During this conversation Sam Hemingway had returned to the house from
his field. He had an armful of white, silky, inside leaves of cornhusks
closely packed together, and these he submerged in a washtub full of
water, in the back-yard, placing stones on them to hold them down.
"What are you about now?" his sister-in-law asked, as she appeared in
the doorway of the kitchen.
"Now, what could a body be about when he's wetting a passle of shucks?"
he answered, dryly. "I'm going to make me some stout horse-collars for
spring ploughing. There ain't but one other thing a body could make out
of wet shucks, and that's foot-mats for town folks to wipe their feet
on. Foot-mats are a dead waste of money, for if fewer mats was used,
women would have to do more sweeping and not get time to stand around
the post-office watching men as much as they do. I reckon it's the way
old daddy Time has of shifting women's work onto men's shoulders. I'll
bet my hat that new-fangled churn that fellow passed with yesterday was
invented by a man out o' pure pity for his sex."
"I was wondering where Virginia went to," Jane said, as if she had not
heard his philosophical utterances. "I've been all round the house
looking for her, even to the barn, but she's disappeared entirely."
Sam shrugged his shoulders significantly. He placed the last stone on
the submerged husks and drew himself up erect. "I was just studying," he
drawled out, "whether it ud actually do to tell you where she is at this
minute. I'd decided I'd better not, and go on and finish this work. From
what I know about your odd disposition, I'd expect one of two solitary
things: I'd expect to see you keel over in a dead faint or stand
stock-still in your tracks and burn to a cinder from internal fires."
"Sam, what do you mean?" The widow, in no little alarm, came towards
him, her eyes fixed steadily on his.
"Well, I reckon you might as well know and be done with it," he said,
"though you'll be sure to let them pies burn afterwards. Jane, your only
child is right now a-sitting on the bench at the gum spring, side by
side with Ann Boyd. In fact, as well as I could see from the rise I was
on in my potato-patch, I'd 'a' took my oath that they was holding hands
like two sweethearts."
"I don't believe a word of it," Jane gasped, turning pale. "It might
have been Virginia with somebody else, but not _that_ woman."
"I wouldn't mistake Ann Boyd's solid shape and blue linsey frock ten
miles off," was the cold comfort Sam dispensed in his next remark. "If
you doubt what I say, and will agree not to jump on Ann and get yourself
drawed up at court for assault and battery, with intent to _get killed_,
you may go look for yourself. If you'll slip through the thicket, you
can come up on 'em unbeknownst."
With a very grave look on her emaciated face, Jane Hemingway, without
wrap for her thin shoulders or covering for her gray head, strode across
the yard and into the bushes. Almost holding her breath in dire suspense
and with a superstitious fear of she knew not what, she sped through the
wood, briers and thorn-bushes clutching at her skirt and wild
grape-vines striking her abreast and detaining her. Presently she was
near enough to the spring to hear voices, but was, as yet, unable to see
who was speaking. Then she became fearful lest the dry twigs with which
the ground was strewn, in breaking under her feet, would betray her
presence, and she began, with the desperate caution of a convict
escaping from prison, to select her way, carefully stepping from one
patch of green moss to another. A few paces ahead of her there was a
group of tall pines, and the earth beneath their skeleton boughs was a
veritable bed of soft, brown needles. She soon gained this favorable
point of progress, and sped onward as noiselessly as the gentle breeze
overhead. Suddenly, through the bushes, she caught a gleam of color, and
recognized the dark-blue skirt Ann Boyd wore so constantly, and--her
heart stood still, for, massed against it, was the light gray of
Virginia's dress. Ah, there could be no shadow of a doubt now. Sam was
right, and with bowed head and crouching form Jane gave bewildered ear
to words which caused her blood to stand still in her veins.
"Yes, I've thought a lots about it, child," she heard Ann saying. "I
can't make it out at all, but I really love you more than I do my own
daughter. I reckon it was the divine intention for me and you to have
this secret between us, and pity one another like we do. I can't help
it, but when you tell me you love me and think I'm good and the best
friend you've got on earth, why, it is the sweetest sound that ever fell
on human ear."
There was a pause. Jane Hemingway held her breath; her very soul hung on
the silence. Then, as if from the dun skies above the shaft descended,
as if dropped from the lips of the Avenging Angel. It was the child of
her own breast uttering sounds as inexplicable, as damning to her hopes,
as if the gentle, tractable girl had approached her bed in the dead
hours of night and said: "Mother, I've come to kill you. There is no way
out of it. I must take your life. I am stronger than you. You must
submit. Ann Boyd has willed it so. Mother, I am Retribution!"
"Yes, I do love you, with all my heart," were the words Jane heard. "I
can't help it. You have been kinder to me, more considerate of my
feelings, than my own mother. But I will make amends for all her cruelty
towards you. I'll love you always. I'll go to my grave loving you. You
are the best woman that ever lived. Suffering has raised you to the
skies. I have never kissed you. Let me now--_do, do_ let me!"
As if in a horrible dream, Jane Hemingway turned back homeward. Without
knowing why, she still moved with the same breathless caution. Hers was
a dead soul dragging a body vitalized only by sheer animal instinct to
escape torture. To escape it? No, it was there ahead--it was here,
encompassing her like a net, yonder, behind, everywhere, and it would
stretch out to the end of time. She told her benumbed consciousness that
she saw it all now. It was not the cancer and its deadly effect that Ann
had held over her that hot day at the wash-place. No wonder that Ann had
not told her all, for that would have marred her comprehensive and
relentless plans. Ann's subtle plot had been to rob her enemy of the
respect and love of her only child. Jane had succeeded in tearing from
Ann Boyd's arms her only offspring, and Ann, with the cunning of her
great, indefatigable brain, had devised this subtle revenge and carried
it through. She had won over to herself the love and respect, even
reverence, of her enemy's child. It had been going on in secret for a
long time, and even now the truth was out only by sheer accident. Jane
Hemingway groaned aloud in agony and self-pity as, with her gray head
down, she groped homeward. What was there to do now? Nothing! She was
learning her final grim lesson in the realization that she was no
possible match for her rival. How well she now recalled the fierce words
Ann had hurled at her only a few days since: "Could I hit back at you
now? Could I? Huh! I could tell you something, Jane Hemingway, that
would humble you to the dust and make you crawl home with your nose to
the earth like a whipped dog." Ah, it was true, only too true! Humbled?
It was more than that. Pride, hope, even resentment, was gone. She now
cowered before her enemy as she had so recently before death itself. For
once she keenly felt her own supreme littleness and stood in absolute
awe of the mighty personality she had been so long and audaciously
combating.
Reaching the fence which bounded her own property, Jane got over it with
difficulty. She seemed to have lost all physical strength. She saw Sam
behind the house, under the spreading, leafless boughs of an apple-tree,
repairing a break in the ash-hopper. She could not have explained what
impulse prompted it, but she paused in front of him, speaking in a tone
he had never heard from her before. "Sam," she said, a stare like the
glaze of death in her eyes, "don't you mention this to my child; do you
hear me? Don't you tell Virginia what we've found out. If you do you'll
get your foot into something you'll be sorry for. Do you hear me, man?
This is my business--_mine_, and not a thing for you to treat lightly.
If you know what's good for you, you'll take my hint and not meddle."
"Well, I never!" Sam exclaimed. "Good Lord, woman, what have them two
folks done to you down there. I never saw you look so plumb
flabbergasted in my life."
"Never you mind about that," Jane said. "You remember what I said and
don't meddle with what doesn't concern you."
"Well, she kin bet I won't," Sam mused, as he stood looking after her,
as she disappeared through the doorway into the kitchen. "This is one of
the times, I reckon, that I'll take her advice. Some'n' big has taken
place, or is about to take place, if I'm any judge."
Jane sank into a chair in the kitchen and softly groaned as she cast her
slow eyes about her. Here all seemed sheer mockery. Every mute object in
the room uttered a cry against her. The big, open fireplace, with its
pots and kettles, the cupboard, the cleanly polished table, with the row
of hot pies Sam had rescued from the coals and placed there to cool, the
churn, the milk and butter-jars and pans, the pepper-pods hanging to the
smoked rafters overhead--all these things, which had to do with mere
subsistence, seemed suddenly out of place among the things which really
counted. Suddenly Jane had a faint thrill of hope, as a thought, like a
stray gleam of light penetrating a dark chamber, came to her. Perhaps,
when Virginia was told that Ann Boyd had only used her as a tool in a
gigantic and subtle scheme of revenge against her own flesh and blood,
the girl would turn back to her own. Perhaps, but it was not likely. Ann
Boyd had never failed in any deliberate undertaking. She would not now,
and, for aught Jane knew to the contrary, Virginia might be as confirmed
already in her enmity as the older woman, and had long been a dutiful
and observant spy. It was horrible, but--yes, Jane was willing to admit
that it was fair. The worm had turned, and its sting was equal to the
concentrated pain of all Ann Boyd's years of isolated sufferings.