"You didn't mind my running in, did you, Tessibel?" asked Frederick,
turning toward the squatter with a broad, comrade-like smile. Then he
noticed his sister, with surprise.
"Ah, Teola! you, too, were caught in the storm? What a blessing to have
a shelter like this! Miss Tessibel won't mind if we stay until it is
over. I came home before I was expected. I almost wish, now, that I had
waited until morning. But I am safe here, though.... Whew! it is a
terrible night."
The distance between Teola and Tessibel widened perceptibly. Neither
girl attempted to speak, and the student smiled at the embarrassment
upon his sister's face. He made to go toward her.
"You needn't mind being here, dear," he said in a low tone. "I don't
believe as Father and Mother do. I shouldn't ask for you to be in a
better place than this hut."
He turned his face toward the roof, letting his eyes sweep the cobwebbed
net, the old coats upon the wall; and lastly to the stove, out of the
top of which jutted the smoking knot.
"There is here," he continued impressively, "a feeling of rest and
contentment to me.... I believe, Tessibel Skinner, that your faith
permeates every inch of it."
He lifted the lid of the stove, and shoved the smouldering wood from
sight. His deep voice came again to Tessibel's ears as if from afar:
"I wish I could impress upon my father what it means to pray and be good
and pure under such circumstances as surround you. I mean, you know,
Tess"--here he turned squarely upon her--"I mean that, for one so young,
you have purity of faith and uplifted confidence in God's goodness."
His voice was silenced by a half-smothered cry dragging itself from the
squatter's throat. Then he noted that something was wrong. Teola, pale
and wretched, had gradually placed a greater distance between herself
and the wooden box. Tess had involuntarily drawn closer to it. She dully
comprehended that Teola was ashamed of the rabbit-like body, struggling
for a mere existence. Expressions of consternation, of indecision and
terror swept over her face. Her eyes dropped for an instant upon the
silent infant. The child gave one great yawn, and whiningly dropped the
sugar rag. Just at this juncture, lightning flashed through the cracked
window and played above the face of the babe until the red of the fire
mark from head to shoulder glowed crimson under the blotched skin. The
tiny, scrawny arms were bare, the withered mouth opened and shut,
gapingly. As the eyes of the boy fell upon it, he went so deadly white
that Tess thought he was going to fall. Without a word, he walked to the
box, considering the wrinkled baby face like a man in a trance. His gaze
took in the flaming brand, the gray eyes fastened upon the candlelight,
and the tiny, searching fingers, which constantly sought something they
could not find. It seemed an eternity before he gathered himself
together, forcing his eyes upward to rest first on Teola, then upon
Tess.
He was the first to speak.
"Where--did--that--child--come--from?"
There was imperious inquisition in the dark eyes.
His voice had changed, until the deepness of it was terrifying.
Teola came nearer to him. Tessibel dropped down beside the infant.
"I want to know where--that child--came from?" commanded the boy once
more. "Whose child is it?"
Tess swung her body round upon the shanty floor, turning cloudy,
rebuking eyes upon Teola. She, Tessibel Skinner, crouching squatter-like
over Dan Jordan's baby, had sworn never to tell Frederick his sister's
secret, and no thought of doing so entered her mind. The minister's
daughter must speak the truth. The mother of the babe would answer the
question put by the student.
Quickly Tess turned over her great desire for the freedom of her father,
followed by the passionate wish to retain the love and prayers of
Frederick Graves. If she denied the child, he would turn upon his
sister, and the shivering girl would divulge her trouble. It would be
the same as breaking her oath. Yet Frederick must not think the child
hers. She turned toward Teola again, and seemed about to open her lips,
when the expression upon the other girl's face stayed her tongue. It was
a mixture of despair, illness and fright. Tessibel imagined she had
discovered beneath the pain-drawn face a desire to claim her own. Ah!
Teola would gather her babe, that tiny bit of shriveled flesh, into her
arms before the whole world. There rose in the squatter's heart a vast
respect for Myra Longman, who had taken her child from the beginning of
its tiny life, and defied the babbling tongues of the settlement
gossips. Teola Graves, although of a different class, was no less a
mother--she would do the same. Tessibel sat up, waiting for the
confession. Why was the minister's daughter so silent?--why so deathly
looking?
"I will be answered," insisted the student. Then, centering his eyes
full upon Tess, he added:
"Tessibel Skinner, _it_ is--yours!"
Teola's lips were pressed closely together. Spasms of pain drew them
down at the corners, making the girl resemble a woman twice her years.
With a sudden inspiration, she turned upon her brother.
"Frederick, Frederick," she stammered. "Don't blame her too much. She is
only a girl."
A cry escaped from the lips of Frederick; another followed from those of
Tess. The minister's daughter was throwing the motherhood of the babe
upon her. Teola had branded her squatter savior with a nameless child--a
horror from which the student shrank! She saw unbelief rise quickly in
his eyes, and saw him draw aside his long rain-coat as it almost touched
the box upon the floor. Shrinking disgust of the wriggling, whimpering
thing on the rags made Frederick involuntarily reach out his hand to his
sister, but his eyes were bent upon Tess.
"And you're the girl I've trusted!" he gasped, as Teola neared him
slowly. "Yours is the faith I've envied!--your life the one standard I
wish to gain!... God!" he groaned, "you--you--you the mother of that!"
His bitter tones stung her to the quick, whipping her into immediate
action. Fire gold-brown and swift as lightning swept into the flashing
eyes. Frederick's sister had thrust the child upon her. The secret was
dead between them. Tess remembered her oath--remembered her love for the
boy, and Teola's cowardice. Her despair gathered as her false position
was forced upon her.
She stooped, and grasped the babe in her hands with a passion that tore
the meager clothing from its body. She crushed the infant to her as if
indeed Teola's words were true. The small dark head fell limply upon her
bosom, the thin legs hung straight and bare over the soiled jacket. One
little hand clutched her torn sleeve, as if there lived in the
infant-brain a fear of harm. Tess, instinct with potent life and rage,
wheeled like a tawny tigress furiously upon Frederick and Teola.
"Air it any of yer damn business," she demanded hotly, "if I wants to
have a brat?"
She had silenced the student by the condemning words, which seared his
soul like molten lead. A dazed terror gathered in his eyes. He smoothed
his forehead with trembling fingers. The lightning forked about the
squatter and the babe, illuminating the small head and the bony body of
the child. Tess felt it shiver and mechanically she lifted her skirt,
wrapping him close within it. Her gaze took in sneeringly the shrinking
form of Teola, and the arm of the student encircling his sister's waist.
For one instant she hated them both with all the strength of her
half-savage nature. Still, no thought came of breaking her promise.
"Ye can both go to hell," she ended distinctly.
A fierce cry from Frederick closed her lips, and the anger within her
changed to terror. What was she doing? Blasting his love, his faith,
his confidence with words that blackened her soul with perfidy and her
life with dishonor. Had she not told the student that long-ago night
that she loved him?--that she was his squatter for ever and ever? And
was she not now at this moment keeping a secret from him for his own
sake? Something in her small, ghastly face brought the lad in his boyish
agony, impulsively forward.
"For God's love--and mine, Tess--tell me, it isn't true! Tell me you are
shielding someone else--"
Teola caught her breath painfully, and Frederick ended:
"Some other squatter girl."
"I ain't got no other squatter's brat here," she cried, turning her eyes
upon Teola. "It ain't no other squatter's brat, air it?"
"No, no, Frederick," replied Teola, white and wan; "she has told you the
truth--it isn't another squatter's child."
Hope died in the boy and outraged feeling leaped into its place. He held
Tessibel's eyes with his relentlessly.
"Did you expect to mix prayers for your father with filth like that?" he
demanded, pointing to the hidden infant in the fold of her dress. "Did
you expect God to hear you, when your life was full of--sin?... I am
ashamed I ever loved you, ashamed that I took my life from your
hands.... I wish I were--dead! I wish I were dead!"
Teola gasped in her new understanding. The squatter and her handsome
brother loved each other! Never for one moment had it dawned upon her,
until she saw the tall boy drop beside the stool and sob out his heart
agony upon the open Bible.
If she dared speak the truth, she could assure him of the goodness of
the fisher-girl. But her lips sealed themselves with her soul's consent.
She raised her face, giving Tess one look of terror. Reaching out, she
touched her brother's arm.
"Frederick, come home with me. This is awful--awful!"
"I don't want to go home," sobbed the boy, in pitiful abandon. "I didn't
know anything could be so hard to bear. And I loved her faith and her
character--and her beautiful face.... Oh, I love her, I love her,
Teola!"
The squatter listened to every passionate word, listened until her face
whitened into a despair that settled there and did not vanish. She had
not moved from the wooden box, nor ceased pressing the half-clad infant
to her breast. Turning, she shot a soul-cutting glance at the other
girl, who owed her very life to her. The glance pleaded for the
miserable boy by the stool, for the sick babe held close to her heart,
and lastly, for herself, her squatter honor, and the powerful love she
had for the student brother. From the depths of her eyes came a demand
to Teola that she tell the truth. The answer was but a slight negative
shake of the proudly-set head, followed by an embarrassment that Teola
covered by leaning over her brother, and raising him from the floor.
Frederick allowed his sister to lead him by the wooden box, past
Tessibel to the door. His eyes traveled back to the open Bible upon the
stool, where but a moment since his own dark head had rested. Then he
laughed--laughed until the sharp sting of his tones made the fisher-girl
grunt in her characteristic way.
Striding forward, he snatched up the book, tore off the covers, and in
another minute had thrust it through the smoke into the stove.
"There goes your faith--your canting trash about your love for the
Saviour! I might have known that one of your kind could not rise above
the grossness in you. I hope you will be as miserable and as unhappy as
I am.... I hope that child will...."
Tess stopped him with a cry. She stooped down, and placed the little Dan
in his bed without a word. Her anger was gone, and from the waters of
bitterness that swept over her a better Tess lived. Her faith in the boy
died instantly, and a higher, nobler and greater faith in the crucified
Saviour lived instead.
She would never tell Frederick that his sister was mother to the little
being he had scorned, nor would she as much as utter the name of Dan
Jordan. Covering the child tenderly, she faced Frederick Graves without
a touch of the awkward girlishness that had hitherto marked her
movements. A glorified expression lightened the white face and shone
from her eyes. He had taught her a lesson of independence she could not
have learned through any other person. Without one glance at the
shivering young mother, she walked to the door, and opened it, as she
had done that night when he had come first to the hut.
"Ye can go," she said, "both of ye. Ye burned my Book, ye did, but ye
can't take it out of my heart. The God up their ain't all yers. He air
mine--and Daddy's--and--the brat's."