Ann Boyd

I

Ann Boyd Stood at the open door of her corn-house, a square, one-storied

hut made of the trunks of young pine-trees, the bark of which, being

worm-eaten, was crumbling from the smooth hard-wood. She had a tin pail

on her arm, and was selecting "nubbins" for her cow from the great heap

of husked corn which, like a mound of golden nuggets, lay within. The

strong-jawed animal could crunch the dwarfed ears, grain and corn

together, when they were stirred into a mush made of wheat-bran and

dish-water.

Mrs. Boyd, although past fifty, showed certain signs of having been a

good-looking woman. Her features were regular, but her once slight and

erect figure was now heavy, and bent as if from toil. Her hair, which in

her youth had been a luxuriant golden brown, was now thinner and

liberally streaked with gray. From her eyes deep wrinkles diverged, and

the corners of her firm mouth were drawn downward. Her face, even in

repose, wore an almost constant frown, and this habit had deeply gashed

her forehead with lines that deepened when she was angry.

With her pail on her arm, she was turning back towards her cottage,

which stood about a hundred yards to the right, beneath the shade of two

giant oaks, when she heard her name called from the main-travelled road,

which led past her farm, on to Darley, ten miles away.

"Oh, it's you, Mrs. Waycroft!" she exclaimed, without change of

countenance, as the head and shoulders of a neighbor appeared above the

rail-fence. "I couldn't imagine who it was calling me."

"Yes, it was me," the woman said, as Mrs. Boyd reached the fence and

rested her pail on the top rail. "I hain't seed you since I seed you at

church, Sunday. I tried to get over yesterday, but was too busy with one

thing and another."

"I reckon you have had your hands full planting cotton," said Mrs. Boyd.

"I didn't expect you; besides, I've had all I could do in my own field."

"Yes, my boys have been hard at it," said Mrs. Waycroft. "I don't go to

the field myself, like you do. I reckon I ain't hardy enough, but

keeping things for them to eat and the house in order takes all my

time."

"I reckon," said Mrs. Boyd, studying the woman's face closely under the

faded black poke-bonnet--"I reckon you've got something to tell me. You

generally have. I wish I could not care a snap of the finger what folks

say, but I'm only a natural woman. I want to hear things sometimes when

I know they will make me so mad that I won't eat a bite for days."

Mrs. Waycroft looked down at the ground. "Well," she began, "I reckon

you know thar would be considerable talk after what happened at meeting

Sunday. You know a thing like that naturally _would_ stir up a quiet

community like this."

"Yes, when I think of it I can see there would be enough said, but I'm

used to being the chief subject of idle talk. I've had twenty odd years

of it, Mary Waycroft, though this public row was rather unexpected. I

didn't look for abuse from the very pulpit in God's house, if it _is_

His. I didn't know you were there. I didn't know a friendly soul was

nigh."

"Yes, I was there clean through from the opening hymn. A bolt from

heaven on a sunny day couldn't have astonished me more than I was when

you come in and walked straight up the middle aisle, and sat down just

as if you'd been coming there regular for all them years. I reckon you

had your own private reasons for making the break."

"Yes, I did." The wrinkled mouth of the speaker twitched nervously. "I'd

been thinking it out, Mrs. Waycroft, for a long time and trying to pray

over it, and at last I come to the conclusion that if I didn't go to

church like the rest, it was an open admission that I acknowledged

myself worse than others, and so I determined to go--I determined to go

if it killed me."

"And to think you was rewarded that way!" answered Mrs. Waycroft; "it's

a shame! Ann Boyd, it's a dirty shame!"

"It will be a long time before I darken a church door again," said Mrs.

Boyd. "If I'm ever seen there it will be after I'm dead and they take me

there feet foremost to preach over my body. I didn't look around, but I

knew they were all whispering about me."

"You never saw the like in your life, Ann," the visitor said. "Heads

were bumping together to the damagement of new spring hats, and

everybody was asking what it meant. Some said that, after meeting, you

was going up and give your hand to Brother Bazemore and ask him to take

you back, as a member, but he evidently didn't think you had a purpose

like that, or he wouldn't have opened up on you as he did. Of course,

everybody thar knowed he was hitting at you."

"Oh yes, they all knew, and he had no reason for thinking I wanted to

ask any favor, for he knows too well what I think of him. He hates the

ground I walk on. He has been openly against me ever since he come to my

house and asked me to let the Sunday-school picnic at my spring and in

my grove. I reckon I gave it to him pretty heavy that day, for all I'd

been hearing about what he had had to say of me had made me mad. I let

him get out his proposal as politely as such a sneaking man could, and

then I showed him where I stood. Here, Mrs. Waycroft, I've been treated

like a dog and an outcast by every member of his church for the last

twenty years, called the vilest names a woman ever bore by his so-called

Christian gang, and then, when they want something I've got--something

that nobody else can furnish quite as suitable for their purpose--why he

saunters over to my house holding the skirts of his long coat as if

afraid of contamination, and calmly demands the use of my

property--property that I've slaved in the hot sun and sleet and rain to

pay for with hard work. Oh, I was mad! You see, that was too much, and I

reckon he never in all his life got such a tongue-lashing. When I came

in last Sunday and sat down, I saw his eyes flash, and knew if he got

half an excuse he would let out on me. I was sorry I'd come then, but

there was no backing out after I'd got there."

"When he took his text I knew he meant it for you," said the other

woman. "I have never seen a madder man in the pulpit, never in my life.

While he was talking, he never once looked at you, though he knew

everybody else was doing nothing else. Then I seed you rise to your

feet. He stopped to take a drink from his goblet, and you could 'a'

heard a pin fall, it was so still. I reckon the rest thought like I did,

that you was going right up to him and pull his hair or slap his jaws.

You looked like you hardly knowed what you was doing, and, for one, I

tuck a free breath when you walked straight out of the house. What you

did was exactly right, as most fair-minded folks will admit, though I'm

here to tell you, my friend, that you won't find fair-minded folks very

plentiful hereabouts. The fair-minded ones are over there in that

graveyard."

Mrs. Boyd stroked her quivering lips with her hard, brown hand, and

said, softly: "I wasn't going to sit there and listen to any more of it.

I'd thrown aside pride and principle and gone to do my duty to my

religion, as I saw it, and thought maybe some of them--one or two, at

least--would meet me part of the way, but I couldn't listen to a two

hours' tirade about me and my--my misfortune. If I'd stayed any longer,

I'd have spoken back to him, and that would have been exactly what he

and some of the rest would have wanted, for then they could have made a

case against me in court for disturbing public worship, and imposed a

heavy fine. They can't bear to think that, in spite of all their

persecution, I've gone ahead and paid my debts and prospered in a way

that they never could do with all their sanctimony."

There was silence for a moment. A gentle breeze stirred the leaves of

the trees and the blades of long grass beside the road. There was a

far-away tinkling of cow and sheep bells in the lush-green pastures

which stretched out towards the frowning mountain against which the

setting sun was levelling its rays.

"You say you haven't seen anybody since Sunday," remarked the loitering

woman, in restrained, tentative tones.

"No, I've been right here. Why did you ask me that?"

"Well, you see, Ann," was the slow answer, "talking at the rate Bazemore

was to your face, don't you think it would be natural for him to--to

sort o' rub it on even heavier behind your back, after you got up that

way and went out so sudden."

"I never thought of it, but I can see now that it would be just like

him." Mrs. Boyd took a deep breath and lowered her pail to the ground.

"Yes," she went on, reflectively, as she drew herself up again and

leaned on the fence, "I reckon he got good and mad when I got up and

left."

"Huh!" The other woman smiled. "He was so mad he could hardly speak. He

fairly gulped, his eyes flashed, and he was as white as a bunch of

cotton. He poured out another goblet of water that he had no idea of

drinking, and his hand shook so much that the glass tinkled like a bell

against the mouth of the pitcher. You must have got as far as the

hitching-rack before his fury busted out. I reckon what he said was the

most unbecoming thing that a stout, able-bodied man ever hurled at a

defenceless woman's back."

There was another pause. Mrs. Boyd's expectant face was as hard as

stone; her dark-gray eyes were two burning fires in their shadowy

orbits.

"What did he say?" she asked. "You might as well tell me."

Mrs. Waycroft avoided her companion's fierce stare. "He looked down at

the place where you sat, Ann, right steady for a minute, then he said:

'I'm glad that woman had the common decency to sit on a seat by herself

while she was here; but I hope when meeting is over that some of you

brethren will take the bench out in the woods and burn it. I'll pay for

a new one out of my own pocket.'"

"Oh!" The exclamation seemed wrung from her when off her guard, and Mrs.

Boyd clutched the rail of the fence so tightly that her strong nails

sunk into the soft wood. "He said _that_! He said that _about me_!"

"Yes, and he ought to have been ashamed of himself," said Mrs. Waycroft;

"and if he had been anything else than a preacher, surely some of the

men there--men you have befriended--would not have set still and let it

pass."

"But they _did_ let it pass," said Mrs. Boyd, bitterly; "they did let it

pass, one and all."

"Oh yes, nobody would dare, in this section, to criticise a preacher,"

said the other. "What any little, spindle-legged parson says goes the

same as the word of God out here in the backwoods. I'd have left the

church myself, but I knowed you'd want to hear what was said; besides,

they all know I'm your friend."

"Yes, they all know you are the only white woman that ever comes near

me. But what else did he say?"

"Oh, he had lots to say. He said he hadn't mentioned no names, but it

was always the hit dog that yelped, and that you had made yourself a

target by leaving as you did. He went on to say that, in his opinion,

all that was proved at court against you away back there was just. He

said some folks misunderstood Scripture when it come to deal with your

sort and stripe. He said some argued that a church door ought always to

be wide open to any sinner whatsoever, but that in your daily conduct of

holding every coin so tight that the eagle on it squeals, and in giving

nothing to send the Bible to the heathens, and being eternally at strife

with your neighbors, you had showed, he said, that no good influence

could be brought to bear on you, and that people who was really trying

to live upright lives ought to shun you like they would a catching

disease. He 'lowed you'd had the same Christian chance in your

bringing-up, and a better education than most gals, and had deliberately

throwed it all up and gone your headstrong way. In his opinion, it would

be wrong to condone your past, and tell folks you stood an equal chance

with the rising generation fetched up under the rod and Biblical

injunction by parents who knowed what lasting scars the fires of sin

could burn in a living soul. He said the community had treated you

right, in sloughing away from you, ever since you was found out, because

you had never showed a minute's open repentance. You'd helt your head,

he thought, if possible, higher than ever, and in not receiving the

social sanction of your neighbors, it looked like you was determined to

become the richest woman in the state for no other reason than to prove

that wrong prospered."

The speaker paused in her recital. The listener, her face set and dark

with fury, glanced towards the cottage. "Come in," she said, huskily;

"people might pass along and know what we are talking about, and,

somehow, I don't want to give them that satisfaction."

"That's a fact," said Mrs. Waycroft; "they say I fetch you every bit of

gossip, anyway. A few have quit speaking to me. Bazemore would himself,

if he didn't look to me once a month for my contribution. I hope what

I've told you won't upset you, Ann, but you always say you want to know

what's going on. It struck me that the whole congregation was about the

most heartless body of human beings I ever saw packed together in one

bunch."

"I want you to tell me one other thing," said Mrs. Boyd, tensely, as

they were entering the front doorway of the cottage--"was Jane Hemingway

there?"

"Oh yes, by a large majority. I forgot to tell you about her. I had my

eyes on her, too, for I knowed it would tickle her nigh to death, and it

did. When you left she actually giggled out loud and turned back an'

whispered to the Mayfield girls. Her old, yellow face fairly shone, she

was that glad, and when Bazemore went on talking about you and burning

that bench, she fairly doubled up, with her handkerchief clapped over

her mouth."

Mrs. Boyd drew a stiff-backed chair from beneath the dining-table and

pushed it towards her guest. "There is not in hell itself, Mary

Waycroft, a hatred stronger than I feel right now for that woman. She is

a fiend in human shape. That miserable creature has hounded me every

minute since we were girls together. As God is my judge, I believe I

could kill her and not suffer remorse. There was a time when my

disposition was as sweet and gentle as any girl's, but she changed it.

She has made me what I am. She is responsible for it all. I might have

gone on--after my--my misfortune, and lived in some sort of harmony with

my kind if it hadn't been for her."

"I know that," said the other woman, as she sat down and folded her

cloth bonnet in her thin hands. "I really believe you'd have been a

different woman, as you say, after--after your trouble if she had let

you alone."

Mrs. Boyd seated herself in another chair near the open door, and looked

out at a flock of chickens and ducks which had gathered at the step and

were noisily clamoring for food.

"I saw two things that made my blood boil as I was leaving the church,"

said she. "I saw Abe Longley, who has been using my pasture for his

cattle free of charge for the last ten years. I caught sight of his

face, and it made me mad to think he'd sit there and never say a word in

defence of the woman he'd been using all that time; and then I saw

George Wilson, just as indifferent, near the door, when I've been

favoring him and his shabby store with all my trade when I could have

done better by going on to Darley. I reckon neither of those two men

said the slightest thing when Bazemore advised the--the burning of the

bench I'd sat on."

"Oh no, of course not!" said Mrs. Waycroft, "nobody said a word. They

wouldn't have dared, Ann."

"Well, they will both hear from me," said Mrs. Boyd, "and in a way that

they won't forget soon. I tell you, Mary Waycroft, this thing has

reached a climax. That burning bench is going to be my war-torch. They

say I've been at strife with my neighbors all along; well, they'll see

now. I struggled and struggled with pride to get up to the point of

going to church again, and that's the reception I got."

"It's a pity to entertain hard feelings, but I don't blame you a single

bit," said Mrs. Waycroft, sympathetically. "As I look at it, you have

done all you can to live in harmony, and they simply won't have it. They

might be different if it wasn't for that meddlesome old Jane Hemingway.

She keeps them stirred up. She and her daughter is half starving to

death, while you--" Mrs. Waycroft glanced round the room at the warm rag

carpet of many colors, at the neat fire-screen made of newspaper

pictures pasted on a crude frame of wood, and, higher, to the

mantel-piece, whose sole ornament was a Seth Thomas clock, with the

Tower of London in glaring colors on the glass door--"while you don't

ask anybody any odds. Instead of starving, gold dollars seem to roll up

to your door of their own accord and fall in a heap. They tell me even

that cotton factory which you invested in, and which Mrs. Hemingway said

had busted and gone up the spout, is really doing well."

"The stock has doubled in value," said Mrs. Boyd, simply. "I don't know

how to account for my making money. I reckon it's simply good judgment

and a habit of throwing nothing away. The factory got to a pretty low

ebb, and the people lost faith in it, and were offering their stock at

half-price. My judgment told me it would pull through as soon as times

improved, and I bought an interest in it at a low figure. I was right;

it proved to be a fine investment."

"I was sorter sorry for Virginia Hemingway, Sunday," said Mrs. Waycroft.

"When her mother was making such an exhibition of herself in gloating

over the way you was treated, the poor girl looked like she was ashamed,

and pulled Jane's apron like she was trying to keep her quiet. I reckon

you hain't got nothing against the girl, Ann?"

"Nothing except that she is that devilish woman's offspring," said Mrs.

Boyd. "It's hard to dislike her; she's pretty--by all odds the prettiest

and sweetest-looking young woman in this county. Her mother in her prime

never saw the day she was anything like her. They say Virginia isn't

much of a hand to gossip and abuse folks. I reckon her mother's ways

have disgusted her."

"I reckon that's it," said the other woman, as she rose to go. "I know I

love to look at her; she does my old eyes good. At meeting I sometimes

gaze steady at her for several minutes on a stretch. Sitting beside that

hard, crabbed old thing, the girl certainly does look out of place. She

deserves a better fate than to be tied to such a woman. I reckon she'll

be picked up pretty soon by some of these young men--that is, if Jane

will give her any sort of showing. Jane is so suspicious of folks that

she hardly lets Virginia out of her sight. Well, I must be going. Since

my husband's death I've had my hands full on the farm; he did a lots to

help out, even about the kitchen. Good-bye. I can see what I've said has

made a change in you, Ann. I never saw you look quite so different."

"Yes, the whole thing has kind o' jerked me round," replied Mrs. Boyd.

"I've taken entirely too much off of these people--let them run over me

dry-shod; but I'll show them a thing or two. They won't let me live in

peace, and now they can try the other thing." And Ann Boyd stood in the

doorway and watched the visitor trudge slowly away.

"Yes," she mused, as she looked out into the falling dusk, "they are

trying to drive me to the wall with their sneers and lashing tongues.

But I'll show them that a worm can turn."