DEFORREST DECIDES
Deforrest Young sat alone in his bachelor
apartments, which he’d obtained after the quarrel
with Waldstricker over the churching of Tessibel Skinner.
He was in Ithaca in response to a letter from Mrs.
Waldstricker, stating that she would meet him in his
rooms this afternoon.
His mind was busily at work with many
problems. For the past week he had had no word
from Tessibel Skinner. Her silence was significant.
Mischief-making anxiety, which always pictures the
worst side of a situation, tormented him cruelly.
He hoped Helen might have news from the shanty by
the lakeside.
When Mrs. Waldstricker finally appeared,
his first impulse was to ask about the squatter girl,
but the troubled expression of his sister’s
face checked the question on his lips. He drew
her tenderly into his arms, and attempted to comfort
her with reassuring pats and caresses.
“You shouldn’t have ventured
out, dear,” he chided. “Sit down here!...
There! Now tell me what’s the matter.”
“I’m so miserable, Forrie,”
she wept. “I can’t do a thing with
Ebenezer.... He’s in such a state of temper
all the time!”
“Don’t try to talk for
a moment, dearest,” soothed the lawyer, much
moved.
“But I must I want
to! It seems as if my whole life has been upset
in some unaccountable manner. And it isn’t
any better since Frederick and Madelene went away.
I was in hopes after they’d gone, I might have
some peace.”
“Is it still ”
Young’s inquiry was broken off by his auditor’s
exclamation.
“Yes, it’s Tessibel Skinner!
He seems perfectly possessed about her. I can’t
understand why, either. I always tell him she’s
nothing to us. He has even gone so far Oh,
Forrie, dear, tell me it isn’t so!”
“What isn’t so?” asked Deforrest,
puzzled.
“Ebenezer says he
says you’d marry ” The inquisitor’s
courage oozed away before she finished her sentence.
Her brother turned and strode up and down the room,
while Mrs. Waldstricker’s eyes, full of questioning
anguish, followed his tall figure.
“I suppose he said I’d
marry Tessibel Skinner. Is that it?” His
voice was low, deep and intense. Wheeling about
he looked across at his sister.
She got up from her chair and went
to him. Her desire to placate her brother supported
her determination to know his precise attitude toward
her husband. She placed her hand on his arm and
replied hurriedly,
“Yes, that’s what he said.
I told him it was no such thing; that you did what
you could for the lonely child without a thought ”
Deforrest’s hand closed over the speaker’s.
“You were mistaken, then,”
he asserted quietly. “I’d have married
Tessibel Skinner long ago, if she’d consented.”
“Forrie, dear, you wouldn’t!
You couldn’t! Especially now! Oh, darling,
you’re all I’ve got in the world....
Can’t you see it would break my heart?”
“You needn’t worry about
it, sister mine.” A sad shake of his head
emphasized his reply. “Tess won’t
marry me. She knows I love her and want to care
for her, but she won’t let me. She sticks
there in that wretched shanty, alone with her trouble
and refuses every offer I make. Her courage is
splendid. I love her for it, although I’m
torn to pieces with anxiety.”
“And I never knew,” Helen
mused. “I thought I thought it
was just you were charitable and kind.”
“No, it wasn’t that.
I’ve loved her since the first, but she couldn’t
love me, that’s all. Then this awful thing
happened.” The deepening lines in his face
and his twitching lips revealed the intensity of his
solicitude. “Have you heard anything about
her?”
“Yes. A man by the name
of Brewer, one of the squatters, brought me a message.”
“Yes, yes!” interrupted the man, very
impatiently.
Helen pressed her face against his
arm. She divined the pain he was suffering.
How was she to soften the hurt her answer would inflict,
even her loving heart couldn’t imagine.
“She has a baby boy,” she whispered.
“God!” groaned Deforrest.
“The baby was born a few days
ago, and every day the squatter’s been at our
house, ostensibly to sell something, but really to
tell me about her.... I saw him this morning,
and he says they are both doing nicely. Forrie,
don’t you think ” There was
something in her brother’s stricken face that
broke off her question.
“Don’t I think what, dear?”
He got up and resumed his restless pacing up and down.
“Oh, I want you to be happy.
Couldn’t you possibly forget you’ve
loved her?”
“No, I can’t,” and
he came to a standstill in front of her. “I
might as well be truthful, dear, as long as you know
this much.... If Tessibel will marry me, I’ll
take her and the boy ” he choked,
paused a few seconds and went on. “I’ll
take them both away from Ithaca. It’s the
only happiness in store for me, and I believe I could
make her happy, too.”
“I can’t bear the thought
of it,” cried Helen, desperately. “Please
don’t think I’m meddling, but has she told
you anything?”
“No. Some one has mistreated
the child shamefully, but she won’t tell anything
about it.”
“Poor little girl!” sighed
Mrs. Waldstricker. “How I wish now I’d
done more for her! I might have, you know.”
The lawyer raised his hand deprecatingly.
“What’s past, is done
with,” he answered gloomily. “I don’t
know how much she’ll let me do, but I am going
to help her in spite of herself. That shack by
the lake is an awful place. I swear I’ll
give her decent surroundings and a chance to live....
I’m going down today.”
“But, Forrie,” his sister
objected, “I want you to come home with me to
dinner. You haven’t been to our house in
a long time, not since the night you came from Binghamton
and went off to Skinner’s in the storm.”
“Helen, dear,” Young explained,
apologetically, “I can’t come to your
house as long as Ebenezer feels toward me the way he
does. You see, don’t you?”
“Oh, I suppose I do, but I just
can’t stand it. Eb has acted badly and
tried to shoulder it all off on you. But can’t
you overlook it, honey?”
“Why, Helen, how can I?
I don’t feel any too pleasant toward him, and
he doesn’t want to be friends, either.
He pays no attention to my wishes but tries to ride
rough shod over me. He regards my interest in
Tess as a personal affront. He persecutes her
because he thinks he’s annoying me. But
there, don’t cry any more. You’ll
only make yourself ill! I think you ought to
go home and lie down. You’ve some one else
besides yourself and Eb to think of, dear girl.”
“I know it,” she sobbed,
“and I’ve tried to show Ebenezer how happy
we’d be if he’d forget those people down
the lake and let you do what you want to. Sometimes
I think he’s lost his mind. I really don’t
know what to do.”
Helen rose from her chair.
“Nor do I,” replied Young.
“But, Deforrest, don’t
you think if you talked to Ebenezer, he’d see
things differently?”
“I’m afraid not,”
said he, adjusting Mrs. Waldstricker’s furs.
“You see, Eb’s always had his own way
in most things, and I can’t take any other position
about Tess, and I won’t.”
“I wish you would come home
with me,” sighed Mrs. Waldstricker, when her
brother was tucking the sleigh robe about her.
“I’m sorry I can’t,
Helen. You’ll hear from me soon,”
he promised, as the sleigh moved away.
Half an hour later found the lawyer
astride his horse, his fine face clouded in sorrowful
thought.
He cantered along the hard packed
road. Here he noted the shimmering veil of ice
over some brooklet waterfall in a cleft of the hill
side. There the precise punctures of a rabbit
track dotted the level snow of the woods. Beyond
a herd of cattle standing placidly around a straw-stack
blew clouds of vapor from their steaming nostrils.
The silent beauty of the hills, glistening in their
frosty covering, set off to advantage the silvery
sheen of the ice-laden lake. Through the trees,
he caught occasional glimpses of East Hill winter-wrapped
in its white mantle. Just north of the city shone
the resplendence of the ice-cloaked rocks and waterfalls
of Fall Creek Gorge, like a massive garniture emblazoned
on the mantle’s skirt. The unbroken calm
of the quiet winter afternoon touched the rider’s
overwrought heart and awoke in him a sense of the
peace and the dignity of the visible creation.
The untroubled serenity and repose which all nature
presented, soothed his troubled spirit. Something
of the unruffled confidence expressed by Tessibel,
when he’d last left her, penetrated his revery.
Her words, “I know Love’s everywhere the
hull time,” had comforted him many times, and
now they came again upon their healing mission.
Tessibel’s baby was one week
old. This afternoon she lay partially dressed
on the cot while Andy was plying his noiseless way
about the kitchen. He stopped a moment on the
journey to the stove and smiled at the young mother.
“I bet he comes today,”
said he. “You’d better be gettin’
that sorrow offen yer face, brat.”
“I ain’t right sorryful,
Andy,” she answered. “I was jest thinkin’
of all the good things Mr. Young air done for me,
an’ hopin’ he’d get you free, too.
Mebbe when Spring comes, Andy, you can run in the woods
with me!”
“I air prayin’ for it every day, kid.”
“When you ain’t afeered
of Auburn any more,” said the girl, after a
moment’s silence, “we’ll go away
from this shanty, an’ mebbe we can both work.
That’d be nice, eh, Andy?”
“Anything’d be nice if
I air with you, an’ the baby, brat,” he
choked.
“Oh, you’ll stay with
us all right,” smiled Tessibel. “Daddy
left me to take care of you an’ I air goin’
to do it!”
Conversation lagged for a time.
The dwarf poured out a cup of tea, and placed a large
slice of bread on a plate with some potatoes and meat.
These he took to the bedside.
“I don’t know what we’d
a done without Jake,” he observed, drawing his
chair to the table.
Tess was beginning to eat a late dinner.
Between bites she smilingly assented.
“Jake air a awful good man....
Andy, ain’t the baby stirrin’ on the chair?”
The dwarf went to the improvised cradle
and carefully drew away the blanket.
“He wants turnin’ on ’is
other side, that air all.” With deft fingers
he rolled the baby boy over, placed the sugar rag
between the twisting lips, and went back to his dinner.
“Jake was tellin’ me this
morning,” she continued, “Sandy Letts got
three years and a half in Auburn.”
“That’ll be dreadful for
him,” the little man responded, thinking of his
lonely years in prison. “But body-snatchin’
air an awful thing. Reckon he won’t try
it again when he gets out.... Eh, kid?”
“At any rate, he won’t
be after us for a while,” she replied, sighing
contentedly.
“Well, I must slick up a bit,”
Andy announced presently. “I want to get
the shanty fixed. Young’d think I weren’t
doin’ right by ye, if ’tain’t red
up, brat.”
“When I tell him all ye’ve
done,” she smiled affectionately, “I bet
he’ll be praisin’ ye.”
Then they were silent until the little
man’d gathered and washed the few dishes.