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NOBODY'S CHILD
By ELIZABETH DEJEANS
Author of THE TIGER'S COAT, etc.
FRONTISPIECE BY
ARTHUR I. KELLER
INDIANAPOLIS
THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
COPYRIGHT 1918
THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
PRESS OF
BRAUNWORTH & CO.
BOOK MANUFACTURERS
BROOKLYN, N. Y.
[Illustration]
CONTENTS
I ANN
II THREE MEN AND A GIRL
III PENNIMAN AND WESTMORE
IV BUT IF HE FAILED HER?
V IN COLONIAL FASHION
VI BAIRD RECONNOITERS
VII THE WESTMORES OF WESTMORE
VIII THE COLONEL IS SUSPICIOUS
IX A FEMININE PROCEDURE
X THE INFINITELY PAINFUL THING
XI KEPT IN THE DARK
XII A VENDETTA
XIII INERADICABLY BRANDED
XIV THE MISFITS
XV AS WITH A CHILD
XVI "IT WAS BORN IN HER"
XVII COMPLEXITIES
XVIII "YOU'RE ALL I HAVE"
XIX A BARGAIN
XX MARRY? YES
XXI A LOT OF PLANNING
XXII IMPRESSIONS
XXIII CHAOTIC UNCERTAINTY
XXIV A DEFINITION OF LOVE
XXV BECAUSE SHE LOVED TOO MUCH
XXVI THE ETERNAL ATTRACTION
XXVII THE THING
XXVIII THE HELL-HOLE OF THE WESTMORES
XXIX "WHAT'S NOT KNOWN"
XXX CONTENT
XXXI THE FAMILY NAME
XXXII THE DEATH-TRAP
XXXIII FROM DESPAIR TO HOPE
XXXIV BEN BROKAW EXPLAINS
XXXV WAITING
XXXVI "IT LIES WITH ANN"
XXXVII COLD CASH
XXXVIII THE REVELATION
XXXIX "WILL YOU GO WITH ME?"
CONCLUSION
NOBODY'S CHILD
I
ANN
The quietude of winter still lay on the land, the apathetic dun of field
and woodland unstirred as yet by the hint of spring that was tipping
with eagerness the wings of the birds and, under their brown
frost-dulled blanket, was quickening into fresh green the woody stems of
arbutus. The mid-morning sun had struggled out of a gray March chill and
was setting a-gleam the drops of moisture on trees and grass, drawing
little rivulets from the streaks of snow which hid in the corners of the
rail-fences and in the hollows of the creek. Winter was reluctantly
saying farewell.
The girl, who a mile back had turned in from the old Fox-Ridge Post-Road
and had come up through the pastures to the edge of the woodland, looked
with smiling understanding at the slow yielding of winter. Another
winter added to her sum of seventeen. Or, rather, as youth always looks
forward and counts much upon the future, perhaps a joyous spring to be
added to her sum of experience.
As she sat, swaying gently to the jerky motion of the creaking buggy,
the reins lax in her hands, her eyes from beneath the shadow of her
brown hood traveled over the reaches of pasture, the slopes of reddish
soil freshly turned for oats, the trails of the snake-fences strangled
by brown undergrowth, the twists and curves of the creek that divided
the pasture from the upward slopes of grain-land, and, beyond, against
the horizon, the red scars and dull patches of scrubby growth that
marked the "Mine Banks," the ancient, worked-out, and now overgrown and
abandoned iron-ore bed that a hundred and fifty years before had yielded
wealth to its owners.
"Spring will make even the Mine Banks lovely," Ann Penniman was
thinking.
She had come up now to the woodland, a wide half circle of tall oaks and
chestnuts, which, like the bend of a huge bow, touched the Mine Banks in
the distance, and behind her reached to the Post-Road. She skirted the
woods for a time, the horse straining through sand, a rough road, in the
winter rarely traveled, but in summer a possible short cut from the
Post-Road to the Penniman farm, which was just beyond the woods.
A short distance ahead, this side of where the creek came out into the
open, the road turned and led into the woods, and Ann had almost reached
the turn when a streak of red, a fox running swift and low, darted
across the road, slid over the corner of pasture that lay between the
woods and the creek, reappeared beyond the creek, then sped up the slope
of plowed ground, making for the shelter of the Mine Banks.
Ann drew up and waited a moment, until the woods awoke to the deep bay
of the hounds as they picked up the scent, followed by the halloo of the
huntsmen. The next moment the whole pack swept almost under her horse's
nose, over and under and through the rail-fence, across the bit of
pasture, checked for a moment or two and casting along the bank of the
creek, then were over and off up the plowed slope, after their quarry.
The color came into the girl's cheeks and she sat taut. A bag-fox! If a
game fox, he would mix up the hunt in the Mine Banks, and be off to the
denser woods and rock-holes above the river, an all day's sport for the
Fox-Ridge Hunt Club. The woods rang and rustled now to their approach.
Some took the fence, some came out by the road, and one and all cleared
the creek and galloped up the opposite slope. Here and there fluttered a
woman's dark skirt, a somber note amid the cluster of men in pink.
Ann knew the meaning of it all well. The Hunt Club was just beyond the
woods, half a mile or so from the Penniman farm. They had loosed the fox
at the edge of the woods, given him his start, then set on the hounds.
She looked with tingling wistfulness after the aristocracy of the
Ridge, embarked on its Saturday of excitement and pleasure, then with
lifted lip at the thin rump of the mare she was driving, and gathered up
the reins. The animal had pricked its ears and quivered when the hunt
swept over it; it had life enough in it for that, but that was all.
Then with a revulsion of feeling, pity for the beast commingled with
self-pity, she let the reins drop. It had been a hard pull of four miles
up the muddy Post-Road and through the sand of the Back Road, and the
wait here was pleasanter than the return to the farm would be. The hunt
had passed, leaving her behind; everything bearing the name of Penniman
or belonging to a Penniman was fated to be left behind; why not sit in
the sun for a time?
But it seemed she had not seen the last of the hunt, for her ear caught
now the gallop of horses, even before she saw them: two horsemen who
cleared the fence at the lower end of the pasture with a bird-like lift
and dip that brought the light into Ann's eyes, and who now galloped up
and by her, headed for the creek, two belated huntsmen come
cross-country from the Post-Road and evidently intent upon joining the
hunt. Ann recognized the foremost rider first from his horse, a
long-necked, clean-limbed sorrel, then from the fleeting glimpse of the
man's profile, dark and clear-cut, the face that for months had played
with her fancy: Garvin Westmore, the most indefatigable sportsman of the
Ridge. The other young man's heavier-jawed and rougher-featured face
she did not know. A guest of the club, probably, out from the city for
the day.
Then she saw again, with a choke of delight, the light lift and dip of
the riders as they cleared the creek--stood up in her ramshackle buggy
to see it.... Saw one horse go down, pitching his rider over his head,
and the other horseman, not Garvin Westmore, go on--wheel when well up
the slope and start back; saw that the horse was struggling with nose to
the ground, but that the man lay motionless.
II
THREE MEN AND A GIRL
Ann had crossed the creek and reached the prostrate man before the other
horseman had time to dismount. She was bending over Garvin Westmore when
the other stood over her.
"Hurt?" he asked tersely.
Ann looked up at him, meeting fairly a pair of keen eyes, grayed into
coldness by an excitement that his manner did not betray.
"He doesn't move--his eyes are shut--" she answered breathlessly. Her
own eyes were dark and dilated, her face a-quiver.
"Wait a minute."
He plunged down into the creek and came up with his cap filled with
water, and, kneeling, dashed it over the unconscious man's face--and
over Ann's hovering hands as well. "It's probably only a faint. The
ground's soft--he's had the breath knocked out of him, that's all."
He appeared to be right, for Garvin Westmore stirred, and, when Ann had
wiped the wet from his face, looked at the two with full consciousness;
at Ann's frightened face and her companion's questioning eyes.
"He threw me--the damned brute."
"Lucky if you've broken no bones," the other returned. "See if you can
stand."
Ann moved aside and he helped Garvin to his feet, watching him
critically as he stretched his arms and felt his body. "All right?" he
asked.
"I think so."
"You're lucky."
"Lucky, am I--" Garvin said through his teeth. Then his voice rose.
"Look--!"
Ann looked, and caught her breath. The horse had at last struggled up
and stood quivering, nostrils wide and head bent, nosing the leg that
hung limp. He had essayed a step, then stopped, grown suddenly moist.
There was something very human in the eyes he lifted to the two men when
they came to him, and even under their handling he shifted only a
little.
Then they drew back, and their voices came sharply to Ann as she stood
with hand pressed to her lips and eyes wide with pity.
"Broken, Garvin--and the shoulder strained--I've seen them like that."
"He went down in that rabbit-hole, Baird!"
"Yep--poor beast."
"What's to be done?" Garvin's voice was strained.
"Nothing--he's done for."
There was silence for a moment and Ann saw that the color had flamed in
Garvin's white face. He was suddenly as violently a-quiver as the
suffering animal, curiously and tensely excited. He glanced behind him,
then to either side, an uncertain look that passed over Ann and his
surroundings, unseeing and yet furtive. Then he took a step backward,
and the hand that had gone to his hip-pocket was swiftly upflung.
Ann's shriek rang out almost simultaneously with the shot, at one with
the leaden fall of the horse and the sharp echo sent back from the Mine
Banks and the chattering lift of the birds in the woods. A crow cawed
wildly as it rose; all about was the stir of startled and scurrying
things.
Baird had whirled to look at Ann, who stood bent over and with arm
hiding her face, and his angry exclamation were the first words spoken:
"God, Garvin, are you mad? What a thing to do--before her!"
He strode to Ann and touched her shaking shoulder. "Come away," he said
with a note of shame. "The idea of his doing such a thing before a girl!
His fall must have knocked the sense out of him!"
But Garvin Westmore was almost as quick as he. He also had turned, with
brows raised high and eyes wild. Then on the instant his face was swept
of expression. He was pale again, collected, even protective when he
drew Ann from Baird's touch. "Don't be frightened, Ann," he said softly,
with the air of one who knew her well. "I'm sorry. I forgot you were
here. I couldn't see the animal suffer--that was all." Then meeting
over Ann's head the commingling of disgust and anger and something else,
the touch of aversion in Baird's eyes, he continued even more softly,
his softness a little husky: "Why should anything that's done for be
allowed to go on suffering a minute more than is necessary? That's what
I was thinking.... Wasn't I right, Ann?"
He addressed the girl, but he was answering Baird's look.
"You looked as if you enjoyed doing it," Baird retorted bluntly.
A flash of expression crossed Garvin Westmore's face, a gleam menacing
and dangerous, like the momentary exposure of a dagger. It came and
went. "I wanted the beast out of pain--if that is what you mean," he
said with hauteur. "Ann knows me better than you do," and he bent over
her. "Don't cry, Ann; the horse is better off than any one of us."
He continued to bend his height to her and to talk in low tones, until
she consented to look up at him. "I don't see how you could--" she said,
in a smothered way. "I--I want to go home--"
"You shall in a minute--but not like this." In her run down to the creek
her hood had slipped off, and he tried now to draw it up over her fallen
hair. She lifted shaking hands and began hurriedly to coil the dark mass
about her head.
Baird watched them curiously. The girl was something more than pretty.
The brown cape with hood attached had concealed her, but when she
lifted her arms he saw that she was slim and rounded, very perfectly so,
and not too tall. Her hair was noticeably black, a dense black, heavy
and with a tendency to curl. As she gathered it up, Baird noticed how
beautifully it grew about her low forehead--that her features were
regular, and that, contrasted with black hair and brows and lashes, her
skin was very white, luminously white. She was certainly very young; her
cheeks and chin were as softly rounded as a baby's. And Garvin was a
particularly good-looking man, of the unmistakably inbred type, tall,
slender, dark, with clear-cut features, well-marked brows and fine eyes.
His were the Westmore features refined into nervousness by inbreeding,
the features of his great-great-grandfather, colonial aristocrat and
owner of the Mine Banks.
Nickolas Baird, as noticeably but one generation removed from the ranks
and of the type that carves its own fortunes, watched the two curiously.
He was not the only onlooker. A man had ridden out of the woods just as
the shot was fired and had come slowly down to the creek. His horse had
leaped when the report came and had sidled nervously as if eager for a
run, but his rider had reined him sharply, held him to a walk, while he
eyed the group in the distance. Though well mounted and in faultless
riding attire, he was evidently not of the hunt; he wore no signs of
haste or eagerness. He had crossed the bit of pasture deliberately, and
had come to the other side of the creek. Then, as if he considered
himself breakable, he had dismounted deliberately and, dropping the
reins, slowly crossed the creek, selecting and testing his footing in
the same careful fashion. His eyes alone, gloomy under their lowered
brows, showed interest in what was passing.
He stood just behind the group before he spoke: "What's all this,
Garvin?"
The three started and turned and Garvin stepped back hastily from Ann,
who with hands still lifted to her hair and eyes wet with tears stared
at the new-comer.
It was Garvin who answered quickly. "It's plain enough what's happened,
Ed. The sorrel went down in a rabbit-hole and broke his
leg--incidentally, he nearly did for me too."
"And you shot him without giving him time to say his prayers. I was in
time to see that."
"He was no gift of yours--I raised him," Garvin answered, with an
instant note of antagonism.
There had been stern rebuke in the elder man's remark, though so quietly
spoken. But they were very evidently brothers. Their features were the
same, the Westmore features; only the elder man's black hair had streaks
of gray about the temples and his face was sallow and his eyes somber.
Garvin at twenty-eight looked less than his age, and his brother, ten
years his senior, looked full forty.
Edward Westmore made no answer. He had looked from his brother to Ann,
at her wistfully moist eyes and air of distress. But if his caught
breath and slowly heightening color indicated the same anger Baird had
felt, he restrained himself well. He said nothing at all, simply looked
at her steadily, flushing and breathing quickly. Then he turned abruptly
and looked up the slope of pasture at Ann's ramshackle buggy; then,
turning more slowly, he gazed an appreciable moment at the looming Mine
Banks.
Possibly it was his way of gaining self-control. Possibly he was looking
for an explanation of the girl's presence and discovered it in the
waiting buggy. At any rate, his manner was calm and courteous when he
faced them again.
"It's too bad it happened," he said, more to Baird than any one else.
"But it can't be helped.... You'll have to get the animal off this land,
it's not ours--unless you can get permission to bury him, Garvin?"
"Not likely," his brother said in an undertone. "It's old Penniman's
land. He hasn't learned to hate us any less these years you've been
away."
Edward Westmore's brows contracted sharply. "I'll take her to her buggy,
and come back," he said, and turned hastily to Ann, who was clambering
down into the creek.
Garvin looked after him in surprise. Then, conscious of his brother's
backward glance, he turned away. Nevertheless, he listened intently to
Edward's low-toned courtesy.
"Let me help you--the bank is slippery."
Both he and Baird could hear distinctly Ann's soft rejoinder, the
slurred syllables that marked her a southern child, but without the
nasal twang usual with the country-folk of the Ridge. "Don't you come,
suh--I can get up easily." She was more embarrassed than distressed now;
her face was rosy red under her hood and her eyes were lowered.
But Edward went on with her, up the stretch of pasture. They saw him
help her into the buggy and stand for a time, evidently talking to her.
And, finally, when she drove off, he bowed to her, as deeply as he would
to any lady on the Ridge, standing and looking after her as she drove
into the woods.
Baird had observed the whole proceeding with interest. The Westmore
family interested him. Ann interested him also, perhaps because he
"couldn't place her," as he himself would have expressed it. During his
two weeks' stay on the Ridge he had assimilated its class distinctions.
There were three classes on the Ridge: the aristocracy, depleted and
poverty ridden as a rule, clinging tenaciously to bygone glory while
casting a half-contemptuous and at the same time envious eye on the
sheer power of money; the second somewhat heterogeneous class developed
during the forty years since the "war," and that, on the Ridge, had as
its distinctive element the small farmer who, in most cases, though not
so well-born, possessed wide family ramifications and an inbreeding and
a narrow jealous pride quite on a par with that of the descendants of
governors and revolutionary generals; and the third class, the class
that had always been, the "poor-white-trash."
In which social division did Ann belong? Certainly not to the latter,
and not to the first, either, Baird judged, for he had watched Garvin's
manner to the girl closely. And he had also noted Garvin's look of
surprise when Edward had followed her. He saw that while Garvin was
audibly considering the best means of getting rid of the dead horse, his
real attention was given to the two at the edge of the woods.
Baird asked his question a little abruptly. "Who is she, Garvin?"
Perhaps Garvin expected the question. "Ann Penniman," he said, without
looking up from the horse.
"One of your people?" Baird asked, conscious that he was expressing
himself awkwardly.
Garvin caught his meaning at once. "Heavens, no! Her people are farmers.
She's old Penniman's grand-daughter. His farm runs down through the
woods there, and this field is part of it--up to the Mine Banks. They're
ours, worse luck--just waste ground. I wish the sorrel was up there in
one of the old ore-pits."
Baird felt that Garvin wanted to lead off from the subject. "She's the
prettiest girl I've seen in a year," he declared.
"Ann is pretty, but I don't see what good it's going to do her," Garvin
answered carelessly. "She'll marry some one of the Penniman
tribe--they're all inter-married--and go on working like an ox. Old
Penniman would take a shotgun to any man who came around who wasn't a
cousin, or a Penniman of some sort. Ann's just a farm girl and has been
brought up like all of them about here." Garvin nodded in the direction
of the disappearing buggy. "She's back now from taking butter and eggs
to the village in exchange for a few doled-out groceries--they're hard
up, the Pennimans." He looked down then at the horse, bent and stroked
its tawny mane. "Poor old Nimrod!" he muttered. "You had a short life of
it--though between us we sometimes had a merry one." His voice had
changed completely, deepened into genuine feeling. "I raised him from a
colt," he remarked to Baird, with face averted.
In the light of what had happened, Baird found it difficult to explain
the man's present emotion. Baird had had a good deal of western
experience which had taught him to regard thoughtfully any man who was
as quick with his pistol as Garvin Westmore had been.
But Baird's real interest was elsewhere. He asked no more questions. In
his own mind he decided that the dormered roof, crisscrossed by naked
branches, which he could see from his window at the Hunt Club, covered
the Penniman house. And he also reflected that he had plenty of spare
time in which to reconnoiter.
III
PENNIMAN AND WESTMORE
Ann drove on through the woods, with the color still warm in her cheeks.
She could not have told just why she was still trembling and felt
inclined to cry. As Garvin Westmore had said, it was best to put the
sorrel out of pain at once. She did not feel, as the young man Garvin
had called Baird had felt, that it was an outrageous thing for Garvin to
have shot the horse while she was there, for Ann had never been shown
any particular consideration by anybody; she was well acquainted with
the hard side of life.
But Garvin's look had been so strange. It had shocked and puzzled
her.... And then Edward Westmore's manner to her? He had been so "nice"
to her, a protective, considerate niceness. He had asked her about her
family and about herself. He had been away from the Ridge for many
years; he had never brought his foreign wife to Westmore. But, now that
she and his father were gone, he had returned to Westmore with the
fortune she had left him and was head of the family. And yet he
remembered them all, her grandfather and her Aunt Sue and her father,
who had been away from the Ridge as long as Ann could remember, and her
mother, whom Ann had never seen. Edward Westmore had not referred to the
life-long enmity that had existed between his father and her
grandfather, and yet he had made her feel that he did not share in it;
that it was a bygone thing and should be buried. Ann had liked him, as
suddenly and as uncontrollably as she had liked Garvin.
For Garvin Westmore had also been "nice" to her, though in a different
way. Back in the days when she used to disobey her grandfather and steal
off to the Westmore Mine Banks for fascinating visits to its caves and
ore-pits, the tall boy who galloped recklessly up hill and down, always
with several hounds at his horse's heels, was one of Ann's terrors. Then
there had been the vague period when she had been "growing up" and had
seen him only very occasionally and had not thought of him at all.
But ever since the day, a few weeks ago, when he had met her and had
ridden up the Post-Road beside her buggy, he had become a vivid entity.
Under his smiling regard she had quickly lost the Penniman antagonism to
any one bearing the name of Westmore. His had been an astonishing and
exhilarating "niceness" to which Ann's suddenly aroused femininity had
instantly responded. Ann had learned that day, for the first time, that
she was pretty and that it was possible for her to arouse admiration.
And during the last two weeks.... It was not merely pity for the sorrel
that had set her cheeks aflame and made her eyes moist; it was
excitement, the stir of commingled emotions and impressions. Her nerves
were always keyed high, vibrant to every impression. And during the last
weeks she had been hiding from every one something of graver import than
her usual thoughts and feelings. Those she had always kept to herself,
partly because she was inclined to be secretive, partly because of
native independence.
Ann had reached the end of the woods now and stopped to compose herself.
Her grandfather would not notice that she had been crying, but her Aunt
Sue would. She would have to tell of the tragedy in the Mine Banks
field; news of that sort had a way of traveling. She would have to say
that she had seen what had happened, but not a word of Edward Westmore's
talk with her or of Garvin--not even to her Aunt Sue. Sue, in her quiet
way, hated the Westmores as bitterly as her grandfather did. Ann's swift
liking for these two men who had, each in his own fashion, been nice to
her, and her swift determination to be nice in return, was a thing to be
carefully concealed. As she had come through the woods, she had looked
at the dead chestnut tree in the split crotch of which there had once
been a flicker's nest. Garvin had not said so, he would not with the
other man standing by, but it probably held a message for her. This was
not the best time to get it, however. Some one might see her and wonder.
Ann took off her hood and smoothed her hair and pressed her hands to
her hot eyes; sat still then and let the wind cool the ache in them, her
face settling into its usual wistful expression, eyes dark under
drooping lids, lips full but smileless, cheeks and chin so rounded and
infantile that they were appealing. Life might make hers a voluptuous
face, there was more than a hint of the probability in the desirous
mouth and full white throat. It was the straight nose with its slightly
disdainful nostrils and the arched and clearly penciled brows that gave
her face its real beauty--a nobler promise than was suggested by lips
and chin.
Through the few intervening trees Ann could see the Penniman barn, a low
wide structure with a basement for housing cattle, an arrangement that
the sharply sloping ground made possible. The house, a little to the
left and beyond, even in winter was obscured by trees. Two tall Lombardy
poplars guarded the kitchen entrance and the woodshed, towering high
above a steep-pitched roof and the alanthus and locust trees that in
summer shaded it. The woods through which Ann had just passed
semicircled the upward sloping field that lay between her and the farm
buildings. To the right, the slope was crested by an orchard, and to the
left, stretching from the house like a long line of melancholy
sentinels, was a double row of magnificent cedars, guarding the road
that led straight across open country, past the Hunt Club and to the
Post-Road. That was the way by which Ann should have come had not the
hint of spring tempted her to take the Back Road, through the pastures
and the woods.
There was no one in sight. In the bit of marsh made by a spread of the
creek several pigs were wallowing, as if glad to find the ground soft,
and in the enclosure behind the barn a horse and three cows stood in the
sun amid a clutter of chickens. Beyond the marsh, under a group of
weeping-willows, was the spring and the usual accompaniment, a
spring-house. Ann had expected to see her aunt's red shawl either at the
spring or on the path that led up between the double row of grapevines,
a full three hundred yards of upward toil to the kitchen door, for it
was the hour for carrying the day's supply of water. But there was no
one in view, not even her grandfather moving feebly about the barn.
Ann took up the reins with a sigh, and drove on. She always sighed when
she approached her home, and tingled with the sensation of embarking on
an adventure when she left it, for Ann possessed in abundance the
attributes of youth: faith, hope, imagination and the capacity to enjoy
intensely. Home meant work, work, work, and few smiles to sweeten the
grind. But for her Aunt Sue, the smoldering rebellion the farm had bred
in Ann would have flared dangerously. As long as she had been too young
to understand, and had had the fields and the woods, it had not mattered
so much. In a vague way, Ann had always felt that she was nobody's
child, a nonentity to her grandfather except when her high spirits,
tinged always by coquetry, and her inflammable temper aroused in him a
sullen anger. And Ann knew that to her aunt she was more a duty than a
joy; Sue Penniman appeared to have an enormous capacity for duty and a
small capacity for affection. But, with the necessity to cling to
something, Ann clung to her aunt. For Sue she worked uncomplainingly.
For Sue's sake she hid her resentment at being a nonentity.
For in the last year of rapid awakening Ann had realized that she had
never been permitted an actual share in the narrow grinding interests of
the family, though, of necessity, she was tied fast to the monotonous
round and, together with her grandfather and aunt, lay between the upper
and nether millstones. The clannish pride that lay in every Penniman lay
in her also, and yet, Ann had felt, vaguely as a child and poignantly as
she grew older, that she was of them and yet not of them. Her
grandfather, even her aunt had made her feel it--and above all the
father who had forsaken her when she was barely old enough to remember
him. Ann never thought of her father without an ache in her throat that
made it impossible for her to talk of him.
At the barn Ann hitched the horse. Her grandfather might want the buggy;
it was best not to unharness until she knew. She took the bundles of
groceries and went on to the house, past the basement door, to the
stairs that led up to the kitchen, for the house, like the barn, was
built on the slope, its front resting on the crown of the slope, its
rear a story from the ground, permitting a basement room and a forward
cellar that burrowed deep into the ground.
Ann had glanced into the basement, but her aunt was not there. The
kitchen, an ancient-looking room, whitewashed and with small
square-paned windows, was also empty. Ann put down her parcels and went
into the living-room. It and the kitchen and the two rooms above were
all that remained of the colonial house that antedated even Westmore. It
was low-ceilinged, thick-walled, and casement-windowed, and had a
fireplace spacious enough to seat a family. Built of English brick
brought to the colony two centuries before, the old chimney had
withstood time and gaped deep and wide and soot-blackened. This room had
been one wing of the colonial mansion, and, because of the solid masonry
that enclosed the cellar beneath it, had not fallen into decay like the
rest of the house.
But it had not been built by a Penniman. A hundred years before, a
Penniman, "a man of no family, but with money in his pocket," had bought
the house and the land "appertaining" from an encumbered Westmore, and
had become father of the Pennimans now scattered through three counties.
The first Penniman and his son's son after him had been tobacco growers
on a small scale and slave owners, but they had never been of the
aristocracy.
It was Ann's grandfather who, some thirty years before, ten years after
the war, had torn down the other two wings of the old house and had
built the porch and plain two-storied front that now sat chin on the
crown of the slope and looked out over terraces whose antiquity scorned
its brief thirty years; looked over and beyond them, to miles of rolling
country. The narrow, back-breaking stairs that led from the living-room
to the rooms above, a back-stairs in colonial days, was now the main
stairway. The mansion had become a farmhouse, for the first Penniman had
been the only Penniman "with money in his pocket."
There was no one in the living-room, and Ann paused to listen, then
climbed the stairs, coming up into a narrow passageway, at one end of
which were three steps. They led to the front bedrooms, her
grandfather's addition to the old house. One room was his, the other had
been Coats Penniman's room, Ann's father's room. Like many of the
Pennimans, Ann's mother had married her first cousin, a boy who had
grown up in her father's house.
The stir Ann had heard was in this room, which, except when it had
accommodated an occasional visiting Penniman, had been closed for
fourteen years. The door stood wide now, the windows were open, and her
aunt was making the bed.
Ann stopped on the threshold, held by surprise. She had not known of any
expected visitor. For the last six years they had been too poor and too
proud to entertain even a Penniman. And there was something in her
aunt's manner and appearance that arrested Ann's attention. Sue Penniman
was always pale, Ann could easily remember the few times when she had
seen color in her aunt's cheeks, and, though she always worked steadily,
it was without energy or enthusiasm. But there was color in her cheeks
now, and eagerness in her movements. She was thin and her shoulders a
little rounded from hard work, but now, when she lifted to look at Ann,
she stood very erect and the unwonted color in her face and the
brightness in her blue eyes made her almost pretty.
"Is some one comin', Aunt Sue?" Ann asked.
Her aunt did not answer at once. She looked at Ann steadily, long enough
for a quiver of feeling to cross her face. Then she came around the bed,
came close enough to Ann to put her hands on Ann's shoulders.
"Cousin Coats is comin', Ann," she said, her nasal drawl softened almost
to huskiness.
Her _father_ coming! The color of sudden and intense emotion swept into
Ann's face, widening her eyes and parting her lips, a lift of joy and of
craving combined that stifled her. It was a full moment before Ann could
speak. Then she asked, "When--?"
"Sunday--to-morrow."
"When did you know?" Ann was quite white now.
"Last night--Ben Brokaw brought the letter."
"And you-all kept it to yourselves!" All the hurt and isolation of Ann's
seventeen years spoke in her face and in her voice.
Sue was surprised by the passion of anger and pain. It was a tribute to
Ann's power of concealment; she had not suspected this pent feeling.
"I didn't know you'd care so much," Sue said in a troubled way. "It
seemed like you didn't care about anything, you're always so--gay. An'
Coats has been away since you were a baby. I didn't think you'd care so
much. I wanted to tell you, but your grandpa didn't want I should till
we'd talked it over. And I was worried about your grandpa too--he was so
excited."
"Grandpa hates me! And father must hate me, too, or he wouldn't have
left me when I was a baby and never even have written to me!" Ann
exclaimed passionately, restraint thrown to the winds.
"_Ann!_ What's come over you to talk like that! Your grandpa doesn't
hate you! If you only knew!... You see, Ann, you've got a gay,
I-don't-care way with you, and it worries your grandpa. He's seen a
terrible lot of trouble. And since the stroke he had four years ago he's
felt he was no good for work any more, and what was going to become of
the place. It's all those things has worried him."
Ann said nothing. She simply stood, quivering under her aunt's hands.
Sue's voice lost its warmth, dropped into huskiness again. "You don't
understand, Ann, so don't you be thinking things that isn't so." She
drew Ann to the bed. "Sit down a minute till I tell you something....
It's always seemed to me foolishness to talk about things that are past,
so I never told you, but now Coats is comin' you ought to know: your
mother died when you were born, Ann, and it almost killed Coats. He
loved your mother dearer than I've ever known any man love a woman.
Every time he looked at you it brought it back to him. We went through a
lot of trouble, Ann--dreadful trouble. It was too much for Coats to
bear, an' he just went away from it, out west. But he wasn't forsakin'
us--it wasn't like that. Why, all these years his thoughts have been
here, and he's sent us money right along--we couldn't have got on if he
hadn't." Sue's voice rose. "There's no better man in all the world than
Coats Penniman, Ann!... And I _know_. He was your mother's own cousin
and mine--we grew up with him, right here in this house--and I know like
no one else does how fine Coats is!" Sue was shaken as Ann had never
seen her, flushed and quivering and bright-eyed.
Ann's eyes were brimming. "But I wasn't to blame."
"Of course you weren't to blame," Sue said pityingly. "I'm just telling
you because I want you to understand and be patient if Coats seems like
a stranger. Don't you feel hard to him. Just you remember that you're a
Penniman and that the Pennimans always stand together and that there
never was a better Penniman walked than Coats.... Just you do your duty
and be patient, Ann, and your reward will come. I've lived on that
belief for many years, and whether I get my reward or not, I'll know
that I've done the thing that's _right_, and that's something worth
living for."
Sue had struck a responsive cord when she called upon the family pride.
Ann's shoulders lifted. And hope, an ineradicable part of Ann, had also
lifted. She looked up at Sue. "Perhaps father will get to love me," she
said wistfully.
Sue drew an uneven breath. Then she said steadily, "Perhaps he will,
Ann.... Just you do right, like I tell you--that's your part." She got
up then. "We won't talk any more now--I've got too much to do. An'
there's something I want you should do, an' that's to talk to Ben
Brokaw. He says he's goin'. He's sitting down in the basement glum as a
bear. When your grandpa tol' him Coats was comin' he up an' said he'd
go--there was goin' to be too many men about the place. I couldn't do
anything with him. But he's got to stay--anyway till Coats gets some one
else. You see if you can persuade him."
"Yes, I'll try--" Ann promised absently, for she was thinking of
something else. "Aunt Sue, does father hate the Westmores too?"
Sue's start was perceptible. She stared at the girl. "Why are you
askin'?" she demanded sharply.
Ann grew crimson, and there was a touch of defiance in her answer. "You
and grandpa hate them--I wondered if he did."
"Have any of them spoken to you?" Sue asked. In all her knowledge of
Sue, Ann had never heard her speak so sharply.
It frightened her, though it did not alter the sense of injustice to the
Westmores which Ann had been cherishing. She gave her version of what
had happened that morning, and Sue listened intently. When Ann had
finished, she bent suddenly and smoothed the bed, averting her face.
"Just like him!" she said in a voice that was not steady. "Just like
every Westmore I've ever known. 'Do-as-I-please' and 'what-do-I-care!'
They've heart neither for woman nor beast. It's brought them to what
they are. Edward Westmore may think his wife's money'll build up the
family, but it won't. Coats will do more with his little twenty thousand
than Edward with his big fortune." She lifted and brushed the fallen
hair from her face, a gesture expressive of exasperation. "And to think
they dare ride over our land!" She looked at Ann as Ann had never seen
her look before. "The next time a Westmore tries to break his neck, just
you drive on, and if any one of them ever speaks to you, turn your back
on him."
"But what have they done to us?" Ann persisted.
Sue quieted, a drop to her usual patient manner. "Never mind what they
have done," she said wearily. "There never was a Westmore who was friend
to a Penniman. But I don't want to think about them--least of all
to-day.... Just you go on and talk to Ben--that'll be helping me, Ann.
There's a world of things to be done before to-morrow.... And go
quietly--your grandpa's lying down in the parlor."
Ann went, still flushed and unconvinced. What was the sense of hating
like that, just because one's father hated before you? And it was plain
that her father shared in the family enmity.
Then defiance slipped from Ann. Her father was coming! Would he be nice
to her? It was not natural for a father to be cold to his child. And she
was grown up now, and pretty. This recently discovered asset of hers
meant a great deal to Ann. And if her father was bringing money with him
to the farm everything would be changed. To Ann, anticipation was one of
the wonderful things in life.
IV
BUT IF HE FAILED HER?
Ann had learned early that with every one except her grandfather smiles
won far more for her than argument. When she put her head into Ben
Brokaw's room she was smiling, though her eyes were observant enough.
The basement was the "wash-room" and the "churning-room," with one
corner partitioned off for the combination of boarder and hired man
that, for the last four years, her grandfather's disabilities had made
necessary. As was customary on the Ridge, the negroes lived in their
cabins, "taking out" their rent in work. Ann had tiptoed in and studied
Ben and his surroundings through the half-open door.
There was no furniture in the little room. Ben's bed was a canvas
hammock, and the decorations of the place were of his own design:
several dozen mole-skins neatly tacked to the walls; coon-skins and
opossum-skins, a fox-skin and a beautifully striped wild-cat-skin were
all stretched in the same fashion. A gun, a pistol and fishing tackle
hung above the hammock, sharing the space with a wide-winged, dried bat.
The hide of a Jersey cow, its soft yellow stained by marks of muddy
feet, carpeted the floor, so much of it as was not occupied by traps,
bird's nests and other woodland litter, and the entire place smelled of
animals.
On the hammock, feet firmly planted on the floor, sat a phenomenally
long-armed, broad-chested, squat man who rolled his huge head and
shoulders gently from side to side, while his hands deftly whittled the
figure-four intended for the box-trap at his feet. His heavy face,
circled by a shock of rough brown hair, suggested the hereditary
drunkard, it was so reddened and ridged and snout-nosed. It was his
appearance that had earned him the sobriquet, "Bear Brokaw." He rolled
like an inebriate when he walked, yet never in his forty years on the
Ridge had Bear Brokaw been known to "take a drink." He knew and was
known by every soul on the Ridge, and by many in the adjoining counties,
for he had worked, in intermittent fashion, on almost every farm and
estate on the Ridge, more that he might be free to shoot and snare than
for the wages he earned. Ben knew the intimate habits of every wild
thing, and the family secrets of mankind as well, and plied a thrifty
trade in skins. He was adored by the children on the Ridge, and in spite
of his queer personality was respected by their elders.
"What are you doin', Ben?" Ann asked.
The small brown eyes he raised to Ann were as bright as a squirrel's and
at the same time shrewdly intelligent. Just now they were reddened by
an angry light and he looked as morose as the lumbering animal he
resembled.
"Fixin' this here trap." His voice was a growling base; his manner
indicated that he wished to be let alone.
Ann selected the cleanest spot on the cowhide and seated herself with
arms embracing her knees. Ever since she could remember Ann had
conversed with Bear Brokaw seated in this fashion, at his feet, and many
had been the secrets each had told the other. For Ben had worked on the
Penniman farm, or, rather, had shot and trapped there, as the desire
took him, for thirty years. He and Ann were fast friends; both were of
the open country.
Ann had cast about in her mind for a topic that would be arresting.
"Ben, Garvin Westmore's sorrel is dead," she announced dramatically.
Ben stopped both his work and his rolling motion. "What you sayin'?"
"He broke his leg, Ben."
"Whee--ee--" he whistled, through his teeth. "How, now?"
Ann told him the story, as she had told it to Sue.
"An' Garvin up an' shot him--I can jest see him at it," Ben muttered,
more to himself than to Ann.
"It was better than having the poor thing suffer," Ann declared with
some warmth.
Ben shook his head in a non-committal way. But he did not take up his
work. He looked down, still shaking his head.
Bear Brokaw had solved many problems for Ann; he had reasons for most
things. She changed her tone. "Why did he do like that, Ben? I wondered
why?"
"'Cause he couldn't help it."
"You don't mean--because he liked doing it?" Ann asked; Baird's remark
had clung to her memory.
Ben looked up quickly. "Why you askin' that, Ann?"
Ann was silenced. She would have to tell too much if she explained. She
was usually quick-witted. "Why, you spoke like that."
"Don't you be seein' meanings where there ain't none," he growled.
Ann knew that he did not mean to explain. But she had succeeded in
drawing him from his grievance, and that had been her first object. He
did not take up the figure-four again; instead, he was meditative.
"That there sorrel was the best hunter in the county," he said
regretfully. "He was great grandson to ole Colonel Westmo's white
Nimrod. That was one horse, Ann! A regular fightin' devil! He jest
naturally loved the smell o' powder. The colonel took him to the war
when he was a colt, an' fifteen years after the colonel was still ridin'
ole Nimrod--ridin' him to the hounds, too. The colonel jest lived on his
back, an' Nimrod were faithfuller than a dog. When there weren't no
huntin', the colonel were in the habit of takin' in every half-way
house fo' miles, an' Nimrod always there to tote him back to Westmo',
whether the colonel was laid acrost his back like a sack o' oats, or
sittin' shoulders square like he always did when not soaked through an'
through. Nimrod knew when to go careful.... I mind one night--that was
the year I was huntin' on Westmo' an' helpin' Miss Judith run the
place--I was bringin' Miss Judith back up the Post-Road from the
station, an' where the Westmo' Road cuts into the Mine Banks we come
plumb on a white objec'. I don't take no stock in ghosts, all I've ever
seen has turned out to be a human or a' animal or a branch wavin' in the
wind. But that bit of road has got a bad name. Them convicts the
Westmo's worked to death over a hundred years ago, over there in the
Mine Banks, is said to come out an' stand clost to the Post-Road,
waitin' for a Westmo' to do for him. 'Twas in that cut the colonel's
grandfather was shot down from his horse, an' nobody never did find out
who done it. An' it was there the Ku-Klux used to gather--guess the
colonel had his share in that, though.... Well, there was that white
thing, an' our horse give a snort an' stopped, an' my heart come up in
my mouth. But Miss Judith, she stood straight up in the buggy.
"'Who's there?' she called out, quick an' clear.
"An' the Banks called back, sharp, like they do, 'Who's there?' but it
was Nimrod whinnied.... It was the colonel gone to bed in the road, an'
Nimrod standin' stock-still by his side, like he always did, till some
one passin' would lay his master acrost his back again.
"Miss Judith sat down when we knew, an' she sat straight as a rod;
there's all the pride of all the Westmo's in Miss Judith, and was then,
though she weren't no older than you. 'Some gentleman has met with an
accident,' she says, very steady. 'Help him to his horse, Ben,' an' I
did.
"But the colonel weren't too far gone not to recognize a petticoat--he
had a' instinc' for anything feminine an' his manners couldn't be beat.
I'd put his hat on his head, but he swep' it off.
"'My grateful thanks to you, Madame,' he says in his fine voice. 'I met
with a little accident. I shall hope to thank you in person to-morrow.'
He were too far gone to know his own daughter, but he hadn't forgot his
Westmo' manners.
"An' Miss Judith sat straight as ever, an' all she says was, 'Drive on,
Ben.'... That's Westmo' for you!" Ben concluded, with deep admiration.
Ann had heard the story before, and always it had brought the color to
her cheeks, for it stirred her imagination, but she had never flushed
more deeply than now. "You like Garvin, don't you, Ben?" she asked
softly.
Ben eyed her in his shrewd way, "Yes, he's got feelin' for the woods--a
born hunter. Trouble is, everything's game to Garvin, Ann."
Ann was afraid to say anything more. "It was a bag-fox they had this
morning," she remarked for diversion.
"Shame!" Ben said curtly. Then, irrelevantly, "I reckon I'll choose
Westmo' fo' my nex' shootin'. I mean to tote my traps over there
to-night."
Ann was recalled to her errand. "You mean you'd go away from us, Ben?"
she asked in well-simulated surprise.
Ben's eyes twinkled. "I'm tellin' you news now, ain't I! What did you
come down here for?"
Ann laughed; she knew it was no use to pretend. "You're so smart,
Ben--you know what's in people's heads ... Aunt Sue told me. She's just
heart-broken, an' I said I'd come an' beg you. How could we have got on
without you this winter, and how are we going to get on without you now?
Don't you go, Ben!"
"Reckon Coats can run this place without me," Ben said determinedly.
"I don't believe he can," Ann persisted. "I know he'll want you."
"Not he. I know Coats Penniman."
"Of course you know him better than I do," Ann said wistfully. "Don't
you like my father, Ben?"
Ben moved restlessly. "He's a Penniman an' awful set in his ways--Coats
Penniman's a fearful steady, determined man--though that's not sayin'
anything against him."
"Aunt Sue says he is the best man who ever walked," Ann said earnestly.
"She's reason to think that way.... I reckon I don't like too much
goodness, Ann--not the kind that's unhuman good. That's because I'm jest
'Bear' Brokaw, though.... No, I'm goin'."