That was the way that my Tess came to me: and I know now how good my
father and my mother were in letting me keep her for my own--they with
only what my father could make by his fishing to live on, and the wolf
never very far away from the door. But the look of those black eyes of
hers and the smile in them won my mother's love to her, just as it had
won mine; and my mother told me, too, long years afterward, that her
heart was hungry for the girl baby that God had not given her--and she
said that Tess seemed to be her very own baby from the minute that she
took her close to her breast from my tired little arms.
As to where Tess came from--from what port in all the wide world the
ship sailed that brought her to us--we had no way of knowing. Nothing
but Tess in her bundle came ashore from the wreck; and what was left of
the ship burrowed down into the sands so fast and so far that there was
to be seen of her only a broken bit of her stern-post at the storm's
ending. Even after the set of the currents against her sunken hull, on
the next spring tide, had cut through the Barnard Bank and so made the
Wreck Gat, no part of her but her broken stern-post ever showed. Tess
herself, though, told us what her own name was, and so gave us a notion
as to what land she belonged to; but we should have been none the
wiser for her telling it--she talking in words that were the same as
Greek to us--if the Vicar had not lent us a hand.
My finding the baby made a stir in the whole village, and everybody
had to have a look at her. In the afternoon along came the Vicar
too--smiling through his gold spectacles, as he always did, and
swinging his black cane. By that time, having had all the milk she
could hold, and a good nap, and more milk again, Tess was as bright as
a new sixpence: just as though she had not passed that morning nearer
to death than ever she was like to pass again and live. She was lying
snug in my mother's arms before the fire, and in her own fashion was
talking away at a great rate--and my mother's heart quite breaking
because her pretty chatter was all in heathen words that nobody could
get at the meaning of. But the Vicar, being very learned, understood
her in a minute. "Why, it's Spanish," said he. "It's Spanish as sure as
you're born! She's calling you 'madrecita,' Mrs. May--which is the same
as 'motherkin,' you know. But I can't make even a guess at the rest of
it. Everything ends in 'ita'--real baby-talk."
"Do kindly ask her, sir, what her blessed little name is," said my
mother. "It'll bring her a deal closer to us to know her name."
"I'll try her in Latin," said the Vicar--"that's the best that I can
manage--and it'll be hit or miss if she understands." And then he bent
over the little tot--she being then a bit over two years old, my mother
thought--and asked her what her name was in Latin words.
For a minute there was a puzzled look in the big black eyes of her and
her brow puckered. And then she smiled all over her pretty face and
answered, as clear as you please: "Tesita." That a baby no bigger than
that understood Latin always has seemed to me most like a miracle of
anything that ever I have known!
My mother looked bothered and chap-fallen. "It's not a real name at
all," she said, and sighed over it.
"It's a very good name indeed, Mrs. May," said the Vicar; "only she's
giving you her baby way of saying it. Her name is Theresa. 'Tesita' is
the same as our 'Tess' would be, you know."
"Theresa! Tess!" cried my mother, brightening up all in a minute. "Why,
that was my own dear mother's name! Her having that name seems to make
her in real truth mine, sir!" And she hugged the baby close to the
heart of her, and all in the same breath cried over it and laughed over
it--thinking, I suppose, of her mother dead and buried, and thankful
for the daughter that she so longed for that had come to her upcast by
the sea.
More than what her name was, as is not to be wondered at, Tess never
told us; and the only thing in the world that gave us any knowledge
of her--and that no more than that her people were like to be
gentlefolk--was a gold chain about her neck, under her little night
gown, with a locket fast to it on which were some letters in such a
jumble that even the Vicar could not make head nor tail of them, though
he tried hard.