Ben was standing beside the bed, with the open grape-basket in his hand,
looking down intently upon the child. His one eye flashed past Tess in
its blindness, while the watery one with the red veins running through
it distorted itself into a squint, and brought its evil gaze upon her.
The fat chin, covered with a stubby growth of hair, shook with malicious
pleasure, the dark teeth set grimly through the brown, tobacco-stained
lips.
"It air a brat!" he said at last, Tess standing paralyzed. "Air its
Pappy the--"
He did not finish. Tess snatched the basket from his hand, and covered
the whining babe.
"Ye be allers snoopin' yer nose in some one's else's business," she said
darkly, her fear of him growing with each minute. "Ye can't keep from my
hut any day, and ye ain't no right here nuther."
"I telled ye and the student that the time'd come when I'd get even with
ye both--and it air here!... It air here, I say!"
"The student ain't nothin' to do with this here brat," retorted Tess.
"Ye thinks as how ye knows a heap.... Well, ye don't.... And it air time
for ye to be a-goin' now, Ben Letts!"
"I air a-goin' to stay," said he, "Daddy's" stool creaking under his
weight.
From a tree near the forest Tess could hear the screech of a night-owl
die away in smothered laughter. The scraping of the willow on the tin
roof came dimly to her in the silence. If some other squatter would only
come along! God had always saved her from Ben Letts.--Dared she pray?
Her eyes sought the window. If she could only see the pine-tree
God!--send Him a little petition--He would forgive and save her. Dominie
Graves had gone completely from her mind; only a wish, a desperate wish,
came to escape the man who had constantly thrown his menacing shadow
across the path of her life. Suddenly her bosom heaved. A verse was
thrown bomb-like into her mind. Tess opened her lips and muttered,
keeping her eyes upon the fisherman.
"If ye have faith as the grain of mustard-seed, ye shall say unto this
mountain--"
The time between the present and that night the student had left her in
bitter sorrow faded. In her imagination she was alone in the rain, with
the child upon her hands, offering it up to the dark God for a blessing.
The same uplifting faith was upon her. The Crucified Savior would
protect her.
"I believe! I believe!" she ejaculated. No soul-desiring thought of
Frederick interrupted her uprising faith. She needed him no more to pray
for her.
"A mustard-seed air--a--a mighty little thing, ain't it, Ben Letts?"
Tess stood up, looking beyond him like one in a dream.
"Yep," grunted the fisherman, staring.
He had never understood the moods of Tess. She was as incomprehensible
to him as the myriads of stars that strung themselves through the sky.
But his inability to understand her made him desire the girl the more.
He had come at an hour when he was sure Tess would be alone. He would
force her to come to his cabin, to marry him even before her father was
hanged. Ben's eyes settled again upon the basket. Through his heavy
senses sifted a wave of hatred for the miserable child, whining for the
milk Tess had stolen. Ben moved his great feet, tearing up a long
splinter from a broken board with his worn-down heel. It startled Tess
from her reverie. In upon her faith came the sickening thought of
Frederick, his confidence in her blasted and gone; it choked a prayer
that lingered upon her lips. Ben rose to his feet, an oath belching from
his ugly mouth.
"Put down that basket. Put it down, I says!"
Never had it entered her mind before to conciliate the dark-browed
fisherman who had pestered her with his attentions, but her frightened
womanhood caught at the idea.
"Wait till I gives him somethin' to eat," she said stolidly. "If he
yaps, someone'll hear him."
Ben sat down and watched her narrowly. Tessibel had grown so beautiful
in the last few months that the brute force in the man rose in his
desire to possess her. There was one way to bring the girl on her knees
to him, one way to bow the proud red head--the little child made no
difference to him. And some day he would get even with the student, too.
The small bare feet of the squatter girl noiselessly plied their way
from the smoking stove to the sugar-bowl, thence to the basket. Tess
held the warm, sweet milk to the infant's lips, lifting the withered
chin that the child might drink the better. Her mind was working
rapidly. How should she escape and rescue the babe? She went back for
more milk, wetting the corner of the cloth and wiping little Dan's
face. Then she gazed straight at Ben Letts, and said,
"How air yer mammy?"
It seemed the most natural thing that she should ask this of him.
"She air well," answered Ben, thrown off his guard. He took out his
pipe, and continued:
"When ye comes to the shanty, ye can't bring that brat."
"Nope; I ain't a-goin' to bring him," Tess replied, whispering a prayer
for aid.
"What be ye goin' to do with it?"
"I don't know yet." A muttered petition fell over the baby's face, but
she said aloud: "I think it air a-goin' to croak."
"I's a-thinkin' so, too," Ben said thoughtfully. "He hes the look of
death on his mug, Tessibel.... Air it yer brat?"
"He air mine now," she answered slowly, raising her head, "and I stays
here with him till he dies."
"Nope; ye be a-comin' to my shanty to-morry. Mammy air expectin' ye....
And ye'll be glad to come--afore I gets done with ye!"
Tess shivered. She remembered Myra's broken wrist, and heard again the
woful cry from the other squatter girl as she told of the harm done her.
If she could get out of the shanty, she could run from him, but that
would leave the child to his mercy. She glanced toward the door.
Whatever came to her, she must protect the babe. Lifting him from his
bed, she sat down at the oven, and extended the blue legs toward the
heat.
"He air so damn thin," she said in excuse, "that he allers yaps if he
air cold.... Have ye seen Myry's kid lately?"
"Yep; to-day. He air a-growin' a little more pert."
"Glad for Myry," was Tessibel's comment.
"Ye ain't heard nothin' from yer Daddy, have ye?" asked Ben, presently.
"Yep. I had a letter from him. He air a-comin' to the shanty as soon as
he air out."
"He ain't a-goin' to get out!"
"Yep, he air; sure he air."
"Air he a-knowin' of yer brat?" Ben was staring at the child.
Tess stared back at him. She had forgotten that she had intimated that
the baby was hers.
"I ain't tellin' Daddy nothin'.... His troubles be enough for _him_."
Her tone was low and bitter. She turned the babe with its back to the
heat to gain time. She had almost decided to run away--she could not
face Myra's fate.
"This durn stove ain't got no fire in it," she said, laying Baby Dan in
the box. "I's a-goin' for a stick of wood!"
As Tessibel walked past him, Ben did not stop her--squatters never saved
steps for their women. The girl flung open the door, but hesitated on
the threshold. During the instant of her indecision, a silent panorama
of night passed before her. Heavy rain clouds dipped almost to the dark
water, obscuring the city and the University hill beyond. A great
steamer attached to a number of canal boats lay as a thin black line in
the center of the lake. An owl left the branches of the hut tree and
circled into the safety of the shore willows, and a stealthy barn cat,
with thread-like legs, crept from the water's edge toward the lane with
a trailing dead fish in his jaws. He turned glistening green eyes upon
Tess, and leapt away with his treasure.
Oh! to be out once more in the darkness with the child--out among God's
creatures, her creatures, there she would be safe--safe from Myra's
terror.
Glancing back at little Dan, she saw his large gray eyes fixed gravely
upon the candlelight. To leave him there was like sending him into the
jaws of death. To take him was impossible. She turned back, closed the
door with a gasp, and faced Ben Letts.
He was at her side in a moment.
"I air got ye now," sounded in her ear like the roar of the sea. She
felt the man crush her in his arms, felt the thick lips upon her face.
"Ye think ye be such a smart kid that ye needn't never mind what a man
says to ye. I knows that brat don't belong to yerself. I ain't seed ye
all summer for nothin'. Tell me, whose air he?"
Tess wrenched herself free, and sent forth scream after scream. A horny
hand left a red mark across the fair face. It was the right of the
fisherman to beat the woman he loved.... Tessibel Skinner was feeling
for the first time the aggressiveness of the male.
"Ben, Ben, I tells ye the truth if ye wait a minute."
Ben relaxed his hold a little, and the girl continued:
"The brat ain't mine--it air a woman's on the hill. She didn't like it,
and gave it to me, with a little money, till Daddy comes back."
"Whose brat air it?"
"A woman's I says, a-livin' on the hill."
The words struggled through the fishy hand.
"Ye'll take it back to her to-night, ye does; then ye comes with me to
the shanty. Yer Daddy ain't a-comin' here no more."
Suddenly Tess heard footsteps crushing the pebbles near the hut. She
could be saved, if she-- She wrenched her face upward, and screamed,
"Rescue ther perishin'!"
The words were sent out in such a strain of agony that Ben Letts thrust
his fingers to her throat. With an oath he closed them together.
"I loves ye, ye hussy; that air why I chokes ye!"
The room whirled around before Tessibel's gaze. She tried to draw her
breath beneath the tightening grasp. The door burst open, and Frederick
Graves received a desperate look of entreaty from the squatter-girl.