Nobody's Child Part 33

She smiled up at him, and her smile made her look more like the Ann he remembered. "I can stand up, but I won't," she said with a touch of her old-time gaiety. "My feet feel queer an' far away when I do."

"Stand up! I should think not!... May I sit here on the step, where I sat the first time we ever really talked together? That was about a hundred years ago, I think." Baird ventured this reference to the past.

Ann answered gravely. "A little less than two months ago--I was thinking of it to-day."

Baird chose to consider the speech propitious, and he ventured further.

"I remember you gave me a definition of love, and then couldn't remember just what you'd said.... I've always remembered that definition of yours."

"I don't remember now what it was I said. I know, though, that I'm not wise about such things." She spoke with a quiver of feeling, and looked beyond him, at the sunset.

Baird did not dare to say one of the things that crowded to his lips. He decided to say, "Wisdom never proceeds from a vacant head, and what you said was a bit of wisdom. I haven't forgotten a word of it."

Ann moved restlessly. She made no reply, but Baird saw the color tinge her cheeks. He had purposely chosen the top step of the porch, for then he could look up into her face, and, surrept.i.tiously, he could hold a bit of her dress. There was comfort in the contact. He felt queerly nervous, for it was so evident that he was not talking to the same girl who had thought aloud while she stared up at the stars. There was a disconcerting air of maturity about Ann.

Somewhere above them a locust started its song and Ann withdrew her eyes from the distance and looked down at Baird's steady upward gaze. "Do you hear that?" she asked.

Her look, veiled and troubled and at the same time observant of the changes the last weeks had wrought upon him, had no more connection with her question than Baird's eager gaze had with his answer. He had grown thinner, his cheek-bones more prominent and his jaw less heavy; he looked more nervously and less brutally forceful.

"That fellow's retiring late--they've been winding their watches under my window all afternoon." He replied, while his blue-gray eyes, alight and questioning, searched her face: "I went for a walk this morning, beyond the creek, to where they're cutting grain, and the gra.s.shoppers were everywhere, grinding their legs as if getting ready for a busy summer. You know the big flat rock, down by the creek, in the woods near the Back Road? I found a tree-toad in the c.h.i.n.kapin bushes there, and two little red and yellow turtles in the creek. I brought them all home with me and played with them a while.... You see, I've been driven to nature for comfort--while I've been waiting for a sight of you."

Ann had grown dead white; her eyes had shifted to her lap, to her tightly clasped hands. "Locusts and gra.s.shoppers coming so early mean--a dry summer--" she said with difficulty. Then more clearly, "I wanted you to come as soon as I was able--because I had to ask you something--" She stopped.

"Well?" Baird breathed.

She met his vivid look, shrank a little under it, but did not look away.

"Mr. Baird, I know why you are staying here--an' I'm sorry. It's no use--I'll only hurt you more and more. You must go away."

Baird sat motionless, his eyes blank.

Ann went on more softly. "You've saved my life--you've done much more than that, an' the only kindness I can do you is just to tell you to go.

If I let you go on caring for me, I'd be doing you a wicked wrong."

Baird flung back his head; color and life and the urge to fight had come back to him. "Suppose you let me decide what's best for me! How can you judge of the future? Am I hateful or repellent to you?... I don't believe it. You like me, and in the end you'll love me."

"I can't ever love you," Ann said firmly.

He took her hands. "Ann, give me a little time, dear? Just a fighting chance?... That's all I ask."

"No. I've been responsible for trouble enough--I can't do it."

"Why can't you? What possible harm can it do for you simply to be kind to me? Give me a chance?"

She was silent, trembling and breathing quickly.

Baird bent and kissed her hands, put his cheek against them. "Ann, I love you--I never dreamed that I could love any one as I love you.

You've gone deep down in me and nestled against things I didn't know were there. I'll be patient--if only you'll give me a word of hope."

"I can't--I can't give you hope when there isn't any!" Ann said with sudden sharpness. "If you asked me for anything else in the world I'd give it to you, but you want a thing I can't give!"

Baird dragged himself up and stood with his back to her. "You hurt me--"

he said through his teeth.

"I'd have to hurt you--like this--every time you came," Ann said with a drop into huskiness. "That's why I'm beggin' you to go an' stop thinking about me. I've got to go on livin' whether I want to or not, an' I couldn't bear it."

Baird turned around. "I'll go," he said. "I'll go to-morrow.... But I'm coming back, Ann.... I'll keep on coming to the end of time. I put my life into you that night--you're part of me. It isn't a debt you owe me, it's just that I belong to you and you to me!" He spoke with pa.s.sionate conviction.

Ann said nothing; she sat with eyes closed.

Then he said thickly, "I've made you ill--is there any one here to look after you?"

"Yes--Aunt Sue--"

He bent down, took her face between his hands and kissed her lips. "I'm going now. I had to say that last--it's true."

x.x.xVII

COLD CASH

"July, August and September--an endless number of Julys, Augusts and Septembers as futile as these last three months have been. That's my future, I suppose--if I go on with it," Baird said to himself. He had just come up through the Mine Banks Road, had crossed the County Road, and had turned into the long winding approach to Westmore.

Baird drew rein and looked back at the looming Mine Banks. Autumn had wielded a full brush, splashing the country with October colors, reds, warm-browns, yellows, rioting in gaudy pre-senile triumph over the resigned duns of field and pasture and the stately indifference of the never-changing cedars and pines. The bald iron-reddened forehead of the Banks, forever ferocious over man's vandalism, glared as angrily upon autumn's saturnalia as it had upon spring's tender eagerness. The venturesome tendrils of wild-grape and Virginia creeper, tolerated by the evergreens, had not dared to wind themselves about the Banks'

burning forehead, and, now, unlike the more courteous evergreens, it supported none of all this brilliant decay. Not even the sumac, inconsequent reveler, had planted its crimson torch upon the Banks' bald head; only the impalpable blue haze, like the courageous wind and the rain, the sun and the snow, ventured to touch it.

Baird's eyes traveled from the Mine Banks to the pastures, then to the brilliant semicircle of woodland that curtained the Penniman house. "If I go on with it," he repeated. He turned and faced Westmore; spoke to his horse and they moved on.

Nickolas Baird, who loved to fight and to conquer, owned himself beaten.

He had kept his promise to Ann: he had gone west to Dempster and had worked indefatigably throughout July, August and September, and, now, in October, they were sending him to France.

Throughout the first two months, he had written frequently to Ann, long letters sometimes, a pretty complete self-expression. She had not answered; it had been a little like writing to the dead. Early in the summer, when terribly anxious over Ann's health, he had written to Coats Penniman, and had received a courteous but reserved reply: "Sue and I wish you well," Coats had written. "We have always thought highly of you. All I can say regarding Ann is that she is steadily improving in health. Yes, she has received your letters, for I have heard her speak of them. Cold comfort this had been to Baird."

Early in August it had occurred to Baird to write Ben. The epistle he had received in return had won Baird's lasting grat.i.tude. There was a big soul in Ben Brokaw, tenderness and loyalty and sincerity. Baird had had some conception of the patient effort Ben had expended upon that letter; he could vision the huge creature compelling himself to chair and table, the dictionary on his knee, his hairy paw cramped by a pen.

Ben had told him some of the things he was yearning to know: quite unimportant things Ann said or did, sustenance, nevertheless, to a lover as starved as Baird was. Among other things, Ben wrote:

"She's not herself yet, but she's prettier nor ever, though, more growed up and stately."

Baird had not asked why Ann would not even acknowledge his letters, and Ben had not referred in any way to what lay between Ann and Baird, yet his entire letter had breathed understanding and sympathy. It had emboldened Baird to ask, "Ben, you know Ann better than any one else--tell me, is there no hope at all for me?"

Ben's answer had been cryptic:

"About your hopes--I ain't no wise judge of women, but I've noticed that some of them is just naturally born giving hearted, and some has to grow up to it. The kind that has to grow to it generally loves most to be loved. They seem to grow up to loving by being loved, that is, if they're loved the right way."

Baird had been thrown upon his own resources, as he had been when he had struggled for Ann's life. He had succeeded then in infusing her with his vitality, why could he not infuse love into her now? Those letters of Baird's to Ann were vividly honest self-expressions; the best in him went hand in hand with acute physical craving.

Then, in September, he had received a staggering blow. Ben wrote: