Tess of the Storm Country Part 23

"Come, Kid," said he gruffly; "it's the law ye're tamperin' with. Do you hear? Let the prisoner go."

Professor Young felt his throat tighten. The pitiful sight of the girl, the ragged skirt, the terrible unkemptness of the small body, almost brought a shout from his lips. It was a new sensation to the learned man, a stinging, rebellious, pitying sensation, a feeling that he wanted to shake the girl from her father's arms, and then care tenderly for her. One great boot had fallen from Tessibel's many times frozen foot.

The little toe marked and cut by frost, limply hanging independent of its fellows, made Young wince.

Suddenly Tessibel sat up and wound her arms more tightly about the big humpbacked body.

"I can't go back to the shanty without ye, Daddy," she whimpered, "and they said--as how ye was comin'--home to stay.... And I ain't goin'--darned if I air."

Young turned his head again toward the window. He could not banish the wish that Tess would listen to him.

The deputy placed his hand firmly upon the prisoner's arm, the fisherman himself trying in vain to loosen the girl's fingers from the s.h.a.ggy beard.

"I--I--air to go with Daddy--I air--I air!"

Tessibel brought out the words snappingly, but Skinner, with the aid of the deputy, opened the clenched hands. Tessibel gave way; she was unable to stop the awful impending danger that hung over her--absolute separation from Daddy Skinner.

"Daddy, Daddy," she gasped, sitting up straight: "man--man, let me go ... I air dyin' without my Daddy ... I air alone--all alone!"

The official moved anxiously as she made this appeal to him. She was now standing on her bare feet, but she bounded forward as the bible-back rose and fell, and large tears dragged themselves from the lowered lids of the fisherman's blue-gray eyes. She pantingly caught her father's hand in hers.

"Kisses, Daddy Skinner, kisses on the bill for Tess--before ye go ...

Tess air a bad brat--"

She could not finish the sentence for the squatter had pressed her to him convulsively. Then Skinner dropped the slender, relaxed body into the wooden arm-chair, and iron-hampered, took up his march behind the deputy. The professor mutely watched the storm, desperate and terrible, break over the squatter girl. Her wild weeping settled into sobs, the sound of which rent and shook the man's emotions. At last he ventured to speak:

"Child, may I be your friend?"

"'Taint no friends I want. It air somethin' to love--to kiss. It air Daddy I want."

The voice came brokenly from the veil of red hair.

Just then the great iron door clanged in the distance behind the prisoner. Tessibel sprang to the open door, straining her ears to catch another sound from the "black place" which had enveloped her father within its menacing shadows.

"He air--gone.... Daddy--air--gone!"

The words were spoken slowly, and hurt the watching man almost as if the torture were his own. A shriek rose from the rounded white throat and the girl threw herself bootless upon the floor, and screamed in pa.s.sionate childish sorrow, the wealth of disheveled hair mantling the dirty jacket, and covering the woful face.

Neither the professor nor Tessibel heard the hurrying footsteps upon the stone floor in the prison corridor, but Tess, still in the frenzy of her new grief, heard her name spoken through a maze:

"Tessibel Skinner!" And then again: "Tessibel Skinner!"

The squatter raised a pale, tear-streaked face to Frederick Graves. She sat up with a painful flush, drawing the bare legs closely under the wet skirt. The student spoke again:

"Tessibel Skinner has forgotten that G.o.d rules and is just. Have your prayers proven nothing to you?"

Tessibel gazed scarlet and embarra.s.sed, into Frederick's face, her under lip quivering. The red head sank slowly down, and the exhausted child wept as only a hurt child can weep.

"I were a-goin' with him," she cried between her sobs, "I could have washed dishes in the prison--to be near Daddy. I air such a lonely Tess 'out him in the hut."

The student lifted her gently in his arms and seated her in the wooden chair. With the tenderness of a brother, he placed the great boots once more upon the girl's feet, and Tessibel was ready to start again upon her long tramp through the row of huts to her shanty home.

The tears had ceased to flow, and with bowed head she was hanging upon every word the student uttered. Professor Young went quietly out, unheeded by either girl or boy.

"No one blames you for your grief, child, at being obliged to leave your father," Frederick said huskily. "But are you going to take off the 'Armor of G.o.d' and forget all that He has promised you?"

Tessibel blinked ignorantly at the long words, "Armor of G.o.d," "Armor of G.o.d." It was something she had not heard before--perhaps it meant that the student's Christ would not help her now. It all came back in a flood of light--her utter faithlessness in the prayers of the student, in the pine-tree G.o.d who had waved her so many a.s.surances. She had not dared to look into the n.o.ble face above her, but when they stepped from the jail into the street, she raised her eyes to Frederick's and murmured:

"I air sorry cause I were so cussed ... I only wanted to go with Daddy."

"I realize that," replied Frederick, making preparations to walk with her by drawing his coat collar tightly about his neck, "but it was impossible, and, from now until the time he comes back, study your Bible."

Tess halted a moment, looking up steadily into the dark eyes of the tall boy.

"Does the Bible talk of Daddy Skinner?" she entreated; "does it tell as how he air comin' home?"

"Indeed, yes," was the student's answer. "There's nothing the Bible doesn't contain. The Saviour was nailed to the Cross bearing his misery to give you a heavenly harp and crown, Tessibel. If you read Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, you will see it all plainly. You can be happy if you pray and are a good girl while your father is away." Then, desiring to ease the tense-drawn face, he added:

"It will please him if you write him often and tell him about yourself....

Come now, it's getting too dark for you to walk those tracks. Child, haven't you a friend in town with whom you can pa.s.s the night? It's frightful to tramp that distance alone."

Tess stiffened instantly. Daddy's shanty was in her care, and of what night had she ever been afraid?

"I air a goin' home," she answered almost sullenly; "ain't a dum bit afraid of nothin'."

As Frederick turned to her side, Tess glanced up confusedly.

"Ye can't walk with me through the streets of Ithacy," said she.

"Why not?"

"Cause--well, cause ye can't, that's why!"

Frederick understood, and, gravely lifting his hat, turned in the other direction with the remark that he would see her again soon.

The girl stood for some seconds staring fixedly after him. Then, wiping her face with the sleeve of a ragged jacket, she started off toward the squatters' row.

CHAPTER XVIII

Many were the troubling thoughts which possessed the mind of Tess as she strode along. In the fulvid depths of her red-brown eyes there dwelt an expression of misery. As the child took her way through the streets, with none to care whither she went, her face lighted with a sudden determination. Frederick had told her to read, to study, to pray--that these three with faith would save Daddy Skinner from the rope of the Canadian Indian; but the student, like all those having plenty, forgot to enquire how Tess was to read without books, or study without anyone to teach her. True, Tess could pick out a few words which Daddy had taught her, could haltingly count the stars in the heavens at night, and the rain-drops on the shanty window. She could read the names upon the store signs and had often seated herself on the railroad tracks with a bit of newspaper to stammer forth the words she knew.

But it was a Bible she needed--to learn about the student's G.o.d and the Christ. Tess was more interested in the cross than the crown, more interested in the nails that had opened the wounds in the Saviour's hands and feet, than in any royal head-covering that might come in some future time to her. There was too much misery in her own life, too much desperate desire for her loved one, to allow the glitter of a promised crown to affect her. She wanted to know of the suffering Christ, to read of how He had promised--Here Tess stopped and tossed back the red hair. What was it she wanted to read about? Ah, yes--not heaven and its glories nor h.e.l.l and its terrors, but of Daddy Skinner back in the shanty.

The Bible would tell her just how to bring him back,--but where should she get one? At the squatter mission, of course. Tessibel remembered that once she had been coaxed to enter the mission, but the children had laughed at her rags and after that she could not be induced to go again.

Then in the bitterness of her heart she had thrown stones and clay from the edges of the track through the open window upon the other children, and had been told by the superintendent never to come near the small church again. But that was four long months ago, and not once since--since the horror of Daddy's going, had she even looked toward the mission.