Tess of the Storm Country Part 59

"There ain't nothin' the matter," she replied sulkily. "I can cry if I wants to, can't I?"

"But, Tessibel, I have never seen you cry like that before, never! Is it money? Here, dear; here is a dollar. Father gave it to me. It will buy some milk, until I can send more. Oh, let me see my baby again. Darling little man! Your mother does love you, even if she must leave you. Tess, he looks worse than he did when I went home last night. You--you will bring him to the church to-morrow?"

"Yep."

"And, Tess, I left a lot of white cloths on the pear-tree near the barn.

I could not bring them to you before, for Mother only sorted them out to throw away this morning. Oh, the baby looks so thin and ill, Tess!"

Tears trickled down upon the infant. Teola pressed her lips again and again to the thin mouth. The vivid mark was offering its crimson tinge sharply against the dead blue of the rest of the baby face.

"And, Tess," burst forth Teola, "how gladly I would give you a dress for yourself if I could, and a dress for him! You can't bring him like this to the church. You don't mind coming as you are?"

"Nope," came the bitter interruption from the squatter. "I don't need no clothes to have a brat sprinkled. I air a squatter, and squatters don't give--a h.e.l.l about nothin'."

Her looks belied the words. With the dignity of a queen, the fine young head had settled back upon the broad shoulders sloping bare at the arms.

The sweet face gave the lie to the hardened speech uttered from the grief she had just spent upon the bed.

"Don't speak like that, Tess! Don't! don't!" gasped Teola. "Some day, after the babe and I are dead--"

Teola had come close to the fisher-girl, her pale face thrust beseechingly forward. Tess hesitated; then flung out her arms and drew the minister's daughter into them. Her eyes were filled with awe indescribable.

"I's a mean brat to make ye say that," she faltered. "I brings the kid to-morry to the church. And, yes, I gets him a dress, too. See? And I buys milk for him, and makes him eat, and he sleeps here," Tess pounded her own strong breast, and ended, "till his dead pappy and his ma come after him, poor little cuss."

Both girls cried softly, till Frederick's voice on the hill rang out sharply in answer to a question from his father. Teola kissed her babe over and over, drawing a small shawl about her shoulders, and picked a path out through the fish-bones on the floor. When Frederick returned to the boat, she was listlessly throwing small stones into the water.

CHAPTER XLI

Tessibel watched Minister Graves' yacht steam by the Hoghole, across the head of the lake and into the inlet. With it went the hopes of reconciliation with the student; the Dominie and his glowering glances of hatred; and Teola with her illness, leaving her the helpless babe.

She suddenly decided to share her secret with Mrs. Longman. She would beg a dress for little Dan to wear to the church for his baptism. She had stubbornly kept the presence of the child in her hut from her squatter friend, although Myra had usually had a way of worming into her innermost confidence. But Tess had given her oath and loyalty to Teola, and feared to tell the other girl the parentage of the child, lest Myra, who loved Ben Letts, should blab the truth to him.

During the weeks the babe had been with her, Tess had sent endless excuses about her absence to the Longman hut. She had to read the Bible; was waiting for someone to bring her a message from Daddy; fishing; getting ready for the winter; anything to keep Myra in ignorance of the tragedy being enacted in Skinner's hut. But now Myra was gone with Ben; Ezra was dead; and Mrs. Longman would not be curious about the little child.

She prepared the basket with the clean clothes that Teola had left on the tree, and, with the easy grace of a barefooted squatter, set out for the ragged rocks with bounding steps.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SHE TOSSED HER FACE UP TO THE SUN.]

Across the lake the patches of forest, shaded with the scarlet and green of dying leaves, relieved the bareness of the harvested wheat-fields. Tessibel had a pa.s.sion for the tumbling waves, they seemed to speak an unknown language to her, but to-day the lake was smooth like polished, clear, blue gla.s.s, and the birds were racing in flocks over it from the north toward the south. Their flight was so rapid that the squatter paused and followed them with her eyes. One flock after another disappeared behind the college hill so quickly that Tess could scarcely bid them farewell. They were her summer friends, had filled the day with brilliant song, and the night with love-twitterings.

Tessibel's forest solitude and rambles, her communion with night things had pa.s.sed, gone with the coming of Teola, gone with the care of the babe. A longing for her old free life came back to her. She stooped down and placed the basket upon the rocks, and, with her arms flung over her head, tossed her face up to the sun. Her soul was dreaming, and the dream changed the half-closed eyes from brown to black.

She stood silently, her gaze roving after the fleet-winged birds. They were leaving her to the winter--and the sick child.

But Daddy, dear old Daddy, was coming back home! She caught her breath.

At that moment her father was the panacaea for all that she had suffered during the last few weeks. Tears welled into her eyes. Just then another great flock of black birds, huddling together, skimmed by through the clear air. Tess threw out her hands.

"Good-bye, good-bye!" she shouted, with conflicting emotions. "Come back again soon. It air lonely in the winter without ye."

As if the birds understood the longing in a kindred soul, the flock halted an instant, seemingly loath to go, circled their ma.s.s of black toward the sky, swept to the water's edge, poised for the fraction of a second, then shot towards the University hill, and disappeared.

With the light-heartedness of youth, Tess reached the Longman cabin. A silence reigned within which at first astonished her. The door was closed, and Satisfied was nowhere in sight. She paused before rapping, and looked to the sh.o.r.e for the boat. Disappointment shot through her: Satisfied and Mrs. Longman had gone to the city. Nevertheless, Tess tapped lightly, and then again. But no voice ordered her in. She lifted the latch, felt the door yield to her touch, and stepped inside. Four lean rats scurried cornerward, sinking from sight into dark holes; numbers of lizards tailed silently backward from the sunbeam slanting across the shanty door. But the sight was so usual to Tess that she merely turned her head slightly, and smiled as if to departing friends, and closed the door behind her. A long object stretched out upon a board arrested her steps. It was covered with a sheet, and the breathless gloom of the shanty caused Tess almost to drop the basket as she set it down. The silent, white thing on the board brought an exclamation of fear from her. With horror settling deep in her eyes she backed against the door. Did the sheet cover death? No; for Ezra had been carried to his grave the day before. The thought freed her from a terror that had gripped her senses at first. She took two steps forward, bent down and looked under the board. Little streams of water had made dark tracks across the hut floor. The corners of the sheet were drenched through.

This sent Tess back once more to the door. Would she dare lift the sheet? Controlling her fear by an effort, Tess gathered her courage together and crept again to the long board. With shaking fingers, she lifted the cloth, and drew it back gently. Then a horrified cry fell sharply from her lips, and she dropped it. Ben Letts and Myra Longman, hugged in each other's arms, lay dead before her.

Fascinated and trembling, she stood considering the livid squatters, no sound, after the first cry, issuing from her pale lips. The dead faces were so close to each other that a human hand could not pa.s.s between them. Upon the plain face of Myra rested a peaceful expression, as if she possessed a quietude she had never known before. Her eyes were closed, and one arm was tightly clasped about Ben's neck--the other about his waist. The storm had loosened the meager hair, had flung it in disorder over the fisher-girl's shoulders. Ben's brown teeth gleamed dark; the drawn lips were stretched wide, as if a pain, dreadful and torturing, had opened them never to be closed again. His two huge arms, twisted about the frail frame of the girl, were locked together by the h.o.r.n.y fingers. To Tessibel it seemed that Myra smiled faintly in the possession of her longed-for happiness. She had Ben Letts at last, and forever--he was her gift of the storm, the eternal gift of a wild night.

Myra had sought, and had found him.

The shanty door pushed open. Like one in a dream, Tess was still looking down upon the dead. Lifting her gaze, she saw Satisfied watching her, his eyes glowing with subdued pain.

"Myry air dead," he said, in a low voice, coming forward.

"Ben Letts, too," added the squatter girl.

"And the brat," finished Longman.

Tess, startled, lifted up her head.

"The brat! I had forgot him," she muttered. "He air dead, too?"

"Yep. He air here."

Longman drew down the sheet still further, exposing the lifeless baby.

The thin little body lay between the father and mother.

For many minutes they surveyed the dead trio in rapt attention.

"Where air Myry's ma?" asked Tessibel presently.

"Back there, in Ezy's bed. She air sick, and so air Mammy Letts."

"Ezy were buried yesterday," ruminated Tess.

"Yep, and Myry be a-goin' to the same place. Ma and me air--alone."

There was something strangely pathetic in the quiet words, in the stolid, ugly face with its hard lines, in the mouth twitching at the corners as he spoke. Tess sprang toward him, and wound her strong young arms about him.

"Myry air happy," she burst forth; "happier than when she were livin'

with you. She air with Ben Letts."

Satisfied, towering over her, blinked confusedly at her words. Puzzling, he drew his heavy brows down darkly.

"Myry were a-seekin' Ben," Tess went on hurriedly, "and the brat couldn't stay without its pa and ma. I says as how Myry air happy, Satisfied."

"She were a-lovin' Ben Letts?" The pain in his clouded blue eyes stung Tess to the heart. The grief of this lonely old man, bereft of his all, seemed the most tragic spectacle she had ever faced.