ITS ANSWER
While Tessibel Skinner, lonely and
despondent, was grieving in the squatter country,
Frederick Graves arrived in Paris with his young wife.
There had been for him but few hours since that last
evening upon the ragged rocks, during which Tessibel’s
face had not haunted him, the brown eyes, sometimes
smiling, more frequently shadowed with tears.
Impotent remorse possessed his days and filled his
wakeful nights with anguish. At such times when
life seemed intolerable, the thought of the comfort
he had supplied for his mother and sister was balm
to his troubled soul.
He regretted, too, that he had not
gone to the squatter settlement to see Tess again
before his marriage to Madelene. He had thought,
then, that the sight of her pleading pain would be
more than he could bear. He had already vowed
to himself over and over with clenched teeth that he
would stay but a short time away from America.
He must see Tess. He did not worry over her keeping
the secret of their clandestine marriage ... he had
implicit confidence in her promise.
Madelene’s keen enjoyment in
displaying the many sights, already familiar to her,
bored him to distraction, and they had been in France
but a few days before she discovered his indifference
to the wonders which seemed of such importance to
her. On the way over she had noticed his spells
of abstraction. She had seen how quickly the shadows
descended upon her husband’s face when it was
in repose. With an intuition characteristically
feminine, she concluded rightly that Frederick’s
interest was not in her, that his attention was really
concentrated upon something quite apart from his wife
and their honeymoon. She determined to find out
the reason.
One morning, breakfasting in their
charming room, Madelene started a bright conversation,
which Frederick met with but a chilly response.
“What’s the matter with
you, Fred?” she demanded curiously. “You
haven’t spoken a pleasant word for two days.”
A faint smile sketched itself about
the corners of Frederick’s lips.
“Aren’t you stretching
that a little, my dear?” he evaded half-playfully.
“Well, perhaps a wee bit,”
laughed Madelene, ruefully. “But honestly,
dear, you look as if you’d lost your last friend
instead of being on your honeymoon.”
She sprang up, rounded the table and
perched daintily on the arm of his chair.
“I do want to make you happy,
darling,” she urged. “What’s
the trouble?”
Frederick made a slightly impatient
gesture with one shoulder.
“I’m happy enough, Madelene!
But it’s this beastly weather! I suppose
that’s the reason I feel so lackadaisical.
If you don’t mind, I don’t believe I’ll
go out today.”
Madelene uttered a little cry of disappointment.
“Now, I am vexed!” she pouted prettily.
“Oh, then I’ll go with
you, of course,” Frederick hastily cut in.
“It doesn’t make any difference to me.”
The young wife felt an impulse to anger.
“But it ought to make a difference,
Fred dear,” she pointed out to him. “Why,
you make me feel so small ... so insignificant....
I don’t want to drag you about if you don’t
want to go.”
Absorbed in his self-centered meditations
his wife’s sightseeing excursions seemed to
him a perfect nuisance.
“I didn’t mean to hurt
you, dear,” he apologized hurriedly.
Madelene got up and went to the window
and gazed down upon the street.
“I know what we’ll do,”
she stated, dancing back to the table. “Let’s
go to some quiet, cool place for a week or two.
I hate Paris in the hot weather, anyway. And
it’ll be fun to be by ourselves ... and we’ll
have long walks.... Would you like that?”
The dark wave of blood surging into
Frederick’s temples made her look curiously
at him. Why should he be embarrassed at such a
suggestion?
“As you please, my dear,” he interrupted
her thought.
Madelene sighed. He did look
ill. It might be the hot weather, but he had
such a strange, detached manner most of the time ...
as if he were far away ... or she was. Her mind
was busy with the problem. She could not eat.
Frederick, too, was but toying with
his breakfast. He was wondering just what Madelene
was planning to do in the country. It would be
even harder for him there than in the city. With
Tessibel’s face always between them, he could
not make a lover’s love to her anywhere.
An hour or so later, while Frederick
had gone to smoke under the trees, his wife stood
critically studying her reflection in the glass ...
with but few misgivings. She was pretty, surely
so, and very rich! What more could a man want?
In the coolness of the country, Frederick would be
better. He would lose his moroseness and give
his undivided attention to her. She would make
all the arrangements for the change without disturbing
him. He should not be bothered a little bit; and
Madelene grew quite happy again with the thought of
having Frederick all to herself in some romantic country
spot.
She summoned her maid, and for a while
with the aid of the hotel officials, she sought for
a place near Paris, yet far enough away to escape
its harassing heat and noises. By night Madelene
had decided upon a farm near the village of Epernon.
“We can get in to the city to
shop, Marie,” she told her maid. “But
Mr. Graves simply can’t stand the hot weather
in town.”
“He does look sick and worried,
ma’am, doesn’t he?” agreed the maid.
Twenty-four hours later Frederick
and Madelene were settled in a pretty villa nestled
at the edge of the forest. Nature in its noblest
expression surrounded them. At the going down
of the sun, Madelene stood beside her husband on the
porch, and pressed her cheek fondly against his shoulder.
“It’s so beautiful, isn’t
it, dear?” she whispered coaxingly.
Out of his wife’s words and
the gentle gloaming, came a deadly sense of loneliness.
A shiver shook Frederick from head to foot. His
only answer was an ejaculated affirmative in a hoarse
voice. The weird sighing of the trees took him
back to Ithaca, back to the ragged rocks ... to Tessibel.
For a moment he was so agonized that tears stung his
lids to a deep hurt.
If in noisy Paris he had been carried
in spirit to the squatter country, where a girl stood
and gazed at him with red-brown eyes, how much more
did she haunt him in the quiet spot where the leaves
sang the same old tunes they sang in her world, where
the wind played among them as it did in the Silent
City! Now and then from yonder clump of trees
a bird twittered; an owl screeched from the tall tree
at the right, and farther on a brook chanted its purling
song like Tessibel’s brook under the mudcellar.
Oh, his dear little girl! His Tess of the Storm
Country! If in those olden days he had desired
her, now that desire was a hundred times more poignant.
In all his willful life he had never suffered like
this. Tess with her clinging arms, her sweet,
winning ways! He sighed a deep, long sigh.
Yet soon he would hear something from her. He
had written her, ... had sent her money for the necessities
of her simple life ... his heart throbbed at the thought
of a letter from her.
Madelene’s conversation he had
not heard, and it was not until she spoke directly
to him that he remembered her presence.
“Don’t you think so, Fred?” she
was asking.
He heaved another sigh as he left
Ithaca and came back to France after that flight of
fancy.
“Don’t I think what?
I really didn’t hear what you said, Madelene,”
he admitted guiltily.
Madelene experienced a hot flash of indignation.
“Do you mean to say you’ve
allowed me to talk all this time and you haven’t
heard a word I’ve said?” she demanded in
a thin, rasping voice.
“I’m sorry,” murmured Frederick.
“Pardon.”
Then the girl lapsed into a sulky
silence, and Frederick, too sick at heart, too indifferent
to her likes and dislikes to care, did not encourage
her to repeat what she had said.
It was perhaps a week later when young
Mrs. Graves felt her first real jealousy. In
the happiness of her hasty marriage, she had almost
forgotten the story told her by the gossips of Ithaca.
It was only when her husband’s eyes were encircled
and darkened by a far-away expression that Tess entered
her mind. But even then, after a glance in the
mirror, she dismissed the little singer contemptuously.
One morning just before breakfast,
they were standing under the trees. On Frederick’s
face was that dreary look of discontent. Madelene
contemplated him steadily. She had watched and
studied, but had not yet solved the problem that occupied
her mind. Was the squatter girl the obstacle?
she wondered. It didn’t seem possible.
Frederick was so fastidious. Why, the girl could
scarcely speak a word of good English! But it
would do no harm to make sure. She decided to
speak to her husband of Tessibel Skinner. But
how?
Frederick owed her some consideration,
and Madelene deeply desired he should be more attentive
to her. Suddenly she laughed aloud. Frederick
turned, the cloud partially lifting from his eyes.
“A happy thought, I dare say?” he inquired.
“Not very,” answered Madelene
flippantly. “I was wondering how long it
would take that Skinner girl to earn enough money to
pay for a trip like this.”
Had a bomb gone off in his face, Frederick
couldn’t have been more appalled. His brows
drew together in a dark frown; his face grew livid
and tensely lined. Madelene noted the effect of
her words. Her suspicion was confirmed, the
problem solved! It was the squatter girl who stood
between her and her husband!
“I forbid you,” said Frederick
in a low, angry voice, “ever to mention that
name again.”
Then he whirled about and walked away
through the trees. In alarm, Madelene sped after
him.
“Frederick!” she implored.
“I’m awfully sorry I said that....
I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
He shook her from his arm.
“Very well,” he replied
savagely, “but just please don’t speak
of her again.”
Tears blinded the girl’s vision....
An enraged feeling rose in her heart. Never in
all her spoiled life had any one spoken to her in such
a way. If Ebenezer had been there, Frederick
would never have dared!
By this time, having stood mute for
several seconds, she was thoroughly indignant.
This was her first real conflict with Frederick, and
she began to feel ill as well as incensed.
“It’s dreadfully disagreeable
of you to get angry over a little thing like that,”
she said impetuously. “One would think you
loved that girl and not me. I was told lots of
times you were crazy about her, but of course, ”
She hesitated now. She wanted
to say cruel things about the squatter girl back in
Ithaca, but she dared not. She was overwrought
with anger, but her husband’s threatening face
forced her to silence.
“Are you determined to keep
harping on a subject I wish to forget?” His
words carried an ominous meaning, which quickened her
already awakened jealousy. Determined to probe
the matter to the bottom she demanded.
“Why should you wish to forget
her? Does she disturb your memory as much as
that?”
“Perhaps,” replied Frederick gloomily.
He saw the danger involved in the
discussion and curbed his tongue. Then he left
her and walked quickly into the house. Madelene
followed, angry and rebellious, and found him seated
at the table, white-faced, with the morning mail unnoticed
before him. Still enraged, she glanced over the
letters indifferently.
“They’re all for me with
the exception of one,” she said sulkily, “and
it’s an Ithaca letter.... May I open it?”
Frederick took it from her and looked
at the envelope. His name was staring back at
him as if every cramped letter were an accusing eye,
and the writing was in the hand of Tessibel Skinner!
He studied it a minute....
“You have mail of your own to
read, my dear,” he said quite kindly. “Let’s
have breakfast.”
When during the morning Frederick
found a moment to himself, he took from his pocket
the letter that had been searing through his clothing
to his heart. Gazing upon it, he shook as if
he had the ague. Trembling hands held it up to
the light. Several times he turned it over.
What had Tess written to him? Had she told him,
as he had her, that she loved him better than all
the rest of the world? He uttered a desperate
ejaculation and stretched out his arms. If he
could have spanned the world that separated them,
he would have dragged her to him by the terrible force
of his desire. Again he turned the letter over.
Something kept him from ripping it
open. He longed to delay the happiness of reading
it, and while he waited, he lifted it to his lips
and passionately kissed the crude writing. It
ran up hill a little, but that only made him smile
and love it the more. It brought memories of
past joys, memories of Tessibel’s endeavor to
learn. Poor little child! Suddenly he slipped
the paper knife into the envelope and slowly dragged
it across the top.... Then he inserted his fingers
and pulled out the bill he had sent her.
In a sudden passion he looked frantically into the
empty envelope.... Nothing!... Absolute emptiness!
The money fluttered from his hand
to the floor, where it lay like a sentient thing,
staring back as if mocking him. He stood half-blindly
gazing upon it. When he looked more closely, he
stooped and picked it up. There written across
its yellow back was the one little line,
“Darlin’, I air a prayin’ for you
every day. Tessibel.”
In a storm of remorse, he collapsed
to the floor with his face in his hands.