Читать книгу Tessa Wadsworth's Discipline - Mrs. Nathaniel Conklin - Страница 6

When she needed any mothering she gave it to herself; with her arms around her shivering, shrinking self, she was beseeching, “Be brave; it’s almost over.”

In the old days, the impulsive little Tessa had always chided herself; the sensitive little Tessa had always comforted herself; the truthful, eager, castle-building little Tessa had always been her own refuge, shield, adviser, and best comforter.

With more bosom friends than she knew how to have confidences with, with more admiring girl friends than she could find a place for, with more hearts open to her than to any one girl at school, Tessa the child, Tessa the maiden, and Tessa the woman had always lived within herself, leaned upon herself.

Mr. Hammerton said that she was a confutation of the oak and vine theory, that he had stood and stood to be entwined about, but that she would never entwine.

In this moment, standing at the door, with her hand upon the knob, a ray of comfort shone into her heart and nestled there like a gleam of sunlight peering through an opening in an under-growth, and the ray of comfort was, that, perhaps Gus Hammerton would come to-night and talk to her in his kindly, practical, unsentimental fashion, sympathizing with her unspoken thoughts, and tender towards the feelings of whose existence he was unaware.

Perhaps—but of late, did she fancy, or was it true? that he was rather shy with her, and dropped into the chair nearest to Dinah.

Well! she could be alone by and by and go to sleep!

So relentless was she, in that instant toward Ralph Towne that it would have been absolute relief could she have looked into his dead face: to see the cold lids shut down fast over the sunshiny eyes, to know that the stiff lips could never open to speak meaningless words, to touch his head and feel assured that, warm and soft, his fingers could never hold hers again.

“Why, Tessa, you look frozen to death,” exclaimed her mother. “How far did you go and where did you meet Mr. Towne?”

“I went to Mayfield,” she closed the door and moved towards the gay little figure reading “The Story of Elizabeth” upon the lounge. “Mr. Towne overtook me after I had passed Old Place.”

“O, Tessa,” cried Dinah, dropping her book, “Dr. Lake was here. What a pity you were out! He asked where ‘Mystic’ was. I made a list on the cover of my book of the things that he talked about. Just hear them. One ought to understand short-hand to keep up with him. Now listen.”

Tessa stood and listened.

“‘The Valley of the Dog,

“‘The Car of Juggernaut,

“‘Insanity,

“‘Intemperance,

“‘Tobacco,

“‘Slavery,

“‘Church and State,

“‘Conceit,

“‘Surgery,

“‘The English Government,

“‘Marriage,

“‘Flirtations,

“‘Ladies as Physicians,

“‘The Wicked World,

“‘A Quotation from Scott.’

“And that isn’t half. I began to grow interested there, and forgot to write.”

“Where did the professional call come in?”

“Oh, that doesn’t take a second. He watches his patient while he talks! Oh, and he told two hospital stories, a story of his school life, and about being lost in the woods, and about a camp-meeting! He is from Mississippi. Your Mr. Towne couldn’t say so much in ten years.”

“He says that the disease in my lungs is not progressive, but that I should protect my health! I ought to spend every winter in the West Indies or in the south of Europe! South of Europe, indeed! On your father’s business! Now if I had married John Gesner I might have spent my winters in any part of the civilized world.”

“Would you have taken us?” asked Dinah.

“The future is veiled from us mercifully.”

Dinah laughed. “Mother, you forget about love.”

“Love!” exclaimed Mrs. Wadsworth scornfully, “I should like to know what love is.”

“Father knows,” said Dinah. “Have you read ‘Elizabeth,’ Tessa?”

“Yes.”

“I’d die before I’d act as she did, wouldn’t you? I’d die before I’d let any body know that I cared for him more than he cared for me, wouldn’t you?”

“It isn’t so easy to die.”

“Did Mr. Towne speak of Sue Greyson?” inquired Mrs. Wadsworth.

“Yes.”

“What did he say?”

“Nothing—much?”

“He must have said something. Couldn’t you judge of his feelings towards her?”

“I am not a detective.”

“H’m,” ejaculated 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 Dickens with Mr. Hammerton until the new year was upon them.

“Gus,” she said severely, with the volumes of Dickens 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!”