The dawn ushered a brilliant spring day, a sky without a cloud, a light warm breeze from the south, the song of birds awakened early by the promise of nature.
Baird lay unconscious of it all, for a little before the pinky gray of morning lighted his room he had fallen asleep. Dawn had crept over him before he knew, and he lay stirless until the knock on his door aroused him into habit.
"Come in!" he called, still held by sleep.
It was the negress he had seen the night before, bearing a tray.
Baird sat up and stared at her. He was fully dressed and lying without covering, and after a rolling comprehensive glance, she stood with eyes lowered.
"What is it?" Baird asked, only half awake as yet.
"Miss Judith done send you a cup of coffee, suh, an' she says fo' you to res' till dinner if you feels like it. I tol' her I thought you was movin'—I didn't go fo' to wake you."
Baird was still dazed, for at the mention of Judith's name the events of the dark hours had rushed over him. It was difficult to connect them with this brilliant sunshine, or this collected ebony statue with the weeping, cringing creature of the night before.
Baird sprang up; he was fully awake now. "What time is it?" he asked.
"Hit's mos' ten, suh."
"Lord! Why didn't some one wake me before! I don't deserve any breakfast. The family—I hope nobody waited for me?"
"Miss Judith an' Mis' Morrison, they ain't had breakfus yet."
Baird pulled off his coat. "Tell them I'll be down right away—it won't take me ten minutes to shave.... Just bring me some hot water, will you?"
The woman served him in silence. Baird would have liked to get some hint of the state of things before he went down, but the family reserve seemed to reside in the black woman also. He saw now that, though powerfully and superbly built, she was not young; she was probably an old family servant. In the hasty minutes he required for dressing, Baird tried to adjust himself to the perfectly normal atmosphere. What had happened while he slept he could not guess. He could tell better when he went down.
Judith and Mrs. Morrison were in the drawing-room, and welcomed him exactly as he had been welcomed when he first entered Westmore. Both bore the marks of anxiety and lack of sleep. In the bright light Mrs. Morrison looked blanched and old, and Judith was also colorless and with heavy shadows under her eyes, but both were gracefully vivacious; their manner was as usual.
"It was a perfect shame to wake you!" Judith declared, when Baird apologized. "We were so certain we heard you moving."
"Don't you worry, Mr. Baird," Mrs. Morrison said. "I only just came down myself, and it was I told Hetty you were up—my old ears deceived me.... Let us go in, Judith—I'm ready fo' your beaten-biscuits."
It seemed that they were to breakfast alone, and with no account given of the absent ones, though Judith did say, "Sunday breakfast is an elastic meal at Westmore. We come down early or late, alone or in relays, as we feel inclined, and, somehow, we manage to be fed."
"I never have been certain which a man likes best—to eat or to sleep," Mrs. Morrison remarked briskly. "The fascinatin'ly natural creatures seem to like both so well—and to drink best of all."
Baird laughed. "That depends on who is ministering to us at the moment. Just now, I should much prefer to eat."
It was all so perfectly normal and natural, with the sunshine slanting across the floor and the windows open to the breeze, that Baird might almost have persuaded himself that he had dreamed—except for the consciousness that he had slept in his clothes and for the telltale pallor and lines of anxiety in Judith's face. And he was certain that he had been waked purposely; he was not wanted at the noonday meal. They intended that he should depart from Westmore in ignorance.
He was soon given a chance to declare his intentions. "I am going to ride to church this morning," Judith said. "Do you care to go, Mr. Baird?"
"Drive to church, you mean, Judith—I'm going with you," Mrs. Morrison intervened.
"Not this morning," Baird said. "I want to get back to the club before noon."
Judith did not urge him, and Baird decided that their determination to drive four miles to church when they were both still ridden by anxiety and drooping with fatigue must also be with purpose, a still further maintaining of appearances; doubtless others beside himself were to be kept in the dark. They were heroic in their methods, these people. They were quite capable of sitting in church with heads high, knowing meantime that something ghastly lay in the disused office. His eyes had not deceived him the night before.
Baird was thinking of it, when, suddenly, heavy steps sounded on the veranda, followed by the tumbling and whining of several hounds, and a voice he knew well said sharply: "Be off, now! Get out!" Then the rear door opened and shut and a man strode through the hall, his spurs jingling as he came.
It was Garvin Westmore.
At the first sound, Judith had half risen; then she dropped back, and the next moment Garvin came in, in riding clothes, booted and spurred, clean-shaven but haggard. Baird was astounded to say the least. Had he been a nervous person, he would have been shocked. His surmises had fallen flat.
Garvin tossed aside his cap. "Still at breakfast?" he said casually. "Hello, Baird." He drew up a chair and sat down.
Baird did not know how the other two looked; he was conscious that he was staring. "Hello—" he returned blankly.
"You'll have coffee, Garvin—" Judith was saying, "and what else?"
"Anything. I'm not hungry."
He looked infinitely tired. His eyes harbored melancholy easily, as did Edward's; he looked somberly at Judith as he tossed a folded slip of paper across to her. "From Ed," he said briefly. Judith glanced at it, then set it aside.
Baird's brain was working again. So Edward had gone—where? And why?
"Is it going to be hot, Garvin?" Mrs. Morrison asked.
"It is already hot, Aunt Carlotta." His voice was too even for sarcasm.
"Aunt Carlotta and I are going to church, and Mr. Baird thinks he must go back to the club. What are you going to do?" Judith said, in the same clear way in which she had spoken to her own people the night before.
Garvin straightened a little under its warning note. "I? I am going to ride—if I can have Black Betty—the bay is about done. You and Aunt Carlotta can represent the family at church, and I'll show myself at the village. I'll ride as far as the Post-Road with you, Baird." He spoke more heartily, though his always disdainful lip curled.
Judith's anxious eyes said that he looked a fitter subject for bed than for the saddle, but she made no comment. For her sake, Baird excused himself and rose. "I'll get things into my bag, then."
They went together, as far as the County Road, Judith and Mrs. Morrison driving and Baird and Garvin riding beside them. There the two men turned into the extension of the Westmore Road that skirted the Mine Banks, the shortest way to the Post-Road, leaving Judith and Mrs. Morrison to go by the more roundabout way; the disused Mine Banks Road was possible only to riders.
Judith reached from the buggy to shake hands with Baird, and there was the same sweetness in her voice as there had been when she parted from him the night before. "You must come to see us very soon, Mr. Baird. I shall expect you," and her eyes said, "Welcome you."
And Garvin's voice also had a kinder note when he parted with her, as if he had his worn nerves under better control. "I'll be back for dinner, Judy."
"Be sure you are," she returned brightly.
"Poor Judith!" Garvin said, as he and Baird rode on. "She has the world on her shoulders—or, rather, the Westmore family—and it's something of a weight, I assure you." He sighed impatiently and looked up at the looming conglomeration of sear undergrowth and trees and bald red patches which they were approaching. "Ever been up there?" he asked.
"No, but I'm going."
"Well, don't go without a guide—there are some ugly pitfalls about.... That was a steep broad hill once, dug down and muddled into what it is by the picks and shovels of English convicts. If all that's said is true, they fared worse under my great-great-grandfather's rule than the niggers did. It's not easy to make slaves of Englishmen.... For the last hundred years it's been simply a game warren. There are caves and underground passages and ore-pits full of water up there, and some soft little hollows, too, where the pines and cedars have grown up. I know every inch of it. It always fascinated me, but there are some of our family who couldn't be driven to set foot in the place, and there's not a nigger in the county will go near it. And that's a good thing—keeps it free of pests." He laughed shortly. "Lord! I've slept off more than one drunk up there—and played with a girl there, too, on occasion, and only the moon the wiser for it." He spoke steadily, carelessly, but with an undercurrent of feeling.
Edward's exclamation still rang in Baird's ears. Garvin had not been drunk the night before; that he knew. When he and Judith went down to the terraces Garvin was dancing with Priscilla Copeley, and with an air of enjoyment.
Baird studied him closely. Garvin was riding with face lifted, and it brought his profile into relief, bold brow, haughty nose and lip, beautifully modeled chin. The lines about his eyes suggested both weariness and sadness, the curled lip measureless disgust and discontent; a thoroughly unhappy man—if he was any judge of physiognomy. And again Baird felt sorry for him; there was something radically wrong with him.
Garvin's face changed suddenly. "Look there!" he exclaimed. "By jove! Any one would say it was a bear."
He was pointing with his whip to a clambering object which was clearly outlined against one of the red patches above, a bald spot just below the cluster of evergreens that darkened the highest ledge on the Banks. There was a red crag behind them, tipping the summit, and the trees stood as if guarding it; the creature that went on all fours was apparently bent on gaining the ledge.
"It does look like a bear—it's a man, though," Baird said.
"It's Bear Brokaw.... What's he climbing up to Crest Cave for? Not for an afternoon nap, I hope. The old cuss knows there's a better way up than that—he's shinning up that slope just because he enjoys it." Garvin looked interested, amused.
"So he's the honey-tree thief."
"Poof!" Garvin said. "He served Aunt Carlotta right. There's not a stancher, closer-mouthed creature in existence than Bear. He swears by Judith and would do almost anything for me. He taught me to handle a gun—many's the night I've gone coon-catching with him."
They rode on, and Garvin's face settled into gravity. "I wonder what he's doing up there?" he said musingly. "I should have thought he'd had enough of the Banks last night," he added, and fell into silence.
It was the first reference to the night Baird had heard, but he dared not question. They were well under the Banks now and the going very rough, a road once, but no more than a trail now, leading over mounds and down into hollows, the trees hedging them closely. Baird felt tired, and they rode in silence for the next half-mile. Then they dipped into a deep cut between high banks, and Garvin aroused to speak again.
"See that?" he said, pointing to a large white stone that stood planted like a monument in the red soil of the roadside. "That's where my grandfather dropped when he was shot by some one hidden up above there. A good place for a murder and a getaway, isn't it?"
"Who did it?" Baird asked with interest.
"That's what we don't know—we never will know, I suppose. The family tried to fasten it on a Penniman, old William Penniman's father, but they had no proof at all—except that there was bad blood between them—there always had been, ever since a Penniman got part of the Westmore tract by buying the old house over there. The accusations of our family didn't help matters. I've always had my theory about it, though: old Penniman's father had nothing to do with it; those men my great-grandparents worked up there in the Banks didn't all die or leave the country—somebody's son or son's son did it." He shrugged with a look of bitter disgust. "Lord! the thing's nearly a hundred years old, and still we go on with it! There's not a Penniman will bend his head to a Westmore, or a Westmore to a Penniman. We go on with things endlessly—just our sickening, effete pride! It gets on my nerves." He looked as if it did; he looked harried.
"There's one Penniman who doesn't seem to bear a grudge," Baird remarked, "the little girl who came to your rescue yesterday morning."
"Ann?... Ann's young and light-hearted. There's plenty of time for the Penniman to develop in her," he answered carelessly, but Baird noticed that his color rose.
Garvin dropped the subject, talked of trivial things, until they reached the Post-Road. They came upon a man here, a sturdily-built, dark-featured man, clad in neat business gray and carrying a bag. He stood at the juncture of the three roads, the Westmore Road, the Back Road to the Hunt Club and the Penniman farm, and the Post-Road. His hat was tipped back like one who had walked far and was warm, and had stopped to rest and look about him. He was looking at the Mine Banks; when the two riders came up out of the cut, he looked at them, or, rather, at Garvin; he had merely glanced at Baird.
It was his steady grim stare at Garvin that arrested Baird's attention. There was no curiosity in it, it was too cold; fraught with recognition and a settled frozen antagonism. He stood his ground though Garvin's horse almost brushed him, planted firmly, like one who would instantly contest the few inches he covered. There was a quiet determined force about the man; Baird was affected by it, even before they reached him.
Baird glanced questioningly at Garvin and saw that he was giving the man stare for stare, erect in his saddle, chin slightly lifted. But Garvin's look lacked the animosity that froze the other man's features, and just before they passed Baird saw Garvin's hand lift half-way to his cap then drop. They passed with Garvin's eyes shifted to look straight ahead, but the man's stare never wavered.
"Speak of the devil and you see him," Garvin muttered, after they had passed.
"Who is he?" Baird asked.
"Coats Penniman.... No forgiveness for the past there—why should I have any compunctions over the future." He spoke icily. The cut he had received had evidently stung.
Baird had already guessed. There was an unnamable likeness to Ann in the man's features.
They had come to the center of the Post-Road. "Well, here we part," Garvin said more lightly. "I'll see you soon, I hope."
"Come over to dinner with me to-morrow," Baird returned. "We've got to arrange about that machine."
"I meant to thank you about that," Garvin said quickly. "I haven't my usual wits about me to-day. It's good of you, Baird." There was all the Westmore charm about the man when he smiled.
"Not a bit of it—I'll see you to-morrow," and they parted, Garvin going off at a gallop down the Post-Road.
Baird took the Back Road, glancing at Coats Penniman as he did so. He had not moved; he was looking after Garvin. "I'd hate to have a man look at me like that—especially if I was in love with his daughter," Baird said to himself.
He rode slowly, for he was thinking—of the past night, of many things that were not clear to him. He came up through the pastures, then skirted the woods, as Ann had the day before. He was thinking of her, among other things, so it did not startle him greatly when he saw her a short distance ahead, standing and looking in his direction. But before he reached her she slipped back into the woods. He hurried his horse and stopped to look about him when he had gained the woods, but she had hidden herself.
Though tired, Baird was tempted to dismount and search for her; he was constitutionally opposed to anything escaping him. He did prepare to dismount, then went on, when it occurred to him why she was there: "To meet her father, of course," was Baird's conclusion. "She took me for him, at first."
Baird was right; Ann had come to meet her father.
Saturday afternoon and evening had been filled with preparations for Coats Penniman's coming. Ann's pause for play in the barn and her adventure with Baird had merely been an interlude in the rush of work. Sue had worked late into the night, and Ann had helped her. When they went to bed, the house shone in readiness for the home-comer.
Ann had worked steadily and silently; she had had her afternoon's adventure to think over, with a commingling of anger and astonishment and a stir of feeling that made her cheeks burn. The big mannerless creature! He had taken advantage. He had held her and looked at her in imperious fashion; in a way that had made her heart bound. And she had not resented it until it was over. Ann was always truthful to herself; she had liked the hot pressure on her cheek; she could feel it yet, though now it made her angry. She was enraged with herself for having liked it, and with Baird for having touched her. He could not have a particle of respect for her or he would not have dared. Ann tossed about uncomfortably on her bed. If he came again—and she hoped earnestly that he would—he should see! All Ann's considerable will was aroused.
Then the ever-present hurt took possession of her. If she had not grown up with the longing to be petted unsatisfied, the caress of a mere stranger would not have seemed so sweet. At least, so Ann explained herself to herself, having had no experience in passion to tutor her. If only her father would love her, she would be happy. If only she knew?
It was then the plan to meet him sprang into Ann's mind and filled it. He had written that he was not to be met at the station; that he wanted to walk home. Ann decided that he was certain to come the back way. She would meet him and come proudly back with him—if he was loving to her. And if he was not?... Ann did not know what she would do. At least, her aunt and her grandfather would not be there to see.
Ann kept her purpose closely to herself during the morning, working feverishly over the tasks Sue set her, her cheeks vivid, as were Sue's. Her grandfather was very silent. He sat with his Bible on his knee, as was his custom on Sunday morning, his thin body bent over it, his white hair hiding his face; but Ann saw him look up once as Sue passed him, moving quickly and energetically. It was a long intent look he gave her, his eyes, always vividly blue, brighter and keener than Ann ever remembered seeing them. His lips, the sunken mouth of an old and broken man, shook. He loved Sue, Ann knew that well; he often watched her at work, but with lips tight set, as if in pain; now they trembled. Coats would be bringing Sue deliverance from toil.
Ann stole off in plenty of time to the Back Road. She had waited almost an hour before Baird came upon her. She saw him when he was some distance away, but it occurred to her that he was probably Garvin Westmore, and from him she had no desire to run; she wanted to tell him that her father was coming.
When she saw who it was she hid herself. Crouched in the creek, she watched Baird's pause and close scrutiny of his surroundings. When he was about to dismount, she was frightened; when he rode on, she was a little disappointed, and yet she wanted him away. Ann did not leave her hiding place until she was certain that Baird was well on his way to the club; then she went back to her post. And when she saw a man coming across the pastures, she forgot Baird, everything; it was her father, come at last.
She watched him with the blood throbbing in her ears, a heavily-built man, not thin and sharp-featured like most of the Pennimans, yet with the Penniman look about him. She had waited eagerly enough, but with each step that brought him nearer, her terror of what might be held her back; she did not stand out where she could be seen until her father had nearly reached her.
When she came out suddenly from behind the undergrowth that screened her, they were only a few yards apart, and Coats Penniman stopped on a forward step, stood quite still. Ann saw the spasm that crossed his face, lifting his brows and widening his eyes. She thought that she had startled him; he did not know who she was.
"It's Ann, father—" she said, with a quivering smile. "I—I came to meet you—"
His face changed, settled into deep lines about his mouth, into wrinkles about his eyes, the look of her grandfather upon him—until he smiled, though it was more a twitching of the muscles in his cheeks than an actual smile.
"Ann—" He drew an audible breath. "I—wasn't expecting it—"
He came to her, for Ann stood rooted; no volition of hers could have brought her an inch nearer to that look of her grandfather, covered by that painful smile. "So you came to meet me?" He put his hands on her shoulders. "It's fourteen years since I saw you—you have grown up—child."
There was all the sorrow of the forsaken in the dazed shrinking look Ann gave him. "Yes, I've grown up," she said in tones as colorless as her face. "But I know you—you look like grandpa."
He bent and kissed her cheek, then took his hands from her shoulders, and he said what Sue had said: "And you are a Penniman, too, Ann—we're all Pennimans—we'll never outgrow that.... How are you, child?"
"I am well, suh."
"And Cousin Sue and Uncle Will?"
"They are well—they are expectin' you."
Coats Penniman took up his bag and they turned into the woods. Ann's eyes were fixed straight before her. Things looked curiously white and unreal, as they do after a shock. Her father looked at her as they went on, at her proud brow and eyes, then at her softly-rounded chin and warm mouth, reminders of her mother, and, again, the deepening lines in his face made him look old. "I'm glad you came to meet me," he said kindly.
And Ann answered to the note of kindness, just as she had always answered to the same note in Sue's voice, by an offer of service. "Can't I carry your satchel for you, father? You've walked so far."
"No, Ann, I've not come home to be waited on.... There're going to be better times at the farm, now I have come home. Until the last year I haven't had the means to make it easier for you all. For fourteen years I've prayed to make money, and then, all at once, when I'd given up hope, it came. For your sake, and for Sue's sake, I wish it had come sooner." He spoke with a deep note of feeling.
"It has been hard for Aunt Sue," Ann said tonelessly.
She felt numb and sick; she was more conscious of a feeling of illness than of anything else. The necessity of walking steadily on when she wanted simply to hide herself somewhere, was infinitely painful. Sue had said, "If Coats seems like a stranger to you, don't you feel hard to him." He did not seem like a stranger to her, any more than her grandfather did, or even her aunt did, at times. But he did not seem like her father, any more than they did. From the height of her isolation, Ann could even look at him calmly.
His dark face had lighted, now that he was looking about him. "Uncle Will has not cut down the trees—every tree is here—just as it used to be," he said with deep satisfaction. "I was afraid he'd had to make cord-wood of them.... How well I remember it all!" he added, half eagerly, half sadly. He walked faster, until they reached the open, and then he stopped. "The house and the barn ... and the spring-house!" he said. "Not a stick or a stone changed! My, my!... And fourteen long years!... When I went, I never wanted to see it again, but it has pulled at me, just the same. It's brought me back."
He turned slowly, half circled to look about him, his eyes finally fixed on the nobly solemn line of cedars. He looked at them long and steadily; he lifted his hat and took it off. "'For better or for worse' ... and so it has been—" His face was wiped of expression; his momentary excitement gone.
"He is thinking of my mother," Ann thought.
He stood a moment longer, motionless, then put on his hat, drawing the brim low over his eyes, and went on, forgetful of his surroundings, and of Ann. Perhaps it was habit that guided him, for he took the usual way, across the field and up the path between the grapevines, and Ann dropped behind; when he went into the house, she could escape.
But Sue had seen them coming. Sue who never ran, who was wont to go about wearily, ran down the kitchen stairs and her father followed, slowly, holding to the stair-rail. Sue sped across the few yards that separated them. "Coats!" she said, "oh,Coats!" and Coats Penniman dropped his bag and opened his arms to her.
Ann stood on the path and watched them, Sue's arms about Coats' neck, his arms holding her—and then her grandfather's welcome. The two men clasped hands, the three stood, held together in their joy, then went on slowly, her father helping her grandfather up the stairs.
Ann slipped in between the grapevines, skirted the barn enclosure, then ran like a hunted thing for the shelter of the woods; not to the hollow through which the road came, but up higher, to the group of pines that edged the woods. There was neither road nor path there; the pines were clothed and would hide her.
She stumbled as she ran, for she could not see; her sobs were blinding and strangling her. She crept beneath the sheltering branches and clung to the earth, the only mother she had ever known, beat upon the breast to which she clung, and clung the tighter.
In that hour of anguish, Ann parted with her childhood, the blessed capacity to weep one moment and laugh the next with sorrow and pain forgotten. The collie had lost his playmate, the birds a fellow-songster. Ann had not lost spirit, nor the power to endure which is a woman's heritage; but a hurt to a child is a scar carried through life, and Ann had been ineradicably branded.
The sun, well on its way to the west, reddened the bald peak above Crest Cave and shot its rays through the screen of pines on the ledge below, mottling the bed of pine-needles at the mouth of the cave. The midday sun had warmed them; they were still warm and resinous, a comfortable resting place.
Garvin Westmore lay full length on the sweet-scented bed, motionless, except when he lifted to his elbow to look out at the country below. His, or some other hand, had cut away the branches that hid the view; one could sit at the mouth of the cave and see, as through a tunnel, the slope of grain-land, the winding creek, the pastures and the Back Road; and, beyond the semicircle of woods, the roof of the Penniman house, and beyond that, open country stretching into blue distance.
Garvin was keeping watch. He quickly singled out Ann's brown cape from the browns and duns of the woods. He sat up and watched each step of her approach. He had not been at all certain that she would come; she was a resolute little thing to brave discovery in this fashion—and both ignorant and innocent ... and vastly trustful. Nevertheless, it was the eternal attraction that was bringing her—and leading him into deep waters as well. There would be all hell to pay—if he were not careful.
He sprang up, more to get away from his thoughts than to be able to see better. He had searched about the Banks and had made sure, and had watched the open country—there was no one about. And she was well away from the woods now, following the creek; its undergrowth would hide her from any one who might turn in from the Post-Road.
She did not leave the shelter of the creek until where it curved away from the Mine Banks. She was just below him now. Then she crossed the open space quickly and was lost in the trees that edged the Westmore Road. Garvin knew that she would come up behind the Crest.
They were safe from observation now, and he circled the Crest and started down the path which was more an animal trail leading through the bushes, than a path. He heard Ann's approach before he saw her, the rustle of sear leaves, and he stopped on one of the bare red patches that the noise of his approach might not startle her. The bushes parted presently, and Ann looked out. Then she looked up and saw him, and smiled. She was lovely as she stood there, half screened, flushed and doubtful and faintly smiling.
Garvin hurried down to her. "It's all right," he said. "I've been watching.... My, but the bushes have pulled you to pieces!"
They had; her cape was off, her hair loose on her shoulders, her breath short. "It's—more grown up—than it used to be," she complained.
"And so are you.... Don't pin up your hair, Ann—it's beautiful that way: I love your hair."
She did not give him the merry glance that was her usual answer to such speeches. She gave him the cape to hold and resolutely gathered up her hair. "Now!" she said, when it was in place.
Garvin had watched her in silence. Her decision had checked him; it was unlike her usual manner. "We'll go up to the cave," he said. "You can rest there."
"I can take my cape now."
"No, I'll carry it.... You're tired, aren't you?"
"A little," she answered quietly.
She let him help her up, her hand in his, her lowered eyelids his to read. He could find nothing there, except that they were darker-tinged than usual—and her lips grave. He decided that she was frightened.
"It was a shame for me, to bring you all this way," he said, with the gentleness which he usually had at command. "I wanted so much really to talk to you, and I couldn't think of a better place."
"I wanted to come," Ann returned. "I wanted to see the Mine Banks again—"
"And to see me, too, Ann?"
"Yes." She gave him a half-questioning, half-appealing glance. "I wanted to talk to you, too." The laughter that usually danced in her eyes was not there.
Garvin was still certain that she was frightened, at her own temerity, and doubtful of him. "Well, we can talk all we want to here, dear. No one will disturb us, and you are safe with me.... See, isn't this perfect?"
They had come to the ledge. Ann looked into the umbrella-like cave with the yawning hole at the back, the burrow of some animal; then at the screen of pines. The place was shut in, warm and restful. "It's lovely," she said softly, "an' I'm not afraid of it now. I came up here once, when I was little, an' something moved in the hole, an' I was scared. I ran, and I never did come back—I imagined it was a lion.... That's why it was fun to come to the Banks—I could have such fearful imaginings—imaginings are fun." She was more like herself now, laughing softly and coquetting with the hole in the cave.
"It's nothing but a fox-hole, Ann. I used to let them have it in the winter and then trap them. When I got to coming here often, I didn't like the smell of them about, and I have made it too hot for them. I let the rabbits have it now—I don't mind their scuttling about while I lie here."
"You talk as if you lived here. It is a peaceful, far-away place to live." She was looking through the tunnel and had lost her smile.
Garvin had a sudden remembrance of some of the scenes the place had harbored, and he turned away from it, impatiently. "Let's sit under the pines, where we can look out," he suggested. He took her cape and spread it close to one of the trees. "How do you like that?"
Ann had not heard him. She was looking steadily at the roof of the Penniman house. She turned sharply, turned her back on it, sat so she could lean against the tree-trunk.
"Why do you sit that way?" Garvin asked in surprise. "Don't you want to look out?"
"No, I like this way best."
Garvin studied her closely. He had seated himself as near to her as he could, with a mental curse for the tree-trunk that allowed no excuse for the support of his arm. The flush of exertion had left Ann's face, and Garvin saw now that she was very pale and heavy-eyed, and her lips compressed. Her hands also were tightly clasped. She was not frightened, or even shy; she was wretched. It was he who was flushed and doubtful. He had not lived well, how ill only he himself knew, but this was his first tampering with innocence.
He put his hand on hers. "What's the matter, Ann?"
She was silent.
"What is it, dear?" he asked tenderly. "We're friends, aren't we? Are you sorry you came up here? What is it? Tell me?"
Ann drew one of her hands away and, taking up a pine-needle, began pricking the bit of cape that lay between them. "No, I am not sorry," she said evenly. "The only comfort I've had to-day is thinking I was coming." She looked up at him, her eyes full of grief. "My father came home to-day."
Garvin would have taken her in his arms, but for the fear that touched him. "But he doesn't know you are here?"
"No. I didn't tell him—I couldn't tell him—anything.... Mr. Garvin, your people are fond of you—my people don't—love me." She had wrenched the thing out, despite the hurt.
Garvin breathed more freely. What a child she was! "What do you mean, dear? Have they been unkind to you—to-day?"
"They are kind to me, but they don't love me," Ann repeated, beginning to quiver. At one wrench and with tremendous effort, she had parted with reserve and the Penniman pride, and plunged on. "I don't know why they don't love me as they love each other. They have never loved me—even when I was little. My father went away an' left me because I reminded him that my being born killed my mother. An' now that he's back, I can see that he's never felt I was part of him. I understand better now—they're kind to me because they pity me. I don't want to be pitied—it's hateful to be pitied!... Your people love you, Mr. Garvin, so you can't understand—I reckon no one will understand." She had ended helplessly, not in tears, for she had wept herself into a decision that morning, and she was holding to that.
Garvin's hand had grown lax on hers and his face gloomy. She had swept away the sensuous emotion to which he had yielded while waiting for her. He had given himself up to a contemplation of possibilities as an escape from harassment. His pursuit of Ann had been just that, from the very beginning, an escape from unendurable conditions. Her, "They're kind to me because they pity me ... it's hateful to be pitied!" had brought back with a rush the thoughts that had darkened his face while he rode with Baird that morning. "Your people love you—so you can't understand." His people love him! How well he understood, indeed!
He had looked straight before him while she talked; now he looked down at her, stirred for almost the first time in his life by a sense of fellow-feeling. "Yes, I understand," he said steadily. "It takes the spirit out of you—gives you over to the very devil—to be dreaded and pitied—almost from your cradle up. I understand, Ann. It's so in some families—for one reason or another.... Some of us are born misfits; we're throwbacks—to something or some one that doesn't quite jibe with our environment. I reckon you're a bit too fine and spirited for your environment, Ann." He was looking at her brow and eyes, not the brow and eyes of a Penniman—not as he had known them.
Ann's sense of isolation caught at the note of sympathy, and she gave her decision into his keeping. "I can't bear things as they are, Mr. Garvin. I made up my mind this morning—I'm going away just as soon as I can."
She had startled him. "You, go away? Why, you're nothing but a child, Ann! Where could you go?"
Ann lifted her hands, held them out for him to see. He had noticed them before, not small hands, work-hardened, but shapely and flexible, with tapering fingers blunted a little at the tips, almost certain sign of manual labor imposed upon childhood. "Look at them!" Ann said tensely. "Would I work any harder with them for other people, than I have for my people? I'm goin'—there's the city for me to go to."
Garvin knew, far better than a stranger would, what such a decision meant to a Penniman—or a Westmore. It meant flinging away caste. They could toil unceasingly, bend their backs to the most menial labor, so long as they toiled upon their own freehold. But to become a servitor, labor with their hands for a wage!
"You can't do that, Ann," he said positively.
"I can, and I will," Ann returned with equal decision.
"If you tried such a thing, your father would bring you back—you're not of age."
She drew a short breath and considered a moment. "But I will be in the fall—they can't make me come back then, can they?"
"No—" Garvin said slowly. "They couldn't—not if you were determined."
He was thinking. A possibility had occurred to him that made him flush; brought him back to the thing to which he had given himself up of late, his desire for Ann.... The thing that was almost impossible here was possible in the city. And what a haven to escape to!... He looked at her as she distressfully pondered her future. She had never seemed more lovable or less a girl to be taken by storm; she had shown an amount of decision he had not known she possessed. He had her confidence; he would do well to keep it.
"If you are determined enough, Ann, and careful to keep what you mean to do a secret, I think you could carry it through," he supplemented. "And why shouldn't you go? Almost anything is better than life as you've had it. I'll help you to go, when you're ready for it."
"You could help me to get something to do, maybe?" she asked quickly. "I've been thinking maybe you could. That's one reason I wanted to talk to you."
"Possibly. I'd do almost anything for you, Ann, especially now I know you're not happy down there."
Her pleasure and relief were evident; she flushed brightly. "You're very nice to me Mr. Garvin."
"We're really friends, then, Ann? You don't share the family grudge?"
"Indeed I don't! I can't see why they are so bitter."
"It's just an hereditary quarrel, that's all, and you are the first Penniman and I the first Westmore who has buried it.... Will you really bury it; dear—and show me that you have?"
"I'm showing that I have," she said earnestly.
"Shan't we kiss each other to prove that the ugly thing is gone from between us?" he asked gravely.
Ann's flush deepened, but not because of any particular self-consciousness; she neither dropped her eyes nor smiled. Ann had gone down in the depths that day and, for the time being, had parted with coquetry. The longing for affection and interest and consideration such as Garvin was offering her was her immediate need. She was desperate for want of it. And yet she hesitated. She felt certain now that Garvin was very fond of her, and to Ann's way of thinking love led to marriage. She was quite as certain that she liked him very much. She hesitated because she was a Penniman and he a Westmore; there was a class distinction between them that had held for generations.
Garvin saw her hesitation and obeyed a subtle instinct when he kept his hands from her and chose the words that would appeal to her, and the more irresistibly because of genuine feeling. "I'm not any more happy than you are, Ann—I'm wretched. My people are kind to me, too, just that, and they pity me endlessly. If ever there was a misfit, it is I. I'm sick to death of it all, and lonely enough to take the short way out.... Be nice to me, dear."
She lifted her lips to him, and his arms took her and held her, and she clung to him with a tensity of affection. He kissed her long and passionately, but with self-control enough to realize the quality of what he received, its affection and gratitude and lack of passion. And when her lips parted from his and he buried his face on her shoulder shaken by the first effort for restraint he had ever cared to make, her hand stroked his hair, gently. "I didn't know you were unhappy, too," she said softly.
When he raised his head he was pale. "You're a child yet," he said. "You'll wake up one of these days—then you'll love me as I love you."
"I like you a great deal," Ann answered, with conviction.
He laughed shortly. "Yes, we're good friends—that's it, isn't it, Ann?"
The note of urgency and dissatisfaction made her uncomfortable. "You asked me to be friends," she said.
She moved away from his hold, and he let her go. "There's all the future," he said more quietly. "You'll love me by and by.... Ann, have you really the courage to go away from all that down there?"
"Yes."
"And the wisdom to keep our friendship to yourself?... It will be a terrible thing for both of us, if they know. I met your father this morning, on his way home, and I'd have spoken to him, if he had let me. I did speak and he cut me—he has neither forgotten nor forgiven."
"What is it they've not forgotten or forgiven?" Ann asked earnestly. "Aunt Sue wouldn't tell me."
Garvin told her what he had told Baird.
Ann flamed scarlet. "There isn't any Penniman would have done that!"
"And there's not a Westmore now who thinks it," Garvin said positively. "The thing's more than half a century old, but it's an insult your people will never forgive.... It's not going to matter to you, is it, now you know?" he added, for Ann looked so perturbed. "I never have believed it for a moment—or Edward either. I know he's terribly sorry for the quarrel, and ashamed that father let the thing rankle. It worries Ed. If it worries you, I'm sorry I told you."
"It doesn't worry me," Ann said firmly. "It doesn't make the least difference to me—in the way I feel to you and Mr. Westmore—we had nothing to do with it, an' to hate an' hate is sickening. But I know how it is with my people. I think grandfather would almost kill me if he knew that we were friends. Even Aunt Sue would be fearful to me." She drew a quick nervous breath. "It makes me want to get away more than ever."
"You shall go—I'll help you," Garvin promised. "But in the meantime I want to see you—I must. If I think of a safe way, you will meet me, won't you?"
Ann thought of the thing that had added hurt to hurt, her father's pleasure in Sue. They had been painfully kind to her at dinner, and after the meal was over he had gone off with Sue, they two to talk together.
"Yes," Ann said. "I'm not afraid. We're doing nothing wrong in liking each other."
"I'll think of a way and write to you."
She got up. "An' I must go now." Her lips quivered and set. "My father has gone with Aunt Sue—to walk around the farm—but they'll be coming back before supper."
"I am afraid you must, dear. If I brought them down on you, I should never forgive myself.... I can go with you to where I met you."
He went with her around to the back of the Crest, down the steep red-clay slope and into the shelter of the bushes. There he lifted her up and kissed her. "Ann!" he said. "Ann! I'm going to make you love me."
Ann received his kiss more shyly, turned her cheek to it. She had emerged a little from wretchedness, and the quality that invites pursuit, that draws passion and gives sparingly in return, the quality with which Ann was plentifully endowed, was coming to the surface. She escaped from his hands without answer and with eyes down.
Ann gained the woods in safety, so much Garvin saw from his perch, but he could not see what followed. At the point where the Back Road forked, she came face to face with Edward Westmore. He was coming from the club, riding slowly, as always.
Ann was flushed from rapid walking; she flushed more deeply when she saw him, and nodded and smiled shyly.
Edward lifted his cap, his tired face lighting. "So we meet again!" he said. "I was thinking of you—have you walked far?"
"Just across the pastures," Ann answered in embarrassment, the more so because he had checked his horse.
She had not expected him to do that, or to look so pleased when he saw her, still less to dismount and come to her which he did immediately. "You look warm, aren't you tired?" he asked.
"Yes," Ann answered, too much surprised for anything but a monosyllable. She was wide-eyed and a little startled, the child look that made her prettiest, and he studied her intently, as if absorbing her features. And yet his manner was deferential; he looked and smiled as he had the day before when he had talked with her.
"I am tired, too," he said. "I have just ridden up from the station to the club.... Won't you rest a few minutes? I wanted to talk more yesterday—I was interested in all you told me, and promised myself to take the first chance to talk again, but I hardly expected this good fortune."
Baird would have been astonished by Edward's air of animation and pleasure, more so even than Ann. "He hates quarreling and wants very much to be friends," was Ann's thought, and she was pleased. The miserable day was ending more happily; Garvin had told her that he loved her and that there was "all the future," and now his brother was showing her that he liked her. There were people in the world to whom she mattered; Garvin was interested in her, deeply interested. Ann was being carried away from her troubles; transformed into beauty and charm.
She gave Edward her drooping glance and slow smile. "I should like to talk, too."
"Shall we sit down then, for a few minutes?... Over there by the creek, don't you think? There used to be a hollow there, and a flat rock."
"Yes—it's there yet," Ann assented willingly.
It was the spot where she had hidden from Baird that morning, where the bank of the creek shelved sharply to a big rock around which the water fretted and quarreled. Clumps of chinkapin bushes intervened, effectually hiding the hollow from the road.
Edward led his horse around them and, after a swift survey that convinced him that they would be well screened, dropped the bridle. Carefully and attentively, as if she were fragile, he helped Ann down to the rock, and Ann, who had sprung down that morning as nimbly as a chamois, lent herself daintily to his guidance, instantly adapting herself to it, enjoying it. This was something quite new to her, as new as Baird's impetuosity or Garvin's restrained passion. And she took, quite as her due, the step-like ridge in the rock that seated Edward at her feet. She was neither embarrassed nor awed, partly because of Edward's well sustained ease and deference, partly because of his very evident interest in every word she uttered.
With a skill which Ann was not experienced enough to recognize, he led her to talk of the farm, then of her people, then of herself. He had been away so long, he told her. He had been everywhere—except at Westmore—much of the time in Europe; everything she told him was news. He drew from her an accurate picture of her life as it had been from her earliest remembrance and as it was now, and that without any such passionate outburst as she had visited upon Garvin. With his knowledge of her family and his growing knowledge of her, it was easy to read between the lines. She was apart from her family; she was not happy with them. Whether she had attained to seventeen years without a romance was the one point upon which he was uncertain; even a very young girl would know how to guard that secret.
Ann could not know that she was being manipulated by a master-hand. When he looked up at her, his eyes held only pleased interest. When he looked down at the resentful, quarreling water and they were hidden from her, his expression was different.
Edward Westmore's combination of ease and impenetrable reserve, of swift intelligence and yet guarded speech, the melancholy that shadowed him, like a thin veil drawn over a smile, had baffled more astute people than Ann. It had made him a noticeable man wherever he had gone; a man of acknowledged charm and suspected subtlety. His family had known him as a spirited and yet dependable boy, the most dependable of the Westmores, until the upheaval which had sent him away from his home had revealed passions his family had not suspected. He had demanded a release from Westmore and Westmore conditions and had gained it. That he had married beyond all expectations well a woman older than himself and possessed of a fortune, and had settled into the inscrutable man he was, with the welfare of Westmore apparently his closest interest, was one of the inexplicable things about him.
Judith perhaps understood Edward better than any one else did; certainly, in their twelve years of married life, his wife had not fathomed him. If his charm had won him conquests, they had never obtruded. If he had craved youth and beauty, he had given no intimation of it. He had unwaveringly upheld both his wife's dignity and his by an unswerving courtesy; how much or how little love he had given her was a secret she had carried with her—she had left him her fortune, unconditionally.
He had led Ann up to the very present, and she told him what he already knew: "And my father came home to-day." She paused on that, because of the tragedy it had been to her, but her face was more expressive than she knew.
"I suppose he will sell the farm and take you all west with him when he goes back? That will mean a different life for you," Edward said.
The suggestion was an entirely new one to Ann; she grew wide-eyed over it. Then she shook her head decidedly. "No, he won't do that—he loves the place."
"Then he will probably send you to school in the autumn."
This also was a new idea, but after consideration she dismissed it. "No.... I didn't study very well when Aunt Sue sent me to school," she added with a touch of shame.
"You didn't?" Edward was genuinely surprised; it was not his reading of her.
"I couldn't ever learn arithmetic—I tried hard, but I couldn't. The teacher told Aunt Sue that I had no brains for study, an' she took me away from school." Ann hated to make the admission, she had been led into it before she knew, and added quickly, "But I liked history and composition—I like to read. I've read my father's books through and through."
"They don't know what good brains are in that school in the village," Edward said quietly. "My greatest pleasure is reading, too—you are fortunate to have grown up in a library."
Ann was forced to admit that it was not a library, just a cupboard in her father's room stacked with books. Edward knew that, as a boy, Coats Penniman had been an omnivorous reader and something of a student. He selected in his mind the books Coats was likely to have read, many histories, the lives of great men, and the staider fiction which he himself had enjoyed when a boy, and Ann warmed into vivid pleasure when she found that they had acquaintances in common. She talked of George Eliot's characters as one would of friends, and lovingly of Maggie Tulliver, that creation of a great woman's brain always tenderly loved by misfits such as Ann.
"She was a nobody's child," Ann said softly.
Edward noticed that the dramatic and emotional appealed profoundly to her, and the sentimental very little. He thought as he listened to her and looked at her beauty that, if the right sort of man possessed her, she would grow into a superb woman; a few years' training would make her a finished product, something more than presentable, a really fascinating woman. But the emotional in her would have to be satisfied. It was innate, patent, unmistakable—her power to arouse passion, an irresistible inclination to test the emotional, and it was quite possible that in the process she might be irremediably marred.
Edward thought of the thing he had witnessed the morning before, his brother's face bent to Ann's, and his own face darkened. He had thought of it frequently in the last twenty-four hours, and with a full realization of what her appeal to Garvin would be. He thought of the night just past, when the family skeleton had broken loose and been captured and locked away again, only after hours of dread and terror to them all.
He turned from the sickening recollection to look again at Ann. He reflected that with her type the brain is apt to be constant and the emotions less dependable, and love, actual love, rarely a sudden thing and almost always a consecration. How much of herself she would give would depend largely on the man who captured her; to hold her he would have to appeal to her brain as well as her emotions. Edward was certain that he read her aright. He had traveled a long way before he had learned what little he knew of women; what man ever knew more than a very little of the riddle the Creator intended man should not solve.
To Ann he said, "But you haven't read many of the more modern novels, have you? And very little poetry?"
"I couldn't get them," Ann answered regretfully. "There's no library in the village." She did not add, "And I have no money to buy books," but Edward understood.
"I have any number of them—good and bad—at Westmore. I should be glad to lend you anything you would like to read."
Ann did not know what to say. She had collided again with the family quarrel. But she wanted to see Edward again. No one had ever talked to her as he had, or treated her as he did. He was quite different from Garvin, far more deferential, and yet eager to please her. She felt intensely sorry for Garvin; things seemed to be all wrong with him, just as they were with her. And she wanted him to love her; she wanted every man to love her—even Ben Brokaw. It was delightful to feel that she could interest them—as she was interesting Edward Westmore. It was wonderful that she could interest him. He was the most courtly man she had ever seen, and the most distinguished-looking. She was accustomed to tanned faces; the black and white contrasts of Edward's face pleased her. He was tall and erect and dignified. She felt a tremendous respect for him, and at the same time she felt perfectly at one with him; he was so pleasant to be with.
"I'd like very much to have the books," she said somewhat helplessly.
Edward smoothed out the difficulty without mentioning it. "I go by here so often, to the club—I could easily leave them up there, beside the bushes. If some one else found them or they got rained on, it wouldn't matter—there are plenty of others." He looked up at her, smiling quizzically. "I go to the club almost every afternoon, and ride back about this time—just when you will be curled up here in the hollow examining what I have left. I know you will do just that, because that is what all book-lovers do—an unread book is as tantalizing as ripe fruit just out of reach."
Ann thought it was a nice way of being told that he wanted to see her again, and she answered with much of his own manner. "Maybe—but never as late as this, though. See, the sun's most down, an' supper waitin' for you at Westmore, like it is for me up at the farm."
"That means that I am dismissed—that it's growing late, and that I've let you sit here without your cape around you.... Let me put it on for you—before we go up."
He wrapped it about her, his touch light yet lingering, brought it together under her chin, as one would with a child. "Have you felt cold?" he asked tenderly, as if guarding something infinitely precious.
For the second time that day affection lifted in Ann's eyes. In all her life no one had looked at her or spoken to her in just that way; even Garvin had not. "No, I have been warm," she answered softly.
Edward looked full into her eyes, the veil of melancholy that so often shadowed his face stealing over it. "Then I've done you no harm, and you have given me a great pleasure," he said. "Now run home quickly—while I get my horse back to the road."
Ann went, as he said, quickly. It had seemed to her that morning, as she had walked along the same road with her father, that she could never be comforted. But she had been—doubly comforted.
"Is Ann always like this?" Coats Penniman asked Sue that evening.
They had come from supper and were sitting together on the porch. Preparing the meal had been Sue's work; Ann had insisted that the clearing away was her task, and Sue knew why she had been so determined; she did not want to join them on the porch.
"She's always quiet when father is around," Sue answered.
"And I'm a strange element—well, it's natural."
Sue knew that Coats meant to talk of Ann, and she dreaded it. They had spent almost the entire day together, going over the farm and talking of its possibilities, and Coats had scarcely mentioned Ann. But Sue knew that he was thinking of her from the occasional questions he asked and from the way in which he had studied Ann, surreptitiously, with a pitying intensity which Sue understood well. When he spoke to Ann directly his usually deep voice softened to its kindliest note, and Ann had answered dutifully, but Sue noticed that she kept her eyes turned from him.
Poor Ann! Sue sighed inaudibly. She was very sorry for the girl, but she had known just how it would be; the love Coats had seemed incapable of giving the child was not likely to be given the grown girl who reminded him even more poignantly of the bitterest days of his life.
She knew Coats so well. They had grown up together, she and her sister Marian and Coats, and his love for her sister seemed to have been born with him. He had loved Marian as a child, as a boy he had adored her, loved her with an all-engrossing passion when they were grown. He would gladly have given his life for the girl who was his wife for less than a year, and over whom he had agonized with an intensity that had almost deprived him of his reason. She had borne her child and had left him desolate. She seemed to have taken with her all his capacity for love. They were like that, the Pennimans; an affection for each other and a tremendous sense of duty, but only one love. She herself was like that. No one had ever guessed; she alone knew who it wasshehad loved all those years; loved in spite of everything, steadily loved and loved.
It was dark, and Sue could think and feel without her face betraying her. Coats' figure was a vague outline, but his presence was an intensely palpable thing. It pressed on her, enveloped her.Whatthat day had been to her! After all these years, he her companion, his hand on her arm, his first thought for her, and no one to come between them—except the ghost of the past. She wanted it laid, buried too deep ever to rise again. So far he had not mentioned the past; was he going to drag the thing out now and agonize over it again?
She had not answered his remark, and he said nothing for a time, smoking in silence. Finally he said, "I wish I could make the future a little easier for her."
Sue drew a breath of relief. She was quite willing to talk of the future, even Ann's future. "I've often wondered what was best to do for her."
"Has any man ever made love to her, Sue?"
"No, no one," Sue said positively. "Who would? You know how away from people we've had to live—we haven't even had the relations here—it was the only way to do when we were so poor.... Besides, Ann's not much more than a child."
"You've always written that she was a thoughtless child. She's less of a child than you realize, Sue. And she's not thoughtless, either. She does a deal of thinking, but keeps it to herself."
Sue remembered Ann's burst of feeling which had so surprised her. "I reckon that she has grown up so gradually I haven't noticed. She has such a careless way with her most of the time. She plays with every mortal thing that comes her way, Coats—peeps at it with her eyelids down—seein' if it's goin' to give her any fun, it seems to me. It drives father mad to see her. I've often watched her, with the collie, with Ben—with every breathing thing that comes her way. An' she does lay hold on people—if there's a creature on earth Ben Brokaw loves, it's Ann. It's Ann has kept him here these last two years—she can do anything with him."
"It was born in her," Coats said evenly. It was his first reference to his wife and he turned from it, spoke more clearly. "Sue, Ann's the quintessence of attraction—I've realized it to-day. She's one of those women you might wall up and use plenty of stone and mortar to do it, and still she'd draw some man to her. It's her portion—we might as well recognize it and allow for it in the future."
"You mean she's bound to marry?"
It was not all Coats had meant, but he said, "Yes."
"But she mustn't marry here, Coats—it's what father has always said.... What chance is there here for a girl, anyway. The few boys that have stayed here are a shiftless lot, an' the Hunt Club set—they're rich, most of them, an' fast—we're just farmers to them—a girl situated like Ann is mustn't have anything to do with them."
"The club is since my time—are they about much, the men?"
"They're all over the place—as long as there's huntin'," Sue said with disgust, "an' they're always about the club, summer and winter. Father stopped their ridin' through here—he put up the gate an' notice—and he arrested Garvin Westmore, Coats."
Coats was silent, Sue guessed, because he might say too much; hatred of the Westmores lay deep in him. Sue liked the restraint he put upon himself. He had gone away a wretched silent man, and had returned a restrained yet forceful personality. He had broadened and gained weight, both mentally and physically. She had guessed from his letters that he had improved, and she had often thought, miserably, that she was not keeping pace with him. She had never had her sister's beauty or attraction, and even her prettiness was fading. And mentally?... What chance had she had, tied down to the farm?... Then bitterness slipped from her. He was here and, she hoped intensely, was going to stay. The fear that had tormented her, that he might marry out of sheer loneliness, was set at rest, and if she could feel certain that he would stay, her cup of joy would be full. All she dared hope for was that he would stay where she could care for him.
Coats spoke again, and of Ann. "I don't know just what to do for her," he said thoughtfully. "You wrote that she had no head for study. If she hasn't, sending her away to school would be a mistake—just courting mischief.... I'm inclined to think that she'll be best off here—until she's older—then I'll try to send her west—put her with people who will look after her and see that she gets a chance to marry, for that's what it will be with her. She's bound to have her bit of life, have it and pay for it, the certainty of it is written all over her, and she'll have a better chance of happiness somewhere else than here." His voice deepened. "You see, Sue, she's not really one of us—that's the thing has been borne in on me to-day. It's an old wound opened, and it's made me feel a little sick; her mother was never meant for this place—or for me. You know how it was with her—just that craving for all the things we were not. It showed in every look and word of Marian's, unconsciously, and it shows doubly in Ann.... Why, Sue, when I looked up this morning and saw her standing there, where Marian often stood, black and white, that hair and brow of hers, and with Marian's lips smiling at me, it was exactly as if a ghost had risen up and beckoned to me! I lost hold on myself. I did the best I could, but my best was bad. I froze whatever affection the child has for me—just froze it forever." He ended helplessly, a sudden breaking away from the restraint that was habitual with him: "She's a woman grown, Sue—I didn't expect it to be that way—I never dreamed it would be like that—you never told me she looked like that—you never told me how she looked!"
"You never asked me to tell you," Sue said painfully.
Coats quieted, gained control of himself almost instantly. "I didn't mean to let myself go like that. It's the last time I'll speak of things that can't be helped. The best I can do is to watch over Ann and give her a chance."
"It's the best any of us can do, Coats," Sue's voice was still husky.
Because of the note of pain, Coats drew his chair close to hers, touched her arm. "You've always done your best, Sue. I left you to bear most of the burden, but I've come back to it. I'm going to stay, Sue—it's going to be lifted from your shoulders to mine.... And I'm glad to be back. I belong here—I'm no money-maker. I'm fitted for just this—to draw a living out of the soil and enjoy doing it.... I can't expect help from Ann—she's bound to go out into the world and live—but you'll stand by me, Sue?"
The assurance Sue longed for had been given her. "Yes, I'll stand by you!" she said deeply. "I'll stand by you always, Coats—I'm fitted for just this, too."