certainly, in their twelve years of married life, his wife had not
fathomed him. If his charm had won him conquests, they had never
obtruded. If he had craved youth and beauty, he had given no intimation
of it. He had unwaveringly upheld both his wife's dignity and his by an
unswerving courtesy; how much or how little love he had given her was a
secret she had carried with her--she had left him her fortune,
unconditionally.
He had led Ann up to the very present, and she told him what he already
knew: "And my father came home to-day." She paused on that, because of
the tragedy it had been to her, but her face was more expressive than
she knew.
"I suppose he will sell the farm and take you all west with him when he
goes back? That will mean a different life for you," Edward said.
The suggestion was an entirely new one to Ann; she grew wide-eyed over
it. Then she shook her head decidedly. "No, he won't do that--he loves
the place."
"Then he will probably send you to school in the autumn."
This also was a new idea, but after consideration she dismissed it.
"No.... I didn't study very well when Aunt Sue sent me to school," she
added with a touch of shame.
"You didn't?" Edward was genuinely surprised; it was not his reading of
her.
"I couldn't ever learn arithmetic--I tried hard, but I couldn't. The
teacher told Aunt Sue that I had no brains for study, an' she took me
away from school." Ann hated to make the admission, she had been led
into it before she knew, and added quickly, "But I liked history and
composition--I like to read. I've read my father's books through and
through."
"They don't know what good brains are in that school in the village,"
Edward said quietly. "My greatest pleasure is reading, too--you are
fortunate to have grown up in a library."
Ann was forced to admit that it was not a library, just a cupboard in
her father's room stacked with books. Edward knew that, as a boy, Coats
Penniman had been an omnivorous reader and something of a student. He
selected in his mind the books Coats was likely to have read, many
histories, the lives of great men, and the staider fiction which he
himself had enjoyed when a boy, and Ann warmed into vivid pleasure when
she found that they had acquaintances in common. She talked of George
Eliot's characters as one would of friends, and lovingly of Maggie
Tulliver, that creation of a great woman's brain always tenderly loved
by misfits such as Ann.
"She was a nobody's child," Ann said softly.
Edward noticed that the dramatic and emotional appealed profoundly to
her, and the sentimental very little. He thought as he listened to her
and looked at her beauty that, if the right sort of man possessed her,
she would grow into a superb woman; a few years' training would make
her a finished product, something more than presentable, a really
fascinating woman. But the emotional in her would have to be satisfied.
It was innate, patent, unmistakable--her power to arouse passion, an
irresistible inclination to test the emotional, and it was quite
possible that in the process she might be irremediably marred.
Edward thought of the thing he had witnessed the morning before, his
brother's face bent to Ann's, and his own face darkened. He had thought
of it frequently in the last twenty-four hours, and with a full
realization of what her appeal to Garvin would be. He thought of the
night just past, when the family skeleton had broken loose and been
captured and locked away again, only after hours of dread and terror to
them all.
He turned from the sickening recollection to look again at Ann. He
reflected that with her type the brain is apt to be constant and the
emotions less dependable, and love, actual love, rarely a sudden thing
and almost always a consecration. How much of herself she would give
would depend largely on the man who captured her; to hold her he would
have to appeal to her brain as well as her emotions. Edward was certain
that he read her aright. He had traveled a long way before he had
learned what little he knew of women; what man ever knew more than a
very little of the riddle the Creator intended man should not solve.
To Ann he said, "But you haven't read many of the more modern novels,
have you? And very little poetry?"
"I couldn't get them," Ann answered regretfully. "There's no library in
the village." She did not add, "And I have no money to buy books," but
Edward understood.
"I have any number of them--good and bad--at Westmore. I should be glad
to lend you anything you would like to read."
Ann did not know what to say. She had collided again with the family
quarrel. But she wanted to see Edward again. No one had ever talked to
her as he had, or treated her as he did. He was quite different from
Garvin, far more deferential, and yet eager to please her. She felt
intensely sorry for Garvin; things seemed to be all wrong with him, just
as they were with her. And she wanted him to love her; she wanted every
man to love her--even Ben Brokaw. It was delightful to feel that she
could interest them--as she was interesting Edward Westmore. It was
wonderful that she could interest him. He was the most courtly man she
had ever seen, and the most distinguished-looking. She was accustomed to
tanned faces; the black and white contrasts of Edward's face pleased
her. He was tall and erect and dignified. She felt a tremendous respect
for him, and at the same time she felt perfectly at one with him; he was
so pleasant to be with.
"I'd like very much to have the books," she said somewhat helplessly.
Edward smoothed out the difficulty without mentioning it. "I go by here
so often, to the club--I could easily leave them up there, beside the
bushes. If some one else found them or they got rained on, it wouldn't
matter--there are plenty of others." He looked up at her, smiling
quizzically. "I go to the club almost every afternoon, and ride back
about this time--just when you will be curled up here in the hollow
examining what I have left. I know you will do just that, because that
is what all book-lovers do--an unread book is as tantalizing as ripe
fruit just out of reach."
Ann thought it was a nice way of being told that he wanted to see her
again, and she answered with much of his own manner. "Maybe--but never
as late as this, though. See, the sun's most down, an' supper waitin'
for you at Westmore, like it is for me up at the farm."
"That means that I am dismissed--that it's growing late, and that I've
let you sit here without your cape around you.... Let me put it on for
you--before we go up."
He wrapped it about her, his touch light yet lingering, brought it
together under her chin, as one would with a child. "Have you felt
cold?" he asked tenderly, as if guarding something infinitely precious.
For the second time that day affection lifted in Ann's eyes. In all her
life no one had looked at her or spoken to her in just that way; even
Garvin had not. "No, I have been warm," she answered softly.
Edward looked full into her eyes, the veil of melancholy that so often
shadowed his face stealing over it. "Then I've done you no harm, and you
have given me a great pleasure," he said. "Now run home quickly--while I
get my horse back to the road."
Ann went, as he said, quickly. It had seemed to her that morning, as she
had walked along the same road with her father, that she could never be
comforted. But she had been--doubly comforted.
XVI
"IT WAS BORN IN HER"
"Is Ann always like this?" Coats Penniman asked Sue that evening.
They had come from supper and were sitting together on the porch.
Preparing the meal had been Sue's work; Ann had insisted that the
clearing away was her task, and Sue knew why she had been so determined;
she did not want to join them on the porch.
"She's always quiet when father is around," Sue answered.
"And I'm a strange element--well, it's natural."
Sue knew that Coats meant to talk of Ann, and she dreaded it. They had
spent almost the entire day together, going over the farm and talking of
its possibilities, and Coats had scarcely mentioned Ann. But Sue knew
that he was thinking of her from the occasional questions he asked and
from the way in which he had studied Ann, surreptitiously, with a
pitying intensity which Sue understood well. When he spoke to Ann
directly his usually deep voice softened to its kindliest note, and Ann
had answered dutifully, but Sue noticed that she kept her eyes turned
from him.
Poor Ann! Sue sighed inaudibly. She was very sorry for the girl, but
she had known just how it would be; the love Coats had seemed incapable
of giving the child was not likely to be given the grown girl who
reminded him even more poignantly of the bitterest days of his life.
She knew Coats so well. They had grown up together, she and her sister
Marian and Coats, and his love for her sister seemed to have been born
with him. He had loved Marian as a child, as a boy he had adored her,
loved her with an all-engrossing passion when they were grown. He would
gladly have given his life for the girl who was his wife for less than a
year, and over whom he had agonized with an intensity that had almost
deprived him of his reason. She had borne her child and had left him
desolate. She seemed to have taken with her all his capacity for love.
They were like that, the Pennimans; an affection for each other and a
tremendous sense of duty, but only one love. She herself was like that.
No one had ever guessed; she alone knew who it was _she_ had loved all
those years; loved in spite of everything, steadily loved and loved.
It was dark, and Sue could think and feel without her face betraying
her. Coats' figure was a vague outline, but his presence was an
intensely palpable thing. It pressed on her, enveloped her. _What_ that
day had been to her! After all these years, he her companion, his hand
on her arm, his first thought for her, and no one to come between
them--except the ghost of the past. She wanted it laid, buried too deep
ever to rise again. So far he had not mentioned the past; was he going
to drag the thing out now and agonize over it again?
She had not answered his remark, and he said nothing for a time, smoking
in silence. Finally he said, "I wish I could make the future a little
easier for her."
Sue drew a breath of relief. She was quite willing to talk of the
future, even Ann's future. "I've often wondered what was best to do for
her."
"Has any man ever made love to her, Sue?"
"No, no one," Sue said positively. "Who would? You know how away from
people we've had to live--we haven't even had the relations here--it was
the only way to do when we were so poor.... Besides, Ann's not much more
than a child."
"You've always written that she was a thoughtless child. She's less of a
child than you realize, Sue. And she's not thoughtless, either. She does
a deal of thinking, but keeps it to herself."
Sue remembered Ann's burst of feeling which had so surprised her. "I
reckon that she has grown up so gradually I haven't noticed. She has
such a careless way with her most of the time. She plays with every
mortal thing that comes her way, Coats--peeps at it with her eyelids
down--seein' if it's goin' to give her any fun, it seems to me. It
drives father mad to see her. I've often watched her, with the collie,
with Ben--with every breathing thing that comes her way. An' she does
lay hold on people--if there's a creature on earth Ben Brokaw loves,
it's Ann. It's Ann has kept him here these last two years--she can do
anything with him."
"It was born in her," Coats said evenly. It was his first reference to
his wife and he turned from it, spoke more clearly. "Sue, Ann's the
quintessence of attraction--I've realized it to-day. She's one of those
women you might wall up and use plenty of stone and mortar to do it, and
still she'd draw some man to her. It's her portion--we might as well
recognize it and allow for it in the future."
"You mean she's bound to marry?"
It was not all Coats had meant, but he said, "Yes."
"But she mustn't marry here, Coats--it's what father has always said....
What chance is there here for a girl, anyway. The few boys that have
stayed here are a shiftless lot, an' the Hunt Club set--they're rich,
most of them, an' fast--we're just farmers to them--a girl situated like
Ann is mustn't have anything to do with them."
"The club is since my time--are they about much, the men?"
"They're all over the place--as long as there's huntin'," Sue said with
disgust, "an' they're always about the club, summer and winter. Father
stopped their ridin' through here--he put up the gate an' notice--and he
arrested Garvin Westmore, Coats."
Coats was silent, Sue guessed, because he might say too much; hatred of
the Westmores lay deep in him. Sue liked the restraint he put upon
himself. He had gone away a wretched silent man, and had returned a
restrained yet forceful personality. He had broadened and gained weight,
both mentally and physically. She had guessed from his letters that he
had improved, and she had often thought, miserably, that she was not
keeping pace with him. She had never had her sister's beauty or
attraction, and even her prettiness was fading. And mentally?... What
chance had she had, tied down to the farm?... Then bitterness slipped
from her. He was here and, she hoped intensely, was going to stay. The
fear that had tormented her, that he might marry out of sheer
loneliness, was set at rest, and if she could feel certain that he would
stay, her cup of joy would be full. All she dared hope for was that he
would stay where she could care for him.
Coats spoke again, and of Ann. "I don't know just what to do for her,"
he said thoughtfully. "You wrote that she had no head for study. If she
hasn't, sending her away to school would be a mistake--just courting
mischief.... I'm inclined to think that she'll be best off here--until
she's older--then I'll try to send her west--put her with people who
will look after her and see that she gets a chance to marry, for that's
what it will be with her. She's bound to have her bit of life, have it
and pay for it, the certainty of it is written all over her, and she'll
have a better chance of happiness somewhere else than here." His voice
deepened. "You see, Sue, she's not really one of us--that's the thing
has been borne in on me to-day. It's an old wound opened, and it's made
me feel a little sick; her mother was never meant for this place--or for
me. You know how it was with her--just that craving for all the things
we were not. It showed in every look and word of Marian's,
unconsciously, and it shows doubly in Ann.... Why, Sue, when I looked up
this morning and saw her standing there, where Marian often stood, black
and white, that hair and brow of hers, and with Marian's lips smiling at
me, it was exactly as if a ghost had risen up and beckoned to me! I lost
hold on myself. I did the best I could, but my best was bad. I froze
whatever affection the child has for me--just froze it forever." He
ended helplessly, a sudden breaking away from the restraint that was
habitual with him: "She's a woman grown, Sue--I didn't expect it to be
that way--I never dreamed it would be like that--you never told me she
looked like that--you never told me how she looked!"
"You never asked me to tell you," Sue said painfully.
Coats quieted, gained control of himself almost instantly. "I didn't
mean to let myself go like that. It's the last time I'll speak of things
that can't be helped. The best I can do is to watch over Ann and give
her a chance."
"It's the best any of us can do, Coats," Sue's voice was still husky.
Because of the note of pain, Coats drew his chair close to hers, touched
her arm. "You've always done your best, Sue. I left you to bear most of
the burden, but I've come back to it. I'm going to stay, Sue--it's going
to be lifted from your shoulders to mine.... And I'm glad to be back. I
belong here--I'm no money-maker. I'm fitted for just this--to draw a
living out of the soil and enjoy doing it.... I can't expect help from
Ann--she's bound to go out into the world and live--but you'll stand by
me, Sue?"
The assurance Sue longed for had been given her. "Yes, I'll stand by
you!" she said deeply. "I'll stand by you always, Coats--I'm fitted for
just this, too."
XVII
COMPLEXITIES
The first of May, and spring had come on the Ridge. A young green lay
upon pasture and woodland, upon every spot where nature was allowed her
way--except the bald patches on the Mine Banks. They still glared a
sullen red, defiantly barren, when even the plowed earth glistened and
was warm, impatient under man's restraining hand, eager to quicken the
seed being entrusted to it, a civilized mother as intent on bearing
fruit as was her uncultured sister.
Those three weeks had brought the stir of life, both restlessness and
joy, to Sue, to Ann, to Judith Westmore; and, as spring quickens man as
well as woman, to Edward Westmore, Garvin and Baird the consciousness of
things desired and not attained which is the urge to all accomplishment.
Even Coats Penniman, busied about the farm from early morning until
night, was stirred by a vague unrest which was not unhappiness nor its
opposite. He worked the harder for it; he had cast his net here; he
meant to gather in the harvest, a modest harvest, but one that would be
sufficient for his family's needs. New horses filled the stalls that
had stood empty so long, new farm implements were stored in the
wagon-shed, the barn acquired a coat of paint. And the crying shame of
water carried by women up three hundred yards to a kitchen without a
convenience was abolished. That was Coats' first improvement: pipes were
laid to the bubbling spring and a pump installed; the spring-house,
unsanitary relic of a past century, would no longer harbor crocks of
milk and butter ill-protected from things that crawl and germs that
fatten; it housed the pump. And only the weeping willows mourned the
change; they no longer stood in a swamp, for a drain carried the seeping
water to the creek; they were a pleasant shelter now for any man and
maid who chose to sit beneath them.
Coats Penniman had his work and Sue had hers. The old house was being
transformed. Many years before, Ann, playing with a forbidden pen-knife,
had cut through the half-dozen layers of paper that generations of
tasteless Pennimans had laid upon the living-room walls and had come to
oak paneling as beautiful as any at Westmore. Sue had not forgotten the
discovery. The living-room was stripped of paper and became again what
it had been in colonial days, a spacious dining-room paneled from
ceiling to floor. The modern front room, the parlor, lost its dingy
figured paper, was hung and curtained in white, as were the rooms above.
Sue, with Ann to help her, and a sturdy negress to do the heaviest work,
labored joyfully. Paint and whitewash had their way with the old house,
and it emerged an elderly lady still, but with white hair smoothed and
wearing a spotless cap.
Only the lonely farm-woman who toils unaided, her interests bound by
four unsightly walls, a veritable prison with a treadmill for diversion,
can justly appreciate what those days of transformation were to Sue. She
had longed for the two strong black hands that under her direction
washed and churned and swept and cooked. But she had longed still more
for a little beauty, a touch of fashion, a hint of luxury. Her day's
work had always lapped over into the morrow. Now she could appear at
supper with hair arranged and wearing a fresh gown. She could go from
supper to sit with Coats on the porch and talk to him of her work as he
talked to her of his. The delight of it!
And it was not only the house that wore new garments. Sue chose
carefully and economically, but she would not have chosen tastefully had
Ann not been at her right hand. Ann had an instinct for color, and an
observant eye for style. She had insisted on shades of blue for Sue.
"You ought to get everything blue, it goes with your eyes, an' it makes
you look young and pretty," she had urged. "Have an all-blue suit, Aunt
Sue, an' a blue silk drivin' coat, an' a little blue hat with white
wings. An' for your house-dresses just have lawn with blue flowers in
it." Sue had thought the coat an unpardonable extravagance, until she
remembered that she often drove with Coats. Then she did not hesitate.
Ann was too proud to ask for anything for herself, but Sue insisted that
whatever she had must be duplicated for Ann, so Ann chose for herself a
summer suit of deep cream and a large cream-colored straw hat. Sue had
objected to Ann's choice of a red coat. "Your suit's so dark a cream
it's 'most yellow, an' your coat's a regular nigger red, Ann."
"I'm black an' white--they're my colors, Aunt Sue. I'll always have to
wear rich colors to look best," Ann returned, and she was right. She did
not put red roses on her hat, however. She decorated it with
water-lilies; their yellow centers blended with hat and gown.
Even Sue did not suspect what pleasure Ann took in her attire, but she
did notice that the girl was startlingly beautiful, even in her simple
white lawn dresses sprayed with either red or yellow. It was not a
glaring effect the girl had produced; she had simply intensified her
usual impression of warmth, her hint of the exotic. Coats noticed it; he
looked at her in an expressionless way, but Sue knew what he thought,
and her father also, when he looked at Ann and then looked away. Ann's
new clothes set her more apart from them than ever.
And in spite of her good sense, Sue envied Ann's compelling quality. She
would never have it, but Ann thought that since her father's return Sue
had grown almost beautiful. Sue's face had grown fuller and now her
cheeks almost always had color. She arranged her brown hair carefully
and changed her dresses frequently. And she laughed much oftener, softly
and with eyes alight. Sue was glad, of course, that Coats had brought
better times to them all, but even supreme relief would not account for
Sue's air of subdued happiness.
Ann had puzzled over the change in Sue, until one day she saw her
watching Coats Penniman while he slept. He had come in tired out and had
stretched himself on the couch in the living-room. Sue and Ann were
sewing when he came in and Sue had sprung up, brought him a glass of
water and begged him to lie down. Then Sue had taken up her sewing
again. A little later, when Ann glanced up, wondering how she could slip
away without being noticed, she saw that her father was asleep and that
Sue sat with hands idle. She was bent forward a little, looking at Coats
in utter absorption, her lips parted, her eyes misty and yearning, her
heart laid bare for Ann to read. Sue had forgotten her, forgotten
everything; there were only they two in the world, she and Coats.
Ann looked long and steadily, and, in those moments of hot surprise and
then of clear understanding, she laid down every claim upon her father,
became definitely nobody's child. Ann's own experience in love had
rapidly taught her; she knew how it was with her father and Sue; Sue
loved her father, and he liked Sue better than he liked any one else.
That was what Garvin said to her in the evenings when they met under the
willows by the spring: that he loved her madly, and that she only liked
him. She let him kiss her when he talked like that. It made her hot and
restless to be plead with and urged and caressed. She did love him--the
thought of losing his love was terrible--yet she was not happy, partly
because she felt that Edward would be shocked if he knew. She had
discovered that the brothers did not love each other any more than she
and her father loved each other. She never mentioned Edward to Garvin,
or Garvin to Edward.
The night before, Garvin had said startling things: that he was going
into the city to live; that Nickolas Baird was arranging a city agency
for a large automobile firm, and that he would probably have charge of
it. Ann had been swept by a feeling of desolation until Garvin had
added, "It won't be right away, but when the time comes will you go with
me?"
Ann knew that she had been silent so long that he had grown desperate.
He had put his arms about her and held her as if he were afraid that she
would run from him. She had said, finally, "I couldn't bear it, to have
you go away."
"But I shall have to go," he had told her positively. "I can't stay at
Westmore--Edward is master of Westmore now.... And you want to go
away--will you go with me, Ann?"