That evening her father called her to say: “The new professor is to preach Sunday evening before church service in the Park; you and I will go to hear him.”

XIII.—THE HEART OF LOVE.

“That is because I am human.” Tessa had answered soberly.

“Suppose it is refused.”

“Then I’ll be like William Howitt; his book was refused four times and he stood on London bridge ready to toss it over. I do not think that I will do as Charlotte Bronte did; she sent a rejected manuscript to a publisher wrapped in the wrapper in which the first publisher had rolled it. I suppose that his address was printed on it.”

She had run on merrily as she had placed the cool, pure lilies in the vase; but her heart was sinking, nevertheless. It had always taken so little to exhilarate or depress her.

“Must you write to-day?” inquired her mother one morning in an unsatisfied tone.

“Several hours.”

“I wanted you to make calls with me and to help me with the currant jelly and to put those button-holes into my linen wrapper.”

“I can do it all, but I must write while I am fresh.”

The first hour she wrote wearily; then she lost the small struggles in her own life and became comforted through the comfort wherewith she comforted others. Not one thing was forgotten, not one household duty shirked, the jelly was made to perfection, the button-holes worked while her mother was taking her afternoon nap, the calls were pushed through, and then Mrs. Wadsworth proposed a call upon Mrs. Towne.

“I promised your Aunt Dinah that I would call.”

Tessa demurred although she remembered her promise; she much preferred calling some time when Aunt Dinah should be with her; Mrs. Wadsworth insisted and Tessa yielded more graciously in manner than in mind.

Mrs. Towne received them most cordially and gracefully; an expression flitted over her eyes as Tessa looked up into them that she never forgot; it touched her as Dr. Lake’s eyes did, sometimes; what could this beautiful old mother need in her? Whatever it might be, she felt fully prepared to give it.

Mrs. Wadsworth was as effusively talkative as usual; Tessa replied when spoken to; lively, fussy, pretty little Mrs. Wadsworth did not compare to her own advantage with her womanly daughter. Mrs. Towne looked at Tessa and thought of the picture that she had seen; it was certainly excellent only that the picture was rather too intellectual; in the picture she might have written “Mechanism of the Heavens” but sitting there in the crimson velvet chair with a pale blue bow among her braids and her soft gray veil shading her cheek she was more like the daughter that she had ever dreamed of—simple, sweet, and thoroughly lovable Mrs. Towne was a trifle afraid of a woman who looked too intellectual. Would she forgive Ralph and trust him again? She was sure that she would until Tessa unbuttoned her glove and drew it off; the slight, strong hand was a revelation; the girl had a will of her own. But might not her will be towards him? “I wish that I knew nothing,” thought the mother, “the suspense will weary me, the disappointment will be nearly as much for me as for the boy.”

Meanwhile, unconscious Tessa, with the glove in her fingers, was far away in the Milan cathedral on the wall opposite her, looking into the arches of the choir, feeling the sunlight through the glimmering painted windows, thinking about the procession of the scarlet-robed priests, and wondering about the hidden chancel; if the picture were upon her wall how it would glow and become alive in the western light, the drooping banners would stir with the breath of the evening, the censers would swing and the notes of the organ would bear her up and away. Away! Where? Was not all her world in this little Dunellen?

“My son is always busy; he rushes into every thing that he undertakes.”

The mother had a voice like the son’s; the soul of sincerity was in it; the sincere, sympathetic voice, the rush of feeling, love, regret, and sense of loss that it brought filled her eyes too full to be raised. At that instant Mrs. Towne was observing her; her heart grew lighter, hoping for the thing that might be.

Mrs. Towne held Tessa’s hand at parting. “I am an old woman, so I may ask a favor of a young one, will you come soon again?”

“Thank you, yes.”

“And often?”

Then she had to promise again. Dr. Towne was seldom at home; she thought of this when she promised. She was thinking of it that evening in the early twilight as she weeded among her pansies. Dine said that it was a wonder that she had not turned into a pansy herself by this time.

“Daughter, why do you sigh?”

Her father was seated in a rustic chair on the piazza with a copy of Burns unopened upon his knee; he had left the store earlier than usual that afternoon, complaining of the old pain in his side.

“My sigh must be very loud or your ears very sharp,” she replied, lifting her head. “I will bring you some perfect pansies.”

He took them and looked down at them; she stood at his side smoothing the straggling locks on his bald forehead with her perfumed, soiled fingers. “I think that if I knew nothing about God but that He made pansies, I should love Him for that,” she said at last.

“Is that what you were sighing over?”

“The sigh came out of the heart of the pansy. I wish I knew how to love somebody.”

“Is that what you were sighing over?”

“I do not know how,” rubbing the soil from her fingers, “to love when I lose faith. I do not know how and it worries me.”

“You mean that you do not know how to honor and trust when you lose faith. Are you so far on the journey of life as that? Must I congratulate you, daughter?”

“No; teach me.”

“No human teaching can teach you to love where you have lost faith.”

“Well; nobody asks me to!”

“If any body ever does, look at your own failings; that pulls me through.”

“I understand that,” still speaking in a troubled voice, “but all the love and patience do no good; people do not change because we love them.”

“No, they do not change, but we change.”

“That is not enough for me; I am not satisfied with the blessing of giving, I want the other somebody to have the blessing of receiving.”

“We do not know the end.”

“You two people do find queer things to talk about,” cried a lively voice behind them. “If I knew what mystical meant, I should say that it was you and Tessa. Don’t you want to hear all about Mrs. Towne, and what a lovely room we were taken into?”

“Yes, dear, and how her hair was fixed and just how she was dressed.”

Tessa ran back to her pansies; Mrs. Wadsworth had found a theme to enlarge upon for the next half hour. As Tessa worked among the flowers, a poem that she had learned that day while making the button-holes sang itself through and through her heart.

    “Oh  the  hurt  and  the  hurt  and  the  hurt  of  love!
        Wherever  the  sun  shines,  the  waters  go,
    It  hurts  the  snowdrop,  it  hurts  the  dove,
        God  on  His  throne,  and  man  below.
    But  sun  would  not  shine  nor  waters  go,
        Snowdrop  tremble  nor  fair  dove  moan,
    God  be  on  high,  nor  man  below,
        But  for  love—the  love  with  its  hurt  alone.
    Thou  knowest,  O,  Saviour,  its  hurt  and  its  sorrows,
        Didst  rescue  its  joy  by  the  might  of  Thy  pain;
    Lord  of  all  yesterdays,  days,  and  to-morrows,
        Help  us  love  on  in  the  hope  of  Thy  gain!
    Hurt  as  it  may,  love  on,  love  forever;
        Love  for  love’s  sake  like  the  Father  above,
    But  for  whose  brave-hearted  Son  we  had  never
        Known  the  sweet  hurt  of  the  sorrowful  love.”

“I am not sincere in repeating that,” she mused. “I don’t love on, love forever—and I don’t want to! If I were in a book, every thing would make no difference, nothing would make a difference—would love on, love forever—and I don’t know how. I wish I did. It would not change him, but it would make me very glad and very good! I can not attain to it.”

The grazing sound of wheels brought her back to the pansies, then to Dr. Lake; he had driven up close to the opening in the lilac shrubbery.

“Ah, Mystic.”

“Good evening, doctor.”

It was the first time that they had been alone together since Sue’s engagement. She had been dreading this first time. She arose and brushed her hands against each other, moving towards the opening in the lilacs.

“I saw you, and could not resist the temptation of stopping to speak to you.”

“Thank you,” she said warmly. “Will you have a lily?”

“No, lilies are not for me. Briers and thorns grow for me.”

“Where are you riding to now?”

“Felix Harrison came home yesterday worse than ever. I was there in the night and am going again. Why don’t he die now that he has a chance? Catch me throwing away such an opportunity.”

“I hope that you will never have such an opportunity,” she answered, not thinking of what she was saying.

“That’s always the way; the lucky ones die, the unlucky ones live.”

“Can you not resist the temptation to tell me any thing so trite as that?”

“Don’t be sharp, Mystic.”

She was leaning against the low fence, her hands folded over each other, a breath of air stirring the wavy hair around her temples, and touching the pale blue ribbon at her throat, a white, graceful figure, speaking in her animated way with the flush of the pink rose tinting her cheeks and a misty veil shadowing her eyes.

“A very pretty picture in a frame-work of brown and green,” thought the old man in the rustic chair on the piazza.

But she never thought of making a picture of herself, she left such small coquetries to girls who had nothing better to do or to think of. She had her life to live and her books to write! Nevertheless two pairs of eyes found her pleasant to look upon. Dr. Lake’s experiences had opened his eyes to see that Tessa Wadsworth was unlike any woman that he had ever known; she was to him the calm of the moonlight, the fragrance of the spring, and the restfulness of trust.

In these weeks of his trouble, had she been like some other of the Dunellen girls, she would have found her way without pushing into his heart by the wide door that shallow Sue had left ajar.

His heart was open to any attractive woman who would sympathize with him; to any woman who would be glad of what Sue Greyson had thrown away; she might have become aware of this but for her instinctive habit of looking upward to love; even the tenderest compassion mingled with some admiration could not grow into love with her in her present moods; she was too young and asked too much of life for such a possibility.

In these days every man was too far below George Macdonald and Frederick Robertson, unless indeed it might be the new Greek professor; in her secret heart she had begun to wonder if Philip Towne were not something like them both; perhaps because in his sermon that Sunday twilight in the Park he had quoted a “declaration of Robertson’s”—“I am better acquainted with Jesus Christ than I am with any man on earth.”

The words came to her as she stood, to-night, talking with Dr Lake; she was wishing that she might repeat them to him; instead she only replied, “Why shouldn’t I be sharp? You are a man and therefore able to bear it.”

“Not much of a man—or wholly a man. I reckon that is nearer right. I never saw a man yet that a blow from a woman’s little finger wouldn’t knock him over.”

“Not any woman’s finger.”

“Any thing would blow me over to-night. Why do women have to make so many things when they are married?” he asked earnestly.

“To keep the love they have won,” she said with a mischievous laugh. “Don’t you know how soon roses fade after they are rudely torn from the protection and nourishment of the parent stem?”

“Rudely! They flutter, they pant, they struggle to tear themselves loose! Why do you suppose that she prefers Stacey to me?”

“I don’t know all things.”

“You know that. Answer.”

“She does not prefer him. He is the smallest part of her calculations. Marriage with you would make no change in her life; she seeks change; she has never been married and lived in Philadelphia—therefore to be married and live in Philadelphia must be glorious.”

“Then if I had money to take her anywhere and everywhere she would have married me. I’ll turn highwayman to get rich then. She shows me every pretty thing she makes; dresses up in all her new dresses and asks me if I feel like the bridegroom lends me her engagement ring when she is tired of it. I’d bite it in two if I dared—reads me his letters and asks me to help her answer them for she can only write a page and a half out of her own head.”

Tessa laughed; it was better to laugh than to be angry, and Sue could not be any body but Sue Greyson.

“She says that her only objection to him is his name and age; she likes my name better, and scribbles Sue Greyson Lake over his old envelopes. I would like to send him one of them. I was reading in the paper this morning of a man who shot the girl that refused him; if I don’t shoot her it will not be her fault, she is driving me mad. If I can’t have her myself, he sha’n’t!”

She dropped her hands and turned away from him.

“Mystic.” But she was among the pansies again.

“Mystic,” with the tone in his voice that she would never forget, “come back. Don’t you throw me over; I shall go to destruction if you do.”

“I can not help you. You do not try to help yourself.”

“I know it. I don’t want to be helped. I drift. I have no will to struggle. She plays with me like a cat with a mouse. I do not know what I am about half the time. I will take a double dose of morphine some night. I wonder if she would cry if she saw me dead. Men have done such things with less provocation; men of my temperament, too. Would you be sorry, Mystic?”

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

“I am weak—I have strayed, I have wandered away—but I can go back.”

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

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

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

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

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

“You have found that your doll is stuffed with sawdust, can’t you toss it aside?”

“I love sawdust,” he answered, comically.

“Then I’m ashamed of you.”

“You haven’t seen other men tried.”

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

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

“Then I despise you.”

“You love like a woman, Mystic; I love like a man.”

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

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

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

“Of course you didn’t! But I will not do it again—I really will not. I am half mad as I told you. Good night, Mystic.”

“Good night,” she said sadly.

He held the reins still lingering.

“Will you ride with me again some day?”

“No, I don’t like to hear you talk.”

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

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

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

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

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

“So I do—than to be married to any one I know.”

“Do you expect to find somebody new?”

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

“Oh, don’t be so dreary,” laughed Dinah.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“That is impossible. Did you tell Dine?”

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

“I am not Leah,” said Tessa seriously, “call Rachel.”

“Rachel! Rachel!” he called, beckoning to Dinah. Dinah whistled by way of reply and dropped Norah’s arm.

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

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

“I only wish it was,” was the dissatisfied reply.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You could immediately retire into a convent.”

Dinah had mischievously fallen behind with her father and mother.

“Then I could never find my good man?”

“Must you find him or die forlorn?”

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

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

“How can any woman be that!” she exclaimed indignantly.

“May you never know.”

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

“That weakness has become a part of our original sin.”

“It isn’t yours,” she retorted.

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

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

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

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

“Haven’t you often told me that I am stupid as an old geometry.”

“And I hate geometry.”

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

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

“I left it to time and common sense.”

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

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

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

“I know that my poetry fails me when extremity comes.”

“Has the extremity come?”

“Yes,” she said bravely.

“And that is another thing that I am not to know.”

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

“What about the reading? Was it all that you expected?”

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

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

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

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

“No, you never kept still long enough.”

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

“Why, Tessa! Do you know him?”

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

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

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

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

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

“I do not always understand Gus.”

“Gus does not ramble; he is plain enough.”

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

“I confess that while I understand what he says I do not understand him. If you do, you are wiser than I.”

“I guess that I am wiser than you.”

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

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

“Yes, you are pretty in warm colors.”

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

XIV.—WHEAT, NOT BREAD.

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

“Feeling wicked and miserable and wanting to go to heaven.”

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

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

“What shall I do on earth?” she asked.

“What you are told.”

“I can not always see or hear what I must do.”

“That’s a pity.”

“Can you?”

“I could not once; I can now.”

“How can you now?”

“Because I desire but one thing—and that is always made plain to me.”

“But how can you get over wanting things?”

“I can not.”

“I do not understand.”

“I mean only this, dear child; I do want things, but I want God’s will most of all.”

“Sometimes I think I do, and then I know that I do not. Do you think,” lowering her voice and speaking more slowly, “that He ever deceives any body?”

“He sometimes, oftentimes, allows them to be deceived,—is that what you mean?”

“He does not do it.”

“No, but He allows others to do it.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Now I must go.”

“I’ll walk to the end of the planks with you.”

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

XV.—SEPTEMBER.

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

“I’ve heard of illustrating books,” she laughed to herself, “but it seems that I must illustrate pictures.”

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

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

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

“You may become famous yet.”

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

“You will be glad of it when you are old.”

“I am glad of it now.”

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

“I do not know how to talk to you; you remind me of Tryphena and Tryphosa; St. Paul would know what to say to you. You seem to have no worldliness in your aims. Your style is impressive. I think that we can keep your pen busy. Your last manuscript is still in the balance.”

“If it be found wanting, what shall I do! The suspense wears upon me.”

“I begin to understand why mediocrity is long-lived. Don’t be a goose, child.”

Mr. Wadsworth was at his desk; he read the letter through twice without comment.

“Well!” she said, playing with a morsel of pink blotting paper.

“It’s beautiful, daughter.”

She wondered why it did not seem so much to her as it did to him and to Miss Jewett.

“I expect that Dine will take to authorship next.”

Tessa’s lips were keeping a secret, for Dine was writing a little story. When had she ever failed to attempt the thing that Tessa had done? She had not taken Tessa’s place in school, and had been graduated much nearer the foot of her class than Tessa had ever stood; still she had Tessa’s knack of writing stories, and telling stories, and had, at her urging, written a story for boys, which Tessa had criticised and copied; Dinah’s penmanship being very pretty, but not at all plain. The letter made no allusion to the fate of Dinah’s story; somewhat anxious about this, she slipped the bulky envelope into her pocket and turned her face homewards. Her winter’s work was laid out for her; there was nothing to do but to do it.

So full was she with plans for the books that she did not hear steps behind her and at her side until Sue Greyson nudged her.

“Say, Tessa, turn down Market Street with me; I have something to tell you.” The serious, startled voice arrested her instantly. What new and dreadful thing had Sue been doing now? Her only dread was for Dr. Lake.

“I’ve been ordering things for dinner; we have dinner at four, so I can afford to run around town in the morning. I’m in a horrid fix and there’s nobody to help me out.”

“What about?”

“I haven’t been doing any thing; it’s other people; it’s always other people,” she said plaintively, “somebody is always doing something to upset my plans. You do not sympathize with me, you never do.”

“I do not know how to sympathize with any thing that is not straightforward and true, and your course is rather zigzag.”

“Dr. Towne said—”

“You haven’t been talking to him,” interrupted Tessa, flushing.

“No, only he called to see father and I was home alone and he asked me what ailed me and I had to tell him that I didn’t want to be married.”

“Well, what could he say?”

“He said, ‘Stay with your father and be a good girl,’” laughed Sue, “the last thing I would think of doing. Father looks so glum and says, ‘Oh, my little girl, what shall I do without you! I wish that fellow was at the bottom of the sea!’ So do I, too. I don’t see why I ever promised to marry him! I think that I must have been bereft of my senses.”

“Why not ask him to wait a year—you will know your own mind—if you have any—by that time.”

“Oh, deary me! I’d be married to John Gesner or some other old fool with money by that time! You don’t mind being an old maid, but I do!”

“How do you know that I don’t mind?” Tessa could not forbear asking.

“Oh, you wouldn’t be so happy and like to do things. I believe that I like Gerald a great deal better any way.”

She grew frightened at Tessa’s stillness; there was not one sympathetic line in the stern curving of her lips.

“Have you told Dr. Lake that?”

“You needn’t cut me in two,” laughed Sue uneasily, “men can’t sue women for breach of promise can they?”

“Answer me, please.”

Sue hesitated, colored, stammered, finally confessed in a weak voice that tried hard to be brave, “Yes, I have! There now! You can’t hurt me! Father said last night that if I had taken Lake he would have given me the house and every thing in it ‘for the old woman to keep house with,’ you know! And then he said that it was hard for me to leave him now that he is growing old, that he would have to marry somebody that wouldn’t care for him, that he never had had much pleasure in his life, that Gerald was a good physician and they could work together and how happy we might all have been! He was mad enough though when he first discovered that Gerald was in love with me; he threatened to send him off. But that’s his way! He is one thing one day and another thing the next! And I couldn’t help it, Tessa, I really, really couldn’t, but I was so homesick and just then Gerald came in—he looked so tired, his cough has come back, too—and when he said ‘How many days yet, Susan?’ I said quick, before I thought, ‘I like you a hundred times better! I would rather marry you than Stacey.’ And then he turned so white that I thought he was dead, and he said something, I don’t know whether it was swearing or praying—and caught me in his arms, and said after that he would never let me go! And then I said—I said—I couldn’t help it—that I would write to Stacey and send back the ring and he took it off and tossed it out the window! I And then I made him go and find it! Stacey can give it to some other girl. I didn’t hurt it. I always took it off when I swept or wet my hands. Life is so uncertain, I thought that he might want it again.”

“Life is uncertain. I never realized it until this minute.”

“Now your voice isn’t angry,” said poor Sue eagerly. “I want you to think that I have done right.”

“When my moral perceptions are blunted, I will.”

“Go away, saying ‘moral perceptions.’ I don’t know what Dr. Towne will think either. Well, what’s did can’t be undid! Now Gerald says that I sha’n’t put it off, but that I’ve got to marry him on that day. I know that you think it is horrid, but you never have lovers, so you don’t know! I don’t see why, either. You are a great deal prettier than I am. When I am tired, I am the lookingest thing, but you always look sweet and peaceful. Don’t you think that I ought to please father and stay home? Why don’t you say something? Are you struck dumb?”

“I can not understand it—yet.”

“I think that I have made it plain enough,” cried Sue, angrily. “You must be very stupid. You like Gerald so much—I used to be jealous—that you ought to be glad for him!”

“I do like him. I like him so well, Sue, that I want him to have a faithful and true wife. O, Sue! Sue Greyson! What are you to take that man’s life into your hands?”

“I don’t know what you mean. I love him, of course! If you think so much of him, why don’t you marry him?”

“The question is not worth a reply.”

“You ought to comfort me; I haven’t any mother,” returned Sue, miserably.

“It is well for her that you haven’t.”

“I don’t see why you can’t let me be comfortable,” whined Sue; “every thing would be lovely if you didn’t spoil it all. Gerald is as wild as a lunatic. He shall write to Stacey or father shall, or I’ll be married beforehand and send him the paper. I could do it in ten days. Do come home with me, I want you to see my wedding dress! It’s too lovely for any thing. My travelling dress is an elegant brown; I got brown to please Stacey, but Gerald likes it.”

“It’s a good idea to choose a color that gentlemen like generally; life is so uncertain.”

“So it is,” replied Sue, unconsciously. “I think that you might congratulate me,” she added, with her hysterical laugh. “You didn’t think that your gold thimble would make pretty things for Dr. Lake’s wife, did you?”

“I congratulate you! I hope that I may congratulate him, in time. Dr. Lake is trying to pour a gallon into a half pint. I hope that one of you will die before you make each other very miserable.”

“You mean thing,” said Sue, almost crying.

“I do not mean to hurt you, Sue, but you are doing something that is wretched beyond words. Don’t you care at all for that poor fellow who loves you?”

“Gerald loves me, too,” she answered proudly. “You are ugly to me, and I haven’t any body that I dare talk to but you. Mary Sherwood says that telling you things is like throwing things into the sea; nobody ever finds them.”

“I must be very full of rubbish.”

“We are going to Washington on our bridal trip; we can’t stay long, for father will not spare Gerald. I shall ask nobody but Dr. Towne and his mother, and Miss Jewett, and you, and Dine. Will you come?” she asked hesitatingly.

“I will come for Dr. Lake’s sake.”

“I got a letter from Stacey this morning. I haven’t opened it yet; it will make me very sad. I wish that I wasn’t so sensitive about things. It’s a dreadful trouble to me. I looked in the glass the first thing this morning expecting that my hair would be all white. I’m dying to show you my things; do come home with me.”

“Sue, do you ever say your prayers?”

“To be sure I do,” she replied, with a startled emphasis.

“Then be sure to say them before you write to that poor fellow.”

“I wish that you would write for me. Will you come the night before and stay all night with me? I shall be so afraid that the roof will tumble in, or somebody come down the chimney to catch me, that I sha’n’t sleep a wink.”

The curves of Tessa’s lips relented. “Yes, I will come. If somebody come they shall catch me, too.”

“You are a darling, after all. We are to be married about noon; Day is to send in the breakfast and the waiters—that was the plan, and if father isn’t too mad, I suppose he’ll do the same now.”

She stood still at the corner. “Well, if I do not see you—good-by till the last night of your girlhood.”

“Last night of my girlhood,” repeated Sue. “What are the other hoods?”

“Womanhood.”

“Oh, yes, and widowhood,” she said lightly.

Tessa turned the corner and walked rapidly along the pavement. “Motherhood,” she was thinking, “the sweetest hood of all! But I can sooner think of that in connection with a monkey or a butterfly than with Sue.”

At the next corner another interruption faced her in the forms of Mary Sherwood and laughing Naughty Nan.

The lively chat was ended with an expostulation from Nan. “Now, Mary Sherwood, hurry. You know that I must do several things this afternoon. I’m going to Mayfield and Green Valley with the handsome black bear, Miss Wadsworth.”

It was the day for her afternoon with Mrs. Towne; it had chanced that she had given to her every Tuesday afternoon. It touched her to find the white-haired, feeble, old lady watching for her at the window. Tessa loved her because she was cultured and beautiful; she loved her voice, her shapely, soft hands, her pretty motions, her elegant and becoming dress, and because—O, foolish Tessa, for a reason that she had tossed away, scorning herself—she was Ralph Towne’s mother. Not once in all these times had she met Dr. Towne in his own home; not until this afternoon in which he was to take Miss Gerard driving.

“My mother is engaged with callers, Miss Tessa; she asked me to take you to her sitting-room, and to take care of you for half an hour.”

“I am sorry to trouble you,” said she confusedly. “I want to see Miss Jewett; I will return in half an hour.”

“And not give me the pleasure of the half hour? When have you and I had half an hour together?”

She remembered.

“On the last night of the old year, was it not? Come with me and ‘take off your things.’ Isn’t that the thing to say?”

Unwillingly she followed him; he wheeled a chair into one of the wide windows overlooking the Park, laid away hat, sacque, and gloves, then seated himself lazily in the chair that he had wheeled to face her own. It was almost like the afternoons in the shabby parlor at home; so like them that she could not at first lift her eyes; in a mirror into which she had glanced, she had noticed how very pale lips and cheeks were and how dark her eyes were glowing.

He bent forward in a professional manner and laid two fingers on her throbbing wrist. “Miss Tessa, what are you doing to lose flesh so?”

With that, she lifted her eyes, the color coming with a rush. “Wouldn’t you like to see my tongue, too?”

“I know your tongue; it has a sharp point.”

“I am sorry.”

“No you are not,” he answered settling himself back in an easy position, and taking a penknife from his pocket to play with. The small knife, with the pearl handle; how often she had seen that in his fingers. “You are a student, of human nature; tell me what you think of me.”

How could she give to that amused assurance the bare, ugly truth!

“How many times have you changed your mind about me?”

“Once, only once.”

“Then your first impression of me was not correct.”

With her usual directness, she answered, “No.”

The blade snapped. If she had seen but his face she would have supposed that he had cut himself. She hastened to speak: “Some one says that we must change our minds three times before we can be sure.”

“But I do not want to wait until you are sure.”

“I am sure now.”

“No doubt. Tell me now.”

How many times his irresistibly boyish manner had forced from her words that she had afterward sorely regretted!

“You will not be pleased. You will dislike me forever after.”

“Much you will care for that.”

“Shall I not?” smiling at the humor in his eyes. “I think that I do not care as I once did for what people think of me; the question nowadays is what I think of them.”

“I will remember,” he said urgently, “that I brought it all upon my own head.”

How could he guess that in her heart was lodged one unpleasant thought of him? Had she not a little while—such a little while since—cared so much for him that he was grieved for her?

“You must promise not to be cross.”

“I promise,” taking out his watch. “You may hammer at me for twenty minutes. I have an engagement at half past three.”

Did Nan Gerard care as she had cared once? Would the sound of his wheels be to Naughty Nan what they were to her a year ago? A blue and gold edition of Longfellow was laid open on its face on the broad window-sill; she ran her forefinger the length of both covers before she could temper her voice; she did not wish to speak coldly, and yet her heart was very cold towards him.

“I think that you took me by surprise at first; I thought you were the handsomest man in the world—”

“You have changed that opinion?” he said, laughing.

“Yes; I should not think of describing you as handsome now; I should simply say that you were tall, dark, with deep-set, not remarkable, brown eyes, a quiet manner, given to few words—not at all remarkable, you are aware.”

“Go on, I am not demolished yet.”

“Your spirit I created out of my own fancies; I gave you in those enthusiastic days a heart like a woman’s heart, and a perfect intellect. You were my Sir Galahad, until I knew that some things you said were not—quite true?”

“Not quite true!” he repeated huskily.

Her eyes as well as her fingers were on the blue covers.

“Not true as I meant truth. Your words did not mean to you what they meant to me—I beg your pardon; do not let me savor of strong-mindedness, but I speak from my heart to your heart. You asked me a question frankly, I have answered it frankly. You said some things to Sue that you ought not to have said and that hurt me; I began to feel that you are not sincere through and through and through. At first I believed wholly in you and then I believed not at all. I was very bitter. And it hurt me so that I would rather have died.”

Her tone was as cold and even as if she were reciting a theorem in Legendre.

“So you died because you were not true, but you did not go to heaven because you had never lived, and therefore I can not expect to find you again. I did not know before how sad such a burial is.”

“Why can not you expect to find me again?”

“To find what? That fancy? If there is any one in the world as good, as true, as strong, gentle and sympathetic as my ideal, I surely hope to find that he is in the world.”

“You thought that his name was Ralph Towne, and now you know that his name is not Ralph Towne.”

“I do not know what his name may be.”

“You think the real Ralph Towne is a stranger not worth knowing?”

“He is a stranger, certainly; whether or not he is worth knowing you know best.”

She laughed, but not the suspicion of a smile gleamed in his eyes; she had forgotten that they could be as dark and stern as this.

“Time will show you, Miss Tessa,” he said humbly.

“I am sharp. I did not mean to be. But it cuts me so when I think that you can flirt with girls like Sue and Miss Gerard. Do you know of what it reminds me? Once the enemy fell upon the rear of an army and smote all that were feeble, when they were faint and weary; it was an army of women and little children, as well as men, and they did not go forth to war; all they asked was a peaceable passage through the land.”

The door was pushed softly open; Tessa lifted her eyes to behold the rare vision of shining gray silk, and real lace, a fine face crowned with white braids and lighted by the softest and brownest of brown eyes.

“My dear.” All her motherhood was concentrated in the two worn-out words.

“Now you may run away, Ralph.”

“I am very glad to,” he said. “Good afternoon, Miss Tessa.”

Tessa could not trust her voice to speak; raising her eyes she met his fully as he turned at the door to speak to his mother; a long searching look on both sides; neither smiled.

“Tessa, have you been quarrelling with my boy?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Has he been quarrelling with you?”

“No, ma’am.”

Mrs. Towne seated herself in the chair that Dr. Towne had vacated, arranged her dress and folded her hands in her lap.

“It is Nan Gerard again! What a flirt that girl is! She called yesterday and Ralph chanced to come in while she was here; she gave him such an invitation to invite her to drive with him that he could not—that is, he did not—refuse. I wish that he wouldn’t, sometimes; but he says that he is amused and no one is harmed. I am not so sure of that. I do not understand Miss Gerard. I think that I do not understand girls of this generation. But I understand you.”

“I wish that you would teach me to be as wise.”

“You will be by and by. Do you know what I would like to ask you to promise?”

“I can not imagine.”

“I have studied you. If you will give yourself five years to think, to grow, you will marry at thirty the man that you would refuse to-day. You are impetuous to-day, you form your judgments rashly, you despise what you can not understand, and you are not yet capable of the love that hopeth all things, endureth all things, that suffereth long and is kind.”

“That is true; I am not capable of it. I have no patience with myself, nor with others.”

“If you will wait these five years, your life and another life might be more blessed.”

“Mrs. Towne! No one loves me. There is no occasion for me not to wait. I could promise without the least difficulty for the happiness or unhappiness of marriage is as unattainable to me to-day as the happiness or unhappiness of old age.”

“I will not ask you to promise, my daughter, but I will ask you to promise this; before you say to any man, ‘Yes,’ will you come to me and talk it all out to me? As if I were really your mother!”