Tess of the Storm Country Part 37

"Yep. And now shut up. Ye air a woman, and was borned for things like this. If ye walks a spell, then I lugs ye across the gully."

"And my father and mother--"

"Shut up, I says," ordered Tess. "It ain't no time to think of fathers and mothers. They don't know nothin' about it, does they?"

"No," said Teola. "They have been in Europe with my little sister for nearly four months. I've been alone all summer, with Rebecca, our maid, and Frederick, my brother--"

Her lips closed over a moan of pain, and she did not continue her sentence.

Through the forest, over the gullies, and down toward the Skinner hut the two girls went slowly, Teola whimpering in her agony of soul, and Tess carrying her when she could not walk. Only once did Tessibel stop.

"Hold a minute," she said gruffly, releasing Teola. "One of the dum thorns went clean through my toe.... It air out now.... Come along! What does I care, if it does bleed!"

Teola drew a sigh of relief when they crept under the willow tree. The hut was in its usual dirty condition, the Bible in the accustomed place on the stool. The suffering girl did not notice that the table was littered with the remains of the dinner, and Tess put her in Daddy's bed, and said, with a compelling, forceful glance:

"Ye air to stay there till I gets back.... And remember we air a woman, and women, when they loves men, keep their mouths shet.... Even if their man air dead.... Ye won't let anyone hear ye a-yelpin' while I air gone, will ye?"

"No, no! Go quickly, Tessibel," murmured Teola. "Go quickly!"

This time the briars and thorns pierced the squatter's bare feet without avail. Tess was rushing away upon an errand of love. Was she not perhaps saving the sister of the student from death--keeping from him a knowledge that would rend his heart? Since that night when Daddy Skinner had been taken to prison, Tess had but once visited Mother Moll. In her impatience, she did not wait to reach the hut.

"Mother Moll!" she shouted, bounding across the gully. "Come out! Tess air here!"

"Come in," commanded a cracked voice.

Tessibel entered the shanty, finding Mother Moll stretched out on the bed, with a corn-cob pipe between her shriveled lips.

"Get up from there, Ma Moll," ordered Tess, "and come to my hut. I wants ye."

"It air too hot," muttered the witch. "I ain't a-movin' from the bed to-day."

Tessibel bent over the wrinkled face, and looked determinedly into the blood-shot eyes.

"I got someone what air sick," she exclaimed, grasping the hag's arm forcibly. "Ye air to come with me.... See? And if ye does come, I gives ye a mess of eels every week for a year--and more'n that. I'll pick yer berries from yer own patch, if ye can't pick them yerself."

"Who air a-ailin'?" asked the old woman, crawling out of bed.

"Never mind. Come along."

It was a strange couple, forging the gorges and gullies, pushing aside the brambles to the lane almost opposite Minister Graves' home. In the summer's quietude, the squatter girl could mark the long chairs on the Dominie's front porch, and the hammock sagging from the hooks in the corner. No one saw the witch and Tessibel enter the hut; no one heard the girl slip the night lock into its fastening. Teola, frightened and miserable, raised her head, and looked once at Mother Moll, then dropped it again.

CHAPTER XXVIII

Dusk had fallen over the lake, closing the shanty within the shadows of the weeping willows. Mother Moll had departed before sunset. Tessibel had four candles streaming their twinkling light upon the bare floor of the hut, and was busying herself at the stove. A voice from the bed faintly whispered:

"Did you tell Rebecca what I told you to? Tell me again what you said to her."

"I telled that ye was to stay to-night with a girl below the ragged rocks, and she didn't give a dum. She air only a workin' girl; she ain't yer own flesh and blood."

"And the baby, Tessibel? May I see my baby?"

"Nope, not to-night."

"Please, Tessibel! Please! Are his eyes grey, and has he dark hair on his head?"

"If ye don't shut up, I takes the brat to Ma Moll.... Now, then, drink this tea, and eat this bread. To-morry ye has to go home, ye know."

"But my baby, Tess! What shall I do about my baby?"

The nervous whining in Teola's voice brought Tess over to her. The squatter forced the soiled blanket over the young shoulders.

"If ye sleeps to-night, I tells ye in the mornin' about the brat....

Sleep, now."

For more than an hour Tessibel sat with Teola Graves' baby clasped tightly in her arms, moving back and forth silently in the wooden rocker. A broken board squeaked now and then under the girl's weight, but she slipped the chair into other positions, and rocked on.

She marveled at the child born but that afternoon. The eyes were large and grey. Locks of damp hair fell over a wrinkled, broad brow, giving the infant the expression of an old, old man. In the light Tess could mark every feature. She had never seen a babe so small, and so sickly-looking. She ran her fingers over the right cheek, tenderly, rubbing down a livid mark that extended from the dark hair to the upper part of the breast. It was the birth-mark of fire, red and gleaming crimson as the brightest blood, and it had been because of this mark that Tess had refused the young mother's request to see her child.

Perhaps in the morning it would be gone. If not, Teola would be stronger and better able to bear the shock. After wrapping the infant closely in a warm cloth, Tess took it in her arms, and laid herself down beside Teola; and the trio slept as all youth sleeps, until the morning sun had been shining long in the window.

"Be ye better now?" asked Tess, trying to stand Teola on her feet.

"I am dreadfully ill yet," was the whispered answer. "But I want to see my baby.... And what shall I do with him? Oh, what shall I do?"

"He air a-sleepin' now," replied the squatter. "And he stays here with me, ye hear? Ye can't take him to yer pa's house, and the hut air good enough for him to live in, if it was good enough for him to be borned in."

"You mean, Tessibel, that you will care for my baby, until I can arrange something for him?--So that my father and mother may not know--"

"Er the student," broke in Tess.

"My brother! Tess, my brother Frederick! He must not know. It would kill him--and me. You, Tess,--you swear that you won't tell him?"

"I ain't a-tellin' him nothin'. I swears it, ye hear? I swears I won't tell the student nothin' about the little kid."

"Of course you won't," answered Teola weakly. "I trust you, Tessibel."

There was a deep questioning in the squatter girl's eyes as they rested upon the quiet bundle on the foot of the bed. How could a mother leave her child in the care of a stranger?--leave him in a squatter's hut, where the rats scurried hungrily about the floor, and the bats fluttered among the ceiling rafters!

"Don't look like that, Tessibel!" Teola burst in. "You understand, don't you, that I can't tell them?--that I can't take him home? My brother loves me better than any other person in the world, and I love him as much as he does me."

The blood suffused the drawn face to the hair line.

"And I want to see my baby before I go," she pleaded.