself aloof from him and above him?

"She loved me once," he soliloquized, "and love with her must die a hard death."

How hard a death even Tessa herself could not comprehend; she understood years afterward when she said: "I thought once that I never could be as glad as I had been sorrowful; but I learned that the power to be glad was infinitely greater than the power of being sorrowful."

That evening her father called her to say: "The new professor is to preach Sunday evening before church service in the Park; you and I will go to hear him."

XIII.--THE HEART OF LOVE.

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?"