Tessa Wadsworth's Discipline Part 30

But sun would not s.h.i.+ne nor waters go, Snowdrop tremble nor fair dove moan, G.o.d 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 pus.h.i.+ng 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 compa.s.sion 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 wis.h.i.+ng 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 s.n.a.t.c.h it."

"You have found that your doll is stuffed with sawdust, can't you toss it aside?"