Chapter IV: Part 4

They were safe from observation now, and he circled the Crest and started down the path which was more an animal trail leading through the bushes, than a path. He heard Ann's approach before he saw her, the rustle of sear leaves, and he stopped on one of the bare red patches that the noise of his approach might not startle her. The bushes parted presently, and Ann looked out. Then she looked up and saw him, and smiled. She was lovely as she stood there, half screened, flushed and doubtful and faintly smiling.

Garvin hurried down to her. "It's all right," he said. "I've been watching.... My, but the bushes have pulled you to pieces!"

They had; her cape was off, her hair loose on her shoulders, her breath short. "It's--more grown up--than it used to be," she complained.

"And so are you.... Don't pin up your hair, Ann--it's beautiful that way: I love your hair."

She did not give him the merry glance that was her usual answer to such speeches. She gave him the cape to hold and resolutely gathered up her hair. "Now!" she said, when it was in place.

Garvin had watched her in silence. Her decision had checked him; it was unlike her usual manner. "We'll go up to the cave," he said. "You can rest there."

"I can take my cape now."

"No, I'll carry it.... You're tired, aren't you?"

"A little," she answered quietly.

She let him help her up, her hand in his, her lowered eyelids his to read. He could find nothing there, except that they were darker-tinged than usual--and her lips grave. He decided that she was frightened.

"It was a shame for me, to bring you all this way," he said, with the gentleness which he usually had at command. "I wanted so much really to talk to you, and I couldn't think of a better place."

"I wanted to come," Ann returned. "I wanted to see the Mine Banks again--"

"And to see me, too, Ann?"

"Yes." She gave him a half-questioning, half-appealing glance. "I wanted to talk to you, too." The laughter that usually danced in her eyes was not there.

Garvin was still certain that she was frightened, at her own temerity, and doubtful of him. "Well, we can talk all we want to here, dear. No one will disturb us, and you are safe with me.... See, isn't this perfect?"

They had come to the ledge. Ann looked into the umbrella-like cave with the yawning hole at the back, the burrow of some animal; then at the screen of pines. The place was shut in, warm and restful. "It's lovely," she said softly, "an' I'm not afraid of it now. I came up here once, when I was little, an' something moved in the hole, an' I was scared. I ran, and I never did come back--I imagined it was a lion.... That's why it was fun to come to the Banks--I could have such fearful imaginings--imaginings are fun." She was more like herself now, laughing softly and coquetting with the hole in the cave.

"It's nothing but a fox-hole, Ann. I used to let them have it in the winter and then trap them. When I got to coming here often, I didn't like the smell of them about, and I have made it too hot for them. I let the rabbits have it now--I don't mind their scuttling about while I lie here."

"You talk as if you lived here. It is a peaceful, far-away place to live." She was looking through the tunnel and had lost her smile.

Garvin had a sudden remembrance of some of the scenes the place had harbored, and he turned away from it, impatiently. "Let's sit under the pines, where we can look out," he suggested. He took her cape and spread it close to one of the trees. "How do you like that?"

Ann had not heard him. She was looking steadily at the roof of the Penniman house. She turned sharply, turned her back on it, sat so she could lean against the tree-trunk.

"Why do you sit that way?" Garvin asked in surprise. "Don't you want to look out?"

"No, I like this way best."

Garvin studied her closely. He had seated himself as near to her as he could, with a mental curse for the tree-trunk that allowed no excuse for the support of his arm. The flush of exertion had left Ann's face, and Garvin saw now that she was very pale and heavy-eyed, and her lips compressed. Her hands also were tightly clasped. She was not frightened, or even shy; she was wretched. It was he who was flushed and doubtful. He had not lived well, how ill only he himself knew, but this was his first tampering with innocence.

He put his hand on hers. "What's the matter, Ann?"

She was silent.

"What is it, dear?" he asked tenderly. "We're friends, aren't we? Are you sorry you came up here? What is it? Tell me?"

Ann drew one of her hands away and, taking up a pine-needle, began pricking the bit of cape that lay between them. "No, I am not sorry," she said evenly. "The only comfort I've had to-day is thinking I was coming." She looked up at him, her eyes full of grief. "My father came home to-day."

Garvin would have taken her in his arms, but for the fear that touched him. "But he doesn't know you are here?"

"No. I didn't tell him--I couldn't tell him--anything.... Mr. Garvin, your people are fond of you--my people don't--love me." She had wrenched the thing out, despite the hurt.

Garvin breathed more freely. What a child she was! "What do you mean, dear? Have they been unkind to you--to-day?"

"They are kind to me, but they don't love me," Ann repeated, beginning to quiver. At one wrench and with tremendous effort, she had parted with reserve and the Penniman pride, and plunged on. "I don't know why they don't love me as they love each other. They have never loved me--even when I was little. My father went away an' left me because I reminded him that my being born killed my mother. An' now that he's back, I can see that he's never felt I was part of him. I understand better now--they're kind to me because they pity me. I don't want to be pitied--it's hateful to be pitied!... Your people love you, Mr. Garvin, so you can't understand--I reckon no one will understand." She had ended helplessly, not in tears, for she had wept herself into a decision that morning, and she was holding to that.

Garvin's hand had grown lax on hers and his face gloomy. She had swept away the sensuous emotion to which he had yielded while waiting for her. He had given himself up to a contemplation of possibilities as an escape from harassment. His pursuit of Ann had been just that, from the very beginning, an escape from unendurable conditions. Her, "They're kind to me because they pity me ... it's hateful to be pitied!" had brought back with a rush the thoughts that had darkened his face while he rode with Baird that morning. "Your people love you--so you can't understand." His people love him! How well he understood, indeed!

He had looked straight before him while she talked; now he looked down at her, stirred for almost the first time in his life by a sense of fellow-feeling. "Yes, I understand," he said steadily. "It takes the spirit out of you--gives you over to the very devil--to be dreaded and pitied--almost from your cradle up. I understand, Ann. It's so in some families--for one reason or another.... Some of us are born misfits; we're throwbacks--to something or some one that doesn't quite jibe with our environment. I reckon you're a bit too fine and spirited for your environment, Ann." He was looking at her brow and eyes, not the brow and eyes of a Penniman--not as he had known them.

Ann's sense of isolation caught at the note of sympathy, and she gave her decision into his keeping. "I can't bear things as they are, Mr. Garvin. I made up my mind this morning--I'm going away just as soon as I can."

She had startled him. "_You_, go away? Why, you're nothing but a child, Ann! Where could you go?"

Ann lifted her hands, held them out for him to see. He had noticed them before, not small hands, work-hardened, but shapely and flexible, with tapering fingers blunted a little at the tips, almost certain sign of manual labor imposed upon childhood. "Look at them!" Ann said tensely. "Would I work any harder with them for other people, than I have for my people? I'm goin'--there's the city for me to go to."

Garvin knew, far better than a stranger would, what such a decision meant to a Penniman--or a Westmore. It meant flinging away caste. They could toil unceasingly, bend their backs to the most menial labor, so long as they toiled upon their own freehold. But to become a servitor, labor with their hands for a wage!

"You can't do that, Ann," he said positively.

"I can, and I will," Ann returned with equal decision.

"If you tried such a thing, your father would bring you back--you're not of age."

She drew a short breath and considered a moment. "But I will be in the fall--they can't make me come back then, can they?"

"No--" Garvin said slowly. "They couldn't--not if you were determined."

He was thinking. A possibility had occurred to him that made him flush; brought him back to the thing to which he had given himself up of late, his desire for Ann.... The thing that was almost impossible here was possible in the city. And what a haven to escape to!... He looked at her as she distressfully pondered her future. She had never seemed more lovable or less a girl to be taken by storm; she had shown an amount of decision he had not known she possessed. He had her confidence; he would do well to keep it.

"If you are determined enough, Ann, and careful to keep what you mean to do a secret, I think you could carry it through," he supplemented. "And why shouldn't you go? Almost anything is better than life as you've had it. I'll help you to go, when you're ready for it."

"You could help me to get something to do, maybe?" she asked quickly. "I've been thinking maybe you could. That's one reason I wanted to talk to you."

"Possibly. I'd do almost anything for you, Ann, especially now I know you're not happy down there."

Her pleasure and relief were evident; she flushed brightly. "You're very nice to me Mr. Garvin."

"We're really friends, then, Ann? You don't share the family grudge?"

"Indeed I don't! I can't see why they are so bitter."

"It's just an hereditary quarrel, that's all, and you are the first Penniman and I the first Westmore who has buried it.... Will you really bury it; dear--and show me that you have?"

"I'm showing that I have," she said earnestly.

"Shan't we kiss each other to prove that the ugly thing is gone from between us?" he asked gravely.

Ann's flush deepened, but not because of any particular self-consciousness; she neither dropped her eyes nor smiled. Ann had gone down in the depths that day and, for the time being, had parted with coquetry. The longing for affection and interest and consideration such as Garvin was offering her was her immediate need. She was desperate for want of it. And yet she hesitated. She felt certain now that Garvin was very fond of her, and to Ann's way of thinking love led to marriage. She was quite as certain that she liked him very much. She hesitated because she was a Penniman and he a Westmore; there was a class distinction between them that had held for generations.

Garvin saw her hesitation and obeyed a subtle instinct when he kept his hands from her and chose the words that would appeal to her, and the more irresistibly because of genuine feeling. "I'm not any more happy than you are, Ann--I'm wretched. My people are kind to me, too, just that, and they pity me endlessly. If ever there was a misfit, it is I. I'm sick to death of it all, and lonely enough to take the short way out.... Be nice to me, dear."

She lifted her lips to him, and his arms took her and held her, and she clung to him with a tensity of affection. He kissed her long and passionately, but with self-control enough to realize the quality of what he received, its affection and gratitude and lack of passion. And when her lips parted from his and he buried his face on her shoulder shaken by the first effort for restraint he had ever cared to make, her hand stroked his hair, gently. "I didn't know you were unhappy, too," she said softly.

When he raised his head he was pale. "You're a child yet," he said. "You'll wake up one of these days--then you'll love me as I love you."

"I like you a great deal," Ann answered, with conviction.

He laughed shortly. "Yes, we're good friends--that's it, isn't it, Ann?"

The note of urgency and dissatisfaction made her uncomfortable. "You asked me to be friends," she said.

She moved away from his hold, and he let her go. "There's all the future," he said more quietly. "You'll love me by and by.... Ann, have you really the courage to go away from all that down there?"

"Yes."

"And the wisdom to keep our friendship to yourself?... It will be a terrible thing for both of us, if they know. I met your father this morning, on his way home, and I'd have spoken to him, if he had let me. I did speak and he cut me--he has neither forgotten nor forgiven."

"What is it they've not forgotten or forgiven?" Ann asked earnestly. "Aunt Sue wouldn't tell me."

Garvin told her what he had told Baird.

Ann flamed scarlet. "There isn't any Penniman would have done that!"

"And there's not a Westmore now who thinks it," Garvin said positively. "The thing's more than half a century old, but it's an insult your people will never forgive.... It's not going to matter to you, is it, now you know?" he added, for Ann looked so perturbed. "I never have believed it for a moment--or Edward either. I know he's terribly sorry for the quarrel, and ashamed that father let the thing rankle. It worries Ed. If it worries you, I'm sorry I told you."

"It doesn't worry me," Ann said firmly. "It doesn't make the least difference to me--in the way I feel to you and Mr. Westmore--we had nothing to do with it, an' to hate an' hate is sickening. But I know how it is with my people. I think grandfather would almost kill me if he knew that we were friends. Even Aunt Sue would be fearful to me." She drew a quick nervous breath. "It makes me want to get away more than ever."

"You shall go--I'll help you," Garvin promised. "But in the meantime I want to see you--I must. If I think of a safe way, you will meet me, won't you?"

Ann thought of the thing that had added hurt to hurt, her father's pleasure in Sue. They had been painfully kind to her at dinner, and after the meal was over he had gone off with Sue, they two to talk together.

"Yes," Ann said. "I'm not afraid. We're doing nothing wrong in liking each other."

"I'll think of a way and write to you."

She got up. "An' I must go now." Her lips quivered and set. "My father has gone with Aunt Sue--to walk around the farm--but they'll be coming back before supper."

"I am afraid you must, dear. If I brought them down on you, I should never forgive myself.... I can go with you to where I met you."

He went with her around to the back of the Crest, down the steep red-clay slope and into the shelter of the bushes. There he lifted her up and kissed her. "Ann!" he said. "Ann! I'm going to make you love me."

Ann received his kiss more shyly, turned her cheek to it. She had emerged a little from wretchedness, and the quality that invites pursuit, that draws passion and gives sparingly in return, the quality with which Ann was plentifully endowed, was coming to the surface. She escaped from his hands without answer and with eyes down.

XV

AS WITH A CHILD

Ann gained the woods in safety, so much Garvin saw from his perch, but he could not see what followed. At the point where the Back Road forked, she came face to face with Edward Westmore. He was coming from the club, riding slowly, as always.

Ann was flushed from rapid walking; she flushed more deeply when she saw him, and nodded and smiled shyly.

Edward lifted his cap, his tired face lighting. "So we meet again!" he said. "I was thinking of you--have you walked far?"

"Just across the pastures," Ann answered in embarrassment, the more so because he had checked his horse.

She had not expected him to do that, or to look so pleased when he saw her, still less to dismount and come to her which he did immediately. "You look warm, aren't you tired?" he asked.

"Yes," Ann answered, too much surprised for anything but a monosyllable. She was wide-eyed and a little startled, the child look that made her prettiest, and he studied her intently, as if absorbing her features. And yet his manner was deferential; he looked and smiled as he had the day before when he had talked with her.

"I am tired, too," he said. "I have just ridden up from the station to the club.... Won't you rest a few minutes? I wanted to talk more yesterday--I was interested in all you told me, and promised myself to take the first chance to talk again, but I hardly expected this good fortune."

Baird would have been astonished by Edward's air of animation and pleasure, more so even than Ann. "He hates quarreling and wants very much to be friends," was Ann's thought, and she was pleased. The miserable day was ending more happily; Garvin had told her that he loved her and that there was "all the future," and now his brother was showing her that he liked her. There were people in the world to whom she mattered; Garvin was interested in her, deeply interested. Ann was being carried away from her troubles; transformed into beauty and charm.

She gave Edward her drooping glance and slow smile. "I should like to talk, too."

"Shall we sit down then, for a few minutes?... Over there by the creek, don't you think? There used to be a hollow there, and a flat rock."

"Yes--it's there yet," Ann assented willingly.

It was the spot where she had hidden from Baird that morning, where the bank of the creek shelved sharply to a big rock around which the water fretted and quarreled. Clumps of chinkapin bushes intervened, effectually hiding the hollow from the road.

Edward led his horse around them and, after a swift survey that convinced him that they would be well screened, dropped the bridle. Carefully and attentively, as if she were fragile, he helped Ann down to the rock, and Ann, who had sprung down that morning as nimbly as a chamois, lent herself daintily to his guidance, instantly adapting herself to it, enjoying it. This was something quite new to her, as new as Baird's impetuosity or Garvin's restrained passion. And she took, quite as her due, the step-like ridge in the rock that seated Edward at her feet. She was neither embarrassed nor awed, partly because of Edward's well sustained ease and deference, partly because of his very evident interest in every word she uttered.

With a skill which Ann was not experienced enough to recognize, he led her to talk of the farm, then of her people, then of herself. He had been away so long, he told her. He had been everywhere--except at Westmore--much of the time in Europe; everything she told him was news. He drew from her an accurate picture of her life as it had been from her earliest remembrance and as it was now, and that without any such passionate outburst as she had visited upon Garvin. With his knowledge of her family and his growing knowledge of her, it was easy to read between the lines. She was apart from her family; she was not happy with them. Whether she had attained to seventeen years without a romance was the one point upon which he was uncertain; even a very young girl would know how to guard that secret.

Ann could not know that she was being manipulated by a master-hand. When he looked up at her, his eyes held only pleased interest. When he looked down at the resentful, quarreling water and they were hidden from her, his expression was different.

Edward Westmore's combination of ease and impenetrable reserve, of swift intelligence and yet guarded speech, the melancholy that shadowed him, like a thin veil drawn over a smile, had baffled more astute people than Ann. It had made him a noticeable man wherever he had gone; a man of acknowledged charm and suspected subtlety. His family had known him as a spirited and yet dependable boy, the most dependable of the Westmores, until the upheaval which had sent him away from his home had revealed passions his family had not suspected. He had demanded a release from Westmore and Westmore conditions and had gained it. That he had married beyond all expectations well a woman older than himself and possessed of a fortune, and had settled into the inscrutable man he was, with the welfare of Westmore apparently his closest interest, was one of the inexplicable things about him.

Judith perhaps understood Edward better than any one else did; certainly, in their twelve years of married life, his wife had not fathomed him. If his charm had won him conquests, they had never obtruded. If he had craved youth and beauty, he had given no intimation of it. He had unwaveringly upheld both his wife's dignity and his by an unswerving courtesy; how much or how little love he had given her was a secret she had carried with her--she had left him her fortune, unconditionally.

He had led Ann up to the very present, and she told him what he already knew: "And my father came home to-day." She paused on that, because of the tragedy it had been to her, but her face was more expressive than she knew.

"I suppose he will sell the farm and take you all west with him when he goes back? That will mean a different life for you," Edward said.

The suggestion was an entirely new one to Ann; she grew wide-eyed over it. Then she shook her head decidedly. "No, he won't do that--he loves the place."

"Then he will probably send you to school in the autumn."

This also was a new idea, but after consideration she dismissed it. "No.... I didn't study very well when Aunt Sue sent me to school," she added with a touch of shame.

"You didn't?" Edward was genuinely surprised; it was not his reading of her.

"I couldn't ever learn arithmetic--I tried hard, but I couldn't. The teacher told Aunt Sue that I had no brains for study, an' she took me away from school." Ann hated to make the admission, she had been led into it before she knew, and added quickly, "But I liked history and composition--I like to read. I've read my father's books through and through."

"They don't know what good brains are in that school in the village," Edward said quietly. "My greatest pleasure is reading, too--you are fortunate to have grown up in a library."

Ann was forced to admit that it was not a library, just a cupboard in her father's room stacked with books. Edward knew that, as a boy, Coats Penniman had been an omnivorous reader and something of a student. He selected in his mind the books Coats was likely to have read, many histories, the lives of great men, and the staider fiction which he himself had enjoyed when a boy, and Ann warmed into vivid pleasure when she found that they had acquaintances in common. She talked of George Eliot's characters as one would of friends, and lovingly of Maggie Tulliver, that creation of a great woman's brain always tenderly loved by misfits such as Ann.

"She was a nobody's child," Ann said softly.

Edward noticed that the dramatic and emotional appealed profoundly to her, and the sentimental very little. He thought as he listened to her and looked at her beauty that, if the right sort of man possessed her, she would grow into a superb woman; a few years' training would make her a finished product, something more than presentable, a really fascinating woman. But the emotional in her would have to be satisfied. It was innate, patent, unmistakable--her power to arouse passion, an irresistible inclination to test the emotional, and it was quite possible that in the process she might be irremediably marred.

Edward thought of the thing he had witnessed the morning before, his brother's face bent to Ann's, and his own face darkened. He had thought of it frequently in the last twenty-four hours, and with a full realization of what her appeal to Garvin would be. He thought of the night just past, when the family skeleton had broken loose and been captured and locked away again, only after hours of dread and terror to them all.

He turned from the sickening recollection to look again at Ann. He reflected that with her type the brain is apt to be constant and the emotions less dependable, and love, actual love, rarely a sudden thing and almost always a consecration. How much of herself she would give would depend largely on the man who captured her; to hold her he would have to appeal to her brain as well as her emotions. Edward was certain that he read her aright. He had traveled a long way before he had learned what little he knew of women; what man ever knew more than a very little of the riddle the Creator intended man should not solve.

To Ann he said, "But you haven't read many of the more modern novels, have you? And very little poetry?"

"I couldn't get them," Ann answered regretfully. "There's no library in the village." She did not add, "And I have no money to buy books," but Edward understood.

"I have any number of them--good and bad--at Westmore. I should be glad to lend you anything you would like to read."

Ann did not know what to say. She had collided again with the family quarrel. But she wanted to see Edward again. No one had ever talked to her as he had, or treated her as he did. He was quite different from Garvin, far more deferential, and yet eager to please her. She felt intensely sorry for Garvin; things seemed to be all wrong with him, just as they were with her. And she wanted him to love her; she wanted every man to love her--even Ben Brokaw. It was delightful to feel that she could interest them--as she was interesting Edward Westmore. It was wonderful that she could interest him. He was the most courtly man she had ever seen, and the most distinguished-looking. She was accustomed to tanned faces; the black and white contrasts of Edward's face pleased her. He was tall and erect and dignified. She felt a tremendous respect for him, and at the same time she felt perfectly at one with him; he was so pleasant to be with.

"I'd like very much to have the books," she said somewhat helplessly.

Edward smoothed out the difficulty without mentioning it. "I go by here so often, to the club--I could easily leave them up there, beside the bushes. If some one else found them or they got rained on, it wouldn't matter--there are plenty of others." He looked up at her, smiling quizzically. "I go to the club almost every afternoon, and ride back about this time--just when you will be curled up here in the hollow examining what I have left. I know you will do just that, because that is what all book-lovers do--an unread book is as tantalizing as ripe fruit just out of reach."

Ann thought it was a nice way of being told that he wanted to see her again, and she answered with much of his own manner. "Maybe--but never as late as this, though. See, the sun's most down, an' supper waitin' for you at Westmore, like it is for me up at the farm."

"That means that I am dismissed--that it's growing late, and that I've let you sit here without your cape around you.... Let me put it on for you--before we go up."

He wrapped it about her, his touch light yet lingering, brought it together under her chin, as one would with a child. "Have you felt cold?" he asked tenderly, as if guarding something infinitely precious.

For the second time that day affection lifted in Ann's eyes. In all her life no one had looked at her or spoken to her in just that way; even Garvin had not. "No, I have been warm," she answered softly.

Edward looked full into her eyes, the veil of melancholy that so often shadowed his face stealing over it. "Then I've done you no harm, and you have given me a great pleasure," he said. "Now run home quickly--while I get my horse back to the road."

Ann went, as he said, quickly. It had seemed to her that morning, as she had walked along the same road with her father, that she could never be comforted. But she had been--doubly comforted.

XVI

"IT WAS BORN IN HER"

"Is Ann always like this?" Coats Penniman asked Sue that evening.

They had come from supper and were sitting together on the porch. Preparing the meal had been Sue's work; Ann had insisted that the clearing away was her task, and Sue knew why she had been so determined; she did not want to join them on the porch.

"She's always quiet when father is around," Sue answered.

"And I'm a strange element--well, it's natural."

Sue knew that Coats meant to talk of Ann, and she dreaded it. They had spent almost the entire day together, going over the farm and talking of its possibilities, and Coats had scarcely mentioned Ann. But Sue knew that he was thinking of her from the occasional questions he asked and from the way in which he had studied Ann, surreptitiously, with a pitying intensity which Sue understood well. When he spoke to Ann directly his usually deep voice softened to its kindliest note, and Ann had answered dutifully, but Sue noticed that she kept her eyes turned from him.

Poor Ann! Sue sighed inaudibly. She was very sorry for the girl, but she had known just how it would be; the love Coats had seemed incapable of giving the child was not likely to be given the grown girl who reminded him even more poignantly of the bitterest days of his life.

She knew Coats so well. They had grown up together, she and her sister Marian and Coats, and his love for her sister seemed to have been born with him. He had loved Marian as a child, as a boy he had adored her, loved her with an all-engrossing passion when they were grown. He would gladly have given his life for the girl who was his wife for less than a year, and over whom he had agonized with an intensity that had almost deprived him of his reason. She had borne her child and had left him desolate. She seemed to have taken with her all his capacity for love. They were like that, the Pennimans; an affection for each other and a tremendous sense of duty, but only one love. She herself was like that. No one had ever guessed; she alone knew who it was _she_ had loved all those years; loved in spite of everything, steadily loved and loved.

It was dark, and Sue could think and feel without her face betraying her. Coats' figure was a vague outline, but his presence was an intensely palpable thing. It pressed on her, enveloped her. _What_ that day had been to her! After all these years, he her companion, his hand on her arm, his first thought for her, and no one to come between them--except the ghost of the past. She wanted it laid, buried too deep ever to rise again. So far he had not mentioned the past; was he going to drag the thing out now and agonize over it again?

She had not answered his remark, and he said nothing for a time, smoking in silence. Finally he said, "I wish I could make the future a little easier for her."

Sue drew a breath of relief. She was quite willing to talk of the future, even Ann's future. "I've often wondered what was best to do for her."

"Has any man ever made love to her, Sue?"

"No, no one," Sue said positively. "Who would? You know how away from people we've had to live--we haven't even had the relations here--it was the only way to do when we were so poor.... Besides, Ann's not much more than a child."

"You've always written that she was a thoughtless child. She's less of a child than you realize, Sue. And she's not thoughtless, either. She does a deal of thinking, but keeps it to herself."

Sue remembered Ann's burst of feeling which had so surprised her. "I reckon that she has grown up so gradually I haven't noticed. She has such a careless way with her most of the time. She plays with every mortal thing that comes her way, Coats--peeps at it with her eyelids down--seein' if it's goin' to give her any fun, it seems to me. It drives father mad to see her. I've often watched her, with the collie, with Ben--with every breathing thing that comes her way. An' she does lay hold on people--if there's a creature on earth Ben Brokaw loves, it's Ann. It's Ann has kept him here these last two years--she can do anything with him."

"It was born in her," Coats said evenly. It was his first reference to his wife and he turned from it, spoke more clearly. "Sue, Ann's the quintessence of attraction--I've realized it to-day. She's one of those women you might wall up and use plenty of stone and mortar to do it, and still she'd draw some man to her. It's her portion--we might as well recognize it and allow for it in the future."

"You mean she's bound to marry?"

It was not all Coats had meant, but he said, "Yes."

"But she mustn't marry here, Coats--it's what father has always said.... What chance is there here for a girl, anyway. The few boys that have stayed here are a shiftless lot, an' the Hunt Club set--they're rich, most of them, an' fast--we're just farmers to them--a girl situated like Ann is mustn't have anything to do with them."

"The club is since my time--are they about much, the men?"

"They're all over the place--as long as there's huntin'," Sue said with disgust, "an' they're always about the club, summer and winter. Father stopped their ridin' through here--he put up the gate an' notice--and he arrested Garvin Westmore, Coats."

Coats was silent, Sue guessed, because he might say too much; hatred of the Westmores lay deep in him. Sue liked the restraint he put upon himself. He had gone away a wretched silent man, and had returned a restrained yet forceful personality. He had broadened and gained weight, both mentally and physically. She had guessed from his letters that he had improved, and she had often thought, miserably, that she was not keeping pace with him. She had never had her sister's beauty or attraction, and even her prettiness was fading. And mentally?... What chance had she had, tied down to the farm?... Then bitterness slipped from her. He was here and, she hoped intensely, was going to stay. The fear that had tormented her, that he might marry out of sheer loneliness, was set at rest, and if she could feel certain that he would stay, her cup of joy would be full. All she dared hope for was that he would stay where she could care for him.

Coats spoke again, and of Ann. "I don't know just what to do for her," he said thoughtfully. "You wrote that she had no head for study. If she hasn't, sending her away to school would be a mistake--just courting mischief.... I'm inclined to think that she'll be best off here--until she's older--then I'll try to send her west--put her with people who will look after her and see that she gets a chance to marry, for that's what it will be with her. She's bound to have her bit of life, have it and pay for it, the certainty of it is written all over her, and she'll have a better chance of happiness somewhere else than here." His voice deepened. "You see, Sue, she's not really one of us--that's the thing has been borne in on me to-day. It's an old wound opened, and it's made me feel a little sick; her mother was never meant for this place--or for me. You know how it was with her--just that craving for all the things we were not. It showed in every look and word of Marian's, unconsciously, and it shows doubly in Ann.... Why, Sue, when I looked up this morning and saw her standing there, where Marian often stood, black and white, that hair and brow of hers, and with Marian's lips smiling at me, it was exactly as if a ghost had risen up and beckoned to me! I lost hold on myself. I did the best I could, but my best was bad. I froze whatever affection the child has for me--just froze it forever." He ended helplessly, a sudden breaking away from the restraint that was habitual with him: "She's a woman grown, Sue--I didn't expect it to be that way--I never dreamed it would be like that--you never told me she looked like that--you never told me how she looked!"

"You never asked me to tell you," Sue said painfully.

Coats quieted, gained control of himself almost instantly. "I didn't mean to let myself go like that. It's the last time I'll speak of things that can't be helped. The best I can do is to watch over Ann and give her a chance."

"It's the best any of us can do, Coats," Sue's voice was still husky.

Because of the note of pain, Coats drew his chair close to hers, touched her arm. "You've always done your best, Sue. I left you to bear most of the burden, but I've come back to it. I'm going to stay, Sue--it's going to be lifted from your shoulders to mine.... And I'm glad to be back. I belong here--I'm no money-maker. I'm fitted for just this--to draw a living out of the soil and enjoy doing it.... I can't expect help from Ann--she's bound to go out into the world and live--but you'll stand by me, Sue?"

The assurance Sue longed for had been given her. "Yes, I'll stand by you!" she said deeply. "I'll stand by you always, Coats--I'm fitted for just this, too."

XVII

COMPLEXITIES

The first of May, and spring had come on the Ridge. A young green lay upon pasture and woodland, upon every spot where nature was allowed her way--except the bald patches on the Mine Banks. They still glared a sullen red, defiantly barren, when even the plowed earth glistened and was warm, impatient under man's restraining hand, eager to quicken the seed being entrusted to it, a civilized mother as intent on bearing fruit as was her uncultured sister.

Those three weeks had brought the stir of life, both restlessness and joy, to Sue, to Ann, to Judith Westmore; and, as spring quickens man as well as woman, to Edward Westmore, Garvin and Baird the consciousness of things desired and not attained which is the urge to all accomplishment.

Even Coats Penniman, busied about the farm from early morning until night, was stirred by a vague unrest which was not unhappiness nor its opposite. He worked the harder for it; he had cast his net here; he meant to gather in the harvest, a modest harvest, but one that would be sufficient for his family's needs. New horses filled the stalls that had stood empty so long, new farm implements were stored in the wagon-shed, the barn acquired a coat of paint. And the crying shame of water carried by women up three hundred yards to a kitchen without a convenience was abolished. That was Coats' first improvement: pipes were laid to the bubbling spring and a pump installed; the spring-house, unsanitary relic of a past century, would no longer harbor crocks of milk and butter ill-protected from things that crawl and germs that fatten; it housed the pump. And only the weeping willows mourned the change; they no longer stood in a swamp, for a drain carried the seeping water to the creek; they were a pleasant shelter now for any man and maid who chose to sit beneath them.

Coats Penniman had his work and Sue had hers. The old house was being transformed. Many years before, Ann, playing with a forbidden pen-knife, had cut through the half-dozen layers of paper that generations of tasteless Pennimans had laid upon the living-room walls and had come to oak paneling as beautiful as any at Westmore. Sue had not forgotten the discovery. The living-room was stripped of paper and became again what it had been in colonial days, a spacious dining-room paneled from ceiling to floor. The modern front room, the parlor, lost its dingy figured paper, was hung and curtained in white, as were the rooms above. Sue, with Ann to help her, and a sturdy negress to do the heaviest work, labored joyfully. Paint and whitewash had their way with the old house, and it emerged an elderly lady still, but with white hair smoothed and wearing a spotless cap.

Only the lonely farm-woman who toils unaided, her interests bound by four unsightly walls, a veritable prison with a treadmill for diversion, can justly appreciate what those days of transformation were to Sue. She had longed for the two strong black hands that under her direction washed and churned and swept and cooked. But she had longed still more for a little beauty, a touch of fashion, a hint of luxury. Her day's work had always lapped over into the morrow. Now she could appear at supper with hair arranged and wearing a fresh gown. She could go from supper to sit with Coats on the porch and talk to him of her work as he talked to her of his. The delight of it!

And it was not only the house that wore new garments. Sue chose carefully and economically, but she would not have chosen tastefully had Ann not been at her right hand. Ann had an instinct for color, and an observant eye for style. She had insisted on shades of blue for Sue. "You ought to get everything blue, it goes with your eyes, an' it makes you look young and pretty," she had urged. "Have an all-blue suit, Aunt Sue, an' a blue silk drivin' coat, an' a little blue hat with white wings. An' for your house-dresses just have lawn with blue flowers in it." Sue had thought the coat an unpardonable extravagance, until she remembered that she often drove with Coats. Then she did not hesitate.

Ann was too proud to ask for anything for herself, but Sue insisted that whatever she had must be duplicated for Ann, so Ann chose for herself a summer suit of deep cream and a large cream-colored straw hat. Sue had objected to Ann's choice of a red coat. "Your suit's so dark a cream it's 'most yellow, an' your coat's a regular nigger red, Ann."

"I'm black an' white--they're my colors, Aunt Sue. I'll always have to wear rich colors to look best," Ann returned, and she was right. She did not put red roses on her hat, however. She decorated it with water-lilies; their yellow centers blended with hat and gown.

Even Sue did not suspect what pleasure Ann took in her attire, but she did notice that the girl was startlingly beautiful, even in her simple white lawn dresses sprayed with either red or yellow. It was not a glaring effect the girl had produced; she had simply intensified her usual impression of warmth, her hint of the exotic. Coats noticed it; he looked at her in an expressionless way, but Sue knew what he thought, and her father also, when he looked at Ann and then looked away. Ann's new clothes set her more apart from them than ever.

And in spite of her good sense, Sue envied Ann's compelling quality. She would never have it, but Ann thought that since her father's return Sue had grown almost beautiful. Sue's face had grown fuller and now her cheeks almost always had color. She arranged her brown hair carefully and changed her dresses frequently. And she laughed much oftener, softly and with eyes alight. Sue was glad, of course, that Coats had brought better times to them all, but even supreme relief would not account for Sue's air of subdued happiness.

Ann had puzzled over the change in Sue, until one day she saw her watching Coats Penniman while he slept. He had come in tired out and had stretched himself on the couch in the living-room. Sue and Ann were sewing when he came in and Sue had sprung up, brought him a glass of water and begged him to lie down. Then Sue had taken up her sewing again. A little later, when Ann glanced up, wondering how she could slip away without being noticed, she saw that her father was asleep and that Sue sat with hands idle. She was bent forward a little, looking at Coats in utter absorption, her lips parted, her eyes misty and yearning, her heart laid bare for Ann to read. Sue had forgotten her, forgotten everything; there were only they two in the world, she and Coats.

Ann looked long and steadily, and, in those moments of hot surprise and then of clear understanding, she laid down every claim upon her father, became definitely nobody's child. Ann's own experience in love had rapidly taught her; she knew how it was with her father and Sue; Sue loved her father, and he liked Sue better than he liked any one else.

That was what Garvin said to her in the evenings when they met under the willows by the spring: that he loved her madly, and that she only liked him. She let him kiss her when he talked like that. It made her hot and restless to be plead with and urged and caressed. She did love him--the thought of losing his love was terrible--yet she was not happy, partly because she felt that Edward would be shocked if he knew. She had discovered that the brothers did not love each other any more than she and her father loved each other. She never mentioned Edward to Garvin, or Garvin to Edward.

The night before, Garvin had said startling things: that he was going into the city to live; that Nickolas Baird was arranging a city agency for a large automobile firm, and that he would probably have charge of it. Ann had been swept by a feeling of desolation until Garvin had added, "It won't be right away, but when the time comes will you go with me?"

Ann knew that she had been silent so long that he had grown desperate. He had put his arms about her and held her as if he were afraid that she would run from him. She had said, finally, "I couldn't bear it, to have you go away."

"But I shall have to go," he had told her positively. "I can't stay at Westmore--Edward is master of Westmore now.... And you want to go away--will you go with me, Ann?"

Then she had told him the thing that had troubled her from the beginning. "A Westmore marry a Penniman? We can't do it, Garvin--ever."

And Garvin had been silent then, thinking; she had felt his hands grow burning hot. Then he said steadily: "The city is not the Ridge, Ann. If you'll only love me completely, as I love you, what seems impossible here may be possible there. I want you, just mine to love and care for always."

Then she had told him with complete honesty. "I don't know whether I love you enough to marry you, but I can't bear to have you go away from me."

He had made his usual appeal, his own unhappiness, and Ann had almost yielded him her promise. But when she thought it all over she was not happy; she was so doubtful of her own feelings.

And she had another anxiety. Edward Westmore had given her a number of books, and she had seen him several times. Every day there had been a book for her in the chinkapin bushes. With the instinct for making herself doubly desired, she did not always stay to thank him. But sometimes she had waited in the hollow, and Edward came and sat at her feet. Then they talked. They had been less exciting but more satisfying hours than she had with Garvin. Edward told her wonderful things, interesting things. She felt like an ignorant child when she was with him, and yet she knew that he liked whatever she said, and that he loved to look at her, and that he touched her with a certain tender reverence. She thought of him as a very dear friend. It was some time before she told him how things were at the farm. Before she realized, she had told him about it, and he had said:

"Never mind, Ann, be patient. There is the future--you will leave the farm, one of these days."

He had spoken quietly enough, but Ann had seen the color come slowly into his face. Though he had turned to look at the water, she had seen and wondered. Was he beginning to care for her--as Garvin did? Such a possibility had never before occurred to her! He had seemed so much older than Garvin--old enough to be her father. It made her very uncomfortable, the first touch of self-consciousness she had had while with him. For several days after that, she had taken her book and hurried away.

Then Ben Brokaw had added to her anxiety. They talked together as always, she and Ben. Though he had said nothing, Ann knew that he understood about her father and herself. On the evening of that Sunday when she had met her father, she had found on her window-sill a box lined with pine-needles and on them several sprays of arbutus. She knew instantly that Ben had put them there, climbed to the roof to do it. His was the language of the woods: Ann knew from the pine-needles that Ben had been somewhere about when she had lain sobbing beneath the pine trees. And she had known just how to thank him; she had pinned a bit of the arbutus to her dress the next morning, and had smiled at him. "It's sweet," was all she had said. And all Ben said was "Um!"

Ben rarely mentioned Coats Penniman, but occasionally he had been satirical over the changes Coats was making. When the house became redolent of paint, he took his hammock and slept in the woods. "Paint is supposed to be a' awful good thing," he told Ann. "Even the ladies thinks it'll hide old age, but it don't deceive nobody. I never took no stock in paint--wood is one of the prettiest things on earth; why cover it up?"