Tessa Wadsworth's Discipline Part 6

"He must have said something. Couldn't you judge of his feelings towards her?"

"I am not a detective."

"H'm," e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Mrs. Wadsworth, glancing up at the uneasy lips, "if he can't talk or sing, he can say something."

"Possibly."

Standing alone at one of the windows in her chamber, she watched the sun go down the last night of the old year.

In her young indignation, she had called Ralph Towne some harsh names; while under the fascination of his presence, she had thought that she did not blame him for any thing; but standing alone with the happy, false old year behind her, and the new, empty year opening its door into nowhere, she cried, with a voiceless cry: "You are not true; you are not sincere; you are shallow and selfish."

At this moment, watching the same sunset, for he had an appreciation of pretty things, he was driving homeward almost as nerve-shaken as Tessa herself; according to his measure, he was regretting that these two trusting women were suffering because of his-he did not call it selfishness-he had been merely thoughtless.

Tessa's heart could kindle and glow and burn itself out into white ashes before his would feel the first tremor of heat; she had prided herself upon being a student of human nature, but this man in his selfishness, his slowness, his simplicity, had baffled her.

How could she be a student of human nature if she understood nothing but truth?

She was in a bitter mood to-night, not sparing Ralph Towne as she would not have spared herself. The crimson and gold faded! the gray shut down over her world: "How alone I shall be to live in a year without him!"

"O, Tessa! Tessa!" cried Dinah, running up-stairs, "here's Gus, and he has brought us something good and funny I know, for he's so provokingly cool."

How could she think thoughts about the old year and the sunset with this practical friend down-stairs and a mysterious package that must mean books! She had expected to cry herself to sleep; instead she read d.i.c.kens with Mr. Hammerton until the new year was upon them.

"Gus," she said severely, with the volumes of d.i.c.kens piled in her arms up to her chin, "if I become matter-of-fact, practical, and commonplace there will be no one in the world to thank but you. I had a poem at my finger tips about the old year that would have forever shattered the fame of Tennyson and Longfellow."

"As we have lost it, we'll be content with them," he said. "Drop your books and let us read them."

Before the dawn she was dreaming and weeping in her sleep, for a voice was repeating, not the voice in the school-house, nor the voice that had read Longfellow, but the voice that had spoken the cold good-by at the gate:

"The leaves are falling, falling, Solemnly and slow; Caw! Caw! the rooks are calling, It is a sound of woe, A sound of woe!"

IV.-SOMEBODY NEW.

There was the faintest streak of suns.h.i.+ne on the dying verbenas in her garden; the dead leaves, twigs, and sprays looked as if some one who did not care had trampled on them. She was glad that the plants were in, that there was a warm place for them somewhere.

The school children were jostling against each other on the planks, on the opposite side of the street, laughing and shouting. Nellie Bird was provokingly chanting:

"Freddie's mad, And I am glad, And I know what will please him."

and there were two little girls in red riding hoods, plaid cloaks, and gay stockings, skipping along with their hands joined. It was a hard world for little girls to grow up in. She had run along the planks from school once, not so very long ago, swinging her lunch-basket and teasing Felix Harrison just as at this minute Nellie Bird was teasing Freddie Stone.

Her needle was taking exquisite st.i.tches; Dinah liked white ap.r.o.ns for school wear, and this was the last of the dainty half-dozen. Her mother's voice and step broke in upon her reverie.

"Tessa, I wouldn't have believed it, but six of my cans of tomatoes have all sizzled up! Not one was last year, though. Mrs. Bird never has such good luck with hers as we have with ours."

"That's too bad. But we have so many that we sha'n't miss them."

"That isn't the question. I remember how my side ached that day. Bridget was so stupid and you and Dine had gone up to West Point with Gus; he always is coming and taking you and Dine off somewhere! You are not attending to a word I say."

"Yes, I am; I am thinking how you took us all three to look at your cans of tomatoes."

"But you don't care about the tomatoes. You never do take an interest in house-work. I would rather have Sue Greyson's skin stuffed with straw than to have you around the house. And _she_ is going to marry Ralph Towne: she pa.s.sed with him this morning; they were in the phaeton with that pair of little grays! And Sue was driving! I believe that you have taken cold in some way, you must see the doctor the next time he comes; your face is the color of chalk, and your eyes are as big as saucers with dark rims under them! You sat here writing altogether too late last night."

"It was only eleven when I went up-stairs."

"That was just an hour too late. What good does your writing do you or any body, I'd like to know."

"It is rather too early in my life to judge."

"Your father spoils you about writing; I suppose that he thinks you are a feather in _his_ cap; I tell him that you are none of my bringing up."

"I am not 'up' yet, perhaps."

"You may as well drop that work and take a run into Dunellen; the air will do you good. You had color enough in the summer. I want a spool of red silk, two pieces of crimson dress braid, and a spool of fifty cotton. Don't get scarlet braid, I want crimson; and run into the library and get me something exciting; you might have known better than to bring me that volume of essays!"

She folded the ap.r.o.n and laid it on the pile in the willow work-basket, wrapped herself in a bright shawl, covered her braids with a brown velvet hat, and started for her walk, drawing on her gloves as she went down the path.

Her mother stood at the window watching her. "She is too deep for me,"

she soliloquized; "there is more in her than I shall ever make out. She is so full of nonsense that I expect she has refused Ralph Towne, and what for, I can't see-there's no one else in the way."

In Tessa's pocket was a long and wide envelope containing the article that she had sat up last night to write; the lessons gathered from her old year she had told in her simple, quaint, forcible style. The t.i.tle was as simple as the article: "Making Mistakes."

"Tessa, you are not brilliant," Miss Jewett had once remarked, "but you do go right to the spot."

The fresh air tinged her cheeks, she breathed more freely away from her work and her reveries; there was life and light somewhere, she need not suffocate in the dark.

It was not a long walk into the little city of Dunellen; fifteen minutes of brisk stepping along the planks brought her to the corner that turned into the broad, paved, maple-lined street. As she turned the corner, a lame child in a calico dress and torn hood staggered past her bent with the weight of a heavy basket. She stopped and would have spoken, but the shy eyes were not encouraging.

Two years ago all the world might have knocked at her gate and she would not have heard.

"Will you ride?" She lifted her eyes, with their color deepening, to find Mr. Towne sitting alone in his carriage looking down at her.

"You are going the wrong way."

"Because I am not going _your_ way?" he asked somewhat sternly.

"I thought that you had gone away," she said uncomfortably.

"We go on the seventeenth."

"You have not told me where?"

"Have I not? You have forgotten. Sue will stay at home and learn to be sensible."

"I don't like you when you speak in that tone."