could see that she was white and tired. If she was in love with Edward,
it did not seem to make her joyful. She had never looked really happy
since the day he had seen her playing in the barn. He asked his question
abruptly, "Ann, are you engaged to anybody?"
Ann simply stared at him.
Baird's face had grown hot. "Are you in love with any one, Ann?... I'd
rather you told me frankly.... If you are, I'll stop coming around and
bothering you. If you're not, I'm going to make you like me."
There was a long silence. Then Ann said, "I'd rather you stayed away."
"You're sure of that, Ann?"
"Yes."
Baird stood in uncertainty for a moment; it was hard for him to hold to
his decision. He was carrying his riding-whip, and he slashed viciously
at the Bouncing-Betsies that edged the path, his teeth set.
Then he straightened. "Well--I guess there's nothing I can do--so I'll
be off."
They went up to the house in silence.
XXVII
THE THING
Garvin Westmore sat at the mouth of Crest Cave, his eyes fixed on the
Back Road and on the stretch of woods below the Penniman house. He had
sat for the greater part of the day almost motionless and steadily
watching--watching every one who came and went by the Back Road, who
entered or left the woods.
Beside him, emptied to the last drop, was the bottle, his comforter
during the last two weeks of brooding suspense, and near it lay Ann's
letter, the confession she had carried to the woods the night before.
Garvin had feared the Thing in himself that stirred so frequently now,
and that dropped back into quietude only when he drugged it. Therefore
he had drunk persistently and deeply during the last two weeks, spent
whole days when he was supposed to be in the city, lying on the carpet
of pine-needles, feeling that, though he had to drug the Thing heavily,
he was still himself, _unpossessed_, thinking quite clearly and coolly,
as he was thinking now.
Once, when he was a boy, the Thing had suddenly come to life in him,
swept him aside for mad hours that neither his family nor he had ever
forgotten. Then for long years he had been as free of it as if it had
never revealed itself. When he had changed from a boy to a man, it had
stirred in him, and they called it "melancholia." It was the same Thing
that had shut Sarah away from life.
Then had come the years when he was a man grown, and the Thing stirred
only occasionally, "fits of depression" that lifted easily into
excitement and dropped suddenly into perfect self-possession. He had
learned then that drink lifted him out of depression, not into
ungovernable excitement or into elation, but into coolness and
capability. _He_ knew that the Thing lay in him ready to spring into
activity at any moment, but he had learned how to deceive those about
him; he even half-deceived his family.
All night he had been in the grip of depression. He had not slept
because of it, and that morning when ostensibly he was on his way to the
city, he had come to the Mine Banks and had hidden his horse, bent upon
gaining the usual relief. At noon he had gone to the woods, by way of
the creek, and had secured Ann's letter. Fortified as he was, he had
read it without mad excitement. It confirmed the apprehension that,
during the last two weeks, had kept him in persistent depression.
He went back to Crest Cave with the queer surface restraint upon him
that drink always produced, and had drained the last drop from the
bottle, his mind focused upon the suspicion over which he had brooded
ever since the night Edward had made him promise not to go near Ann.
Ann had written:
"DEAR GARVIN:
"If I could endure it any longer without telling you, I'd not
write this; but I can't. You have asked me all along in your
letters why I have written so anxiously, and I have told you
that I wasn't happy because I was worried about everything, but
I didn't tell you the real reason.
"Garvin, I can't do it. I don't love you enough to go with you.
Almost from the time I promised I've been sorry I promised. I'm
wretched because I have to tell you. I feel sick when I think
of how it will hurt you, and I hate myself for not having known
my heart any better. I meant everything I ever said to you. I
thought I loved you, and I did want you to be happy. I still
want you to be happy--I want you to have everything good that a
man can have. But you want something that I've found out is not
in me to give to you. That's the thing I have found out about
myself, and it isn't right not to tell you.
"There isn't any more I can say, except that begging won't
change my feeling to you. Please forget me. You'll be gone from
here to where you'll find people you like.
"I'll always think lovingly of you--you were kind to me when I
was dreadfully unhappy. You and Edward have both been kind to
me. Lovingly, ANN."
Garvin had tossed the letter aside. It lay through the afternoon, its
open page stirred occasionally by the light breeze. The slight rustle
and the whispering of the pines were almost the only sounds, except when
the birds sang. Garvin moved only when some one passed along the Back
Road; then he bent forward, his eyes burning and intent beneath lifted
brows. He watched Coats Penniman drive up to the woods and disappear;
later on, saw Baird ride up the Back Road, evidently returning from the
city. He watched him intently, made sure it was Baird, and settled back
again into alert waiting.
It was late in the afternoon when another horseman, riding toward the
club, came slowly up through the pastures and melted into the woods.
Garvin sat, head craned and eyes narrowed, watching every step of the
man's progress. When the woods had swallowed the rider, Garvin got up,
circled the Crest, and went down to the Mine Banks Road. He crossed it,
then crossed swiftly the open space between the road and the creek, and
went down into the bed of the creek for better cover, and, with the
caution of the practised hunter, made his slow way along to where it
left the woods.
It had taken some time to creep along without noise. When he reached the
woods, where the field undergrowth gave way to trees and the banks of
the creek were studded with rocks, he waited for a time, crouched behind
a rock. He had come with the utmost caution, still, a broken twig, some
slight sound, might have betrayed him. He heard nothing but the wood
sounds, no voices or stir of any kind. Then he straightened, though
still well sheltered by the rock, and looked about him.
There was no one there. So far as his keen eyes could discover, there
was no one on the steep upward slope of the woods beyond the creek, no
one on this side either; no one on the road leading to the club, or on
the road that branched off to the Penniman house. A short distance away
was the flat rock with the bank rising above it and the saucer-like
depression in which it lay semicircled by a dense screen of chinkapin
bushes. He could wait there, it was a very perfect hiding-place, but
from that point he could not see the two roads. He was better placed
where he was, for a growth of wood-honeysuckle surrounded his
hiding-place; by parting it a little he could see very well and not be
seen. Garvin waited some time before his brother returned from the club.
Where the road forked, Edward stopped, looked up the Penniman Road, then
dismounted and came toward the creek. He led his horse behind the
chinkapin bushes, left it, and came to the top of the bank, looking down
at the flat rock. Then he climbed down, seated himself, and looked down
at the swirling water. He looked at it steadily, except when he turned
to look up at the screen of bushes. He was waiting for some one.
Garvin also waited. A hot cord had begun to tighten about his head,
forcing the blood into his eyes, yet he stood quite still; he was
thinking quite clearly; he had known it would be like this.... Even
when Ann came around the screen of bushes, he did not stir.
Edward sprang up and helped her down. Garvin could see their every
motion, even their expression, the smile each had for the other; but
they spoke very low, so low that the murmur of their voices mingled
confusingly with the ceaseless gurgle of the water.... He could not
creep any nearer to them and not be discovered.... But he needed no
clearer confirmation than actions: when Ann stood beside him, Edward put
his hands on her shoulders, looking into her eyes while she talked
rapidly and distressedly. When they sat down, Edward sat at her feet.
When he began to talk to her, long and low and steadily, he took her
hands, both her hands, and Ann's face was bent so that Garvin could not
see it. Apparently she said nothing, simply sat motionless, enthralled
by what Edward was saying.
Garvin went on thinking--quite clearly. He had known he would find just
this. He had seen it all enacted while he sat up there in the Mine
Banks--this and more--and he had planned just what he would do. He had a
good cool brain; he was clever to have decided that this was the state
of things, to have foreseen it all and to have planned to the last
detail. Let Edward have his hour, the--_thief_! He, Garvin, would have
his hour, too!
He felt a tense elation, like one who ruled destinies. When Ann's voice
lifted in a smothered cry of emotion, the sudden answer to the pause in
Edward's steady speech, Garvin only parted the bushes a little more
widely, watched more intently. She had slipped into Edward's arms and he
was holding her, her arms about his neck, his arms clasping her. He
kissed her many times, murmured over her, and then she began to weep,
breathlessly, a note of joy in her tears, words and tears and caresses
commingled.
"Edward is sedate!" the gibing Thing that was Garvin Westmore said. With
Ann's arms about his neck and her head on his breast, he was talking her
into calmness, talking, talking, interminably, the deep murmur of his
voice never once raised, soothing her as one would a child. And when, at
last, they stood up, his hands were on her shoulders again. But his face
betrayed him; he wore a look of exaltation, and Ann's was tremulously
happy. They thought themselves pledged to each other for all time, those
two!
They went up out of the hollow hand in hand, and parted after a long
kiss. Ann crossed the creek and ran up the opposite slope, turning often
to look at Edward, who stood watching her absorbedly, a lightly-moving,
radiant thing. She paused for a long moment, poised on the crest of the
slope, a slender graceful form, young as the young green that framed
her--then disappeared over the crest. She had gone to the cluster of
pines at the edge of the woods, to sit there for a time with her
happiness.
Edward watched until even her graceful head had vanished. Then he
mounted and rode out by the Back Road--taking his way by the Mine Banks
to Westmore.
Garvin crept down along the creek, went as he had come. He would reach
the Mine Banks before his brother did.
XXVIII
THE HELL-HOLE OF THE WESTMORES
Sue Penniman had been searching frantically for Ann, through the house,
on the terraces; she had even gone down the cedar avenue and then to the
spring-house. She had not gone to the barn, for Coats was at the barn
and Ann was certain not to be there; besides, Sue did not want to see
Coats, not until she had found Ann and forced her to tell the truth.
But she could not find Ann. She came back finally to the kitchen steps
and called up to the negress who was busy above, "Rachel, do you know
where Ann is?"
"I seen her go down by the woods, Miss Sue."
"When?"
"About a' hour ago."
Sue paused; then she asked, "Was she dressed up, Rachel?"
"Yes'm--she got on her white dress."
"All right," Sue said, trying to keep the thickness out of her voice.
Sue put the corner of the house between her and the woman, and stood for
a moment in confused thought. She was too terrified to think clearly;
she could make no plan; she felt bewildered and helpless.... She would
have to tell Coats--she dared not keep the thing to herself. He would
have to be told in the end, anyway.... It was trouble again for Coats,
desperate trouble. It was of Coats Sue was thinking, more than of Ann.
She would rather have died than bring this thing on him, this long
perspective of trouble for them all.
Sue went draggingly to the barn. Coats was in the wagon-shed, shifting
the buggies and wagons so as to make room for a new hayrack.
He saw Sue come in, simply that she was there, in the doorway. "Time for
supper?" he asked. "I didn't know it was so late." He was looking at the
bare space he had made.
"Coats--"
At the husky note he turned quickly and saw her face. He reached her at
a stride. "Sue!"
Sue could not find words; she looked at him haggardly.
"What's the matter?" he demanded. "What's happened?"
"It's Ann, Coats."
His brows lowered and the color came in his face. "Ann?... Well?"
"I just found it out this afternoon.... She's been meeting Garvin
Westmore--for a long time. They've planned to go away together." Sue
could not bring herself to tell him her worst fear, not at once.
But Coats leaped to it; he grew white. "She, she's not--?"
"I don't know--Coats," she said with difficulty. "I can't find her
anywhere--I wanted to ask her before I told you. Rachel says she went
down to the woods about an hour ago.... I ran out of writin' paper an'
went to Ann's room, to her box for some, an' I found a sheet in it with
'Dear Garvin' an' some other words of a letter that was begun. I was so
frightened I broke open her trunk then, an' I found a lot of his
letters. He, writes like they were engaged, but ... Coats, I'm
afraid--I'm afraid she's in trouble--" She would have to say it sooner
or later; it was best they should face it together.
Coats had grown quite gray, the down-drawn muscles of his face making
him look old. He looked away from Sue's quivering face, beyond her to
the open, staring down the vista of the past. "It had to be a Westmore,
of course," he said slowly and with extraordinary evenness. "It's about
time that family became extinct."
To one who did not know Coats Penniman, the words would sound cold, but
Sue knew the meaning of the gray tint that had overspread his face, and
the extent of the concentrated rage that edged each word with bitter
sarcasm. In her terror she began to cry. "I don't know it's true,
Coats--I don't know it's true, dear.... I haven't talked to Ann. We
can't tell till we've asked Ann.... Coats, if harm comes to you because
of this, it'll just kill me--"
Coats looked at her; took her arm. "Don't, Sue--don't cry so.... I can't
do anything till I'm sure. I can't tell till I see his letters. Where
are they, Sue?"
"At the house.... It'll drive you mad to read them."
"Oh, no, it won't," Coats said, through tight lips. "It may drive Edward
mad, though. I shall settle my account with both of them ... when I'm
ready.... Where did you say Ann had gone?"
"Rachel said she had gone down to the woods. She said Ann was dressed
up--I thought maybe she had gone away with Garvin--it's what he's been
askin' her to do."
"Not in broad daylight," Coats said, in the same cutting way. "His kind
do their work at night.... She'll come back--and with nothing but misery
before her.... If Marian had only lived, the child might have been
saved--" At thought of his wife, he dropped into huskiness and restless
motion. "Come to the house," he said thickly. "We can't stand here doing
nothing."
Sue followed him as he strode along. "Go by the front way," she begged.
"Rachel mustn't see.... And father; Coats, you mustn't tell
father--it'll kill him--it'll bring on a stroke, Coats."
Coats stopped. He had regained his composure. "Keep calm," he said. "I
mean to keep calm. We've faced trouble together before, Sue--we're
neither of us going to go mad."
"I'd rather have died than have this happen."
"I know you would. You're all Penniman, Sue--there're some of us
mongrel, but not you."
They went in by the front porch. "Bring me the letters," Coats said, in
the same quiet way.
Sue went to Ann's room and gathered them up from the bed where they lay
scattered, as she had left them when she had hurried to find Ann. She
brought, also, the sheet of paper that had led her to discovery, placed
them all in Coats' hands.
Coats read them, Ann's few blotted sentences first. It was Ann's
struggle over her letter to Garvin, a beginning put aside because it was
so ill-written and blotted:
"DEAR GARVIN:
"If I could endure any longer without telling you, I'd not
write this, but I can't. You have asked me all along in your
letters why I have written so anxiously, and I have told you
that I wasn't happy because I was worried about everything, but
I didn't tell you the real reason."
Coats read it, then passed from letter to letter, his brows lowering
more and more ominously, his eyes graying to steel as he noted such
sentences as these: "Why do you let your mind dwell on the possibility
of trouble--we are going away so soon, Ann--in less than a month we'll
be together. I'm going to live to make you happy, then." And in another
letter there was the underlined sentence, "_You are mine, now, every bit
of you_--there can be no going back for either of us;" and in the same
letter "... if we are careful, there is no danger of any one's knowing
how much we are to each other. And it will only be for a short time--I
have the agency at last--we will go in June." Coats understood as
neither Ann nor Sue had understood the omissions in the picture of their
life together with which Garvin had closed his letter. He understood
perfectly what was in Garvin's mind. He knew what Garvin was, as Sue
could not know. The men on the Ridge knew Garvin Westmore; he was an
open secret.
When Coats put down the last letter and sat looking at the collected
evidences of sensual infatuation and very evident suffering, a sort of
madness that could not be given the name of love, he was without even
the faint doubt that had given Sue a ray of hope. There might be girls
who had either the coolness or the hardihood to pass through a siege
such as this unscathed. Or the occasional girl who, though capable of
arousing mad passions, remains aloof, wrapped in a self-sufficient
self-respect that makes her invincible. But it was not his reading of
the child who had grown up without anybody's particular care. He had
said to Sue, "She's bound to have her bit of life, have it and pay for
it." It had come sooner and more terribly than he had feared. Coats
thought of Ann when she was a little thing, just able to walk across
the floor, her steps, as always, leading her to him, and his face
twisted in pain.
Sue had watched him. "Coats, you think it's so?" she asked despairingly.
"Yes," he said.
"What are you goin' to do?" she whispered.
Coats got up and gathered the letters together. "I'm going to find her
first.... You go, Sue, and see if she's in sight anywhere. Then come and
tell me."
He wanted those few minutes alone. He went up to his room and, from a
shelf in the cupboard, took his pistol, loaded it and put it in his
pocket. When Sue came back, he was again where she had left him, his hat
on and binding the letters together. He put them in his pocket.
"I don't see her, Coats.... You have your hat--what are you goin' to
do?" Sue could not rid herself of the terror his grim look inspired.
"I'm going to look for her--better I should talk to her where your
father won't hear.... Then I'm going to Westmore."
Sue grew deadly pale. "Coats, don't you fight them! Don't, for my sake!"
Coats' lip curled. "Don't worry. I've got a word to say to Edward, and
I'll guarantee he'll listen."
"If anything happens to you, I don't want to live," Sue said in despair.
Coats' face softened. He put his arm about her. "You're forgetting that
we Pennimans are not cowards, Sue."
She looked at him with her heart in her eyes. "I'm just a woman when it
comes to you, Coats--just a lovin' woman." In her agony of fear over
him, Sue had thrown away the concealment of years; the truth stood
clear, looked the man she loved straight in the eye.
It struck queerly across Coats' tense nerves, the revelation of a thing
quite unexpected, but having nothing to do with the burning present. He
answered to it only vaguely. "Do your part, then, Sue. Do what I tell
you to do. Don't give way.... And not a word of all this to your
father." He bent and kissed her, then, putting her aside, went out.
He went down to the woods, his eyes keen and searching beneath his
lowered brows. He saw no sign of Ann, either in the open or at the edge
of the woods, and went straight on, looking about him, but not pausing,
until he came out on the Back Road. He had not expected to find Ann in
the woods. In one of his first notes to Ann, Garvin had appointed Crest
Cave as an afternoon meeting-place; Coats had made a mental note of it.
He followed the Back Road until he stood clear of the woods, then looked
about him. There was no sign of any one. As far as he could see, in
every direction, fields and woods and brilliant evening sunshine; cattle
in the pastures below, but not a human being in sight.
Coats looked at the warm teeming country, then up at the looming Mine
Banks, over which hung a faint blue haze, the mist from innumerable
ore-pits which the spring rains had filled to overflowing. "The
hell-hole of the Westmores," he always called it in his own mind.
Then he struck off for it, directly across country, his vigorous stride
carrying him along rapidly.
XXIX
"WHAT'S NOT KNOWN"
Later, when the hollows lay in shadow and only the crowns of the hills
glistened in the departing sunshine, Coats Penniman came back through
the woods.
Sue had gone about the house oppressed by the terror she tried to keep
out of her face. She was gripped by the certainty that there was even
worse trouble in store for them than merely the shame Ann had brought
upon them. The thought of it made her weak-kneed and sick, yet she tried
to do the usual things in the usual way. She persuaded her father to
have an early supper and go to bed, and she sent Rachel to her cabin,
gave her an unexpected evening off. They would have their wretchedness
to themselves for one night at least. If only it did not end in tragedy!
Coats' grimly purposeful look obsessed her. And in all her coming and
going, from the kitchen landing, when she was down-stairs, from an upper
window, while she waited for her father to go to sleep, she watched the
woods.
Sue had watched Coats in terror when he went down to the woods; she
watched in terror when she saw him coming back. He had gone quickly,
but was coming back slowly, bent forward and walking as if each step was
an effort. His coat was off, laid over one shoulder, and his free hand
held it in place, so that it covered his other arm.
Sue ran down the spring-house path, and they met as he was dragging
himself up to the willows. She did not need to ask if anything had
happened, for Coats was ghastly pale, and, even before she reached him,
she saw that he was walking so slowly because he could not walk any
faster, though, from the strained look in his eyes and the effort he was
making, it was plain that he wanted to hurry. They had fought and he was
terribly hurt; they had tried to kill him, and suddenly rage sprang up
in Sue, commingled with her fear that he was mortally wounded.
Even before she reached him, she cried, "Coats, they've hurt you--"
"I've been shot," Coats said, in a voice that was not his it was so
lifeless.
He spoke with great difficulty, as if he were about to faint, yet at her
horrified exclamation he frowned and looked about him. "Hush!" he said
thickly. "It's just my arm--but I've bled so I'm almost done.... Get me
a drink of water."
Sue obeyed him instantly and in silence. He looked grim and
determined--in spite of his exhaustion; somberly excited and at the same
time fearful of something, of being overcome by weakness, for one
thing. Sue visioned the worst as she hurriedly filled the tin cup she
took from one of the jutting logs of the spring-house. He was not
fatally hurt; her greatest terror had been quieted, and the fighting
blood of the Pennimans lifted in her, giving her courage. If he had
killed a Westmore it was that Westmore's due. Hatred of their hereditary
enemy nerved her. No matter what Coats had done in his righteous anger,
she would stand by him; she would stand and fall with Coats--no matter
what came. Even the sight of his blood-soaked coat did not turn her
faint.