TESSIBEL’S DISCOVERY
Frederick stood for one tense minute
watching Tessibel hurry over the rocks. Many
times he had pictured this interview, ... even framed
the sentences in which he would express his remorse
and win her forgiveness. It had never occurred
to his brooding thought that the years of absence
which had increased his own ardor, might have lessened
the squatter girl’s regard for him. But
the meeting wasn’t working out as he’d
planned. He’d been almost paralyzed at her
coming, speechless except for the few halting words
of entreaty. Now, it dawned upon him that she
was going away without a word, that she was taking
the child with her, and that he might never see either
of them again.
“Tessibel,” he called
hoarsely. “Stop, or ... I’ll
tell Waldstricker.”
His words brought Tess to a standstill.
The threat filled her with fear, for well she knew
the elder’s power. Still keeping hold of
Boy’s hand, she retraced her steps.
“Why did you come here?”
she asked, fear and distaste making her voice cold
and hard.
“To see you and ... him.”
Frederick pointed to the child, who was now hiding
behind his mother’s skirts.
“Well, now you’ve seen us.”
Frederick stared at the speaker, his
lips pursed with surprise. Was this Tess Skinner,
the squatter girl? The voice was hers, but its
tones were resonant with contempt! Face and form
he recognized, but not the new poise, the dignity
of her motherhood. The brown eyes he remembered
as lighted by love, now expressed unutterable abhorrence.
“Tess, dear Tess,” he pleaded, “let
me talk to you.”
Tess stooped over the child, rearranged
his little waist, and pushed back the curly hair.
“Boy go home now, and mother’ll come directly.”
She kissed the bewildered upturned
face. The baby couldn’t understand what
was going on.... Mummy seemed sad, and the nice
man, who was so white and sick looking, had spoken
angrily to his beautiful mother.
“I’d rather stay wif you,” he lisped.
“But Mummy asks Boy to go,”
said Tess, and to the dog, “Here, Petey, go
home with Boy.”
Placing his hand on the dog’s
collar, the child turned slowly and unwillingly toward
the house. He’d taken but a few halting
steps along the rocks before Frederick’s voice
rang out.
“Tess, Tessibel, let me hold
him ... kiss him once more. Don’t shake
your head! Don’t say no! I’ve
wanted him so all these years. Oh, Tessibel!”
His pitiful pleading touched the listening
girl. At last, face to face with the man whose
cowardice and selfishness had brought her so much
trouble, her one desire was to escape ... to run away.
But he was begging for her to be kind, to allow him
to hold her baby!... What right had he to kiss
him?... To be sure, the child was his, too, but but
“Oh, No! No! I don’t
want you to!” she cried, protesting. “You
can never be anything in his life. Why don’t
you let us alone?”
Frederick had walked very close to
her side by this time, his white face twitching.
“I must kiss him once more,” he persisted.
Tess turned to the loitering child.
She could see that at a word of assent from her, Boy
would rush into the outstretched arms Frederick held
toward him. The mother, with a twist at her heart,
recognized the tie which drew together this man and
her son. A dreadful fear clutched her. Would
Frederick do as he had threatened, hoping that he might
thus come in contact with his son? Her mind flew
to Deforrest Young.... He must never know the
name of Boy’s father. She could feel the
blood coursing madly through her temples, and her
head ached dully.
Nevertheless, she went back and took
hold of the child’s hand.
“You may kiss the gentleman
... good-bye,” she said in a constrained voice.
“The pretty man was goin’
to be my faver,” said the child, pleadingly.
“I want a daddy awful bad.”
“Yes, yes, I know,” Tess
returned tremulously. “Now hurry, dear,
and then run home.”
Only too gladly did the child jump
away and bound into his father’s extended arms.
“Mummy says I has to go home,” he whispered.
While the tall man silently caressed
the dark curls of her boy, Tess of the Storm Country
endured such pain as she’d never known before.
The mutual attraction between the two, so differently
related to her, seemed anomalous and impossible.
Frederick unwillingly allowed the
child to slip to the rocks and after Tess’d
started Boy and the dog on their homeward way, she
stood before him, her lips quivering. She knew
he, too, suffered, and she waited quietly as he dried
his eyes and recovered his choking breath.
She was sorry he’d come.
She’d hoped never to see him again. But,
now, she must be assured that he would continue the
deception in regard to the past. As anxious as
she had once been to have him claim her as his own,
to tell the world she belonged to him, she, now, wanted
to keep silent.
“It was useless for you to come,” she
chided presently.
Frederick made an impetuous movement with his hand.
“Oh, no, it wasn’t....
Won’t you let me atone, let me make up for all
the things I’ve done ... and haven’t done?
I want oh, how I want ”
“It’s too late,” interrupted the
girl. “Much too late.”
“But, Tessibel, I know you love
me. You can’t have forgotten. And I’ll
make the boy love me. He does now! Didn’t
you hear him call me father?”
“He has no father,” she
responded coldly. “And I I haven’t
any love left for you.”
The words were low but distinctly spoken.
“I don’t believe it!...
I won’t!... You shall love me!... I
won’t have you with Young. ... He can see
my boy every day ... be with you hour after hour....
I hate him!”
“You hate him!” Tessibel’s
eyes burned and flashed with indignation. “When
you should be grateful, because he’s done everything
you should’ve done.... You’ve said
all you can. You can’t make up to us ...
the baby and me.... Won’t you please go?”
Frederick felt he was losing his reason.
The love he’d nursed in secret, the passion
that had wasted him away, shook his frail frame.
He wouldn’t be denied!
“God help me, I won’t
go!” he gritted, the words carrying on his thought.
With one sweep of his arms, he encircled
Tess in a close embrace. She made frantic efforts
to free herself, but Frederick, strong under the emotion
consuming him, only hugged her closer.
“Let me go!” Tess almost
screamed the words. Then, her voice changed to
a tense whisper, hoarse with loathing. “How
can ... oh, how dare you!”
But she could not protect her face
from the searching mouth. Violently, Frederick
twisted her around and for one moment his lips fell
upon hers. Deep groans came between the kisses
he thrust upon her.
A moment later the sound of advancing
steps lifted Frederick’s face from hers.
Muttering an oath, he threw Tess forcibly from him,
for there in the path was Ebenezer Waldstricker, about
whose sagging lips played a supercilious smile.
“So I was not mistaken,”
he sneered, looking his brother-in-law full in the
face. “If Madelene doesn’t care, I
do.”
“Well?” growled Frederick.
“You’ve found me here, now do what you
cursed want to, I don’t care.”
“Perhaps you’ll care before
I finish,” said the elder grimly, and he included
the girl in his baleful glare. “I think
you both will.”
Tessibel’s mind flew to Boy.
What could these two men do to her darling?
She went forward toward Waldstricker,
her eyes raised appealingly to his.
“Won’t you make Mr....
Mr. Graves keep away?” she petitioned. “I
don’t want him here.”
“Yes, it looked, when I came
around the corner, as if you didn’t want him,
miss,” scoffed the elder. Then he laughed,
and the laugh cut the throbbing girl to the quick.
“Very much as if you wanted him to go....
Now, then, sir, what’s this girl to you?”
“I’m nothing to him, Mr.
Waldstricker,” she asserted, without giving
Frederick a chance to speak.
Graves still felt that maddening passion,
that demand for his own.
“She lies,” he said in low tones.
Tess turned to him passionately.
“You know what I say is true.
You came here without my desiring it! I don’t
want anything to do with you.... Haven’t
you both harmed me enough?... Do I ever come
around and hurt you?... Why don’t you tell
the truth?”
“All right,” he shouted,
his irritation at her resistance overcoming his fear
of the elder. “If you want the truth, here
it is. I’m ”
“Don’t! Don’t!” screamed
Tess.
“Ah!” hissed Waldstricker’s lips
like a jet of steam.
He’d caught within his powerful
net the girl he wanted. He’d bring to light
the secret that’d preyed upon his sister’s
spirits so long. For the squatter girl he felt
no pity, for Frederick only contempt. They were
both weaklings that he’d sweep away in his pursuit
of Young and the squatters.
“He’s sick,” said
Tessibel, trying to discount Frederick’s confession.
“Your brother-in-law’s sick. You can
see that!... He thinks ... why, he’s mad!”
“I’m not mad!” Frederick
turned upon her fiercely, then back to the big man
whose eagerness bent him forward. “I’m
the father of her boy.”
The blood left Waldstricker’s
face, so that it looked like carved marble.
“So ’tis so,” he
got out, “and you admit it, you cur, and you
dared to marry my sister? Now, as God lets me
live, you’ll both suffer for this, and as for
you, Tessibel Skinner, look out for that bastard of
yours!”
The squatter girl uttered a heart-broken
cry, and turning, fled around the rocks into the lane
and up the hill.