Nobody's Child
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Once, when he was a boy, the Thing had suddenly come to life in him, swept him aside for mad hours that neither his family nor he had ever forgotten. Then for long years he had been as free of it as if it had never revealed itself. When he had changed from a boy to a man, it had stirred in him, and they called it "melancholia." It was the same Thing that had shut Sarah away from life.
Then had come the years when he was a man grown, and the Thing stirred only occasionally, "fits of depression" that lifted easily into excitement and dropped suddenly into perfect self-possession. He had learned then that drink lifted him out of depression, not into ungovernable excitement or into elation, but into coolness and capability. He knew that the Thing lay in him ready to spring into activity at any moment, but he had learned how to deceive those about him; he even half-deceived his family.
All night he had been in the grip of depression. He had not slept because of it, and that morning when ostensibly he was on his way to the city, he had come to the Mine Banks and had hidden his horse, bent upon gaining the usual relief. At noon he had gone to the woods, by way of the creek, and had secured Ann's letter. Fortified as he was, he had read it without mad excitement. It confirmed the apprehension that, during the last two weeks, had kept him in persistent depression.
He went back to Crest Cave with the queer surface restraint upon him that drink always produced, and had drained the last drop from the bottle, his mind focused upon the suspicion over which he had brooded ever since the night Edward had made him promise not to go near Ann.
Ann had written:
"Dear Garvin:
"If I could endure it any longer without telling you, I'd not write this; but I can't. You have asked me all along in your letters why I have written so anxiously, and I have told you that I wasn't happy because I was worried about everything, but I didn't tell you the real reason.
"Garvin, I can't do it. I don't love you enough to go with you. Almost from the time I promised I've been sorry I promised. I'm wretched because I have to tell you. I feel sick when I think of how it will hurt you, and I hate myself for not having known my heart any better. I meant everything I ever said to you. I thought I loved you, and I did want you to be happy. I still want you to be happy – I want you to have everything good that a man can have. But you want something that I've found out is not in me to give to you. That's the thing I have found out about myself, and it isn't right not to tell you.
"There isn't any more I can say, except that begging won't change my feeling to you. Please forget me. You'll be gone from here to where you'll find people you like.
"I'll always think lovingly of you – you were kind to me when I was dreadfully unhappy. You and Edward have both been kind to me. Lovingly, Ann."
Garvin had tossed the letter aside. It lay through the afternoon, its open page stirred occasionally by the light breeze. The slight rustle and the whispering of the pines were almost the only sounds, except when the birds sang. Garvin moved only when some one passed along the Back Road; then he bent forward, his eyes burning and intent beneath lifted brows. He watched Coats Penniman drive up to the woods and disappear; later on, saw Baird ride up the Back Road, evidently returning from the city. He watched him intently, made sure it was Baird, and settled back again into alert waiting.
It was late in the afternoon when another horseman, riding toward the club, came slowly up through the pastures and melted into the woods. Garvin sat, head craned and eyes narrowed, watching every step of the man's progress. When the woods had swallowed the rider, Garvin got up, circled the Crest, and went down to the Mine Banks Road. He crossed it, then crossed swiftly the open space between the road and the creek, and went down into the bed of the creek for better cover, and, with the caution of the practised hunter, made his slow way along to where it left the woods.
It had taken some time to creep along without noise. When he reached the woods, where the field undergrowth gave way to trees and the banks of the creek were studded with rocks, he waited for a time, crouched behind a rock. He had come with the utmost caution, still, a broken twig, some slight sound, might have betrayed him. He heard nothing but the wood sounds, no voices or stir of any kind. Then he straightened, though still well sheltered by the rock, and looked about him.
There was no one there. So far as his keen eyes could discover, there was no one on the steep upward slope of the woods beyond the creek, no one on this side either; no one on the road leading to the club, or on the road that branched off to the Penniman house. A short distance away was the flat rock with the bank rising above it and the saucer-like depression in which it lay semicircled by a dense screen of chinkapin bushes. He could wait there, it was a very perfect hiding-place, but from that point he could not see the two roads. He was better placed where he was, for a growth of wood-honeysuckle surrounded his hiding-place; by parting it a little he could see very well and not be seen. Garvin waited some time before his brother returned from the club. Where the road forked, Edward stopped, looked up the Penniman Road, then dismounted and came toward the creek. He led his horse behind the chinkapin bushes, left it, and came to the top of the bank, looking down at the flat rock. Then he climbed down, seated himself, and looked down at the swirling water. He looked at it steadily, except when he turned to look up at the screen of bushes. He was waiting for some one.
Garvin also waited. A hot cord had begun to tighten about his head, forcing the blood into his eyes, yet he stood quite still; he was thinking quite clearly; he had known it would be like this… Even when Ann came around the screen of bushes, he did not stir.
Edward sprang up and helped her down. Garvin could see their every motion, even their expression, the smile each had for the other; but they spoke very low, so low that the murmur of their voices mingled confusingly with the ceaseless gurgle of the water… He could not creep any nearer to them and not be discovered… But he needed no clearer confirmation than actions: when Ann stood beside him, Edward put his hands on her shoulders, looking into her eyes while she talked rapidly and distressedly. When they sat down, Edward sat at her feet. When he began to talk to her, long and low and steadily, he took her hands, both her hands, and Ann's face was bent so that Garvin could not see it. Apparently she said nothing, simply sat motionless, enthralled by what Edward was saying.
Garvin went on thinking – quite clearly. He had known he would find just this. He had seen it all enacted while he sat up there in the Mine Banks – this and more – and he had planned just what he would do. He had a good cool brain; he was clever to have decided that this was the state of things, to have foreseen it all and to have planned to the last detail. Let Edward have his hour, the —thief! He, Garvin, would have his hour, too!
He felt a tense elation, like one who ruled destinies. When Ann's voice lifted in a smothered cry of emotion, the sudden answer to the pause in Edward's steady speech, Garvin only parted the bushes a little more widely, watched more intently. She had slipped into Edward's arms and he was holding her, her arms about his neck, his arms clasping her. He kissed her many times, murmured over her, and then she began to weep, breathlessly, a note of joy in her tears, words and tears and caresses commingled.
"Edward is sedate!" the gibing Thing that was Garvin Westmore said. With Ann's arms about his neck and her head on his breast, he was talking her into calmness, talking, talking, interminably, the deep murmur of his voice never once raised, soothing her as one would a child. And when, at last, they stood up, his hands were on her shoulders again. But his face betrayed him; he wore a look of exaltation, and Ann's was tremulously happy. They thought themselves pledged to each other for all time, those two!
They went up out of the hollow hand in hand, and parted after a long kiss. Ann crossed the creek and ran up the opposite slope, turning often to look at Edward, who stood watching her absorbedly, a lightly-moving, radiant thing. She paused for a long moment, poised on the crest of the slope, a slender graceful form, young as the young green that framed her – then disappeared over the crest. She had gone to the cluster of pines at the edge of the woods, to sit there for a time with her happiness.
Edward watched until even her graceful head had vanished. Then he mounted and rode out by the Back Road – taking his way by the Mine Banks to Westmore.
Garvin crept down along the creek, went as he had come. He would reach the Mine Banks before his brother did.
XXVIII
THE HELL-HOLE OF THE WESTMORES
Sue Penniman had been searching frantically for Ann, through the house, on the terraces; she had even gone down the cedar avenue and then to the spring-house. She had not gone to the barn, for Coats was at the barn and Ann was certain not to be there; besides, Sue did not want to see Coats, not until she had found Ann and forced her to tell the truth.
But she could not find Ann. She came back finally to the kitchen steps and called up to the negress who was busy above, "Rachel, do you know where Ann is?"
"I seen her go down by the woods, Miss Sue."
"When?"
"About a' hour ago."
Sue paused; then she asked, "Was she dressed up, Rachel?"
"Yes'm – she got on her white dress."
"All right," Sue said, trying to keep the thickness out of her voice.
Sue put the corner of the house between her and the woman, and stood for a moment in confused thought. She was too terrified to think clearly; she could make no plan; she felt bewildered and helpless… She would have to tell Coats – she dared not keep the thing to herself. He would have to be told in the end, anyway… It was trouble again for Coats, desperate trouble. It was of Coats Sue was thinking, more than of Ann. She would rather have died than bring this thing on him, this long perspective of trouble for them all.
Sue went draggingly to the barn. Coats was in the wagon-shed, shifting the buggies and wagons so as to make room for a new hayrack.
He saw Sue come in, simply that she was there, in the doorway. "Time for supper?" he asked. "I didn't know it was so late." He was looking at the bare space he had made.
"Coats – "
At the husky note he turned quickly and saw her face. He reached her at a stride. "Sue!"
Sue could not find words; she looked at him haggardly.
"What's the matter?" he demanded. "What's happened?"
"It's Ann, Coats."
His brows lowered and the color came in his face. "Ann?.. Well?"
"I just found it out this afternoon… She's been meeting Garvin Westmore – for a long time. They've planned to go away together." Sue could not bring herself to tell him her worst fear, not at once.
But Coats leaped to it; he grew white. "She, she's not – ?"
"I don't know – Coats," she said with difficulty. "I can't find her anywhere – I wanted to ask her before I told you. Rachel says she went down to the woods about an hour ago… I ran out of writin' paper an' went to Ann's room, to her box for some, an' I found a sheet in it with 'Dear Garvin' an' some other words of a letter that was begun. I was so frightened I broke open her trunk then, an' I found a lot of his letters. He, writes like they were engaged, but … Coats, I'm afraid – I'm afraid she's in trouble – " She would have to say it sooner or later; it was best they should face it together.
Coats had grown quite gray, the down-drawn muscles of his face making him look old. He looked away from Sue's quivering face, beyond her to the open, staring down the vista of the past. "It had to be a Westmore, of course," he said slowly and with extraordinary evenness. "It's about time that family became extinct."
To one who did not know Coats Penniman, the words would sound cold, but Sue knew the meaning of the gray tint that had overspread his face, and the extent of the concentrated rage that edged each word with bitter sarcasm. In her terror she began to cry. "I don't know it's true, Coats – I don't know it's true, dear… I haven't talked to Ann. We can't tell till we've asked Ann… Coats, if harm comes to you because of this, it'll just kill me – "
Coats looked at her; took her arm. "Don't, Sue – don't cry so… I can't do anything till I'm sure. I can't tell till I see his letters. Where are they, Sue?"
"At the house… It'll drive you mad to read them."
"Oh, no, it won't," Coats said, through tight lips. "It may drive Edward mad, though. I shall settle my account with both of them … when I'm ready… Where did you say Ann had gone?"
"Rachel said she had gone down to the woods. She said Ann was dressed up – I thought maybe she had gone away with Garvin – it's what he's been askin' her to do."
"Not in broad daylight," Coats said, in the same cutting way. "His kind do their work at night… She'll come back – and with nothing but misery before her… If Marian had only lived, the child might have been saved – " At thought of his wife, he dropped into huskiness and restless motion. "Come to the house," he said thickly. "We can't stand here doing nothing."
Sue followed him as he strode along. "Go by the front way," she begged. "Rachel mustn't see… And father; Coats, you mustn't tell father – it'll kill him – it'll bring on a stroke, Coats."
Coats stopped. He had regained his composure. "Keep calm," he said. "I mean to keep calm. We've faced trouble together before, Sue – we're neither of us going to go mad."
"I'd rather have died than have this happen."
"I know you would. You're all Penniman, Sue – there're some of us mongrel, but not you."
They went in by the front porch. "Bring me the letters," Coats said, in the same quiet way.
Sue went to Ann's room and gathered them up from the bed where they lay scattered, as she had left them when she had hurried to find Ann. She brought, also, the sheet of paper that had led her to discovery, placed them all in Coats' hands.
Coats read them, Ann's few blotted sentences first. It was Ann's struggle over her letter to Garvin, a beginning put aside because it was so ill-written and blotted:
"Dear Garvin:
"If I could endure any longer without telling you, I'd not write this, but I can't. You have asked me all along in your letters why I have written so anxiously, and I have told you that I wasn't happy because I was worried about everything, but I didn't tell you the real reason."
Coats read it, then passed from letter to letter, his brows lowering more and more ominously, his eyes graying to steel as he noted such sentences as these: "Why do you let your mind dwell on the possibility of trouble – we are going away so soon, Ann – in less than a month we'll be together. I'm going to live to make you happy, then." And in another letter there was the underlined sentence, "You are mine, now, every bit of you– there can be no going back for either of us;" and in the same letter "… 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." Coats understood as neither Ann nor Sue had understood the omissions in the picture of their life together with which Garvin had closed his letter. He understood perfectly what was in Garvin's mind. He knew what Garvin was, as Sue could not know. The men on the Ridge knew Garvin Westmore; he was an open secret.
When Coats put down the last letter and sat looking at the collected evidences of sensual infatuation and very evident suffering, a sort of madness that could not be given the name of love, he was without even the faint doubt that had given Sue a ray of hope. There might be girls who had either the coolness or the hardihood to pass through a siege such as this unscathed. Or the occasional girl who, though capable of arousing mad passions, remains aloof, wrapped in a self-sufficient self-respect that makes her invincible. But it was not his reading of the child who had grown up without anybody's particular care. He had said to Sue, "She's bound to have her bit of life, have it and pay for it." It had come sooner and more terribly than he had feared. Coats thought of Ann when she was a little thing, just able to walk across the floor, her steps, as always, leading her to him, and his face twisted in pain.
Sue had watched him. "Coats, you think it's so?" she asked despairingly.
"Yes," he said.
"What are you goin' to do?" she whispered.
Coats got up and gathered the letters together. "I'm going to find her first… You go, Sue, and see if she's in sight anywhere. Then come and tell me."
He wanted those few minutes alone. He went up to his room and, from a shelf in the cupboard, took his pistol, loaded it and put it in his pocket. When Sue came back, he was again where she had left him, his hat on and binding the letters together. He put them in his pocket.
"I don't see her, Coats… You have your hat – what are you goin' to do?" Sue could not rid herself of the terror his grim look inspired.
"I'm going to look for her – better I should talk to her where your father won't hear… Then I'm going to Westmore."
Sue grew deadly pale. "Coats, don't you fight them! Don't, for my sake!"
Coats' lip curled. "Don't worry. I've got a word to say to Edward, and I'll guarantee he'll listen."
"If anything happens to you, I don't want to live," Sue said in despair.
Coats' face softened. He put his arm about her. "You're forgetting that we Pennimans are not cowards, Sue."
She looked at him with her heart in her eyes. "I'm just a woman when it comes to you, Coats – just a lovin' woman." In her agony of fear over him, Sue had thrown away the concealment of years; the truth stood clear, looked the man she loved straight in the eye.
It struck queerly across Coats' tense nerves, the revelation of a thing quite unexpected, but having nothing to do with the burning present. He answered to it only vaguely. "Do your part, then, Sue. Do what I tell you to do. Don't give way… And not a word of all this to your father." He bent and kissed her, then, putting her aside, went out.
He went down to the woods, his eyes keen and searching beneath his lowered brows. He saw no sign of Ann, either in the open or at the edge of the woods, and went straight on, looking about him, but not pausing, until he came out on the Back Road. He had not expected to find Ann in the woods. In one of his first notes to Ann, Garvin had appointed Crest Cave as an afternoon meeting-place; Coats had made a mental note of it.
He followed the Back Road until he stood clear of the woods, then looked about him. There was no sign of any one. As far as he could see, in every direction, fields and woods and brilliant evening sunshine; cattle in the pastures below, but not a human being in sight.
Coats looked at the warm teeming country, then up at the looming Mine Banks, over which hung a faint blue haze, the mist from innumerable ore-pits which the spring rains had filled to overflowing. "The hell-hole of the Westmores," he always called it in his own mind.
Then he struck off for it, directly across country, his vigorous stride carrying him along rapidly.
XXIX
"WHAT'S NOT KNOWN"
Later, when the hollows lay in shadow and only the crowns of the hills glistened in the departing sunshine, Coats Penniman came back through the woods.
Sue had gone about the house oppressed by the terror she tried to keep out of her face. She was gripped by the certainty that there was even worse trouble in store for them than merely the shame Ann had brought upon them. The thought of it made her weak-kneed and sick, yet she tried to do the usual things in the usual way. She persuaded her father to have an early supper and go to bed, and she sent Rachel to her cabin, gave her an unexpected evening off. They would have their wretchedness to themselves for one night at least. If only it did not end in tragedy! Coats' grimly purposeful look obsessed her. And in all her coming and going, from the kitchen landing, when she was down-stairs, from an upper window, while she waited for her father to go to sleep, she watched the woods.
Sue had watched Coats in terror when he went down to the woods; she watched in terror when she saw him coming back. He had gone quickly, but was coming back slowly, bent forward and walking as if each step was an effort. His coat was off, laid over one shoulder, and his free hand held it in place, so that it covered his other arm.
Sue ran down the spring-house path, and they met as he was dragging himself up to the willows. She did not need to ask if anything had happened, for Coats was ghastly pale, and, even before she reached him, she saw that he was walking so slowly because he could not walk any faster, though, from the strained look in his eyes and the effort he was making, it was plain that he wanted to hurry. They had fought and he was terribly hurt; they had tried to kill him, and suddenly rage sprang up in Sue, commingled with her fear that he was mortally wounded.
Even before she reached him, she cried, "Coats, they've hurt you – "
"I've been shot," Coats said, in a voice that was not his it was so lifeless.
He spoke with great difficulty, as if he were about to faint, yet at her horrified exclamation he frowned and looked about him. "Hush!" he said thickly. "It's just my arm – but I've bled so I'm almost done… Get me a drink of water."
Sue obeyed him instantly and in silence. He looked grim and determined – in spite of his exhaustion; somberly excited and at the same time fearful of something, of being overcome by weakness, for one thing. Sue visioned the worst as she hurriedly filled the tin cup she took from one of the jutting logs of the spring-house. He was not fatally hurt; her greatest terror had been quieted, and the fighting blood of the Pennimans lifted in her, giving her courage. If he had killed a Westmore it was that Westmore's due. Hatred of their hereditary enemy nerved her. No matter what Coats had done in his righteous anger, she would stand by him; she would stand and fall with Coats – no matter what came. Even the sight of his blood-soaked coat did not turn her faint.
Coats was leaning against the spring-house, and she put her arm about him, holding the cup to his lips, for he kept his uninjured hand pressed to his shoulder. "Don't you worry, Coats," she said resolutely. "I'm not frightened now. Just you drink this, an' then let me help you up to the house. I've got father to bed an' I've sent Rachel home an' Ben's not about. Just you tell me – I'll stand by you no matter what it is, Coats."
Evidently he did not mean to tell her, or else his haste was too great to waste precious moments. The water had revived him somewhat. "I'm not going to the house," he said more clearly than he had spoken before. "Go up and get something soft to wrap my arm in. Bring it to the barn – I'll manage to get up there and wait for you – in the wagon-shed. Don't let anybody know what you're about – just come to the barn to me… Has Ann come back?"
"No. Ain't you seen her, Coats?"
"No." He paused to think, intently, though his face was twitching from pain. Then he went on hurriedly, "It's just as well – it's better she shouldn't know… She'll come back. Put a note where she's sure to find it – just say that we've gone driving and won't be back till late, and that she's to look after her grandfather; that she's not to leave the house; that Ben will be there, so she needn't feel nervous. Say that and nothing more. Then get your hat and things and something to put around my arm and another coat for me – I want you to drive me into the city as fast as you can. I'd not take you with me, but I can't manage by myself."
"Coats! You can't go all that way with your arm like that! You've got to have a doctor!" Every word he had uttered made her the more certain that there had been a tragedy, something so terrible that he was afraid of arrest. He was afraid to tell her, and she was afraid to ask him. "You can't go like that," she reiterated helplessly. "You'll bleed to death." The thought of it made her sick.