TESSIBEL'S PRAYER
For four lingering days, hour after hour, Tess of the Storm Country
waited for Frederick. He had promised to return, and so each day when
her household duties were completed, she hastened to the ragged rocks at
the edge of the forest. But her eager hope passed into sick apprehension
as the lingering twilights of successive evenings deepened into the
darkness of night and he did not come. Tess grew paler and more
dejected, so that even Daddy Skinner's fading sight remarked it.
"Ain't feelin' quite pert, be ye, brat?" he inquired.
Tessibel started nervously.... It was habitual now if any one spoke to
her quickly.
"I ain't sick, daddy," she assured him. "I guess it air the hot day
makin' me tired."
"Nuff to bake the hair off a cast iron pup," observed Andy, from the
garret hole.
"I'll bet it air some warm up there, pal," sympathized Orn.
"Ye bet yer neck," agreed Andy cheerfully.
Then Tessibel hopefully started for the rocks in search of the sunshine
which had left her life with Frederick four days before.
* * * * *
Deforrest Young, too, had noticed the change in his little friend ...
had observed her extreme nervousness and unusual shyness when she
recited her lessons. Today, moreover, she had not appeared at all. Late
that afternoon he called at the Skinner home to find the reason.
Daddy Skinner occupied his customary seat on the bench in front of the
shack, watching with listless, dull eyes the restless waves. He greeted
the professor with his twisted smile, as the latter called to him from
the lane.
"Where's Tessibel?" asked Young, after they had remarked upon the
weather and the health of themselves and their friends.
"Well, I don't know just where she air gone," replied Orn, "but seems to
me's if she went off toward the rocks. Shall I call her, eh?"
"No, no! I'll go look for her," answered the professor.
He found her sitting pensively on the rocks, her hand resting on the
head of Kennedy's brindle bulldog, and in the moment he stood there
gazing at the girl, he felt unaccountably saddened.
When Tess became conscious of his presence, she gave him a shadowy,
fleeting smile, which vanished almost before it had fully appeared. Her
eyes were heavy and dim with unshed tears, and she was as pale as the
mist clouds that drifted slowly across the sky and away over the eastern
hills. Perhaps it was the melancholy of that smile appealing to his deep
love that made Professor Young hurry toward her, holding out his hands.
Pete greeted him with a welcoming whine, wagging his whole body, in
default of the tail he had lost.
"Your father said you were here, child," Young said in a low voice. "May
I sit down?"
Tess acquiesced by a nod of her head, and he settled himself comfortably
on the rock. Crouching down on the other side of her, Pete put his head
in the girl's lap. Her hands rested upon his broad back, while the man
played with him, pulling and poking his heavy jowls and hanging lips,
and the dog uttered delighted growls at the attention.
"I'm afraid my little girl hasn't been quite well of late," Young began
presently.
The red-brown eyes fell and a flushed, lovely face bent beneath a shower
of bronze curls.
"Has she?" he queried again, with tender sympathy.
Lower and lower bent the auburn head until the man could no longer see
the troubled face.
"I knew there was something wrong with my little pupil," said he softly.
"Now tell me about it."
"I can't," whispered Tessibel. "I ain't able."
Oh, if she only could! At that moment it seemed that all of her
troubles would take wing if this thoughtful, solemn-eyed friend shared
the burden of her heart. When she lifted her face again and repeated, "I
can't tell," Deforrest Young placed his fingers under her chin and kept
his eyes steadily upon her until the transparent lids drooped and the
long lashes rested on her cheeks.
"Is it something you'll tell me some time?" he asked.
Tessibel shuddered, and made no reply, although there was a slight
negative shake of her head.
"Then I'll ask you another question, Tess dear," insisted Young. "Isn't
there something I can do to help you?"
Tessibel shook her head, a violent blush suffusing her face. Tears
gathered thickly in the brown eyes. To see her thus was agony.... His
great love sought to share and bear her suffering, yet he could not
force her confidence.
"I'm going to exact one promise from you," he continued, much moved.
"I'll be awful glad to promise what I can," she murmured humbly.
"Then it's this." Compassion for her abject misery was expressed in the
very tones of his deep voice. "If at any time in the future you need
me ... for anything, no matter what, will you--will you come to me and
tell me? Will you let me help you?"
Impetuous appreciation of his sincerity caused Tess to touch his arm.
"Nobody were ever so good to me in all the world," she said brokenly.
Never had Deforrest Young so keenly desired the right to care for her as
he did then. The impulse to take her in his arms, to tell her, as he had
once, that he loved her, almost unnerved him; but he could not. Tess
seemed of late to have grown away from him, to be no longer the
light-hearted child she had been, even in that dark time when her father
was in prison.
"You haven't promised me yet, Tessibel," he insisted seriously.
"I promise ... sure!" said Tess, swallowing hard.
In the silence that followed, Pete, as though conscious that all was
not well with his adored mistress, rose on his haunches, and tried to
kiss her face. The dog's sympathy was sweet. She wanted Frederick so
badly! Oh, she thought, if she dared ask Deforrest. She would! She could
not bear another night of this uncertainty, this suspense.
"I air wishin' to ask ye somethin'," she stammered. "Don't tell anybody,
will ye?"
"Certainly not," declared Young, quickly.
"Do ye--do ye happen to know where--the student Graves air--today?"
Young considered the long curls falling over each shoulder and the
anxious eyes. She was staring fixedly at him. Was the student somehow
connected with her present distress? Frederick's marked attention of
late to Madelene Waldstricker was, he supposed, generally known. He had
not seen him with Tess for a long time. He had concluded the young man's
interest in the squatter girl had passed. Was it possible that Tess
still cared for him?
"Well, that's hard to tell," he told her presently, looking out over the
lake. "But if they've had good luck, I suppose the young people are
quite well on their way to Paris by now. The ceremony, one of those
hasty affairs, was performed yesterday. They took the night train to New
York."
Tessibel's breath caught in her throat.... The heavens seemed to tumble
into the lake.... An awful booming sounded in her ears. She grew limp,
sick at heart, ... dizzy, but she made no outcry, only, unconscious of
its pain, bit her lip until it bled. The hope she had nursed, that he
would not do this awful thing was lost.
Pete stirred uneasily. Restrained by Tessibel's hand on his head, he
laid down again making whining noises in his throat, inarticulate
expressions of his love for the suffering girl.
"Didn't you know he was going to marry Miss Waldstricker?" asked Young.
"Yep,--I knew," whispered Tess, when she could breathe, "but--tell
me--about it."
"There's not much to tell," explained the Professor, reluctant to
distress her. "It seems the young lady didn't want a large wedding and
did want to start abroad immediately, so they had a private affair--no
one present but the relatives."
Tess made an effort to control herself.
"Graves won't go back to college any more," went on Young. "He's going
into business with his brother-in-law, Mr. Waldstricker. I understand
when they return from abroad they will live with my sister the rest of
the winter."
There was no response from the drooping little figure at his side.
Tess was thinking of the winter without Frederick. She sickened as she
pictured him away off in that foreign land. It seemed he must be at the
very end of the world. It bewildered her to think of his being with
another woman than herself. She could not think of them as married--He
was her husband. She was silent so long that Young spoke to her softly.
"Shall I take you home, my dear?"
Numb and dazed, she sat dumbly enduring the hurt.
"Nope, I air goin' to stay here awhile." 'Twas only a trembling breath
that wafted the man his answer.
Young hesitated. Then rising he walked away along the rocks, leaving
Tess and the brindle dog amid the falling shadows.
Spent with emotion, the squatter girl heard the retreating footsteps of
her friend die away in the twilight. Then she pushed the dog gently from
her lap and laid herself down upon the rocks and pillowed her aching
head upon his body.
Gradually the tender melancholy of the dying day touched her mood with
subtle sympathy and soothed her troubled spirit. Rapt in rueful revery,
she followed mechanically the flight of a flock of birds. Like swift
shadows flitting over the water, they dipped and winged upward and away,
out of her vision.
Frederick had gone from her life almost as completely and as suddenly as
those birds had disappeared from her sight. How mercilessly short had
been her days of happiness, those days threaded and inter-threaded with
her husband's love.
The sun had set and the purples and reds were fading from the fleecy
clouds in the eastern sky. The gloaming grew in caressing cadences up
from the limpid lake to the ragged rocks. The night winds blew gently
down the hill side, the swaying leaves were whispering "hush, hush," and
the surface of the lake, shimmering in the mellow light of the rising
moon, was flecked here and there into silvery sparkles. The airs of
evening fluttered the ringlets upon her forehead and enveloped her hot
body in cooling comfort. Responsive to the quiet beauty about her, the
turmoil of her thoughts subsided. The sharp anguish which had at first
stunned her was becoming but a dull ache, permitting her to think
connectedly.
This place and this hour held the most vital associations of her young
life. Here in the gathering gloom, Frederick had wooed and won her, and
had spent with her many of the too few hours of her wedded bliss. Upon
such another evening, she had made him the promises that had led to her
only deceptions of Daddy Skinner, and here, four short days ago, her
husband had murdered her joy.
Reflecting upon her plight, its hopelessness well nigh overwhelmed her.
Through the utter desolution of her life rang the haunting, words of the
Cantata she'd heard sung last Eastertide in the Big Ithaca Church.
"Oh, was there ever loneliness like this?"
Over and over the melody repeated itself, insistently recalling the
Master's agony in the garden, and lifting her thoughts slowly upward
away from herself to His ultimate triumph and glory.
Betrayed and deserted by the man that loved her, she fixed her attention
instinctively upon the Divine Love "with whom is no variableness,
neither shadow of turning" and sought courage from the words of Him "who
spake as never man spake." His command, "Love your enemies, do good to
them that hate you and pray for them which despitefully use you," came
to her tortured heart, a healing inspiration.
Immediately she got to her feet. The dog, tired of the enforced
inactivity, jumped up and ran to and fro on the rocks, barking. She had
given her husband up to another woman--he had said it was all she could
do for him. But she loved him and her love rejoiced in giving. Pete,
puzzled that the girl did not join him in his play as usual, came back
and stood in front of her and looked up into her face. She turned to the
old pine tree, her familiar friend, and extended her arms to the God of
her exalted faith.
"Goddy, dear, goodest Goddy," she prayed, "bless my Frederick wherever
he air--an'--help Tessibel to die--in--in the spring."