One day in the following July, Tessibel was going to Mrs. Longman's hut,
with a list of Bible words she did not understand. She stopped at the
edge of the forest, and listened to a curious sobbing sound she thought
issued from beyond the gorge. Then, thinking herself mistaken, she ran
nimbly on, avoiding the long thorns that lay in her path. The noise came
more distinctly through the clear air, making the squatter girl lift her
head and pause again. There was no mistake this time.
"It ain't no pup," she said aloud, "'cause a pup don't snivel like
that."
Raising the red head, she tore long threads of hair loose from the
briars, and, drawing the masses of curls about her shoulders, broke into
the opening of the forest. Some one was crying, and any sign of
suffering brought an immediate response from Tess. It might be Myra, or
it might be some little lost child. Spurred on by sympathy, she bounded
over a bed of dead chestnut burrs, waded through the water to the other
side of the creek, and struggled up the rocks.
Teola Graves, crouched in an attitude of suffering and despair, was
seated on the gnarled root of a huge tree. Tessibel watched her for an
instant. Here was a holy personage to the squatter, touched with the
finger of the mysterious God the student worshiped. And was she not the
sister of Frederick, and had not Teola given her coffee from her own
cup that winter night? Tessibel had not spoken to the minister's
daughter since her father had been taken away to Auburn, and some of the
intensity Tess had felt upon that one great day of her life came back to
her as she stood hesitant, watching the student's sister.
Perhaps the girl was weeping for some pleasure denied her--perhaps for a
jewel to wear about her neck. She went forward impulsively, and laid her
hand upon the rounded shoulder.
"What be ye blattin' over?" she stammered, with a tinge of awe in her
voice.
Teola struggled to her feet, suppressing her grief. The question stopped
the flow of tears, and the two girls, so differently situated, the one
the daughter of an eminent minister, and the other a squatter,
wonderingly eyed each other.
"I thought I was alone," was Teola's answer.
"So ye was," replied Tess. "I heard ye cryin' from the lower ledge of
the rocks. What air the matter?"
Infinite pity and tenderness in the coarse words, spoken in a sweet,
persuasive voice, brought a fresh burst of tears from Teola.
"I'm--I'm ill to-day."
"Ye'll be all right to-morry.... 'T'ain't much, air it?"
"It is very much to me," whispered Teola. "I'm so lonely, and so
afraid!"
Tessibel sat silently down beside the other girl, twining one arm about
the twisted root of the tree. She was used to sorrow, used to watching
the agony of human souls without hope. A bird in the top of the tree
above them sent a plaintive note into the hot air. Another answered
from the forest, and Tessibel raised her head and saw a scarlet bird
take wing and disappear into the branches of the wood trees.
She waited for Teola to speak, but at last, seeing there was no
cessation of tears, she leaned over and touched her.
"Be ye lonely for yer ma?" she murmured.
Teola shook her head in the negative.
"Then for yer pa?"
"No!"
Ah! Tess had forgotten. Had she not seen Frederick go away weeks before,
in a boat filled with pots and kettles and food for a camping
expedition? Had he not smiled at her brightly as she passed him on her
way to the fish line? She could remember the tense feeling in her
throat, and felt again the hot blood rushing madly into her face. Of
course, the girl was weeping for her brother!
"Then air ye blattin' for the student?"
She could scarcely utter the last word, scarcely let Teola hear her
voice use that beloved name.
"Yes, I was crying for him," replied Teola. "He is dead, you know."
For one instant Tess thought the world had lost its sun. Her face
creased into lines, which tightened rope-like under the tanned skin. How
could Frederick have died, and she not have known? She rose unsteadily
to her feet, uttering one grunt significant of her suffering.
"Were he drowned?" she asked, in a voice so pained that Teola raised her
head and looked at her. She did not understand the meaning of the
whitened lips nor of the tense drawing-down of the long red-brown eyes.
"No," she replied slowly, "he was killed in the fire on the hill last
winter."
The muscles relaxed in the squatter's face. Her legs refused to bear the
slender body, and Tessibel dropped again at Teola's side. The kiss she
had cherished burned hot upon her lips. Her student lived. The
minister's daughter cried for the other one, for him who had called her
Miss Skinner, and who afterward helped her smuggle Frederick into the
opera-house.
"Why! he air been dead a long time, ain't he?"
"Yes; six months."
"And ye air a-lovin' him yet?"
"Yes."
"But he air dead," philosophized Tess. "He ain't with no other girl."
Teola shivered violently.
"Oh, I know that; I know that. But I--I need him. I want him so!"
"But he air dead," said Tess again steadily.
For many minutes neither spoke. For Teola's new burst of agony settled a
solemnity upon Tess which she could not throw off. Forgetting her
squatter position, she slipped her hand between the white fingers of the
weeper. Teola did not care if the girl's finger-nails were filled with
black soot, did not care if the squatter were covered with a dirty,
ragged dress, or if her bare feet were calloused from the rocks. Tess
was a human being who sympathized with her, and sympathy was as
necessary to Teola's soul at that moment as breath was to her body. In
the spasmodic whitening of the other girl's face Tess realized a
desperate heart agony.
[Illustration: "THEN YE AIR COMIN' HOME WITH ME TO THE SHANTY."]
"Ye air sick," she said at last, an enlightened expression widening her
lids. "A woman's kind of sick, ain't it? Eh?"
"Yes," answered Teola, flushing deeply; "yes."
"Then ye air a-comin' home with me to the shanty." Tess muttered this in
a sly voice, almost in a whisper.
Teola raised her glance, and read in the eyes bent upon her that her
whole secret was known. Tessibel Skinner, her father's foe, the daughter
of a murderer, was helping her to her feet.
"I'm too sick to walk," she wept, in a barely audible voice. "I tried to
throw myself from the rocks, over there, but the water was so silent,
blue and terrible, that I couldn't."
"Ye be comin' with me," insisted Tess stolidly.
She was urging her forward, holding Teola by both arms.
"I can't! I can't! Leave me here--I am so ill! I am going to die!"
"Ye air to come," commanded Tess. "And, if ye will, I'll lug ye when ye
can't walk. Women like ye don't die, and Mother Moll will come to the
hut to-day."
"Mother Moll!" echoed Teola. "Mother Moll! Oh, you mean the witch? And
will she--oh, will she help me so they will never know?"
"Yep. And now shut up. Ye air a woman, and was borned for things like
this. If ye walks a spell, then I lugs ye across the gully."
"And my father and mother--"
"Shut up, I says," ordered Tess. "It ain't no time to think of fathers
and mothers. They don't know nothin' about it, does they?"
"No," said Teola. "They have been in Europe with my little sister for
nearly four months. I've been alone all summer, with Rebecca, our maid,
and Frederick, my brother--"
Her lips closed over a moan of pain, and she did not continue her
sentence.
Through the forest, over the gullies, and down toward the Skinner hut
the two girls went slowly, Teola whimpering in her agony of soul, and
Tess carrying her when she could not walk. Only once did Tessibel stop.
"Hold a minute," she said gruffly, releasing Teola. "One of the dum
thorns went clean through my toe.... It air out now.... Come along! What
does I care, if it does bleed!"
Teola drew a sigh of relief when they crept under the willow tree. The
hut was in its usual dirty condition, the Bible in the accustomed place
on the stool. The suffering girl did not notice that the table was
littered with the remains of the dinner, and Tess put her in Daddy's
bed, and said, with a compelling, forceful glance:
"Ye air to stay there till I gets back.... And remember we air a woman,
and women, when they loves men, keep their mouths shet.... Even if their
man air dead.... Ye won't let anyone hear ye a-yelpin' while I air gone,
will ye?"
"No, no! Go quickly, Tessibel," murmured Teola. "Go quickly!"
This time the briars and thorns pierced the squatter's bare feet without
avail. Tess was rushing away upon an errand of love. Was she not perhaps
saving the sister of the student from death--keeping from him a
knowledge that would rend his heart? Since that night when Daddy Skinner
had been taken to prison, Tess had but once visited Mother Moll. In her
impatience, she did not wait to reach the hut.
"Mother Moll!" she shouted, bounding across the gully. "Come out! Tess
air here!"
"Come in," commanded a cracked voice.
Tessibel entered the shanty, finding Mother Moll stretched out on the
bed, with a corn-cob pipe between her shriveled lips.
"Get up from there, Ma Moll," ordered Tess, "and come to my hut. I wants
ye."
"It air too hot," muttered the witch. "I ain't a-movin' from the bed
to-day."
Tessibel bent over the wrinkled face, and looked determinedly into the
blood-shot eyes.
"I got someone what air sick," she exclaimed, grasping the hag's arm
forcibly. "Ye air to come with me.... See? And if ye does come, I gives
ye a mess of eels every week for a year--and more'n that. I'll pick yer
berries from yer own patch, if ye can't pick them yerself."
"Who air a-ailin'?" asked the old woman, crawling out of bed.
"Never mind. Come along."
It was a strange couple, forging the gorges and gullies, pushing aside
the brambles to the lane almost opposite Minister Graves' home. In the
summer's quietude, the squatter girl could mark the long chairs on the
Dominie's front porch, and the hammock sagging from the hooks in the
corner. No one saw the witch and Tessibel enter the hut; no one heard
the girl slip the night lock into its fastening. Teola, frightened and
miserable, raised her head, and looked once at Mother Moll, then dropped
it again.