CHAPTER XXX
Tess closed the door of her shanty, looked about to see if anyone were watching her movements, then she, too, broke into the high weeds that surrounded the running brook under the mud cellar. Her little ruse in giving the child to its mother delighted her. She would find Teola, and bring her and the babe back to the shanty. Softly she parted the branches that hid the spot where she had first seen the Dominie's daughter. Through the maze of brambles she saw the girl, with the child clasped closely in her arms. The cloth in which Tess had wrapped it had fallen from the little shoulders, leaving them white, save for the blood-red mark of fire. Teola lifted the infant, and kissed it passionately, bending her head over it, praying. Tess could not enter upon such a holy scene. She sank down upon the turf. The basket yawned upon a bed of moss, its flannel rags hanging over the edge. Teola was making the babe ready to return to its bed, when Tess slipped under the branches of the short sumac trees, and entered the clearing.
"Come back to the shanty," she said. "Ye be here too long."
"I can't. I must go home, Tessibel.... I could hardly get away as it was. Oh, Tess, isn't he beautiful?... Don't you think the mark will soon go away? What makes him open his mouth so much? Possibly the sugar rag is too large."
"Nope, 'tain't that. He be tired, and that air what makes him gape like that. Wait until he gets some bigness. He air little yet."
"I haven't asked you, Tess," and Teola turned troubled eyes upon the squatter, "I haven't been able to ask you how you feed him. And where do you get the milk?... Oh, if I only had some money! When mother is home, I do get a little. But Rebecca won't give me a cent. Tessibel, where do you get the milk?"
The babe was still clasped in her arms.
"I crib it from the cows at Kennedy's. They all has too much for their calves, anyhow."
"You mean you steal it, Tess?" asked Teola fearfully. "Oh, Tessibel! Oh! Oh, Tess, Tess, how good you are!"
"I ain't good," Tess retorted. "It ain't good to steal, air it? And squatters ain't never good, they ain't. But the brat's got to eat, ain't he? If I ain't got no milk, then I has to crib it. See?"
Bitter tears were falling upon the head of little Dan. They were the mother's first tears since that day when Tess had led her up the hill to the summer cottage.
"But Kennedy will shut his cows up soon," announced the squatter. "Then I don't know what to do. The brat air too little to eat fish, he air."
Suddenly Teola conceived an idea.
"If I should put out a little milk behind the house, in a pail, could you come after it, Tessibel?"
"Yep," replied Tess eagerly. "I could crib it from your yard, if ye'll let me."
"Yes, yes; that's the way to do," replied Teola, with a faint smile. "If I can't get the milk out, you go into the kitchen. Simply take all you can get. Take all you want. My father and mother will be home soon. They know by this time I am ill. My brother also gets back from camping at the same time. You see how careful I shall have to be, Tessibel. And in September, we go back to the city, for school always takes us home then. If I could only have my own baby. My own precious baby!"
Tessibel grunted. Teola misunderstood her.
"Oh, I am grateful to you, dear! I think that you are the best girl in all the world. So does my brother Frederick. He says—"
She stooped to cover the child, her voice ceasing.
The babe had been carefully tucked in.
"He's a been sayin' what?" The tones of the squatter were eager, her eyes so bright that Teola did not answer for a moment.
"He says that there is no girl as good as you, and that your faith in God is what he would rather have than anything else in the world.... Oh, Tess, if I could only believe, and be sure that soon the baby and I could go to—his father!"
"If ye asks, ye can go," replied Tess solemnly. "The student says what ye asks with faith ye'll get. Ain't that enough to prove it?"
This fell reverently from the lips of the girl. Faith in Frederick rather than faith in God had given birth to her believing soul. But neither girl realized it. Both were silent for some minutes. Teola was looking dreamily at the opposite hill, the basket with its precious burden already hanging on the squatter's arm. Tess had learned that such loud smacks as the infant was giving were indicative of hunger. So she made a move to go.
"I takes him back to feed him. He air hungry."
"Oh, Tess, if I could only feed him! If I could only always have him! I wish—I wish I were a squatter. Then I would face the world with my baby.... Oh, I am so unhappy and ill!"
True, she was ill, for there came to Tessibel's ears a cough that echoed against the rocks with the familiar sound of death in it. It sounded like that of a fisherwoman she had known in a shanty below the great rocks, who had died and been taken to the Potter's field.
"I air a-prayin' every day," said Tess, with a lump in her throat, "that ye be taken with the brat to the sky—to the brat's pa what ye loves.... Air that the prayin' ye wants?"
Teola nodded, and Tess, smiling tenderly, hesitated, and whispered:
"The student's God can do anything He wants to. Asks Him to let ye go 'cause ye be sick, and the brat air sick, too, and—the winter'll be cold for him."
She touched the handle on her arm lightly, turned, and disappeared.
Teola sat for some moments dry-eyed, looking at the high hill across the blue water, thinking of the next few weeks, and of how she and the babe would be called away. If she only had the precious uplifting faith of Tessibel! Something must come to her and the baby. Her stern father, who hated Tessibel Skinner with all his heart, must never know of the little Dan. Her mother, weary and nervous, would go to her grave from the shock; and Frederick—
Teola straightened at the thought of her brother. He would help her in all things, even in the tragedy that now covered her life. Of that Teola felt sure, but the humiliation would be too great. Better die apart from her child. With another racking cough, she turned her face toward home, two hectic spots shining clear and red upon the white cheeks. Rebecca silently helped her to bed.
That night, at ten o'clock, after Tess had silenced the child in her arms and Teola had lost her nervousness in a stupor, three boats shot from different points of the west shore, and quietly oared a path through the moonlit lake toward the netting place.
The occupants of one boat were Satisfied Longman and his son. In another Jake Brewer sat, alone. In the third Ben Letts puffed upon his pipe. His thoughts were upon the one person he desired—Tess. Like most of mankind, he wanted what he could not get; wanted the girl who turned a mocking, beautiful face toward him and used such a bitter tongue. Tess was responsible for the scars upon his face, but he would feel them well carried if he gained the girl—and tamed her. That Tess was a devoted admirer of the student Graves made her none the less desirable. Ben dipped his oars with dexterous aptitude and shot under the shadow of the trees. An instant later, his boat was beside those of the other squatters, and he was standing with his hand upon the north reel. Out into the lake the net was carried by Satisfied Longman and Jake Brewer. Ben could see the tall, thin form of Ezra through the shadows, guiding the ropes as they slipped through his fingers. Here was a boy aspiring to the love of Tessibel Skinner. Ben heard the swish of the net far out in the lake as it took to the silent waters, heard the dipping of the oars, and saw the boats strike for the shore. Then Ezra came toward him, at the command of his father, Satisfied Longman.
During that evening, Deforest Young was calling upon Deacon Hall. He refused the Deacon's invitation to row him to the city.
"Thanks," said he, "but the night is delightful. I think I shall walk. I shall go by the shore and skirt to the tracks at the Hoghole."
He failed to say, however, that his reason for walking was that he desired to catch a glimpse of the red-haired Tess. He had not seen her since the discovery of the new-born babe.
The candle was lighted in the Skinner hut, and he tapped gently. For an instant there was no response, He knew the girl was at home—there had been a sudden discontinuance of a humming when he knocked.
"Miss Skinner, it is I—Professor Young," he called. "If it is too late, I will come again."
The door was promptly thrown open.
"Come in," said Tess with a smile. "I thought as how it were someone else."
"I have been at Deacon Hall's," explained he. "They agree with me that you ought to go and see your father. I did not tell them why you could not. Where is the little child?"
Tess glanced at the babe.
"I keeps him in the basket or the box in the daytime, but nights I takes him to bed with me. The rats be so dum thick that one of them big fellers would chew the little chap's ear offen him afore I could stop it."
She said it so naturally, as if she were speaking of the most ordinary thing, that Young felt a hysterical desire to laugh. It was a dreadful thought, this of the rat in the box with the babe.
"Are the men netting to-night?" he asked, quickly changing the subject.
"Yep, they be."
"I suppose there is no stopping it," sighed Young; "and they run such dreadful risks. But, if there were no laws about it, there would be no fish left in the lake."
Tessibel's brow gathered a thick network of wrinkles. She had heard the subject discussed and argued from her babyhood days. The best fish in the waters must be kept for the gentlemen who came for sport during the season. But the fishermen, who needed bread for their families, were forced by the law to go without.
"There oughtn't to be no laws about fishin'," she frowned, in decision. "It air wicked, when brats air a-wantin' bread and beans."
Young saw danger ahead in the argument, so he switched to the home-coming of the minister's family. From that he again spoke of the infant, who was whimpering a little. Tess took him up, and warmed the milk.
"I shall go now, child," said Young, rising. "You are tired. You ought to go to bed."
"Yep, I air tired, I air," answered Tess, wearily "Good-night."
Once out upon the shore, Young looked back at the hut. It was dark. He saw three boats flit silently by him toward the city, as if phantoms guided them. They crossed the moonbeams, and Young lost them in the dark shadows near the shore.