Part 18

"Far from it, Hetty--you run along and tell Miss Judith I'm here. I'm in a hurry, for I have to get back to town this evening."

Baird looked about the beautiful old room. How well he knew it! It was Judith's rightful setting; he was glad she possessed the place. The fact that she was a rich woman did not trouble him at all; if he loved her greatly, he supposed it would.

Judith came presently, her light quick step in the hall, then her actual presence, welcome in every movement, her cheeks warm and eyes very bright. She was still in black, but Baird thought he had never seen her look more youthful. Or was it simply because he felt so many years older than when he last saw her?

"You here, Nickolas?" she said.

Baird took the hands she held out to him, clasped them firmly. "Yes--to say good-by for a time--I'm sailing for France day after to-morrow. I've snatched a few minutes this afternoon because I wanted to see you."

There were swift thoughts surging through Judith's brain, but her answer was spontaneous enough: "That was good of you!"

"Yes, kind to myself," Baird said lightly. "I felt urged to come."

Judith's smiling eyes had taken instant note of his appearance, and her keen perception was busied over him. He lacked buoyancy, lacked it utterly; every trace of boyishness was gone. He had aged, hardened. He had the air of a man who looks coolly and joylessly upon his future.

Judith had learned nothing from Baird's letters. He had left the Ridge very suddenly; something had gone wrong. Probably Coats had intervened, or, possibly, when she had discovered herself an heiress, Ann had failed him. Judith had the jealous woman's bitter estimate of the girl who had brought both her brothers under her sway, and had entangled Baird also. The intensity of detestation she felt for Ann sometimes sickened Judith. That Ann had won part of Edward's fortune had ground Judith's detestation to a dagger's point.

Under her brilliant exterior Judith was quivering. She had longed for the sight and touch of this man and, but for Ann, she might have recaptured him. Yet she had refrained from dealing the girl a blow. For months Judith's soul had been crisscrossed by passions and burdened by secrets. And Judith was in revolt. In revolt against conventions, against her rearing, against herself; against everything. She was typical of many women of her period; the restless craving woman of 1905 was at heart a revolutionary, and ten years of revolt have molded her into the feminist of to-day.

Judith had been resolutely considering her future. What did life, lived as she was living it, offer her? Unproductive, undeveloping middle-years and a solitary old age. She felt that she had paid her last debt to Westmore, and that the future lay before her, to be lived in different fashion--if she had the courage to make the break. She had decided to make it.

And in her visioning of the future Nickolas Baird was a prominent figure. He was an ambitious man, vastly capable, and destined for big things, and she could help him. He would not marry Ann; she felt certain that she could prevent it; it was her duty to prevent it. He would recover from his infatuation, for he was not the sort of man who would be held very long by an infatuation.

Judith had been on the point of writing to Baird her momentous decisions, and in coming to her he had given her an unexpected opportunity. The smile did not leave her lips. "I have made all the arrangements, Nickolas--I intended to write to you about it before I left--that I am going to Paris, too--in a few days."

"_You_ leave Westmore!" Baird was too much surprised to express pleasure.

"Yes, I am leaving Westmore--and I doubt whether I shall ever return to it." Her color had risen; though she smiled, a little of the bitterness she felt edged her words.

"I imagine it must be desolate for you here--but you, out of this setting--I can't conceive of it exactly." Then it occurred to Baird what this move of hers would mean to them both; a continued intimacy, certainly. The vague motives that had brought him to her prompted the quick addition: "We'll meet in Paris then, Judith--we'll see it together."

Though undefined, there was a suggestion both in his words and his manner that affected Judith curiously, urging her to a sudden defiant candor. What had her restrained, conventional life won for her? Nothing more than expressions of gallant admiration; never the vital gripping thing. "My setting!" she said scornfully. "A woman reared as I have been has no more freedom of will than a walled-in prisoner! She's a perfect slave, bound to the past and handed over hand-tied into the future. From now on, I'm going to live. I am going to know countries, and nations, and women and men--more as a man knows them. I'm going to think as I please and live as I please. Not even the past is going to dictate my future!" She had flung out her resolve, body tense and head high.

Baird studied her; she had both surprised and amused him. Though not widely experienced, he had met this sort of revolt degenerated into mere free-living. Baird considered himself broad-minded, but he had not passed beyond the conception that a woman's assertion of free thought and action invariably meant that she was considering--as he would have expressed it to himself--"going on the loose."

But Judith Westmore, with her monumental pride and her immense self-respect and her narrowly conventional rearing, talking of becoming a free-lance! She didn't know what she was talking about; she could no more do it than she could fly. She would see Paris--the world and its peoples, for that matter--and "_men_," as conventionally as her class and kind always saw them. She was simply worn into exasperation by Westmore troubles--and her love for him. The thing was laughable--and a little sad.

It was Baird's very genuine admiration and liking for Judith that was responsible for this conclusion. To almost any other attractive woman who had tempted his present uncertain mood, he would have answered, and meaningly, "Well, why not?" But to Judith he said kindly and amusedly, "I don't wonder you want to throw all this off and get out into breathing space. It'll do you good to get a change. I don't believe you'll paint Paris a vivid red, though, Judith, even if I tried to help you do it."

It was evident that he had not taken her seriously, and Judith decided that it was as well that he had not done so; she had said much more than she had intended to say. The future was before them, and he would discover soon enough that she was in deadly earnest. He would find a changed woman when they met in Paris.

She regained her usual bright manner. "I'm glad you're not too shocked to continue our acquaintance. I hope you'll come to see me in Paris, and then you can tell me what you think of my new way of life."

Baird smiled. "Of course I'll come."

She was very beautiful as she stood there, head high and with the color of defiance still warming her cheeks. The ugly ache in Baird reminded him that, at a few words from him, her structure of independence would crumble. She would marry him to-morrow if he asked her, and give him an immense devotion. His flush deepened into a dull red.

Judith wondered of what he was thinking so absorbedly. Of Ann? Mentally, she had passed on to the other decision she had reached. "Nickolas, you knew, of course, that Edward remembered Ann Penniman very generously in his will?" she asked.

Baird started and stiffened. "Yes, so I understand."

"Do you still care about her?... I wouldn't ask unless I had a good reason."

Baird had not realized that anything could hurt so keenly as this questioning. His thoughts of a moment ago had vanished at the first mention of Ann's name. "Yes, I love her just the same."

"But things haven't gone very smoothly, I am afraid, Nickolas?"

"No--they haven't.... I love Ann--she doesn't love me."

"I doubt whether she is capable of loving anybody, very much," Judith said quietly. "I hear that she is going to take her little fortune and leave the Ridge--educate herself; first of all, for she is ambitious.... You mean to see her before you go, I suppose?"

"Yes."

Baird did not know why he said it; he had meant to go without seeing Ann. But, from the depths of him, the "Yes" came, resonant with determination.

Judith grew dead white, for what she meant to say next was of tragically serious import. And it was not jealousy alone that actuated her. She spoke very slowly and clearly. "I'm sorry to hurt you, Nickolas--I'm certain you don't know--but if you really mean to persist, if you intend to try to persuade Ann to marry you, you ought to know. She may risk not telling you, she may not tell any man whom she wants to marry, and let him in for disgrace in the future, for any amount of undreamed-of trouble.... Ann is not Coats Penniman's daughter, Nickolas.... Edward, my brother, was Ann's father."

Judith was looking directly into Baird's eyes, and she saw how curiously they widened and grayed. She watched the blood drain from his face. In spite of the passions warring in her, Judith's love for Baird was a very complete thing. She suffered as she watched him. She felt that she had hurt him terribly.

Baird moved at last, looked down at the floor. "I can't realize it--at once--all it means--" he muttered.

Judith continued. "You see, Nickolas, Edward was only a boy, he was only twenty-one, and he was madly in love with Marian Penniman--and she with him. She was a very pretty girl, with Ann's same dangerous allure about her. You know the family quarrel? They met secretly--my father knew nothing about it, neither did Mr. Penniman--until it was too late. Edward was a nice boy, he loved Marian and he wanted to marry her. There was fearful trouble. Mr. Penniman and my father quarreled violently. My father swore that no Westmore should marry a Penniman, and Mr. Penniman was as determined that no daughter of his should owe anything to a Westmore. Edward would have run away with her if he could, but Mr. Penniman guarded his house with a shotgun, and between them all they married Marian to her cousin, Coats Penniman, just to save her good name. Coats loved her--he honestly wanted to help her, so it was a marriage only in name. It was a wretched business. It killed Marian, I believe, and it almost killed Edward." Judith's voice quivered with deep feeling. "Poor Edward!... And, in the end, he's sacrificed for his family's sins--"

Baird had heard Judith's explanation, his senses mechanically grasped what she said, while he pondered the thing which was of such tremendous import to him. When Judith had finished, he was still pale, but collected enough.

He looked very steadily at Judith when he asked his questions. "Did Garvin know Ann's relationship to him?"

"No. Mr. Penniman, Coats and Sue, and Edward and myself--we were the only ones who knew.... And Ben Brokaw knew. I think Ben guessed rather than knew--way back in the beginning. And from the beginning he's been like a father to Ann, I mean in feeling--much more so than Coats."

"And Ann didn't know?"

"Not till Edward told her. Ben says Edward told her, for the first time, on the afternoon of his death.... I don't know just what Edward had in mind for her--certainly to take her away from the farm, and perhaps to adopt her. I know he would never have made the truth known--he would guard the Westmore name too carefully for that."

There was coldness in Judith's assertion, a discounting of Ann. Judith Westmore had the southern aristocrat's pitiless contempt for the illegitimate. It was the heritage of the negro, the curse of the South, but why think about it? Nothing would have compelled her to countenance Ann.

Baird understood, but he made no comment. He prepared to go, and smiled when he took Judith's hand. "Thank you for telling me--you have done me a kindness. It's settled that we next meet in Paris, and happily, I hope.... By the way, I must have your address."

Judith gave it to him. She wished that she could keep him long enough to smooth away the last few painful moments. It had certainly been a shock to him, but it would be salutary. He was very cool-headed; he would think it over, and from all angles; and he would not go to Ann.

When Baird had circled the lawn and had reached the road below, he looked back. Judith still stood where he had left her, on the steps of the portico. She waved to him, and he lifted his hat. Then his eyes traveled over Westmore. It was a beautiful old place.... And the proudly arched brows of Edward Stratton Westmore, first Westmore of Westmore, had been transmitted unto Ann!

When he turned to open country, Baird's face was set and resolute.

XXXIX

"WILL YOU GO WITH ME?"

Baird walked slowly down the cedar avenue, for he was waiting. Then he chose a spot beneath the trees, where the branches hung so low that they shut out the country, and sat down. By leaning forward he could look up and down the avenue, otherwise he was shut away from the world, canopied by a leafy tent. And the evening was closing in early.

Sue had told Baird that Ann would return from the village by way of the avenue. As he waited, Baird remembered the first time he had ridden up between the cedars, light-heartedly determined to discover Ann. That had been a boy's quest. He was still seeking to discover Ann, a man now, anxious and tensely determined.

It seemed a very long time before he saw her at the end of the avenue, driving slowly, her cape about her shoulders, but with hood thrown back. He saw the black and white contrasts of face and hair first, before her features grew distinct. She was leaning back, with reins lax and eyes lowered. Even when he came out into the road, she did not look up; he had time in which to see what the last three months had done to her, that they had brought back much of the old roundness and softness to chin and lips, and fulness and warmth to her throat. The beautiful arch and sweep of her brows, her Westmore inheritance, was even more pronounced. Ben was right, she had grown more arrestingly beautiful.

Baird let the horse pass him, he was abreast of the buggy when she looked up and saw him. Her convulsive jerk of the reins stopped the horse, and Baird came to her, looking directly into her eyes.

"Ann Westmore," he said.

She sat motionless for a full moment, then she answered, very low, "You know, then."

"And you thought that would matter to me?"

"Yes."

The color swept into his face. "So that's why you sent me away, and would have none of me all summer!" He drew back. "Will you come with me now, where I can talk to you, or will you drive on with your Westmore and Penniman pride and leave me to travel alone?"

Ann looked down at the reins, then up, straight up the avenue, a long enough moment to vision the future. Her thoughts, whatever they were, drew the color of surprise from her face. Then she looked at Baird, lips parted a little and eyes blank, like one frightened by what she had seen.

"Will you come?" Baird repeated.

"Yes." She dropped the reins and moved vaguely, as if to get out on the other side, but Baird reached in and lifted her, held her up, as he had once before, long enough to look steadily into her troubled eyes.

Then he set her down. "Come this way--I'll take my answer, whatever it's to be, here--not in the middle of the road."

He guided her to the spot he had chosen. "We'll fight it out here," he said in the same controlled way, though his eyes were alight.

Ann complied in silence, not confusedly, absently rather, as if too completely engrossed by her thoughts either to speak or to object. She sat with hands lax and eyes vague.

Baird studied her, trying to determine just how to begin: by telling her the truth about himself first of all, he decided, though he longed to set that aside until he had captured the one all-important thing.

He began abruptly. "Judith told me about your father and mother, the whole history, and I hoped that was the reason you had sent me away--that you thought it would matter to me.... I can match you history for history: my father and mother found each other much as yours did, in spite of their different religions, which was quite as insurmountable a difficulty as Edward and your mother faced. My mother was a Jewess and my father an Irish Catholic. They lived together two years, and then, because I had come, they went before a justice of the peace and gave me my father's name. To their way of thinking they weren't a bit more married than they had ever been. Love had married them and they had clung to each other in spite of everything. I've often thought, when I've seen the children a loveless marriage has brought into the world, that I've had the best of it--that those children must be wanting in some way. I never fully realized how much the mere legality of a marriage means to people like your people until I listened to Judith this afternoon.... So, you see, Ann, it doesn't matter to me. It matters a good deal more to me that you've suffered because of the narrow prejudices of your people. You told the collie, when you hugged and kissed him, in the barn, that first day I talked to you, that he and Ben were the only ones that loved you. You have gone hungry and thirsty--that's been the trouble with you."

Ann's vagueness had slipped from her; she was quivering from head to foot. "I know it!" she said. "I'm always wanting to be loved an' trying to make people love me, and it's led to fearful trouble. It drove Garvin mad and it took my father--away--from me--" Her voice failed her.

Baird put his arm about her, bent and kissed her hands. "Don't think about all that, Ann. You love me--I _know_ you do--there's nothing between us now."

But she held him off. "Yes, there is!... Let me tell you: I let Garvin love me--I thought for a time that I loved him. But it was just that I wanted so badly for somebody to love me, an' I know now that the way I felt to him was like I would have felt if I had known he was my father's brother--just that I was fond of him an' sorry for him. I had to tell him so and--" She broke off with a shudder, then went on with head hung. "I've felt differently to you.... Back at the time you kissed me--I loved it. When you used to come an' talk to me, even then I liked you--sitting close by me--even while I was worrying over Garvin an' not knowing what to do, an' at the same time caring more for Edward than for any one else in the world, just _feeling_ that he was my father, an' not knowin' why I loved him so much. That night you met me on the spring house path and asked me if I was engaged to anybody, I told you I'd rather you stayed away, because I was angry at myself for feelin' to you the way I did. I felt _hateful_ caring for three men at the same time, like I was doing. Then when I read your letters this summer--"

Baird was not to be denied any longer. He pulled her hands from his shoulders, drew her forcibly into his arms, and lifting her bowed head, found her lips.

He kissed away resistance, her efforts to speak, plead and demanded until he won response, arms that circled his neck and clasped him, and then her long and passionate kiss. Even when her arms slid from his neck and her head dropped back against his shoulder, he held her imprisoned. He put back her fallen hair and kissed her brow and her cheek and her throat, until the chill of something striven for and still unpossessed touched him.

He looked down at her. "What is it?" he asked. "You love me--why aren't you happy?"

Her eyes were brimming with tears. "I do love you--but--"

She tried to free herself, and he let her go, for he was sobered by the pallor that had replaced the hot flush in her cheeks. "What's the difficulty, Ann--tell me!" he demanded. "It's not going to make any difference, whatever it is--but tell me."

"It's something I can't tell, but it may bring disgrace on me an' that will be disgrace on you--if I let you marry me."

"It's nothing you have done--I know that!" Baird said quickly. "What other people have done doesn't matter to me.... You mean the true inwardness of all that tragedy last spring?... Why, Ann, I've always known that half that story hadn't been told."

"I was the cause of it all.... Any day it may come out who I am and worse things than that for you to bear. That was the reason I made you go away an' wouldn't answer your letters."

"Westmore and Penniman pride--there it is again!" Baird said. "I don't want your secret, dear. I think there's not much you could tell me that I haven't already guessed--in spite of Ben." He circled her with his arms. "Do you think that anything could drive me away from you now--after that kiss of yours?... Tell me again that you love me! Tell me!"

Her answer was a drooping glance and her slow smile, which Baird stole from her lips. "Ann, you're here in my arms and I'm holding you close, but I've a queer feeling that I'm clasping something that may slip away any moment--it makes me want to hold you tighter. It won't be like that by and by--when you're all mine?"

"I don't know," she said slowly. "I'll always be wanting to be loved an' not thinkin' so much about whether I'm lovin' or not.... I know it was like heaven when Edward told me he was my father and how much he loved me. I'd been wanting to be loved like that--all my life--"

Baird pondered her answer for a moment.... She had not pretended; she had told the truth about herself; the woman in her answered to the man in him, but there was, deep in her, a capacity for loving that he had not yet touched. It was guarded by hesitancy, elusiveness, and, not selfishness exactly, nor timidity, but an indefinable inaccessibility that was simply Ann. Judith was more forceful and less complex.... Perhaps if Ann had striven over him as he had striven over her, the thing he wanted to grasp would be his. Edward had come nearer to the indefinable thing than he had.... And yet, it was her inaccessible quality that had drawn him, and that made him hold her the tighter now.

Baird remembered something Ben had written: "... I ain't no wise judge of women, but I've noticed that some of them is just naturally giving-hearted, and some has to grow up to it. The kind that has to grow up to it generally loves most to be loved. They seems to grow up to loving by being loved, that is, if they're loved the right way." Ben had defined Ann very accurately.... But how was he to discover the right way of loving her? Certainly not until he possessed her.

Baird looked down at Ann. "Probably it's your nature not to give much, and I love to struggle for all I get. You're all quivering nerves, a mixture of snow and sunshine, and I've no nerves to speak of--I'm all fight. I think we're suited to each other." He spoke decidedly. "Ann, they're sending me to Europe; I'm going day after to-morrow--will you go with me? Will you marry me to-morrow, and come away from all this?"

She was silent for a long time. "I'd rather wait--till you come back," she said finally.

It was the answer he expected. She was very true to herself, and he liked it. "I'll be gone for a good many months," he said quietly. "What will you do while I'm gone--stay here?"

"I--they want me to go to school.... I can't stay here. My father wanted me to be educated--I'm so ignorant. He told me he meant to make a wonderful woman of me. That I would grow to be a more charmin' an' wonderful woman than Judith.... But those things he thought because he loved me so much." She spoke bleakly.

"You'll be a deal more wonderful than Judith, because you have a quality she doesn't possess," Baird said. "Do you want to go to school, Ann?"

There was actual terror in her reply. "No. They'd all be strangers--there's nobody would care anything about me."