Nobody's Child Part 16

"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, surrept.i.tiously, 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 pa.s.sion 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 a.s.surance 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.