CHAPTER XXXV
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.