Nobody's Child

"An' the Banks called back, sharp, like they do, 'Who's there?' but it was Nimrod whinnied… It was the colonel gone to bed in the road, an' Nimrod standin' stock-still by his side, like he always did, till some one passin' would lay his master acrost his back again.

"Miss Judith sat down when we knew, an' she sat straight as a rod; there's all the pride of all the Westmo's in Miss Judith, and was then, though she weren't no older than you. 'Some gentleman has met with an accident,' she says, very steady. 'Help him to his horse, Ben,' an' I did.

"But the colonel weren't too far gone not to recognize a petticoat – he had a' instinc' for anything feminine an' his manners couldn't be beat. I'd put his hat on his head, but he swep' it off.

"'My grateful thanks to you, Madame,' he says in his fine voice. 'I met with a little accident. I shall hope to thank you in person to-morrow.' He were too far gone to know his own daughter, but he hadn't forgot his Westmo' manners.

"An' Miss Judith sat straight as ever, an' all she says was, 'Drive on, Ben.'… That's Westmo' for you!" Ben concluded, with deep admiration.

Ann had heard the story before, and always it had brought the color to her cheeks, for it stirred her imagination, but she had never flushed more deeply than now. "You like Garvin, don't you, Ben?" she asked softly.

Ben eyed her in his shrewd way, "Yes, he's got feelin' for the woods – a born hunter. Trouble is, everything's game to Garvin, Ann."

Ann was afraid to say anything more. "It was a bag-fox they had this morning," she remarked for diversion.

"Shame!" Ben said curtly. Then, irrelevantly, "I reckon I'll choose Westmo' fo' my nex' shootin'. I mean to tote my traps over there to-night."

Ann was recalled to her errand. "You mean you'd go away from us, Ben?" she asked in well-simulated surprise.

Ben's eyes twinkled. "I'm tellin' you news now, ain't I! What did you come down here for?"

Ann laughed; she knew it was no use to pretend. "You're so smart, Ben – you know what's in people's heads … Aunt Sue told me. She's just heart-broken, an' I said I'd come an' beg you. How could we have got on without you this winter, and how are we going to get on without you now? Don't you go, Ben!"

"Reckon Coats can run this place without me," Ben said determinedly.

"I don't believe he can," Ann persisted. "I know he'll want you."

"Not he. I know Coats Penniman."

"Of course you know him better than I do," Ann said wistfully. "Don't you like my father, Ben?"

Ben moved restlessly. "He's a Penniman an' awful set in his ways – Coats Penniman's a fearful steady, determined man – though that's not sayin' anything against him."

"Aunt Sue says he is the best man who ever walked," Ann said earnestly.

"She's reason to think that way… I reckon I don't like too much goodness, Ann – not the kind that's unhuman good. That's because I'm jest 'Bear' Brokaw, though… No, I'm goin'."

Ann could not puzzle out just what he meant. She let it drop, for thinking of it made her unhappy. She moved nearer and put her hand on Ben's great hairy paw, stroking it as she would have stroked the collie. "You stay, Ben?" she pleaded softly. "Just stay a while and see how it will be. Stay 'cause I want you to. What'll I do without you to talk to – if my father doesn't care about me?.. An' maybe he won't, you know – I can't tell… You think he will, though, don't you, Ben?" It was the anxiety uppermost in Ann and must out.

Ben's little animal eyes were very bright as he looked down at her, and, whatever his thoughts, his expression was not unkindly.

"You reckon if you smiled at the spring the water would run up hill to you?" he asked. "You sure could bring the birds down from the trees, Ann." This was certainly one way of avoiding her question.

Ann knew Bear Brokaw as well as he knew her. She knew she had won. "And we'll make the swimmin'-pool down in the woods – soon as it's warm," she coaxed. "We'll have fun this spring, Ben." This was a project that lay close to Ben's heart. His room might be redolent of animal skins, but Ben himself was not; he had a beaver's love for the water.

"Um!" he growled, his eyes twinkling.

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 attitude 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 circumstance, 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 institution. 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 assured 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 goddess. 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 analysis 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.