"I air comin', Daddy."
She stumbled through the night back to the shanty, her secret locked in her breast.
CHAPTER XVII
TESSIBEL'S PRAYER
For four lingering days, hour after hour, Tess of the Storm Country waited for Frederick. He had promised to return, and so each day when her household duties were completed, she hastened to the ragged rocks at the edge of the forest. But her eager hope passed into sick apprehension as the lingering twilights of successive evenings deepened into the darkness of night and he did not come. Tess grew paler and more dejected, so that even Daddy Skinner's fading sight remarked it.
"Ain't feelin' quite pert, be ye, brat?" he inquired.
Tessibel started nervously.... It was habitual now if any one spoke to her quickly.
"I ain't sick, daddy," she assured him. "I guess it air the hot day makin' me tired."
"Nuff to bake the hair off a cast iron pup," observed Andy, from the garret hole.
"I'll bet it air some warm up there, pal," sympathized Orn.
"Ye bet yer neck," agreed Andy cheerfully.
Then Tessibel hopefully started for the rocks in search of the sunshine which had left her life with Frederick four days before.
Deforrest Young, too, had noticed the change in his little friend ...
had observed her extreme nervousness and unusual shyness when she recited her lessons. Today, moreover, she had not appeared at all. Late that afternoon he called at the Skinner home to find the reason.
Daddy Skinner occupied his customary seat on the bench in front of the shack, watching with listless, dull eyes the restless waves. He greeted the professor with his twisted smile, as the latter called to him from the lane.
"Where's Tessibel?" asked Young, after they had remarked upon the weather and the health of themselves and their friends.
"Well, I don't know just where she air gone," replied Orn, "but seems to me's if she went off toward the rocks. Shall I call her, eh?"
"No, no! I'll go look for her," answered the professor.
He found her sitting pensively on the rocks, her hand resting on the head of Kennedy's brindle bulldog, and in the moment he stood there gazing at the girl, he felt unaccountably saddened.
When Tess became conscious of his presence, she gave him a shadowy, fleeting smile, which vanished almost before it had fully appeared. Her eyes were heavy and dim with unshed tears, and she was as pale as the mist clouds that drifted slowly across the sky and away over the eastern hills. Perhaps it was the melancholy of that smile appealing to his deep love that made Professor Young hurry toward her, holding out his hands.
Pete greeted him with a welcoming whine, wagging his whole body, in default of the tail he had lost.
"Your father said you were here, child," Young said in a low voice. "May I sit down?"
Tess acquiesced by a nod of her head, and he settled himself comfortably on the rock. Crouching down on the other side of her, Pete put his head in the girl's lap. Her hands rested upon his broad back, while the man played with him, pulling and poking his heavy jowls and hanging lips, and the dog uttered delighted growls at the attention.
"I'm afraid my little girl hasn't been quite well of late," Young began presently.
The red-brown eyes fell and a flushed, lovely face bent beneath a shower of bronze curls.
"Has she?" he queried again, with tender sympathy.
Lower and lower bent the auburn head until the man could no longer see the troubled face.
"I knew there was something wrong with my little pupil," said he softly.
"Now tell me about it."
"I can't," whispered Tessibel. "I ain't able."
Oh, if she only could! At that moment it seemed that all of her troubles would take wing if this thoughtful, solemn-eyed friend shared the burden of her heart. When she lifted her face again and repeated, "I can't tell," Deforrest Young placed his fingers under her chin and kept his eyes steadily upon her until the transparent lids drooped and the long lashes rested on her cheeks.
"Is it something you'll tell me some time?" he asked.
Tessibel shuddered, and made no reply, although there was a slight negative shake of her head.
"Then I'll ask you another question, Tess dear," insisted Young. "Isn't there something I can do to help you?"
Tessibel shook her head, a violent blush suffusing her face. Tears gathered thickly in the brown eyes. To see her thus was agony.... His great love sought to share and bear her suffering, yet he could not force her confidence.
"I'm going to exact one promise from you," he continued, much moved.
"I'll be awful glad to promise what I can," she murmured humbly.
"Then it's this." Compassion for her abject misery was expressed in the very tones of his deep voice. "If at any time in the future you need me ... for anything, no matter what, will you--will you come to me and tell me? Will you let me help you?"
Impetuous appreciation of his sincerity caused Tess to touch his arm.
"Nobody were ever so good to me in all the world," she said brokenly.
Never had Deforrest Young so keenly desired the right to care for her as he did then. The impulse to take her in his arms, to tell her, as he had once, that he loved her, almost unnerved him; but he could not. Tess seemed of late to have grown away from him, to be no longer the light-hearted child she had been, even in that dark time when her father was in prison.
"You haven't promised me yet, Tessibel," he insisted seriously.
"I promise ... sure!" said Tess, swallowing hard.
In the silence that followed, Pete, as though conscious that all was not well with his adored mistress, rose on his haunches, and tried to kiss her face. The dog's sympathy was sweet. She wanted Frederick so badly! Oh, she thought, if she dared ask Deforrest. She would! She could not bear another night of this uncertainty, this suspense.
"I air wishin' to ask ye somethin'," she stammered. "Don't tell anybody, will ye?"
"Certainly not," declared Young, quickly.
"Do ye--do ye happen to know where--the student Graves air--today?"
Young considered the long curls falling over each shoulder and the anxious eyes. She was staring fixedly at him. Was the student somehow connected with her present distress? Frederick's marked attention of late to Madelene Waldstricker was, he supposed, generally known. He had not seen him with Tess for a long time. He had concluded the young man's interest in the squatter girl had passed. Was it possible that Tess still cared for him?