"My mother died when I was born," Ann said with a quiver of feeling. "I reckon if I'd had her, everything would have been all different."
Ann had grown up with the longing for a father, but since the night before she had wanted her mother, wanted her intensely. That afternoon, on their return from the village, she had gone down to the woods. There had been a letter for her in the chestnut tree, an impassioned letter. Garvin wrote of the night before, of her promise to go with him. "You are mine now, every bit of you—there can be no going back for either of us." And he had also said, "Some one has been spying on us, Ann. I found that out last night. We can't meet as we have. I'll write to you every day, but we mustn't even be seen speaking to each other, for the present. But don't let that worry you, dear—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." Then he had painted a picture of their life together that to one more experienced than Ann might have suggested some notable omissions. Ann simply knew that the letter did not make her happy.... Then there was also a book for her in the bushes, and on the fly leaf a line: "Please wait for me to-morrow?" That had not made her happy, either.
"I suppose it would have made a difference," Baird was saying thoughtfully. "It would have made a difference to me, too—it makes a difference to any child. I wasn't much better off than you—my mother died when I was four years old."
"You can't remember then even how she looked," Ann said with profound fellow-feeling, "any more than I can remember my mother."
She had slipped from her chair, seated herself on the step beside him, and Baird could see her eyes now, wells of sympathy. So long as she lived, Ann would do such things, offer sympathy by the suggestion of a caress, just as she would always respond to the masculine call by an illusive half-promise. Baird saw her sympathy and felt her nearness. She was an utterly sweet thing; he would have liked to touch her; not in the rough way in which he once had, just draw her close and kiss her softly. He kept his rebellious hands clasped behind his head.
"I can just remember her face—in the misty way I saw yours when you were in the chair," he said steadily. "I can't remember where or when, but I know it was my mother. She was black and white—like you." Baird did not tell her that his mother had been a Jewess; that was a thing he told no one, though he often shrugged in private over his parentage, a Jewish mother and an Irish father! A truly modern American inheritance! "And not such a bad one, either," he was in the habit of adding to himself. "It produces good brains." Just now his brain was retrospective, his feelings busied with Ann.
"I suppose a mother is just as helpful to a boy as she is to a girl," he continued, in the same reflective way. "I suppose, if I'd had my mother to talk to, I'd know women better—all the nice side of them—the mother side.... I suppose I'd know myself better.... Lord knows, I'd like some one to tell me what the lasting thing is composed of—the thing one wants to go through life with."
There was a long silence. Ann was also reflecting vaguely on the same subject, her hands clasped about her knees, her head thrown back, looking up at the stars that appeared to move restlessly, as if palely rebellious under the supremacy of the moon. A cricket beneath the steps ventured upon the stillness, and, as if emboldened by its temerity, a bird flitted by them to the clump of lilacs on the terrace and cut the silence with injunctions to "Whip-poor-will!" Far off, somewhere in the open, his mate agreed with him and reiterated his insistence. Then, just below them, in the pasture, a bobwhite called repeatedly, seeking an answer, which came presently, from the far distance, faint almost as a whispered echo.
"The night birds are making love," Baird said softly. "All nature's stirring with it. Ann, what is love, anyway? The thing we humans ought to have—the lasting thing, I mean?"
"I've been thinking, too," Ann answered musingly. "Why—I suppose it's ... I don't know just how to say it—"