Tess of the Storm Country Part 36

CHAPTER XXVII

One day in the following July, Tessibel was going to Mrs. Longman's hut, with a list of Bible words she did not understand. She stopped at the edge of the forest, and listened to a curious sobbing sound she thought issued from beyond the gorge. Then, thinking herself mistaken, she ran nimbly on, avoiding the long thorns that lay in her path. The noise came more distinctly through the clear air, making the squatter girl lift her head and pause again. There was no mistake this time.

"It ain't no pup," she said aloud, "'cause a pup don't snivel like that."

Raising the red head, she tore long threads of hair loose from the briars, and, drawing the ma.s.ses of curls about her shoulders, broke into the opening of the forest. Some one was crying, and any sign of suffering brought an immediate response from Tess. It might be Myra, or it might be some little lost child. Spurred on by sympathy, she bounded over a bed of dead chestnut burrs, waded through the water to the other side of the creek, and struggled up the rocks.

Teola Graves, crouched in an att.i.tude of suffering and despair, was seated on the gnarled root of a huge tree. Tessibel watched her for an instant. Here was a holy personage to the squatter, touched with the finger of the mysterious G.o.d the student worshiped. And was she not the sister of Frederick, and had not Teola given her coffee from her own cup that winter night? Tessibel had not spoken to the minister's daughter since her father had been taken away to Auburn, and some of the intensity Tess had felt upon that one great day of her life came back to her as she stood hesitant, watching the student's sister.

Perhaps the girl was weeping for some pleasure denied her--perhaps for a jewel to wear about her neck. She went forward impulsively, and laid her hand upon the rounded shoulder.

"What be ye blattin' over?" she stammered, with a tinge of awe in her voice.

Teola struggled to her feet, suppressing her grief. The question stopped the flow of tears, and the two girls, so differently situated, the one the daughter of an eminent minister, and the other a squatter, wonderingly eyed each other.

"I thought I was alone," was Teola's answer.

"So ye was," replied Tess. "I heard ye cryin' from the lower ledge of the rocks. What air the matter?"

Infinite pity and tenderness in the coa.r.s.e words, spoken in a sweet, persuasive voice, brought a fresh burst of tears from Teola.

"I'm--I'm ill to-day."

"Ye'll be all right to-morry.... 'T'ain't much, air it?"

"It is very much to me," whispered Teola. "I'm so lonely, and so afraid!"

Tessibel sat silently down beside the other girl, twining one arm about the twisted root of the tree. She was used to sorrow, used to watching the agony of human souls without hope. A bird in the top of the tree above them sent a plaintive note into the hot air. Another answered from the forest, and Tessibel raised her head and saw a scarlet bird take wing and disappear into the branches of the wood trees.

She waited for Teola to speak, but at last, seeing there was no cessation of tears, she leaned over and touched her.

"Be ye lonely for yer ma?" she murmured.

Teola shook her head in the negative.

"Then for yer pa?"

"No!"

Ah! Tess had forgotten. Had she not seen Frederick go away weeks before, in a boat filled with pots and kettles and food for a camping expedition? Had he not smiled at her brightly as she pa.s.sed him on her way to the fish line? She could remember the tense feeling in her throat, and felt again the hot blood rushing madly into her face. Of course, the girl was weeping for her brother!

"Then air ye blattin' for the student?"

She could scarcely utter the last word, scarcely let Teola hear her voice use that beloved name.

"Yes, I was crying for him," replied Teola. "He is dead, you know."

For one instant Tess thought the world had lost its sun. Her face creased into lines, which tightened rope-like under the tanned skin. How could Frederick have died, and she not have known? She rose unsteadily to her feet, uttering one grunt significant of her suffering.

"Were he drowned?" she asked, in a voice so pained that Teola raised her head and looked at her. She did not understand the meaning of the whitened lips nor of the tense drawing-down of the long red-brown eyes.

"No," she replied slowly, "he was killed in the fire on the hill last winter."

The muscles relaxed in the squatter's face. Her legs refused to bear the slender body, and Tessibel dropped again at Teola's side. The kiss she had cherished burned hot upon her lips. Her student lived. The minister's daughter cried for the other one, for him who had called her Miss Skinner, and who afterward helped her smuggle Frederick into the opera-house.

"Why! he air been dead a long time, ain't he?"

"Yes; six months."

"And ye air a-lovin' him yet?"

"Yes."

"But he air dead," philosophized Tess. "He ain't with no other girl."

Teola shivered violently.

"Oh, I know that; I know that. But I--I need him. I want him so!"

"But he air dead," said Tess again steadily.

For many minutes neither spoke. For Teola's new burst of agony settled a solemnity upon Tess which she could not throw off. Forgetting her squatter position, she slipped her hand between the white fingers of the weeper. Teola did not care if the girl's finger-nails were filled with black soot, did not care if the squatter were covered with a dirty, ragged dress, or if her bare feet were calloused from the rocks. Tess was a human being who sympathized with her, and sympathy was as necessary to Teola's soul at that moment as breath was to her body. In the spasmodic whitening of the other girl's face Tess realized a desperate heart agony.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "THEN YE AIR COMIN' HOME WITH ME TO THE SHANTY."]

"Ye air sick," she said at last, an enlightened expression widening her lids. "A woman's kind of sick, ain't it? Eh?"

"Yes," answered Teola, flushing deeply; "yes."

"Then ye air a-comin' home with me to the shanty." Tess muttered this in a sly voice, almost in a whisper.

Teola raised her glance, and read in the eyes bent upon her that her whole secret was known. Tessibel Skinner, her father's foe, the daughter of a murderer, was helping her to her feet.

"I'm too sick to walk," she wept, in a barely audible voice. "I tried to throw myself from the rocks, over there, but the water was so silent, blue and terrible, that I couldn't."

"Ye be comin' with me," insisted Tess stolidly.

She was urging her forward, holding Teola by both arms.

"I can't! I can't! Leave me here--I am so ill! I am going to die!"

"Ye air to come," commanded Tess. "And, if ye will, I'll lug ye when ye can't walk. Women like ye don't die, and Mother Moll will come to the hut to-day."

"Mother Moll!" echoed Teola. "Mother Moll! Oh, you mean the witch? And will she--oh, will she help me so they will never know?"