TESSIE
Again our scene shifts, and, as in the screen play, that retrospective
distant picture brings one back to an earlier vision, so from the
distance we now see the runaway, Tessie.
Step by step, along the dark, uncertain road of offences which in
themselves were trivial, but which brought such dire results upon the
erring girl as to make her all but an outcast, Tessie, after the first
foolish blunder, found herself confronted with a seeming necessity for
keeping up the false role she had almost unwittingly assumed. The girl
was not wicked. Her untrained and unrestrained tongue was her worst
enemy, and it very often belied her honest, generous heart.
In inducing Dagmar to leave home she actually believed she was
assisting a friend--her intention was to better that friend's
circumstances, but the methods! How could she know that right could not
result from deliberate wrong! That doctrine had never been made a part
of such education as she had the opportunity of acquiring. True, the
girl learned right from wrong, also her religion was very clear on the
point, but she could not then believe it was wrong to fly from the
horrors of mill drudgery, made unbearable by the more intimate
environment of a miserable home.
So Tessie Wartliz was suffering from an inherited disease commonly
called "Greed." Her parents were greedy for money, and she was greedy
for good times. She wanted much of anything she enjoyed, and had little
care how that abnormal amount was obtained.
The fatal night she and Dagmar (now our own Rose Dixon) landed so
suddenly in Franklin, where the jitney dropped them almost into the
arms of Officer Cosgrove, Tessie, as we will remember, escaped, and
carried with her the pocketbook she had been carrying for her
companion, and in that little soiled purse was the much-prized, lost
and found, scout badge of merit.
Tessie at first thought little or nothing of the trinket. As she had
scoffed at its purpose, when Rose respected it, so she brushed it aside
as of no importance when she emptied the pitiful pittance of her
forsaken companion into her own pocketbook, when forced to use the
funds or beg from strangers.
On the step of the last jitney that rumbled through Franklin making no
stops, and being entirely unoccupied by passengers, Tessie managed to
hide as the car slowed up at a turn, and later she crawled inside, when
the sleepy driver, his day and night work finished, allowed the motor
to "take its head" as we might say to a horse-drawn vehicle. Her heart
almost ceased beating when the officer who commanded the line between
the two villages, stopped Frank and demanded to know if he carried any
passengers.
"Three empty dinner pails that came out full of supper," the driver
called back, and Tessie actually under the seat, felt free to breathe
again and keep watch for some turn where a kindly house light might
gleam out to save her from a dreaded night, under a tree or behind some
rugged, wild world shelter.
Just as Frank, the driver, slowed down, preparatory to turning for the
big shed, under which the modern carry-all would be laid up until
daylight next morning, Tessie decided she would ask this rustic to
assist her. Believing that most men, especially those not too old, were
apt to be kind-hearted or maybe "softhearted," she climbed from her
hiding place, and timidly tapped Frank on his astonished shoulder.
"Gosh!" he exclaimed, "where'd you come from?"
"I lost my way!" she answered not altogether untruthfully. "Can you
help me? Where do you live?"
"Say," Frank challenged, "you look pretty near big enough to talk to
traffic cops. How'd you get in this boat, anyhow?"
His voice was not friendly. That anyone should have climbed into the
"Ark" without signalling him was evidently opposed to his sense of
humor. Tessie did not reply as glibly as she had intended to. Instead
she threw herself on his mercy, as actors might say in melodrama.
"Honest I did get lost. I'm on my way to the Woolston mills, and I
missed so many trains, and caught so many jitneys I lost count. Then,
when I saw you come along I was so glad I almost--well, I just flopped.
I was dog-tired. First I hailed you, but you were dozing I guess, then
I was scared to death you would jolt by and leave me, so I had to climb
on."
"Oh," replied Frank, not altogether convinced, but evidently on the way
to conviction. "I did fall off a little, I'm out since four A.M. Now,
young lady, what's your idea of fixin' for the night? My old lady,
meaning a first-rate little mother, is awful strict about girls ridin'
in this bus not accompanied by their parents, and I don't see my way
clear to tote you home at this unearthly hour. I see by--the make-up"
(with an inclusive glance over the now thoroughly frightened Tessie)
"that you are a mill girl, and I know they are takin' on new hands at
Woolston's, so that sounds natural, but findin' you like this in the
Ark--even mother might think that a little bit stretched."
"Well, tell me the name of some one out this way, and I can say I'm
goin' there, and you can fix it by objectin' to takin' me. Say, you
didn't know when I got on how far I wanted to go."
"Some cute little fixer, you are," Frank admitted, and this was the
story Tessie clung to when Frank Apgar brought the girl into his
mother's house a few minutes later.
Thus began her adventure weeks ago. Each day and every night adding new
and more serious complications to the seemingly innocent quest for a
broader life than could be lived in the mill end of Flosston, Tessie
was compelled to add falsehood to fabrication, to bear out her original
story, and save herself from being "picked up" and forcibly returned to
her parents.
She knew the Franklin officer would trace her easily if she went by
frequented ways, so instead of looking for work in a mill she sought
and obtained employment in a family of rather influential suburbanites.
The scarcity of domestic help assisted her in this enterprise, and
being really skilled in handling machinery and materials, it was not
difficult for her to follow orders, and assist a cook who was overjoyed
to have help of any sort in the big country residence.
But the little human butterfly had tried her wings, and she very
quickly found life at Appleton too tame for her liking. Directly upon
receiving pay for her first two weeks of service, Tessie (her assumed
name meant nothing to her or to us) said good-bye to Rebecca the cook,
and taking no chances with members of the family who were "interested
in her," she left Appleton and journeyed forth again.
She had now acquired a new accomplishment. She could serve as waitress
or second girl, and this advantage almost assured her of success in any
sort of well-built community.
But it would be tame, slow, as Tessie figured it out, and only a big
city could possibly satisfy her ambition "to be somebody."
Then came the temptation which resulted so disastrously.
Out in Elmhurst, her next stop, a troop of girl scouts was drilling
when she stepped off the train. New clothes and a better appearance,
the result of that first pay at housework, had converted the mill girl
into quite an attractive young lady, and as she waited at the pretty
little square, watching the girl scouts drill, something like envy
possessed her.
Why did they always seem so settled, so prosperous and satisfied! What
was there in a mere society that could do all that for any girl?
This question she asked almost audibly, for her lips moved and her face
betrayed a puzzled and aggressive look of defiance.
It was always that way with Tessie. She fought first and investigated
later. This unfortunate characteristic was responsible for much of her
perversity. She set herself against conditions instead of trying to
overcome them.
Never had her unhappy self felt more aggressive than now, as she
watched those girl scouts drill, every peal of laughter they sent over
the velvet green seemed to hiss at her, and every graceful valiant
maneuver of wig-wagging or physical drill added deeper envy to her
smoldering jealousy.
"That's the kind of thing Dagmar likes," she told herself. "Pity some
movie man couldn't get that picture. It would go fine at a Sunday
School mixup."
This last was another thrust at organized authority, but the thought of
Dagmar recalled the scout badge.
"Humph!" she scoffed. "Guess I could fool them if I wanted to. I'll bet
none of them has this grand marshall headlight!"
Her hand was on the little bag wherein lay that badge. Its pin was
entangled in threads of torn handkerchiefs, and its pretty clover leaf
was enameled with caked face powder and candy dust.
For a few moments she considered slipping her hand in the bag and
quickly pinning the badge on her pretty rose-colored sweater. Then she
could walk over to the drilling troop, and introduce herself as a
visiting scout, sure to be made welcome in Elmhurst.
"But they might catch me on their sign language," she decided. "Guess I
better wait until I get on to some of their deaf and dumb stuff."
So for the moment she was saved, but the temptation was too alluring to
be easily vanquished. It was certain to return, and that in an hour
when seeming necessity offered a more urgent excuse for its
fulfillment. The scout badge in hands unconsecrated was like a holy
thing surrounded by evil--it would maintain its own pure character
unsullied, but evil mocked it--and the good, like a frightened little
fairy, hid itself deep in girl-scout idealism, waiting for rescue.
Tessie was restive and unhappy. She had failed to gain by all her risks
and daring adventure. Not only had she lost her place, but she had
likewise lost her companions, and while unwilling to admit it the girl
felt keenly the separation from Dagmar.
"All the same," she declared, taking a last look at the girls in their
brown uniforms on the green square, "I'll be one of them some day. They
don't have to be too particular about girls they are supposed to help.
I'll give them a good chance to help little old Tessie," and with that
prophetic statement, more important to her than the unhappy girl had
any way of guessing, Tessie tried for one more "place" to earn a little
more money, that she might eventually make her way toward a big city.