XVI.-A TANGLE.

Mrs. Wadsworth's strong will triumphed, as it usually did, and Dinah was sent into the country early in the last week of September, with a promise from Tessa that she would release her from her durance as soon as one of her books was finished and herself spend the remainder of the winter with the childless old people who had been looking forward to this pleasure from winter to winter ever since Tessa was ten years old.

Half Dunellen had pacified Dinah with the promise of long weekly letters, and she knew that Tessa and her father would write often. "I am not strong enough to write letters," her mother had said. "Tessa will tell you every thing." "I will add a postscript whenever Tessa will permit," said Mr. Hammerton, which queerly enough consoled homesick Dinah more than all the other promises combined.

Sue had not come to talk to Tessa and she dared not go to Dr. Greyson's for fear of influencing her. She had met Dr. Lake once; he had lifted his hat with a flourish, but would not stop to speak to her.

And now it was Wednesday and Sue's wedding day had been set for Friday.

At noon, among other letters, her father brought her a note from Felix Harrison:

"I must see you; I want to talk to you. Come Wednesday afternoon."

How she shrank from this interview she did not understand until she could think it over years afterward. In those after years when she said, "I do not want to live my life over again," she remembered her experiences with Felix Harrison; more than all, the feeling of those weeks when she had felt _bound_. It was also in her mind when she said, as she often did say, in later life, "I could never influence any one to marry." How often an expression in the mature years of a woman's life would reveal a long story, if one could but read it.

Another word of hers in her middle age, "I love to help little girls to be happy," was the expression to years of longing that no one had ever guessed; her mother least of all.

But she had not come to this settled time yet; it was weary years before she was at leisure from herself. It was Wednesday noon now and Felix had sent for her; she shrank from him with a shrinking amounting to terror; he would touch her hand, most certainly, and he might put his arm around her and kiss her; she would faint and fall at his feet if he did; he might say that she had promised him, that she was bound to him, that he would never let her go; that he was gaining strength and that she must become his wife or he would die!

Why could he not write his message? What could he have to say to her?

Was it not all said and laid away to be remembered, perhaps, and that was all? Then the memory of the old Felix swept over her, and she bowed her head and wept for him! She had held herself in her heart as his promised wife for six long weeks, how could she shrink from him? Was he not to her what no other man would ever become? Was she not to him the one best and dearest?

"I wonder," she sobbed, "why _he_ had to be the one to love me; why was not the love given to one whom I could love? Why must such a good and perfect gift as love be a burden to him and to me? If some one I know-"

The cheeks that were wet for Felix Harrison burned at the thought of one she knew!

"Oh, I wonder-but I must not wonder-I must be submissive; I must bow before the Awful Will."

In that hour it was harder to bear for Felix Harrison to love her than for Ralph Towne to be indifferent.

"What are you going to do this afternoon?" inquired her mother at the dinner table.

"Take my walk! And then the thing that comes first"

"You never have any plan about any thing; any one with so little to do ought to have a plan."

"My plan is this-_do the next thing_! I find that it keeps me busy."

"The next thing, hard or easy," said Mr. Wadsworth.

"Hard! Easy!" repeated Mrs. Wadsworth in her ironical voice. "Tessa never had a hard thing to do in her life. It will be my comfort in my last hours, Tessa, that you have been kept from troubles and disappointments."

"You might as well take the comfort of it now," said Tessa.

"Not many young women of your age have your easy life," her mother continued; "you have no thought where your next meal will come from, or where you will live in your old age, or where-"

"I know where all my good things come from," interrupted Tessa, reverently; "the how, the when, and the what that I do not know-that I am waiting to know."

"That is like you! Not a thought, not a care; it will come dreadful hard to you if you ever _do_ have trouble."

Tessa's tears ever left in her heart a place for sweet laughter; so light, so soft, so submissive, and withal so happy was the low laugh of her reply that her father's eyes filled at the sound. Somebody understood her.

Mrs. Wadsworth looked annoyed. Her elder daughter's words baffled her.

Tessa _was_ shallow and she sighed and asked her if she would take apple pie.

Tessa ate her pie understanding how she was a trial to her mother, but not understanding how she could hinder it. Could she change herself? or could her mother change herself?

"I wish that it were easier for me to love people," she said coming out of a reverie, "then I would not need to trouble myself about not understanding them."

"I thought that you were a student of human nature," said her father.

"I always knew that she couldn't see through people," exclaimed her mother.

"I do not; I never know when I am deceived."

"My rule is," Mr. Wadsworth arose and stood behind his chair, "to judge people by themselves and not by _myself_."

"Oh, the heartaches that would save," thought Tessa. At the hour when she was walking slowly towards Felix, her black dress brushing the gra.s.s, her eyes upon the harvested fields lying warm in the mellow sunlight, and on her lips the sorrowful wonder, he was sitting alone in the summer-house, his head dropped within his hands. He was wondering, too, as all his being leaped forward at the thought of her coming, and battling with the strong love that was too strong for his feeble strength.

When her hand unlatched the gate, he was not in the summer-house; she walked up the long path, and around to the latticed porch where Laura liked to sew or read in the afternoons; there was no one there; the work-basket had been pushed over, cotton and thimble had rolled to the edge of the floor, the white work had been thrown over a chair, she stood a moment in the oppressive silence, trembling and half leaning against a post; the tall clock in the hall ticked loudly and evenly: forever-never, never-forever! Her heart quickened, every thing grew dark like that night in the lecture-room, she was possessed with a terror that swept away breath and motion. A groan, then another and another, interrupted the never-forever, of the clock, then a step on the oil-cloth of the hall, and she dimly discerned Laura's frightened face, and heard as if afar off her surprised voice: "Why, Tessa! O, Tessa, I am so glad!"

The frightened face was held up to be kissed and arms were clinging around her.

"I'm always just as frightened every time-he was in the summer-house and father found him-he can speak now-it doesn't last very long."

"I will not stay, he needs you."

"Not now, no one can help him; father is with him. If this keeps on Dr.

Greyson says that some day he will have to be undressed and dressed just like an infant. He has been nervous all day, as if he were watching for something. O, Tessa, I want to die, I want him to die, I can't bear it any longer."

Tessa's only reply was her fast dropping tears.

"If he only had a mother," said Laura; "I want him to have a mother now that he can never have a wife! If he only had been married, his wife would have clung to him, and loved him, and taken care of him. Don't you think that G.o.d might have waited to bring this upon him until he was married?"

"Oh, no, no, _no!_" shivered Tessa; "we do not know the best times for trouble to come. I shall always believe that after this."

"He always liked you better than any one; do you know that he has a picture of you taken when we went to the Inst.i.tute? You have on a hat and sacque, and your school books are in your hand."

"I remember that picture! Has he kept it all this time?"

"If he asks for you-he will hear your voice-will you go in?"

"No, I can not see him," she answered nervously.

"Then I will walk down to the gate with you. He will be sure to ask, and I do not like to refuse him."

Walking slowly arm in arm as they used to walk from school years ago, they pa.s.sed down the path, at first, speaking only of Felix, and then as they neared the gate, falling into light talk about Laura's work, the new servant who was so kind to Felix, the plants that Laura had taken into the sitting-room, "to make it cosy for Felix this winter," the shirts that she had cut out for him and their father, and intended to make on the machine; about the sewing society that was to meet to-morrow, a book that Felix was reading aloud evenings while their father dozed and she sewed, some Mayfield gossip about Dr. Towne, and their plan of taking Felix travelling next summer. Tessa listened and replied. She never had any thing to say about herself. Laura thought with Mrs. Wadsworth that Tessa had never had any "experiences." Miss Jewett and Tessa's father knew; but it was not because she had told them. What other people chattered about to each other she kept for her prayers.