Nobody's Child Part 4

It was complete surrender, and Ann sprang up. "I've got to help Aunt Sue now," she announced brightly. "And, Ben, I didn't put the horse out."

"Want I should, I reckon."

Ann only laughed as she pirouetted out and danced up the stairs to the kitchen.

She did not go back to Sue, however; not immediately. She caught up her cape and a bucket and, as soon as Ben was on his way to the barn, started for the spring. But it was evidently not her ultimate destination, for she dropped the bucket there and, after a cautious study of the barn and the house, sped like a rabbit across the field and into the woods.

From their shelter she again studied her surroundings, then darted for the dead chestnut tree. She climbed as agilely as she had run, and quickly gained the split crotch. The flicker's hole was bored deep in the dead wood, and Ann brought up from its depth a folded slip of paper.

She curled up in the crotch and read it:

"DEAR ANN:

"You are the sweetest and the most beautiful thing I know. Did you mean what you said when you promised to be friends? I hope you did. I've been living on that hope for the last two weeks.

Will you come to the Crest Cave at the Banks on Sunday afternoon, at four, and tell me again that our great-grandfathers' quarrels don't matter to us? Please come, dear! Please!

"GARVIN."

Though the color came warmly in Ann's cheeks and a smile lifted the corners of her mouth, she looked grave enough when she sat thinking over what she had read. So far her meetings with Garvin Westmore had had the excuse of chance; he knew on what days she drove to the village, and the chestnut tree had treasured only notes expressive of pleasure over the meeting of the day before. But this was different.

Sue Penniman had done her duty; Ann was not altogether ignorant; less ignorant and far more imaginative; more eager for life and at the same time more certain of herself than most of the girls on the Ridge.

Beneath her coquetry, the new and intoxicating realization of her allure, was the craving for the certain something that distinguished the Westmores from the Pennimans; a "niceness" Ann called it, for want of a clearer understanding. She had been immediately at home with Garvin, and with his brother also. They were not beyond her intelligence. Something in her had arisen and met, on a footing of equality, the thing in them that delighted her.

In her ignorance of much that would have been clearer to a more sophisticated girl, Ann was not nearly so self-conscious or so afraid of this more plainly revealed att.i.tude of the lover, and of the sanction she would be giving to secrecy, as she was doubtful of her duty to the Penniman cause. It was that troubled her most. She felt no great sense of duty to her grandfather, and Sue's blind clinging to the family quarrel seemed senseless. But there was her father? Ann wanted his love more than she wanted anything else in the world; the tenderness that would cherish her, against which she could nestle and that would caress her in return. She longed for it, and would joyfully give implicit obedience in return.

Ann thought the matter out as she sat there. When she put the note in the bosom of her dress and climbed soberly down from her perch, she had decided: if her father loved her--and she would know instantly if there was about him the something that had always held her apart from her grandfather and even from her Aunt Sue--she would not meet Garvin Westmore. She would tell her father every circ.u.mstance, and if he willed that it must be so, his quarrel would be hers.

But if he failed her? Ann's full lips set and she put her hand over the note in her bosom.

V

IN COLONIAL FASHION

The Westmores were giving a dinner after the hunt, as had been customary in the days when Westmore was noted for lavish hospitality. It was by no means a Hunt Club dinner, however, for, according to Westmore standards, the Hunt Club had become a lax inst.i.tution. In order to exist it had taken in members, excellent people, of course, who, because of their money or because of prominence acquired during the last few years, had partially compelled their way into Ridge society. The men affiliated fairly well, their clan spirit rarely stood in the way of sociability, perhaps because many of them had been forced into the city, into business relations with the newcomers.

But the feminine aristocracy of the Ridge still clung to traditional usage. Changed conditions had partly demolished traditional barriers; they were forced to countenance, in a formal way, women who were not of "the family connection," but as every member of the old Fox-Ridge aristocracy was related to every other member, Fox-Ridge society was quite sufficient unto itself.

And the newcomers on the Ridge bore their partial exclusion from the intimate circle with equanimity. As a general thing they possessed more money than the old Ridge families and had numerous friends in the city whom they entertained at their Ridge homes. They were the gayest element on the Ridge, nearly all of them merely summer residents; in the winter appearing only at the Hunt Club meets.

Nickolas Baird, who had been "put up" at the Hunt Club by a city member, and who, for reasons of his own, meant to remain where he was for some time, was decidedly gratified by his invitation to the Westmore dinner.

He had formed a casual friendship with Garvin Westmore which had been furthered by his purchase of a Westmore horse. Then he had met Judith Westmore, and from that moment had been welcome at Westmore.

"It will be just a family gathering," Judith had explained to him the week before, as she stood on the top step of the entrance to Westmore, whipping her riding-skirt lightly with her gold-handled crop. "You, of course, will find it endlessly dull, Mr. Baird--still we want you."

Baird had a.s.sured her that no gathering of which she was a part would be dull; that he was beyond measure pleased.

"You are to bring your dress clothes strapped to your saddle, in true colonial fashion, and spend the night here," Judith had continued. "Be sure to bring your dancing shoes," and, with a lithe turn and a smiling nod, had vanished into Westmore.

Baird had cantered off down the two miles of impossible road that led across Westmore to the Post-Road, smiling to himself, or, rather, at himself. How old was Judith Westmore, anyway? Certainly in the thirties.

"Bo'n sho'tly after de war," the old negro who curried his horse at the Hunt Club had told him, for Baird had his own methods of making discoveries. She looked possibly--twenty-eight; slim, with the bust of a young Venus and the hips of a Diana. She certainly carried her head like a G.o.ddess. Baird had never seen a more graceful creature on horseback.

And she walked as she rode, gracefully, spiritedly. Hers were the Westmore features at their best: a face not too long to be beautiful; arched brows, straight nose, a very perfectly molded chin, eyes a dark hazel and thickly lashed, a dainty head bound about by ink-black hair.

Time had barely touched her. She was vivacious, yes ... but a little cold?

Baird was not certain. He thought, with slightly heightened color, of that quick turn at the door that had drawn her riding-skirt taut over the curves of hip and leg; and of her easily dilated eyes. Hers was not a warm mouth, too perfectly chiseled for that, but her hand was a live warm thing. Why in heaven's name hadn't she married?

Baird was twenty-six. He had reached the age when youth's first missteps lay in retrospect; the turning point, when a.n.a.lysis enters into the pursuit of the feminine. That he would endeavor to capture masterfully and in headlong fashion was legibly scrolled upon him. Whether faithfulness was any part of his composition was not so easy to determine. Certainly there was far more admiration than desire in his thoughts of Judith Westmore. What imagination he possessed had been busied with her for the last three weeks. She was wonderful! A belle that would have swayed three states--in colonial days. She had told him that the gold handle of her riding-whip had been presented to her grandmother by Henry Clay, and that the comb which sometimes topped her black coronet had frequently courtesied to General Washington. She had simply not had her grandmother's opportunities.

It amused Baird that his hard sense had been captured by the glamour of it. Backgrounded by Chicago or Wyoming the thing would have been ridiculous. But where people rode to the hounds and talked easily of governors and generals, their great-grandfathers, it was quite a natural thing.

"'In true colonial fashion,'" Baird quoted, on the afternoon of the hunt, as he prepared to strap his Gladstone bag to the back of his saddle. "The d.a.m.ned thing'll bounce about like h.e.l.l and I'll have a runaway if I'm not careful. Wonder how Mistress Judith's ancestors managed it? Saddle-bags, of course.... Hey, Sam?" he called to the old negro who was leading two of the returned hunters up to the stable, "haven't got any colonial saddle-bags about the place, have you?"

"Yes, suh, suttenly, suh," Sam a.s.sented promptly. He came up with face beaming. Baird's joking, accompanied as it was by shining half-dollars, delighted every negro on the place.

"Let's have them, then."

"Yes, suh--dey sho' is about de place, suh--tho' I don't 'zactly knows where."

Baird laughed. "Of course.... Take in those horses and bring me a piece of rope--I don't trust these straps."

Sam came back with a hitching-strap and between them they did their best to make the bag fast.

"Where does that road between the cedars come out?" Baird asked when he had mounted. "Can't I get to Westmore if I go that way?"

Sam looked dubious. "Yes, suh--hit comes out to de County Road, an' from there am de road thro' de woods to Westmo'. Hit's the shortest way, but hit goes thro' de Penniman place."

"I thought it did--I'll go that way."

"But ole Mr. Penniman, he done built a gate by his house, suh, an' put on a padlock an' set up a sign. He don't 'low Hunt Club folks ridin'

thro'."

"But he wouldn't mind my going through, would he?"

Sam looked grave. "I dunno, suh. He done had Mr. Garvin 'rested 'cos he rode thro'. He had him up to co't--yes, suh."

"Fined him, did he?" Baird asked with interest.

"Yes, _suh_! He done fin' him, an' when Mr. Garvin paid, Mr. Penniman, he refuse' to take de money. He give hit back to de co't, an' tol' 'em to give hit to the first orphan they seen, dat he don' want no Westmo'

money."

"He did!"

"Yes, suh.... I reckon tho' 'twas mostly 'cos of Mr. Garvin bein' a Westmo'," Sam added cautiously.

"Well, I'm not a Westmore--I'll chance it," Baird said decidedly.