on the nobly solemn line of cedars. He looked at them long and steadily;
he lifted his hat and took it off. "'For better or for worse' ... and
so it has been--" His face was wiped of expression; his momentary
excitement gone.
"He is thinking of my mother," Ann thought.
He stood a moment longer, motionless, then put on his hat, drawing the
brim low over his eyes, and went on, forgetful of his surroundings, and
of Ann. Perhaps it was habit that guided him, for he took the usual way,
across the field and up the path between the grapevines, and Ann dropped
behind; when he went into the house, she could escape.
But Sue had seen them coming. Sue who never ran, who was wont to go
about wearily, ran down the kitchen stairs and her father followed,
slowly, holding to the stair-rail. Sue sped across the few yards that
separated them. "Coats!" she said, "oh, _Coats_!" and Coats Penniman
dropped his bag and opened his arms to her.
Ann stood on the path and watched them, Sue's arms about Coats' neck,
his arms holding her--and then her grandfather's welcome. The two men
clasped hands, the three stood, held together in their joy, then went on
slowly, her father helping her grandfather up the stairs.
Ann slipped in between the grapevines, skirted the barn enclosure, then
ran like a hunted thing for the shelter of the woods; not to the hollow
through which the road came, but up higher, to the group of pines that
edged the woods. There was neither road nor path there; the pines were
clothed and would hide her.
She stumbled as she ran, for she could not see; her sobs were blinding
and strangling her. She crept beneath the sheltering branches and clung
to the earth, the only mother she had ever known, beat upon the breast
to which she clung, and clung the tighter.
In that hour of anguish, Ann parted with her childhood, the blessed
capacity to weep one moment and laugh the next with sorrow and pain
forgotten. The collie had lost his playmate, the birds a
fellow-songster. Ann had not lost spirit, nor the power to endure which
is a woman's heritage; but a hurt to a child is a scar carried through
life, and Ann had been ineradicably branded.
XIV
THE MISFITS
The sun, well on its way to the west, reddened the bald peak above Crest
Cave and shot its rays through the screen of pines on the ledge below,
mottling the bed of pine-needles at the mouth of the cave. The midday
sun had warmed them; they were still warm and resinous, a comfortable
resting place.
Garvin Westmore lay full length on the sweet-scented bed, motionless,
except when he lifted to his elbow to look out at the country below.
His, or some other hand, had cut away the branches that hid the view;
one could sit at the mouth of the cave and see, as through a tunnel, the
slope of grain-land, the winding creek, the pastures and the Back Road;
and, beyond the semicircle of woods, the roof of the Penniman house, and
beyond that, open country stretching into blue distance.
Garvin was keeping watch. He quickly singled out Ann's brown cape from
the browns and duns of the woods. He sat up and watched each step of her
approach. He had not been at all certain that she would come; she was a
resolute little thing to brave discovery in this fashion--and both
ignorant and innocent ... and vastly trustful. Nevertheless, it was the
eternal attraction that was bringing her--and leading him into deep
waters as well. There would be all hell to pay--if he were not careful.
He sprang up, more to get away from his thoughts than to be able to see
better. He had searched about the Banks and had made sure, and had
watched the open country--there was no one about. And she was well away
from the woods now, following the creek; its undergrowth would hide her
from any one who might turn in from the Post-Road.
She did not leave the shelter of the creek until where it curved away
from the Mine Banks. She was just below him now. Then she crossed the
open space quickly and was lost in the trees that edged the Westmore
Road. Garvin knew that she would come up behind the Crest.
They were safe from observation now, and he circled the Crest and
started down the path which was more an animal trail leading through the
bushes, than a path. He heard Ann's approach before he saw her, the
rustle of sear leaves, and he stopped on one of the bare red patches
that the noise of his approach might not startle her. The bushes parted
presently, and Ann looked out. Then she looked up and saw him, and
smiled. She was lovely as she stood there, half screened, flushed and
doubtful and faintly smiling.
Garvin hurried down to her. "It's all right," he said. "I've been
watching.... My, but the bushes have pulled you to pieces!"
They had; her cape was off, her hair loose on her shoulders, her breath
short. "It's--more grown up--than it used to be," she complained.
"And so are you.... Don't pin up your hair, Ann--it's beautiful that
way: I love your hair."
She did not give him the merry glance that was her usual answer to such
speeches. She gave him the cape to hold and resolutely gathered up her
hair. "Now!" she said, when it was in place.
Garvin had watched her in silence. Her decision had checked him; it was
unlike her usual manner. "We'll go up to the cave," he said. "You can
rest there."
"I can take my cape now."
"No, I'll carry it.... You're tired, aren't you?"
"A little," she answered quietly.
She let him help her up, her hand in his, her lowered eyelids his to
read. He could find nothing there, except that they were darker-tinged
than usual--and her lips grave. He decided that she was frightened.
"It was a shame for me, to bring you all this way," he said, with the
gentleness which he usually had at command. "I wanted so much really to
talk to you, and I couldn't think of a better place."
"I wanted to come," Ann returned. "I wanted to see the Mine Banks
again--"
"And to see me, too, Ann?"
"Yes." She gave him a half-questioning, half-appealing glance. "I wanted
to talk to you, too." The laughter that usually danced in her eyes was
not there.
Garvin was still certain that she was frightened, at her own temerity,
and doubtful of him. "Well, we can talk all we want to here, dear. No
one will disturb us, and you are safe with me.... See, isn't this
perfect?"
They had come to the ledge. Ann looked into the umbrella-like cave with
the yawning hole at the back, the burrow of some animal; then at the
screen of pines. The place was shut in, warm and restful. "It's lovely,"
she said softly, "an' I'm not afraid of it now. I came up here once,
when I was little, an' something moved in the hole, an' I was scared. I
ran, and I never did come back--I imagined it was a lion.... That's why
it was fun to come to the Banks--I could have such fearful
imaginings--imaginings are fun." She was more like herself now, laughing
softly and coquetting with the hole in the cave.
"It's nothing but a fox-hole, Ann. I used to let them have it in the
winter and then trap them. When I got to coming here often, I didn't
like the smell of them about, and I have made it too hot for them. I let
the rabbits have it now--I don't mind their scuttling about while I lie
here."
"You talk as if you lived here. It is a peaceful, far-away place to
live." She was looking through the tunnel and had lost her smile.
Garvin had a sudden remembrance of some of the scenes the place had
harbored, and he turned away from it, impatiently. "Let's sit under the
pines, where we can look out," he suggested. He took her cape and spread
it close to one of the trees. "How do you like that?"
Ann had not heard him. She was looking steadily at the roof of the
Penniman house. She turned sharply, turned her back on it, sat so she
could lean against the tree-trunk.
"Why do you sit that way?" Garvin asked in surprise. "Don't you want to
look out?"
"No, I like this way best."
Garvin studied her closely. He had seated himself as near to her as he
could, with a mental curse for the tree-trunk that allowed no excuse for
the support of his arm. The flush of exertion had left Ann's face, and
Garvin saw now that she was very pale and heavy-eyed, and her lips
compressed. Her hands also were tightly clasped. She was not frightened,
or even shy; she was wretched. It was he who was flushed and doubtful.
He had not lived well, how ill only he himself knew, but this was his
first tampering with innocence.
He put his hand on hers. "What's the matter, Ann?"
She was silent.
"What is it, dear?" he asked tenderly. "We're friends, aren't we? Are
you sorry you came up here? What is it? Tell me?"
Ann drew one of her hands away and, taking up a pine-needle, began
pricking the bit of cape that lay between them. "No, I am not sorry,"
she said evenly. "The only comfort I've had to-day is thinking I was
coming." She looked up at him, her eyes full of grief. "My father came
home to-day."
Garvin would have taken her in his arms, but for the fear that touched
him. "But he doesn't know you are here?"
"No. I didn't tell him--I couldn't tell him--anything.... Mr. Garvin,
your people are fond of you--my people don't--love me." She had wrenched
the thing out, despite the hurt.
Garvin breathed more freely. What a child she was! "What do you mean,
dear? Have they been unkind to you--to-day?"
"They are kind to me, but they don't love me," Ann repeated, beginning
to quiver. At one wrench and with tremendous effort, she had parted with
reserve and the Penniman pride, and plunged on. "I don't know why they
don't love me as they love each other. They have never loved me--even
when I was little. My father went away an' left me because I reminded
him that my being born killed my mother. An' now that he's back, I can
see that he's never felt I was part of him. I understand better
now--they're kind to me because they pity me. I don't want to be
pitied--it's hateful to be pitied!... Your people love you, Mr. Garvin,
so you can't understand--I reckon no one will understand." She had ended
helplessly, not in tears, for she had wept herself into a decision that
morning, and she was holding to that.
Garvin's hand had grown lax on hers and his face gloomy. She had swept
away the sensuous emotion to which he had yielded while waiting for her.
He had given himself up to a contemplation of possibilities as an escape
from harassment. His pursuit of Ann had been just that, from the very
beginning, an escape from unendurable conditions. Her, "They're kind to
me because they pity me ... it's hateful to be pitied!" had brought back
with a rush the thoughts that had darkened his face while he rode with
Baird that morning. "Your people love you--so you can't understand." His
people love him! How well he understood, indeed!
He had looked straight before him while she talked; now he looked down
at her, stirred for almost the first time in his life by a sense of
fellow-feeling. "Yes, I understand," he said steadily. "It takes the
spirit out of you--gives you over to the very devil--to be dreaded and
pitied--almost from your cradle up. I understand, Ann. It's so in some
families--for one reason or another.... Some of us are born misfits;
we're throwbacks--to something or some one that doesn't quite jibe with
our environment. I reckon you're a bit too fine and spirited for your
environment, Ann." He was looking at her brow and eyes, not the brow and
eyes of a Penniman--not as he had known them.
Ann's sense of isolation caught at the note of sympathy, and she gave
her decision into his keeping. "I can't bear things as they are, Mr.
Garvin. I made up my mind this morning--I'm going away just as soon as I
can."
She had startled him. "_You_, go away? Why, you're nothing but a child,
Ann! Where could you go?"
Ann lifted her hands, held them out for him to see. He had noticed them
before, not small hands, work-hardened, but shapely and flexible, with
tapering fingers blunted a little at the tips, almost certain sign of
manual labor imposed upon childhood. "Look at them!" Ann said tensely.
"Would I work any harder with them for other people, than I have for my
people? I'm goin'--there's the city for me to go to."
Garvin knew, far better than a stranger would, what such a decision
meant to a Penniman--or a Westmore. It meant flinging away caste. They
could toil unceasingly, bend their backs to the most menial labor, so
long as they toiled upon their own freehold. But to become a servitor,
labor with their hands for a wage!
"You can't do that, Ann," he said positively.
"I can, and I will," Ann returned with equal decision.
"If you tried such a thing, your father would bring you back--you're not
of age."
She drew a short breath and considered a moment. "But I will be in the
fall--they can't make me come back then, can they?"
"No--" Garvin said slowly. "They couldn't--not if you were determined."
He was thinking. A possibility had occurred to him that made him flush;
brought him back to the thing to which he had given himself up of late,
his desire for Ann.... The thing that was almost impossible here was
possible in the city. And what a haven to escape to!... He looked at her
as she distressfully pondered her future. She had never seemed more
lovable or less a girl to be taken by storm; she had shown an amount of
decision he had not known she possessed. He had her confidence; he would
do well to keep it.
"If you are determined enough, Ann, and careful to keep what you mean to
do a secret, I think you could carry it through," he supplemented. "And
why shouldn't you go? Almost anything is better than life as you've had
it. I'll help you to go, when you're ready for it."
"You could help me to get something to do, maybe?" she asked quickly.
"I've been thinking maybe you could. That's one reason I wanted to talk
to you."
"Possibly. I'd do almost anything for you, Ann, especially now I know
you're not happy down there."
Her pleasure and relief were evident; she flushed brightly. "You're very
nice to me Mr. Garvin."
"We're really friends, then, Ann? You don't share the family grudge?"
"Indeed I don't! I can't see why they are so bitter."
"It's just an hereditary quarrel, that's all, and you are the first
Penniman and I the first Westmore who has buried it.... Will you really
bury it; dear--and show me that you have?"
"I'm showing that I have," she said earnestly.
"Shan't we kiss each other to prove that the ugly thing is gone from
between us?" he asked gravely.
Ann's flush deepened, but not because of any particular
self-consciousness; she neither dropped her eyes nor smiled. Ann had
gone down in the depths that day and, for the time being, had parted
with coquetry. The longing for affection and interest and consideration
such as Garvin was offering her was her immediate need. She was
desperate for want of it. And yet she hesitated. She felt certain now
that Garvin was very fond of her, and to Ann's way of thinking love led
to marriage. She was quite as certain that she liked him very much. She
hesitated because she was a Penniman and he a Westmore; there was a
class distinction between them that had held for generations.
Garvin saw her hesitation and obeyed a subtle instinct when he kept his
hands from her and chose the words that would appeal to her, and the
more irresistibly because of genuine feeling. "I'm not any more happy
than you are, Ann--I'm wretched. My people are kind to me, too, just
that, and they pity me endlessly. If ever there was a misfit, it is I.
I'm sick to death of it all, and lonely enough to take the short way
out.... Be nice to me, dear."
She lifted her lips to him, and his arms took her and held her, and she
clung to him with a tensity of affection. He kissed her long and
passionately, but with self-control enough to realize the quality of
what he received, its affection and gratitude and lack of passion. And
when her lips parted from his and he buried his face on her shoulder
shaken by the first effort for restraint he had ever cared to make, her
hand stroked his hair, gently. "I didn't know you were unhappy, too,"
she said softly.
When he raised his head he was pale. "You're a child yet," he said.
"You'll wake up one of these days--then you'll love me as I love you."
"I like you a great deal," Ann answered, with conviction.
He laughed shortly. "Yes, we're good friends--that's it, isn't it, Ann?"
The note of urgency and dissatisfaction made her uncomfortable. "You
asked me to be friends," she said.
She moved away from his hold, and he let her go. "There's all the
future," he said more quietly. "You'll love me by and by.... Ann, have
you really the courage to go away from all that down there?"
"Yes."
"And the wisdom to keep our friendship to yourself?... It will be a
terrible thing for both of us, if they know. I met your father this
morning, on his way home, and I'd have spoken to him, if he had let me.
I did speak and he cut me--he has neither forgotten nor forgiven."
"What is it they've not forgotten or forgiven?" Ann asked earnestly.
"Aunt Sue wouldn't tell me."
Garvin told her what he had told Baird.
Ann flamed scarlet. "There isn't any Penniman would have done that!"
"And there's not a Westmore now who thinks it," Garvin said positively.
"The thing's more than half a century old, but it's an insult your
people will never forgive.... It's not going to matter to you, is it,
now you know?" he added, for Ann looked so perturbed. "I never have
believed it for a moment--or Edward either. I know he's terribly sorry
for the quarrel, and ashamed that father let the thing rankle. It
worries Ed. If it worries you, I'm sorry I told you."
"It doesn't worry me," Ann said firmly. "It doesn't make the least
difference to me--in the way I feel to you and Mr. Westmore--we had
nothing to do with it, an' to hate an' hate is sickening. But I know how
it is with my people. I think grandfather would almost kill me if he
knew that we were friends. Even Aunt Sue would be fearful to me." She
drew a quick nervous breath. "It makes me want to get away more than
ever."
"You shall go--I'll help you," Garvin promised. "But in the meantime I
want to see you--I must. If I think of a safe way, you will meet me,
won't you?"
Ann thought of the thing that had added hurt to hurt, her father's
pleasure in Sue. They had been painfully kind to her at dinner, and
after the meal was over he had gone off with Sue, they two to talk
together.
"Yes," Ann said. "I'm not afraid. We're doing nothing wrong in liking
each other."
"I'll think of a way and write to you."
She got up. "An' I must go now." Her lips quivered and set. "My father
has gone with Aunt Sue--to walk around the farm--but they'll be coming
back before supper."
"I am afraid you must, dear. If I brought them down on you, I should
never forgive myself.... I can go with you to where I met you."
He went with her around to the back of the Crest, down the steep
red-clay slope and into the shelter of the bushes. There he lifted her
up and kissed her. "Ann!" he said. "Ann! I'm going to make you love me."
Ann received his kiss more shyly, turned her cheek to it. She had
emerged a little from wretchedness, and the quality that invites
pursuit, that draws passion and gives sparingly in return, the quality
with which Ann was plentifully endowed, was coming to the surface. She
escaped from his hands without answer and with eyes down.
XV
AS WITH A CHILD
Ann gained the woods in safety, so much Garvin saw from his perch, but
he could not see what followed. At the point where the Back Road forked,
she came face to face with Edward Westmore. He was coming from the club,
riding slowly, as always.
Ann was flushed from rapid walking; she flushed more deeply when she saw
him, and nodded and smiled shyly.
Edward lifted his cap, his tired face lighting. "So we meet again!" he
said. "I was thinking of you--have you walked far?"
"Just across the pastures," Ann answered in embarrassment, the more so
because he had checked his horse.
She had not expected him to do that, or to look so pleased when he saw
her, still less to dismount and come to her which he did immediately.
"You look warm, aren't you tired?" he asked.
"Yes," Ann answered, too much surprised for anything but a monosyllable.
She was wide-eyed and a little startled, the child look that made her
prettiest, and he studied her intently, as if absorbing her features.
And yet his manner was deferential; he looked and smiled as he had the
day before when he had talked with her.
"I am tired, too," he said. "I have just ridden up from the station to
the club.... Won't you rest a few minutes? I wanted to talk more
yesterday--I was interested in all you told me, and promised myself to
take the first chance to talk again, but I hardly expected this good
fortune."
Baird would have been astonished by Edward's air of animation and
pleasure, more so even than Ann. "He hates quarreling and wants very
much to be friends," was Ann's thought, and she was pleased. The
miserable day was ending more happily; Garvin had told her that he loved
her and that there was "all the future," and now his brother was showing
her that he liked her. There were people in the world to whom she
mattered; Garvin was interested in her, deeply interested. Ann was being
carried away from her troubles; transformed into beauty and charm.
She gave Edward her drooping glance and slow smile. "I should like to
talk, too."
"Shall we sit down then, for a few minutes?... Over there by the creek,
don't you think? There used to be a hollow there, and a flat rock."
"Yes--it's there yet," Ann assented willingly.
It was the spot where she had hidden from Baird that morning, where the
bank of the creek shelved sharply to a big rock around which the water
fretted and quarreled. Clumps of chinkapin bushes intervened,
effectually hiding the hollow from the road.
Edward led his horse around them and, after a swift survey that
convinced him that they would be well screened, dropped the bridle.
Carefully and attentively, as if she were fragile, he helped Ann down to
the rock, and Ann, who had sprung down that morning as nimbly as a
chamois, lent herself daintily to his guidance, instantly adapting
herself to it, enjoying it. This was something quite new to her, as new
as Baird's impetuosity or Garvin's restrained passion. And she took,
quite as her due, the step-like ridge in the rock that seated Edward at
her feet. She was neither embarrassed nor awed, partly because of
Edward's well sustained ease and deference, partly because of his very
evident interest in every word she uttered.
With a skill which Ann was not experienced enough to recognize, he led
her to talk of the farm, then of her people, then of herself. He had
been away so long, he told her. He had been everywhere--except at
Westmore--much of the time in Europe; everything she told him was news.
He drew from her an accurate picture of her life as it had been from her
earliest remembrance and as it was now, and that without any such
passionate outburst as she had visited upon Garvin. With his knowledge
of her family and his growing knowledge of her, it was easy to read
between the lines. She was apart from her family; she was not happy
with them. Whether she had attained to seventeen years without a romance
was the one point upon which he was uncertain; even a very young girl
would know how to guard that secret.
Ann could not know that she was being manipulated by a master-hand. When
he looked up at her, his eyes held only pleased interest. When he looked
down at the resentful, quarreling water and they were hidden from her,
his expression was different.
Edward Westmore's combination of ease and impenetrable reserve, of swift
intelligence and yet guarded speech, the melancholy that shadowed him,
like a thin veil drawn over a smile, had baffled more astute people than
Ann. It had made him a noticeable man wherever he had gone; a man of
acknowledged charm and suspected subtlety. His family had known him as a
spirited and yet dependable boy, the most dependable of the Westmores,
until the upheaval which had sent him away from his home had revealed
passions his family had not suspected. He had demanded a release from
Westmore and Westmore conditions and had gained it. That he had married
beyond all expectations well a woman older than himself and possessed of
a fortune, and had settled into the inscrutable man he was, with the
welfare of Westmore apparently his closest interest, was one of the
inexplicable things about him.