XXXI
THE FAMILY NAME
It was after sundown when Judith lifted from her work over the flower-bed on the terrace and looked at the glow in the western sky. It was twilight; time for Garvin to come from the city, and Edward from his daily ride to the club; another long evening before her without the relief of active work.
Would Baird come that evening? Since her visitors had gone, there had been significant intervals between his calls, and she was quite helpless in the matter. She was filled with a passionate revolt against what she felt was woman's helplessness. If she had a man's opportunities, how long would she remain quiescent at Westmore, a slave to a routine that had begun to gall her intolerably! And any day she might be set aside.
Judith had endlessly pondered Edward's tense championship of Ann, and Baird's interest in the girl. What was going to grow out of it all? Something certainly that would make Westmore unendurable to her. After fifteen years of mental and physical toil, she was a dependent, unskilled in any direction—except as a housekeeper—the spinster adjunct to a family that would not need her. It was the fate of most women who conserved and conserved. It was her rearing that had made her what she was. If she had defied the family conventions and had gone out into the world, she could easily have made a life for herself. It was men who held the winning cards.... Judith's gardening had been a relief. She could look her thoughts while she worked; the warm earth her strong hands had prodded and pressed was a safe confidant.
She stood with hand shading her face, looking at the sunset glow, her lips shut in a straight line, her eyes smoldering. When the thud of steps on the porch above warned her that some one was coming, she turned with her usual swift decision, but first she had wiped expression from her face, a resolute downward movement of her hand from which her eyes emerged, level and questioning.
It was Ben Brokaw who was hurrying down to her, his long arms hanging and his body bent, his usual position when running and which was oddly suggestive of primordial locomotion. The smile that grew in Judith's eyes as she watched the grotesque creature changed quickly into a frown when she saw his face. He had evidently run some distance, for there was about him the steaming heat of a hard-driven animal. But his ridged and mottled face was curiously drawn and tense. He had brought up within a few feet of her, had paused and straightened.
With the instant alarm of one inured to apprehension, Judith asked, "What has happened?"
Ben could express himself only in the way natural to him. "Miss Judith, there ain't no time fo' me to come around slow to what I've got to tell, an' you ain't one to go under, you're Westmo' through an' through.... Miss Judith, the Mine Banks is claimed another Westmo'."