Tess of the Storm Country Part 45

"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 d.a.m.n 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 superst.i.tious 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 sh.o.r.e!

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 sh.o.r.e," 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 x.x.xII

"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 embarra.s.sment 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 smouldering wood 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 circ.u.mstances 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 G.o.d'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 he gathered 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 pa.s.sionate 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's heart 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 cla.s.s, 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, _it_ is--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!... G.o.d!" he groaned, "you--you--you the mother of that!"

His bitter tones stung her to the quick, whipping her into 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 pa.s.sion 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 d.a.m.n 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 h.e.l.l," 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 G.o.d'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: