Nobody's Child Part 36

"I was the cause of it all.... Any day it may come out who I am and worse things than that for you to bear. That was the reason I made you go away an' wouldn't answer your letters."

"Westmore and Penniman pride--there it is again!" Baird said. "I don't want your secret, dear. I think there's not much you could tell me that I haven't already guessed--in spite of Ben." He circled her with his arms. "Do you think that anything could drive me away from you now--after that kiss of yours?... Tell me again that you love me! Tell me!"

Her answer was a drooping glance and her slow smile, which Baird stole from her lips. "Ann, you're here in my arms and I'm holding you close, but I've a queer feeling that I'm clasping something that may slip away any moment--it makes me want to hold you tighter. It won't be like that by and by--when you're all mine?"

"I don't know," she said slowly. "I'll always be wanting to be loved an'

not thinkin' so much about whether I'm lovin' or not.... I know it was like heaven when Edward told me he was my father and how much he loved me. I'd been wanting to be loved like that--all my life--"

Baird pondered her answer for a moment.... She had not pretended; she had told the truth about herself; the woman in her answered to the man in him, but there was, deep in her, a capacity for loving that he had not yet touched. It was guarded by hesitancy, elusiveness, and, not selfishness exactly, nor timidity, but an indefinable inaccessibility that was simply Ann. Judith was more forceful and less complex....

Perhaps if Ann had striven over him as he had striven over her, the thing he wanted to grasp would be his. Edward had come nearer to the indefinable thing than he had.... And yet, it was her inaccessible quality that had drawn him, and that made him hold her the tighter now.

Baird remembered something Ben had written: "... I ain't no wise judge of women, but I've noticed that some of them is just naturally giving-hearted, and some has to grow up to it. The kind that has to grow up to it generally loves most to be loved. They seems to grow up to loving by being loved, that is, if they're loved the right way." Ben had defined Ann very accurately.... But how was he to discover the right way of loving her? Certainly not until he possessed her.

Baird looked down at Ann. "Probably it's your nature not to give much, and I love to struggle for all I get. You're all quivering nerves, a mixture of snow and suns.h.i.+ne, and I've no nerves to speak of--I'm all fight. I think we're suited to each other." He spoke decidedly. "Ann, they're sending me to Europe; I'm going day after to-morrow--will you go with me? Will you marry me to-morrow, and come away from all this?"

She was silent for a long time. "I'd rather wait--till you come back,"

she said finally.

It was the answer he expected. She was very true to herself, and he liked it. "I'll be gone for a good many months," he said quietly. "What will you do while I'm gone--stay here?"

"I--they want me to go to school.... I can't stay here. My father wanted me to be educated--I'm so ignorant. He told me he meant to make a wonderful woman of me. That I would grow to be a more charmin' an'

wonderful woman than Judith.... But those things he thought because he loved me so much." She spoke bleakly.

"You'll be a deal more wonderful than Judith, because you have a quality she doesn't possess," Baird said. "Do you want to go to school, Ann?"

There was actual terror in her reply. "No. They'd all be strangers--there's n.o.body would care anything about me."

There it was, her one great need, the thing upon which he must build.

Baird kissed her breath away. "You sweet reluctant thing! Do you think I'd go away without you!" His voice suddenly deepened. "Ann, you want to be loved and I want to love. I've been _hungry_ for you, literally starved. I _want_ you--you can't understand how much I want you. You'll travel, and you can study, and I'll be satisfied just to study you....

Come with me, Ann!"

"An' you don't mind taking me and trouble both together--for there may be big trouble?'

"I've told you--I'll take anything, so you come with it."

The dusk had gathered rapidly; close as they were to each other, their faces had grown indistinct. Ann's answer was groping hands lifted to him, a pressure of slim fingers on his neck. But when he tried to kiss her she bent her head, smothering his caresses with her hair. "I must say 'yes' my own way," she objected.

"Well--say it your way," Baird whispered, husky from emotion.

She lifted her face and brushed his cheek with her lashes. "A b.u.t.terfly's kiss," she said with soft gaiety.

"You've pretty ways--dangerous ways--" Baird said chokingly. "I'll love you too much--that'll be the trouble." He strove for control. "Ann--do you remember what you said to the stars, the night I didn't know my own heart--when you told me what love was?"

"Yes, I remember."

"Repeat it, won't you--I want to hear you say it."

Ann's slurred syllables again made music of it: "Love is wantin'

somebody for all your own--so badly you feel sure you can't live without them ... an' at the same time bein' such good friends with them that you care more about makin' them happy than being happy yourself."

"There's a bit of the Golden Rule in that," Baird said. "That's what makes it difficult. Do you think we can live up to it, Ann?"

Ann answered him to the best of her ability.... Years later she answered the same question with a better understanding.

CONCLUSION

Is it permissible to steal a fragment from later history in order to elucidate what has gone before? It is a responsibility the fictional historian must sometimes take.

Judith and Ann and Baird are of the present. Life has woven them into subsequent history, drawing from a skein as tangled as was the skein of thirteen years ago. The fragment I pilfer is the conclusion of a letter from Judith to Ann, penned in our day, and part of another story:

"I have written you a few facts, Ann. I have one more thing to tell you, something that reaches back beyond these years of mutual antagonism.... The day after Nickolas Baird married you, Coats Penniman came to see me, and told me the following: that Sue had found certain letters of Garvin's to you which gave him the erroneous impression that Garvin had wronged you. Then he went, hot from reading them, to the Mine Banks, thinking he would find you with Garvin. That he met Garvin at the first ore-pit and accused him, and that Garvin denied it. That he gave Garvin the lie and they drew their pistols, that they fired, and that Garvin wounded him in the shoulder, disabling his pistol arm. That Garvin had leveled to fire again, when, suddenly, Edward appeared and tried to hold Garvin back, and that Garvin's pistol went off. Coats thought the shot had gone wild until he saw Edward drop. He said that Garvin laughed wildly then and ran back into the Banks.

"Coats said that Edward had pa.s.sed instantly. He realized then some of the complications that were certain to follow, and that he went directly home, and that Sue drove him into the city, where he had his wound dressed.

"Coats said that he had had no intention of s.h.i.+rking his responsibility, that he had simply waited for events to shape themselves, and that what followed made any action on his part unnecessary, but that he had determined to come to me with his confession as soon as he felt that your future was a.s.sured. He told me to proceed against him if I thought fit, that he would face any charge I made. I thought I had paid my last debt to Westmore, but I was mistaken; I told Coats to take his secret back with him and keep it.

"And I have kept it until to-day. Now I turn it over to you, together with my confession: for the sake of my family's good name, I did the thing that saved you from disgrace; I saved one brother at, what seemed to me, a lesser expense to the other.

"Take what I have told you and add it to your already full experience of lives inextricably tangled because of you.

Wherever you have cast your net, you have brought in a heavy haul.... JUDITH."

And from Ann's reply also a fragment:

"... and what you have told me is not new to me. Coats told me long ago, while I still lay ill. Coats told me, and dear old Ben told me all he knew--I made them tell me, for I knew that my father had never forsaken me--_of his own free will_.

"And, Judith, I also know just why you have written all this to me. Throughout these years it has been a Westmore pitted against a n.o.body's child. But I feel no bitterness, only an immense interest, for out of it all has grown a wonderful thing.... ANN."

THE END