One bright, crisp morning a few days later, after her uncle had ridden
his old horse, in clanking, trace-chain harness, off to his field to do
some ploughing, Virginia stole out unnoticed and went over to Ann
Boyd's. The door of the farm-house stood open, and in the sitting-room
the girl saw Ann seated near a window hemming a sheet.
"I see from your face that you've had more news," the old woman said, as
she smiled in greeting. "Sit down and tell me about it. I'm on this job
and want to get through with it before I put it down."
"I got a letter this morning," Virginia complied, "from a woman down
there who said she was my mother's nurse. The operation was very
successful, and she is doing remarkably well. The surgeon says she will
have no more trouble with her affliction. It was only on the surface and
was taken just in time."
"Ah, just in time!" Ann held the sheet in her tense hands for a moment,
and then crushed it into her capacious lap. "Then _she's_ all right."
"Yes, she is all right, Mrs. Boyd. In fact, the doctor says she will
soon be able to come home. The simple treatment can be continued here
under their directions till she is thoroughly restored."
There was silence. Ann's face looked as hard as stone. She seemed to be
trying to conquer some rising emotion, for she coughed, cleared her
throat, and swallowed. Her heavy brows were drawn together, and the
muscles of her big neck stood up under her tanned skin like tent-cords
drawn taut from pole to stake.
"I may as well tell you one particular thing and be done with it," she
suddenly gulped. "I don't believe in deception of any sort whatever. I
hate your mother as much as I could hate anything or anybody. I want it
understood between us now on the spot that I done what I did for _you_,
not for her. It may be Old Nick in me that makes me feel this way at
such a time, but, you see, I understand her well enough to know she will
come back primed and cocked for the old battle. The fear of death didn't
alter her in her feelings towards me, and, now that she's on her feet,
she will be worse than ever. It's purty tough to have to think that I
put her in such good fighting trim, but I did it."
"I am afraid you are right about her future attitude," Virginia sighed,
"and that was one reason I did not want help to come through you."
"That makes no odds now," Ann said, stoically. "What's done is done. I'm
in the hands of two powers--good and evil--and here lately I never know,
when I get out of bed in the morning, whether I'm going to feel the cool
breath of one or the hot blast of the other. For months I had but one
desire, and that was to see you, you poor, innocent child, breathing the
fumes of the hell I sunk into; and just as my hopes were about to be
realized the other power caught me up like a swollen river and swept me
right the other way. Luke King really caused it. Child, since God made
the world He never put among human beings a man with a finer soul. That
poor, barefoot mountain boy that I picked up and sent off to school has
come back--like Joseph that was dropped in a pit--a king among men.
Under the lash of his inspired tongue I had to rise from my mire of
hatred and do my duty. I might not have been strong enough in the right
way if--if I hadn't loved him so much, and if he hadn't told me, poor
boy, with tears in his eyes and voice, that you were the only woman in
the world for him, and that his career would be wrecked if he lost you.
I let him leave me without making promises. I was mad and miserable
because I was about to be thwarted. But when he was gone I got to
thinking it over, and finally I couldn't help myself, and acted. I
determined, if possible, to pull you back from the brink you stood on
and give you to him, that you might live the life that I missed."
Virginia sank into a chair. She was flushed from her white, rounded neck
to the roots of her hair.
"Oh, I didn't deserve it!" she cried. "I have remained silent when my
mother was heaping abuse upon you. I made no effort to do you justice
when your enemies were crying you down. Oh, Mrs. Boyd, you are the best
and most unselfish woman that ever lived."
"No, I am not that," Ann declared, firmly. "I'm just like the general
run of women, weak and wishy-washy, with dry powder in my make-up that
anybody can touch a match to. There is no counting on what I'll do next.
Right now I feel like being your stanch friend, but I really don't know
but what, if your mammy hemmed me in a corner, I'd even throw up to her
what you did that night. I say I don't know what notion might strike me.
She can, with one word or look of hers, start perdition's fire in me. I
don't know any more than a cat what made me go contrary to my plans that
night. It wasn't in a thousand miles of what I wanted to do, and having
Jane Hemingway come back here with a sound body and tongue of fire isn't
what I saved money to pay for. If forgiveness is to be the white garment
of the next life, mine will be as black as logwood dye."
"The pretty part of it all is that you don't know yourself as you really
are," Virginia said, almost smiling in her enthusiasm. "Since I've seen
the beautiful side of your character I've come almost to understand the
eternal wisdom even in human ills. But for your hatred of my mother,
your kindness to me would not be so wonderful. For a long time I had
only my mother to love, but now, Mrs. Boyd, somehow, I have not had as
great anxiety about her down there as I thought I would have. Really, my
heart has been divided between you two. Mrs. Boyd, I love you. I can't
help it--I love you."
Ann suddenly raised her sheet and folded it in her lap. Her face had
softened; there was a wonderful spiritual radiance in her eyes.
"It's powerful good and sweet of you to--to talk that way to a poor,
despised outcast like I am. I can't remember many good things being said
about me, and when you say you feel that way towards me, why--well, it's
sweet of you--that's all, it's sweet and kind of you."
"You have _made_ me love you," Virginia said, simply. "I could not help
myself."
Ann looked straight at the girl from her moist, beaming eyes.
"I'm a very odd woman, child, and I want to tell you what I regard as
the oddest thing about me. You say you feel kind towards me, and,
and--love me a little. Well, ever since that night in that young scamp's
room, when I came on you, crouched down there in your misery and fear,
looking so much like I must 'a' looked at one time away back when not a
spark of hope flashed in my black sky--ever since I saw you that way,
helpless as a fresh violet in the track of a grazing bull, I have felt a
yearning to draw you up against this old storm-beaten breast of mine and
rock you to sleep. That's odd, but that isn't the odd thing I was
driving at, and it is this, Virginia--I don't care a snap of my finger
about my _own_ child. Think of that. If I was to hear of her death
to-night it wouldn't be any more to me than the news of the death of any
stranger."
"That _is_ queer," said Virginia, thoughtfully.
"Well, it's only nature working, I reckon," Ann said. "I loved her as a
baby--in a natural way, I suppose--but when she went off from me, and by
her going helped--child though she was--to stamp the brand on me that
has been like the mark of a convict on my brow ever since--when she went
off, I say, I hardened my heart towards her, and day after day I kept it
hard till now she couldn't soften it. Maybe if I was to see her in
trouble like you were in, my heart would go out to her; but she's
independent of me; the only thing I've ever heard of her is that she
cries and shudders at the mention of my name. She shudders at it, and
she'll go down to her grave shuddering at it. She'll teach her children
not to mention me. No, I'll never love her, and that's why it seems odd
for me to feel like I do about you. Heaven knows, it seems like a dream
when I remember that you are Jane Hemingway's child and the chief pride
of her hard life. As for my own girl, she's full grown now, and has her
natural plans and aspirations, and is afraid my record will blight them.
I don't even know how she looks, but I have in mind a tall,
stiff-necked, bony girl inclined to awkwardness, selfish, grasping, and
unusually proud. But I can love as well as hate, though I've done more
hating in my life than loving. There was a time I thought the very seeds
of love had dried up in me, but about that time I picked up Luke King.
Even as a boy he seemed to look deep into the problems of life, and was
sorry for me. Somehow me and him got to talking over my trouble as if
he'd been a woman, and he always stood to me and pitied me and called me
tender names. You see, nobody at his home understood him, and he had his
troubles, too, so we naturally drifted together like a mother and son
pulled towards one another by the oddest freak of circumstances that
ever came in two lives. We used to sit here in this room and talk of the
deepest questions that ever puzzled the human brain. Our reason told us
the infinite plan of the universe must be good, but we couldn't make it
tally with the heavy end of it we had to tote. He was rebellious against
circumstances and his lazy old step-father's conduct towards him, and he
finally kicked over the traces and went West. Well, he had his eyes open
out there, and came back with the blaze of spiritual glory in his manly
face. He started in to practise what he was preaching, too. He yanked
out of his pocket the last dollar of his savings and forked it over to
the last people on earth to deserve it. That made me so mad I couldn't
speak to him for a while, but now I'm forced to admit that the sacrifice
hasn't harmed him in the least. He's plunging ahead down there in the
most wonderful way, and content--well, content but just for one thing. I
reckon you know what that is?"
Ann paused. Virginia was looking out through the open doorway, a flush
creeping over her sensitive face. She started to speak, but the words
hung in her throat, and she only coughed.
"Yes, you know as well as I do," Ann went on, gently. "He come over here
the other night after he left your house. He hitched his horse at the
gate and come in and sat down. I saw something serious had happened, and
as he was not due here, and was overwhelmed with business in Atlanta, I
thought he had met with money trouble. I made up my mind then and there,
too, that I'd back him to the extent of every thimbleful of land and
every splinter of timber in my possession; but it wasn't money he
wanted. It was something else. He sat there in the moonlight that was
shining through the door, with his head on his breast plumb full of
despair. I finally got it out of him. You'd refused him outright. You'd
decided that you could get on without the love and life-devotion of the
grandest man that ever lived. I was thoroughly mad at you then. I come
in an inch of turning plumb against you, but I didn't. I fought for you
as I'd have fought for myself away back in my girlhood. I did it,
although I could have spanked you good for making him so miserable."
"You know why I refused him," Virginia said, in a low voice. "You, of
all persons, will know that."
"I don't know as I do," Ann said, with a probing expression in her eyes.
"I don't know, unless, after all, you have a leaning for that young
scamp, who has no more real honor than a convict in his stripes. Women
are that way, except in very rare cases. The bigger the scoundrel and
the meaner he treats them the more they want him. If it's that, I am not
going to upbraid you. Upbraiding folks for obeying the laws of nature is
the greatest loss of wind possible. If you really love that scamp, no
power under high heaven will turn you."
"Love him? I loathe him!" burst passionately from Virginia's lips.
"Then what under the sun made you treat Luke King as you did?" asked
Ann, almost sternly.
"Because I could not marry him," said the girl, firmly. "I'd rather die
than accept the love and devotion of a man as noble as he is
after--after--oh, you know what I mean!"
"Oh, I see--I see," Ann said, her brows meeting. "There comes another
law of nature. I reckon if you feel that way, any argument I'd put up
would fall on deaf ears."
"I could never accept his love and confidence without telling him all
that took place that night, and I'd kill myself rather than have him
know," declared the girl.
"Oh, _that's_ the trouble!" Ann exclaimed. "Well, I hope all that will
wear away in time. It's fortunate that you are not loved by a narrow
fool, my child. Luke King has seen a lots of the world in his young
life."
"He has not seen enough of the world to make him overlook a thing of
that kind, and you know it," Virginia sighed. "I really believe the
higher a man becomes spiritually the higher his ideal of a woman is. I
know what he thinks of me now, but I don't know what he would think if
he knew the whole truth. He must never be told that, Mrs. Boyd. God
knows I am grateful to you for all you have done, but you must not tell
him that."
Ann put down her sheet and went to the fireplace, and with the tip of
her coarse, gaping shoe she pushed some burning embers under a
three-legged pot on the stone hearth. With her tongs she lifted the iron
lid and looked at a corn-pone browning within, and then she replaced it.
Her brow was deeply wrinkled.
"You told me everything that happened that night, if I remember right,"
she said, tentatively. "In fact, I know you did."
Virginia said nothing; her thoughts seemed elsewhere.
Leaning the tongs against the fireplace, Ann came forward and bent over
her almost excitedly.
"Look here, child," she said, "you told me that--that I got there in
time. You told me--"
"I told you all I thought was necessary for you to understand the
situation," said Virginia, her eyes downcast, "but I didn't tell you all
I'd have to tell Luke King--to be his wife."
"You say you didn't." Ann sat down heavily in her chair. "Then be plain
with me; what under the sun did you leave out?"
"I left out the fact that I was crazy that night," said Virginia. "I
read in a book once that a woman is so constituted that she can't see
reason in anything which does not coincide with her desires. I saw only
one thing that night that was worth considering. I saw only the awful
suffering of my mother and the chance to put an end to it by getting
hold of that man's money. Do you understand now? I went there for that
purpose. I'd have laid down my life for it. When those men came he urged
me to run and hide in his room, as he and I stood on the veranda, and it
was not fear of exposure that drove me up the stairs holding to his
hand. It was the almost appalling fear that the promised money would
slip through my fingers if I didn't obey him to the letter. And when he
whispered, with his hot breath in my ear, there in his room, as his
friends were loudly knocking at the door below, that he would rid
himself of them and come back, and asked me if I'd wait, I said yes, as
I would, have said it to God in heaven. Then he asked me if it was '_a
promise_,' and I said yes again. Then he asked me, Mrs. Boyd, he asked
me--"
Virginia's voice died out. She fell to quivering from head to foot.
"Well, well, go on!" Ann said, under her breath. "Go on. What did he ask
you?"
Virginia hesitated for another minute, then, with her face red with
shame, she said: "He asked me to prove it by--kissing him--kissing him
of my own free will. I hesitated, I think. Yes, I hesitated, but I heard
the steps of the men in the hall below at the foot of the stairs. I
thought of the money, Mrs. Boyd, and I kissed him."
"You did?"
"Yes. I did--there, _in his room_!"
"Well, I'm glad you told me that," Ann breathed, deeply. "I think I
understand it better now. I understand how you feel."
"So you see, all that's what I'd have to tell Luke King," Virginia said;
"and I'll never do it--never on this earth. I want him always to think
of me as he does right now."
Ann locked her big hands in her lap and bent forward.
"I see my greatest trouble is going to lie with you," she said. "You are
conscientious. Millions of women have kept worse things than that from
their husbands and never lost a wink of sleep over them, but you seem to
be of a different stripe. I think Luke King is too grand a man to hold
that against you, under all the circumstances. I think so, but I don't
know men any better than they know women, and I'm not going to urge you
one way or the other. I thought my easy-going husband would do me
justice, but he couldn't have done it to save his neck from the loop. In
my opinion there never will be any happy unions between men and women
till men quit thinking so much about the weakness of women's _bodies_
and so little of the strength of their _souls_. The view you had that
night of the dark valley of a living death, and your escape from it, has
lifted you into a purity undreamt of by the average woman. If Luke
King's able to comprehend that, he may get him a wife on the open
mountain-top; if not, he can find her in the bushes at the foot. He'll
obey his natural law, as you and I will ours."