CHAPTER XLI
Tessibel watched Minister Graves' yacht steam by the Hoghole, across the head of the lake and into the inlet. With it went the hopes of reconciliation with the student; the Dominie and his glowering glances of hatred; and Teola with her illness, leaving her the helpless babe.
She suddenly decided to share her secret with Mrs. Longman. She would beg a dress for little Dan to wear to the church for his baptism. She had stubbornly kept the presence of the child in her hut from her squatter friend, although Myra had usually had a way of worming into her innermost confidence. But Tess had given her oath and loyalty to Teola, and feared to tell the other girl the parentage of the child, lest Myra, who loved Ben Letts, should blab the truth to him.
During the weeks the babe had been with her, Tess had sent endless excuses about her absence to the Longman hut. She had to read the Bible; was waiting for someone to bring her a message from Daddy; fishing; getting ready for the winter; anything to keep Myra in ignorance of the tragedy being enacted in Skinner's hut. But now Myra was gone with Ben; Ezra was dead; and Mrs. Longman would not be curious about the little child.
She prepared the basket with the clean clothes that Teola had left on the tree, and, with the easy grace of a barefooted squatter, set out for the ragged rocks with bounding steps.
SHE TOSSED HER FACE UP TO THE SUN.
Across the lake the patches of forest, shaded with the scarlet and green of dying leaves, relieved the bareness of the harvested wheat-fields. Tessibel had a passion for the tumbling waves, they seemed to speak an unknown language to her, but to-day the lake was smooth like polished, clear, blue glass, and the birds were racing in flocks over it from the north toward the south. Their flight was so rapid that the squatter paused and followed them with her eyes. One flock after another disappeared behind the college hill so quickly that Tess could scarcely bid them farewell. They were her summer friends, had filled the day with brilliant song, and the night with love-twitterings.
Tessibel's forest solitude and rambles, her communion with night things had passed, gone with the coming of Teola, gone with the care of the babe. A longing for her old free life came back to her. She stooped down and placed the basket upon the rocks, and, with her arms flung over her head, tossed her face up to the sun. Her soul was dreaming, and the dream changed the half-closed eyes from brown to black.
She stood silently, her gaze roving after the fleet-winged birds. They were leaving her to the winter—and the sick child.
But Daddy, dear old Daddy, was coming back home! She caught her breath. At that moment her father was the panacæa for all that she had suffered during the last few weeks. Tears welled into her eyes. Just then another great flock of black birds, huddling together, skimmed by through the clear air. Tess threw out her hands.
"Good-bye, good-bye!" she shouted, with conflicting emotions. "Come back again soon. It air lonely in the winter without ye."
As if the birds understood the longing in a kindred soul, the flock halted an instant, seemingly loath to go, circled their mass of black toward the sky, swept to the water's edge, poised for the fraction of a second, then shot towards the University hill, and disappeared.
With the light-heartedness of youth, Tess reached the Longman cabin. A silence reigned within which at first astonished her. The door was closed, and Satisfied was nowhere in sight. She paused before rapping, and looked to the shore for the boat. Disappointment shot through her: Satisfied and Mrs. Longman had gone to the city. Nevertheless, Tess tapped lightly, and then again. But no voice ordered her in. She lifted the latch, felt the door yield to her touch, and stepped inside. Four lean rats scurried cornerward, sinking from sight into dark holes; numbers of lizards tailed silently backward from the sunbeam slanting across the shanty door. But the sight was so usual to Tess that she merely turned her head slightly, and smiled as if to departing friends, and closed the door behind her. A long object stretched out upon a board arrested her steps. It was covered with a sheet, and the breathless gloom of the shanty caused Tess almost to drop the basket as she set it down. The silent, white thing on the board brought an exclamation of fear from her. With horror settling deep in her eyes she backed against the door. Did the sheet cover death? No; for Ezra had been carried to his grave the day before. The thought freed her from a terror that had gripped her senses at first. She took two steps forward, bent down and looked under the board. Little streams of water had made dark tracks across the hut floor. The corners of the sheet were drenched through. This sent Tess back once more to the door. Would she dare lift the sheet? Controlling her fear by an effort, Tess gathered her courage together and crept again to the long board. With shaking fingers, she lifted the cloth, and drew it back gently. Then a horrified cry fell sharply from her lips, and she dropped it. Ben Letts and Myra Longman, hugged in each other's arms, lay dead before her.
Fascinated and trembling, she stood considering the livid squatters, no sound, after the first cry, issuing from her pale lips. The dead faces were so close to each other that a human hand could not pass between them. Upon the plain face of Myra rested a peaceful expression, as if she possessed a quietude she had never known before. Her eyes were closed, and one arm was tightly clasped about Ben's neck—the other about his waist. The storm had loosened the meager hair, had flung it in disorder over the fisher-girl's shoulders. Ben's brown teeth gleamed dark; the drawn lips were stretched wide, as if a pain, dreadful and torturing, had opened them never to be closed again. His two huge arms, twisted about the frail frame of the girl, were locked together by the horny fingers. To Tessibel it seemed that Myra smiled faintly in the possession of her longed-for happiness. She had Ben Letts at last, and forever—he was her gift of the storm, the eternal gift of a wild night. Myra had sought, and had found him.
The shanty door pushed open. Like one in a dream, Tess was still looking down upon the dead. Lifting her gaze, she saw Satisfied watching her, his eyes glowing with subdued pain.
"Myry air dead," he said, in a low voice, coming forward.
"Ben Letts, too," added the squatter girl.
"And the brat," finished Longman.
Tess, startled, lifted up her head.
"The brat! I had forgot him," she muttered. "He air dead, too?"
"Yep. He air here."
Longman drew down the sheet still further, exposing the lifeless baby. The thin little body lay between the father and mother.
For many minutes they surveyed the dead trio in rapt attention.
"Where air Myry's ma?" asked Tessibel presently.
"Back there, in Ezy's bed. She air sick, and so air Mammy Letts."
"Ezy were buried yesterday," ruminated Tess.
"Yep, and Myry be a-goin' to the same place. Ma and me air—alone."
There was something strangely pathetic in the quiet words, in the stolid, ugly face with its hard lines, in the mouth twitching at the corners as he spoke. Tess sprang toward him, and wound her strong young arms about him.
"Myry air happy," she burst forth; "happier than when she were livin' with you. She air with Ben Letts."
Satisfied, towering over her, blinked confusedly at her words. Puzzling, he drew his heavy brows down darkly.
"Myry were a-seekin' Ben," Tess went on hurriedly, "and the brat couldn't stay without its pa and ma. I says as how Myry air happy, Satisfied."
"She were a-lovin' Ben Letts?" The pain in his clouded blue eyes stung Tess to the heart. The grief of this lonely old man, bereft of his all, seemed the most tragic spectacle she had ever faced.
"Yep," she replied, trying to smile through her tears; "she were a-lovin' him, and were a-seekin' his lovin's all the time. It were only in the storm—she found what she were a-seekin'."
She turned her head sharply toward the dead.
"Ye can see she air a-smilin', Satisfied, can't ye? And Ben air a-huggin' her up to him. That air somethin' Myry wanted. And ye air a-goin' to leave them like that, ain't ye? Don't tear Ben's arms loose, 'cause Myry won't be happy if ye does. Can't ye put 'em in a box, just like they air?"
Longman made a protesting motion. Some fishermen had picked the two dead ones up, locked in each other's arms. And he himself had covered them with a sheet, without making an effort to part them. He had not thought of putting them in the squatters' cemetery together.
"And let the brat stay with 'em, too," Tess broke in on his reverie.
"Yep," he replied; "I lets 'em all stay together. What Myry seeked for and found, she can have for all of me."
The listening girl knew there was hatred in the father's tones for Ben Letts. Well, she had hated Ben too, but he was all Myra's now, and there was no more hatred for the ugly squatter in the heart of Tessibel.
"She air a-smilin', Satisfied," Tess said again.
Longman loosened Tessibel's arms, and, walking slowly forward, looked down upon his daughter.
"I hain't seed before that she were a-smilin'," he said, taking a long breath. "Ye says as how she air happy, Tess?"
"Yep; she air with Ben Letts."
"I air a-goin' in to tell her ma that Myry air happy," asserted Longman, with relief in his voice. "I thank ye, Tess, for tellin' me that she were. I weren't thinkin' of nothin' but the storm, the water, and the time that ma and me were a-sleepin' when Myry were a-dyin'. She air happy, ye air sure, Tess?"
"Yep, for she were a-seekin' Ben Letts. She told me as how—" Tessibel choked back the words.
"She told ye what?"
Tess was going to tell him of the night on the ragged rocks and of Myra's broken wrist, but, with a flashing glance at the dead woman, changed her mind. In her vivid imagination she thought that Myra was silently entreating her not to speak ill of the dead man in her arms.
"She told me that Ben were the brat's pa, and that—" her eyes gladdened as she finished—"she were a-lovin' him; and, Satisfied, when we air a-lovin', and lovin' damn hard, then ain't we happy when we air with them what we loves?"
She had come close to him, standing near the dead man and woman. The girl slipped her hand into Longman's reassuringly, as she asked the last question.
"Yep," replied Satisfied, disappearing into the back room.
Tessibel had forgotten the child in the basket. She turned her eyes toward it, and a movement of the cover told her that the little Dan was awake. She was bending over it when Longman appeared at her side.
"Mammy says as how ye air to come in, Tess," he said, his eyes falling upon the child. "Whose brat air it?" he asked, with no shadowing suspicion in his glance. "Where did ye get it, Tessibel?"
"I air a-carin' for it for a while. I comed, Satisfied——"
Could she ask these people in sore grief for a dress that the dead child on the board had worn?
"Ye comed for what?" asked the man.
"I air a-wantin' to take him to the church, and I ain't got no dress for him. Would Mammy Longman let me take one?"
"Yep. Go in, and tell her. She air in bed."
Tess covered the babe's face, and placed the basket on the table.
"I can't leave him in the hut," she explained; "the rats air too thick."
"Yes," was all Longman said, and he fell to thinking deeply.
Tess crept away to the back room.
"I comed to see ye, Mammy Longman, and——"
"Sit down on the bed," interrupted the tired voice. "Myry and Ezy air both gone. Satisfied says as how Myry air a-smilin' and as how ye said she were happy. Satisfied and me feels better, we does."
Tessibel choked back the welling tears.
The gray head resting upon a soiled pillow, the pale face turned toward the wall, which had not turned to her, struck Tess deeper than Satisfied's stolid grief.
"Ye be sure Myry air happy?" came the tired voice again.
"Yep."
Mrs. Longman threw her eyes on Tessibel.
"If she air happy, what air ye cryin' for?"
"'Cause it air lonely for ye and Satisfied without her and the brat. I knows, 'cause I ain't had Daddy in such a long time."
"We was lookin' for Myry back, but not like—"
Tess broke in upon her words.
"Mammy Longman, I air a-carin' for a little chap what ain't goin' to live, and I wants a dress to take him to the church. Will ye let me have one?"
Mrs. Longman sat up, a new interest dawning in her faded eyes.
"To a church? Why to a church? He ain't dead yet, air he?"
"Nope; but his ma wants him took to the church where the Huly Ghost air, to have the water put on him.... Can I take the dress?"
"Yep, Tess; take one from Myry's box. They ain't good, but our little brat wored them."
Aimlessly, she lay down again and ceased speaking, but whimpered until Tess left the room. The girl made her choice from the small stock of dresses that had been worn by the Longman family, and had at last descended to the little dead boy.
On her way home to the hut once more, Tess paused on the rocks. The spectacle at Longman's had filled her eyes with the shadow of longing. She had seen Myra clasped in the arms of the man she loved. Tessibel's thoughts flew to the student. She could imagine her own happiness if she had been in the storm, and Frederick had taken her in his arms, and they should have—
"I wish almost I was Myry," she moaned, "and the student was Ben Letts.... No, no! not that! not that!"
She sank under the burden of a new thought. Myra had sought, and had found—had searched for Ben in the storm, and had found him. Myra had had more faith than she had.
"Faith the size of a mustard-seed," flashed into her mind. Her own past unbelief pressed upon her, and the color fled from her cheeks, leaving them pale.
She opened the basket, and put her wistful face close to the sleeping child, her mental tension gone in her uprising faith.
"I thought as how ye were a-keepin' the student from me, but ye ain't. God ain't ready to let me have him. But he air a-goin' to let me have him some time. I air glad I got ye, and I hopes that ye live, too. Myry air got Ben Letts, and I air a-goin' to have—Frederick." She walked home in a reverie deep and sweet.