Part 12

Baird considered for a longer space, and then summed up thus: "From the very first Judith appealed to the best in me--she's appealed more to the mental than the physical side of me. That's why, instead of plunging along in a fever these last twenty-four hours, I've been planning for a contented future. And if respect and admiration and the certainty that a woman will make you a splendid, wife, plus a reasonable degree of passion, aren't good reasons for thinking of marriage, then I've learned nothing from watching men who have been infatuated with their wives in much the same fashion that a man is infatuated with his mistress; the result is usually ructions. I love Judith in sensible marrying fashion, but I confess I ought to feel more joyous over it."

Unless a man is permeated by the golden thing of which, as yet, Baird had little conception, he is apt to settle his own case first and the woman's last. He turned finally to a consideration of Judith. Baird was not any more conceited than the average man, but the certainty that Judith loved him about as completely as a woman could love a man was his unalterable conviction. He might live to be eighty, live to doubt most things, but of that he was certain. And it had not been a sudden thing with her; it was a culmination, a steady growing up to an involuntary offering. She desired him and wished to marry him, and not after the deliberate fashion in which he had been considering their union. Judith loved him intensely, and had sought to attract him as many honest women before her had sought to capture the men they wished to marry. She had waited through the day, then had gone because she must do something to save her pride. She knew that, if the spark was in him at all, he would follow.

He knew now just how it was with him, and he knew how it was with her. He wasn't in the least elated, yet he was pretty thoroughly committed.

What did he intend to do?

XXIV

A DEFINITION OF LOVE

Baird was still pondering his situation when, half an hour later, he let himself through the Penniman gate. The collie must have been abroad in the moonlight seeking adventure, for Baird was not disturbed by any hostile demonstrations; the Penniman barn and house might have been abandoned property, they were so silent under the moon; there was no lighted window, no stir of any kind--until he neared the front porch--then some woman dressed in white rose from a chair, evidently startled.

Even in the bright moonlight, Baird could not tell whether it was Ann Penniman or not, he was not near enough, but he was quick to reassure whoever it was: "It's Nickolas Baird; Mr. Penniman gave me permission to come through."

It was Ann's relieved voice that answered. "Oh--is it?... I thought it was some one else," and she sat down again. Ann had the porch to herself that evening, for Sue and Coats had gone to a neighbor's, and, perhaps because she had been thinking absorbedly of Garvin, she had been startled into wondering if the rider could be he.

Baird had let his horse bring him by the shortest way, for he had had about enough of his thoughts, and was tired of the saddle. When seated in his room, in business fashion, he would decide just what course to take. It occurred to him now that he would think the better for a respite. Looking at Ann would be a relief, like laying down a treatise and taking up a novel.

He had come nearer. "Sitting all alone, Miss Ann?" he asked.

"Yes.... Father and Aunt Sue have gone to make a visit."

Baird dismounted and came to her. "Just sitting and thinking? I've been riding and thinking, and I'm tired of it. May I stop for a while?"

"If you like," Ann said indifferently. "I reckon father'll come along before long--they only went to a neighbor's." Then, because her father had decreed that Baird should be treated hospitably, she added, "Won't you wait for him?"

"A few minutes." Baird seated himself on the top step, at Ann's feet. "What a night!"

"The chair'd be more comfortable," Ann suggested politely.

"I'd rather sit here, thank you.... May I have the cushion, though?"

He took it from the chair, and sat back against the pillar of the porch, his legs stretched comfortably. He could see Ann's face quite distinctly now, all except her eyes,--they were shadowed pools in a white setting; she was black and white, more marked contrasts than in daylight, though not so clearly outlined.

"I've just been to Westmore," Baird said, "and when we struck the County Road that horse of mine turned this way, instead of going on by the Mine Banks. I was thinking too hard to notice until he'd gone some distance, so I let him have his way. They're cute beasts--when they're headed for their stables they're as good as a man at calculating distance."

"Did you get him here?" Ann asked.

"Yes, I bought him off Garvin Westmore."

"Almost every horse about here would choose this way through to the Post-Road because they're used to it. One reason the Mine Banks Road is so dreadful is because everybody used to come this shorter way. I used to count the horses that came through in a day--when I was little."

"You've always lived here, then, Miss Ann?"

"Always.... I reckon I'd be lonely for it--if I went away," she added soberly.

"You wouldn't be going far away, would you?"

"Oh, no--"

There was something in her manner that recalled fleeting conjectures Baird had had since seeing her with Edward that afternoon. Judith had said, "I realize that Edward will probably marry--" It would be odd if Edward was really thinking seriously of Ann--a Penniman and all the rest of it. There'd be a stir on the Ridge, and a perfect storm in the clan. Silly, caste-bound idiots! Ann was exquisite enough for any sphere. She had been superb while she handled that horse--plenty of spirit and go. And if Edward loved her, he'd marry her, in spite of them all; Edward was a pretty fine sort.... But how about Garvin?... Some one had talked love to Ann, it showed in her face and in her voice--that was what made her seem so changed. Was it Edward or Garvin?... She certainly had drawing power, the thing that's entirely aside from physical beauty; ugly women often had it.

Baird turned from his thoughts. "This is a different sort of place from where I grew up--just about as different as you can imagine," and he slipped into reminiscences of Chicago and of his father, and, when Ann showed her interest, he endeavored to elucidate the intricacies of ward politics.

It seemed to Ann that he had grown up with plenty of wickedness about him, drinking and stealing and such things; among men who cared nothing about any one or anything, only to make money. It was a wonder that he was as nice as he was, and he must be nice, in spite of the way he had once behaved to her, or Edward and Garvin would not be so devoted to him. Ann was certain that Judith Westmore could be cruel, very beautiful and charming, but cruelly proud. Baird was evidently courting her, and she was probably not very nice to him. He certainly did not seem as light-hearted as he once did. And neither was she--she was feeling heavy-hearted enough.

Ann was always quick with sympathy. She had been poignantly reminiscent all day, and she, in her turn, told Baird a little about her own childhood, speaking so softly that her slurred syllables were music. She told him nothing intimate, yet it was a revelation of loneliness; the fields and the woods and Ben had been her companions. Baird was impressed, as Edward had been, by a child life lived apart from its family.

"You hadn't a mother, then, Ann?" Baird had responded to the change in her manner; he forgot to say, "Miss Ann."

"My mother died when I was born," Ann said with a quiver of feeling. "I reckon if I'd had her, everything would have been all different."

Ann had grown up with the longing for a father, but since the night before she had wanted her mother, wanted her intensely. That afternoon, on their return from the village, she had gone down to the woods. There had been a letter for her in the chestnut tree, an impassioned letter. Garvin wrote of the night before, of her promise to go with him. "_You are mine now, every bit of you_--there can be no going back for either of us." And he had also said, "Some one has been spying on us, Ann. I found that out last night. We can't meet as we have. I'll write to you every day, but we mustn't even be seen speaking to each other, for the present. But don't let that worry you, dear--if we are careful, there is no danger of any one's knowing how much we are to each other. And it will only be for a short time--I have the agency at last--we will go in June." Then he had painted a picture of their life together that to one more experienced than Ann might have suggested some notable omissions. Ann simply knew that the letter did not make her happy.... Then there was also a book for her in the bushes, and on the fly leaf a line: "Please wait for me to-morrow?" That had not made her happy, either.

"I suppose it would have made a difference," Baird was saying thoughtfully. "It would have made a difference to me, too--it makes a difference to any child. I wasn't much better off than you--my mother died when I was four years old."

"You can't remember then even how she looked," Ann said with profound fellow-feeling, "any more than I can remember my mother."

She had slipped from her chair, seated herself on the step beside him, and Baird could see her eyes now, wells of sympathy. So long as she lived, Ann would do such things, offer sympathy by the suggestion of a caress, just as she would always respond to the masculine call by an illusive half-promise. Baird saw her sympathy and felt her nearness. She was an utterly sweet thing; he would have liked to touch her; not in the rough way in which he once had, just draw her close and kiss her softly. He kept his rebellious hands clasped behind his head.

"I can just remember her face--in the misty way I saw yours when you were in the chair," he said steadily. "I can't remember where or when, but I know it was my mother. She was black and white--like you." Baird did not tell her that his mother had been a Jewess; that was a thing he told no one, though he often shrugged in private over his parentage, a Jewish mother and an Irish father! A truly modern American inheritance! "And not such a bad one, either," he was in the habit of adding to himself. "It produces good brains." Just now his brain was retrospective, his feelings busied with Ann.

"I suppose a mother is just as helpful to a boy as she is to a girl," he continued, in the same reflective way. "I suppose, if I'd had my mother to talk to, I'd know women better--all the nice side of them--the mother side.... I suppose I'd know myself better.... Lord knows, I'd like some one to tell me what the lasting thing is composed of--the thing one wants to go through life with."

There was a long silence. Ann was also reflecting vaguely on the same subject, her hands clasped about her knees, her head thrown back, looking up at the stars that appeared to move restlessly, as if palely rebellious under the supremacy of the moon. A cricket beneath the steps ventured upon the stillness, and, as if emboldened by its temerity, a bird flitted by them to the clump of lilacs on the terrace and cut the silence with injunctions to "Whip-poor-will!" Far off, somewhere in the open, his mate agreed with him and reiterated his insistence. Then, just below them, in the pasture, a bobwhite called repeatedly, seeking an answer, which came presently, from the far distance, faint almost as a whispered echo.

"The night birds are making love," Baird said softly. "All nature's stirring with it. Ann, what is love, anyway? The thing we humans ought to have--the lasting thing, I mean?"

"I've been thinking, too," Ann answered musingly. "Why--I suppose it's ... I don't know just how to say it--"

"Try, Ann--you're a woman, you ought to know."

Ann pondered, eyes still lifted to the stars. "Why--I guess it's wanting somebody for all your own--so badly you feel sure you can't live without them ... an' at the same time bein' such good friends with them that you care more about makin' them happy than being happy yourself."

Baird sat up abruptly. "Say that again, will you!"

Ann was startled into confusion. She looked wonderingly at his earnestness. "I don't believe I know--just what I said."

Baird repeated her definition alertly. "That was it, wasn't it?"

"Yes, I think so."

He sat a moment in thought. "That's about right," he said finally and decidedly, "and here I've been asking myself all sorts of fool questions for twenty-four solid hours."

He got up, stood a moment looking down at her, laughing softly, amusedly, and with an air of relief. "And you're not sure just what you did say! It was a bit of wisdom that slipped out of your subconsciousness.... Ann, you're a divinely dear thing! I'm grateful to you for existing, and I'll come another evening and tell you so."

Ann had recovered somewhat from surprise. This was a little more like the impetuous young man who had displeased her because she had liked his kiss. She shook hands with him distantly. "Father'll be here then, I hope."

Baird did not stop to parley. He rode off through the cedar avenue, turned his horse over to Sam, and went directly to his room. He threw aside his cap and, sitting down at his table, wrote to Judith.

XXV

BECAUSE SHE LOVED TOO MUCH

It was Hetty who gave Baird's letter to Judith on Monday morning, as soon as Judith returned from Fair Field. "Mr. Baird come in Saturday evenin' an' he look mighty surprised when I tol' him you was gone," Hetty said, "an' yestiddy mo'nin' Sam Jackson, he come from de club fetchin' this letter.... Honey, you ain't lookin' right smart--weren't de party no 'count?"

"Yes, the party was all right," Judith answered briefly. "I'm tired, that's all."

Hetty knew better, but what the trouble was she could not guess.

Hetty had lived with the Westmores for fifty years. She was born in a Westmore cabin and was a slave child when the war broke. On the morning when the Westmore slaves had celebrated their emancipation by departing from Westmore, Hetty had been left behind. She had clung to the family throughout the hard years, the only house-servant Westmore possessed until Edward's wife's money helped to resurrect the place. She had been mammy to all the Westmore children, had "toted" both Edward and Judith and had been sole mother to Sarah and Garvin, for Mrs. Westmore had soon faded into God's half-acre, leaving Judith to become mistress of Westmore; master of Westmore, in reality, for the colonel was no longer master of anything, least of all of himself.

Hetty had a dog's attachment to Westmore and the family, and for Judith, not merely attachment, but worship. Judith wielded the whip sometimes, her stinging, cutting tongue, and Hetty cowered under it, as on the night when she had let Sarah escape to the Mine Banks. Hetty had known that Sarah's change from gentleness to restlessness portended an out-break and was confident in the strength of her own arms, they had often restrained Sarah in the old days, but she had not had intelligence enough to circumvent cunning. Just as now, when she sensed tension in Edward, in Garvin, and in Judith, she was unable to determine the cause. As soon as Judith returned, pale and bright-eyed and with lips hard set, Hetty knew that she was in trouble of some sort. She could only wait upon her dumbly, watch her in canine fashion.

Judith did not read Baird's letter at once. She attended to her household first. When she knew she could shut herself away without fear of interruption, she opened it.

"Dear Wonder-Woman," Baird wrote.

"Though I feel that I have forfeited the joy of ever again calling you so, that you will be quite right if you decree never to see or speak to me again, I can't help thinking of you just as I always have, as the most wonderful woman I have ever known.

"You are big-natured and kind enough to forgive me for the other night? You are, aren't you? You know, don't you, that I meant no disrespect when I forgot for a moment that you are too fine, too far beyond me for me ever to touch? I've not been a very good sort, Judith--I dropped for a moment into old ways. If by my fault I have lost your friendship, I feel that I shall lose the best thing that has ever come into my life. You have kept me to decent ways--you have taught me reverence for much that I used to consider loosely. That's why you are, and always will be the Wonder-woman.

"Will you forgive me and let me try in the future to be better worthy of your friendship and your kindness? I want them both, more than I have ever wanted anything.

"Yours in sincere regret,

"NICKOLAS BAIRD."

Judith had known that it would be a withdrawal of some sort.... She sat for a long time with the letter in her lap, looking straight before her, feeling rather than thinking. Then she got up abruptly, let the pages fall, and went to the window, looking down on Westmore, at the terraces, off over the country with its promise of plentiful harvest, then up at the Westmore half-acre.... God's half-acre?... He had dealt hardly with some who lay there, and He had dealt hardly with her.

With the ache of irreparable loss torturing her, Judith went back in bitter retrospect over the years. What chance had she had? She had given her youth to Westmore; every nerve, every energy, every atom of her brain and body strained, year in and year out, to the one purpose, the conservation of the family. Her mother had slipped away and left the burden to her. Her father had weighted the burden until it was mountain-high, then had left her to carry it. Edward had flung aside family allegiance and had gone; Sarah had worse than failed her, added dread and a stigma to the burden; Garvin had remained, but more of an anxiety than a help.... Edward had come back to allegiance, tried through the last ten years to lighten her burden as much as possible, and now had lifted it to his own shoulders, but that could not bring back her youth or soften the callouses on her shoulders. They were attached to the bone, by long galling become an irremovable part of her. She was thirty-four; she had crossed the apex; she had started on the downward way.... And that letter told her so.

Cheeks white and eyes flaming, Judith stared at God's half-acre. What chance had she had? What had _He_ sent her in those twenty years of struggle? She had worked faithfully, but what had _He_ done to satisfy the _woman_ in her--the ache for _life_! A cousin had made love to her and a nobody, a boy whose father had been overseer of slaves, had ventured to tell her that he loved her, and both romances had had their inception and their close back in the years when she was young enough to be all appeal and no brain--the sort upon which Baird would expend himself--some brainless pretty girl who would have no conception of the possibilities that lay in the man who would be mad over her.

Judith turned from the window, goaded into restless pacing by the thought. Some girl who could smile like Ann Penniman! Just allure, nothing more, but the thing that captures, nevertheless.... Baird had come to her too late; not too late if she had been like some women, experienced in the art of capture. Though cumbered by thirty-four years, she was as inexperienced as any girl, and far more ineffective because made awkward by pride and a consciousness of the overwhelming thing which had grown and grown in her until it had led her to that moment in his arms.

Judith's tightly-gripped hands twisted when she thought of that sudden offering. What woman who was not made a fool of by passion would have made that mistake!... Or what woman possessed of an iota of strategic ability would, after making one mistake, have made another, allowed her pride to carry her away when her one hope lay in the elimination of pride? Had she remained at Westmore, Baird would be hers now, and quite unconscious that he had been a dilatory lover; and she had beauty and charm enough to have kept him in ignorance. He would have married her in ignorance and been happy, as thousands of other men had married and been content, for she had a beautiful body and a clear understanding of both his possibilities and his defects. And she loved him completely.

But she had blundered stupidly, irremediably--loosened the hold she had on him by one uncontrollable act, and, by another misstep, had given his usually cool brain time to adjust itself and pen her that cruelly clever letter.... It was damnably clever; it eliminated himself, and pointed out to her the only role it would be possible for her to play.... She had lost him, and through her own fault--because she loved him too much. She wanted to scream; she had to hold herself with strong hands. If she had Sarah's taint in her, she would go mad.

It was the ache of desolation that finally brought Judith to her knees, laid her quivering across her bed, crying like a child under the lash. And it was pride and the tenacity that had held her to Westmore, a faint hope of the future, that, later on, nerved her to write her answer:

"DEAR NICKOLAS:

"Of course you are forgiven, for I have succeeded in forgiving myself. At the risk of your thinking me immodest, I'll speak plainly--the moon and the spring-time were a little too much for us the other evening, and we behaved rather foolishly. I'm some eight years older than you are, and I certainly should have known better, so I take the blame--if there is any--upon myself. Let us think of it as an incident, a bit of nature, or a bit of sweetness, or quite a reprehensible proceeding, or in any way that's proper to think of it, but certainly not as a thing that can for a moment affect our sincere liking for each other. I have enjoyed our friendship fully as much as you have, and I certainly want it to continue. If, as you say, I have helped you by stimulating that very good brain of yours, I am happy.

"Please be sure that you are always welcome at Westmore. We are all of us fond of you, and I'm as eager as can be to have you succeed. Edwin Carter was at Fair Field yesterday, and he spoke enthusiastically of you. He talked quite a long time to me about you and told me as a state secret that he was going to urge Mr. Dempster to send you to Europe in the autumn--he said they couldn't spare you till then. It will be splendid if they do that--I hope they will.

"Your affectionate friend,

"JUDITH WESTMORE."

"Don't forget Priscilla Copeley's lawn party on Wednesday. Elizabeth Dickenson and Christine Carter are coming out on the three-thirty, they told me."

The letter reached Baird that evening and he read it eagerly, then sat in thought over it for a time. It did not alter his conviction in the least, though it did call forth his sincere admiration. "She's fine--a thoroughbred! She knew just what note to strike!" Then his shrewdness added, "But I'm not forgiven--not a bit more than she forgives herself, and I'm sorry."

Baird got up and walked about then, half reflective, half restless. He had the evening on his hands; he couldn't go to Westmore until the next night--he must go then--what was he going to do for the next three moonlit hours--until he could go to bed?

He got his horse, finally, and rode through the cedar avenue; if Ann was about he would stop and talk with her.

XXVI

THE ETERNAL ATTRACTION