Part 21

Mr. Wadsworth had listened in utter bewilderment, recalling Tessa's repeated declaration that it was Dinah. "I _am_ in my dotage," he thought; "for I certainly understood that he said Tessa."

"My wish was with your wish," he said.

"She will be better satisfied," Mr. Hammerton answered in his most abrupt tone. "He is a fine man; I can understand his attraction for her."

Mrs. Wadsworth entered at that instant and the conversation was too fraught with pain to both ever to be resumed; therefore it fell out that Mr. Hammerton was the only one in the world who ever knew, beyond a perhaps, which of the sisters he had asked of the father.

That Tessa had not been influenced by his importunate and mistaken urging, was one of the things that her father was thankful for to the end of his days.

"Poor Gus! The dear, brave boy," sighed Tessa over her letter. "And my worry has only been to reveal to me that I can not reason myself into loving or not loving."

A paragraph in Nan Gerard's letter was dwelt long upon; then the daintily written pink sheet dropped from her fingers and she sat bending forward looking into the glowing brands until the lights were out down-stairs and Hilda's heavy step had passed her door.

"Oh, Naughty Nan!" she said rousing herself, "I hope that you love him very, very much. Better than I know how to do!"

The paragraph ran in this fashion:

"I have had a very pretty present; I really believe that I like it better than any thing that Robert ever gave me. It is a ring with an onyx: on the stone is engraved two letters in monogram. You shall guess them, my counsellor, and it will not be hard when I whisper that one of them is T. I am very happy and very good. 'Nan's Experiment' is burnt up and with it all my foolishness. 'Such as I wish it to be.' I think of that whenever I look at my ring. Tell me all about your lovely Miss Sarepta. I like to know how I shall have to behave before her. We are to be married next month."

Did Nan know the hurt and the hurt and the hurt of love? No wonder that she was "shy" with Mrs. Towne. Why had not Mrs. Towne told her? Must she write and congratulate Naughty Nan whose story was such as she wished it to be?

The letters that she had written that evening were on the bureau; the sudden remembering of the line that she had written in Mrs. Towne's brought her to her feet with a rush of shame like the old hot flashes from head to foot; she seized the letter and rolling it up tucked it down among the coals; it blazed, burning slowly, the flame curled around the words that she had been saved just in time from sending; the words that would never be written or spoken.

The room was chilly and the candle had burnt out before she went to bed; the lights opposite had long been out. The room was cold and dark and strange; outside in the darkness the night was wild.

It was too late; her conflict had lasted too long; her pride and disdain had killed his love for her; perhaps he felt as she did in that time when she had wanted some one to love her, and he had taken Naughty Nan as she had taken Felix.

She had lived it all through once; she could live it all through again; she could have slept, but would not for fear of the waking. Oh, if it would never come light, and she could lie forever shielded in darkness! But the light crept up higher and higher into the sky, Hilda passed the door, and Uncle Knox's heavy tread was in the hall below.

Another day had come, and other days would always be coming; every day life must be full of work and play, even although Dr. Towne had failed in love that was patience; she had suffered once, because he was slow to understand himself, and plainly he had suffered to the verge of his endurance, because she was slow in understanding herself!

The day wore on to twilight; she had worked listlessly; in the twilight she laid her work aside, and went over to the cottage.

"I have something to show you," said Miss Sarepta; "guess what my last good gift from Philip is."

"I did not know that he had any thing left to give you."

"It is the last and best. A flower of spring!" From a thick envelope in her work-basket, she drew out a photograph, and, with its face upward, laid it in Tessa's hand.

A piquant face: daring in the eyes, sweetness on the lips.

"Nan Gerard!" cried Tessa, catching her breath with a sound like a sob.

"Naughty Nan! And they are to be married here in this room, that I may be bridesmaid."

"Oh, how stupid I was!"

"Why, had you an inkling of it?"

"Several of them, if I had had eyes to see!"

"It came last night, and I lay awake all night, thinking of the woman that Philip will love henceforth better than he loves me."

"Oh, how can you bear it?" Tessa knelt on the carpet at her side, with her head on the arm of the chair.

"I could not, at first. I could not now, if I did not love Philip better than I love myself."

So her sorrow had become Miss Sarepta's! She drew a long breath, and did not speak.

"Don't feel so sorry for me, dear. I have known that in the nature of things,--which is but another name for God's will,--this must come. Even after all the years, it has come suddenly. Will she love my brother?"

"I am sure she will; more and more as the years go on!"

"Every heart must choose for itself," said Miss Sarepta dreamily, "and the choice of the Lord runs through all our choices."

Tessa's lips gave a glad assent.

A letter from Dinah that evening ended thus. "Father is not at all well; I think that he grows weaker every day. To-day he said, 'Isn't it _almost_ time for Tessa to come?'"

At noon the next day she was in Dunellen.

XXVI.--ANOTHER MAY.

May came with blossoms, lilacs, and a birthday, she smiled all to herself over last year's reverie; the anniversary of the day in which she had walked homewards with Mr. Hammerton and accepted Felix in the evening followed the birthday; a sad anniversary for Felix, she remembered, for he had her habit of retrospection.

The days slipped through his mind, Laura had told her; he would often ask the day of the week or month. He had become quiet and melancholy, seemingly absorbed in the interest of the moment. He had greeted Tessa as he would have greeted any friend, at their last interview, and she had left him believing that his future would not be without happiness. A year ago to-day, Mr. Hammerton had said that a year made a difference, sometimes. And this year! How the events had hurried into each other, jostling against each other like good-humored people in a crowd! A year ago to-day she had thought of Nan Gerard as the wife of Ralph Towne; to-day she was sailing on the sea, Professor Towne's wife; just as naughty as ever, but rather more dignified. A year ago to-night she had held herself the promised wife of her old tormentor, Felix Harrison; since that night all his future had become a blank, the strong man had become as a little child; since that day Dine had found her wonderful John; since that day Dr. Lake had had his heart's desire, and had been called away from Sue, leaving her a widow; the hurrying year had taken from Gus a long hope and had given him a future of hard work with meagre wages. And Dr. Towne! But she could not trust herself to think of him. They met as usual, not less often; he had grown graver since last year, and had thrown himself heart and soul into his work: never demonstrative, his manner towards her, had, if possible, become less and less intrusive; but ever responsive, having nothing to respond to, now, but a gentle deference, a shyness that increased; a stranger would have said, meeting him with Tessa Wadsworth, that he was intensely interested in her, but exceedingly in doubt of finding favor.

But Tessa could not see this; she felt only the restraint and chilliness.

Once they were left suddenly alone together; he excused himself and abruptly left her; clearly, he had no reply to make to her letter; his love was worn out with her freaks and whims.

"I deserve it," she said, taking stern pleasure in meting out justice to herself.

One afternoon in late May, she found herself on the gnarled seat that the roots had braided for her; she had been gazing down into the brook and watching a robin-redbreast taking his bath in it, canary-fashion; she watched him until he had flown away and perched upon a post of the Old Place meadow fence, then her eyes came back to the water, the stones, and the weeds.

"I always know where to find you!" The exclamation could be in no other loud voice; she recognized Sue before she lifted her eyes to the tall, black-draped figure. If Sue had had a sorrow, there was no trace of it in voice or countenance.

"Isn't it dusty? How I shall look trailing around in all this black stuff! What do you always come here for? Do you come to meet somebody?"

"It seems that I have come to meet you."

"Don't you remember how you talked to me here that day? I did keep my promise; I _was_ good to Gerald. Poor, dear Gerald! I have nothing to reproach myself with."

"Did mother send you here?"

"She said that I would find you between the end of the planks and Mayfield. Come through the grounds of Old Place with me. I want you to see Mrs. Towne's flowers and a new arbor that Dr. Towne has been putting up."

"No, thank you," said Tessa rising and tossing away a handful of withering wild flowers.

"You don't know how lovely the place is. Dr. Towne is always thinking of some new thing to do; I asked him if it were for that grand wife that he has been waiting so long for, and, do you believe, he said 'Yes,' as sincerely as could be. He looked up at his mother and smiled when he said it, too. I believe they know something. Nan Gerard didn't get him any way! Won't she have a lovely time travelling! I always did want to go to Europe; Gerald never would have taken me. I can't believe that he's dead, can you?"

As Tessa was busy with her veil and did not speak, Sue rattled on.

"Did you know that I've been making another visit at Miss Gesner's? They call their place Blossom Hill, and it has been so sweet with blossoms."

"Is she as lovely as ever?"

"I don't know," said Sue, doubtfully; "sometimes I think that she is stiff and proud; the truth is she doesn't like to have her old brother pay attention to me. She thinks that he is too old a boy for such nonsense; but _he_ doesn't think so! Good for me that he doesn't. What are you walking so fast for? I went to drive with him every day after business hours; we _did_ look stylish!"

"With Miss Gesner, too?" queried Tessa, in a voice that she could not steady.

"No, indeed," laughed Sue, "and that's the beauty of it. What did we want her along for? Of course we talked about Gerald; we talked a great deal about him. I told him how kind he had been to me and how I adored him and how I mourned for him. I am sure that I cried myself sick; Dr. Towne gave me something one night to keep me from having hysterics! I should have died of grief if Mrs. Towne hadn't taken me to Old Place; she was like a mother, and _he_ was as kind as kind could be! It was like the other time before I was engaged to Gerald; I couldn't believe that it wasn't that time. The Gesners were kind, too; I thought at first that Miss Gesner really loved me; but she began to be stiff after she saw her brother kiss me. I couldn't help it; I told him that it was too soon for such goings on."

"O, _Sue!_" cried Tessa, wearily. "And he loved you so."

"Gerald! Of course he did! But that's all past and gone! He can't expect me never to have any good times, can he? He didn't leave me any money to have a good time with! I'm too young to shut myself up and think of his grave all the time. You and father are the most unreasonable people I ever saw! Why, he thinks because he thinks of mother every day, and wouldn't be married for any thing, that I must be that kind of a mourner, too! It's very hard; nobody ever had so much trouble as I do. I never used to like John Gesner, but you don't know how interesting he can be. He took off my wedding ring one day and said it didn't fit. It always was a little too large. Gerald said that I would grow into it," she said, slipping it up and down on her finger and letting it drop on the grass.

"There!" with a little laugh as she stooped to look for it, "suppose I could never find it. Is that what you call an omen, Tessa? Help me look!"

"No, let it be. Let it be buried, too."

"There! I have found it. You needn't be so cross to me. I wonder why you are cross to me. Gerald Raid once that you would be a good friend to me forever."

"I will, Susie," said Tessa, fervently.

"You always liked Gerald. What did you like him for?" asked Sue, curiously.

As the answer was not forthcoming, Sue started off on a new branch of the old topic. "Mr. John Gesner is going to Europe this fall, or in the winter; he is going on business, but he says that if he had a wife to go around with him that he would stay a year or two. Wouldn't that be grand? Nan Gerard will have to be home when the Seminary opens, anyway. It would be grand to travel for two years."

"Why does not Miss Gesner go with him?"

"Oh, she wouldn't leave Lewis. Lewis and Blossom Hill are her two idols. Mr. John says that if he were married, he would build a new house right opposite, and he asked me as we passed the grand houses which style I liked best. There was one with porticoes and columns, I chose that. He said that it could be built while he was away, and be all ready for him to bring his bride home to. But you are not listening; you never think of what I am saying," Sue said, in a grumbling, tearful voice. "My friends are forever misunderstanding me. Gerald never misunderstood me. What do you think Dr. Towne said to me? He said that when I am old, I shall love Gerald better than any one; that what comes between will fall out and leave that time. Won't it be queer? He said that women ought to think love the best thing in the world. I cried while he was talking. I can love any body that is kind to me. When I told John Gesner that, he said, 'I will always be kind to you.' But you are not listening; I verily believe that you care more for that squirrel than you do for me!"

"See it run," cried Tessa. "Isn't it a perfect little creature? If you will come and stay a week with me, we will take a walk every day."

"I can't--now," Sue stumbled over her words. "Say, Tessa, Mr. Gesner has given me a set of pearls. I can wear pearls in mourning, can't I?"

"With your mourning, you can wear any thing."

"Can I? I didn't know it. It's awful lonesome at home; lonesomer than it ever was."

"I would come and stay a week with you, but I do not like to leave father; he is not so strong as he was last summer."

"You wouldn't let Mr. Gesner come and spend the evening; I haven't asked him, but I'm going to ask him the next time I see him."

Dr. Greyson called for Sue late in the evening. "I have the comfort of my old age hard and fast," he said; "she will never want to run away from me again, will you, Susie?"

"I don't know," said Sue, with a hard, uncomfortable laugh; "you must keep a sharp lookout. I may be in Africa by this time next year."

XXVII.--SUNSET.

"Father is very feeble," said Mrs. Wadsworth one day in June. "I shall persuade him to take a vacation. Lewis Gesner told him yesterday that he must take a rest; do you notice how he spends all his evenings on the sofa? I think that if Gus would come and play chess as he used to that it would rouse him."

The week of Mr. Wadsworth's vacation ran into two weeks and into a month; Dr. Greyson fell into a friendly habit of calling daily; Mr. Lewis Gesner and Mr. Hammerton came for a chat with him on the piazza as often as every other day, sometimes one of them would pass the evening beside his lounge in the sitting-room. Mr. Hammerton amused him by talk of people and books with a half hour of politics thrown in; and Mr. Gesner with his genial voice and genial manner helped them all to believe that life had its warm corners, and that an evening all together, with the feeble old man on the lounge an interested listener, was certainly one of the cosiest.

"Father, why have you kept Mr. Gesner to yourself all these years?" Tessa asked after one of these evenings.

"I would have brought him home before, if I had known that you would have found him so charming."

"He is my ideal of the shadow of a rock in a weary land," she answered; "I do not wonder that his sister's heart is bound up in him. How can brothers who live together be so different?"

"John is well enough," said her father, "there's nothing wrong about him."

"He makes me _creep_," said Tessa, vehemently, thinking of a pair of bracelets that Sue had brought to show her that day.

Mr. Wadsworth lay silent for awhile, then opening his eyes gazed long at the figures and faces that were all his world; Mrs. Wadsworth's chair was at the foot of the lounge, the light from the lamp on the table fell on her busy hands, leaving her face in shadow; Dinah was reading at the table, with one hand pushed in among her curls; Tessa had dipped her pen into the ink and was carelessly holding it between thumb and finger before writing the last page of her three sheets to Miss Sarepta.

"Oh my three girls!" he murmured so low that no one heard.

Mrs. Wadsworth, in these days, was forgetting to be sharp, and hovered over him and lingered around him as lovingly as ever Tessa did.

"Doctor," said Tessa, standing on the piazza with Dr. Greyson late one evening, "do you think that he may die suddenly?"

"Yes."

"Any time, when the pain comes?"

"Any hour when the pain comes."

"Does mother know?"

"I think that she half suspects; she has asked me, and I have evaded the question."

"Does he know it?"

"He has known it since March."

Since he had wanted her to come home!

"Perhaps he has told mother."

"She would only excite him and hasten the end."

"She can be quiet enough when she chooses. I am glad--oh, I am so glad--"

"Is the doctor gone?" cried Dinah rushing out, "father wants him. He has the pain dreadfully."

The paroxysm was severe, but it passed away; Dr. Greyson decided to remain through the night; he fell asleep in the sitting-room and was awakened by Tessa's hand an hour before dawn.

"Thank you, dear," said Mr. Wadsworth to his wife as she laid an extra quilt across his feet.

They were his last words. Tessa always liked to think of them.

July, August, and September dragged themselves through sunny days and rainy days into October. Tessa had learned that she could live without her father. There was little outward change in their home, the three were busy about their usual work and usual recreations; friends came and went; Tessa wrote and walked; gave two afternoons each week to Mrs. Towne, sometimes in Dunellen and sometimes at Old Place; ran in, as of old, for a helpful talk with Miss Jewett, not forgetting that she must be, what Dr. Lake had said,--a good friend to his wife. These were the busy hours; in the still hours,--but who can know for another the still hours?

Mr. Hammerton and Mr. Lewis Gesner proved themselves to be invaluable friends; Tessa's warm regard for Mr. Gesner, even with the shock that came to her afterward, never became less; he ever remained her ideal of the rock in the weary land.

Two weeks after her father's funeral, she had stood alone one evening towards dusk among her flowers: she had been gathering pansies and thinking that her father had always liked them and talked about them.

There was a sound of wheels on the grass and a carriage stood at the opening in the shrubbery; the face into which she looked this time was not worn, or thin, or excited; a dark face, with grave, sympathetic eyes, was bending towards her.

"I wish that I could help you," he said.

"I know you do. No one can help me. I do not need help. I _am_ helped."

"The air is sweet to-night."

"And so still! Do you like my pansies?"

"Yes."

"Will you take them to your mother, and tell her that I will come to-morrow."

"I will tell her; but I will keep the pansies for myself, if you will give them to me."

She laid them in his hand with fingers that trembled.

"Do they say something to me?"

"They say a great deal to me!"

"What do they say?"

"I can not find a meaning for you. They must be their own interpreter."

"But I may think that you gave them to me to keep as long as I live."

"Yes; to keep as long as you live."

"When you have something to say to me--something that you know I am waiting to hear--will you say it, freely, of your own accord."

"Yes, freely, of my own accord."

"I regret to trouble you; but if you ever waited, you know that it is the hardest of hard work."

"I know," said Tessa, her voice breaking; "but you may not like what I say."

"Perhaps you will say what I like then."

"I will if I _can_."

What had she to say, freely, of her own accord? I think that it was the knowledge of what she would say by and by when she was fully sure that helped her to bear the loneliness of this summer and autumn.

And thus passed the summer that she had planned for rest. November found her making plans for winter. Her last winter's work had been sent to her, one volume with its new illustrations, and the other, with but one new picture; her father had looked forward to them; she sent copies to Elsie, Mabel, and Sue, also to Felix Harrison and Mr. Hammerton; Miss Jewett and Mrs. Towne made pretty and loving speeches over theirs; Tessa wondered, why, when she had written them with all her heart, they should seem so little to her now.

"Where is your novel, Lady Blue," Mr. Hammerton, asked one evening.

"I think that I shall live it first," she answered, seriously. "I couldn't love my ideal well enough to put him into a book, and the _real_ hero would only be lovable and commonplace, and no one would care to read about him--no one would care for him but me."

"It must be something of an experience to learn that one's ideal can not be loved, and rather humiliating to find one's self in love with some one below one's standard."

"That's what life is for,--to have an experience, isn't it?"

"It seems to be some people's experience," he said, looking as wise as an owl, and as unsympathetic.

November found Sue making plans, also. Her plans came out in this wise: she called one morning to talk to Tessa; Tessa was sewing in her own chamber, and Sue ran up lightly, as lightly as in the days before Gerald Lake had come to Dunellen.

"Busy!" she said blithely, her flowing crape veil fluttering at the door.

"Not too busy. Come in."

Sue talked for an hour with her gloves on, then, carelessly, as she described some pretty thing that the Professor's wife had brought from over the sea, she drew the glove from her left hand, watching Tessa's face. The quick color--the quick, indignant color--repaid the manoeuvre; the wedding ring--the new wedding ring--was gone, and in its stead blazed a cluster of diamonds.

"You might as well say something," began Sue, moving her hand in the sunlight.

"I have nothing to say. I wonder how you dare come to me."

"Why shouldn't I dare? I know it seems soon; but circumstances make a difference, and Mr. Gesner has to go to Europe next month. He took the other ring; I couldn't help it--I wouldn't have kept it safe with a lock of his hair in a little box--but he said that I shouldn't have this unless I gave him that."

Tessa's head went down over her work; she had not wept aloud before since she was a little girl, but now the sobs burst through her lips uncontrolled. That ring that Dr. Lake had carried that day in the rain not fourteen months ago!

Sue sprang to her feet, then dropped back into her chair and wept in sympathy, partly with a vague feeling of having done some dreadful thing, partly with the fear that life in a foreign land might not be wholly alluring; Mr. Gesner was kind, but poor Gerald had loved her so!

"O, Tessa! Tessa! don't," she cried. "Stop crying and speak to me."