At dusk that day Ann Boyd went out to search for a missing cow. She
crossed the greater part of her stretch of meadow-land in the foggy
shadows, and finally found the animal mired to the knees in a black bog
hidden from view by the high growth of bulrushes. Then came the task of
releasing the patient creature, and Ann carried rails from the nearest
fence, placing them in such a way that the cow finally secured a
substantial footing and gladly sped homeward to her imprisoned calf.
Then, to escape the labor of again passing through the clinging vines
and high grass of the marsh, Ann took the nearest way to the main road
leading from the store on to Jane Hemingway's cottage. She had just
reached the little meeting-house, and a hot flush of anger at the memory
of the insult passed upon her there was surging over her, when,
happening to glance towards the graveyard in the rear of the building,
she saw Virginia Hemingway and Langdon Chester, quite with the air of
lovers, slowly walking homeward along a path which, if more rugged, led
more directly towards the girl's home. Ann Boyd started and then stared;
she could hardly credit the evidence of her sight--Virginia Hemingway
and the scapegrace son of that man, of all men, together!
"Ah, ha!" she exclaimed, under her breath, and, falling back into the
bushes which bordered the roadside, she stood tingling from head to foot
with a new and unexpected sensation, her eager eyes on the loitering
pair. "So _that's_ it, is it? The young scamp has picked _her_ out,
devil that he is by blood and birth. Well, I might have known it. Who
could know better than me what a new generation of that cursed stock
would be up to? Right now he's the living image of what his father was
at the same age. He's lying to her, too, with tongue, eyes, voice, and
very bend of body. Great God, isn't she pretty? I never, in my best day,
saw the minute that I could have held a candle to her, and yet they all
said--but that makes no difference. I wonder why I never thought before
that he'd pick her out. As much as I hate her mammy, and her, too, I
must acknowledge she's sweet-looking. She's pure-minded, too--as pure of
thought as I was away back there when I wore my hair in a plait. But
that man will crush your purity, you little, blind kitten, crush it like
a fresh violet under a horse's hoof; _he'll_ teach you what life is.
That's the business the Chesters are good at. But, look! I do believe
she's holding off from him." Ann crept onward through the bushes to keep
pace with the couple, now and then stretching her neck or rising to her
full height on tiptoe.
"He hasn't been on her track very long," she mused, "but he has won the
biggest part of his battle--he's got her to meet him privately. A sight
of this would lay her old mammy out stiff as a board, but she'll be kept
in the dark. That scamp will see to that part of the affair. But she'll
know in the end. Somebody will tell her the truth. Maybe the girl will
herself, when the awful, lonely pinch comes and there is no other friend
in sight. _Then_, Jane Hemingway, it will all come home to you. Then
you'll look back on the long, blood-hound hunt you've given another
woman in the same plight. The Almighty is doing it. He's working it out
for Jane Hemingway's life-portion. The girl is the very apple of her
eye; she has often said she was the image of herself, and that, as her
own marriage and life had come to nothing, she was going to see to it
that her only child's path was strewn with roses. Well, Langdon Chester
is strewing the roses thick enough. Ha, ha, ha!" the peering woman
chuckled. "Jane can come along an' pick 'em up when they are withered
and crumble like powder at the slightest touch. Now I really will have
something to occupy me. I'll watch this thing take root, and bud, and
leave, and bloom, and die. Maybe I'll be the first to carry the news to
headquarters. I'd love it more than anything this life could give me.
I'd like to shake the truth in Jane Hemingway's old, blinking eyes and
see her unable to believe it. I'd like to stand shaking it in her teeth
till she knew it was so, and then I honestly believe I'd fall right down
in front of her and roll over and over laughing. To think that I, maybe
_I_ will be able to flaunt the very thing in her face that she has all
these years held over me--the very thing, even to its being a son of the
very scoundrel that actually bent over the cradle of my girlhood and
blinded me with the lies that lit up his face."
A few yards away the pair had paused. Chester had taken the girl's hand
and was gently stroking it as it lay restlessly in his big palm. For a
moment Ann lost sight of them, for she was stealthily creeping behind
the low, hanging boughs of the bushes to get nearer. She found herself
presently behind a big bowlder. She no longer saw the couple, but could
hear their voices quite distinctly.
"You won't even let me hold your hand," she heard him say. "You make me
miserable, Virginia. When I am at home alone, I get to thinking over
your coldness and indifference, and it nearly drives me crazy. Why did
you jerk your hand away so quickly just now?"
"I don't see what you were talking to a drummer about me for, in a
public place like that," the girl answered, in pouting tones.
"Why, it was this way, Virginia--now don't be silly!" protested Chester.
"You see, this Masters and I were at college together, and rather
intimate, and down at the store we were standing talking when you came
in the front to buy something. He said he thought you were really the
prettiest girl he had ever seen, and he was begging me to introduce him
to you."
"Introduce him!" Virginia snapped. "I don't want to know him. And so you
stood there talking about me!"
"It was only a minute, Virginia, and I couldn't help it," Chester
declared. "I didn't think you'd care to know him, but I had to treat him
decently. I told him how particular your mother was, and that I couldn't
manage it. Oh, he's simply daft about you. He passed you on the road
this morning, and hasn't been able to talk about anything since. But who
could blame him, Virginia? You can form no idea of how pretty you are in
the eyes of other people. Frankly, in a big gathering of women you'd
create a sensation. You've got what every society woman in the country
would die to have, perfect beauty of face and form, and the most
remarkable part about it is your absolute unconsciousness of it all.
I've seen good-looking women in the best sets in Augusta and Savannah
and Atlanta, but they all seem to be actually making up before your very
eyes. Do you know, it actually makes me sick to see a woman all rigged
out in a satin gown so stiff that it looks like she's encased in some
metallic painted thing that moves on rollers. It's beauty unadorned that
you've got, and it's the real thing."
"I don't want to talk about myself eternally," said Virginia, rather
sharply, the eavesdropper thought, "and I don't see why you seem to
think I do. When you are sensible and talk to me about what we have both
read and thought, I like you better."
"Oh, you want me to be a sort of Luke King, who put all sorts of fancies
in your head when you were too young to know what they meant. You'd
better let those dreams alone, Virginia, and get down to everyday facts.
My love for you is a reality. It's a big force in my life. I find myself
thinking about you and your coldness from early morning till late at
night. Last Monday you were to come to the Henry Spring, and I was there
long before the time, and stayed in agony of suspense for four hours,
but I had my walk for nothing."
"I couldn't come," Ann Boyd heard the sweet voice say. "Mother gave me
some work to do, and I had no excuse; besides, I don't like to deceive
her. She's harsh and severe, but I don't like to do anything she would
disapprove of."
"You don't really care much for me," said Langdon--"that is the whole
thing in a nutshell."
Virginia was silent, and Ann Boyd bit her lip and clinched her hands
tightly. The very words and tone of enforced reproach came back to her
across the rolling surf of time. She was for a moment lost in
retrospection. The young girl behind the bushes seemed suddenly to be
herself, her companion the dashing young Preston Chester, the prince of
planters and slave-holders. Langdon's insistent voice brought back the
present.
"You don't care for me, you know you don't," he was saying. "You were
simply born with all your beauty and sweetness to drag me down to
despair. You make me desperate with your maddening reserve and icy
coldness, when all this hot fire is raging in me."
"That's what makes me afraid of you," Virginia said, softly. "I admit I
like to be with you, my life is so lonely, but you always say such
extravagant things and want to--to catch hold of me, and kiss me, and--"
"Well, how can I help myself, when you are what you are?" Chester
exclaimed, with a laugh. "I don't want to act a lie to you, and stand
and court you like a long-faced Methodist parson, who begins and ends
his love-making with prayer. Life is too beautiful and lovely to turn it
into a funeral service from beginning to end. Let's be happy, little
girl; let's laugh and be merry and thank our stars we are alive."
"I won't thank my stars if I don't go on home." And Virginia laughed
sweetly for the first time.
"Yes, I suppose we had better walk on," Langdon admitted, "but I'm not
going out into the open road with you till I've had that kiss. No, you
needn't pull away, dear--I'm going to have it."
The grim eavesdropper heard Virginia sharply protesting; there was a
struggle, a tiny, smothered scream, and then something waked in the
breast of Ann Boyd that lifted her above her sordid self. It was the
enraged impulse to dart forward and with her strong, toil-hardened hands
clutch the young man by the throat and drag him down to the ground and
hold him there till the flames she knew so well had gone out of his
face. Something like a prayer sprang to her lips--a prayer for help, and
then, in a flush of shame, the slow-gained habit of years came back to
her; she was taking another view--this time down a darkened vista.
"It's no business of mine," she muttered. "It's only the way things are
evened up. After all, where would be the justice in one woman suffering
from a thing for a lifetime and another going scot free, and that one,
too, the daughter of the one person that has deliberately made a life
miserable? No, siree! My pretty child, take care of yourself, I'm not
your mother. If she would let me alone for one minute, maybe her eyes
would be open to her own interests."
Laughing pleasantly over having obtained his kiss by sheer force,
Langdon, holding Virginia's reluctant hand, led her out into an open
space, and the watcher caught a plain view of the girl's profile, and
the sight twisted her thoughts into quite another channel. For a moment
she stood as if rooted to the ground behind the bushes which had
shielded her. "That girl is going to be a hard one to fool," she
muttered. "I can see that from her high forehead and firm chin. Now, it
really _would_ be a joke on me if--if Jane Hemingway's offspring was to
avoid the pitfall I fell into, with all the head I've got. Then, I
reckon, Jane _could_ talk; that, I reckon, would prove her right in so
bitterly denouncing me; but will the girl stand the pressure? If she
intends to, she's made a bad beginning. Meeting a chap like that on the
sly isn't the best way to be rid of him, nor that kiss; which she let
him have without a scratch or loss of a hair on his side, is another bad
indication. Well, the game's on. Me 'n' Jane is on the track neck to
neck with the wire and bandstand ahead. If the angels are watching this
sport, them in the highest seats may shed tears, but it will be fun to
the other sort. I'm reckless. I don't much care which side I amuse; the
whole thing come up of its own accord, and the Lord of Creation hasn't
done as much for my spiritual condition as the Prince of Darkness. I may
be a she-devil, but I was made one by circumstances as naturally as a
foul weed is made to grow high and strong by the manure around its root.
And yet, I reckon, there must be _some_ dregs of good left in my cup,
for I felt like strangling that scamp a minute ago. But that may have
been because I forgot and thought he was his daddy, and the girl was me
on the brink of that chasm twenty years wide and deeper than the mystery
of the grave of mankind. I don't know much, but I know I'm going to
fight Jane Hemingway as long as I live. I know I'm going to do that, for
I know she will keep her nose to my trail, and I wouldn't be human if I
didn't hit back."
The lovers had moved on; their voices were growing faint in the shadowy
distance. The gray dusk had fallen in almost palpable folds over the
landscape. The nearest mountain was lost like the sight of land at sea.
She walked on to her cow that was standing bellowing to her calf in the
stable-lot. Laying her hand on the animal's back, Ann said: "I'm not
going to milch you to-night, Sooky; I'm going to let your baby have all
he wants if it fills him till he can't walk. I'm going to be better to
you--you poor, dumb brute--than I am to Jane Hemingway."
Lowering the time-worn and smooth bars, she let the cow in to her young,
and then, closing the opening, she went into her kitchen and sat down
before the fire and pushed out her water-soaked feet to the flames to
dry them.
In an iron pot having an ash-covered lid was a piece of corn-pone
stamped with the imprint of her fingers, and on some smouldering coals
was a skillet containing some curled strips of fried bacon. These things
Ann put upon a tin plate, and, holding it in her lap, she began to eat
her supper. She was normal and healthy, and therefore her excitement had
not subdued her appetite. She ate as with hearty enjoyment, her mind
busy with what she had heard and seen.
"Ah, old lady!" she chuckled, "you can laugh fit to split your sides
when a loud-mouthed preacher talks in public about burning benches, but
your laugh is likely to come back in an echo as hollow as a voice from
the grave. If this thing ends as I want it to end, I'll be with you,
Jane, as you've managed to be with me all these years."
Till far in the night Ann sat nursing her new treasure and viewing it in
all its possible forms, till, growing drowsy, from a long day of
fatigue, she undressed herself, and, putting on a dingy gray night-gown,
she crept into her big feather-bed.
"It all depends on the girl," was her last reflection before sleep bore
her off. "She isn't a bit stronger than I was at about the same age, and
I'll bet the Chester power isn't a whit weaker than it was. Well, time
will tell."
Late in the night she was waked by a strange dream, and, to throw it out
of mind, she rose and walked out into the entry and took a drink of
water from the gourd. She had dreamed that Virginia had come to her
bedraggled and torn, and had cried on her shoulder, and begged her for
help and protection. In the dream she had pressed the girl's tear-wet
face against her own and kissed her, and said: "I know what you feel, my
child, for I've been through it from end to end; but if the whole world
turns against you, come here to me and we'll live together--the young
and old of the queerest fate known to womankind."
"Ugh!" Ann ejaculated, with a shudder. "I wonder what's the matter with
me." She went back to bed, lay down and drew her feet up under the
sheets and shuddered. "To think I'd have a dream of that sort, and about
_that woman's_ child!"