Part 11

She stretched out her hands to take his hand in both hers: "Don't talk so," she said brokenly. "You know you do not mean it; why can't you be brave and good? I didn't know that men were so weak."

"I _am_ weak--I have strayed, I have wandered away--but I can go back."

Long afterward she remembered these words; they, with his last "good-by, Mystic," were all that she cared to remember among all the words that he had ever spoken to her.

She did not speak; she moved her fingers caressingly over his hand, thinking how pliant and feminine, how characteristic, it was.

"I know a woman's heart," he ran on lightly; "she is not a sacred mystery to me, as the fellows say in books. I dissected an old negro woman's heart once; she died of enlargement of the heart, so that it was as much a study as the largest heart of her kind. Sue is going out to-night with Towne and his mother--it's a pity that _he_ wouldn't step in now--she might let us all have a fair fight, and old Gesner, too, with his simpering voice! She would take Gesner only he doesn't propose. 'Thirty days hath September.' I wish it had thirty thousand. When I was a youngster, and got a beating for not learning that, I little thought that one day I _would_ learn it and count the days every night. Oh, that rare and radiant first of October! Do you know," bending forward and lowering his tone, "that she is more than half inclined to throw him over?"

"She is never more than half inclined to do anything," answered Tessa indignantly. "I wish that he were here to keep her out of mischief. Why do you stay so much with her? Surely you have business enough to keep you out of her presence."

He laughed excitedly. "Keep a starving man away from bread when he has only to stretch out his hand and snatch it."

"You have found that your doll is stuffed with sawdust, can't you toss it aside?"

"I love sawdust," he answered, comically.

"Then I'm ashamed of you."

"You haven't seen other men tried."

"It is no honor to you to be thinking of her under existing circumstances."

"I would run away with her to-night if she would run with me."

"Then I despise you."

"You love like a woman, Mystic; I love like a man."

"I hope that no man will ever dishonor himself or dishonor me with love like that."

As he stooped to pick up his glove, his breath swept her cheek; she started, almost exclaiming as she drew back, flushed and bewildered. He colored angrily, then laughed an excited, reckless laugh, and gathered the reins which had been hanging loose.

"Dr. Lake," in a hurried, tremulous voice, "please don't do that. Oh, why must you? Why can't you be brave?" Her voice was choking with tears. "I did not _think_ such a thing of you."

"Of course you didn't! But I will not do it again--I really will not. I am half mad as I told you. Good night, Mystic."

"Good night," she said sadly.

He held the reins still lingering.

"Will you ride with me again some day?"

"No, I don't like to hear you talk."

Again she went back to her pansies; the innocent pansies with their faint, pure breath were more congenial. As he drove under the maples, he muttered words that would have startled her as much as his tainted breath.

"Do you like it in this world, little pansies?" she sighed.

Her father laid his book within a window on the sill, and came down to her to talk about the buds of the day-lilies; her mother fanned herself with a palm-leaf fan and complained of the heat; Dinah ran down-stairs, fresh and airy in green muslin with a scarlet geranium among her curls, and after standing still to ask if she looked pretty, ran across to the planks to walk up and down with Norah Bird with their arms linked and their heads close together.

Tessa sighed again, remembering the old confidential talks with Laura when they both cared for the same things before she had outgrown Laura. There were so many things in her world to be sighed about to-night; the thought of Felix threw all her life into shadow; Norah and Dinah were laughing over some silly thing, and her mother was vigorously waving the fan and vigorously fretting at the heat and the dust in this same hour in which Felix--her bright, good Felix--was moaning out his feeble strength. She had not dared to ask Dr. Lake how he was; what comfort would it be to know that he was a little better or a little worse? How could she talk to him of her busy life and take him a copy of her book? She was counting the days, also; for in October her book would surely be out.

"You think more of that than you would of being married," Dinah had said that day.

"So I do--than to be married to any one I know."

"Do you expect to find somebody _new_?"

"Perhaps I do not expect to find any one at all," she had answered.

"Oh, don't be so dreary," laughed Dinah.

_Was_ that dreary? Once it might have seemed dreary; a year ago with what a smiting pain she would have echoed the word, but it was not a dreary prospect to-night as she stood with her father's arm about her.

A new thing had happened to disturb her; Dinah was becoming shy and constrained in the presence of Mr. Hammerton; last summer she would run out to meet him, hang on his arm and chatter like a magpie; this summer she would oftener avoid him than move forward to greet him; this shamefacedness was altogether new and very becoming, yet the elder sister did not like it. There was no change in Mr. Hammerton, why should there be change in Dinah or in herself? He came no oftener than he had come last summer, he manifested no preference, sometimes she thought that this non-manifestation was too studied; gifts were brought to each, were it books or flowers. Did poor little Dine care for him, and was she so afraid of revealing it? Or, had she decided that it was for _her_ sake that he came, and did she leave them so often together alone that it might be pleasanter for both? More than once or twice when he was expected, she had pleaded an engagement with Norah, and had not appeared until late in the evening.

"I wonder what's got Dine," their mother had remarked, "she seems possessed to run away from Gus."

Their father had looked annoyed and exclaimed, "Nonsense, mother, nonsense."

Tessa's reverie was ended by Mr. Hammerton's quick step upon the planks.

"He was here last night," commented Mrs. Wadsworth as he crossed the street.

"Good evening, good people," he said opening the gate. "You make quite a picture! If you had fruit and wine I should rub up my French or Spanish. I think that I am not too late; I did not hear until after tea that Professor Towne is to read tonight in Association Hall; some of your favorites, Lady Blue. Will you go, you and Dine?"

"Oh, yes, indeed; that is just what I want."

"It is to be selections from 'Henry V.,' 'The High Tide,' 'Locksley Hall,' I think, and a few lighter things. You will think that you would rather elocute 'The High Tide' than even to have written it."

"That is impossible. Did you tell Dine?"

"No, but I will. It was proper to ask the elder sister was it not?"

"I am not Leah," said Tessa seriously, "call Rachel."

"Rachel! Rachel!" he called, beckoning to Dinah. Dinah whistled by way of reply and dropped Norah's arm.

"Have you brought me Mother Goose or a sugar-plum?" she asked lightly. "And why do you call me Rachel?"

"Don't talk nonsense, children," said Mr. Wadsworth very gravely. The color deepened in Mr. Hammerton's cheeks and forehead as he met the old man's grave eyes. "Mother, let's you and I go too," proposed Mr. Wadsworth, "we will imagine it to be twenty-seven years ago."

"I only wish it was," was the dissatisfied reply.

That evening was an event in Tessa's quiet life: she heard no sound but the reader's voice, she saw no face but his; she drew a long breath when the last words were uttered.

"Was it so good as all that?" whispered Mr. Hammerton. "You shall go to the Chapel with me next Sunday and hear him preach about 'Meditation.'"

Dr. Towne, his mother, and Sue Greyson were seated near them; she did not observe the group until she arose to leave the hall.

"Wasn't it stupid?" muttered Sue, catching at her sleeve. "And isn't he perfectly elegant? Almost as elegant as the doctor."

"You will not forget your promise?" Mrs. Towne said as Tessa turned towards her.

"Has Miss Tessa been making you a promise? She does not know how to break her word," said Dr. Towne.

"You do not need to tell me that; her eyes are promise-keepers."

Mrs. Towne kept her at her side until they reached the entrance and would have detained her until Professor Towne had made his way to them, had not Mr. Hammerton understood by the moving of her lips that she was not pleased and hurried her away.

"I hope that I shall never become acquainted with Professor Towne," exclaimed Tessa nervously, as Mr. Hammerton drew her hand within his arm.

"Why not? I thought that you were wrapped up in him as the young ladies say."

"Suppose I make a hole in him and find him stuffed with sawdust."

"You could immediately retire into a convent."

Dinah had mischievously fallen behind with her father and mother.

"Then I could never find my _good_ man?"

"Must you find him or die forlorn?"

For several moments she found no answer: then the words came deliberately; "Perhaps I _need_ not; I wonder why I thought there was a _must_ in the matter; why may I not be happy and helpful without ending as good little girls do in fairy stories? I need not live or die forlorn--and yet--Gus, you are the only person in the whole world to whom I would confess that I would rather be like the good little girl in the fairy story! Please forget it."

"It is too pleasant to forget," he answered. "I do not want you to be too ambitious or too wise for the good old fashions of wife and mother!"

"How can any woman be that!" she exclaimed indignantly.

"May you never know."

"What an easy time Eve had! All she had to do was to be led to Adam. She would not have chosen him a while afterward; he was altogether too much under her influence."

"That weakness has become a part of our original sin."

"It isn't yours," she retorted.

"Am I so different from other men?" he asked in a constrained voice.

"Most assuredly. I should as soon think of a whole row of encyclopedias falling in love."

Mr. Hammerton was silent, for once repartee failed him.

Suddenly she asked, "Is your imagination a trial to you?"

"Haven't you often told me that I am stupid as an old geometry."

"And I hate geometry."

"You read, you write, you live, you love through your imagination. You wrap the person you love in a rosy mist that is the breath of your hopeful heart, and you see your hero through that mist. Of course the mist fades and you have but the ugly outline--then, without stopping to see what God hath wrought, you cry out, 'Oh, the horrible! the dreadful!' and run away with your fingers in your ears."

A few silent steps, then she said, "I deserve that. It is all true. Why did you not tell me before?"

"I left it to time and common sense."

"It will take a great deal of both to make me sensible," she answered humbly, and then added, "if suffering would root out my fancies--but I am like the child that tumbles and tumbles, and then tumbles again. I need to be guided by such a steady hand. Sometimes I do long so for somebody to do me good."

Her companion's silence might be sympathetic; as such she interpreted it, or she could not have said what she never ceased wondering at herself for saying--"I am not disappointed in love; but I _am_ disappointed in loving. I thought that love was once and forever. Poets say so."

"Yes, but we do not know how they live their poetry."

"I know that my poetry fails me when extremity comes."

"Has the extremity come?"

"Yes," she said bravely.

"And that is another thing that I am not to know."

"Not for five and fifty years. I will pigeon-hole all my experiences for you--if there is no one to object on my side or yours."

"What about the reading? Was it all that you expected?"

"Wait a minute; call Dine before we talk it over."

They had outwalked the others; Mr. Hammerton's strides would not be pleasant to keep pace with in the long walk of life, as Dinah had once told him. It was a truth that no one recognized so well as himself, that he lacked the power of adaptation; he was too tall or too short, too broad or too narrow, too crooked or too straight for any niche in Dunellen, but the one that he had found in his boyhood by the snug, safe corner in the home where Dinah was growing up to entangle herself in his heart, and Tessa, lovable and wise, to enthrone herself in his intellect. In the game of forfeits, when he had been doomed to "Bow to the wittiest, kneel to the prettiest, and kiss the one you love the best," in the long ago evenings, when they were all, old and young, children together, he had always bowed to Tessa and knelt to bewitching little Dine and kissed her. Now he bowed to Tessa, but he did not kiss Dine.

They stood waiting near a lamp-post; he, fidgeting as usual, she, straight and still.

"Lady Blue, you never put me on a pedestal, did you?"

"No, you never kept still long enough."

Professor Towne passed them with Mrs. Towne leaning upon his arm; Mrs. Towne bowed and smiled, he lifted his hat in recognition of Tessa's hesitating half inclination.

"Why, Tessa! Do you know him?"

"I almost spoke to him one day by mistake; I did not intend to bow, but he looked at me--I suppose the bow bowed itself."

"He has a noble presence! He is altogether finer physically than his cousin."

"I don't know that he is," she answered wilfully. Dinah came willingly enough; they walked more slowly and talked.

"Tessa," began Dine abruptly as they were brushing their hair at bedtime, "isn't Gus a fine talker?"

"Is he like Coleridge? He could talk four hours without interruption, but sometimes his listeners, learned men too, did not understand a word of it."

"I do not always understand Gus."

"Gus does not ramble; he is plain enough."

Dine brushed out a long curl and looked down upon it. "I shall ask him to give me a list of books that I ought to read."

"I confess that while I understand what he says I do not understand _him_. If you do, you are wiser than I."

"I guess that I am wiser than you."

"I used to think that I understood people; I have come to the conclusion that I do not understand even my own self."

"Do you like garnet? I want a garnet in some material this winter. Gus says that I am a butterfly."

"Yes, you are pretty in warm colors."

Tessa drew a chair to the open window and sat a long time leaning her elbows on the sill with her face towards the Harrison Homestead. Felix had always been so proud of the old house with its tiled chimney-pieces, with its ancient crockery brought from Holland and the iron bound Bible with the names of his ancestors; for two hundred years the place had been held in the Harrison name, a great-great-grandfather having purchased the land from the Indians. He had said once to her, "I have a good old honest name to give to you, Tessa." She would have worn his name worthily for his sake; if it might be,--but her father would hold her back,--why should she not sacrifice herself? Was not Felix worthy of her devotion? What other grander thing could she ever do? The moon was rising; she changed her position to watch it and did not leave it until it stood high above the apple orchard.

XIV.--WHEAT, NOT BREAD.

Early one evening Tessa was writing alone in her own chamber; Dinah was spending a few days in Dunellen; while Dinah was away she wrote more than usual out of her loneliness.

Becoming wearied she laid the neat manuscript away and began scribbling with a pencil on a half sheet of foolscap; the disconnected words revealed the thoughts that had been troubling her all day.

"Counsel. Waiting. Asking. Deception. Years and years. Oh, I _want_ to go to heaven."

A tap at the door sounded twice before it broke upon her reverie; absent-mindedly she opened the door, but the absent-mindedness was lost in the flash of light that burst over her face when she recognized, in the twilight, the one person in all the world whom she wished to see.

"Oh, I was wishing for you! Did some good spirit send you."

"I have been feeling all day that you wanted me," said the little woman suffering herself to be drawn into the room. "What are you doing?"

"Feeling wicked and miserable and wanting to go to heaven."

"You are not the kind to go to heaven, you are the kind to stay on earth; what would you do in heaven if you do not love to do God's will on earth?"

Tessa drew her rocker nearer the open window and seated her guest in it, moved a low seat beside it, and sat down folding her hands in her lap.

"What shall I do on earth?" she asked.

"What you are told."

"I can not always see or hear what I must do."

"That's a pity."

"Can you?"

"I could not once; I can now."

"How can you now?"

"Because I desire but one thing--and that is always made plain to me."

"But how can you get over _wanting_ things?"

"I can not."

"I do not understand."

"I mean only this, dear child; I do want things, but I want God's will most of all."

"Sometimes I think I do, and then I _know_ that I do not. Do you think," lowering her voice and speaking more slowly, "that He ever _deceives_ any body?"

"He sometimes, oftentimes, allows them to be deceived,--is that what you mean?"

"He does not do it."

"No, but He allows others to do it."

"Not--when--they pray--about it and ask what they may do--would He let somebody who prayed be deceived?"

Miss Jewett was removing her gloves. She smoothed out each finger and thumb before she spoke, and laid them on the window-sill.

"I have been trying to think--oh, now, I know! Do you not remember one whom He permitted to be deceived after asking His counsel?"

"No. I thought the thing impossible. I do not see how such a thing can be."

"It can be; it has been. What for, do you suppose?"

"To teach some lesson. I am learning--oh, how bitterly!--that His teaching is the best of His gifts."

"So it is, child; but oh, how we have to be crushed before we can believe it. Is your life so hard? It appears a very happy life to me."

"So every one else thinks. I suppose it would be, but that I make my own trials; _do_ I make them? No, I don't! How can I make things hard when I only do what seems the only right thing to do. Tell me about that somebody who was deceived--like me," she added.

"He was a priest; he ministered before the Lord, and he believed in David, because he was an honorable man, and high in the king's household; so when David came to him and said: 'The king hath commanded me a business, and hath said unto me, Let no man know it,' of course, he believed him, and when he asked him for bread the old priest would have given it, not thinking that in harboring the king's son-in-law he was guilty of treason; but he had no bread; he had nothing but the shew-bread, which only the priests might eat. He did not dare give him that until he asked counsel of the Lord. No priest had ever dared before, and how could he dare? But David and his men were starving, they dared go to no one else for help; but the priest didn't know that, poor, old, trustful man, so he asked counsel, and having obtained permission, he gave to David the hallowed bread. That was right, because our Lord approves of it; then David asked for Goliath's sword, and he gave him that, and went to sleep that night as sweetly as the night before, I have no doubt, because he had asked counsel of the Lord and followed it."

"Did any harm come to him?" asked Tessa, quickly.

"Harm! He lost his head; Saul slew him for treason; and he pleaded before the king: 'And who is so faithful among all thy servants as David, which is the king's son-in-law, and goeth at thy bidding, and is honorable in thine house?' God could have warned him or have brought to his ears the news that David was an outlaw, but He suffered him to be deceived and lose his life for trusting in the man who was telling him a lie."

After a silence Tessa said: "He _had_ to obey! I'm glad that he obeyed; I believe that was written just for me. I asked God once to let somebody love me, and I trusted him, because I thought that God had given him to me--and it has broken my heart with shame. I did not know before that He let me be deceived; I knew that I was obeying Him, but I thought that my humiliation was my punishment for doing I knew not what."

"Now I know the secret of some of your articles that I have cried over; not less than ten people told me how much they were helped by that article of yours, 'Night and Day.'"

"I have three letters that I will show you sometime; I know that my trouble has worn a channel in my heart through which God's blessing flows; except for that I should have almost died."

"You do not look like dying; your eyes are as clear as a bell, and there's plenty of fun in you yet."

"The fun and sarcasm are a little bit sanctified, I think; I never say sharp things nowadays."

"Perhaps the answer to your prayer has not all come yet; sometimes the answer is given to us to spoil it or use as we please, just as the mother gives the child five cents in answer to his coaxing, and the hap or mishap of it is in his hands. Perhaps He has given you the wheat, and you must grind it and bake it into bread; be careful how you grind and how you knead and bake! To some people, like Sue Greyson, He gives bread ready baked, but you can receive more, and therefore to you He gives more--more opportunity and more discipline. To be born with a talent for discipline, Tessa, is a wonderful gift, and oh, how such have to be taught! Would you rather be like flighty Sue?"

"No, oh, no, indeed," shivered Tessa, "but she can go to sleep when I have to lie awake."

"Now I must go."

"I'll walk to the end of the planks with you."

Tessa was too much moved to care to talk; the walk with Miss Jewett was almost as silent as her walk homeward alone.

XV.--SEPTEMBER.

If Miss Jewett had not been once upon a laughing time a girl herself, she would have wondered where the girls in Dunellen found so much to laugh about. Nan Gerard laughed. Sue Greyson laughed, and Tessa Wadsworth laughed; they laughed separately, and they laughed together; they cried separately, too, but they did not cry together. Nan knew that it was September, because she had planned to come to Dunellen in September; Sue knew, because so few days remained before her wedding-day; and Tessa knew, because she found the September golden rod and pale, fall daisies in her long walks towards Mayfield; she knew it, also, because her book was copied and at the publishers', awaiting the decision over which she trembled in anticipation night and day. One morning, late in the month, she found at the post-office a long, thick, yellow envelope, containing two dozens of pictures; several of them she had seen long ago in Sunday-school books, those that were new to her, appeared cut or torn from some book; the letter enclosed with the pictures requested her to write a couple of books and to use those pictures.

"I've heard of illustrating books," she laughed to herself, "but it seems that I must illustrate pictures."

Coaxing Miss Jewett into her little parlor, she showed her the pictures, and read aloud the letter.

"I think it is a great compliment to you," said the little woman, admiringly. "You do not seem to think of that."

"Father will think so. You and he are such humble people, that you think me exalted! Women have become famous before they were as old as I."

"You may become famous yet."

"It isn't in me. Genius is bold; if it were in me, I should find some way of knowing it. My work is such a little bit, such a poor little bit. But I do like the letter."

"You will be glad of it when you are old."

"I am glad of it now."

She read it again: the penmanship was straggling and ugly.