Nobody's Child Part 14

"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 p.r.i.c.king 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 hara.s.sment. 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 cla.s.s 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 pa.s.sionately, but with self-control enough to realize the quality of what he received, its affection and grat.i.tude and lack of pa.s.sion. 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!"