During this talk Jane Hemingway had gone out to the fence to speak to
Dr. Evans, who had passed along the road, a side of bacon on his left
shoulder, and she came back, and with a low groan sat down. Sam
Hemingway, who sat near the fire, shrugged his shoulders and sniffed.
"You are making too much of a hullabaloo over it," he said. "I've been
thinking about the matter a lots, and I've come to the final conclusion
that you are going it entirely too heavy, considering the balance of us.
Every man, woman, and child, born and unborn, is predestinated to die,
and them that meet their fate graceful-like are the right sort. Seeing
you takin' on after them doctors left actually turned _me_ sick at the
stomach, and that ain't right. I'll be sick enough when my own time
comes, I reckon, without having to go through separate spells for all my
kin by marriage every time they have a little eruption break out on
them. Then here's Virginia having her bright young life blighted when it
ought to be all sunshine and roses, if I may be allowed to quote the
poets. I'll bet when you was a young girl your cheeks wasn't kept wet as
a dish-rag by a complaining mother. No, what you've got to do, Sister
Jane, is to pucker up courage and face the music--be resigned."
"Resigned! I say, resigned!" was the rebellious reply--"I say, resigned!
with a slow thing like this eating away at my vitals and nothing under
high heaven to make it let go. You can talk, sitting there with a pipe
in your mouth, and every limb sound, and a long life ahead of you."
"But you are openly disobeying Biblical injunction," said Sam, knocking
his exhausted pipe on the heel of his shoe. "You are kicking agin the
pricks. All of us have to die, and you are raising a racket because your
turn is somewhere in sight. You are kicking agin something that's as
natural as a child coming into the world. Besides, you are going back on
what you preach. You are eternally telling folks there's a life in front
of us that beats this one all hollow, and, now that Providence has
really blessed you by giving you a chance to sorter peep ahead at the
pearly gates, you are actually balking worse than a mean mule. I say you
ought to give me and Virginia a rest. If you can't possibly raise the
scads to pay for having the thing cut out, then pucker up and grin and
bear it. Folks will think a sight more of you. Being a baby at both ends
of life is foolish--there ain't nobody willing to do the nursing the
second time."
"I want you to hush all that drivel, Sam," the widow retorted. "I reckon
folks are different. Some are born with a natural dread of death, and it
was always in my family. I stood over my mother and watched her breathe
her last, and it went awfully hard with her. She begged and begged for
somebody to save her, even sitting up in bed while all the neighbors
were crouched about crying and praying, and yelled out to them to stop
that and do something. We'd called in every doctor for forty miles
about, and she had somehow heard of a young one away off, and she was
calling out his name when she fell back and died."
"Well, she must have had some load on her mind that she wasn't ready to
dump at the throne," said Sam, without a hint of humor in his drawling
voice. "I've always understood your folks, in the woman line at least,
was unforgiving. They say forgiveness is the softest pillow to expire
on. I dunno, I've never tried it."
"I'm miserable, simply miserable!" groaned Jane. "Dr. Evans has just
been to Darley. He promised to see if any of my old friends would lend
me the money, but he says nobody had a cent to spare."
"Folks never have cash for an investment of that sort," answered Sam. "I
fetched up your case to old Milward Dedham at the store the other day.
He'd just sold five thousand acres of wild mountain land to a Boston man
for the timber that was on it, and was puffed up powerful. I thought if
ever a man would be prepared to help a friend he would. 'La me, Sam,'
said he, 'you are wasting time trying to keep a woman from pegging out
when wheat's off ten cents a bushel. Any woman ought to be happy lying
in a grave that is paid for sech times as these.'"
The widow was really not listening to Sam's talk. With her bony elbows
on her knee, her hand intuitively resting on the painless and yet
insistent seat of her trouble, she rocked back and forth, sighing and
moaning. There was a clicking of the gate-latch, a step on the gravelled
walk, and Virginia, flushed from exercise in the cool air, came in and
emptied her apron in the chimney corner, from which her uncle lazily
dragged his feet. He leaned forward and critically scanned the heap of
wood.
"You've got some good, rich, kindling pine there, Virginia," he drawled
out. "But you needn't bother after to-day, though. I'll have my wagon
back from the shop to-morrow, and Simpson has promised to lend me his
yoke of oxen, and let me haul some logs from his hill. Most of it is
good, seasoned red oak, and when it gets started to burning it pops like
a pack of fire-crackers."
Virginia said nothing. Save for the firelight, which was a red glow from
live coals, rather than any sort of flame, the big room was dark, and
her mother took no notice of her, but Sam had his eyes on her over his
left shoulder.
"Your mother has been keeping up the same old song and dance," he said,
dryly; "so much so that she's clean forgot living folks want to eat at
stated times. I reckon you'll have to make the bread and fry what bacon
is left on that strip of skin."
Virginia said nothing to him, for her glance was steadily resting on her
mother's despondent form. "Mother," she said, in a faltering, almost
frightened tone, for she had been accustomed to no sort of deception in
her life, and the part she was to play was a most repellent
one--"mother, I've got something to tell you, and I hardly know how to
do it. Down the road just a while ago I met a friend--a person who told
me--the person told me--"
"Well, what did the person tell you?" Sam asked, as both he and the
bowed wreck at the fire stared through the red glow.
"The person wants to help you out of trouble, mother, and gave me the
hundred dollars you need. Before I got it I had to give my sacred word
of honor that I'd never let even you know who sent it. I hardly knew
what to do, but I thought perhaps I ought to--"
"What? You mean--oh, Virginia, you don't mean--" Jane began, as she rose
stiffly, her scrawny hand on the mantel-piece, and took a step towards
her almost shrinking daughter.
"Here's the money, mother," Virginia said, holding out the roll of
bills, now damp and packed close together by her warm, tense fingers.
"That's all I am allowed to tell you. I had to promise not to let you
know who sent it."
As if electrified from death to life, Jane Hemingway sprang forward and
took the money into her quivering fingers. "A light, Sam!" she cried.
"Make a light, and let me see. If the child's plumb crazy I want to know
it, and have it over with. Oh, my Lord! Don't fool me, Virginia. Don't
raise my hopes with any trick anybody wants to play."
With far more activity than was his by birth, Sam stood up, secured a
tallow candle from the mantel-piece, and bent over the coals.
"Crazy?" he said. "I _know_ the girl's crazy, if she says there's any
human being left on the earth after Noah's flood who gives away money
without taking a receipt for it--to say nothing of a double, iron-clad
mortgage."
"It looks and feels like money!" panted the widow. "Hurry up with the
light. I wonder if my prayer has been heard at last."
"Hearing it and answering are two different things; the whole
neighborhood has _heard_ it often enough," growled Sam, as he fumed
impatiently over the hot coals, fairly hidden in a stifling cloud of
tallow-smoke.
"Here's a match," said Virginia, who had found one near the clock, and
she struck it on the top of one of the dog-irons, and applied it to the
dripping wick. At the same instant the hot tallow in the coals and ashes
burst into flame, lighting up every corner and crevice of the great,
ill-furnished room. Sam, holding the candle, bent over Jane's hands as
they nervously fumbled the money.
"Ten-dollar bills!" she cried. "Oh, count 'em, Sam! I can't. They stick
together, she's wadded 'em so tight."
With almost painful deliberation Sam counted the money, licking his
rough thumb as he raised each bill.
"It's a hundred dollars all right enough," he said, turning the roll
over to his sister-in-law. "The only thing that's worrying me is who's
had sech a sudden enlargement of the heart in this section."
"Virginia, who gave you this money?" Mrs. Hemingway asked, her face
abeam, her eyes gleaming with joy.
"I told you I was bound by a promise not to tell you or anybody else,"
Virginia awkwardly replied, as she avoided their combined stare.
"Oh, I smell a great big dead rat under the barn!" Sam laughed. "I'd bet
my Sunday-go-to-meeting hat I know who sent it."
"You do?" exclaimed the widow. "Who do you think it was, Sam?"
"Why, the only chap around about here that seems to have wads of cash to
throw at cats," Sam laughed. "He pitched one solid roll amounting to ten
thousand at his starving family awhile back. Of course, he did this,
too. He always _did_ have a hankering for Virginia, anyway. Hain't I
seen them two--"
"He didn't send it!" Virginia said, impulsively. "There! I didn't intend
to set you guessing, and after this I'll never answer one way or the
other. I didn't know whether I ought to take it on those conditions or
not, but I couldn't see mother suffering when this would help her so
much."
"No, God knows I'm glad you took it," said Jane, slowly, "even if I'm
never to know. I'm sure it was a friend, for nobody but a friend would
care that much to help me out of trouble."
"You bet it was a friend," said Sam, "unless it was some thief trying to
get rid of some marked bills he's hooked some'r's. Now, Virginia, for
the love of the Lord, get something ready to eat. For a family with a
hundred dollars in hand, we are the nighest starvation of any I ever
heard of."
While the girl was busy preparing the cornmeal dough in a wooden
bread-tray, her mother walked about excitedly.
"I'll go to Darley in the hack in the morning," she said, "and right on
to Atlanta on the evening train. I feel better already. Dr. Evans says I
won't suffer a particle of pain, and will come back weighing more and
with a better appetite."
"Well, I believe I'd not put myself out to improve on mine," said Sam,
"unless this person who is so flush with boodle wants to keep up the
good work. Dern if I don't believe I'll grow _me_ a cancer, and talk
about it till folks pay me to hush."