Tessa Wadsworth's Discipline Part 65

"Is the doctor gone?" cried Dinah rus.h.i.+ng out, "father wants him. He has the pain dreadfully."

The paroxysm was severe, but it pa.s.sed away; Dr. Greyson decided to remain through the night; he fell asleep in the sitting-room and was awakened by Tessa's hand an hour before dawn.

"Thank you, dear," said Mr. Wadsworth to his wife as she laid an extra quilt across his feet.

They were his last words. Tessa always liked to think of them.

July, August, and September dragged themselves through sunny days and rainy days into October. Tessa had learned that she could live without her father. There was little outward change in their home, the three were busy about their usual work and usual recreations; friends came and went; Tessa wrote and walked; gave two afternoons each week to Mrs.

Towne, sometimes in Dunellen and sometimes at Old Place; ran in, as of old, for a helpful talk with Miss Jewett, not forgetting that she must be, what Dr. Lake had said,-a good friend to his wife. These were the busy hours; in the still hours,-but who can know for another the still hours?

Mr. Hammerton and Mr. Lewis Gesner proved themselves to be invaluable friends; Tessa's warm regard for Mr. Gesner, even with the shock that came to her afterward, never became less; he ever remained her ideal of the rock in the weary land.

Two weeks after her father's funeral, she had stood alone one evening towards dusk among her flowers: she had been gathering pansies and thinking that her father had always liked them and talked about them.

There was a sound of wheels on the gra.s.s and a carriage stood at the opening in the shrubbery; the face into which she looked this time was not worn, or thin, or excited; a dark face, with grave, sympathetic eyes, was bending towards her.

"I wish that I could help you," he said.

"I know you do. No one can help me. I do not need help. I _am_ helped."

"The air is sweet to-night."

"And so still! Do you like my pansies?"

"Yes."

"Will you take them to your mother, and tell her that I will come to-morrow."

"I will tell her; but I will keep the pansies for myself, if you will give them to me."

She laid them in his hand with fingers that trembled.

"Do they say something to me?"

"They say a great deal to me!"

"What do they say?"

"I can not find a meaning for you. They must be their own interpreter."

"But I may think that you gave them to me to keep as long as I live."

"Yes; to keep as long as you live."

"When you have something to say to me-something that you know I am waiting to hear-will you say it, freely, of your own accord."

"Yes, freely, of my own accord."

"I regret to trouble you; but if you ever waited, you know that it is the hardest of hard work."

"I know," said Tessa, her voice breaking; "but you may not like what I say."

"Perhaps you will say what I like then."

"I will if I _can_."

What had she to say, freely, of her own accord? I think that it was the knowledge of what she would say by and by when she was fully sure that helped her to bear the loneliness of this summer and autumn.

And thus pa.s.sed the summer that she had planned for rest. November found her making plans for winter. Her last winter's work had been sent to her, one volume with its new ill.u.s.trations, and the other, with but one new picture; her father had looked forward to them; she sent copies to Elsie, Mabel, and Sue, also to Felix Harrison and Mr. Hammerton; Miss Jewett and Mrs. Towne made pretty and loving speeches over theirs; Tessa wondered, why, when she had written them with all her heart, they should seem so little to her now.

"Where is your novel, Lady Blue," Mr. Hammerton, asked one evening.

"I think that I shall live it first," she answered, seriously. "I couldn't love my ideal well enough to put him into a book, and the _real_ hero would only be lovable and commonplace, and no one would care to read about him-no one would care for him but me."

"It must be something of an experience to learn that one's ideal can not be loved, and rather humiliating to find one's self in love with some one below one's standard."

"That's what life is for,-to have an experience, isn't it?"

"It seems to be some people's experience," he said, looking as wise as an owl, and as unsympathetic.

November found Sue making plans, also. Her plans came out in this wise: she called one morning to talk to Tessa; Tessa was sewing in her own chamber, and Sue ran up lightly, as lightly as in the days before Gerald Lake had come to Dunellen.

"Busy!" she said blithely, her flowing c.r.a.pe veil fluttering at the door.

"Not too busy. Come in."

Sue talked for an hour with her gloves on, then, carelessly, as she described some pretty thing that the Professor's wife had brought from over the sea, she drew the glove from her left hand, watching Tessa's face. The quick color-the quick, indignant color-repaid the manuvre; the wedding ring-the new wedding ring-was gone, and in its stead blazed a cl.u.s.ter of diamonds.

"You might as well say something," began Sue, moving her hand in the sunlight.

"I have nothing to say. I wonder how you dare come to me."

"Why shouldn't I dare? I know it seems soon; but circ.u.mstances make a difference, and Mr. Gesner has to go to Europe next month. He took the other ring; I couldn't help it-I wouldn't have kept it safe with a lock of his hair in a little box-but he said that I shouldn't have this unless I gave him that."

Tessa's head went down over her work; she had not wept aloud before since she was a little girl, but now the sobs burst through her lips uncontrolled. That ring that Dr. Lake had carried that day in the rain not fourteen months ago!

Sue sprang to her feet, then dropped back into her chair and wept in sympathy, partly with a vague feeling of having done some dreadful thing, partly with the fear that life in a foreign land might not be wholly alluring; Mr. Gesner was kind, but poor Gerald had loved her so!

"O, Tessa! Tessa! don't," she cried. "Stop crying and speak to me."

"Go away from me. Go home. I will not speak to you."

For a moment Sue waited, then she arose and moved towards the door, standing another moment, but as Tessa did not turn or speak, she went down-stairs, not lightly, hushed by the revelation of a grief that she could not understand.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Good-by, Mystic; you and I will have our talk another day," said Sue.]