Part 13

In the days, or rather, the evenings, that followed, Baird came and went by the cedar avenue. Though as frequent a caller at Westmore as ever, he appeared to have a penchant for the short cut, and curiously enough he seemed also to prefer the longest way back to the club from the station, around by the County Road and through the Penniman place.

With the purpose of bringing Baird often to Westmore, and at the same time bridging the awkward interval of adjustment, Judith had asked Elizabeth Dickenson and Christine Carter for a fortnight's visit at Westmore. Judith had given much thought to what must be her attitude to Baird, a perfect friendliness and the best presentation of herself always; while Baird, who possessed in full the masculine capacity to forget an affair in which he had lost interest, had given the matter no thought at all. It was a thing finished, comfortably adjusted, disposed of. He liked Judith very much, occasionally he wondered how in the world he had ever mistaken liking for anything else, for in comparing her with Ann she appeared so unalluringly mature; he had simply been off his head for a time, that was all.

Baird was gallant to Judith without effort, and attentive to her guests, and glad, on the whole, that he rarely saw Judith alone. He went about to the Ridge gatherings with Judith and her guests, gave a dinner party at the club for them, taking care always that he should not be detained so late that he could not stop for a few minutes, at least, at the Penniman house.

He took a great deal of pains to secure that few moments with Ann, or an hour or more, if he could manage it. It would seem that Coats and Sue tacitly favored him, for simultaneously with his regular comings and goings they forsook the front porch. They had many calls to return, frequent evening drives to the village, and, when not actually off the place, they were not in evidence. Ben was always there, but he never obtruded.

Though Ann appeared to be too self-absorbed to pay any particular attention to him, Baird noticed that she looked annoyed when, not finding any one on the porch, he had the assurance to knock at the living-room entrance, forcing her to come down from her room. She always told him with frozen politeness that her father and Aunt Sue were out, and that he must keep quiet and not wake her grandfather. Baird knew that, in the evenings, Ann was always somewhere about the place, for Sue waited upon the old man during the day, and it had become Ann's duty to watch over him in the evenings. He always went to bed early now, and slept heavily; he had grown very deaf and feeble in the last few weeks.

With his usual assurance, Baird would beg Ann to come out to the porch, and often he stayed until late, using every art he knew to interest Ann. He talked on many subjects, and Ann listened; sometimes Baird was certain that she was not even listening.

He did not know what to make of her. She was utterly unlike the girl whom he had once roughly kissed; often so absent-minded that Baird vowed to himself in rage that it would be the last time he would try to talk to her. But there were the times when she aroused and was gravely thoughtful, and best of all were her occasional lapses into sweetness. Baird thought her irresistibly charming then, "divinely dear," as on the night when she had unconsciously solved his doubts for him. And she was so young; so utterly young that she made him feel vastly experienced.

Half a dozen times during the fortnight Baird decided that he would stop riding through the Penniman place, put temptation behind him, and as many times lapsed into an unsatisfactory investigation of Ann. Nobody knew what he was about; he'd like to make up his mind about Ann before the Ridge began to gossip about his devotion. He wondered, uncomfortably, what Judith would say if she knew how often he was at the Pennimans'. What would Edward think?

Judith already knew. The fortnight she had planned so carefully was not yet over when, one day, Hetty remarked: "Sam Jackson, he was tellin' me Mr. Baird is settin' up mos' every night with Ann Penniman. Sam says he don't go nor come no other way but through de Penniman place. I reckon Mr. Baird, he ain't been long enough on de Ridge to know jes' who is de right famb'lys 'roun' here."

Judith received the information in perfect silence, carried it about with her for a hotly jealous day, before she imparted it to Edward. Edward was the one person who could say an effective word to Baird.

Judith chose an opportunity when they were alone. "Hetty tells me that they are talking at the club about Mr. Baird's going so much to the Pennimans'--he seems to be taken with Ann." Judith was purposely abrupt; if Edward was startled, so much the better.

He was startled, more moved than she thought he could be; he rarely flushed, but the color grew in his face until he was crimson. "He might spend his time to worse advantage," he returned icily.

Judith's nerves were not under the best of control, for it had been a wretched two weeks, every day of which had assured her of Baird's complete withdrawal. A slight sneer crept into her even answer: "Ann is hardly the girl for Nickolas Baird to marry--for any one who considered social position to marry--is she?... Isn't it your duty to advise him a little?"

Edward changed from red to white. He rose from his chair and stood over his sister, looked at her as Judith had not seen him look since the day when he had defied her father and had left Westmore. "Ann would grace any position--I intend to help her to do so," he said, and left the room.

Judith sat in petrified silence.... So Edward loved the girl.... She had not suspected that.... A long vista opened before Judith Westmore: she was reminded that Edward owned Westmore; that he could make Ann mistress of Westmore if he chose; that his fortune was his to dispose of as he liked. She and Garvin were dependents upon him, nothing more. The shock of the thing stilled her. She was utterly helpless--she could do nothing.

By degrees, Baird also had come to the conclusion that Edward loved Ann Penniman, and that she loved him to the extent of being completely indifferent to every one else. From the way in which Baird sometimes paced his room after an evening at the Pennimans', his conclusions certainly disturbed him. Baird's powers of observation had been on the alert; he guessed that Edward saw Ann frequently. Edward came to the club almost every afternoon, dallied over a mint-julep, then went off down the Back Road, and Baird had discovered that often it was a full hour before he rode out of the woods again.

If Garvin had been up to that sort of thing, Baird would not have granted Ann much chance of happiness; but Edward was as straight a man as he had ever known. If he was making love to Ann, it was intended seriously. He couldn't come to her house; to meet her secretly was the only thing he could do; it was what he himself would do under the same circumstances.... And Edward had the right of way; he was in the field first and, more than that, Edward was his friend. He, Baird, had no right to be hanging about trying to interest Ann. What the devil was the matter with him, anyway, that he was determined to get into such messes! Here, he had just failed Judith, and now he was urged to get in Edward's way.... It would be wild folly for him to fall in love with Ann.

For four restless nights Baird kept away from Ann. He was too upset to go anywhere. Judith's guests had gone and he could not bring himself to go to Westmore; he did not want to see either Judith or Edward. The last night of the four Baird spent in the city, and came back the next day swearing to himself that he'd not do _that_ again--he'd rather sit in his room and do nothing. Then, quite suddenly, he reached a characteristic decision; it did not take him long to get into the saddle and to the Penniman house.

Coats and Sue were not there, but neither was Ann, though Baird knocked an unreasonable time at the living-room door. He walked around the house then, and was rewarded by meeting Ann, who was hurrying up the spring-house path, breathless, as from a run.

To accomplish the momentous thing that had been weighing upon her, Ann had risked leaving her grandfather alone for a short time. During the last two weeks it had made little difference to Ann whether she sat on the porch listening to Baird, or lay on her bed thinking of the thing that loomed large before her. It had grown out of her two weeks of companionship with Edward. No matter what the hurt to Garvin, she must tell him the truth.

She had written her confession that day, spent hours and much paper over the short letter, and as soon as her father and Sue were safely away she had taken it to the woods. She was back now; the thing was done; she was panting as much from nervousness as from haste.

The sight of a man looming dimly in the path startled her and she stopped. She felt ill enough to be frightened by everything; a moment before a bird had fluttered in the grapevines and her heart had stood still.

"It's only I--don't be frightened," Baird's voice said.

Ann came on without answer.

"You've been running--where have you been?" Baird questioned. He felt jealously certain that Ann had been to the woods--to see Edward, of course.

Ann did not answer his question. "Were you at the house? Was grandpa all right?" she asked anxiously.

"I think so--everything was quiet.... Why don't you wait a minute and get your breath?... I want to ask you something, anyway, Ann?"

Ann did pause. "Well?" she asked indifferently.

Baird looked at her in silence for a moment. Even in the dim light he could see that she was white and tired. If she was in love with Edward, it did not seem to make her joyful. She had never looked really happy since the day he had seen her playing in the barn. He asked his question abruptly, "Ann, are you engaged to anybody?"

Ann simply stared at him.

Baird's face had grown hot. "Are you in love with any one, Ann?... I'd rather you told me frankly.... If you are, I'll stop coming around and bothering you. If you're not, I'm going to make you like me."

There was a long silence. Then Ann said, "I'd rather you stayed away."

"You're sure of that, Ann?"

"Yes."

Baird stood in uncertainty for a moment; it was hard for him to hold to his decision. He was carrying his riding-whip, and he slashed viciously at the Bouncing-Betsies that edged the path, his teeth set.

Then he straightened. "Well--I guess there's nothing I can do--so I'll be off."

They went up to the house in silence.

XXVII

THE THING

Garvin Westmore sat at the mouth of Crest Cave, his eyes fixed on the Back Road and on the stretch of woods below the Penniman house. He had sat for the greater part of the day almost motionless and steadily watching--watching every one who came and went by the Back Road, who entered or left the woods.

Beside him, emptied to the last drop, was the bottle, his comforter during the last two weeks of brooding suspense, and near it lay Ann's letter, the confession she had carried to the woods the night before. Garvin had feared the Thing in himself that stirred so frequently now, and that dropped back into quietude only when he drugged it. Therefore he had drunk persistently and deeply during the last two weeks, spent whole days when he was supposed to be in the city, lying on the carpet of pine-needles, feeling that, though he had to drug the Thing heavily, he was still himself, _unpossessed_, thinking quite clearly and coolly, as he was thinking now.

Once, when he was a boy, the Thing had suddenly come to life in him, swept him aside for mad hours that neither his family nor he had ever forgotten. Then for long years he had been as free of it as if it had never revealed itself. When he had changed from a boy to a man, it had stirred in him, and they called it "melancholia." It was the same Thing that had shut Sarah away from life.

Then had come the years when he was a man grown, and the Thing stirred only occasionally, "fits of depression" that lifted easily into excitement and dropped suddenly into perfect self-possession. He had learned then that drink lifted him out of depression, not into ungovernable excitement or into elation, but into coolness and capability. _He_ knew that the Thing lay in him ready to spring into activity at any moment, but he had learned how to deceive those about him; he even half-deceived his family.

All night he had been in the grip of depression. He had not slept because of it, and that morning when ostensibly he was on his way to the city, he had come to the Mine Banks and had hidden his horse, bent upon gaining the usual relief. At noon he had gone to the woods, by way of the creek, and had secured Ann's letter. Fortified as he was, he had read it without mad excitement. It confirmed the apprehension that, during the last two weeks, had kept him in persistent depression.

He went back to Crest Cave with the queer surface restraint upon him that drink always produced, and had drained the last drop from the bottle, his mind focused upon the suspicion over which he had brooded ever since the night Edward had made him promise not to go near Ann.

Ann had written:

"DEAR GARVIN:

"If I could endure it any longer without telling you, I'd not write this; but I can't. You have asked me all along in your letters why I have written so anxiously, and I have told you that I wasn't happy because I was worried about everything, but I didn't tell you the real reason.

"Garvin, I can't do it. I don't love you enough to go with you. Almost from the time I promised I've been sorry I promised. I'm wretched because I have to tell you. I feel sick when I think of how it will hurt you, and I hate myself for not having known my heart any better. I meant everything I ever said to you. I thought I loved you, and I did want you to be happy. I still want you to be happy--I want you to have everything good that a man can have. But you want something that I've found out is not in me to give to you. That's the thing I have found out about myself, and it isn't right not to tell you.

"There isn't any more I can say, except that begging won't change my feeling to you. Please forget me. You'll be gone from here to where you'll find people you like.

"I'll always think lovingly of you--you were kind to me when I was dreadfully unhappy. You and Edward have both been kind to me. Lovingly, ANN."

Garvin had tossed the letter aside. It lay through the afternoon, its open page stirred occasionally by the light breeze. The slight rustle and the whispering of the pines were almost the only sounds, except when the birds sang. Garvin moved only when some one passed along the Back Road; then he bent forward, his eyes burning and intent beneath lifted brows. He watched Coats Penniman drive up to the woods and disappear; later on, saw Baird ride up the Back Road, evidently returning from the city. He watched him intently, made sure it was Baird, and settled back again into alert waiting.

It was late in the afternoon when another horseman, riding toward the club, came slowly up through the pastures and melted into the woods. Garvin sat, head craned and eyes narrowed, watching every step of the man's progress. When the woods had swallowed the rider, Garvin got up, circled the Crest, and went down to the Mine Banks Road. He crossed it, then crossed swiftly the open space between the road and the creek, and went down into the bed of the creek for better cover, and, with the caution of the practised hunter, made his slow way along to where it left the woods.

It had taken some time to creep along without noise. When he reached the woods, where the field undergrowth gave way to trees and the banks of the creek were studded with rocks, he waited for a time, crouched behind a rock. He had come with the utmost caution, still, a broken twig, some slight sound, might have betrayed him. He heard nothing but the wood sounds, no voices or stir of any kind. Then he straightened, though still well sheltered by the rock, and looked about him.

There was no one there. So far as his keen eyes could discover, there was no one on the steep upward slope of the woods beyond the creek, no one on this side either; no one on the road leading to the club, or on the road that branched off to the Penniman house. A short distance away was the flat rock with the bank rising above it and the saucer-like depression in which it lay semicircled by a dense screen of chinkapin bushes. He could wait there, it was a very perfect hiding-place, but from that point he could not see the two roads. He was better placed where he was, for a growth of wood-honeysuckle surrounded his hiding-place; by parting it a little he could see very well and not be seen. Garvin waited some time before his brother returned from the club. Where the road forked, Edward stopped, looked up the Penniman Road, then dismounted and came toward the creek. He led his horse behind the chinkapin bushes, left it, and came to the top of the bank, looking down at the flat rock. Then he climbed down, seated himself, and looked down at the swirling water. He looked at it steadily, except when he turned to look up at the screen of bushes. He was waiting for some one.

Garvin also waited. A hot cord had begun to tighten about his head, forcing the blood into his eyes, yet he stood quite still; he was thinking quite clearly; he had known it would be like this.... Even when Ann came around the screen of bushes, he did not stir.

Edward sprang up and helped her down. Garvin could see their every motion, even their expression, the smile each had for the other; but they spoke very low, so low that the murmur of their voices mingled confusingly with the ceaseless gurgle of the water.... He could not creep any nearer to them and not be discovered.... But he needed no clearer confirmation than actions: when Ann stood beside him, Edward put his hands on her shoulders, looking into her eyes while she talked rapidly and distressedly. When they sat down, Edward sat at her feet. When he began to talk to her, long and low and steadily, he took her hands, both her hands, and Ann's face was bent so that Garvin could not see it. Apparently she said nothing, simply sat motionless, enthralled by what Edward was saying.

Garvin went on thinking--quite clearly. He had known he would find just this. He had seen it all enacted while he sat up there in the Mine Banks--this and more--and he had planned just what he would do. He had a good cool brain; he was clever to have decided that this was the state of things, to have foreseen it all and to have planned to the last detail. Let Edward have his hour, the--_thief_! He, Garvin, would have his hour, too!

He felt a tense elation, like one who ruled destinies. When Ann's voice lifted in a smothered cry of emotion, the sudden answer to the pause in Edward's steady speech, Garvin only parted the bushes a little more widely, watched more intently. She had slipped into Edward's arms and he was holding her, her arms about his neck, his arms clasping her. He kissed her many times, murmured over her, and then she began to weep, breathlessly, a note of joy in her tears, words and tears and caresses commingled.

"Edward is sedate!" the gibing Thing that was Garvin Westmore said. With Ann's arms about his neck and her head on his breast, he was talking her into calmness, talking, talking, interminably, the deep murmur of his voice never once raised, soothing her as one would a child. And when, at last, they stood up, his hands were on her shoulders again. But his face betrayed him; he wore a look of exaltation, and Ann's was tremulously happy. They thought themselves pledged to each other for all time, those two!

They went up out of the hollow hand in hand, and parted after a long kiss. Ann crossed the creek and ran up the opposite slope, turning often to look at Edward, who stood watching her absorbedly, a lightly-moving, radiant thing. She paused for a long moment, poised on the crest of the slope, a slender graceful form, young as the young green that framed her--then disappeared over the crest. She had gone to the cluster of pines at the edge of the woods, to sit there for a time with her happiness.

Edward watched until even her graceful head had vanished. Then he mounted and rode out by the Back Road--taking his way by the Mine Banks to Westmore.

Garvin crept down along the creek, went as he had come. He would reach the Mine Banks before his brother did.

XXVIII

THE HELL-HOLE OF THE WESTMORES

Sue Penniman had been searching frantically for Ann, through the house, on the terraces; she had even gone down the cedar avenue and then to the spring-house. She had not gone to the barn, for Coats was at the barn and Ann was certain not to be there; besides, Sue did not want to see Coats, not until she had found Ann and forced her to tell the truth.

But she could not find Ann. She came back finally to the kitchen steps and called up to the negress who was busy above, "Rachel, do you know where Ann is?"

"I seen her go down by the woods, Miss Sue."

"When?"

"About a' hour ago."

Sue paused; then she asked, "Was she dressed up, Rachel?"

"Yes'm--she got on her white dress."

"All right," Sue said, trying to keep the thickness out of her voice.

Sue put the corner of the house between her and the woman, and stood for a moment in confused thought. She was too terrified to think clearly; she could make no plan; she felt bewildered and helpless.... She would have to tell Coats--she dared not keep the thing to herself. He would have to be told in the end, anyway.... It was trouble again for Coats, desperate trouble. It was of Coats Sue was thinking, more than of Ann. She would rather have died than bring this thing on him, this long perspective of trouble for them all.

Sue went draggingly to the barn. Coats was in the wagon-shed, shifting the buggies and wagons so as to make room for a new hayrack.

He saw Sue come in, simply that she was there, in the doorway. "Time for supper?" he asked. "I didn't know it was so late." He was looking at the bare space he had made.

"Coats--"

At the husky note he turned quickly and saw her face. He reached her at a stride. "Sue!"

Sue could not find words; she looked at him haggardly.

"What's the matter?" he demanded. "What's happened?"

"It's Ann, Coats."

His brows lowered and the color came in his face. "Ann?... Well?"

"I just found it out this afternoon.... She's been meeting Garvin Westmore--for a long time. They've planned to go away together." Sue could not bring herself to tell him her worst fear, not at once.

But Coats leaped to it; he grew white. "She, she's not--?"

"I don't know--Coats," she said with difficulty. "I can't find her anywhere--I wanted to ask her before I told you. Rachel says she went down to the woods about an hour ago.... I ran out of writin' paper an' went to Ann's room, to her box for some, an' I found a sheet in it with 'Dear Garvin' an' some other words of a letter that was begun. I was so frightened I broke open her trunk then, an' I found a lot of his letters. He, writes like they were engaged, but ... Coats, I'm afraid--I'm afraid she's in trouble--" She would have to say it sooner or later; it was best they should face it together.

Coats had grown quite gray, the down-drawn muscles of his face making him look old. He looked away from Sue's quivering face, beyond her to the open, staring down the vista of the past. "It had to be a Westmore, of course," he said slowly and with extraordinary evenness. "It's about time that family became extinct."