Part 6

"Are you writing again?"

"Yes, sir."

"Then you must walk every day."

"Oh, I do, rain or shine. I am going down the road this afternoon to look at the wheat fields and the oat fields and to see the boys and girls dropping corn!"

"And to wish that you were a little girl dropping corn?"

"No, indeed," she said earnestly and solemnly. "I like my own life better than any life I ever knew in a book or out of a book."

"When I count up my mercies I'll remember that."

She was dwelling upon those words of her father late that afternoon as she sauntered homeward with her hands full of wild flowers and grasses.

"Mystic, will you ride with me?"

A feeling of warmth and of tenderness ever crept into her heart at the sound of this voice.

She loved Dr. Lake.

"No, sir, thank you; I am out for a walk and when I walk I never ride."

"But I want to talk to you--to tell you something." She stepped nearer and stood at the carriage wheel; his voice was sharp and his white temples hollow. "Sue has refused me," he began with a laugh. "I proposed last night, and what do you think she said? 'Why, Dr. Lake, you are poor, and you smell of medicine.'"

"They are both true," she said, not conscious of what reply she was making.

"Yes," he answered bitterly, "they are both true and will _be_ true until the end of time. Don't you think that you could reason with her and change her mind; you have influence." He laid his gloved hand on the hand that rested on the wheel. "It will kill me, Mystic, if she doesn't marry me."

So weak, so pitiful! She could have cried. And all for love of flighty Sue Greyson!

"I was sure that she would accept me. She has done every thing _but_ accept me. I did not know that a woman would permit a man to take her day after day into his arms and kiss her unless she intended to marry him. Would _you_ permit that?" he asked.

"You know that I would not," she answered proudly; "but Sue doesn't know any better; all she cares for is the 'fun' of the moment."

"I have been hoping so long; since Towne went away; I can't bear this."

"There is as much strength for you as for any of us," she said gently.

"But I am too weak to hold it."

And he looked too weak to hold it. She could not lift her full eyes. "I am so sorry," was all she could speak.

"There isn't any thing worth living for anyway; I, for one, am not thankful for my 'creation.' I wish I was dead and buried and out of sight forever. Sue Greyson has another offer to whisper to all Dunellen. I would not stay here, I would go back to that wretched hospital, but my engagement with her father extends through another year. Well, you won't ride home with me?"

"Not to-day, I want to be out in this air."

"And you don't want to be shut in here with my growling. I don't blame you; I'd run away from myself if I could. I'll kill half Dunellen and all Mayfield with overdoses before another night, and then take a big dose myself. Say, Mystic, you are posted in these things, where would be the harm?"

"Take it and see."

"Not yet awhile. I am not sure of many things, but I _am_ sure that a man's life in this world will stare in his face in the next. And my life has not been fit even for your eyes."

Homely, shabby, old, worn, excited, with a sharp ring in his voice and a stoop in his shoulders. What was there in him to touch Sue Greyson? Where was the first point of sympathy?

Tessa could have taken him into her arms and cared for him as she would have cared for a child.

"I have just seen an old man die; a good old man; he was over ninety; he prayed to the last; that is his lips moved and his old wife laid his hands together; he liked to clasp his hands when he prayed, she said. She put her ear down close to his mouth, but she could not distinguish the words. I was wishing that I could go in his place, and that he could take up my life and live it through for me. He would do better with it than I shall."

"Is not that rather selfish?"

"Life is such a sham. I don't believe in the transmigration of souls; I don't want to come back and pull through another miserable existence."

"I want you to stay this soul in this body; I do not want to lose you."

"If every woman in the world were like you--"

"And every man were as tired and hungry as you--"

"What would he do?"

"He would hurry home to a good, hot dinner."

"I have not eaten or drank since yesterday morning. Sue has a hot dinner waiting for me. She will sit with me while I eat, and tell me, perhaps, that she has had a letter from that fellow in Philadelphia, or that that well-preserved specimen of manhood, old John Gesner, has asked her to drive with him. Some flirtation of hers is sauce to every dish."

"Poor Sue," sighed Tessa.

"She might be happy if she would; I would take care of her."

"Good-by," squeezing his fingers through his glove. "Go home and eat."

"Give me a good word before I go."

"Wait."

"Is that the best word you know?"

"It is good enough."

"Well, good day, Mystic," he said, lifting his hat.

She went back to the grassy wayside, thinking. What right had Sue Greyson's light fingers to meddle with a life like Dr. Lake's? They had not one taste in common. How could he find her attractive? She disliked every thing in which he was interested; it was true that she could sing, sing like one of the wild birds down in the woods, and he loved music.

She paused and stood leaning against the rails of a fence, and looked across the green acres of winter wheat; one day in September she had stood there watching the men as they were drilling the wheat; afterward she had seen the tender, green blades springing up in straight rows, and once she had seen the whole field green beneath a light snow. The wind moved her veil slightly, both hands were drooping as her elbows leaned upon the upper rail, her cheeks were tinged with the excitement of Dr. Lake's words, and her eyes suffused with a mist that was too sorrowful to drop with tears. A quick step on the grass at her side did not startle her; she did not stir until a voice propounded gravely: "If a man should be born with two heads, on which forehead must he wear the phylactery?"

She turned with a laugh. "Gus, I would know that was you if I heard the voice and the question in the Great Desert."

"Can't you decide?"

"My thoughts were not nonsense."

"Of course not, you were labelling and pigeon holing all that you have thought of since sunrise! I've been sitting on a stone waiting for your conference to end. Are you in the habit of meeting strange men and conversing with them."

"Yes, I came out to meet you."

"I only wish you did! I wish that you would make a stranger of me and be polite to me. It is nothing new for you to be wandering on a Saturday afternoon, and nothing new for you to find me."

"I didn't find you."

"I intended to give you the honor of the discovery; now we will share the glory. Shall we go on?"

"I have been to my roots; do you know my roots? Do you know the corner above Old Place and the tiny stream?"

"I know every corner, and every root, and every stream. Shall I carry your flowers for you? I never can see why I should relieve a maiden of a burden when her avoirdupois equals mine. You will not give them to me? I have something to read to you--something of my own composing--I composed it in one brilliant wakeful moment--you will appreciate it."

"I do not believe it."

"Wait until you hear it. Lady Blue, are you going to be literary and never be married! Woe to the day when I taught you all you know."

They went on, slowly, for she liked to talk to Mr. Hammerton. "Father said something like that this morning and it troubled me; why may I not do as I like best? Why should he care to see me married before he dies?"

"Why should he not?"

"Nonsense. I can take good care of myself; beside," with a mischievous glance into his serious eyes, "I really don't know whom to marry."

"Oh, you could easily find some one. If all else fail, come to me, and if I am not too busy I will take you into consideration."

"Thanks, good friend! But you will always be too busy. What have you to read to me?"

"Something that you will appreciate. I wrote it for you. Stay, sit down, while I read it."

"I don't want to. You can read and walk. The mother of Mrs. Hemans could read aloud while walking up hill."

Mr. Hammerton's voice was not pleasant to a stranger, but Tessa liked it because it belonged to him; it was a part of him like his big nose, his spectacles, and the tiny bald spot over which, every day, he carefully brushed his hair. The color in his cheeks was as pretty as a girl's, and so was the delicate whiteness of his forehead; the bushy mustache, however, made amends for the complexion that he sometimes regretted; Tessa had once told him that his big nose, his mustache, and his awkwardness were all that kept him from being as pretty as his sister.

"I am not the mother of Mrs. Hemans." He took a sheet of paper from his pocket-book, and showed her the poem written in his peculiarly plain, upright hand.

"Excuse my singing and I will read. You must not think of any thing else."

"I will not."

"You are walking too fast."

She obediently took slower steps.

He cleared his throat and, holding the paper near his eyes, began to read. A shadow gathered in his listener's eyes at the first four lines.

"A nightingale made a mistake; She sang a few notes out of tune, Her heart was ready to break, And she hid from the moon.

"She wrung her claws, poor thing, But was far too proud to speak; She tucked her head under her wing, And pretended to be asleep.

"A lark arm in arm with a thrush, Came sauntering up to the place; The nightingale felt herself blush, Though feathers hid her face.

"She knew they had heard her song, She felt them snicker and sneer. She thought this life was too long, And wished she could skip a year.

"'O, nightingale!' cooed a dove, O, nightingale, what's the use; You bird of beauty and love, Why behave like a goose?

"'Don't skulk away from our sight, Like a common, contemptible fowl; You bird of joy and delight, Why behave like an owl?

"'Only think of all you have done; Only think of all you can do; A false note is really fun From such a bird as you.

"'Lift up your proud little crest: Open your musical beak; Other birds have to do their best, You need only to speak.'

"The nightingale shyly took Her head from under her wing, And giving the dove a look, Straightway began to sing.

"There was never a bird could pass; The night was divinely calm; And the people stood on the grass, To hear that wonderful psalm!

"The nightingale did not care, She only sang to the skies; Her song ascended there, And there she fixed her eyes.

"The people that stood below She knew but little about; And this story's a moral, I know, If you'll try to find it out."

"How did you know that I need that?" she asked, taking it from his hand. "Who wrote it?"

"I did."

"Don't you know?"

"No. I don't know. I copied it for you."

"Thank you. I thank you very much. You could not have brought me any thing better."

"I brought you a piece of news, too."

"As good as the poem?"

"Nan Gerard thinks so. She is to be married and to live at Old Place; our castle in the air."

"Old Place isn't my castle in the air. Who told you?"

"A woman's question. I never told a woman a secret yet that she did not reply, 'Who told you?' Mary Sherwood told me, of course. Do you congratulate Naughty Nan?"

"Must I?"

"It's queer that I do not know that man. I have missed an introduction a thousand times. Do you congratulate her?"

"I am supposed to congratulate _him_. He is very lovable."

"I thought that only women were that."

"That's an admission," laughed Tessa, "you cross old bachelor."

"You learned that from Dine."

"No, I learned it from you."

Tessa talked rapidly and lightly, perhaps, because she did not feel like talking at all.

Would he marry Nan Gerard? Why could she not be glad for Nan Gerard? Why must she be just a little sorry for herself? Why must it make a difference to her? Why must the weight of the flowers be too heavy for her hand, and why must she give them that toss over a fence across a field?

"Your pretty flowers," expostulated Mr. Hammerton.

"I do not care for them; they were withering."

"I have a thought; I wonder why it should come to me; I am wondering if you and I walk together here a year from to-day what we shall be talking about. My prophetic soul reveals to me that a year makes a difference sometimes."

"I remember a year ago to-day," she answered. "A year _has_ made a difference."

"Not to you or me?"

"To Nan Gerard?" she answered seriously.

"But that does not affect us."

Did it not? A year ago to-day Ralph Towne had brought her some English violets, and she had pressed them and thrown a thought about him and about them into a poem. To-day had he taken violets to Nan Gerard?

"Lady Blue; you are absent-minded."

"Am I? I was only labelling and pigeon-holing a thought; it is to be laid away to moulder with the dust of ages."

"A thought that can not be spoken?"

"A thought that it was folly to think, and that would be worse than folly to speak."

If he replied she did not hear; they sauntered on, she keeping the path and he walking on the grass.

A carriage passed, driving slowly. The two ladies within watched the pedestrians,--a fair-faced girl with thoughtful eyes, and a tall man with an intellectual face,--as if they were a part of the landscape of the spring.

"'In the spring a young man's fancy--'"

laughingly quoted one of them.

"Will she accept or refuse him?" asked the other.

"If she do either it will be once and forever," was the reply seriously given. "Did you notice her mouth? She has been very much troubled, but she can be made very glad."

After the carriage had passed, Mr. Hammerton spoke, "I am glad we amused those people; they failed to decide whether or not we are lovers."

"They have very little penetration, then," said Tessa. "I am too languid and you are too unconscious."

"There is nothing further to be said; you do not know what you have nipped in the bud."

"I suppose we never know that."

Dinah met them at the gate, her wind-blown curls and laughing eyes in striking contrast to the older face that had lost all its color. Tessa did not see that Mr. Hammerton's eyes were studying the change in her face; she had no more care of the changes in her face with him than with Dinah.

"I'll be in about eight," he said to Dinah, as Tessa brushed past him to enter the gate.

Another thing that influenced impressible Tessa this day, was a talk at the tea-table. They were sitting around the tea-table cozily, the four people who, in her mother's thought, constituted all Tessa's world. Mr. Wadsworth in an easy position in his arm-chair was listening to his three girls and deciding that his little wife was really the handsomest and sprightliest woman that he had ever seen, that happy little Dine was as bewitching as she could well be, and that Tessa, the light of his eyes, was like no one else in all the world. Not that any stranger sitting in his arm-chair would have looked through his eyes, but he was an old man, disappointed in his life, and his three girls were all of earth and a part of heaven to him. They were all talking and he was satisfied to listen. "I believe that some girls are born without a mother's heart," Mrs. Wadsworth said in reply to a story of Dine's about a young mother in Dunellen who had slapped her baby, saying that she hated it and was nothing but a slave to it! "Now, here's Tessa. _She_ has no motherliness. Only this morning Freddie Stone fell down near the gate and hurt his head; his screams were terrifying, but she went on working and let him scream. As I said it is all as girls are born."

"Yes," answered Tessa, in the deliberate way in which she had schooled herself to reply to her mother, "I know that your last assertion is true. There was a lady in school, a teacher of mathematics, she acknowledged that she did not love her own little girls as other mothers seemed to do. She stated it as she would have stated any fact in geometry; perhaps she thought that she was no more responsible for one than for the other. The mere fact of motherhood does not bring mother love within; any mother that does not give to her child a true idea of the mother-heart of God fails utterly in being a mother. She may be a nurse, a paid nurse, or a nurse upon compulsion; any hired nurse can wash a child's face, can tie its sash and make pretty things for it to wear, and _any_ nurse, who was never mother to a child, can teach it what God means when He says, 'as a mother comforteth.' Miss Jewett could not be happier in her Bible class girls if they were all her own children; she says so herself. Mary Sherwood said to her one day, 'If my mother were like you, how different I should have been!'"

"Such a case is an exception," returned Mrs. Wadsworth excitedly.

"Nineteen out of her twenty-three girls tell her their troubles when they would not tell their own mothers," said Dinah. "She has twenty-three secret drawers to keep their secrets in."

"She has time to listen to fol-de-rol. She advises them all to marry for some silly notion and let a good home slip, I've no doubt."

"I expect that twenty-one of her girls have refused John Gesner," laughed Mr. Wadsworth. "He will have to bribe Miss Jewett to let them alone."

"Only twenty, father," said Dine. "Tessa and Sue and I are waiting to do it."

"I will make this house too uncomfortable for the one of you that does refuse him."

"Mother! mother!" remonstrated Mr. Wadsworth gently.

"He'll never have the honor," said Dine. "Mr. Lewis Gesner is the gentleman; I have always admired him. Haven't you, Tessa?"

"Yes; I like to shake hands with him; he has a trustworthy face."

"So much for the mothers of Dunellen, Tessa; how about the fathers? Would the girls like to have Miss Jewett for a father, too?"

"Oh, the fathers have the bread-winning to do. If the mothers do not understand, we can not expect the fathers to understand. There was a girl at school who had had a hard home experience; she told me that she never repeated the second word of the Lord's prayer; that she said instead: Our Lord, who art in heaven?"

"Oh, deary me! How dreadful!" cried Dinah, moving nearer the arm-chair and dropping her head on her father's shoulder. "Didn't she _ever_ learn to say it?"

"Not while we were at school."

"Tessa, you can talk," said her mother.

"Yes," said Tessa, humbly, "I can talk."

"She was a very wicked girl," continued Mrs. Wadsworth. "I don't see how she dared; I should think that she would have been afraid of dying in her sleep as a judgment sent upon her."

"Perhaps she did not repeat the prayer as a charm," answered Tessa, in her clearest tones.

Dinah lifted her head to laugh.

"You upheld her, no doubt," declared Mrs. Wadsworth.

"I sympathized with her as they who never had a pain can feel for the sick," said Tessa, smiling into her father's eyes.

"How did you talk to her?" asked Dine.

"What is talk? I only told her to wait and she would know."

"It's easy to talk," said Mrs. Wadsworth uncomfortably. "You can talk an hour about sympathy, but you didn't run out to Freddie Stone."

"Why didn't you?" inquired her father seriously.

Tessa laughed, while Dine answered.

"Mother was there talking as fast as she could talk, Bridget was there with a basin of water and a sponge, Mrs. Bird had run over, a carriage with two ladies, a coachman and a footman had stopped to look on, and oh, I was there too. He was somewhat bloody."

"You are excused, daughter. Save your energies for a time of greater need."

"Energies! Need!" tartly exclaimed Mrs. Wadsworth. "If she begins to be literary, she will care for nothing else."

"I see no evidence of a lessening interest yet," replied her father.

"Oh, I might know that you would encourage her. She might as well have the small-pox as far as her prospects go! A needle is a woman's weapon."

"You forget her tongue, mother," suggested Dine. "Oh, Tessa, what is that about a needle; Mrs. Browning says it."

Tessa repeated:

"'A woman takes a housewife from her breast, And plucks the delicatest needle out As 'twere a rose, and pricks you carefully 'Neath nails, 'neath eyelids, in your nostrils,--say, A beast would roar so tortured--but a man, A human creature, must not, shall not flinch, No, not for shame.'"

"Some woman wrote that when she'd have done better to be sewing for her husband, I'll warrant," commented Mrs. Wadsworth. Mr. Wadsworth looked grave.

"Oh she had a literary husband," replied Tessa, mischievously. "A word that rhymed with supper would do instead of bread and butter; and he cared more for one of her poems than he did for his buttons."

"Literary men don't grow on every bush; and they don't take to literary women, either," said her mother.

"Mother, you forget the Howitts, William and Mary; what good, good times they have taking long walks and writing; like you and Gus, Tessa, and Mr. and Mrs. Browning--"

"You don't find such people in Dunellen; _we_ live in Dunellen. Gus will choose a woman that doesn't care for books, and so will Mr. Towne, mark my words! And so will Felix Harrison, even if he is killing himself with study."

"He is improving greatly," said Mr. Wadsworth, pulling one of Dine's long curls straight. "He is going away Monday to finish his studies."

"I honor him," said Tessa, flushing slightly.

"Don't," said Dine, "he sha'n't have you, Tessa. Don't honor him."

"That's all you and your father think of--keeping Tessa. She needs the wear and tear of married life to give her character."

"It's queer about that," rejoined Tessa in a perplexed tone, playing with her napkin ring. "If such discipline _be_ the best, why is any woman permitted to be without it? Why does not the fitting husband appear as soon as the girl begins to wish for him? In the East, where it is shameful for a girl not to be married at eleven, I have yet to learn that the wives are noted for strength or beauty of character."

"You may talk," said her mother, heatedly, "but two years hence _you_ will dance in a brass kettle."

"I hope that I shall work in it," answered Tessa, coloring painfully, however. Whether her lips were touched with a slight contempt, or tremulous because she was very, very much hurt, Dinah could not decide; she was silent because she could not think of any thing sharp enough to reply; she never liked to be _too_ saucy.

Mr. Wadsworth spoke in his genial voice: "It's a beautiful thing, daughters, to help a good man live a good life."

Dinah thought: "I would love to do such a beautiful thing." Tessa was saying to herself, "Oh, what should I do if my father were to die!"

Mr. Wadsworth pushed back his chair, went around to his wife and kissed her. Tessa loved him for it.

"You have helped a good man, a good old man, haven't you, fairy?" he said, smoothing the hair that was as pretty as Dinah's.

"Yes," answered his wife, and Tessa shivered from head to foot. "People all said that you were a different man after you were married."

"I'm going over to Norah's," cried Dinah. "I told her that I would come to write our French together. And, oh, father! I forgot to tell you, Gus will be in about eight."

"I don't know that I care for chess; I can not concentrate my attention as I could a year ago."

"Why do you run off if he is coming?" asked Mrs. Wadsworth.

"He comes too often to be attended to," Dine answered. "Won't you be around, Tessa?"

"Perhaps."

Tessa had resolved to give the evening to writing letters, and was passing through the dining-room with a china candlestick in her hand, when her father, reading Shakespeare at the round table, on which stood a shaded lamp, detained her by catching at her dress.