CHAPTER XXX
Tess closed the door of her shanty, looked about to see if anyone were watching her movements, then she, too, broke into the high weeds that surrounded the running brook under the mud cellar. Her little ruse in giving the child to its mother delighted her. She would find Teola, and bring her and the babe back to the shanty. Softly she parted the branches that hid the spot where she had first seen the Dominie's daughter. Through the maze of brambles she saw the girl, with the child clasped closely in her arms. The cloth in which Tess had wrapped it had fallen from the little shoulders, leaving them white, save for the blood-red mark of fire. Teola lifted the infant, and kissed it passionately, bending her head over it, praying. Tess could not enter upon such a holy scene. She sank down upon the turf. The basket yawned upon a bed of moss, its flannel rags hanging over the edge. Teola was making the babe ready to return to its bed, when Tess slipped under the branches of the short sumac trees, and entered the clearing.
"Come back to the shanty," she said. "Ye be here too long."
"I can't. I must go home, Tessibel.... I could hardly get away as it was. Oh, Tess, isn't he beautiful?... Don't you think the mark will soon go away? What makes him open his mouth so much? Possibly the sugar rag is too large."
"Nope, 'tain't that. He be tired, and that air whatmakes him gape like that. Wait until he gets some bigness. He air little yet."
"I haven't asked you, Tess," and Teola turned troubled eyes upon the squatter, "I haven't been able to ask you how you feed him. And where do you get the milk?... Oh, if I only had some money! When mother is home, I do get a little. But Rebecca won't give me a cent. Tessibel, where do you get the milk?"
The babe was still clasped in her arms.
"I crib it from the cows at Kennedy's. They all has too much for their calves, anyhow."
"You mean you steal it, Tess?" asked Teola fearfully. "Oh, Tessibel! Oh! Oh, Tess, Tess, how good you are!"
"I ain't good," Tess retorted. "It ain't good to steal, air it? And squatters ain't never good, they ain't. But the brat's got to eat, ain't he? If I ain't got no milk, then I has to crib it. See?"
Bitter tears were falling upon the head of little Dan. They were the mother's first tears since that day when Tess had led her up the hill to the summer cottage.
"But Kennedy will shut his cows up soon," announced the squatter. "Then I don't know what to do. The brat air too little to eat fish, he air."
Suddenly Teola conceived an idea.
"If I should put out a little milk behind the house, in a pail, could you come after it, Tessibel?"
"Yep," replied Tess eagerly. "I could crib it from your yard, if ye'll let me."
"Yes, yes; that's the way to do," replied Teola, with a faint smile. "If I can't get the milk out, you go into the kitchen. Simply take all you can get. Takeall you want. My father and mother will be home soon. They know by this time I am ill. My brother also gets back from camping at the same time. You see how careful I shall have to be, Tessibel. And in September, we go back to the city, for school always takes us home then. If I could only have my own baby. My own precious baby!"
Tessibel grunted. Teola misunderstood her.
"Oh, I am grateful to you, dear! I think that you are the best girl in all the world. So does my brother Frederick. He says—"
She stooped to cover the child, her voice ceasing.
The babe had been carefully tucked in.
"He's a been sayin' what?" The tones of the squatter were eager, her eyes so bright that Teola did not answer for a moment.
"He says that there is no girl as good as you, and that your faith in God is what he would rather have than anything else in the world.... Oh, Tess, if I could only believe, and be sure that soon the baby and I could go to—his father!"
"If ye asks, ye can go," replied Tess solemnly. "The student says what ye asks with faith ye'll get. Ain't that enough to prove it?"
This fell reverently from the lips of the girl. Faith in Frederick rather than faith in God had given birth to her believing soul. But neither girl realized it. Both were silent for some minutes. Teola was looking dreamily at the opposite hill, the basket with its precious burden already hanging on the squatter's arm. Tess had learned that such loud smacks as the infant was giving were indicative of hunger. So she made a move to go.
"I takes him back to feed him. He air hungry."
"Oh, Tess, if I could only feed him! If I could only always have him! I wish—I wish I were a squatter. Then I would face the world with my baby.... Oh, I am so unhappy and ill!"
True, she was ill, for there came to Tessibel's ears a cough that echoed against the rocks with the familiar sound of death in it. It sounded like that of a fisherwoman she had known in a shanty below the great rocks, who had died and been taken to the Potter's field.
"I air a-prayin' every day," said Tess, with a lump in her throat, "that ye be taken with the brat to the sky—to the brat's pa what ye loves.... Air that the prayin' ye wants?"
Teola nodded, and Tess, smiling tenderly, hesitated, and whispered:
"The student's God can do anything He wants to. Asks Him to let ye go 'cause ye be sick, and the brat air sick, too, and—the winter'll be cold for him."
She touched the handle on her arm lightly, turned, and disappeared.
Teola sat for some moments dry-eyed, looking at the high hill across the blue water, thinking of the next few weeks, and of how she and the babe would be called away. If she only had the precious uplifting faith of Tessibel! Something must come to her and the baby. Her stern father, who hated Tessibel Skinner with all his heart, must never know of the little Dan. Her mother, weary and nervous, would go to her grave from the shock; and Frederick—
Teola straightened at the thought of her brother. He would help her in all things, even in the tragedythat now covered her life. Of that Teola felt sure, but the humiliation would be too great. Better die apart from her child. With another racking cough, she turned her face toward home, two hectic spots shining clear and red upon the white cheeks. Rebecca silently helped her to bed.
That night, at ten o'clock, after Tess had silenced the child in her arms and Teola had lost her nervousness in a stupor, three boats shot from different points of the west shore, and quietly oared a path through the moonlit lake toward the netting place.
The occupants of one boat were Satisfied Longman and his son. In another Jake Brewer sat, alone. In the third Ben Letts puffed upon his pipe. His thoughts were upon the one person he desired—Tess. Like most of mankind, he wanted what he could not get; wanted the girl who turned a mocking, beautiful face toward him and used such a bitter tongue. Tess was responsible for the scars upon his face, but he would feel them well carried if he gained the girl—and tamed her. That Tess was a devoted admirer of the student Graves made her none the less desirable. Ben dipped his oars with dexterous aptitude and shot under the shadow of the trees. An instant later, his boat was beside those of the other squatters, and he was standing with his hand upon the north reel. Out into the lake the net was carried by Satisfied Longman and Jake Brewer. Ben could see the tall, thin form of Ezra through the shadows, guiding the ropes as they slipped through his fingers. Here was a boy aspiring to the love of Tessibel Skinner. Ben heard the swish of the net far out in the lake as it took to the silent waters, heard thedipping of the oars, and saw the boats strike for the shore. Then Ezra came toward him, at the command of his father, Satisfied Longman.
During that evening, Deforest Young was calling upon Deacon Hall. He refused the Deacon's invitation to row him to the city.
"Thanks," said he, "but the night is delightful. I think I shall walk. I shall go by the shore and skirt to the tracks at the Hoghole."
He failed to say, however, that his reason for walking was that he desired to catch a glimpse of the red-haired Tess. He had not seen her since the discovery of the new-born babe.
The candle was lighted in the Skinner hut, and he tapped gently. For an instant there was no response, He knew the girl was at home—there had been a sudden discontinuance of a humming when he knocked.
"Miss Skinner, it is I—Professor Young," he called. "If it is too late, I will come again."
The door was promptly thrown open.
"Come in," said Tess with a smile. "I thought as how it were someone else."
"I have been at Deacon Hall's," explained he. "They agree with me that you ought to go and see your father. I did not tell them why you could not. Where is the little child?"
Tess glanced at the babe.
"I keeps him in the basket or the box in the daytime, but nights I takes him to bed with me. The rats be so dum thick that one of them big fellers would chew the little chap's ear offen him afore I could stop it."
She said it so naturally, as if she were speaking of the most ordinary thing, that Young felt a hystericaldesire to laugh. It was a dreadful thought, this of the rat in the box with the babe.
"Are the men netting to-night?" he asked, quickly changing the subject.
"Yep, they be."
"I suppose there is no stopping it," sighed Young; "and they run such dreadful risks. But, if there were no laws about it, there would be no fish left in the lake."
Tessibel's brow gathered a thick network of wrinkles. She had heard the subject discussed and argued from her babyhood days. The best fish in the waters must be kept for the gentlemen who came for sport during the season. But the fishermen, who needed bread for their families, were forced by the law to go without.
"There oughtn't to be no laws about fishin'," she frowned, in decision. "It air wicked, when brats air a-wantin' bread and beans."
Young saw danger ahead in the argument, so he switched to the home-coming of the minister's family. From that he again spoke of the infant, who was whimpering a little. Tess took him up, and warmed the milk.
"I shall go now, child," said Young, rising. "You are tired. You ought to go to bed."
"Yep, I air tired, I air," answered Tess, wearily "Good-night."
Once out upon the shore, Young looked back at the hut. It was dark. He saw three boats flit silently by him toward the city, as if phantoms guided them. They crossed the moonbeams, and Young lost them in the dark shadows near the shore.
CHAPTER XXXI
Keeping to the water's edge, Professor Young walked rapidly toward Ithaca. He knew that further up the shore the fishermen were drawing their nets; he did not wish to advance upon them. Since knowing Tessibel Skinner, he had become more lenient toward the law-breakers.
He turned into the forest at the side of the Hoghole, but the sound of voices brought him to a standstill.
Ezra Longman was shouting out a threat.
"Ye be a-tryin' to get Tess, and I tells ye to look out."
"Shet up!" responded Ben Letts.
"If ye air a-wishin' to live," came the boy's voice again, "I says for ye to keep away from her."
"I lives 'cause I lives, and I ain't afraid of ye, nohow."
The Professor barely caught the words, for they were gurgled in the deep throat.
"I wants Tess for a woman," Ben broke out, "and for a woman I air a-goin' to have her. She'll care for Mammy and me. I gets her. See?"
The north reel stopped turning, but the south one went on silently. Ben Letts and Ezra Longman were turning over and over on the sand, at grips with each other.
Professor Young uttered no word. Then Ezra's voice came from under Ben's big body.
"I tells what I knows about Skinner if ye don't get up and let me be," said he. "I tells—"
Red fingers closed over his throat, and Ezra Longman spoke no more. As the south reel kept turning around and around, the rope slackened from the north reel in the water; and still Ben Letts held his deadly fingers pressed about the neck of his enemy.
Professor Young saw Ben sit up and bend his head to the heart of the other fisherman. Then, with a furtive glance about, he lifted the boy in his arms, and came toward Young, grunting under his burden. Young drew back into the overhanging branches.
The squatter stumbled up the rocks, dragging the boy after him, and with a mighty effort lifted him high in the air, and tumbled the body into the Hoghole.
In another instant, Ben was back upon the shore at the reel, turning swiftly until silently it caught up with the other, just as the net dragged in the shallow waters, with bushels of flopping fish inside.
Professor Young lowered himself into the Hoghole. It was necessary for him to use the greatest caution. The lad came to the surface directly below him, and the Professor saw him catch at a jagged end of a rock.
"Can you breathe?" asked Young, in a low voice. "And can you help yourself a little?"
"Yep," came back the faint answer.
"Then, when I put out my foot, take hold of it, and make no noise, for your enemy is but a short distance away, and he meant to kill you. Now, come up.... There! Don't lean too heavily upon me, for the rocks are slippery."
Without any more conversation, the two men, one wet and weak, with bleeding head, with a gash over his right brow, crossed the forest toward the tracks. By dint of persuasion, Young forced the boy to give his father's name. He had caught enough of the talk between the fishermen to know that Tess was the cause of their quarrel. But what Ezra had threatened to tell about Skinner he did not know. Two miles from Ithaca the boy became light-headed and feeble. His tongue was loosened in his delirium, and Young heard a story that made his heart beat faster and revived hopes he had considered almost dead. Through the moonbeams that slanted to the tracks he imagined he saw a little figure skirting the rays, with flying red hair. Not for anything in the world would he lose sight of the boy. He had the first clue in the case that so interested him. Acquittal for the father of Tessibel Skinner was within his grasp. It was late when he dragged Ezra, laughing and gibbering, into a private hospital. He installed a nurse beside the boy, bidding her keep a record of any delirious mutterings he might make, and to observe silence about them.
Ben Letts wondered what Satisfied Longman would ask about his son. He spoke to the father first, his thick brain trying to avoid trouble.
"Ye air both got a lot of nerve to keep three men at the south reel, when I air the only one here."
"Where's Ezy?" asked Longman.
There was no anxiety in his voice. He was tumbling the fish into the cars.
"I ain't no way a-knowin' where he air. He skippedaway, and said how he wanted to speak to his pappy, and I ain't seed him since.... Ezy were a fool when he was born."
"Gone home, like a sneakin' kid," put in Jake Brewer. "He ain't no hankerin' for nettin'. He ain't been right since Orn Skinner shot the gamekeeper."
"He air my brat," replied Longman, "and he air good, if he does do what he oughtn't to sometimes. I air satisfied with him.... Let's go home."
And, silently, as a spectral fleet, the boats lapped their way back, edging the shore carefully.
Far into the night Satisfied Longman and the tired mother waited for their boy.
"He'll show up to break'us," soothed the father; but the mother trembled with terror. It was the first evening Ezra had missed the netting, and he had never been from home for a whole night.
As day after day passed, it was noised about the settlement that Ezra Longman had run away, some saying that he had been seen upon a line of canal boats going to Albany. The mother watched each hour for some word from him. Then, with a sorrowful expression in the faded eyes, she said to Myra:
"If Ezy had had any edication, he'd 'a' writ. He'll be a-comin' home some of these days."
After that, the fisherman's hut carried along its usual routine—while a boy in the city was wrestling with fever, and the head of the law school hung upon his muttered words with avidity.
"You think he is very ill, Tess?" Teola asked, early one evening in September, when she and Tessibel werealone in the Skinner hut. Tess came forward to the wooden box, holding in her hand the frying-pan filled with bacon fat, and gazed down upon the baby Dan, contemplating the wee old-man face thoughtfully.
"He air sick! He air a look on him what air on Myry's brat—kind of sickly. That air because he has so many lines in his face, and he air so little," she finished, wrinkling the sun-tanned cheeks and shrugging her shoulders almost disdainfully.
Teola knelt down, and slipped one slender arm under the dark head. These two girls had been drawn together during the past few weeks by a tie stronger than death. It had brought Frederick nearer to the squatter, and little did Teola realize that, had it not been for her handsome brother, her secret would have been discovered long before. It was of him she was thinking as she bent over the fire-scarred babe on this stormy September night in the fisherman's hut.
"I may not be able to come down to-morrow, Tessibel," she said, looking up into the serious face, "because my brother is coming home early in the morning."
The frying-pan fell to the floor; the fat spattered and ran across the broken, tilted boards until it congealed into rounded miniature mountains. Teola turned a puzzled face toward the fishermaid, but there was nothing about the girl to tell her why the accident had happened, for Tessibel, grappling with a huge cloth, was wiping the floor furiously.
"I was saying, Tess," repeated Teola, "that I may not come down to-morrow.... Oh! hear how it rains, and the thunder!... Tess, since he died, and the baby came, thunder-storms make me shiver."
"It ain't nothin' that'll hurt ye," grunted Tess from her position on the floor.
"I know it, unless one stands directly in the lightning's path. But I am such a coward, Tessibel! You have so much faith—that's why you're not afraid."
The pathetic face turned suddenly upon Tess with a questioning look.
"My brother, you know, thinks you are such a good girl—and—and—you are a good girl, aren't you, Tess?"
"Squatters ain't never good," answered Tess in a low tone, her eyes dropping under the steady gaze of the other girl. "But I—I love the student's God, I does."
She was standing with rag hanging from her right hand, her face illumined by a deep flush that disappeared only when it met the red hair.
"I believe that you do love Him, Tess," Teola breathed. "And Frederick told me that if he had your faith, he could do anything in the world. You know, the Bible says that if we had faith as large as a mustard seed, we could move a mountain."
Her voice faltered on the last words. Tess grunted significantly.
"Aw! a mustard seed ain't no bigger than a speck of dirt."
"I know it, Tess; I know it. But one only has to have a little faith in God to enable Him to answer every prayer we utter."
She grasped the thin baby to her breast frantically, kissed the crimson mark up and down, until where the frenzied lips had traveled the flesh turned purple. Oh!to have faith to believe that she might soon have her child with her always—always! Of late there had crept over Teola the shadow of the great beyond, into which her student lover had been so hastily summoned. The shrieking of the wind, and the mournful fluttering of the tiny hands made her shiver, and she coughed slightly.
"A mountain air bigger than that hill with the look-out on it," ruminated Tess, picking up a huge knot of wood from behind the stove.
"I know that, too," replied Teola.
For the space of many minutes only the smacking of the baby lips upon the sugar rag and the roaring of the turbulent wind were heard in the hut. Suddenly the vibrations of a great peal of thunder shook the shanty with violent effect; a streak of lightning shot zig-zaggedly through the room like some livid, malicious spirit. Teola screamed in terror.
"It hit some place near here," said Tess.
"Yes, and wasn't it awful? Oh, if the storm would only cease!"
"It air comin' nearer," answered Tess, with the keen instincts of a squatter. "It air got to turn sidewise through the window afore it goes over the hill. What air ye afraid of, if ye believes that ye can move a mountain if ye has the faith? God wouldn't hit the brat with lightnin', would He?"
"Oh, I haven't the faith, Tess!" moaned Teola, rocking to and fro in her keen agony of soul. "Long ago I stopped believing the way I did when I was a child. I prayed that night when Dan was killed, until my head ached and pounded for days. I wanted to see him once more, and God wouldn't let me; and then I prayed again—" Teola buried her face in the breast of theinfant, and sobbed, "I prayed that the baby might die when he was born, but God didn't see fit to take him. Somehow, it doesn't do any good to pray any more."
Tess paused in her work, standing with her hands on her hips, a solemn expression in the long eyes.
"Yer faith wasn't as big as a speck of dirt, then, were it?" she queried. "And maybe mine ain't for Daddy. But the student air a-prayin' for him! It air a damn shame ye ain't got him a-prayin' for yerself and the kid.... Ye'd a seen yer man before now, and the brat would 'a' died, too."
With a start caused by the squatter's words, Teola laid the child down, crouching back upon her feet. She eyed the fisher-girl critically. What a strange mixture of good and bad—of the holy and the unholy—lived in the tawny, magnificent squatter! She answered hesitatingly:
"But if my brother should know about the baby, it would break my heart, Tessibel. It would kill me—and him, too! Nothing could ever make me tell him. You understand, don't you, Tess?"
"Yep."
It was as Tess had said. The storm was coming nearer, sending vivid shafts of lightning in splendid awfulness across the sky. Torrents of rain descended, thrashing the lake into uneven, towering crests of white foam. The weeping willow tree groaned over the shanty roof, jarring and tearing at the broken bits of tarred tin.
"Tess, Tess, how can you bear that awful noise, constantly through the night? It frightens me to death. It sounds like the spirits of people who are dead."
She shivered again, the cutting rasp from the chimney place stinging her with fright.
"It air spirits," replied Tess softly. "There air one kind of spirits for the sun when it air a-shinin', and the waves just a-ripplin' over the lake. They air good spirits. But on nights like this there air bad ones—the ghosts of Indians, squaws, and sometimes of the Letts' family—them dead 'uns."
She paused, her low voice trailing into silence on that one word "dead," the luminous eyes burning with superstitious fear. How many times had the squaw and her burnt brat, now long since called to the land of their fathers, moaned through the winter nights, making the shanty ring with their piteous plaints! How many times Tessibel had imagined that she had seen the headless man from Haytes' Corner flit from the shadows of the long lane and lose himself in the overhanging willows on the shore!
Suddenly a foreign sound pierced the storm. Tessibel drew near Teola. Both girls were standing over the wooden box. The violence of the storm impelled them to grasp each other's hands. In through the broken window the strange sound was borne again.
"A boat's a-beatin' agin the shore," said Tess quietly. "Some one air a-comin' in out of the rain."
The words were only formed on her lips when the door opened abruptly. Tessibel turned her head; Teola dropped her hand and uttered a cry. Frederick Graves, with his fingers upon the door, was closing it against the fury of the storm.
CHAPTER XXXII
"You didn't mind my running in, did you, Tessibel?" asked Frederick, turning toward the squatter with a broad, comrade-like smile. Then he noticed his sister, with surprise.
"Ah, Teola! you, too, were caught in the storm? What a blessing to have a shelter like this! Miss Tessibel won't mind if we stay until it is over. I came home before I was expected. I almost wish, now, that I had waited until morning. But I am safe here, though.... Whew! it is a terrible night."
The distance between Teola and Tessibel widened perceptibly. Neither girl attempted to speak, and the student smiled at the embarrassment upon his sister's face. He made to go toward her.
"You needn't mind being here, dear," he said in a low tone. "I don't believe as Father and Mother do. I shouldn't ask for you to be in a better place than this hut."
He turned his face toward the roof, letting his eyes sweep the cobwebbed net, the old coats upon the wall; and lastly to the stove, out of the top of which jutted the smoking knot.
"There is here," he continued impressively, "a feeling of rest and contentment to me.... I believe, Tessibel Skinner, that your faith permeates every inch of it."
He lifted the lid of the stove, and shoved the smoulderingwood from sight. His deep voice came again to Tessibel's ears as if from afar:
"I wish I could impress upon my father what it means to pray and be good and pure under such circumstances as surround you. I mean, you know, Tess"—here he turned squarely upon her—"I mean that, for one so young, you have purity of faith and uplifted confidence in God's goodness."
His voice was silenced by a half-smothered cry dragging itself from the squatter's throat. Then he noted that something was wrong. Teola, pale and wretched, had gradually placed a greater distance between herself and the wooden box. Tess had involuntarily drawn closer to it. She dully comprehended that Teola was ashamed of the rabbit-like body, struggling for a mere existence. Expressions of consternation, of indecision and terror swept over her face. Her eyes dropped for an instant upon the silent infant. The child gave one great yawn, and whiningly dropped the sugar rag. Just at this juncture, lightning flashed through the cracked window and played above the face of the babe until the red of the fire mark from head to shoulder glowed crimson under the blotched skin. The tiny, scrawny arms were bare, the withered mouth opened and shut, gapingly. As the eyes of the boy fell upon it, he went so deadly white that Tess thought he was going to fall. Without a word, he walked to the box, considering the wrinkled baby face like a man in a trance. His gaze took in the flaming brand, the gray eyes fastened upon the candlelight, and the tiny, searching fingers, which constantly sought something they could not find. It seemed an eternity before hegathered himself together, forcing his eyes upward to rest first on Teola, then upon Tess.
He was the first to speak.
"Where—did—that—child—come—from?"
There was imperious inquisition in the dark eyes.
His voice had changed, until the deepness of it was terrifying.
Teola came nearer to him. Tessibel dropped down beside the infant.
"I want to know where—that child—came from?" commanded the boy once more. "Whose child is it?"
Tess swung her body round upon the shanty floor, turning cloudy, rebuking eyes upon Teola. She, Tessibel Skinner, crouching squatter-like over Dan Jordan's baby, had sworn never to tell Frederick his sister's secret, and no thought of doing so entered her mind. The minister's daughter must speak the truth. The mother of the babe would answer the question put by the student.
Quickly Tess turned over her great desire for the freedom of her father, followed by the passionate wish to retain the love and prayers of Frederick Graves. If she denied the child, he would turn upon his sister, and the shivering girl would divulge her trouble. It would be the same as breaking her oath. Yet Frederick must not think the child hers. She turned toward Teola again, and seemed about to open her lips, when the expression upon the other girl's face stayed her tongue. It was a mixture of despair, illness and fright. Tessibel imagined she had discovered beneath the pain-drawn face a desire to claim her own. Ah! Teola would gather her babe, that tiny bit of shriveled flesh, into her arms before the whole world. There rose in the squatter'sheart a vast respect for Myra Longman, who had taken her child from the beginning of its tiny life, and defied the babbling tongues of the settlement gossips. Teola Graves, although of a different class, was no less a mother—she would do the same. Tessibel sat up, waiting for the confession. Why was the minister's daughter so silent?—why so deathly looking?
"I will be answered," insisted the student. Then, centering his eyes full upon Tess, he added:
"Tessibel Skinner,itis—yours!"
Teola's lips were pressed closely together. Spasms of pain drew them down at the corners, making the girl resemble a woman twice her years. With a sudden inspiration, she turned upon her brother.
"Frederick, Frederick," she stammered. "Don't blame her too much. She is only a girl."
A cry escaped from the lips of Frederick; another followed from those of Tess. The minister's daughter was throwing the motherhood of the babe upon her. Teola had branded her squatter savior with a nameless child—a horror from which the student shrank! She saw unbelief rise quickly in his eyes, and saw him draw aside his long rain-coat as it almost touched the box upon the floor. Shrinking disgust of the wriggling, whimpering thing on the rags made Frederick involuntarily reach out his hand to his sister, but his eyes were bent upon Tess.
"And you're the girl I've trusted!" he gasped, as Teola neared him slowly. "Yours is the faith I've envied!—your life the one standard I wish to gain!... God!" he groaned, "you—you—you the mother of that!"
His bitter tones stung her to the quick, whipping herinto immediate action. Fire gold-brown and swift as lightning swept into the flashing eyes. Frederick's sister had thrust the child upon her. The secret was dead between them. Tess remembered her oath—remembered her love for the boy, and Teola's cowardice. Her despair gathered as her false position was forced upon her.
She stooped, and grasped the babe in her hands with a passion that tore the meager clothing from its body. She crushed the infant to her as if indeed Teola's words were true. The small dark head fell limply upon her bosom, the thin legs hung straight and bare over the soiled jacket. One little hand clutched her torn sleeve, as if there lived in the infant-brain a fear of harm. Tess, instinct with potent life and rage, wheeled like a tawny tigress furiously upon Frederick and Teola.
"Air it any of yer damn business," she demanded hotly, "if I wants to have a brat?"
She had silenced the student by the condemning words, which seared his soul like molten lead. A dazed terror gathered in his eyes. He smoothed his forehead with trembling fingers. The lightning forked about the squatter and the babe, illuminating the small head and the bony body of the child. Tess felt it shiver and mechanically she lifted her skirt, wrapping him close within it. Her gaze took in sneeringly the shrinking form of Teola, and the arm of the student encircling his sister's waist. For one instant she hated them both with all the strength of her half-savage nature. Still, no thought came of breaking her promise.
"Ye can both go to hell," she ended distinctly.
A fierce cry from Frederick closed her lips, and the anger within her changed to terror. What was she doing?Blasting his love, his faith, his confidence with words that blackened her soul with perfidy and her life with dishonor. Had she not told the student that long-ago night that she loved him?—that she was his squatter for ever and ever? And was she not now at this moment keeping a secret from him for his own sake? Something in her small, ghastly face brought the lad in his boyish agony, impulsively forward.
"For God's love—and mine, Tess—tell me, it isn't true! Tell me you are shielding someone else—"
Teola caught her breath painfully, and Frederick ended:
"Some other squatter girl."
"I ain't got no other squatter's brat here," she cried, turning her eyes upon Teola. "It ain't no other squatter's brat, air it?"
"No, no, Frederick," replied Teola, white and wan; "she has told you the truth—it isn't another squatter's child."
Hope died in the boy and outraged feeling leaped into its place. He held Tessibel's eyes with his relentlessly.
"Did you expect to mix prayers for your father with filth like that?" he demanded, pointing to the hidden infant in the fold of her dress. "Did you expect God to hear you, when your life was full of—sin?... I am ashamed I ever loved you, ashamed that I took my life from your hands.... I wish I were—dead! I wish I were dead!"
Teola gasped in her new understanding. The squatter and her handsome brother loved each other! Never for one moment had it dawned upon her, until she saw the tall boy drop beside the stool and sob out his heart agony upon the open Bible.
If she dared speak the truth, she could assure him of the goodness of the fisher-girl. But her lips sealed themselves with her soul's consent. She raised her face, giving Tess one look of terror. Reaching out, she touched her brother's arm.
"Frederick, come home with me. This is awful—awful!"
"I don't want to go home," sobbed the boy, in pitiful abandon. "I didn't know anything could be so hard to bear. And I loved her faith and her character—and her beautiful face.... Oh, I love her, I love her, Teola!"
The squatter listened to every passionate word, listened until her face whitened into a despair that settled there and did not vanish. She had not moved from the wooden box, nor ceased pressing the half-clad infant to her breast. Turning, she shot a soul-cutting glance at the other girl, who owed her very life to her. The glance pleaded for the miserable boy by the stool, for the sick babe held close to her heart, and lastly, for herself, her squatter honor, and the powerful love she had for the student brother. From the depths of her eyes came a demand to Teola that she tell the truth. The answer was but a slight negative shake of the proudly-set head, followed by an embarrassment that Teola covered by leaning over her brother, and raising him from the floor. Frederick allowed his sister to lead him by the wooden box, past Tessibel to the door. His eyes traveled back to the open Bible upon the stool, where but a moment since his own dark head had rested. Then he laughed—laughed until the sharp sting of his tones made the fisher-girl grunt in her characteristic way.
Striding forward, he snatched up the book, tore off thecovers, and in another minute had thrust it through the smoke into the stove.
"There goes your faith—your canting trash about your love for the Saviour! I might have known that one of your kind could not rise above the grossness in you. I hope you will be as miserable and as unhappy as I am.... I hope that child will...."
Tess stopped him with a cry. She stooped down, and placed the little Dan in his bed without a word. Her anger was gone, and from the waters of bitterness that swept over her a better Tess lived. Her faith in the boy died instantly, and a higher, nobler and greater faith in the crucified Saviour lived instead.
She would never tell Frederick that his sister was mother to the little being he had scorned, nor would she as much as utter the name of Dan Jordan. Covering the child tenderly, she faced Frederick Graves without a touch of the awkward girlishness that had hitherto marked her movements. A glorified expression lightened the white face and shone from her eyes. He had taught her a lesson of independence she could not have learned through any other person. Without one glance at the shivering young mother, she walked to the door, and opened it, as she had done that night when he had come first to the hut.
"Ye can go," she said, "both of ye. Ye burned my Book, ye did, but ye can't take it out of my heart. The God up their ain't all yers. He air mine—and Daddy's—and—the brat's."
CHAPTER XXXIII
The rain rushed in through the open door. The wind shook the dust in clouds from the overhanging nets, waving the long cobwebs that hung in fine threads from the ceiling into fantastic figures.
Frederick, still supporting his sister, stepped into the glare of the lightning. Tess closed the door behind them, and stood with her back against it. The high chest lifted and lifted, the white, tightened throat choking down the sobs that tried to force themselves to her lips. "She were a damn sneak," were the first words she said, shudderingly covering her face with her hands.
"Aw, aw, I ain't a-goin' to have it here.... I can't have it here."
She was thinking of the child, now twisting and turning for more sugar. A whine from its lips drew Tess slowly toward it. She stood looking down upon it for many minutes. The baby had taken away her all, for Tess realized now the extent of her love for Frederick. Nothing would make the days shorter; there was no looking forward to a kindly nod or a gracious word from him.
"I hates ye," she said out loud, slowly, leaning over the infant with a frown on her face, "but I hates yer ma worse than I hates you. Yer ma air a piker, she air."
The babe whimpered and shivered. Tessibel wrapped its bare shoulders in a piece of the blanket.
"I could throw ye out in the rain, I hates ye so," she burst forth in sudden anger. "Ye ain't no right in this shanty."
Her eyes glittered with rage and humiliation; her head sank nearer and nearer the fire-marked child, her shock of red hair falling like a mantle of gold across its thin body. The twisting fingers entangled themselves in the tawny curls, drawing the squatter down until her face was almost in the box. With a grunt of abhorrence she spread out the wiry little hands, extricating lock after lock.
Once free, she squatted back upon her feet, scrutinizing the child with no sign of sympathy in her eyes. Suddenly she caught a glimpse of the forest and the lake beyond through the window. She could see the rain falling in quantities into the water, and the great pine-tree, in which sat her God of Majesty, whitened under the zig-zag glare of lightning. The superstitious, imaginative girl rose unsteadily to her feet. Pressing her face to the smeared pane, she saw the jagged lightning tearing again toward the tree; then it played about the figure that Tess had grown to love. The old man amid the branches bent toward the squatter, and held out his waving arms. A cry burst from Tessibel's lips. She opened the door, standing in bold relief against the candlelight, and shot her hands far into the dark night.
"Oh, Goddy, Goddy!" she breathed, catching her breath in stifling sobs. "The student air gone, and the Bible air burnt, and Daddy air in a prison cell. Might'n I asks ye—?"
She turned, with heaving bosom, without finishing. Bending over the child, she drew him into her arms. With the same sublime expression of suffering, she went back to the open door and knelt in the beating rain, and tendered the little child toward the God of her dreams.
"Might'n it please ye, Goddy, to bless the brat—and Tess?"
The student was no longer the motive power of her prayer. Tess, the squatter, was struggling with a new faith of her own. Flash after flash brightened the sky, and still she knelt, offering the sick child for her God to bless. One long peal of thunder shook the inky waters, and rumbled reverberatingly into the hills. Tessibel's eyes were riveted upon the pine-tree. The wind dropped the shaking branches for a minute—the arms extended straight toward her. With fast-falling tears she bowed over the wailing baby, and stood up with a long breath.
"Goddy, Goddy, it air hard work for ye to forgive Tessibel, I knows.... To-day I loved the student best"—a sob tightened her throat—"to-night I love you best, and ... and the Man hanging on the Cross."
She closed the hut door, and seated herself at the oven, and warmed the infant with tender solicitude, forcing the warm, sweetened water into the meager body. Then she slipped off her clothes, gathered the little Dan to her breast, and crept into bed.
"I said as how I hated ye, brat," she whispered, "but I don't hate ye now, poor little shiverin' dum devil!"
During the rest of the storm the babe slept, but Tessibel wept out her loss of the only love she had ever known save Daddy Skinner's—wept until, from sheer exhaustion, her head dropped upon the dark one of Dan Jordan's babe, and she slept.
The next morning, Tess rose languidly. Without a smile or a prayer, she arranged the sop for the babe, then sat down beside him to think. Such a radicalchange in her life brought an influx of indescribable emotions. Her Bible was gone—the one book out of which she was learning the secret of happiness and patience. She remembered how, the night before, the realization of her despair had brought her closer to the Cross. Out of the brightness of the lightning she had received a promise of a blessing. Still, the tender, sensitive heart was bleeding for its own. But Tess had the hidden God to help her—and the child. She sat watching him; she could see that he was growing thinner, growing more emaciated as the days passed. He could eat only the food Tess forced into his mouth. But the sugar rags kept him from whining. At this moment he was eying the window-pane with intelligent intentness.
"Ye air the miserablest little devil I ever seed. No pappy, and a mammy what air afraid to say ye air hers. I hated ye last night, but ye air such a wrinkled little tramp that this mornin' I promises ye to keep ye till ye dies."
She was bending over the babe, watching every expression that flitted over the drawn mouth. In this position she did not hear the door open silently, as Teola stepped in.
The minister's daughter whispered to the crouching squatter:
"Tessibel, can—can you ever forgive me?"
Tess stood up and took a long breath. Teola noted how the night had changed the brilliant coloring to a whiteness that startled her. An agony of remorse broke over her, and, dropping upon her knees, she wept upon the face of little Dan.
"Tess, I've nearly died all through the night.... Oh, can you forgive me?"
"I ain't no business to be a-forgivin' ye. It be the brat what ye air to asks forgiveness of."
Teola sprang to her feet.
"Tess!" she cried sharply. Never had the girl appeared in this light.
"It air hard on the little kid," Tessibel said meditatively, "when its ma says what another woman air a-mothering it for good and all."
This remark came forth in even tones. Teola had not thought of the harm she had done the child of Dan Jordan, by throwing the motherhood upon the squatter. She turned her troubled eyes, first upon Tess, then upon the child.
"Tessibel, I do love him, even if I disowned him. But I haven't the courage you have. You looked so beautiful when you said he was yours.... And Frederick is ill to-day."
Tessibel's heart thumped loudly.
"I heard him crying all night, Tess," went on Teola, "and, oh! so many times I wanted to go and tell him that you were—a good girl; but I didn't have the courage. But I know that sometime—Tess, will you pray for me?"
"I ain't doin' no prayin' to-day," replied Tess. "To-morry, mebbe.... Aw! I wanted the student to pray for Daddy, and to like me—"
Teola never forgot the scene that followed.
The fisher-girl settled in a heap upon the floor, bowed the tired head, and wept.
"Tessibel! Tess," called Teola, touching the girl's shoulder, "listen. I'll tell him!—I'll tell him! He shall come back to you to-night—if it kills me."
Tessibel lifted her white face.
"Ye be goin' to tell him that the brat air yers?" queried she brokenly.
"I'll go and make it all right with him. He shall come to you to-day.... Oh, what a wicked girl I was! Kiss me, Tess."
Elias Graves' beautiful daughter sank on the breast of the squatter, and there was a kiss of forgiveness.
The baby whimpered. Teola drew away from Tessibel with a long sigh. She reached for the milk-can.
"There ain't none there," Tess said, with a touch of joy in her tones. "It air all gone. He et all that you brought him."
"And I can't get him any more now," moaned Teola. "Oh, Tess, I'm so ill! I wish I were dead!"
A tall boy had repeated the same words the night before. Tess drew herself up painfully. She pitied Teola from the bottom of her heart, but, in spite of her pity, she could not help the thrill of happiness when she thought of Frederick coming, and knowing all.
"It ain't no use to wish ye were dead," said she, "'cause ye can't allers die if ye wants to. When I thought Daddy was a-goin' to the rope, I say every day I were a-goin' to die.... Women ain't a-dyin' so easy."
She was preparing the warm sop for the child, and taking him from his mother's arm, she sat down in the rocking chair. She did not speak again until she had drained the sweetened water from the bread-crusts, and the child had smacked it down eagerly.
Suddenly she spoke, handing the babe to Teola.
"Can't ye put out a drop more milk evenin's?"
"I took all there was last night, and the night before,too. And this morning Rebecca was furious—she had to go without milk in her coffee. I don't know that I can get any to-night."
"The weather air so cold now," explained Tess, "Kennedy won't let his cows stay in the fields nights. I might crib some more if I could. Every time I steals up to yer house, I thinks yer woman'll see me; and yer Pappy and Mammy comes home to-morry."
Teola nodded.
"If yer Pappy catched me swipin' milk, he'd knock the head offen me. I steals it just the same.... I air afraid of yer Pappy, though."
"No wonder," replied Teola, and she lapsed into silence.
Her father hated the squatter girl—hated the fishermen who still plied their unlawful trade under the noses of the gamekeepers.
Teola was crying softly. She felt it was only just to relieve Tess of the stigma she had placed upon her. But to go home and face the proud young brother with the story of her sin—with the lie she had told—were almost unbearable. Then another thought pierced her. Could Tess keep the baby all winter? And would she herself have the courage to live, knowing that he might sometimes be hungry and cold? Frederick would help her. She was glad she had decided to tell him.
As she walked up the long hill, she saw her brother standing on the porch, and noted the pallor of his face, the expression of misery in his eyes. At first the boy did not see her—not until she called his name softly.
Teola sank upon the upper step.
"It takes away my breath to climb that hill," she panted, when she could speak. "It grows harder and harder every day."
"I shall be glad when we leave this old cottage," was the boy's moody reply. "I never knew how much I hated the lake until to-day."
Teola did not answer to this, for she knew that she was to blame for that hatred. Frederick was looking at the hut under the willow wofully.
"If anyone had told me what I saw last night," he blurted out, a moment later, "I believe I would have killed him.... I loved her, Teola."
Now she would tell him—send him back to Tessibel with joy in his heart. She sprang up impetuously.
"Frederick," she began quickly, "let me tell—"
But he interrupted her.
"You need not tell me that I have to forgive her for such a thing as this because of ignorance.... It's too horrible!... I shall never get the sight of that child out of my mind.... That streak of awful, lurid red ... that yapping mouth ... those clawing hands.... God! the disgust I felt.... Teola! Teola! You are ill! Rebecca, come here! Come! Come!"
Together they lifted her from the porch where she had fallen, like a man stabbed with a knife. Gurgling from her lips poured the fresh red blood from the diseased lungs. Teola tried to speak, tried to tell Frederick the truth, but the awful tugging in her chest, and her brother's order that she must not speak, closed her lips upon the good resolution. Added to his command came one from the doctor, who arrived later, that she must not speak one word until he came the next day. The hemorrhagehad been brought on by Frederick's description of her child. After her brother had gone, she thought of the hour when she could tell him, but with a thankful feeling in her heart that it had been delayed a little time.
Until the great University bells chimed the hour of midnight, Tessibel waited in the hut for Frederick.
"She hes forgot to tell him," she muttered wearily, pulling the sleepy babe into her arms, "and—and he ain't a-comin'."