Читать книгу Tessa Wadsworth's Discipline - Mrs. Nathaniel Conklin - Страница 3

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She was standing one afternoon on the broad piazza, leaning against the railing, with color enough in her usually colorless cheeks as she watched the tall figure passing through the low gateway; he turned towards the watching eyes, smiled, and touched his hat.

“You will be in again this week,” she said coaxingly, “you can give me ten minutes out of your busy-ness.”

“Twice ten, perhaps.”

The light that flashed into her eyes was her only reply; she stood leaning forward, playing with the oleander blossoms under her hand until he had seated himself in his carriage and driven away; not until the brown head and straw hat had disappeared behind the clump of willows at the corner did she stir or move her eyes, then the happy feet in the bronze slippers tripped up-stairs to her own chamber. Dinah had left her slate on a chair, and dropped her algebra on the carpet, at the sound of Norah’s voice below the window.

Tessa was glad to be alone; she was always glad to be alone after Ralph Towne had left her, to think over all that he had said, and to feel again the warm shining of his brown eyes; to thank God with a few, low, joyful exclamations that He had brought this friend into her life; and then, as foolish women will, she must look into her own face and try to see it as he saw it,—cheeks aglow, tremulous lips, and such a light in the blue eyes!

She did not know that her eyes could look like that. She had thought them pale, cold, meaningless, and now they were like no eyes that she had ever looked into; a dancing, tender, blue delight.

Had he read her secret in them?

Her enthusiasm with its newness, sweetness, and freshness,—for it was as fresh as her heart was pure,—was moulding all her thoughts, strengthening her desire to become in all things true and womanly, and making her as blithe all day long as the birds that twittered in the apple-tree near her chamber window.

It mattered not how her hands were busied so long as her heart could be full of him. And he, Ralph Towne, blind and obtuse as any man would be who lived among books and not in the world at all, and more than a trifle selfish, as men sometimes find themselves to be, little thinking of the effect of his chance visits and fitful attentions, had in the last two months come to a knowledge that grieved him; for he was an honorable man, he loved God and reverenced womankind. He had not time now to think of any thing but the book for which he was collecting material. It was something in the natural history line, he had once told her, but he never cared to speak of it; indeed Ralph Towne cared to talk but of few things; but she loved to talk and he loved to listen. He loved to listen to her, but he did not love her (so he assured himself), he only loved her presence, as he loved the sunshine, and he did not love the sunshine well enough to fret when the day was gloomy; in these days he did not love any body or any thing but himself, his books, and his mother.

Dunellen said that he was proud of his money and proud of a great-great-grandmother who had been cousin to one of the president’s wives; but Tessa knew that he was not proud of any thing but his beautiful white-haired mother.

Not understanding the signs of love, how could he know that Tessa Wadsworth was growing to love him; he had never thought of himself as particularly worth loving. Surely she knew a dozen men who were handsomer (if that were what she cared for), and another dozen who could talk and tell stories and say pretty things to women (if that were what attracted her); still he knew to-day that his presence and light talk (he did not remember that he had said any thing to be treasured) had moved her beyond her wont. She was usually only self-contained and dignified; but to-day there must have been some adequate cause for her changing color, for the lighting and deepening of her eyes as they met his so frankly; he was sure to-day of what he had only surmised before,—that this sensitive, high-spirited, pure-hearted woman loved him as it had never entered his preoccupied mind or selfish heart to love her or indeed any human being.

“I have been a fool!” he ejaculated. “Well, it is done, and, with a woman like her, it can not be undone! Miserable bungler that I am, I have been trying to make matters better, and I have made them a thousand times worse! Why did I promise to call again this week? Why did I give her a right to ask me? I wish that I had never seen her! God knows,”—she would never have forgotten his eyes could she have seen them at this instant, penitent and self-reproachful,—“that I did not mean to trifle with her.”

Meanwhile, resting in Dinah’s chair, with the algebra and slate at her feet, she was thinking over and over the words he had spoken that afternoon; very few they were, but simple and sincere; at least so they sounded to her. She smiled as “I do care very much” repeated itself to her, with the tone and the raising of the eyes.

“Very much!” as much as she did? It was about a trifle, some little thing that she had put into rhyme for him; how many rhymes she had written for him this summer! He so often said, “Write this up for me,” and she had so intensely enjoyed the doing it, and so intensely enjoyed his appreciation—his over-appreciation, she always thought.

O, Tessa, Tessa, pick up that algebra, and go to work with it. Life’s problems are too complex for your unworldliness.

She stooped to pick up Dinah’s slate, and, instead of finishing the work upon it, she wrote out rapidly a thought that had tinged her cheeks while Ralph Towne had been with her. The silent side she called it. Was it the silent side? If it were, how was it that he understood? She knew that he understood; she knew that he had understood when he answered, “Twice ten, perhaps.”

Her mother’s voice below broke in upon her reverie; fancy, sentiment, or delicate feeling of any kind died a hard and sudden death under Mrs. Wadsworth’s influence, yet she read more novels than did either of her daughters, and would cry her lovely eyes red and swollen over a story that Tessa would not deign to skip through. It was one of her mother’s plaints that Tessa had no feeling.

Ralph Towne did not give the promised “twice ten” minutes that week, nor for weeks afterward; she met him several times driving with his mother, or with his mother and Sue Greyson: her glad, quick look of recognition was acknowledged by a lifting of the hat and a “good afternoon, Miss Tessa.” Once she met him alone with Sue Greyson. Sue’s saucy, self-congratulatory toss of the head stung her so that she could have cried out. “I am ashamed”—no, I am not ashamed to tell you that she cried herself to sleep that night, as she asked God to bless Ralph Towne and make him happy and good. She could not have loved Ralph Towne if she might not have prayed for him. Her mother would have been inexpressibly shocked at such a mixture of “love and religion.”

“How long have you loved Christ?” asked the minister, when Tessa was “examined” for admission to the church.

“Ever since I have known Him,” was the timid reply.

And Ralph Towne, in these miserable days, for he was miserable, as miserable in his fashion as she was in hers, was blaming her and excusing himself. What had he ever said to her? Was every one of a man’s words to be counted? There was Sue Greyson, why didn’t she turn sentimental about him? True, he had said one day when they were talking about friendship—what had he said that day? Was she remembering that? If she had studied his words—but of course, she had forgotten! What had possessed him to say such things? But how could he look at her and not feel impelled to say something warm? It could not be his fault; it must be hers, for leading him on and for remembering every trivial word. And of that she was equally sure, for how could he do any man or any woman wrong, this sincere and honorable Christian gentleman?

In her imagination there was no one in a book or out of a book like Ralph Towne. Gus Hammerton was a scholar and a gentleman, but she had known him all her life; Felix Harrison was gracious and good, but he was not like Ralph Towne. Ralph Towne was not her ideal, he was something infinitely better than she could think; how beautiful it was to find some one nobler and grander than her ideal! Far away in some wonderful, unknown region he had grown up and had been made ready for her, and now he had come to meet her; bewildered and grateful, she had loved him and believed in him—almost as if that unknown region were heaven.

It was her wildest dream come true; that is, it had come true, until lately. Some strange thing was happening; it was happening and almost breaking her heart.

“Tessa, you look horrid nowadays,” exclaimed Dinah, one afternoon, as Tessa came up on the piazza, returning from her usual walk. “You are white, and purple, and all colors, and you never sing about the house or talk to me or to any body. You actually ran away while Mrs. Bird was over here yesterday, and you don’t even go to see Miss Jewett! She asked me yesterday if you had gone away. When Laura was talking to you yesterday, you looked as if you did not hear one word she said.”

“I was listening.”

“And you used to have such fun talking to Gus; I believe that you went up-stairs while he was here last night.”

“I had a headache; I excused myself.”

“You always go down the road. Why don’t you go through Dunellen?”

“I want to get into the country; I never walk through a street simply for the pleasure of it. I like to be alone.”

“Do you ever walk as far as Old Place?”

“That isn’t far, only three miles; sometimes I go to Mayfield, that is a mile beyond Old Place.”

“Isn’t Old Place splendid? Next to Mr. Gesner’s it is the handsomest place around.”

“It is more home-like than Mr. Gesner’s.”

“Sue likes Mr. Gesner’s better. I told her that I would take Old Place and she could have Mr. Gesner’s. Mr. Gesner’s is stone; Old Place is all wood. Do you ever see any of the Townes?”

“There are not many to be seen.”

“Counting Sue, there are three. Sue thinks that she is stylish, driving around with Mrs. Towne. She stayed a week with Miss Gesner once, too. Why don’t you and I get invited around to such places? Mrs. Towne ought to invite you. Mr. Towne used to come here often enough.”

“Used to come!” Tessa shivered standing in the sunlight. “Yes, it was ‘used to come,’” she was thinking. “I have been dreaming, now I am awake. I wish that I had died while I was dreaming.”

“Now you look pale again! I guess you are growing up,” laughed unconscious Dinah; “it’s hateful and horrid to grow up; I never shall. Remember that I am always to be fifteen.”

“I hope that you never will grow up,” said Tessa, earnestly, “every thing is just as bad as you can dream.”

“Mr. Towne has given Sue coral ear-rings,” Dinah ran on. Tessa had gone down to her flower-bed to pull a few weeds that had pushed themselves in among her pansies. “He gave his mother several groups in stone for the dining-room; they are all funny, Sue says. In one, some children are playing doctor; in another, they are playing school. He gave his cousin a silk dress, and he bought himself a set of books for his birthday; he was thirty-two. Did you think he was so old?”

“Yes.”

“I say, Tessa, Sue thinks that she is going to marry him.”

“Does she?” The voice was away down in the flowers.

“You are always among those flowers. Don’t you wish that we had a conservatory? They have a grand one at Old Place. I wonder why they have so little company.”

“Mrs. Towne is feeble; she likes a quiet house.”

“Yes, Sue says that. But Grace Geer, his cousin, is there! Mrs. Towne is to give Old Place and all its treasures to Mr. Towne upon his wedding-day; she wants a daughter more than any thing, Sue says. I wish she would take me. Sue thinks that she will take her. Every other word that she speaks is ‘Mr. Ralph.’ She talks about him everywhere. Do you believe it?”

“Believe what?”

Tessa had returned to the piazza with a bunch of pansies.

“Believe that she will marry him! She has real pretty manners when she is with them, and really tries not to talk slang. But I don’t believe it. He treats her as he would treat any one else; I have seen them together.”

“Perhaps she will. People say so,” said Tessa.

Poor motherless, sisterless Sue! Was she making a disappointment for herself out of nothing? Or was it out of a something like hers?

It was certainly true that Sue Greyson had taken a summer tour with Mrs. Towne and Mr. Ralph Towne, and that she had spent more of her time during the last year at Old Place than in her own small, unlovely home. She loved her father “well enough,” she would have told you; but after the months at Old Place, she found the cottage in Dunellen a stale and prosaic affair; her father had old Aunt Jane to keep house for him, why did he need her? He would have to do without her some day. Doctor Lake was great fun, why could he not be interested in him?

“He is a stranger, not my only daughter,” her father had once replied.

“Your father will be glad enough and proud enough that he let you come to Old Place,” comforted Grace Geer, when Sue told her that he missed her at home. “Ralph Towne’s wife will be a happy woman for more reasons than one; and he is interested in you, as one can see at a glance. He told his mother to-day that he should always be glad that they had come to Old Place.”