Nobody's Child Part 23

"You wouldn't be going far away, would you?"

"Oh, no--"

There was something in her manner that recalled fleeting conjectures Baird had had since seeing her with Edward that afternoon. Judith had said, "I realize that Edward will probably marry--" It would be odd if Edward was really thinking seriously of Ann--a Penniman and all the rest of it. There'd be a stir on the Ridge, and a perfect storm in the clan.

Silly, caste-bound idiots! Ann was exquisite enough for any sphere. She had been superb while she handled that horse--plenty of spirit and go.

And if Edward loved her, he'd marry her, in spite of them all; Edward was a pretty fine sort.... But how about Garvin?... Some one had talked love to Ann, it showed in her face and in her voice--that was what made her seem so changed. Was it Edward or Garvin?... She certainly had drawing power, the thing that's entirely aside from physical beauty; ugly women often had it.

Baird turned from his thoughts. "This is a different sort of place from where I grew up--just about as different as you can imagine," and he slipped into reminiscences of Chicago and of his father, and, when Ann showed her interest, he endeavored to elucidate the intricacies of ward politics.

It seemed to Ann that he had grown up with plenty of wickedness about him, drinking and stealing and such things; among men who cared nothing about any one or anything, only to make money. It was a wonder that he was as nice as he was, and he must be nice, in spite of the way he had once behaved to her, or Edward and Garvin would not be so devoted to him. Ann was certain that Judith Westmore could be cruel, very beautiful and charming, but cruelly proud. Baird was evidently courting her, and she was probably not very nice to him. He certainly did not seem as light-hearted as he once did. And neither was she--she was feeling heavy-hearted enough.

Ann was always quick with sympathy. She had been poignantly reminiscent all day, and she, in her turn, told Baird a little about her own childhood, speaking so softly that her slurred syllables were music. She told him nothing intimate, yet it was a revelation of loneliness; the fields and the woods and Ben had been her companions. Baird was impressed, as Edward had been, by a child life lived apart from its family.

"You hadn't a mother, then, Ann?" Baird had responded to the change in her manner; he forgot to say, "Miss Ann."

"My mother died when I was born," Ann said with a quiver of feeling. "I reckon if I'd had her, everything would have been all different."

Ann had grown up with the longing for a father, but since the night before she had wanted her mother, wanted her intensely. That afternoon, on their return from the village, she had gone down to the woods. There had been a letter for her in the chestnut tree, an impa.s.sioned letter.

Garvin wrote of the night before, of her promise to go with him. "_You are mine now, every bit of you_--there can be no going back for either of us." And he had also said, "Some one has been spying on us, Ann. I found that out last night. We can't meet as we have. I'll write to you every day, but we mustn't even be seen speaking to each other, for the present. But don't let that worry you, dear--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." Then he had painted a picture of their life together that to one more experienced than Ann might have suggested some notable omissions.

Ann simply knew that the letter did not make her happy.... Then there was also a book for her in the bushes, and on the fly leaf a line: "Please wait for me to-morrow?" That had not made her happy, either.

"I suppose it would have made a difference," Baird was saying thoughtfully. "It would have made a difference to me, too--it makes a difference to any child. I wasn't much better off than you--my mother died when I was four years old."

"You can't remember then even how she looked," Ann said with profound fellow-feeling, "any more than I can remember my mother."

She had slipped from her chair, seated herself on the step beside him, and Baird could see her eyes now, wells of sympathy. So long as she lived, Ann would do such things, offer sympathy by the suggestion of a caress, just as she would always respond to the masculine call by an illusive half-promise. Baird saw her sympathy and felt her nearness. She was an utterly sweet thing; he would have liked to touch her; not in the rough way in which he once had, just draw her close and kiss her softly. He kept his rebellious hands clasped behind his head.

"I can just remember her face--in the misty way I saw yours when you were in the chair," he said steadily. "I can't remember where or when, but I know it was my mother. She was black and white--like you." Baird did not tell her that his mother had been a Jewess; that was a thing he told no one, though he often shrugged in private over his parentage, a Jewish mother and an Irish father! A truly modern American inheritance!

"And not such a bad one, either," he was in the habit of adding to himself. "It produces good brains." Just now his brain was retrospective, his feelings busied with Ann.

"I suppose a mother is just as helpful to a boy as she is to a girl," he continued, in the same reflective way. "I suppose, if I'd had my mother to talk to, I'd know women better--all the nice side of them--the mother side.... I suppose I'd know myself better.... Lord knows, I'd like some one to tell me what the lasting thing is composed of--the thing one wants to go through life with."

There was a long silence. Ann was also reflecting vaguely on the same subject, her hands clasped about her knees, her head thrown back, looking up at the stars that appeared to move restlessly, as if palely rebellious under the supremacy of the moon. A cricket beneath the steps ventured upon the stillness, and, as if emboldened by its temerity, a bird flitted by them to the clump of lilacs on the terrace and cut the silence with injunctions to "Whip-poor-will!" Far off, somewhere in the open, his mate agreed with him and reiterated his insistence. Then, just below them, in the pasture, a bobwhite called repeatedly, seeking an answer, which came presently, from the far distance, faint almost as a whispered echo.

"The night birds are making love," Baird said softly. "All nature's stirring with it. Ann, what is love, anyway? The thing we humans ought to have--the lasting thing, I mean?"

"I've been thinking, too," Ann answered musingly. "Why--I suppose it's ... I don't know just how to say it--"

"Try, Ann--you're a woman, you ought to know."

Ann pondered, eyes still lifted to the stars. "Why--I guess it's wanting somebody for all your own--so badly you feel sure you can't live without them ... an' at the same time bein' such good friends with them that you care more about makin' them happy than being happy yourself."

Baird sat up abruptly. "Say that again, will you!"

Ann was startled into confusion. She looked wonderingly at his earnestness. "I don't believe I know--just what I said."

Baird repeated her definition alertly. "That was it, wasn't it?"

"Yes, I think so."

He sat a moment in thought. "That's about right," he said finally and decidedly, "and here I've been asking myself all sorts of fool questions for twenty-four solid hours."

He got up, stood a moment looking down at her, laughing softly, amusedly, and with an air of relief. "And you're not sure just what you did say! It was a bit of wisdom that slipped out of your subconsciousness.... Ann, you're a divinely dear thing! I'm grateful to you for existing, and I'll come another evening and tell you so."

Ann had recovered somewhat from surprise. This was a little more like the impetuous young man who had displeased her because she had liked his kiss. She shook hands with him distantly. "Father'll be here then, I hope."

Baird did not stop to parley. He rode off through the cedar avenue, turned his horse over to Sam, and went directly to his room. He threw aside his cap and, sitting down at his table, wrote to Judith.

XXV

BECAUSE SHE LOVED TOO MUCH

It was Hetty who gave Baird's letter to Judith on Monday morning, as soon as Judith returned from Fair Field. "Mr. Baird come in Sat.u.r.day evenin' an' he look mighty surprised when I tol' him you was gone,"

Hetty said, "an' yestiddy mo'nin' Sam Jackson, he come from de club fetchin' this letter.... Honey, you ain't lookin' right smart--weren't de party no 'count?"

"Yes, the party was all right," Judith answered briefly. "I'm tired, that's all."

Hetty knew better, but what the trouble was she could not guess.

Hetty had lived with the Westmores for fifty years. She was born in a Westmore cabin and was a slave child when the war broke. On the morning when the Westmore slaves had celebrated their emanc.i.p.ation by departing from Westmore, Hetty had been left behind. She had clung to the family throughout the hard years, the only house-servant Westmore possessed until Edward's wife's money helped to resurrect the place. She had been mammy to all the Westmore children, had "toted" both Edward and Judith and had been sole mother to Sarah and Garvin, for Mrs. Westmore had soon faded into G.o.d's half-acre, leaving Judith to become mistress of Westmore; master of Westmore, in reality, for the colonel was no longer master of anything, least of all of himself.

Hetty had a dog's attachment to Westmore and the family, and for Judith, not merely attachment, but worship. Judith wielded the whip sometimes, her stinging, cutting tongue, and Hetty cowered under it, as on the night when she had let Sarah escape to the Mine Banks. Hetty had known that Sarah's change from gentleness to restlessness portended an out-break and was confident in the strength of her own arms, they had often restrained Sarah in the old days, but she had not had intelligence enough to circ.u.mvent cunning. Just as now, when she sensed tension in Edward, in Garvin, and in Judith, she was unable to determine the cause.

As soon as Judith returned, pale and bright-eyed and with lips hard set, Hetty knew that she was in trouble of some sort. She could only wait upon her dumbly, watch her in canine fashion.

Judith did not read Baird's letter at once. She attended to her household first. When she knew she could shut herself away without fear of interruption, she opened it.

"Dear Wonder-Woman," Baird wrote.

"Though I feel that I have forfeited the joy of ever again calling you so, that you will be quite right if you decree never to see or speak to me again, I can't help thinking of you just as I always have, as the most wonderful woman I have ever known.

"You are big-natured and kind enough to forgive me for the other night? You are, aren't you? You know, don't you, that I meant no disrespect when I forgot for a moment that you are too fine, too far beyond me for me ever to touch? I've not been a very good sort, Judith--I dropped for a moment into old ways.

If by my fault I have lost your friendship, I feel that I shall lose the best thing that has ever come into my life. You have kept me to decent ways--you have taught me reverence for much that I used to consider loosely. That's why you are, and always will be the Wonder-woman.

"Will you forgive me and let me try in the future to be better worthy of your friendship and your kindness? I want them both, more than I have ever wanted anything.

"Yours in sincere regret,

"NICKOLAS BAIRD."

Judith had known that it would be a withdrawal of some sort.... She sat for a long time with the letter in her lap, looking straight before her, feeling rather than thinking. Then she got up abruptly, let the pages fall, and went to the window, looking down on Westmore, at the terraces, off over the country with its promise of plentiful harvest, then up at the Westmore half-acre.... G.o.d's half-acre?... He had dealt hardly with some who lay there, and He had dealt hardly with her.

With the ache of irreparable loss torturing her, Judith went back in bitter retrospect over the years. What chance had she had? She had given her youth to Westmore; every nerve, every energy, every atom of her brain and body strained, year in and year out, to the one purpose, the conservation of the family. Her mother had slipped away and left the burden to her. Her father had weighted the burden until it was mountain-high, then had left her to carry it. Edward had flung aside family allegiance and had gone; Sarah had worse than failed her, added dread and a stigma to the burden; Garvin had remained, but more of an anxiety than a help.... Edward had come back to allegiance, tried through the last ten years to lighten her burden as much as possible, and now had lifted it to his own shoulders, but that could not bring back her youth or soften the callouses on her shoulders. They were attached to the bone, by long galling become an irremovable part of her.

She was thirty-four; she had crossed the apex; she had started on the downward way.... And that letter told her so.