Tessa Wadsworth's Discipline Part 44

opening his arms towards her.

"No, I won't. Let me alone, Dr. Lake."

Tessa was already on the stairs; Sue ran towards her laughing and screaming, the parlor door was closed with a bang.

"Now he's angry," cried Sue, tripping on the stairs. "I don't care; he wants me to stay and talk sentiment, and I _hate_ being sentimental.

And, Tessa, you sha'n't talk to me, either."

"Where is your father?" inquired Tessa, standing on the threshold of Sue's chamber.

"In the dining-room drying his feet and drinking a cup of coffee."

"Don't you want to go down and say good night? He will lose every thing when he loses you."

Sue hesitated. "I don't know how to be tender and loving, I should make a fool of myself; he isn't over and above pleased with this thing anyway; he never did pet me as your father has petted you. Your father is like a mother. He said once when I was a little girl that he wished that I had died and Freddie had lived; Freddie was two years older and as bright as a b.u.t.ton. Father loved him. I shall never forget that; I shall never forgive him no matter how kind he is to me. And he swears at me when he is angry with me; he used to, but Gerald told him that he should not swear at _his_ wife! Father said that he didn't mean any thing by it. Gerald will be kinder to me than father has been; father swears at me in one breath and calls me the comfort of his old age in the next. You can't turn him into your father if you talk about him all night."

"But he will be glad if you go down; he will think of it some day and so will you."

"He isn't sentimental and I can't be. Besides I have some things to put into my trunk, and I want to put a ruffle into my wrapper that I may have it all ready. It's eleven o'clock now; we shall not be asleep to-night."

Tessa urged no more; it was not her father who was drying his feet and drinking his coffee down-stairs alone on the night before her wedding day. How he would look at her and take her into his arms with tears.

Sue opened her trunk. "Gerald's things are all in. It does seem queer to have his things packed up with mine. And when we come home every thing will go on just the same only I shall be Mrs. Lake instead of Miss Greyson."

As Tessa stood behind her arranging her hair, She said, "There, I like that. I almost look like Nan Gerard. What do you think she said to-day?

She was here with Mary Sherwood to see father and they saw Mr. Ralph in my alb.u.m. 'That's the man I intend to marry,' she said, 'eyes, money, and all.' Mary scolded her but she only laughed. She said that if she couldn't get him, she should take the professor, for he was just as handsome and could talk about something beside paregoric and postmortem examinations."

Tessa said nothing. How she had pitied Nan Gerard, and how harshly she had misjudged Dr. Towne. She was awakened in the night by Sue's voice-

"Put your arm around me, Tessa."

The long night ended at last in the dull dawn, for it was raining still.

Tessa had slept fitfully; Sue had lain perfectly quiet, not speaking again or moving.

At eleven o'clock Sue and Dr. Lake were married. Dr. Greyson sat with his head in his hands, turned away from them, his broad frame shaking from head to foot; Tessa did not look at Dr. Lake: she sat on a sofa beside Mrs. Towne, with her eyes fixed on the carpet. Sue cried and laughed together when her father kissed her; she drew herself to the full height of Mrs. Gerald Lake, when Dr. Towne shook hands with her. At half past twelve the bride and bridegroom were driven to the depot; Tessa remained to give a few orders to the servants, and was then taken home in Dr. Towne's carriage.

"It seems to me as lonely as a funeral," she said; "and Sue is laughing and eating chocolate cream drops this very minute. Marriage should be a leap into the suns.h.i.+ne."

"I hope that yours will be," her companion said in his gravest tone.

"If it ever _is_, you may rest a.s.sured that it will be. It will be the very happiest suns.h.i.+ne that ever shone out of heaven."

She was learning to talk to Dr. Towne as easily as she talked to her father, for he was the one man in the world that she was sure that she would never marry; she knew that he desired it as little as she did herself.

"Why will it be so happy?"

"Because I shall wait till I am _satisfied_."

"Satisfied with him? You will never be that."

"Then I shall wither in single blessedness; I shall be unhappily not married instead of unhappily married."

"Philip Towne is your ideal."

"I know it," she said. "I like to think that he is in the world. He makes me as happy as a pansy."

"Women are never happy with their ideals."

"They seldom have an opportunity of testing it; Professor Towne has a pure heart and he has brains."

Dr. Towne answered in words that she never forgot, "That is what he says of you."

"Oh, I am so glad! I like to have that said of me better than any thing."

She remembered, but she would not tell him, that a lady had said of him, having seen him but a few moments, and not having heard him speak, that he was a "rock."

"And I love rocks and know all about them," she had added.

"They give shadow in a weary land," Tessa had thought. "I have been in a weary land and he has _not_ been a shadow to me."

After a silent moment he spoke, "Don't you think that you were rather hard on me last week?"

"Yes," she said frankly, "I have thought it all over; I intended to tell you that I was sorry; I _am_ sorry; I will not do so again."

"Till next time?"

"There shall not be any next time; in my thoughts I have been very unjust to you; I have come nearer hating, really _hating_ you, than any other person I ever knew. I am sorry; I am always sorry to be unjust."

One look into the suns.h.i.+ny eyes satisfied her that she was forgiven. It almost seemed as if they were on the old confidential footing.

"Have you gathered any autumn leaves?" he asked.

"Yes, some beautiful ones. I did not get any last year-" She stopped, confused.

She had lived through her year without him. Was he remembering last October, too?

About sunset it cleared; she was glad for Dr. Lake's sake; about the bride she did not think; Sue would be thankful if none of her bridal finery were spoiled.

The evening mail brought a letter from Dinah.

There were two pieces of news in it, in both of which Tessa was interested. The school-master was twenty-one years of age, "a lovable fellow, the room grows dark when he goes out of it, and he likes best the books that I do." This came first, she read on to find that Professor Towne's mother and sister had come this summer to the house over the way, that Miss Towne was "perfectly lovely" and had been an invalid for fifteen years, not having put her foot to the ground in all that time; she could move about on the first floor, but pa.s.sed most of her time in a chair, reading, writing, and doing the most beautiful fancy work. She was beautiful, like Professor Towne, but the mother was only a fussy old lady. Her name was Sarepta!

Dinah's letters were rather apt to be ecstatic and incoherent. Tessa wrote five pages in her book that night and a foolscap sheet to Dinah.

She fell asleep thinking of what Professor Towne had said about her.