The Secret of the Storm Country
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Grace Miller White >> The Secret of the Storm Country
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25 [Illustration: "I CAST THE FIRST STONE," HE SAID SWIFTLY]
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THE SECRET OF THE STORM COUNTRY
BY
GRACE MILLER WHITE
AUTHOR OF
TESS OF THE STORM COUNTRY,
ROSE O' PARADISE, ETC.
ILLUSTRATED BY
LUCIUS W. HITCHCOCK
NEW YORK
GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS
Made in the United States of America
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Copyright, 1916, by
Woman's World.
Copyright, 1917, by
Woman's World.
Copyright, 1917, by
The H. K. Fly Company.
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I Lovingly Dedicate this Book to
Lil And Arthur Miller
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CONTENTS
Chapter Page
I. The Squatter Folk 9
II. The Coming of Andy Bishop 16
III. Tessibel Meets Waldstricker 25
IV. Tess and Frederick 33
V. A Gossip With "Satisfied" 38
VI. Waldstricker Makes a Proposal 44
VII. Waldstricker and Mother Moll 53
VIII. Tessibel's Marriage 58
IX. The Musicale 64
X. A Victim of Circumstances 72
XI. Frederick Intimidated 80
XII. Making Ready for the Warden 86
XIII. Sandy Proposes to Tess 94
XIV. The Warden's Coming 99
XV. The Search 105
XVI. Tessibel's Secret 112
XVII. Tessibel's Prayer 124
XVIII. A Letter 131
XIX. Its Answer 137
XX. Madelene Complains to Ebenezer 144
XXI. The End of the Honeymoon 149
XXII. The Repudiation 152
XXIII. The Quarrel 159
XXIV. Waldstricker Interferes 164
XXV. The Summons 168
XXVI. The Churching 171
XXVII. Daddy Skinner's Death 182
XXVIII. Young Discovers Andy 189
XXIX. The Vigil 195
XXX. Sandy Comes to Grief 202
XXXI. Waldstricker's Threat 207
XXXII. Helen's Message 211
XXXIII. Hands Stronger Than Waldstricker's 215
XXXIV. Love Air Everywhere the Hull Time 222
XXXV. Boy Skinner 227
XXXVI. Deforrest Decides 232
XXXVII. The New Home 238
XXXVIII. Dinner at Waldstricker's 244
XXXIX. Father and Son 250
XL. Husband and Wife 256
XLI. Tessibel's Discovery 261
XLII. A Man's Arm at the Window 266
XLIII. Sandy's Job 271
XLIV. Sandy's Visit 276
XLV. Andy Vindicated 279
XLVI. Sandy's Courting 286
XLVII. Waldstricker's Anger 294
XLVIII. The Sins of the Parents 302
XLIX. Tessibel and Elsie 311
L. Tessibel's Vision 321
LI. The Christmas Guest 328
LII. The Storm 334
LIII. The Happy Day 339
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ILLUSTRATIONS.
Page.
"I cast the first stone," he said swiftly Frontispiece
"I will," gritted Waldstricker, in spite of himself interested
in the old woman's revelations 30
"I was wonderin' little one, when you say your prayers,
if you'd pipe one for me?" 111
"Hush!" he cried, "Haven't you any heart?" 157
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CHAPTER I
THE SQUATTER FOLK
The lazy warmth of a May afternoon, the spring following Orn Skinner's
release from Auburn Prison, was reflected in the attitudes of three men
lounging on the shore in front of "Satisfied" Longman's shack. At their
feet, the waters of Cayuga Lake dimpled under the rays of the western
sun. Like a strip of burnished silver, the inlet wound its way through
the swamp from the elevators and railroad stations near the foot of
south hill. Across the lake rose the precipitous slopes of East Hill,
tapestried in green, etched here and there by stretches of winding white
road, and crowned by the buildings on the campus of Cornell University.
Stretched from the foot of State Street on either side of the Lehigh
Valley track lay the Silent City, its northern end spreading several
miles up the west shore of the Lake. Its inhabitants were canalers,
fishermen and hunters, uneducated, rough and superstitious. They built
their little huts in the simplest manner out of packing boxes and rough
lumber and roofed them with pieces of tin and sheet iron. Squatters they
were appropriately named, because they paid no attention to land titles,
but stuck their shacks wherever fancy indicated or convenience dictated.
The people of the Silent City slept by day and went very quietly about
their work under the cover of darkness, for the game laws compelled the
fishermen to pull their nets at night, and the farmers' chickens were
more easily caught, his fruit more easily picked when the sun was
warming China.
Summers, their lives were comparatively free from hardships. Fish were
plentiful and easy to take; the squatter women picked flowers and
berries in the woods and sold them in the city and the men worked
occasionally, as the fit struck them. But the winters were bitter and
cruel. The countryside, buried deep in snow, made travel difficult.
When the mercury shrank timidly into the bulb and fierce winds howled
down the lake, the Silent City seemed, indeed, the Storm Country.
"I were up to the Graves' place yesterday, helpin' Professor Young,"
said Jake Brewer, the youngest and most active of the three men.
"Never had no use fer that duffer, Dominie Graves, myself," answered
Longman. The speaker turned a serious face to the third member of the
party. "Ner you nuther, eh, Orn?"
Orn Skinner was an enormous man, some six and a half feet tall. Two
great humps on his shoulders accentuated the breadth and thickness of
his chest while they tended to conceal the length of his arms. A few
months before he'd been in the death house at Auburn. Through the
efforts of Deforrest Young, the dean of the Law College at Cornell, he'd
been pardoned and sent home.
The gigantic squatter removed his pipe from his mouth and smoothed the
thready white beard, straggling over his chin.
"Nope, I hated 'im," he muttered. "He done me dirt 'nough. If it hadn't
been fer Tess an' Lawyer Young, he'd a hung me sure."
"Ye didn't git the deed to yer shack land afore he died, did ye, Orn?"
interrupted "Satisfied" Longman. "Tessibel told ma the preacher promised
it to ye."
A moody expression settled in Skinner's eyes. "So he did promise it," he
explained. "He writ Tess a letter. He said as how he were sorry for his
meanness an' would give me the deed. But he didn't!"
A shrill voice calling his name brought "Satisfied" Longman to his feet,
and he hobbled away toward the shack.
"'Pears like 'Satisfied' ain't got much strength any more," said
Skinner. "He ain't been worth much of anythin' sence I got back."
"Him an' Ma Longman've failed a lot sence Myry an' Ezry died," agreed
Jake. "An' no wonder! Them two didn't amount to much to my way o'
thinkin', but their pa an' ma set considerable store by 'em ... Ben
Letts were a bad 'un, too. It used to make me plumb ugly to see 'im
botherin' Tess when ye was shet up, Orn, an' him all the time the daddy
of Myry's brat."
"Yep, Ben were bad," agreed Skinner. "I were sure he done the shootin',
but 'tweren't till Ezry swore he saw 'im that the lawyer could prove I
didn't do it. But Tess says Myry loved Ben. Women air queer critters,
ain't they?"
"Myry sure was," assented Brewer, thoughtfully. "In spite of Ezry's
tellin' her, Ben'd most drowned him, an' done the killin' they was goin'
to hang you fer, up she gits an' takes the brat an' goes off with Ben.
It were the worst storm of the year. No wonder him, Myry an' their brat
all was drowned."
Longman, coming out of the shack, overheard the last remark. The other
two fell silent. After he'd sat down again, he dissipated their
embarrassment by saying,
"But Tess says Myry air happy now 'cause she air got Ben. Fer myself, I
dunno, though. But, if Myry air satisfied, me an' ma air satisfied,
too."
The other two nodded in solemn sympathy. After a moment, Jake took out
his pipe and filled it. Holding the lighted match above the bowl, he
glanced at Skinner.
"Where air Tess?" he asked.
"She air up to Young's. He air learnin' her book stuff, an' his sister
air helpin' the brat sing. It air astonishin' how the brat takes to it.
Jest like a duck to water."
"Tess air awful smart," sighed Longman, "an' she air awful good, too.
She sings fer ma 'most every day. I heard her only yesterday, somethin'
'bout New Jerusylem. Ma loves Tessibel's singin'."
Then, for perhaps the space of three minutes, they lapsed into silence.
At length, Jake Brewer spoke,
"Be ye goin' to let her marry the Student Graves, Orn?" he asked.
"I dunno," Skinner muttered, "but I know this much, I don't like high
born pups like him hangin' 'round my girl. 'Tain't fittin' an' I told
Tess so!"
Orn knocked the ashes out of his pipe and rose slowly.
"Guess I'll be moseyin' 'long, pals," he smiled. "The brat'll be back
'fore long."
"Wait a minute, Orn," Longman broke in. "Ma's got some pork an' beans
she wants to send up to Mother Moll. She thought, mebbe, Tess'd take 'em
to 'er."
"Sure, 'Satisfied,' I'll take 'em home an' the brat'll take 'em up the
ravine next time she goes to the professor's."
"Mother Moll were the only one of us all," Jake told Skinner, while
Longman was in the shack, "what stood by Tess. She allers says Tess air
a goin' to surprise us all. She says as how the brat'll be rich an' have
a fine home. I dunno--but old Moll do tell the future right good when
she looks in the pot."
"She told the brat I were comin' home from Auburn," added Skinner, "when
it looked certain I were goin' to hang."
Longman came out of the shack with a pan in his hands.
"Yep," he corroborated. "An' she told ma years ago she'd lose her brats
in a storm. Old Moll air a wise woman, all right."
The dish of beans in his hand, the Bible-backed fisherman directed his
steps toward his own home, some distance away beyond the ragged rocks.
The old squatter walked slowly. His health had broken in prison and his
strength seemed hardly sufficient to move the big body. The path, an
outcropping ledge of the precipitous cliff, was very narrow because of
the unusually high level of the water in the lake. Picking his way
slowly, he considered reminiscently the events which had almost
destroyed him.
He recalled the long years of monotonous existence in the shack, the
hard nights pulling the nets and the varied scrapes Tess had tumbled
into. Then, suddenly, came the shooting of the game keeper, his own
arrest, trial and conviction. The white glare of hateful publicity had
been thrown, without warning, upon him and his motherless brat. He'd
been torn away from his quiet haunts at the lake side and shut up in the
narrow confines of a fetid cell. The enforced separation from his
daughter, at the critical period between girl and womanhood, had left
her alone in the shanty and exposed her to countless perils and
hardships. Unmitigated calamities, especially the long imprisonment,
they had seemed at the time, but the event proved otherwise.
Friends had arisen and helped him establish his innocence and win his
pardon. The responsibilities thrown upon the squatter girl had been met
with love and courage and had disciplined her high temper and awakened
her ambition. The dirt and disorder that had formerly obtained in the
shack had disappeared. Her housewifely arts had transformed the hut into
a comfortable home, rough to be sure, small and inadequate, but
immaculate and satisfactory.
The shanty stood on a little point of land projecting into the lake.
Huge weeping willows shrouded it from the sun in summer. They mourned
and murmured of the past, when the breezes of morning and evening
stirred their whispering leaves. Their bare limbs thrashed and pounded
the tin roof when the storm winds tore down the lake. In front and to
one side, Tessibel's new privet hedge shone a dark, dusky green, and the
flower beds were beginning to show orderly life through the blackish
mold. The shack itself was rather more pretentious than most of the
squatter shanties. It had two rooms and was thoroughly battened against
the storms.
Coming into the path, Orn met his daughter and went with her to the
house.
The greatest change the year had brought was in the girl herself. She
had ripened into the early maturity common to the squatter woman. She
was no longer the red-haired tatterdemalion who had romped over the
rocks and quarreled with the boys of the Silent City. Her tom-boy days,
amid the ceaseless struggles against the hardships of the Storm Country,
gave to her slender body strength and lent to it poise and grace.
Bright brown eyes lighted by loving intelligence illumined her face,
tanned by sun and wind, but very sweet and winsome, especially when the
curving red lips melted into a smile. A profusion of burnished red
curls, falling about her shoulders almost to her hips, completed the
vivid picture. Tess of the Storm Country, the animate expression of the
joy and beauty of the lake side in spring, was the boast of the Silent
City.
* * * * *
Late that same night, Tessibel lay asleep in the front room of the
shanty. Four miles to the south, Ithaca, too, slept,--the wholesome
sleep of a small country town, while Cayuga Lake gleamed and glistened
in the moonlight, as if fairies were tumbling it with powdered fingers.
Above both town and span of water, Cornell University loomed darkly on
the hill, the natural skyline sharply cut by its towers and spires.
An unusual sound awakened her. She lifted her lids and glanced about
drowsily, then propped herself on one elbow. Her sleep-laden eyes fell
upon the white light slanting across the rough shanty floor. Suddenly,
like a dark ghost, a shadow darted into it--the shadow of a human head.
At the first glimpse at it, Tessibel looked cautiously toward the
window, and there, as in a frame, was a face--a man's face. Tess dropped
on her pillow. For possibly two minutes, she lay quietly waiting, while
the shadow moved curiously to and fro on the floor. Twice the head
disappeared, and as suddenly returned, poised a moment, then, like an
image moving across a screen, was gone. Instantly Tess sat straight up
in bed. Perhaps one of the squatters needed her. She crept to the floor,
yawning, tiptoed to the door, and unbarred it. Without pausing to cover
her feet, she stepped outside, the fresh scent of May blossoms sweeping
sweet to her nostrils. The warm night-wind, full of elusive odors,
brushed her face like thready cobwebs, that broke at her touch, only to
caress her anew.
Midnight held no fear for Tessibel, for she loved every living creature,
those traveling by day being no dearer than those flying by night. She
felt no deeper thrills for the bright-winged birds singing in the sun
than for yonder owl who screeched at her, now, from the weeping willow
tree.
After picking her way to the front of the shanty, she made a tour of the
house and encircled the mud cellar, calling softly the while. No one
appeared; no voice, either of friend or stranger, answered the
persuasive importunity of Tessibel. But, after she was again in the
doorway, she heard north of the shanty the crackling of twigs as if some
stealthy animal were crawling over them. If there were an intruder, he'd
gone, and the girl, satisfied, went back into the house and once more
lay down to sleep.
When she woke again, Daddy Skinner was moving softly near the stove,
kindling the fire, and Tessibel lay in languid silence. She watched him
yearningly until he felt her gaze and looked at her. His twisted smile
of greeting brought an exclamation of love from the girl. All the
inhabitants of the Silent City knew this crippled old man could play on
the emotions of his lovely young daughter as the morning sun plays upon
the sensibilities of the lark. How she adored him, in spite of his great
humps and his now hobbling legs!
Soon, her father went to the lake for a pail of water, and she sprang
from the cot and dressed hastily.
CHAPTER II
THE COMING OF ANDY BISHOP
Later in the forenoon, when Tessibel returned home from an errand to
Kennedys', she found Daddy Skinner on the bench at the side of the
shanty, one horny hand clutching the bowl of a pipe in which the ashes
were dead. It took but one sharp glance from the red-brown eyes for Tess
to note that his face was white, almost grey; she saw, too, with a
quiver of loving sympathy, that his lower lip hung away from his dark
teeth as though he suffered. She sprang toward him, and dropped to her
knees, at his side.
"Daddy Skinner!" she exclaimed. "Daddy Skinner, ye're sick! Ye're sick,
darlin'!... Tell me, Daddy, what air the matter? Tell Tessibel."
She laid her hand tenderly on his chest. His heart was beating a heavy
tattoo against the blue gingham shirt.
"Ye hurt here?" she queried breathlessly.
The pipe dropped to the soft sand, and Skinner's crooked fingers fell
upon the profusion of red curls. Then he slowly tilted up her face.
"Yep, I hurt in there!" he muttered brokenly.
And as ashen and more ashen grew the wrinkled old countenance, Tessibel
cried out sharply in protest.
"Why, Daddy, what d'ye mean by yer heart's hurtin' ye?... What do ye
mean, Daddy?... I thought the doctor'd fixed yer heart so it wouldn't
pain ye no more."
The man considered the appealing young face an instant.
"I want to talk to ye about somethin'," said he, presently, "and I know
ye'll never tell anythin' Daddy tells ye."
With a little shake of her head that set the tawny curls a-tremble,
Tessibel squatted back on her feet.
"'Course I won't tell nobody, but if ye've got a pain in yer heart,
daddy, the doctor--"
"I don't need no doctor, brat. I jest--jest got to talk to ye, that air
all."
A slender girlish figure cuddled between Daddy Skinner's knees, and warm
young lips met his. Never had Tess seen him look just that way, not even
when he had been taken from her to prison. The expression on his face
was hopeless, forlornly hopeless, and to wait until he began to speak
took all the patience the eager girl-soul could muster.
"Brat, dear," he sighed at length, "I ain't needin' to tell ye again
what I went through in Auburn, hev I?"
Brown eyes, frightened and fascinated, sought and found the faded greys.
"'Course not, Daddy Skinner! But what fer air ye talkin' about Auburn
Prison?... Ye promised me, Daddy, ye'd forgit all about them days, an'
now what're ye rememberin' 'em fer?"
Skinner's face blanched, and drops of sweat formed in the spaces behind
his ears and trickled in little streams down his neck.
"I got to remember 'em, child," he groaned.
"What fer I want to know? Ye'd best make a hustle an' tell me or, in a
minute, I'll be gettin' awful mad."
The pleading, sorrowful face belied the threat, and a pair of red lips
touched Skinner's hand between almost every word.
"Do ye bring to mind my tellin' ye about any of the fellers up there,
Tessibel?" came at length from the man's shaking lips.
Tess stroked his arm lovingly.
"Sure, Daddy, I remember 'bout lots of 'em, an' how good they be, an'
how kind, an' how none of 'em be guilty."
"Ye bet none of 'em be guilty," muttered Daddy Skinner. "Nobody air ever
guilty who gets in jail.... Folks be mostly guilty that air out o'
prison to my mind."
"That air true, Daddy Skinner," she assented, smiling. "Sure it air
true, but it ain't no good reason fer you to be yappin' 'bout Auburn,
air it?... Now git that look out of yer eyes, an' tell Tessibel what air
troublin' ye!"
But Daddy Skinner's grave old face still kept its set expression. The
haunted look, born in his eyes in the Ithaca Jail, had returned after
all these happy months. Tess was frantic with apprehension and dread.
"Ye know well's ye're born, Daddy, nobody can hurt ye," she told him
strenuously. "Ye've got Tessibel, and ye've got--" She was about to say,
"Frederick," but substituted, "Professor Young."
The girl lovingly slipped her fingers over her father's heavy hand and
drew it from her curls.
"Ye're goin' to peel it off to me now, ain't ye?" she coaxed.
"Let's go inside the shanty," said the fisherman, in a thick voice.
With the door closed and barred, the father and daughter sat for some
time in troubled silence.
"I asked if ye remembered some of my pals in Auburn Prison, an' ye said
ye did, didn't ye, Tessibel?" asked Skinner, suddenly.
Tess gave an impatient twist of her shoulders.
"An' I told ye I did, Daddy," she replied. "'Course I do. I ain't never
forgot nobody who were good to you, honey."
"An' ye're pretty well satisfied, ain't ye, brat, most of 'em there air
innercent?"
"Ye bet, Daddy darlin', I air that!"
"Well, what if one of them men who were good to yer old father'd come
an' ask ye to do somethin' for 'im?"
With an upward movement of her head, Tessibel scrambled to her feet.
"Why, I'd help 'im!" she cried in one short, quick breath. "I'd help
'im; 'course I would."
"An' ye'd always keep it a secret?"
"Keep what a secret?"
Daddy Skinner's face grew furtive with fear.
"Why--well now, s'posin' Andy Bishop--ye remember Andy, the little man I
told ye about, the weenty, little dwarf who squatted near Glenwood?"
Tess nodded, and the fisherman went on, hesitant.
"He--were accused--of murderin'--"
"Waldstricker--Ebenezer Waldstricker's father?" interjected Tess. "Sure,
I remember!" Her eyes widened in anxiety. "Andy were sent up there fer
all his life, weren't he? An' weren't he the one Sandy Letts swore
agin?... 'Satisfied' Longman says Waldstricker give Sandy money for
tellin' the jury what he did."
"Like as not," answered Skinner. "Anyhow, Bishop were there fer life! He
air been there five years a innercent man.... My God, _Auburn fer five
years_!"
The last four words were wailed forth, the look of hopeless horror
deepening in his old eyes. Then he threw back his shoulders and spoke
directly to Tess.
"Well, what if he skipped out o' jail, an' what if he'd come here an'
say, 'Kid, 'cause what I done fer yer dad, now you do somethin' fer
me!'"
Tess was trembling with excitement as she stood before her father. The
generosity of her loving nature instinctively responded to his apparent
need. She was instantly eager to show her love and loyalty.
"I'd do it, Daddy!" she exploded. "I'd do it quick!"
"But what if--if--if--if--it made ye lots of trouble an'--an'--mebbe
some of yer friends--if they found it out--wouldn't think 'twere right?"
A queer, obstinate expression lived a moment in the girl's eyes. Then
she smiled.
"I ain't got no friends who'd say it were wrong to help somebody what'd
helped my darlin' old daddy."
Skinner bent his heavy brows in a troubled frown over stern eyes.
"But ye couldn't tell yer friends about it, kid," he cautioned.
A mist shone around the girl's thick lashes.
"Daddy, ye know I never blat things I hadn't ought to.... Slide yer arms
'round yer brat's neck, look 'er straight in the eye, an' tell 'er 'bout
Andy; an' if she can help, she sure will."
A noise in the vicinity of the cot gave Tessibel an involuntary start.
She turned her head slowly and saw two feet protruding from under her
bed. Clinging to Daddy Skinner, she watched, with widening lids, a
dwarfed figure crawl slowly into full view, and Tess found herself
staring into a pair of beautiful, boyish, blue eyes.
A slow smile broke over the dwarf's face.
"Yer brat's the right sort, Orn," he cried, in the sweetest tenor voice
Tess ever heard. "Ye don't need to make her promise no more.... Her word
air good's God's law."
"So it air, Andy," replied Orn. "Tessibel, this air my friend, Andy
Bishop, an' he were a good pal, as good as any man ever had."
For one single, tensely-strung moment, Tessibel contemplated the ugly
little figure and the upraised, appealing face. Then as a sudden sense
of protection spurred her to immediate action, she sent back a welcoming
smile. Two or three quick steps took her to the dwarf's side.
"I air going' to help ye, Andy," she announced brokenly. "Ye was in
prison fer life, wasn't ye, huh?"
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