Nobody's Child. Dejeans Elizabeth

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      "What's to be done?" Garvin's voice was strained.

      "Nothing – he's done for."

      There was silence for a moment and Ann saw that the color had flamed in Garvin's white face. He was suddenly as violently a-quiver as the suffering animal, curiously and tensely excited. He glanced behind him, then to either side, an uncertain look that passed over Ann and his surroundings, unseeing and yet furtive. Then he took a step backward, and the hand that had gone to his hip-pocket was swiftly upflung.

      Ann's shriek rang out almost simultaneously with the shot, at one with the leaden fall of the horse and the sharp echo sent back from the Mine Banks and the chattering lift of the birds in the woods. A crow cawed wildly as it rose; all about was the stir of startled and scurrying things.

      Baird had whirled to look at Ann, who stood bent over and with arm hiding her face, and his angry exclamation were the first words spoken: "God, Garvin, are you mad? What a thing to do – before her!"

      He strode to Ann and touched her shaking shoulder. "Come away," he said with a note of shame. "The idea of his doing such a thing before a girl! His fall must have knocked the sense out of him!"

      But Garvin Westmore was almost as quick as he. He also had turned, with brows raised high and eyes wild. Then on the instant his face was swept of expression. He was pale again, collected, even protective when he drew Ann from Baird's touch. "Don't be frightened, Ann," he said softly, with the air of one who knew her well. "I'm sorry. I forgot you were here. I couldn't see the animal suffer – that was all." Then meeting over Ann's head the commingling of disgust and anger and something else, the touch of aversion in Baird's eyes, he continued even more softly, his softness a little husky: "Why should anything that's done for be allowed to go on suffering a minute more than is necessary? That's what I was thinking… Wasn't I right, Ann?"

      He addressed the girl, but he was answering Baird's look.

      "You looked as if you enjoyed doing it," Baird retorted bluntly.

      A flash of expression crossed Garvin Westmore's face, a gleam menacing and dangerous, like the momentary exposure of a dagger. It came and went. "I wanted the beast out of pain – if that is what you mean," he said with hauteur. "Ann knows me better than you do," and he bent over her. "Don't cry, Ann; the horse is better off than any one of us."

      He continued to bend his height to her and to talk in low tones, until she consented to look up at him. "I don't see how you could – " she said, in a smothered way. "I – I want to go home – "

      "You shall in a minute – but not like this." In her run down to the creek her hood had slipped off, and he tried now to draw it up over her fallen hair. She lifted shaking hands and began hurriedly to coil the dark mass about her head.

      Baird watched them curiously. The girl was something more than pretty. The brown cape with hood attached had concealed her, but when she lifted her arms he saw that she was slim and rounded, very perfectly so, and not too tall. Her hair was noticeably black, a dense black, heavy and with a tendency to curl. As she gathered it up, Baird noticed how beautifully it grew about her low forehead – that her features were regular, and that, contrasted with black hair and brows and lashes, her skin was very white, luminously white. She was certainly very young; her cheeks and chin were as softly rounded as a baby's. And Garvin was a particularly good-looking man, of the unmistakably inbred type, tall, slender, dark, with clear-cut features, well-marked brows and fine eyes. His were the Westmore features refined into nervousness by inbreeding, the features of his great-great-grandfather, colonial aristocrat and owner of the Mine Banks.

      Nickolas Baird, as noticeably but one generation removed from the ranks and of the type that carves its own fortunes, watched the two curiously.

      He was not the only onlooker. A man had ridden out of the woods just as the shot was fired and had come slowly down to the creek. His horse had leaped when the report came and had sidled nervously as if eager for a run, but his rider had reined him sharply, held him to a walk, while he eyed the group in the distance. Though well mounted and in faultless riding attire, he was evidently not of the hunt; he wore no signs of haste or eagerness. He had crossed the bit of pasture deliberately, and had come to the other side of the creek. Then, as if he considered himself breakable, he had dismounted deliberately and, dropping the reins, slowly crossed the creek, selecting and testing his footing in the same careful fashion. His eyes alone, gloomy under their lowered brows, showed interest in what was passing.

      He stood just behind the group before he spoke: "What's all this, Garvin?"

      The three started and turned and Garvin stepped back hastily from Ann, who with hands still lifted to her hair and eyes wet with tears stared at the new-comer.

      It was Garvin who answered quickly. "It's plain enough what's happened, Ed. The sorrel went down in a rabbit-hole and broke his leg – incidentally, he nearly did for me too."

      "And you shot him without giving him time to say his prayers. I was in time to see that."

      "He was no gift of yours – I raised him," Garvin answered, with an instant note of antagonism.

      There had been stern rebuke in the elder man's remark, though so quietly spoken. But they were very evidently brothers. Their features were the same, the Westmore features; only the elder man's black hair had streaks of gray about the temples and his face was sallow and his eyes somber. Garvin at twenty-eight looked less than his age, and his brother, ten years his senior, looked full forty.

      Edward Westmore made no answer. He had looked from his brother to Ann, at her wistfully moist eyes and air of distress. But if his caught breath and slowly heightening color indicated the same anger Baird had felt, he restrained himself well. He said nothing at all, simply looked at her steadily, flushing and breathing quickly. Then he turned abruptly and looked up the slope of pasture at Ann's ramshackle buggy; then, turning more slowly, he gazed an appreciable moment at the looming Mine Banks.

      Possibly it was his way of gaining self-control. Possibly he was looking for an explanation of the girl's presence and discovered it in the waiting buggy. At any rate, his manner was calm and courteous when he faced them again.

      "It's too bad it happened," he said, more to Baird than any one else. "But it can't be helped… You'll have to get the animal off this land, it's not ours – unless you can get permission to bury him, Garvin?"

      "Not likely," his brother said in an undertone. "It's old Penniman's land. He hasn't learned to hate us any less these years you've been away."

      Edward Westmore's brows contracted sharply. "I'll take her to her buggy, and come back," he said, and turned hastily to Ann, who was clambering down into the creek.

      Garvin looked after him in surprise. Then, conscious of his brother's backward glance, he turned away. Nevertheless, he listened intently to Edward's low-toned courtesy.

      "Let me help you – the bank is slippery."

      Both he and Baird could hear distinctly Ann's soft rejoinder, the slurred syllables that marked her a southern child, but without the nasal twang usual with the country-folk of the Ridge. "Don't you come, suh – I can get up easily." She was more embarrassed than distressed now; her face was rosy red under her hood and her eyes were lowered.

      But Edward went on with her, up the stretch of pasture. They saw him help her into the buggy and stand for a time, evidently talking to her. And, finally, when she drove off, he bowed to her, as deeply as he would to any lady on the Ridge, standing and looking after her as she drove into the woods.

      Baird СКАЧАТЬ