THE VIGIL
During Professor Young's instant of hesitation on the threshold, the
wind gusted sheets of snow into the Skinner shanty. Quieting the dog by
a low-spoken word, Deforrest stepped in and closed the door against the
storm. The acrid smoke drawn from the stove by the back-draft, filled
the room,--a choking cloud.
Andy stared at the intruder for an instant, and then turned again to the
girl lying unconscious upon the body of her father.
Young's vision comprehended the whole tragedy. He pulled off his cap and
gloves and shook the snow from his shoulders. Advanced to the bedside, a
glance satisfied him that the squatter was dead and that Tess had
fainted. He had recognized the dwarf the minute he saw him, and
heartsick with apprehension, he wondered what he was doing there.
"Get up," said he. "Let me look at her."
The dwarf moved aside hesitatingly.
"Air she dead, too?" he whimpered.
"Bring me some water," commanded Young.
Andy went to the pail, dipped a portion of water into a small basin, and
waddled back with it.
"Her daddy air dead," he offered. "Ye can see he air dead."
"Yes!" nodded Young, taking the dish.
He did not speak again until Tess groaned, and opened her eyes. She made
a half struggle to sit up, and Young lifted her to her feet.
"Lean on me," he said gently.
Tess stared at him, incredulously. He had come after all! Relief
crumpled her up in his arms.
"Daddy air dead," she whispered.
"Yes, dear," soothed Young. "There, lean your head on my shoulder, poor
little broken baby."
His tones were so tender, so soft! They went to the heart of the
stricken dwarf, and like a hurt child he burst into tears. Professor
Young turned and looked at him.
"Don't do that," he said huskily. "Sit down--don't cry!"
Without moving from her position, Tess said, "Andy, Andy, dear, git on
up in the garret a few minutes, will ye?"
The dwarf crept to the ladder, and Deforrest let him go. A dozen
questions leapt to the lawyer's lips at the same time, but the girl
against his breast looked so desperately ill he had no heart to ply
them. Tess lifted her lids heavily.
"Ye won't tell nobody he air here?" she gulped.
"How long has he been here?" asked Young, instead of answering her
question.
"Ever since spring," sighed Tessibel.
"Was he here that day when Mr. Waldstricker and my sister--"
"Yep." The girl's whisper was very low.
"And when Burnett came too, I suppose?"
"Yep, I hid 'im ... Daddy loved 'im, Daddy did."
She began to cry softly. Her confession had taken her mind back to the
huge figure on the bed.
"I wanted to go with Daddy," she sobbed. "I didn't know--I thought I
couldn't live without 'im."
Stooping, Deforrest gathered the mourning little one into his arms, and
seating himself in the big rocker, pressed his cheek against her hair in
sympathy. Patiently he waited, holding her thus while the mercy of her
flowing tears dulled the first sharp edge of her grief.
Bye and bye the sobs ceased, and a faint, catchy little voice struggled
up through the red curls to the man's ears.
"Ye air awful good to me, you air. Oh, I needed ye so, and I feared--I
feared mebbe ye wasn't never comin' again!"
"My dear, my dear," Young soothed, much moved. Then he rose and placed
her in the chair. "You sit here and tell me about it."
Bravely she looked into the friendly face, a doleful smile quivering on
her lips.
"The first thing I want to know," she asked, "what air ye goin' to do
'bout Andy?"
Professor Young had anticipated this question.
"Until I've had more time to think about it, and until after the funeral
anyway, I'll keep your secret," he reassured her kindly.
"An' ye won't say anythin' to nobody 'bout 'im till ye talk with me
again?" she queried, fearfully.
"That's what I mean, Tess," Young answered.
"Ye air so good to me, ye air," sighed Tess, satisfied.
"Child," began Young a moment later, "can you bear to tell me about it,
now?"
"About Daddy?" asked Tess, "or about the other--"
The lawyer's nod, responsive to the latter half of her question,
reawakened the suffering girl's memory of the horror of the church
meeting.
"It were so awful," she said after a pregnant pause. "I mean--Mr.
Waldstricker--"
"What about it? Tell me," Young interrupted, as the gentle voice
hesitated.
"See ... this!" she murmured, turning her head.
Young's eyes caught the red of the wound on her neck.
"He did that!... How?" he ejaculated fiercely.
"He hit me with a piece of--coal!" answered Tess, sinking back, very
white.
"No, no; God, no!" he cried desperately. "He couldn't have done that!"
"He said I were ... bad," interrupted Tess, very low. She bowed her
head, and the man, stunned, made no move toward her. His muscles seemed
powerless, and he had no volition to comfort her. He could not erase
from his mind that horrid picture her few direct words had brought
before him. "But ... _you_ air trustin' me!" was the way Tess brought
him back to himself.
"Then it's true what--what--"
His tongue grew parched.
"Yep, but trust me, please!" cried Tess.
Trust her! Believe in her with her confession ringing in his ears. God,
if he did not love her, it wouldn't be so hard to believe, to trust, to
help. But with this fierce jealousy stabbing at his heart, he felt he
must know more--all. His mind went back to that time when she had come
to him with a child in a basket, and her plea had been the same, "Oh,
trust me! Please trust me!"
"If you could only ... tell me ... something," he groaned.
"It air true what Mr. Waldstricker hit me fer," bowed Tess, swallowing
hard, "but I can't say nothin' 'bout it, I can't! I ain't able to tell
nothin' more'n that!"
Young still stood several feet from her.
"I must do something to help you," he implored. "Won't you even tell me
when it--it will be, Tessibel?"
Through her tense fingers the girl murmured a stifled "March."
March--scarce three months away! He would have given five years of his
life to have had her tell him the truth about this thing that had
crushed her. He made a nervous movement with his fingers to his hair.
"You are bound by a promise?" he demanded sharply.
A white, uplifted, pained face was his answer.
"You'll tell me some day, if you can," he said, going swiftly to her.
"Yes," whispered Tess.
And then for a long time nothing was heard in the hut but the winter
without, the growls and mutterings of the bulldog in his sleep by the
stove, and a sob now and then from the dwarf in the garret.
The healing silence of a common love in the presence of a common grief
settled upon the strangely matched couple. The little squatter girl,
with her shameful secret, and the great lawyer and teacher, kept solemn
vigil over the body of Daddy Skinner.
* * * * *
Daddy Skinner was buried. All the arrangement in connection with the
obsequies devolved upon Professor Young. It was he who brought the girl
back to the shanty in her simple, clinging, black gown, and after the
carriage had delivered them at the hut door, carried her, almost
unconscious, into the house and laid her gently upon her bed. Then he
closed the door and sat down beside her. It was perhaps an hour later
when she lifted her eyes appealingly.
"I air awful glad ye stayed with me," she choked.
"Tess,"--Young's voice shook.... "Will you let me talk to you a little
and not feel I'm intruding upon your sorrows or your secrets?"
"Ye wouldn't do anythin' what wasn't right," murmured the girl, under
her breath.
For some moments he smoothed her burning forehead. Then he lifted her
hand and held it in his.
"Tessibel," he began.
"What?"
"First, tell me about the little man in the garret."
"There ain't nothin' much to tell," she responded, shaking her head.
"When he got out of Auburn, he come here and asked me an' Daddy to take
care of 'im, an' we done it, that air all."
"I see, dear--and--and you didn't think the law required you to give him
up?"
Tess moved her head negatively on the pillow.
"Sure not, or I'd a done it long ago. The law--what do I care 'bout the
law?... It air always puttin' innercent men in jail. That air all the
law air fer."
"But this man is a murderer," Young tried to explain to her.
But Tessibel's gesture, both hands raised, palms outward, expressed her
dissent.
"They said as how Daddy were a murderer, too," she retorted, "but you
found out he weren't, didn't ye?"
Young, not able to gainsay this, nodded his head.
"How long are you going to keep him here?" he asked presently.
Tess sent him a glance pathetically sad and discouraged.
"I don't know. The poor little duffer hain't no friends. He ain't no
other place to go where old Eb won't git 'im."
Young thought of his brother-in-law. He realized immediately with what
joy that stern disciplinarian would snatch the little man back into
Auburn prison. Doubtless, too, he would visit his rage on the girl
who'd shielded him.
"Ye helped Daddy git out o' jail," Tess whispered. "Couldn't ye keep
Andy out?"
Deforrest Young turned his face to the ceiling. A pair of gleaming eyes
were staring down upon him from the square hole.
"Come down here, you," he said peremptorily.
Andy slid down the ladder and squatted himself beside the cot. Young
considered the boyish face some time in silence.
"What made you kill Waldstricker?" he demanded.
Andy shook his head.
"I never done it, mister," he denied positively.
"Tell me how it happened! If I'm going to help you, you must tell me the
truth."
This wasn't what Young had intended to say at all.
"Andy ain't a liar," came from Tess.
"Tell me every word," urged Young.
The dwarf curled himself into a little ball and began.
"Well, us was all in a saloon at the Inlet, an' old Waldstricker, he
come in with a nuther man, an' they both got a drink an' t'uther man
went out. Me an' Owen Bennet were settin' at the table, ... Waldstricker
he says somethin' nasty 'bout squatters an' ... Owen went fer 'im.
Waldstricker pulled 'is gun. I knocked it out o' his hand an' Owen
grabbed it up offen the floor an' sent a bullet right through
Waldstricker's heart. Then us uns beat it, I mean me an' Owen, an' when
they caught us ... he put the shootin' on me. I didn't do it, an' Owen
knows I didn't."
Young was very quiet during this recital. He was considering the eager,
boyish, upraised face.
"I hope ye believe me, mister--sir--please do," Andy pleaded.
Deforrest Young crossed his legs, smoothed his hair with one hand, and
sat back in his chair.
"I think I do," he nodded presently. "Only I am placed in a very
peculiar position. By rights I ought to send you back--then help you
afterward if I can."
Tessibel sat up, her eyes wildly frightened.
"Ye couldn't do that!" she cried. "Ye couldn't do that! Don't ye
remember a day on the rocks, when I was awful sad, an' you said, 'Tess,
if ye ever want me to do anything for ye, come and tell me.' Didn't ye
say it?"
Young bowed his head.
"I air askin' it now," said Tess, throwing out her hand. "I air beggin'
ye not to send Andy back. Let 'im stay with me. I promised Daddy I'd
take care of 'im."
"Lie down again and be quiet, child," urged Deforrest, sadly. "You don't
want to make yourself sick.... Hush, you mustn't cry!... Oh, child dear,
will you please stop shaking that way?"
He had forgotten that when Tess loved any one, she would battle until
her death before she gave him up.
"Then don't send little Andy back, an' I'll be awful good," she pleaded.
Young sat for some time, one hand on Tessibel's, the other beating a
tatoo on the arm of Daddy's wooden rocker.
"I suppose," he said at length, as if speaking to himself, "I'll be
highly criticized if any one finds out about this irregular proceeding.
Nevertheless--" He turned to Tess. "I'll go quietly to work and see what
I can do. In the meantime, dear child, you can't stay here in this
house."
"But I promised Daddy I'd take care of Andy here, an' I air goin' to.
Him and me can live here all right."
Young sighed. There was the same stubborn tone in her voice she had used
in those days when her father was away in prison, and he had argued with
her to leave the settlement.
"Well, at any rate," he said after a while, "I'll take time to consider
it, and then we'll decide something."
Ten minutes later he was riding slowly up the hill, and as the past
panoramied across his mind ... and evolved itself into the present, he
shook his head. Tessibel had separated him from his family, had made him
a stranger to his best friends. Would she now, by holding to
Waldstricker's convicted murderer, deprive him of his honor?