Ann simply stared at him.

Baird's face had grown hot. "Are you in love with any one, Ann?... I'd rather you told me frankly.... If you are, I'll stop coming around and bothering you. If you're not, I'm going to make you like me."

There was a long silence. Then Ann said, "I'd rather you stayed away."

"You're sure of that, Ann?"

"Yes."

Baird stood in uncertainty for a moment; it was hard for him to hold to his decision. He was carrying his riding-whip, and he slashed viciously at the Bouncing-Betsies that edged the path, his teeth set.

Then he straightened. "Well--I guess there's nothing I can do--so I'll be off."

They went up to the house in silence.

XXVII

THE THING

Garvin Westmore sat at the mouth of Crest Cave, his eyes fixed on the Back Road and on the stretch of woods below the Penniman house. He had sat for the greater part of the day almost motionless and steadily watching--watching every one who came and went by the Back Road, who entered or left the woods.

Beside him, emptied to the last drop, was the bottle, his comforter during the last two weeks of brooding suspense, and near it lay Ann's letter, the confession she had carried to the woods the night before.

Garvin had feared the Thing in himself that stirred so frequently now, and that dropped back into quietude only when he drugged it. Therefore he had drunk persistently and deeply during the last two weeks, spent whole days when he was supposed to be in the city, lying on the carpet of pine-needles, feeling that, though he had to drug the Thing heavily, he was still himself, _unpossessed_, thinking quite clearly and coolly, as he was thinking now.

Once, when he was a boy, the Thing had suddenly come to life in him, swept him aside for mad hours that neither his family nor he had ever forgotten. Then for long years he had been as free of it as if it had never revealed itself. When he had changed from a boy to a man, it had stirred in him, and they called it "melancholia." It was the same Thing that had shut Sarah away from life.

Then had come the years when he was a man grown, and the Thing stirred only occasionally, "fits of depression" that lifted easily into excitement and dropped suddenly into perfect self-possession. He had learned then that drink lifted him out of depression, not into ungovernable excitement or into elation, but into coolness and capability. _He_ knew that the Thing lay in him ready to spring into activity at any moment, but he had learned how to deceive those about him; he even half-deceived his family.

All night he had been in the grip of depression. He had not slept because of it, and that morning when ostensibly he was on his way to the city, he had come to the Mine Banks and had hidden his horse, bent upon gaining the usual relief. At noon he had gone to the woods, by way of the creek, and had secured Ann's letter. Fortified as he was, he had read it without mad excitement. It confirmed the apprehension that, during the last two weeks, had kept him in persistent depression.

He went back to Crest Cave with the queer surface restraint upon him that drink always produced, and had drained the last drop from the bottle, his mind focused upon the suspicion over which he had brooded ever since the night Edward had made him promise not to go near Ann.

Ann had written:

"DEAR GARVIN:

"If I could endure it 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.

"Garvin, I can't do it. I don't love you enough to go with you.

Almost from the time I promised I've been sorry I promised. I'm wretched because I have to tell you. I feel sick when I think of how it will hurt you, and I hate myself for not having known my heart any better. I meant everything I ever said to you. I thought I loved you, and I did want you to be happy. I still want you to be happy--I want you to have everything good that a man can have. But you want something that I've found out is not in me to give to you. That's the thing I have found out about myself, and it isn't right not to tell you.

"There isn't any more I can say, except that begging won't change my feeling to you. Please forget me. You'll be gone from here to where you'll find people you like.

"I'll always think lovingly of you--you were kind to me when I was dreadfully unhappy. You and Edward have both been kind to me. Lovingly, ANN."

Garvin had tossed the letter aside. It lay through the afternoon, its open page stirred occasionally by the light breeze. The slight rustle and the whispering of the pines were almost the only sounds, except when the birds sang. Garvin moved only when some one pa.s.sed along the Back Road; then he bent forward, his eyes burning and intent beneath lifted brows. He watched Coats Penniman drive up to the woods and disappear; later on, saw Baird ride up the Back Road, evidently returning from the city. He watched him intently, made sure it was Baird, and settled back again into alert waiting.

It was late in the afternoon when another horseman, riding toward the club, came slowly up through the pastures and melted into the woods.

Garvin sat, head craned and eyes narrowed, watching every step of the man's progress. When the woods had swallowed the rider, Garvin got up, circled the Crest, and went down to the Mine Banks Road. He crossed it, then crossed swiftly the open s.p.a.ce between the road and the creek, and went down into the bed of the creek for better cover, and, with the caution of the practised hunter, made his slow way along to where it left the woods.

It had taken some time to creep along without noise. When he reached the woods, where the field undergrowth gave way to trees and the banks of the creek were studded with rocks, he waited for a time, crouched behind a rock. He had come with the utmost caution, still, a broken twig, some slight sound, might have betrayed him. He heard nothing but the wood sounds, no voices or stir of any kind. Then he straightened, though still well sheltered by the rock, and looked about him.

There was no one there. So far as his keen eyes could discover, there was no one on the steep upward slope of the woods beyond the creek, no one on this side either; no one on the road leading to the club, or on the road that branched off to the Penniman house. A short distance away was the flat rock with the bank rising above it and the saucer-like depression in which it lay semicircled by a dense screen of c.h.i.n.kapin bushes. He could wait there, it was a very perfect hiding-place, but from that point he could not see the two roads. He was better placed where he was, for a growth of wood-honeysuckle surrounded his hiding-place; by parting it a little he could see very well and not be seen. Garvin waited some time before his brother returned from the club.

Where the road forked, Edward stopped, looked up the Penniman Road, then dismounted and came toward the creek. He led his horse behind the c.h.i.n.kapin bushes, left it, and came to the top of the bank, looking down at the flat rock. Then he climbed down, seated himself, and looked down at the swirling water. He looked at it steadily, except when he turned to look up at the screen of bushes. He was waiting for some one.

Garvin also waited. A hot cord had begun to tighten about his head, forcing the blood into his eyes, yet he stood quite still; he was thinking quite clearly; he had known it would be like this.... Even when Ann came around the screen of bushes, he did not stir.

Edward sprang up and helped her down. Garvin could see their every motion, even their expression, the smile each had for the other; but they spoke very low, so low that the murmur of their voices mingled confusingly with the ceaseless gurgle of the water.... He could not creep any nearer to them and not be discovered.... But he needed no clearer confirmation than actions: when Ann stood beside him, Edward put his hands on her shoulders, looking into her eyes while she talked rapidly and distressedly. When they sat down, Edward sat at her feet.

When he began to talk to her, long and low and steadily, he took her hands, both her hands, and Ann's face was bent so that Garvin could not see it. Apparently she said nothing, simply sat motionless, enthralled by what Edward was saying.

Garvin went on thinking--quite clearly. He had known he would find just this. He had seen it all enacted while he sat up there in the Mine Banks--this and more--and he had planned just what he would do. He had a good cool brain; he was clever to have decided that this was the state of things, to have foreseen it all and to have planned to the last detail. Let Edward have his hour, the--_thief_! He, Garvin, would have his hour, too!

He felt a tense elation, like one who ruled destinies. When Ann's voice lifted in a smothered cry of emotion, the sudden answer to the pause in Edward's steady speech, Garvin only parted the bushes a little more widely, watched more intently. She had slipped into Edward's arms and he was holding her, her arms about his neck, his arms clasping her. He kissed her many times, murmured over her, and then she began to weep, breathlessly, a note of joy in her tears, words and tears and caresses commingled.

"Edward is sedate!" the gibing Thing that was Garvin Westmore said. With Ann's arms about his neck and her head on his breast, he was talking her into calmness, talking, talking, interminably, the deep murmur of his voice never once raised, soothing her as one would a child. And when, at last, they stood up, his hands were on her shoulders again. But his face betrayed him; he wore a look of exaltation, and Ann's was tremulously happy. They thought themselves pledged to each other for all time, those two!

They went up out of the hollow hand in hand, and parted after a long kiss. Ann crossed the creek and ran up the opposite slope, turning often to look at Edward, who stood watching her absorbedly, a lightly-moving, radiant thing. She paused for a long moment, poised on the crest of the slope, a slender graceful form, young as the young green that framed her--then disappeared over the crest. She had gone to the cl.u.s.ter of pines at the edge of the woods, to sit there for a time with her happiness.

Edward watched until even her graceful head had vanished. Then he mounted and rode out by the Back Road--taking his way by the Mine Banks to Westmore.

Garvin crept down along the creek, went as he had come. He would reach the Mine Banks before his brother did.

XXVIII

THE h.e.l.l-HOLE OF THE WESTMORES

Sue Penniman had been searching frantically for Ann, through the house, on the terraces; she had even gone down the cedar avenue and then to the spring-house. She had not gone to the barn, for Coats was at the barn and Ann was certain not to be there; besides, Sue did not want to see Coats, not until she had found Ann and forced her to tell the truth.

But she could not find Ann. She came back finally to the kitchen steps and called up to the negress who was busy above, "Rachel, do you know where Ann is?"

"I seen her go down by the woods, Miss Sue."

"When?"

"About a' hour ago."

Sue paused; then she asked, "Was she dressed up, Rachel?"

"Yes'm--she got on her white dress."