Part 2

It was very pleasant to be loved by a woman like this woman; he could not understand her, but she touched him like the perfume of the white rose, or the note of the thrush. His next words were sincere and abrupt. "You asked me some time since to burn the package of poems you have written for me. If I had done as much for you, would you destroy them?"

A flush, a dropping of the eyes, and a low laugh answered him.

He arose quickly, with a motion of tossing off an ugly sensation. "I am very much engaged; I do not know when I can come again. We are going west for the winter."

She could not lift her eyes, or speak, or catch her breath. She arose, slowly, as if the movement were almost too great an effort, and stood leaning against the tall chair, her fingers fumbling with the fringe of the tidy; the room had become so darkened that the white fringe was but a dark outline of something that she could feel.

"Sue Greyson is to accompany my mother; I shall be much away, and I do not like to leave her with strangers."

"Sue is pleasant and lively." She had spoken, and now she could, not quite clearly yet, but a glance revealed the blood surging to his forehead, the veins swollen in his temples, even through the heavy mustache she discerned the twitching of his lips. The pain in her heart had opened her eyes wide. Had he come to make the parting final? What had she done that he should thus thrust her away outside of all the interests in his life? Did he know how she cared, and was he so sorry? Was he trying to be "patient," as his mother had advised--patient with her for taking him at his word?

Dunellen had called her proud; this instant she was as humble as a child.

Slowly and sorrowfully she said, "Come again--some time."

"Yes," he said, as slowly and as sorrowfully, "I will."

He was very sorry for this woman who had been so foolish as to think that his words had meant so much.

She had closed the street door and was on the first step of the stairs when her mother called to her from the sitting-room.

"What did Sir Dignified Undemonstrative have to say for himself?"

"He does not talk about himself."

"It is your turn to get tea! It is Bridget's afternoon out."

Mrs. Wadsworth was a little lady something less than five feet in height, as slight as a girl of twelve, and prettier than either of her daughters; with brown hair, brown eyes, and the sprightliest manner possible.

"Young enough to be Tessa's sister," Dunellen declared.

But she was neither sister nor mother as her elder daughter defined the words.

"If you get him, Tessa, you'll get a catch," remarked Mrs. Wadsworth watching the effect of her words.

The first sound of her mother's voice had brought her to herself, her self-contained, cautious and, oftentimes, sarcastic self.

"Have you any order about tea?"

Her studied respect toward her mother, was pitiful sometimes. It was hard that she could not attain somewhat of her ideal of daughterhood.

"No, but I want you to do an errand for me after tea. I forgot to ask Dine to do it on her way from school."

"Very well," she assented obediently.

She stumbled on the basement stairs, and found the kitchen so dark that she groped her way to a chair and sank into it, dropping her head on the table. She could hear nothing, see nothing, feel nothing--the whole earth was empty!

Where was God? Had He gone, too?

Through the open windows floated the sound of girls' voices, as Norah and Dinah chatted and laughed in the garden. But the sound was far off; the engine whistled and screamed, but the sound was not in her world; carriages rolled past, the front gate swung to, her father's step was on the piazza over her head, and he was calling, her dear old father, "Where are you all, my three girls?"

His fulfilled hope was bitterer than all her disappointments ever could be.

"I don't wonder," she said with a sob in her throat, as she arose and pushed her hair back, "I don't wonder that he can not love me; but oh, I wish that he had not told me a lie!"

October passed; the days hurried into November; there was no more leaf-hunting for her, no more long walks down the beautiful country road, no more tripping up and down stairs with a song or a hymn on her lips, no more of life, she would have said, for every thing seemed like death. She did not die with shame, as at first she was sure that she would do; she could not run away to the far end of the earth where she would never again see his face; where every face would be a new face, where no voice would speak his name; she could not dig a hole in the earth and creep into it; she could not lie down at night and shut her tired eyes, with both hands under her cheek, as she always fell asleep, and never awake again, as she would love best of all to do; she could cry out, but she could not hear the answer, "Oh, please tell me when I _meant_ to be so good, why it had to be so hard."

No; she had to live in a world where people would laugh at her if they only knew; how she would shiver and freeze if her mother should once begin to harp upon the sudden break. She could not bemoan herself all the time; she was compelled to live because she had been born, and she was compelled to thrive and grow cheery; there were even moments when she forgot to be ashamed, for her mother's winter cough set in with the cold winds, and beside being nurse, she was in reality the head of the small household. Dinah was preparing to be graduated in the summer and was no help at all; instead, an hour or two every evening Tessa was asked to study with her, for she did not love study and was not quick like her sister.

And then she had her own special work to do, for she was a scribbler in prose and rhyme; the half dozen weeklies that came to the house contained more than once or twice during the year sprightly or pathetic articles under the initials T. L. W.

But few knew of this her "literary streak," as her mother styled it, for she dreaded any publicity.

Miss Jewett, her father, and Mr. Hammerton were her sole encouragers and advisers; Mr. Towne was not aware that she dipped her pen in ink for any one's pleasure but his own. Beside this work there were friends to entertain, half the girldom in Dunellen were her friends or had been at some time.

Ralph Towne often wondered how she was "taking" it; he could have found no sign of it in her face or in her life. Her father feared that she was being overworked. Mr. Hammerton's short-sighted eyes noticed a shadow flit across her eyes, sometimes, when she was talking to him, and said to himself, "I see her often; I see a change that is not a change; there is something happening that no one knows."

III.--THE LAST NIGHT OF THE OLD YEAR.

All her life she had longed for personal beauty; she loved every beautiful thing and she wanted to love her own face. It was Ralph Towne's perfect face that had drawn her to him, his voice, and his eyes, like the woods in October.

She had studied her face times enough by lamplight and sunlight to know it thoroughly, but she could not discover the sweetness that Miss Jewett saw, or the intelligence that delighted her father; she could find without much searching the freckles on her nose, the shortness of her upper lip, the two slight marks that infantile chicken-pox had dented into her forehead, the upward tendency of her nose, and the dimple that was only half a dimple in her chin.

She was as pretty and as homely as any of the fair, blue-eyed girls in Dunellen or elsewhere: with lips that shaped themselves with every passing feeling; with eyes that could grow so bright and dark that one could forget how bright they were; with the palest of chestnut hair, worn high or low, as the little world of Dunellen demanded; with hands slight and characteristic; a figure neither tall nor slender, but perfectly proportioned, rounded and graceful; arrayed as neatly and becomingly as she could be on her limited allowance, usually in plain colors, often in black of a soft texture with a ribbon of some pale tint at her throat and among her braids. A stranger might have taken her for any one of the twenty-three girls in Miss Jewett's Bible class; that is any one of the blue-eyed ones who wore gray vails and gray walking suits.

But you and I know better.

With her self-depreciation she was one thing that she was not likely to guess--the prettiest talker in the world.

Felix Harrison had told Miss Jewett so years ago.

"I haven't any accomplishments," she often sighed.

"You do not need any," Mr. Hammerton had once said.

One morning in December she chanced upon a bundle of old letters in one of Dinah's drawers, they were written during the winter that she had spent in the city two years ago.

She drew one from its envelope; it was dated December 22, just two years ago to-day; she ran through it eagerly. How often she had remembered that day as an era; the beginning of the best things in her uneventful life! The second perusal was more slow. "I have seen somebody new; he is a friend of Aunt Dinah's, or his mother is, or was. Don't you remember that handsome house near Mayfield, just above Laura's? When they were building it, Laura and I used to speculate as to whom it belonged, and wonder if it would make any difference to us. She said she would marry the son (for of course there would be a handsome and learned son) and that I should come to live with her forever; and Felix said that he would buy it for me, some day; you and I used to play that we owned it but that we preferred to live nearer Dunellen and had left it in charge of our housekeeper! How often when the former owner was in Europe, I have stood outside the gates and peered in and planned how happy we would all be there. Father should rest and read, and enjoy all the beautiful walks and the woods and the streams in the meadow with the rustic bridge, and mother should have a coach and four, and you and Gus and I would have it all.

"All this preamble is to introduce the fact that the somebody new is the owner of Old Place. Isn't that an odd name? I don't like it; I should call it Maplewood; in the autumn it is nothing but one glory of maple. His mother named it and they have become accustomed to its queerness. His mother is wintering with a relative, an invalid, I believe; I think that she has taken the invalid to Florida and the son (the father died long ago) has come to spend the winter in the city. They say he is wise and learned (I do not see any evidence of it, however), but he certainly is a veritable Tawwo Chikwo, the beauty of the world. Get out my old Lavengro and read about him.

"He is almost as dark as a gypsy, too, his eyes are the brownest and sunniest. I never saw such eyes (a sunbeam was lost one day and crept into his eyes for a home), his hair, beard, and mustache are as brown as his eyes; as brown, but not at all bright.

"He looks like a big boy, but Aunt Dinah says that he is in the neighborhood of thirty; his life has left no trace in his face, or perhaps all that brown hair covers the traces of discipline. His manner is gentleness and dignity united. But he can't talk. Or perhaps he won't.

"His replies (he ventures nothing else) are simple, good, kind, and above all, _sincere_. I have a feeling that I shall believe every word he says. That is something new for me, too. He doesn't think much of me. He likes to hear me talk though; I have made several bright remarks for the pleasure of the sunbeam in his eyes.

"If I were his mother I should be sorry to do or say any thing to frighten it away.

"I know that he has never been in love; he could not be such a dear, grave, humorous, gentle, dignified, stupid big boy if some girl had shaken him up.

"If he were the talker that Gus Hammerton is, I should go into raptures over him. He is a doctor, too, but he has not begun practice; he has been travelling with his mother. Is it not lovely to be rich enough to do just what you like?

"Tell Gus that I will answer his letter sometime; you may let him read this if you like."

This letter she tore into atoms; she glanced over the others to find Ralph Towne's name; not once did she find it.

"I will do something to commemorate this anniversary," she thought. "I will drop his photograph into the fire, and tear the fly-leaf out of the Mrs. Browning he gave me."

Her name and his initials were all that was written in the book; very carefully she cut out the entire page.

"Why, child! have you seen a ghost?" her mother exclaimed, meeting her in the hall.

"Yes, but it was only a ghost; there was nothing real about it."

That afternoon, having some sewing to do for her father, she betook herself to the chilliness of the parlor grate; her mother was in a fault-find frame of mind and Tessa's nerves were ready to be set on edge at the least provocation.

That parlor! She would have wept over its shabbiness had she ever been able to find tears for such purposes. Wheeling an arm-chair near enough to the grate to be made comfortable by all the heat there was, she placed her feet on the fender and folded her hands over the work in her lap. It was a raw day, the sky over Mr. Bird's house was unsympathetic, the bare branches in the apple orchard stretched out in all directions stiff and dry as if they were never to become green again; the outlook was not cheering, the inlook was little more so; but how could she wish for any thing more than her father was able to give his three dear girls!

This room had seemed pretty to her in the summer when the windows were open and she could have flowers everywhere; Ralph Towne always spoke of her flowers, and he had more than once leaned back in that worn green arm-chair opposite hers, as if that stiff, low room were the place of all places that he loved to be in. In dreary contrast with his own home, how poor and tasteless this home must be! How the carpet must stare up at him with its bunches of flowers and leaves upon its faded gray ground; how plain the white shades must appear after curtains of real lace; how worn and yellowish the green rep of the black-walnut furniture; how few the books in the small bookcase; and the photographs and engravings upon the walls, how they must shock him! How meagre and coarse her dress must be to him after his mother's rich attire!

She despised herself for pitying herself!

Sue Greyson said that Old Place was fairy-land, but in her catalogue of its attractions she had omitted the spacious library; his "den," Mr. Towne called it. In Tessa's imagination he was ever in that room buried among its treasures.

Was her photograph in that room? What had he done with it? Where was he keeping it? How he had coaxed for it! She had had it taken unwillingly; it was altogether too much like giving herself away; but when she could refuse no longer she had given it to him. A vignette with all herself in it; too much of herself for him to understand; what would he do with it now? Burn it, perhaps, as she had burned his; but he would not be burning a ghost, it was her own self, that he had thrown away.

"I should have despised myself forever if I had not believed in him and been true," she reasoned. "I would rather trust in a lie than not believe the truth. And how could I know that he was not true!"

She took up her work and began to sew, her reverie running on and running away with her; an ottoman stood near her, she had laid needlework and scissors upon it: how many associations there were clustering around it! It was an ugly looking thing, too; her mother had worked the cover one winter years ago when she was kept in by a cough; the wreath of roses was so unlike roses, and the parrot that was poised in the centre of the wreath, on a brown twig, was so ungainly! One night--how long ago it was--before she had ever seen Ralph Towne, Felix Harrison had been seated upon it while he told her with such a warm, shy glance that he never slept without praying for her. And Ralph Towne had scattered his photographs over it, and asked her to choose from among them, saying, "I should not have had them taken but for you."

The ugly old parrot was dear after all.

"I wonder," she soliloquized, taking slow stitches, "if having lost faith in a person, it can ever be brought back again? If he should come and say that he has been wrong--"

The gate clicked, in an instant she was on her feet, _had_ he come to confess himself in the wrong? Oh, how she would forgive and forget! And trust him?

The tall thin figure had a stoop in its shoulders, Ralph Towne was erect; the overcoat was carelessly worn, revealing a threadbare vest and loose black necktie; it was only Dr. Lake, Dr. Greyson's new partner.

She had been drawn to him the first moment of their meeting. As soon as he had left after his first call, she had said to Dinah: "I never felt so towards any one before; I shall be so sorry for him to go away where I can not follow him; I want to put my arms around him and coax him to be good."

"How do you know that he isn't good?"

"I do know it. I do not know how I know. He hasn't any 'women folks' either. He is as sensitive to every change in one's voice as the thermometer is to changes in the atmosphere. I never saw any one like him before. When I make a collection of curiosities I find in Human Nature, I shall certainly take him for one of the rarest and most interesting. It would not take two minutes to convert him from the inquisitor to the martyr at the stake. I feel as if he were a little child crying with a thorn in his finger, and he had no mother to take it out."

"He was only here fifteen minutes and he was as full of fun as he could be; he ran down the piazza, and he whistled while he was unhitching his horse, and began to sing as he drove off. Oh, you are so funny! you hear a man talk slang--he is equal to Sue Greyson for that--ask mother about her cough, tell a funny story, and then think his heart is breaking with a thorn in his finger."

Tessa would not laugh. "I want him to stay; I don't want ever to lose him."

"Isn't he ugly? Such a tall, square forehead. Did you ever see such a forehead?"

"My first thought of him was, 'oh, how homely you are.'"

But that first thought never recurred; she was too much attracted by his rapid, easy utterance and sensitive voice to remember his plain face and careless attire.

She resumed her sewing with a new train of thought and had forgotten Dr. Lake's entrance, when Bridget came to the door with a request from Mrs Wadsworth; opening the door of the sitting-room, she found her mother leaning back in her sewing chair with a plaintive and childish expression, and Dr. Lake playing with her spools of silk, sitting in a careless attitude of perfect grace at her side. Tessa was sorry to have the picture spoiled by his rising to greet her.

"Ralph Towne, M.D.," he was replying, "he was born with a gold spoon in his pretty mouth! It would have been better for him if it had been silver-plated like mine. Quit? He's a mummy, a cloister, a tomb! I do not quarrel with any man's calling," he continued, winding the black silk around his fingers, "circumstances have made me a physician. Calling! It means something only when circumstances have nothing to do with it."

"Read the lives of the world's best workers," said Tessa.

"A glass of water, an empty glass, and a spoon, if you please, Miss Tessa. Do you remember--I have forgotten his name--but I assure you that I am not concocting the story--he rose to eminence in the medical profession, several rounds higher in the ladder of fame than I expect to climb--and his mind was drawn towards medicine when he was a youngster by the display of gold lace that his father's physician flung into the eyes of the world. Gold lace made that boy a famous doctor." Tessa brought the glasses and the water; in a leisurely manner he counted a certain number of spoonfuls of water into the empty glass. "I'm a commonplace fellow! I'm not one of the world's workers! Neither is Ralph Towne! To have an easy life and not do _much_ harm is the most I hope for in this world; as for the next, who knows anything about that? I say, 'Your tongue, please,' and drop medicine and make powders all day long for my bread and butter. I have no faith in medicine."

"Then you are an impostor! You shall never see even the tip of my tongue."

He laughed as if it were such fun to laugh.

"What is medicine to you?" he asked after counting forty drops from a vial into the water. "A woman in a crowd once touched the border of a certain garment and through faith was healed; so I take the thing that He has ordained for healing, all created things are His garment; through His garment I come nearer to Him and am healed."

Mrs. Wadsworth looked annoyed. "So I may take cream instead of cod liver oil, doctor."

"If you prefer it," he answered carelessly. "Miss Tessa, you are a Mystic."

Tessa liked to watch the motion of his fingers; his hands were small, shapely, and every movement of them struck her as an apt quotation. She was learning as much of himself from his hands as from his face.

"Now I must go and scold Felix Harrison," he said rising. "A teaspoonful in a wineglass of water three times a day, Mrs. Wadsworth! He had an attack last night and cheated me out of my dreams. Do you know him, Mystic? If he do not leave off brain work he will make a fool of himself. A gold spoon would not have hurt him."

He turned suddenly facing Tessa as they stood alone in the hall; he was seriousness itself now; a look of care had settled over his features. He was not a "big boy," he was a man, undisciplined, it is true, but a man to whom life meant many disappointments and hard work.

"What is the matter with you? Do you ever go to sleep? If you do not give up thinking and take to nonsense and novels, I shall be called to take you through a nervous fever. Mind, I am in earnest. Don't spend too much time in washing the disciples' feet either; it is very charming to be St. Theresa, but you are not strong enough."

"Thank you. I am well. Is Sue at home?"

"No, she stays at Old Place until her knight departs. He had better go soon or I shall meet him in the woods. Alone. At midnight. What is he trifling with her for? Does he intend to marry her?"

Was this his thorn? Could he love a shallow girl like Sue Greyson?

"Ought we to talk about her?" she asked gently.

"You are her friend. You are older than she is. She will not listen to me. Her father takes no more care of her than he does of you."

"She has not cared for me lately."

"She does care for you. You must pull her through this. Towne made a fool of a girl I know--she is married, though; it didn't smash her affections very deep; married rich, too. But it will be a pity for Sue to have a heartache all for nix; she is a guileless piece; I would be sorry for her to have a disappointment."

"Motherless children are always taken care of," she answered trying to speak lightly.

In the twilight she sat alone at the parlor grate; it was beginning to rain; through the mist the lights in kitchen and parlor opposite were gleaming; Dinah and Bridget were laughing in the basement; a quick, hard cough, then her father's voice in a concerned tone sounded through the stillness.

Why was she feeling lonely and as if her heart would break, unless somebody should come, or unless somebody gave her something, or unless something happened? In story-books, when one was in such a mood, in a misty twilight something always happened.

Why were there not such strong helpers in her life as women in books always found? Compared with the grand, good, winning lover in books, what were the men she knew? Why, Dr. Lake was frivolous, Felix Harrison weak, Gus Hammerton practical and pedantic, and Mr. Towne heartless and stupid!

"Gus is here," said Dinah, her head appearing at the door, "and he has brought you a book! But I'm going to read it first."