Nobody's Child

"Sunday – to-morrow."

"When did you know?" Ann was quite white now.

"Last night – Ben Brokaw brought the letter."

"And you-all kept it to yourselves!" All the hurt and isolation of Ann's seventeen years spoke in her face and in her voice.

Sue was surprised by the passion of anger and pain. It was a tribute to Ann's power of concealment; she had not suspected this pent feeling.

"I didn't know you'd care so much," Sue said in a troubled way. "It seemed like you didn't care about anything, you're always so – gay. An' Coats has been away since you were a baby. I didn't think you'd care so much. I wanted to tell you, but your grandpa didn't want I should till we'd talked it over. And I was worried about your grandpa too – he was so excited."

"Grandpa hates me! And father must hate me, too, or he wouldn't have left me when I was a baby and never even have written to me!" Ann exclaimed passionately, restraint thrown to the winds.

"Ann! What's come over you to talk like that! Your grandpa doesn't hate you! If you only knew!.. You see, Ann, you've got a gay, I-don't-care way with you, and it worries your grandpa. He's seen a terrible lot of trouble. And since the stroke he had four years ago he's felt he was no good for work any more, and what was going to become of the place. It's all those things has worried him."

Ann said nothing. She simply stood, quivering under her aunt's hands.

Sue's voice lost its warmth, dropped into huskiness again. "You don't understand, Ann, so don't you be thinking things that isn't so." She drew Ann to the bed. "Sit down a minute till I tell you something… It's always seemed to me foolishness to talk about things that are past, so I never told you, but now Coats is comin' you ought to know: your mother died when you were born, Ann, and it almost killed Coats. He loved your mother dearer than I've ever known any man love a woman. Every time he looked at you it brought it back to him. We went through a lot of trouble, Ann – dreadful trouble. It was too much for Coats to bear, an' he just went away from it, out west. But he wasn't forsakin' us – it wasn't like that. Why, all these years his thoughts have been here, and he's sent us money right along – we couldn't have got on if he hadn't." Sue's voice rose. "There's no better man in all the world than Coats Penniman, Ann!.. And I know. He was your mother's own cousin and mine – we grew up with him, right here in this house – and I know like no one else does how fine Coats is!" Sue was shaken as Ann had never seen her, flushed and quivering and bright-eyed.

Ann's eyes were brimming. "But I wasn't to blame."

"Of course you weren't to blame," Sue said pityingly. "I'm just telling you because I want you to understand and be patient if Coats seems like a stranger. Don't you feel hard to him. Just you remember that you're a Penniman and that the Pennimans always stand together and that there never was a better Penniman walked than Coats… Just you do your duty and be patient, Ann, and your reward will come. I've lived on that belief for many years, and whether I get my reward or not, I'll know that I've done the thing that's right, and that's something worth living for."

Sue had struck a responsive cord when she called upon the family pride. Ann's shoulders lifted. And hope, an ineradicable part of Ann, had also lifted. She looked up at Sue. "Perhaps father will get to love me," she said wistfully.

Sue drew an uneven breath. Then she said steadily, "Perhaps he will, Ann… Just you do right, like I tell you – that's your part." She got up then. "We won't talk any more now – I've got too much to do. An' there's something I want you should do, an' that's to talk to Ben Brokaw. He says he's goin'. He's sitting down in the basement glum as a bear. When your grandpa tol' him Coats was comin' he up an' said he'd go – there was goin' to be too many men about the place. I couldn't do anything with him. But he's got to stay – anyway till Coats gets some one else. You see if you can persuade him."

"Yes, I'll try – " Ann promised absently, for she was thinking of something else. "Aunt Sue, does father hate the Westmores too?"

Sue's start was perceptible. She stared at the girl. "Why are you askin'?" she demanded sharply.

Ann grew crimson, and there was a touch of defiance in her answer. "You and grandpa hate them – I wondered if he did."

"Have any of them spoken to you?" Sue asked. In all her knowledge of Sue, Ann had never heard her speak so sharply.

It frightened her, though it did not alter the sense of injustice to the Westmores which Ann had been cherishing. She gave her version of what had happened that morning, and Sue listened intently. When Ann had finished, she bent suddenly and smoothed the bed, averting her face.

"Just like him!" she said in a voice that was not steady. "Just like every Westmore I've ever known. 'Do-as-I-please' and 'what-do-I-care!' They've heart neither for woman nor beast. It's brought them to what they are. Edward Westmore may think his wife's money'll build up the family, but it won't. Coats will do more with his little twenty thousand than Edward with his big fortune." She lifted and brushed the fallen hair from her face, a gesture expressive of exasperation. "And to think they dare ride over our land!" She looked at Ann as Ann had never seen her look before. "The next time a Westmore tries to break his neck, just you drive on, and if any one of them ever speaks to you, turn your back on him."

"But what have they done to us?" Ann persisted.

Sue quieted, a drop to her usual patient manner. "Never mind what they have done," she said wearily. "There never was a Westmore who was friend to a Penniman. But I don't want to think about them – least of all to-day… Just you go on and talk to Ben – that'll be helping me, Ann. There's a world of things to be done before to-morrow… And go quietly – your grandpa's lying down in the parlor."

Ann went, still flushed and unconvinced. What was the sense of hating like that, just because one's father hated before you? And it was plain that her father shared in the family enmity.

Then defiance slipped from Ann. Her father was coming! Would he be nice to her? It was not natural for a father to be cold to his child. And she was grown up now, and pretty. This recently discovered asset of hers meant a great deal to Ann. And if her father was bringing money with him to the farm everything would be changed. To Ann, anticipation was one of the wonderful things in life.

IV

BUT IF HE FAILED HER?

Ann had learned early that with every one except her grandfather smiles won far more for her than argument. When she put her head into Ben Brokaw's room she was smiling, though her eyes were observant enough. The basement was the "wash-room" and the "churning-room," with one corner partitioned off for the combination of boarder and hired man that, for the last four years, her grandfather's disabilities had made necessary. As was customary on the Ridge, the negroes lived in their cabins, "taking out" their rent in work. Ann had tiptoed in and studied Ben and his surroundings through the half-open door.

There was no furniture in the little room. Ben's bed was a canvas hammock, and the decorations of the place were of his own design: several dozen mole-skins neatly tacked to the walls; coon-skins and opossum-skins, a fox-skin and a beautifully striped wild-cat-skin were all stretched in the same fashion. A gun, a pistol and fishing tackle hung above the hammock, sharing the space with a wide-winged, dried bat. The hide of a Jersey cow, its soft yellow stained by marks of muddy feet, carpeted the floor, so much of it as was not occupied by traps, bird's nests and other woodland litter, and the entire place smelled of animals.

On the hammock, feet firmly planted on the floor, sat a phenomenally long-armed, broad-chested, squat man who rolled his huge head and shoulders gently from side to side, while his hands deftly whittled the figure-four intended for the box-trap at his feet. His heavy face, circled by a shock of rough brown hair, suggested the hereditary drunkard, it was so reddened and ridged and snout-nosed. It was his appearance that had earned him the sobriquet, "Bear Brokaw." He rolled like an inebriate when he walked, yet never in his forty years on the Ridge had Bear Brokaw been known to "take a drink." He knew and was known by every soul on the Ridge, and by many in the adjoining counties, for he had worked, in intermittent fashion, on almost every farm and estate on the Ridge, more that he might be free to shoot and snare than for the wages he earned. Ben knew the intimate habits of every wild thing, and the family secrets of mankind as well, and plied a thrifty trade in skins. He was adored by the children on the Ridge, and in spite of his queer personality was respected by their elders.

"What are you doin', Ben?" Ann asked.

The small brown eyes he raised to Ann were as bright as a squirrel's and at the same time shrewdly intelligent. Just now they were reddened by an angry light and he looked as morose as the lumbering animal he resembled.

"Fixin' this here trap." His voice was a growling base; his manner indicated that he wished to be let alone.

Ann selected the cleanest spot on the cowhide and seated herself with arms embracing her knees. Ever since she could remember Ann had conversed with Bear Brokaw seated in this fashion, at his feet, and many had been the secrets each had told the other. For Ben had worked on the Penniman farm, or, rather, had shot and trapped there, as the desire took him, for thirty years. He and Ann were fast friends; both were of the open country.

Ann had cast about in her mind for a topic that would be arresting. "Ben, Garvin Westmore's sorrel is dead," she announced dramatically.

Ben stopped both his work and his rolling motion. "What you sayin'?"

"He broke his leg, Ben."

"Whee – ee – " he whistled, through his teeth. "How, now?"

Ann told him the story, as she had told it to Sue.

"An' Garvin up an' shot him – I can jest see him at it," Ben muttered, more to himself than to Ann.

"It was better than having the poor thing suffer," Ann declared with some warmth.

Ben shook his head in a non-committal way. But he did not take up his work. He looked down, still shaking his head.

Bear Brokaw had solved many problems for Ann; he had reasons for most things. She changed her tone. "Why did he do like that, Ben? I wondered why?"

"'Cause he couldn't help it."

"You don't mean – because he liked doing it?" Ann asked; Baird's remark had clung to her memory.

Ben looked up quickly. "Why you askin' that, Ann?"

Ann was silenced. She would have to tell too much if she explained. She was usually quick-witted. "Why, you spoke like that."

"Don't you be seein' meanings where there ain't none," he growled.

Ann knew that he did not mean to explain. But she had succeeded in drawing him from his grievance, and that had been her first object. He did not take up the figure-four again; instead, he was meditative.

"That there sorrel was the best hunter in the county," he said regretfully. "He was great grandson to ole Colonel Westmo's white Nimrod. That was one horse, Ann! A regular fightin' devil! He jest naturally loved the smell o' powder. The colonel took him to the war when he was a colt, an' fifteen years after the colonel was still ridin' ole Nimrod – ridin' him to the hounds, too. The colonel jest lived on his back, an' Nimrod were faithfuller than a dog. When there weren't no huntin', the colonel were in the habit of takin' in every half-way house fo' miles, an' Nimrod always there to tote him back to Westmo', whether the colonel was laid acrost his back like a sack o' oats, or sittin' shoulders square like he always did when not soaked through an' through. Nimrod knew when to go careful… I mind one night – that was the year I was huntin' on Westmo' an' helpin' Miss Judith run the place – I was bringin' Miss Judith back up the Post-Road from the station, an' where the Westmo' Road cuts into the Mine Banks we come plumb on a white objec'. I don't take no stock in ghosts, all I've ever seen has turned out to be a human or a' animal or a branch wavin' in the wind. But that bit of road has got a bad name. Them convicts the Westmo's worked to death over a hundred years ago, over there in the Mine Banks, is said to come out an' stand clost to the Post-Road, waitin' for a Westmo' to do for him. 'Twas in that cut the colonel's grandfather was shot down from his horse, an' nobody never did find out who done it. An' it was there the Ku-Klux used to gather – guess the colonel had his share in that, though… Well, there was that white thing, an' our horse give a snort an' stopped, an' my heart come up in my mouth. But Miss Judith, she stood straight up in the buggy.

"'Who's there?' she called out, quick an' clear.