Part 13

As they passed down the aisle, Tessa's dress brushed against Felix Harrison; he was sitting alone with his father.

"Why! Felix Harrison! Did you ever?" whispered irrepressible Sue.

The Lecture Room was well-lighted, and well-filled. Professor Towne was the fashion in Dunellen. During the opening prayer there was a stir in one of the pews behind Tessa; she did not lift her head, her heart beat so rapidly that she felt as if she were suffocating.

"Poor fellow," came in Sue's loud whisper close to her ear. "They have taken him out! I should think that he would know better than to go among folks."

Tessa could not follow the speaker for some minutes; the lights went out, she could not catch her breath; Mrs. Towne took her hand and held it firmly, then the lights came dim, through a misty and waving distance, her breath was drawn more easily, she could discern the outline of the preacher, and then his dark face was brought fully into view, his voice sounded loud in her ears; for some time longer she could not catch and connect his words; then, clear and strong, the words fell from his lips, and she could listen and understand--

"Good is the will of the Lord concerning me."

If Felix could have listened and understood, would he have been comforted, too?

His voice held her when her attention wavered; afterward, that one sentence was all that had fastened itself; and was not that enough for one life time?

At the door, Dr. Towne stood waiting for his mother, and Mr. Hammerton and Dinah were moving towards the group.

"I knew that you would be here," said Dinah, "so I coaxed Gus away from father. I couldn't wait to tell you that your books have come. Two splendid dozens in all colors; I had to open them. You don't mind? Gus and I each read a brown one; we think the crimson and blue ones must be splendid."

Sue drew Tessa aside to coax in her plaintively miserable voice, "Come home with me; father will say things, and I shall be afraid."

"I can't help you, Sue."

"You mean you _won't_. I'll elope with Dr. Lake, and then Dunellen will be on fire, and you don't care."

"I'm not afraid. He has good sense, if you haven't."

"I'll come and see you to-morrow, then."

"Well, that will do."

"Nobody ever had so much trouble before," sighed Sue as she went off.

Mr. Hammerton was in high glee and teased Tessa all the way home about her book.

"The milk pails were on the fence twice, Lady Blue, that is tautology."

"Oh, they kept them there."

"And the grandmother was always knitting."

"She always did knit."

"Lady Blue, you are on the road to Poverty; he who walks the streets of Literature will stop at the house of Starvation. Homer was a beggar; Terence was a slave; Tasso was a poor man; Bacon was as poor as a church mouse; Cervantes died of nothing to eat. Are you not beginning to feel the pangs of hunger? Breath and memory fail me, or I would convince you. Collins died of neglect; Milton was an impecunious genius; every body knows how wretchedly poor Goldsmith was; and wasn't poor old prodigious Sam Johnson hungry half his life? Chatterton destroyed himself. I tremble for you, child of Genius! Author of 'Under the Wings,' what hast thou to say in defence of thy mad career?"

"Don't mind him, Tessa," consoled Dinah, "he does like your book; he said that he had no idea that you could do so well; that there was great promise in it, that it revealed a thoughtful mind--he said it to father--that the delineation of character was fine, and that it had the real thing in it. What is the real thing?"

"Read it and you will know."

"If it isn't asking too much," began Tessa, timidly, "I wish that _you_ would write me a criticism, Gus. I like the way that you talk about books. Not many know how to read a book, and still fewer know how to talk about it. Will you, please?"

"You overrate my judgment; sentiment is not in my line; I have done my share in reading books; I do not know that I have got much out of them all. My own literary efforts would be like this:

"'Here lies--and more's the pity! All that remains of Thomas New-city.'

"His name was Newtown."

Dinah gave her little shout.

"Then you will not promise," said Tessa, disappointedly. "I'm not afraid of sharp criticism; I want to do my poor little best; I do not expect to do as much as the girls in books who write stories. I do not expect any publisher to fall in love with me as he did in _St. Elmo_, wasn't it?"

"What _do_ you expect to do?"

"I hope--perhaps that is the better word--to give others all the good that is given me; I believe that if one has the 'gift of utterance' even in so small a fashion as I have it, that experiences will be given to utter; the Divine Biographer writes the life for the human heart to read, interpret and put into words! And to them is given a peculiar life, or, it may be, a peculiar appreciation of life; heartaches go hand in hand with headaches.

"I was born into my home that I may write my books; my poor little books, my little, weak, crooked-backed children! Would Fredrika Bremer have written her books without her exceptional home-training, or Sara Coleridge, or any other of the lesser lights shine as they do shine, if the spark had not been blown upon by the breath of their home-fires? When I am sorry sometimes that I can not do what I would and go where I would, I think that I have not gathered together all the fragments that are around loose between the plank walk and the soldiers' monument! Said mother, '_How_ do you make a book? Do you take a little from this book and a little from that?'"

"What did you say?" asked Dine.

"Oh, I said that I took a tone from her voice, an expression from father's eyes, a curl from your head, a word from Gus's lips, a laugh from Sue Greyson, a sigh from Dr. Lake, an apple blossom from Mr. Bird's orchard, a spray of golden rod from the wayside, a chat from loungers in the Park, a wise saying from Miss Jewett--"

"That's rather a conglomeration," said Dinah.

"That is life, as I see it and live it."

"What do you take from yourself?" asked Mr. Hammerton.

"I have all my life from the time that I cried over my first lie and prayed that I might have curly hair, to the present moment, when I am glad and sorry about a thousand things."

"What did mother say?"

"She said that any one could write a book, then."

"Let her try, then! It's awful hard about the grammar and spelling and the beginning a chapter and ending it and introducing people!"

"Yes, it's awful hard or awful easy," replied Mr. Hammerton. "Which is it, Lady Blue?"

"Ask me when I have written my novel! Did you hear from the afternoon mail, Dine?"

"Yes," said Dine, grimly, "I should think I _did_ hear. Mother and I have had a fight! Father took care of the wounded and we are all convalescing. Aunt Theresa has written for one of us to come next week; kindly says that she will take me if mother can not spare you; I said right up and down that _I_ wouldn't go, and mother said right down and up that I _should_ go, that she couldn't and wouldn't spare you! Aunt Theresa has the rheumatism, and it's horrid dull on a farm! I was there when I was a little girl, and she sent me to bed before dark; I'm afraid that she will do it again; if she does I'll frighten her out of her rheumatics. Mother will not let you have a voice in the matter, Tessa; who knows but you might meet your fate? The school-teacher boards with them; he is just out of college. Mother sha'n't make me go!"

"I do not choose to go; but I could have all my time to myself. A low, cosy chamber and a fire on the hearth, no one to intrude or hinder."

"But the school-master!" added Mr. Hammerton.

"He's only a boy; I could put him into my book."

"We'll draw lots; shall we?"

"If mother is determined, the lot is drawn."

"And father wants you, I know; he had an attack of pain before tea. I wish that I was useful and couldn't be spared."

"May I not have a vote; I am a naturalized member of the family?"

"You would want Tessa, too," said Dinah.

"Would I?" he returned, squeezing the gloved fingers on his arm, whereupon Dinah became confused and silent.

Tessa found her books upon the hall table; her father, Mr. Hammerton, and Dinah followed her into the hall to watch her face and laugh over her exclamations.

"Your secret is out," cried her father; "at Christmas there will be a placard in Runyon's with the name of the book and author in flaming red letters! You can not remain the Great Unknown."

"I feel so ashamed of trying," said Tessa, with a brown cover, a red cover, and a green cover in her hands, "but I had to. I'll be too humble to be ashamed. 'Humility's so good when pride's impossible.'"

Several copies were taken up-stairs; Miss Jewett's name was written in one, Mrs. Towne's in another, Mr. Hammerton's in one that he had selected, and in one, bound in a sober gray, she wrote,

"Felix Harrison. In memory of the old school days when he helped me with my compositions.

"T. L. W."

She never knew of his sudden, sharp cry over it: "Oh, my life! my lost life! my wasted life!"

XVI.--A TANGLE.

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.