Nobody's Child

It did not bring her back to consciousness, but hope had him now, coupled with a definite purpose: to get her away as soon as possible, back to her home. It would not be possible to carry her through that network of briers, but if he made his way up the creek to where there was less undergrowth he could reach the pasture. Then he could get his horse.

It was no easy matter to carry her limp body and still keep a hand free for the lantern. He made his slow way around rocks, half the time wading in water, more than once almost falling. He was nearly exhausted by combined anxiety and exertion when circumstance favored him; he came to a wide path tracked by the cattle, an easy ascent. When he reached the pasture, he laid his burden down, put the lantern where it would serve as a guide for his return.

He skirted the undergrowth along the creek without much difficulty, avoided the brier-patch, and came to the rail fence, shortly above where his horse was tied. He took down a tier of rails that he might lead him through, and his return was even more rapid than his going.

To mount his horse with Ann laid across his shoulder taxed every muscle in his body, and to hold her inert weight half-seated before him and dragging over one arm while he kept one hand free to guide his horse took both strength and skill.

Baird found the Back Road by keeping, as nearly as he could judge, parallel with the Post-Road. With his horse's head turned homeward, his task was not so difficult, for the animal strode along the familiar way, needing no guidance. In his relief, Baird kissed Ann's upturned face. "It won't be long now," he whispered. In his stress he had forgotten the hole in the bridge; forgotten Edward; forgotten Garvin; forgotten every one but Ann; forgotten even himself.

Their entrance into the woods was like passing from a darkness in which objects could be sensed into the thicker blackness of a tunnel. Baird could tell where the road led off to the club only by the turn his horse made. He forced him to back and then urged him straight ahead. Once on the Penniman Road, the animal could be trusted to keep on. That he did keep on and with the lessened speed of the horse walking away from his stable was the only guarantee Baird had that they were going in the right direction.

In time they emerged from the tunnel, into what seemed, by contrast, a normality. Baird had loathed the palpable blackness that had shrouded Ann's vague outline; he had seemed to be embracing an unreality. When they neared the barn and a horse in the enclosure whinnied, it was like hearing a friendly voice. Baird forced his horse to circle the barn, started him on the road leading to the front of the house, which the animal took gladly because again headed for the club, and checked him before the vague black mass which was the house. There was no lighted window, no sign of anxiety or of welcome.

Baird dismounted and laid Ann gently on the grass. If there was any one in that apparently heartless house to whom he could entrust her, he would ride for a doctor. He left her on the grass – better that two should move her with the care two could give – and went to the living-room door. He knocked, then pounded, then called, and was answered by total silence.

A chill touched him; was the whole world dead? Where were they all at this hour of the night? He lighted a match and, for the first time that night, looked at his watch. It was only a few minutes after ten. Baird's disbelief was so complete that he put the watch to his ear, and even when he found it ticking steadily he could not credit what it had told him. It seemed to Baird that he had spent hours under the bridge and that he had agonized half the night over Ann. But there was one comfort, if his watch was right, Ann had not been unconscious half the night. And her family were probably simply out for the evening and would be back.

He tried the door, found it unlocked, and, going in, lighted the lamp. Then he brought Ann to the couch. He could see her distinctly now, and his heart contracted as he looked at her; the limpness of her body and the waxen immobility of her face were terrifying, an inertia as complete as death. She was slipping away, and he did not know how to call her back.

As long as Baird had been fighting his way along through the night, he had been hopeful. But that vacant house!.. If he went for help, Ann would die while he was gone; there was no doctor within four miles. If his ignorance struggled with that persistent unconsciousness, he might blunder fatally. He felt desperate.

XXXIII

FROM DESPAIR TO HOPE

Baird had sat for an hour with his fingers on Ann's wrist; from twelve o'clock until the living-room clock struck one. He had made his decision. As he had expressed it to himself, "I'll stand by my job."

Once, in South America, he and a companion had worked over a man who was dying from exhaustion. They had administered stimulants and had wrapped the man in hot blankets. Baird had ransacked the living-room and the kitchen, had come upon the family supply of simple remedies, among them a bottle of spirits of camphor, and, in the cedar chest beneath the stairs, had found a feather-bed laid away for the summer. He had built a fire in the kitchen stove and had heated water.

Baird had set to work then upon Ann's cold limp body, had taken off her shoes and stockings and had chafed her icy feet with hot water and camphor. He had opened her dress and had rubbed her chest and her arms and her hands with it. Then he had wrapped her closely in the feather-bed, and, lastly, he had tried to make her swallow a little of the mixture.

Though he had worked quickly, it had taken time, a lifetime of effort and of waiting, it had seemed to Baird, before even a slight warmth had crept into her body. When his fingers discovered a throb in her wrists, Baird was uplifted; he sprang from despair to hope. When her chest began gently to lift and fall, he climbed to the height of gratitude.

For an hour he had sat almost motionless, feeling life grow beneath his fingers, watching the ghastly white in Ann's face change to a more life-like hue. It seemed to him that the life in her was trying to answer to the life in him, that each throb of his heart transmitted a little and still a little more of its bounding vitality to her, and, gradually, a curious certainty had taken possession of Baird: that through his finger-tips he was pouring his superabundant strength into Ann's limp body, while with all his force he was willing her to live.

The conviction possessed him so completely that it blotted out the disjointed thoughts that had obtruded while he had longed for other assistance than his own: his anxiety over the absence of Ann's people; the suggestion that they had traveled by the Post-Road and had fallen into the death-trap he had left unguarded; his pangs of retrospective jealousy; his hopes for the future.

He was so concentrated upon his idea that all extraneous thoughts and impressions had faded from his brain. The collie had thrust himself in through the partly-open door and had nosed Baird's absorption and Ann's muffled form, and Baird had scarcely noticed him; the murky, indeterminate night had resolved itself into a steady rain, and Baird had not been aware of it; the clock had struck a single definite note, and Baird had not heard it, for Ann had stirred at last, had moved her head and sighed.

With the same curious certainty that his strength had led her back to life, and that if he called to her now she would answer, Baird bent to her ear: "Ann – ?" he said softly. He called to her several times, softly, insistently, waited, then called again. When, finally, her eyelids lifted, he was so imbued with the certainty that speech would follow that the sweep of relief did not unsteady him. She was looking at him widely, fully, but without blankness. She knew him.

He waited, giving her time. It seemed to Baird that her half-awakened thoughts crossed her eyes like slowly-moving shadows. Then her gaze turned slowly from him to the room, to the half-open door and the blackness beyond. And suddenly recollection appeared to leap up in her, twitching the muscles in her face until it set in a mask of pain. She turned strained eyes on him, and speech broke from her, a voice husky but demanding:

"Is it true, what he told me – that Edward was dying?"

Baird had not thought it would be this way. He had not considered what Ann would say when she spoke; all he had thought was that, if only she could speak, he would know whether or not she was injured, whether she was in pain. Baird's native quickness and coolness almost forsook him; he retained only presence of mind enough to grasp the fact that it was Edward she loved, and that he dared not thrust the truth upon her suddenly and abnormally active brain.

He parleyed until he could think. "Who told you that, dear?"

Her speech came quickly and thickly: "Garvin. He came for me. He said Edward's horse threw him an' he was dyin' an' wanted me."

Baird had done his thinking, and had hazarded a guess as well. "He didn't tell you the truth," he said clearly and decidedly. "He simply wanted you to come with him."

She said nothing, but she relaxed; the rigid muscles in her face softened into relief and her eyes grew cloudy and slowly closed. The spurt of abnormal animation passed.

With a new fear tugging at him, Baird watched the moisture gather on her forehead and about her lips and noted the utter laxness of her hands and the weighted heaviness of her eyelids. Was she slipping into unconsciousness again? He bent over her.

"Ann, does your back hurt?" he begged.

She breathed rather than spoke the word, "No – "

"Do you feel any pain?"

She moved her head in denial.

"You're sleepy – that's all?"

She did not answer.

If she had fainted, it was a warm breathing unconsciousness like the sleep of exhaustion. And she had said she was not in pain… As he listened to her regular breathing Baird gradually lost his fear; nature was helping her now. He loosened the hot thing in which she was wrapped, and sat with her hand in his; if she grew feverish he would know it. There was nothing over which he could exert himself; he must simply wait; sit there till morning, if no one came.

For the first time since the struggle had begun Baird thought of himself. He was fearfully tired, sore and aching and wet; he was wet and caked with mud almost to his waist. He was experiencing the reaction. Depression settled upon him… So it was Edward she loved. That sort of love would hold for a long time; there was no hope for him… That she had not been crushed or broken was one of the wonders, but she was not out of danger – her spine might be injured… A wave of anger swept Baird, arousing him a little from depression: where were her people throughout all this tragedy? Why had they left her alone in the house for Garvin to mislead? For that must have been the way of it – he had told her a half-truth in order to get her away… Then he sank back into depression.

When the clock struck two, Baird looked up at the slowly-traveling hands; the next would be the deadest hour of the night.

XXXIV

BEN BROKAW EXPLAINS

"Does she know about Edward?" Baird asked of Ben. He had followed Ben to the barn, and that was his first anxious question.

"Yes. I tol' her. She had to be told – I couldn't keep it from her. I tol' her before Sue come."

"God! How did she take it?"

Ben's eyes lighted. "Like a Penniman – or a Westmo' would take it!"

"You had courage," Baird breathed in relief. "I didn't dare tell her."

"I knowed who I talked to," Ben returned deeply. "Ann growed up under my han' – I know the blood that's in Ann. She's got courage, Ann has – I weren't afraid."

It was Ben Brokaw, not the Penniman family, who had come in out of the darkness and the rain and had watched over Ann while Baird had gone for the doctor. Between three and four o'clock, the sleeping collie had roused and gone out, and a few minutes later Baird had heard the approach of some one. When he sprang up, it was Ben who had confronted him, dripping wet, splashed with mud, small eyes peering and amazed. He had looked at Ann, prostrate, an instant of partial comprehension, then he had looked, as redly as any enraged animal, at Baird.

Baird's explanation had been succinct, and, after a moment of grief-stricken understanding, Ben had shown even a shrewder grasp of the situation than Baird himself. Their consultation had been a hurried one, but when Baird galloped off through the rain he had been supported by the certainty that he had left both love and wisdom watching over Ann. There was a capable brain and a father's tender heart in Bear Brokaw's grotesque body – and a dog's faithfulness.

It was after sunrise when Baird had brought the doctor to the Pennimans' door, and it was Sue Penniman, haggard but collected, not Ben, who had opened to them.

"How is she?" had been Baird's instant question.

"We think she's better. She's awake an' able to talk."

Baird had held Sue's eye. "I've told the doctor Ben sent me for him. I couldn't tell him anything about the accident, only that she must have lain unconscious for a long time."

Sue met his look steadily. "We'll tell him about it," she said.

"Where is Ben?" Baird had asked.

"He just went out to the barn."

Baird had followed and had found Ben seated on a box in the wagon-shed, whittling and swaying as he worked. Any one who knew Ben well could have told Baird that Ben always whittled and swayed when thinking deeply or when perturbed; that he always carried bits of pine in his pockets, and that under his handling they usually became figure-fours. Ben had heard Baird's hasty approach, but he had not looked up until Baird was upon him with his anxious question.

Ben thought, as he watched Baird's partial relief, that the young fellow looked pretty thoroughly "done." The rain had washed most of the mud from his trousers, but he was still well smudged with it and soaking wet, his face gray-white and his eyes red-rimmed.

"You better set down while you wait fo' what the doctor has to say," he advised in a kindly growl. "Emergencies had oughter be met standin' and suspense sittin'. You've stood up pretty good against the first, reckon you can do the right thing by the second… There's a box strong enough to hol' you, over there."

Baird brought it and sat down opposite Ben.

"You're about as wet and all in as I am," he remarked, in answer to the kindly note in Ben's voice. The big creature was just as Baird had seen him last, wet and muddy and queerly mottled about his cheeks and nose, red patches upon the nearest approach to pallor his tanned face could attain.

"A wettin' ain't nothin' to me," Ben said, "but I done somethin' the same things you done last night." Then, either to ease Baird's suspense or for some other reason, he continued: "I was tellin' you last night it was me foun' the hole in the bridge an' what was below, an' we agreed I must have come on it a little after you'd took Ann away… You see, when I run to Westmo' to tell Judith about Edward, she says, 'Ben, Garvin ain't here. You take the word to the Copeleys first, go quick, then try to meet up with Garvin.' I done what she says. I had a hard time findin' Garvin, though. I got the first word of him at the club. Everybody were gone from there to tell everybody else what a Westmo' had done to hisself, an' the cook were the only one left. He said a while befo' he'd heard some one gettin' out Garvin's automobile from the shed – seems he'd been keepin' it there, at the club. The cook reckoned it was Garvin that some one must have tol' Garvin what had happened, an' he'd took the automobile so's to get to Westmo' in a hurry. I started down the Post-Road then, an' I come upon what had happened. My lord!" Ben paused, then went on. "Well, I dragged some rails acrost the road an' went fo' help, an' we got the las' man bearin' the name of Westmo' back to his house."

In spite of his efforts, Ben's voice had grown unsteady, and he whittled violently and in silence for a few moments, until speech escaped him: "It begun to rain on us befo' we got to Westmo', like the sky were weepin' over the sins of them that brung us into the world. That po' thing we was carryin' – 'tweren't none of his fault. An' we builds jails an' madhouses fo' the like of him, an' jest goes right on fillin' them… Garvin weren't never jest right, Mr. Baird. Them two youngest Westmo's – Sarah an' Garvin – 'twere their pa should answer fo' them … an' yet, what right hev I talkin' like that! There didn't no one teach sense to men like the ole colonel an' ole Mr. Penniman. I've jest got one big pity fo' every one of them – particular fo' them that's left."

"He nearly did for Ann – I'm not thinking of his forebears," Baird said bitterly.

Ben collected himself. "He was jest out of his mind – you can't judge him like you would a sane man… You know, of co's', that Edward cared a lot for Ann and she fo' him, an' that Garvin were mad over her, like he would be, an' that she wouldn't have him. If you don't know, I'm telling you, an' fo' Ann's sake, it's a thing we ain't goin' to speak about to others. I'll tell you, too, what Ann tol' me when her an' me were talkin', befo' Sue come back. Ann tol' me she was sittin' in the dark on the porch an' Garvin come up sudden an' tol' her Edward were hurt an' dyin' an' askin' fo' her to come. He'd brought his automobile to the cedar road, an' that's what he must have been doin' when the cook heard him. I know his horse was at the club barn when I was there, because I seen it there. Ann says she went off quick with him, she weren't thinkin' of nobody but Edward, an' they started fo' the Post-Road. She didn't suspicion at first that Garvin weren't in his right mind, but when they began to tear down the Post-Road he spoke queer, an' jest befo' they struck the bridge she was sure he was clean mad. She was so scart she stood up, an' the next thing they was throwed. It was her standin' up saved her, I reckon. Jest what drove Garvin mad we'll never know. How much he knowed of what's happened, or jest what he intended to do, it's beyond us to tell, but that he was clean beside hisself, that's certain."

Baird had listened to Ben's explanation. It fitted in with much that he knew and with much that he had suspected, and he guessed that Ben could have told him a great deal more had he chosen to do so. Ben loved Ann, as a father loves his daughter, so much Baird had discovered during the night, and, also, that Ben was faithful to both the Pennimans and the Westmores. In his weariness and anxiety, Baird refused to think of it. What did it matter – if only Ann pulled through unshattered?

Baird was sick with fatigue, racked still by anxiety, and angered by Coats Penniman's neglect of his daughter. "Where were Ann's people all night – why did they leave Ann to fall into a trap like that?" he demanded.

Ben worked away at his stick. "That were a mystery to me, till Sue come. It was natural enough, though, how that happened. Coats, he had to go to the city, an' Sue, she drove in with him, early in the evenin'. They'd left word with Ann they'd be gone late. They knowed I'm always here in the evenin' – I ain't moved off this place a single evenin', not in weeks. They weren't worryin' about Ann's not bein' safe. But last evenin' I weren't here, an' you know why. Sue tells me they were drivin' Billy, an' you know what he is. Come time to get home, they had trouble with him. He's a devil, that horse, a good traveler, but that's all. He give Coats' shoulder a bad wrench. There weren't no trains they could get till near mornin', an' Sue she took the first train out an' walked up from the station, leavin' Coats to dispose of Billy and come out later. Sue were worried to death over her father an' Ann, she looked like a ghost when she come in, an' ready to drop, but she come to when she seen what trouble she'd come back to… That's Penniman fo' you, jest like Miss Judith's stiff upper lip is Westmo'. These southern ladies, Mr. Baird, whose mothers done stood fas' while their men was bein' shot to pieces in the war – their mothers' blood's in them, all right! They'll stand up to anything, they will, an' gamble on a chance cooler nor any man!" Ben spoke with a profound admiration that dignified even his language.

Baird thought of Judith and how he had bent to her hand. But he had learned a surprising thing. "You don't tell me that old Mr. Penniman was in the house all the time I was there?" he exclaimed. "Why, I pounded the door and shouted."

"Sure he was there – up to his room in the front. He's fearful deaf an' he were asleep. He never heared you. I forgot to tell you, when we were plannin' quick of how to keep from everybody's knowin' that Ann was with Garvin. All my mind was on gettin' the doctor to her an' keepin' Ann's name from bein' mixed up in what's happened, an' so was yours."

"Will Miss Penniman be able to carry it through?" Baird asked anxiously.

"She will! I've done talked to her."

"And Ann?"

"Ann's too sick to talk – that's her answer," Ben returned with decision. "I tol' you I'd find the right thing to say." He pointed: "You see that there hole, where fodder is throwed down to the cows? Ann fell through there – it's a consid'able fall – more'n fifteen feet an' it won't be the first case of the kind the doctor has had to do with. I say that I foun' Ann down there, onconscious, an' any that doubts my word can come to me! I ain't never judged a lie a lie if it were tol' to help a woman – it's about the only chanst a man has to make up to his ma fo' men's havin' fastened the story of Eve to her."

In spite of his anxiety, Baird smiled. He liked Ben, and for much the same reasons as he had liked Edward Westmore; Ben Brokaw was every whit as true a gentleman. Baird thought of Edward's gentleness and consideration to women. "Ben?" he asked abruptly. "Why did Edward kill himself? Ann loved him, and you say he loved her – why did he hurt her like that? There appears to be no doubt about it, for the doctor told me that the pistol was smoked and that the wound showed that it had been fired at close range. The reason Mr. Copeley gave me – that Edward had heart trouble – isn't sufficient reason to me. Why in the name of heaven did he do such a thing!"

Ben stopped his work. But he did not look at Baird; he looked out at the struggle between sun and mist. After a considerable pause, he said slowly, "It seems the cruelest thing in all this night's work, don't it?.. I can't explain it… The Ridge'll give its reasons, an' first among them, that there is knowed to be one Westmo' whose mind ain't right, an' that now the thing's showed itself in Edward… It's all right your askin' me – I know you are considerin' Ann same as I am. You can ask me anything you like an' I'll answer to the best of my ability, but it's a thing I won't discuss with nobody else. I thought a heap of Edward – I don't want to talk about it. My biggest trouble now is Ann."

If Ben intended to divert Baird, he succeeded. Baird moved restlessly, then got up. "He's in there a long time!" he said through his teeth.

He went to the door and looked out at the misty morning. It had been a steady, deep-sinking rain, like the satisfying answer to a prayer, and now the sun was fighting the steaming moisture, trying to work its vivifying will upon the growing things; in an hour's time it would triumphantly climb the heavens.

Ben looked at Baird's drooping shoulders. The boy was almost falling from fatigue. He was certainly a "cool-head," but a boy, nevertheless; a young fellow experiencing his first big trouble, and not knowing just what to make of it. He loved Ann completely, he had shown that, a somewhat astonishing thing in one of his rough-and-ready sort, Ben thought. If the doctor brought them bad news, they were both going to suffer.

Baird straightened and turned. "He's coming," he said.

Ben rose uncertainly to his feet. "You go ask him," he returned in his deepest growl.

But Baird was already on his way. The doctor's buggy had come into view, and Ben watched Baird go. He peered intently at the group, the doctor bent forward a little and Baird standing with one hand on the dashboard, as if for support… The buggy moved on, and, for a moment, Ben could not make out whether Baird was returning laggingly or not. Then he saw that he came with head up, and Ben stopped swaying.