On her way to the train the next morning, she mailed a letter addressed—
“Ralph Towne, M. D.,
City.”
Her tender, passionate, truth-loving, bewildered heart had poured itself out in these words:
“I am so afraid of leading you to think something that is not true; something that I may have to contradict in the future. When I am with you, I forget every thing but you; when I am alone, my heart rises up and warns me that I may be making another mistake, that I only think I love you because I want to so much, and that I should only worry you with my caprices and doubts if I should marry you. You have been very patient with me, but you might lose your patience if I should try it too far. I will not marry you until I am sure; I must know of a certainty that I love you with the love that hopes, endures, that can suffer long and still is kind. You do not know me, I am hard and proud; when I went down into the Valley of Humiliation because of believing that you loved me when you did not, I was not gentle and sweet and forgiving—I was hard and bitter; I hated you almost as much as I had loved you. Now I must think it all through and live through all those days, the days when I loved you and the days when I hated you, before I can understand myself. I could marry you and we could live a life of surface peace and satisfaction, and you might be satisfied in me and with me; but if I felt the need of loving you more than I did love you, my life would be bondage. If the pride and hardness and unforgivingness may be taken away and I may love you and believe in you as I did that day that you brought me the English violets, I shall be as happy—no, a thousand times happier than I was then. But you must not hope for that; it is not natural; it may be that of grace such changes are wrought, but grace is long in working in proud hearts. You are not bound to me by any word that you have spoken; find some one gentle and loving who will love you for what you are and for what you will be.”
XXIII.—WHAT SHE MEANT.
In the weeks that followed, Tessa learned to the full the meaning of homesickness. No kindness could have exceeded the kindness that she hourly received from uncle and aunt and from the inmates of the cottage over the way; still every night, or rather early every morning, she fell asleep with tears upon her cheeks; she longed for her father, her mother, for Dine and Gus, for Miss Jewett, for Nan Gerard, and even poor, grief-stricken Sue; for Mrs. Towne’s dear face and dear hands she longed inexpressibly, and she longed with a longing to which she would give no sympathy for another presence, an unobtrusive presence that would not push its way, a presence with the aroma of humility, gentleness, and a shy love that persisted with a persistence that neither the darkness of night nor the light of day could dispel.
Lying alone in the darkness in the strange, low room, with a fading glow upon the hearth that lent an air of unreality to the old-fashioned furniture, she congratulated herself upon having been brave and true, of having withheld from her lips a draught for which she had so long and so despairingly thirsted; she had been so brave and true that she must needs be strong, wherefore then was she so weak? Sometimes for hours she would lie in perfect quiet thinking of Mr. Hammerton; but thinking of him as calmly as she thought about her father. There was no intensity in her love for him, no thrill, save that of gratitude for his years of brotherly watchfulness; she would have been proud of him had he married Dine; his friendship was a distinction that she had worn for years as her rarest ornament; he was her intellect, as her father was her conscience, but to give up all the others for him, to love him above father, mother, sister—to give up forever the hope of loving Ralph Towne some day—she shuddered and covered her face with her hands there alone in the dark. Cheery enough she was through the days, sewing for Aunt Theresa and falling into her happiest talk of books and people, thoughts and things, reading aloud to Uncle Knox, and every evening reading aloud the pages of manuscript that she had written that day, and every afternoon, laying aside work or writing, to run across to the cottage for a couple of hours with Miss Sarepta.
Miss Sarepta at her window in her wheelchair watched all day the black, brown, or blue figure at her writing or sewing, and when the hour came, saw the pencils dropped into the box, the leaves of manuscript gathered, the figure rise and toss out its arms with a weary motion; then, in a few moments the figure with a bright shawl over its head would run down the path, stand a moment at the gate to look up and down and all around, and then, with the air of a child out of school, run across the street and sometimes around the garden before she brought her bright face into the watcher’s cosy, little world.
Miss Sarepta’s mother described Tessa as “bright, wide awake, and ready for the next thing.”