Helen smiled indulgently. This wee bit of femininity was the one creature who could keep her father amiable from one end of the day to the other.
"My girlie wants to eat with daddy?" Ebenezer went on, his face buried in the flaxen hair. "Then she shall."
"Elsie wants to eat with daddy," parroted the child.
"That's why I say she's spoiled," offered Helen, shrugging her shoulders. "Now her place is in the nursery, but what can I do?"
"Her place is right here on her father's knee," replied Waldstricker, "where I always want her, bless her."
During the discussion about the child, Frederick got up from the table and went out of doors.
As he left the dining room, he had no definite plan; but no sooner had he walked across the front lawn and taken a view of the long road--the way that led to Tessibel and his boy--than his feet, seemingly of their own volition, led him along the grassy path up the hill. If he could only see the two of them without his family knowing! One kiss from his boy, one loving look from Tess, and he felt he could start again to live!
To the sick man the distance was considerable, but minute by minute he grew stronger, restored by revivifying hope. An hour, only a short hour, only a little distance further and he would be at the lake; in sight of the willow trees around the shack. He went down the hill to the top of the lane. Here Tess had come to him that long ago night he'd married her. Every familiar spot stung him with bitter memories of the squatter girl.
He went slowly down and stopped under a great tree opposite the house where he'd formerly lived. Young had the place now, and Tess lived there and his boy. Ebenezer's insinuations hurt him. His jealousy of Deforrest revived. Remorse for his criminal selfishness burned him, an unquenchable fire.
Shaken by conflicting emotions, he went on by the deserted hut under the willows to the lake shore. He'd go out to the ragged rocks and rest, and then he'd try to see Tessibel and the boy.
He came to the great gray slab where he'd left Tess the night he told her of Madelene, and sank down in the shade of the overhanging rocks.
Screened from the blazing sun, his hot skin rejoiced in the coolness of the damp grotto. With unseeing eyes, he glanced out over the glassy mirror of the placid water. Unheeding, he heard none of the bird-calls, and paid no attention to the intimate little sounds of the lake side.
What should he do when at last he saw Tess and the boy? Would he dare claim them?
Suddenly, something made him sit up straight and listen. It was a child's laugh. He got up and stepped behind the hanging shoulder of the rock and waited. He looked cautiously around the jutting-rock, and there, racing toward him through the brilliant sunshine, was a little boy, a handsome, sturdy boy, and bounding along beside him, Kennedy's bulldog.
Then, instinctively, Frederick knew this was his son. He would speak, he must speak! He stepped from his hiding place and came face to face with the little fellow and his companion. The dog, uttering a great growl, crouched on his hind quarters in rage. A stranger had ventured upon ground belonging to his dear ones, and Pete was demanding, in his doglike way, the reason thereof.
"Pete, Pete," called Frederick, soothingly, and Pete dropped his head and came forward, as if to a friend. The boy stood, feet wide-spread, staring fixedly at this man whom Pete knew and he had never seen before.
Frederick patted the dog and smiled ingratiatingly at the boy. He was looking down into a pair of dark eyes, eyes like his own, into the grave face of a child asking why he was there.
The dog nuzzled the man's hand and fawned upon him, making in his throat little noises of welcome.
Frederick held out his other hand.
"Won't you come, too, little boy?"
"I can't!... Mummy wouldn't like it. I don't know you."
"She won't mind, I'm sure," replied Frederick, his heart beating so hard he could hear it. "Pete knows me, and I know your mother. Her name is--is Tessibel.... Isn't it?"
The man could scarcely get that beloved name from between his lips.
"Yes, Tessibel is my mummy," said the boy. "You know my mummy, and my Uncle Forrie?"
"Yes," assented Frederick, sitting down. "Come here and let me tell you all about your mother's beautiful curls."
Boy hitched nearer the tall stranger. He was drawn in some unknown way toward this man whose arms were out-held to him. Then, suddenly, he walked straight into them, his eyes still very grave, still very questioning.
The moment Frederick touched the little one he felt the world was his.
He forgot Waldstricker, forgot Madelene, forgot everything, but his elf-like son within his cuddling grasp. He touched his lips to the little face.
"Oh, I've wanted to see you so," he murmured.
"Why didn't you come, then?" demanded Boy.
"I was away," said Frederick.
"My Uncle Forrie goes away, too. When he came home yesterday, he brought me a beautiful engine--it goes on wheels. I love my Uncle Forrie."
"Could you love me, dear?" breathed Frederick.
"Yes, oh, yes. I love everybody. God, too. So does Mummy. And Deacon, he's my owl, and An--"
Boy's lips closed on the nearly spoken word. He suddenly remembered the daily lessons he'd had from his mother never to mention Andy's name to any one; that, if he did, a big man would come and take his darling Andy away. No, Boy couldn't stand that. He wouldn't say anything about Andy, not even to this strangely attractive man.
"What were you going to say, boy?" petitioned Frederick.
"Nothin'. Just nothin'."
And the father was satisfied, satisfied not to talk, glad to have his son so heavenly close. The long years of his exile were slipping away.
The nerve-racking yearning of tedious days and yet more tedious, sleepless nights was partially quieted. His son, so long, merely, the pulseless image of his dreams, had become a breathing reality, and the child was the living link between its mother and himself. The longer he held the little one, the more intense grew his desire for Tess. At length this demand urged him to ask,
"Where's your mother?"
"She's home, just up there in that house. She's working."
"You haven't any father?" the man queried at last. A lump rose in his throat and choked him. What had the child been told about him, he wondered.
"Oh, yes, I have somewhere's, but I got another up in the sky, away back in the clouds, Mummy says. And he's awful glad when I'm good, and he cries like anything, when I'm bad. So I try to be good, and sometimes I'm gooder'n gold."
To hear a name from the child's lips, the name he had dreamed of, was the one thought filling his mind.
"Let me be your father?" he said, his voice breaking.
"Sure I will," he answered. "There's my mummy, now!"
Around the jutting rocks came Tess. The red curls hung about her shoulders like a vivid velvet mantle, just as Frederick always dreamed of them. But her figure, in her simple morning dress, was fuller and more womanly. Upon her face was an expression of serenity and peace. Ah!
The woman was even more lovely than the girl he'd married, and to the love-hungry man, on the great, gray slab of rock, she was infinitely desirable.
"Mummy," shouted the child, joyfully, "I've found a daddy for us. Petey and me found him."
Tess stared at the man, undisguised horror and dismay written in her eyes. She'd not seen Frederick since that day he'd urged her to marry Sandy Letts to escape Waldstricker, whose hands, he'd described, as stronger'n God's. She'd hardly heard of him after he and Madelene had gone West. She had long ago ceased to feel any desire for him. Indeed, she scarcely thought of him. During the full happy years since she left the shanty, under the loving tuition of Deforrest Young, the disgrace this man on the rocks had heaped upon her had covered its claws and lacerated her no more. But, at the sight of him, visions of the past reared themselves in her imaginative mind. Memory, suddenly, flung all the cruelties of his treatment of her into a kaleidoscopic jumble, and meddlesome fear presented numerous suggestions of calamity. A moment she stood as if turned to stone.
"Come on, come," Boy cried, tugging at her dress.
Frederick struggled to his feet, and held out his arms.