Laura cried a little when Tessa kissed her at the gate. "I wish that you wouldn"t go; I want you to stay and help me. Will you come again soon?"
"I can"t," she answered hurriedly.
"Did Felix know that you were coming to-day?"
Tessa"s eyes made answer enough; too much, for Laura understood.
"I will not tell him that I know-but I had guessed it-I heard him praying once while we were away, and I knew that he was giving up _you_."
Tessa kissed her again, and without a word hurried away, walking with slower steps as she went on with her full eyes bent upon the ground.
Was it so much to give up Tessa Wadsworth? What _was_ she that she could make such a difference in a man"s life? Was she lovable, after all, despite her quick words and sharp speeches? She was not pretty like Dinah, or "taking" like Sue; it was very pleasant to be loved for her own sake; "my own unattractive self," she said. It would be very pleasant in that far-off time, when she reviewed her life, to remember that some one had loved her beside her father and Dine and Miss Jewett!
And a good man, too; a man with brains, and a pure heart!
Her ideal was a man with brains, and a pure heart; then why had she not loved Felix Harrison?
"Oh, I don"t know," she sighed. "I can"t understand." Slowly, slowly, with her full eyes on the ground she went on, not heeding the sound of wheels, or gay voices, as a carriage pa.s.sed her now and then; but as she went on, with her eyes still full for Felix, a light sound of wheels set her heart to beating, and she lifted her eyes to bow to Dr. Towne.
In that instant her heart bowed before the Awful Will in acceptance of the love that had been given to her, even as other things in her lot had been given her, without any seeking or asking.
"I can bear it," she felt, filling the words with Paul"s thought, when he wrote, "I can do all things."
Dr. Towne drew the reins: she stood still on the edge of the foot-path.
"My mother misses you, Miss Tessa."
"Does she? I am sorry, but I have to be so busy at home."
His sympathetic eyes were on her face. "I thought, that you were never troubled about any thing," he said.
"I am not-when I can help it."
"I left Sue Greyson up the road looking for you; I could not bring her to meet you, as my carriage holds but one; there was news in her face."
"Then I will go to hear."
The light sound of his wheels had died away before she espied Sue"s tall figure coming quickly towards her.
"Oh, Tessa! How _could_ you go so far? Your mother said that you were here on this road, and that I should find you either up a tree or in the brook; I"ve got splendid news! guess! Did you meet Dr. Towne? He stopped and talked to me, but I wouldn"t tell him. He and his mother will know in time. Now, guess."
"Let me sit down and think. It will take time."
They had met near the brook at the corner of the road that turned past Old Place; on the corner stood a tall, bare walnut-tree, the gnarled roots covered a part of the knoll under which a slim thread of water trickled over moss and jagged flat stones, and then found its clear way into a broader channel and thence into the brook that crossed one of the Old Place meadows.
These roots had been Tessa"s resting-place all summer; how many times she had looked up to read the advertis.e.m.e.nt of the clothier in Dunellen painted in black letters on a square board nailed to the trunk; how many times had she leaned back and looked down into the thread of water at the moss, and the pebbles, the tiny ferns and the tall weeds, turning to look down the road towards May field where the school-house stood, and then across the fields-the wheat fields, the corn fields-to the peach orchard beyond them, and beyond that the green slope of the fertile hill-side with its few dwellings, and above the slope the crooked green edge that met the sky-sometimes a blue sky, sometimes a sky of clouds, and sometimes gray with the damp clouds hanging low; thinking, as her eyes roved off her book, of some prank of Rob"s or some quaint saying of Sadie"s, of some little comforting thought that swelled in grandma"s patient, gentle heart, or of something sharp that Sadie"s snappish mother should say; sometimes she would take the sky home for her book and sometimes the weeds and the pebbles and the brook; and when it was not her book it was Felix-poor Felix!-or Dr. Lake, whom she loved more and more every day with the love that she would have loved a naughty, feeble, winsome child; or Mr. Towne, of his face that was ever with her like the memory of a picture that she had lingered before and could never forget, or of his voice and some words that he had spoken; or of her father and his failing strength and brave efforts to conceal it; sometimes a kind little thing that her mother had done for her, some self-denial or shame-faced demonstration of her love for her elder daughter, sometimes of Dine"s changeful moods, and often of the book of George Eliot"s that she was reading, or the latest of Charles Kingsley"s that she was discussing with Mr. Hammerton; thinking, musing, feeling, planning while she picked up a pebble or tore a weed into bits, or wrote a sentence in her pocket notebook! It was no wonder that this gnarled seat was so much to her that she lost herself and lost the words that Sue was speaking so rapidly.
"You are not listening to me at all," cried Sue at last "I might as well talk to the tree as to talk to you!"
"I am listening; what is it?"
"It"s all settled-splendidly settled-and I"m as happy as Cinderella when she found the Prince! Now guess!"
"Well, then," stooping to pick a weed that had gone to seed, "I guess that you have come to your right mind, that you will marry Stacey on Friday and all will go as merry as a marriage bell should."
"What a thing to guess! That"s too horrid! Guess again."
"You have grown good and "steady," you will keep house for your father and be what he is always calling you,-the comfort of his old age,-and forego lovers and such perplexities forever."
"That"s horrider still! Do guess something sensible."
"You are going to marry Dr. Lake. Your father has stormed and stormed, but now he has become mild and peaceable; you are to be married Friday morning and start off immediately in the sober certainty of waking bliss."
"Yes," said Sue very seriously, "that is it. Every thing is as grand as a story-book, except that father will not give me the house for a wedding present. Oh, those wretched days since I saw you last! I did think that I would take laudanum or kill myself with a penknife. You don"t know what I have been through. Old Blue Beard is pious to what father has been; Gerald, _he_ kept out of the house. I should have run away before this, only I knew that father would come around and beg my pardon. He always does."
Tessa stooped to dip her fingers in the water.
"And _this_ is your idea of marriage," she said quietly.
"No, it isn"t. I never looked forward to any thing like this; I always wanted something better. I am not doing very well, although I suppose there _are_ girls in Dunellen who would think Gerald a catch."
"Oh, Sue, Sue! when he loves you so! If he could hear you, it would break his heart!"
"Take him yourself then, if you think he"s so much," laughed Sue. "Nan Gerard will get the catch!"
"Sue, I am ashamed of you!" exclaimed Tessa rising. "I am glad if you are happy-as happy as you know how to be. I want you to be happy-and _do_ be good to Dr. Lake."
How Sue laughed!
"Oh, you dear old Goody Goody," she cried, springing to her feet and throwing her arms around Tessa. "What else should I be to my own wedded husband? But it does seem queer so near to Old Place to be talking about marrying Dr. Lake."
"We"ll remember this place always, Sue, and that you promised to be kind to Dr. Lake."
"Yes, I"ll remember," with a shadow pa.s.sing over her face. "The next time you and I sit here it will be all over with me. I shall be out of lovers for the rest of my natural life." She laughed and chatted all the way home; her listener was silent and sore at heart.
"You will come to-morrow night and see the last of me, won"t you? This is what I came to ask you, "the last sad office" isn"t that it? Sue Greyson will never ask you another favor."
"Yes, I will come." She had always loved Sue Greyson. She did not often kiss her, but she kissed her now.
"Don"t look so. Laugh, can"t you? If it is something terrible, it isn"t happening to you."
"The things that happen to me are the easiest to bear."
Sue crossed over to the planks and went on pondering this, then gave it up to wonder how she would wear her hair on her wedding morning; Tessa would make it look pretty any way, for she was born a hair-dresser.
And Tessa went in and up-stairs, thinking of a remark of Miss Jewett"s: "I should not understand my life at all, it would be all in a tangle, if it were not for my prayers."