Nobody's Child Part 29

The thing was terrible. The news had reached the club before the sunset glow had faded from the sky, brought to Sam by a Westmore negro and transmitted by him to the men who were dining at the club: Edward Westmore had taken his own life--at the Mine Banks. The men had scattered to their homes with the news, and Baird had ridden at once to Westmore.

There was nothing he could do; the family had already collected. Even Colonel d.i.c.kenson had been sent for and would reach Westmore before midnight. At Westmore Baird had learned a few details: Ben Brokaw had found the body and had run to Westmore with the news, and Judith and the two neighbors she took with her had discovered Edward's pistol, with one chamber emptied, lying in the gra.s.s not far from his hand. It was the ivory-handled, silver-chased weapon that all of them knew so well, which Edward always kept loaded and often carried.

Mr. Copeley had said to Baird: "We can't account for such an act on Edward's part. The only reason we can give to ourselves is that during the past year he has suffered from occasional attacks of heart trouble.

That's the reason he wouldn't hunt and always rode so slowly. It may have preyed on his mind.... It is most kind of you to come, Mr. Baird, and we all thank you; but there is nothing you can do." Baird had remained only a few moments.

Brave people! Courteous and dignified even when in the deepest distress.

During the moment Judith had given him, Baird had bent to her hand in profound admiration. She was deadly pale, but erect and clear-voiced.

She was a woman in a million, was Judith Westmore!... And he had liked Edward almost better than any man he had ever known.... And Ann? Did she know yet?

Baird was thinking intently of Ann. As soon as the shock of the thing had worn off, he had thought of Ann. Since the night before, when Ann had said, "I'd rather you stayed away," he had been as unhappy as he had thought it possible for him to be, wretched because he felt unable to get out and fight for the thing he had begun to want badly.

Baird's horse had brought him down into the hollow, to where the creek crossed the Post-Road. Beyond was the long upgrade at the summit of which he would turn off into the club road, the extension of the Pennimans' cedar avenue.... Who would tell Ann? And how much would it mean to her?

Baird's horse had come to the bridge, his hoofs had struck the planks, when he stopped abruptly, with fore-feet planted. When Baird spoke to him, he snorted and backed.

Baird knew the signs of fright, but when he peered over the animal's head he could see nothing. It was impossible to _see_ anything in that density of gloom; one could only _feel_. He spoke to his horse again, but the creature refused to move. There was certainly some good reason for such reluctance; the bridge was dangerously ramshackle, and should have been condemned long ago.

Baird dismounted, led his horse to the roadside, and groped until he found a tree to which he could tie him. He went back to the bridge and, kneeling, felt his way along. He came upon it very soon; his hand left the plank and reached into s.p.a.ce, a yawning hole wider certainly than the length of his arm, for there appeared to be nothing beyond.

He crept along then to the side of the bridge, and, presently, he made it out: beyond the broken and splintered end of timber which supported the planks on which he was, there was no bridge. It had been torn away, had collapsed. Full fifteen feet below, in the blackness, the creek tore along, fretted by the rocks. Whatever had jammed through that rotten structure had gone to certain destruction.... An automobile!

A certainty, something more than a premonition of a disaster to which he had played agent, turned Baird hot. He hung over the black gulf, trying to see, alive with dread of what he might see.... He could not see, but he could smell. It was an exhalation from below, the odor of gasoline; he was right, then.

Baird straightened, energetic, as always when action was demanded.... If only he had a lantern!... He remembered that he had matches, and struck one. The breeze, faint though it was, snuffed it out. He tried another with the same result. His next effort was a torch, a letter twisted so as to burn as long as possible.

It served his purpose, a flickering revelation of a ma.s.s of wreckage thrust against the shelving bank of the creek--until the flame crept to his fingers and he was forced to drop the charred paper. He sprang up and went back to the road, not to get help, that did not occur to him, but to get down to the thing below as soon as possible. There might be life lingering beneath that ma.s.s of wreckage.

Baird encountered a snake fence and an almost impa.s.sable mat of briers, but even in the darkness he felt sure of his direction, certain of it when he slid down into mud and water. He stood still, trying to determine just where the wrecked machine lay; to his left? His olfactory nerves helped him, and his hand soon touched a bit of the wreckage, an upflung wheel, then the rear of the car. Baird was trying to discover all he could first by feeling. He had a note-book in his pocket with which to make a brief bonfire, but he was saving that. If only he had a lantern!

It was the smell of a reeking wick that suggested a possibility. In 1905, an automobile was not equipped with electricity; its tail light was a lantern. Baird's hand had encountered it, its gla.s.s shattered, but the metal lamp intact and still warm. He lighted the wick; though inadequately equipped, he could find his way about now.

The machine lay against a rock, half-overturned, and with nose buried in the soft earth of the bank. Baird made his way forward on its other side. Engine, wheel and seat were jammed against the rock and half-buried in the earth, but by climbing over the rock he reached the top of the pile, and could throw the light on the confused ma.s.s.

For a moment he knelt motionless above the thing he saw, weakened by a wave of physical inability; it was not the Mine Banks alone that had claimed a Westmore.... Then he made certain that the body below was without pulse or heartbeat, and that his utmost strength could not move the ma.s.s that rested on it. The end must have come as instantaneously to one brother as it had to the other.

It was of Judith, Baird was thinking as he prepared to go back. He must take the word to Westmore.... And by some means, he must prevent travelers on the Post-Road from plunging into this death-trap. He felt a little dizzy and sick.

Baird held the light up, trying to see the bank above. He kept it upheld, staring at what it revealed--a woman's crumpled body flung against the soft loamy earth, a white blot against a black background.

Even before he reached her, Baird knew who she was, and the thought was quicker than his forward plunge: "It was Garvin she loved, and Edward knew it. It was that had 'preyed' on his mind."

Baird's first terror, when his hands discovered warmth in her body, was that it was deceptive--life might be gone ... or it might be pa.s.sing fast, was his fear when he found that her heart was beating; it beat so faintly against his hand. He brushed the hair from her face and brought the light close, but Ann's eyes remained closed, her lips colorless, her skin bluey-white; life was merely flickering.

Something infinitely painful rose up in Baird and choked him, a hurt greater than anything he had ever known, a profounder sense of desolation than he had had when his father lay dying. He wanted to hold her against his breast.

When he lifted her, she sighed, and the unexpected a.s.surance of life galvanized him. He laid her down and stumbled to the creek. He brought back a little water in his cupped hands and dropped it on her face, then he rubbed her forehead with his wet hands.

It did not bring her back to consciousness, but hope had him now, coupled with a definite purpose: to get her away as soon as possible, back to her home. It would not be possible to carry her through that network of briers, but if he made his way up the creek to where there was less undergrowth he could reach the pasture. Then he could get his horse.

It was no easy matter to carry her limp body and still keep a hand free for the lantern. He made his slow way around rocks, half the time wading in water, more than once almost falling. He was nearly exhausted by combined anxiety and exertion when circ.u.mstance favored him; he came to a wide path tracked by the cattle, an easy ascent. When he reached the pasture, he laid his burden down, put the lantern where it would serve as a guide for his return.

He skirted the undergrowth along the creek without much difficulty, avoided the brier-patch, and came to the rail fence, shortly above where his horse was tied. He took down a tier of rails that he might lead him through, and his return was even more rapid than his going.

To mount his horse with Ann laid across his shoulder taxed every muscle in his body, and to hold her inert weight half-seated before him and dragging over one arm while he kept one hand free to guide his horse took both strength and skill.

Baird found the Back Road by keeping, as nearly as he could judge, parallel with the Post-Road. With his horse's head turned homeward, his task was not so difficult, for the animal strode along the familiar way, needing no guidance. In his relief, Baird kissed Ann's upturned face.

"It won't be long now," he whispered. In his stress he had forgotten the hole in the bridge; forgotten Edward; forgotten Garvin; forgotten every one but Ann; forgotten even himself.

Their entrance into the woods was like pa.s.sing from a darkness in which objects could be sensed into the thicker blackness of a tunnel. Baird could tell where the road led off to the club only by the turn his horse made. He forced him to back and then urged him straight ahead. Once on the Penniman Road, the animal could be trusted to keep on. That he did keep on and with the lessened speed of the horse walking away from his stable was the only guarantee Baird had that they were going in the right direction.

In time they emerged from the tunnel, into what seemed, by contrast, a normality. Baird had loathed the palpable blackness that had shrouded Ann's vague outline; he had seemed to be embracing an unreality. When they neared the barn and a horse in the enclosure whinnied, it was like hearing a friendly voice. Baird forced his horse to circle the barn, started him on the road leading to the front of the house, which the animal took gladly because again headed for the club, and checked him before the vague black ma.s.s which was the house. There was no lighted window, no sign of anxiety or of welcome.

Baird dismounted and laid Ann gently on the gra.s.s. If there was any one in that apparently heartless house to whom he could entrust her, he would ride for a doctor. He left her on the gra.s.s--better that two should move her with the care two could give--and went to the living-room door. He knocked, then pounded, then called, and was answered by total silence.

A chill touched him; was the whole world dead? Where were they all at this hour of the night? He lighted a match and, for the first time that night, looked at his watch. It was only a few minutes after ten. Baird's disbelief was so complete that he put the watch to his ear, and even when he found it ticking steadily he could not credit what it had told him. It seemed to Baird that he had spent hours under the bridge and that he had agonized half the night over Ann. But there was one comfort, if his watch was right, Ann had not been unconscious half the night. And her family were probably simply out for the evening and would be back.

He tried the door, found it unlocked, and, going in, lighted the lamp.

Then he brought Ann to the couch. He could see her distinctly now, and his heart contracted as he looked at her; the limpness of her body and the waxen immobility of her face were terrifying, an inertia as complete as death. She was slipping away, and he did not know how to call her back.

As long as Baird had been fighting his way along through the night, he had been hopeful. But that vacant house!... If he went for help, Ann would die while he was gone; there was no doctor within four miles. If his ignorance struggled with that persistent unconsciousness, he might blunder fatally. He felt desperate.

x.x.xIII

FROM DESPAIR TO HOPE

Baird had sat for an hour with his fingers on Ann's wrist; from twelve o'clock until the living-room clock struck one. He had made his decision. As he had expressed it to himself, "I'll stand by my job."

Once, in South America, he and a companion had worked over a man who was dying from exhaustion. They had administered stimulants and had wrapped the man in hot blankets. Baird had ransacked the living-room and the kitchen, had come upon the family supply of simple remedies, among them a bottle of spirits of camphor, and, in the cedar chest beneath the stairs, had found a feather-bed laid away for the summer. He had built a fire in the kitchen stove and had heated water.

Baird had set to work then upon Ann's cold limp body, had taken off her shoes and stockings and had chafed her icy feet with hot water and camphor. He had opened her dress and had rubbed her chest and her arms and her hands with it. Then he had wrapped her closely in the feather-bed, and, lastly, he had tried to make her swallow a little of the mixture.

Though he had worked quickly, it had taken time, a lifetime of effort and of waiting, it had seemed to Baird, before even a slight warmth had crept into her body. When his fingers discovered a throb in her wrists, Baird was uplifted; he sprang from despair to hope. When her chest began gently to lift and fall, he climbed to the height of grat.i.tude.

For an hour he had sat almost motionless, feeling life grow beneath his fingers, watching the ghastly white in Ann's face change to a more life-like hue. It seemed to him that the life in her was trying to answer to the life in him, that each throb of his heart transmitted a little and still a little more of its bounding vitality to her, and, gradually, a curious certainty had taken possession of Baird: that through his finger-tips he was pouring his superabundant strength into Ann's limp body, while with all his force he was willing her to live.

The conviction possessed him so completely that it blotted out the disjointed thoughts that had obtruded while he had longed for other a.s.sistance than his own: his anxiety over the absence of Ann's people; the suggestion that they had traveled by the Post-Road and had fallen into the death-trap he had left unguarded; his pangs of retrospective jealousy; his hopes for the future.

He was so concentrated upon his idea that all extraneous thoughts and impressions had faded from his brain. The collie had thrust himself in through the partly-open door and had nosed Baird's absorption and Ann's m.u.f.fled form, and Baird had scarcely noticed him; the murky, indeterminate night had resolved itself into a steady rain, and Baird had not been aware of it; the clock had struck a single definite note, and Baird had not heard it, for Ann had stirred at last, had moved her head and sighed.

With the same curious certainty that his strength had led her back to life, and that if he called to her now she would answer, Baird bent to her ear: "Ann--?" he said softly. He called to her several times, softly, insistently, waited, then called again. When, finally, her eyelids lifted, he was so imbued with the certainty that speech would follow that the sweep of relief did not unsteady him. She was looking at him widely, fully, but without blankness. She knew him.

He waited, giving her time. It seemed to Baird that her half-awakened thoughts crossed her eyes like slowly-moving shadows. Then her gaze turned slowly from him to the room, to the half-open door and the blackness beyond. And suddenly recollection appeared to leap up in her, twitching the muscles in her face until it set in a mask of pain. She turned strained eyes on him, and speech broke from her, a voice husky but demanding:

"Is it true, what he told me--that Edward was dying?"