Nobody's Child Part 26

"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, s.h.i.+fting 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 s.p.a.ce 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.s through a siege such as this unscathed. Or the occasional girl who, though capable of arousing mad pa.s.sions, 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 suns.h.i.+ne; 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 h.e.l.l-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.