In about half an hour Virginia returned home. She passed Sam under the
apple-tree, where he now had a big pot full of shelled corn and lye over
an incipient fire preparing to make whole-grained hominy, and hastened
into the kitchen, where Jane sat bowed before the fire.
"Is there anything I can do, mother?" she inquired.
There was a pause. Mrs. Hemingway did not look up. In some surprise,
Virginia repeated her question, and then Jane said, calmly and
deliberately:
"Yes; there is something you can do. You can get out of my sight, and
_keep_ out of it. When I want anything from you, I'll call on you."
Virginia paused, dumfounded, and then passed out into the yard and
approached her uncle.
"Can you tell me," she asked, "if anything has gone wrong with mother?"
Sam gave her one swift glance from beneath his tattered, tent-shaped
wool-hat, and then, with his paddle, he began to stir the corn and lye
in the pot.
"I reckon," he said, after a momentary struggle over a desire to tell
the plain truth instead of prevaricating, "if you don't know that woman
by this time, Virgie, it's your own fault. I'm sure I don't try to keep
up with her tantrums and sudden notions. That woman's died forty-seven
times in her life, and been laid out and buried ten. Maybe she's been
tasting them pies she was cooking, and got crooked. You let a body's
liver be at all sluggish and get a wad o' sweet-potato dough lodged
inside of 'em, and they'll have a sort of jim-jams not brought on by
liquor. I reckon she'll cough it down after a while. If I was you,
though, I'd let her alone."
Jane was, indeed, acting strangely. Refusing to sit down to the mid-day
meal with them, as was her invariable custom, she put on her bonnet and
shawl and, without a word of explanation, set off in the direction of
Wilson's store. She was gone till dusk, and then came in with a slow
step, passed through the sitting-room, where Sam had made a cheerful
fire, and went on to her own room in the rear of the house. Virginia
rose to follow her solicitously, but Sam put out a detaining hand,
shifting his pipe into the corner of his mouth.
"I'd let her alone if I was in your place," he said. "Let her go to bed
and sleep. She'll get up all right in the morning."
"I only wanted to see if there was anything I could do for her,"
Virginia said, in a troubled tone. "Do you suppose it is a relapse she
is having? Perhaps she has discovered that the cancer is coming back.
The fear of that would kill her, actually kill her."
"I don't think that's it," said Sam, impulsively; "the truth is,
Virginia, she--" He pulled himself up. "But maybe that _is_ it. Anyway,
I'd let her alone."
Darkness came down. Virginia spread the cloth in the big kitchen and put
the plates and dishes in their places, and then slipped to the door of
her mother's room. It was dark and still.
"Supper is on the table, mother," she said; "do you want anything?"
There was a sudden creaking of the bed-slats, a pause, then, in a
sullen, husky voice, Jane answered, "No, I _don't_; you leave me alone!"
"All right, mother; I'm sorry to have disturbed you. Good-night."
Sam and his niece ate alone in the big room by the wavering light of the
fire. The wind had risen on the mountain-top, and roared across the
fields. It sang dolefully in the pines near by, whistled shrilly under
the eaves of the house, and scurried through the open passage outside.
After the meal was over, Sam smoked a pipe and thumped off to bed,
carrying his shoes in his hand. Virginia buried the remains of the big
back-log in the hot ashes, and in the darkness crept into her own room,
adjoining that of her mother, and went to bed.
Jane Hemingway was not sleeping; she had no hope of a respite of that
sort. She would have doubted that she ever could close her eyes in
tranquillity till some settlement of the life-crushing matter was
reached. What was to be done? Only one expedient had offered itself
during her aimless walk to the store, where she purchased a spool of
cotton thread she did not need, and during her slow return along the
road and the further hours of solitude in her darkened chamber, and that
expedient offered no balm for her gashed and torn pride. She could
appeal to the law to protect her innocent daughter from the designing
wiles of a woman of such a reputation as Ann Boyd bore, but, alas! even
Ann might have foreseen that ruse and counted on its more deeply
stirring Virginia's sympathies and adding to her faith. Why she had not
at once denounced her child for her filial faithlessness she could not
have explained, unless it was the superstitious dread of having
Virginia's infidelity reconfirmed. Of course, she must fight. Yes, she'd
have to do that to the end, although her shrewd enemy had already beaten
her life-pulse dead in her veins and left her without a hope of adequate
retaliation. Going to law meant also that it was her first public
acknowledgment of her enemy's prowess, and it meant, too, the
wide-spread and humiliating advertisement of the fact that Virginia had
died to her and been born to the breast of her rival; but even that must
be borne.
These morose reflections were broken, near midnight, by a step in the
passage outside. The door was opened softly, and Virginia, in her
night-robe, came in quietly and approached the bed.
"I know you are not asleep, mother," she said, tremulously. "I've heard
you rolling and tossing ever since I went to bed."
Jane stared from her hot pillow for an instant, and then slowly propped
herself up on her gaunt, quivering elbow. "You are not asleep either, it
seems," she said, hollowly.
"No, I couldn't for thinking about you," Virginia replied, gently, as
she sat down on the foot of the bed.
"You couldn't, huh! I say!" Jane sneered. "Huh, _you_! It's a pity about
you!"
"I have reason to worry," Virginia said. "You know the doctors told you
particularly not to get depressed and downhearted while you are
recovering your strength."
"Huh! what do they mean by prescribing things that can't be reached
under the sun? They are idiots to think I could have peace of mind after
finding out what I did this morning. I once had a cancer in the flesh;
I've got one now in my heart, where no knife on earth can reach it."
There was a pause. The eyes of the mother and daughter met in the
half-darkness of the room. There was a lull in the whistling of the wind
outside. Under the floor a hen with a brood of chickens was clucking
uneasily and flapping her wings in the effort to keep her brood warm.
Across the passage came the rasping sound of Sam's snoring, as
unconscious of tragedy as he had been in his cradle, and yet its
creeping shadow lay over his placid features, its bated breath filled
the air he was breathing. Virginia leaned forward wonderingly, her lips
parted and set in anxiety.
"You are thinking about the debt on the farm?" she ventured. "If that's
it, mother, remember--"
"The debt on this paltry shack and few acres of rocky land? Huh! if that
was all I had to complain about I'd bounce out of this bed and shout for
joy. Oh, Lord, have mercy on me!"
"Then, mother, what--" Virginia drew herself up with a start. Her
mother, it now struck her, had said her trouble was due to a discovery
she had made that morning. What else could it be than that her mother
had accidentally seen her in company with Ann Boyd? Yes, that was it,
and Virginia hastily told herself that some satisfying explanation must
be made, some plausible and pacifying reason must be forthcoming that
would allay her mother's anger, but it was hard to lie, in open words,
as she had been doing in act. The gentle girl shuddered before the
impending ordeal and clinched her hands in her lap. Yes, it was hard to
lie, and yet the truth--the _whole_ truth--was impossible.
"Mother," she began, "you see--I suppose I'll have to confess to you
that Mrs. Boyd and I--"
"Don't blacken your soul with lies!" her mother hurled at her,
furiously. "I slipped up in a few feet of you both at the spring and saw
you kissing her, and heard you tell her you loved her more than anybody
in the world, and that she'd treated you better than I ever did, and
that she was the best woman that ever lived. Explain all that, if you
can, but don't set there and lie to me who gave you what life you've
got, and toiled and stinted and worked my hands to the bone to raise,
you and let you hold your own with others. If there's a speck of truth
in you, don't deny what I saw with my own eyes and heard with my two
ears."
"I'll not deny it, then," Virginia said. She rose and moved to the
small-paned window and stood with her face turned away. "I have met Mrs.
Boyd several times and talked to her. I don't think she has ever had
justice done her by you and her neighbors; she is not rightly
understood, and, feeling that you have been all along the chief
influence against her, and have always kept her early trouble stirred
up, I felt like being her friend as well as I could, and at the same
time remain true to you."
"Oh, you poor, poor little sniffling idiot!" Jane said, as she drew her
thin legs out from the coverings and rested her feet on the floor and
leaned forward. "All this time you've been thinking, in your grand way,
that you were doing a kindness to her, when she was just using you as a
tool, to devil me. Huh! didn't she throw it up to me once at the
wash-place where she and I met? She told me to my teeth that something
was coming that would bring my face to the earth in shame. I thought she
knew about the cancer, and was gloating over it; but she wasn't speaking
of that, for when I came back from Atlanta, sound and whole, she hurled
her hints at me again. She said she knew nothing about the cancer at
that time, but that she still knew something that would make me slink
from the faces of men and women like a whipped hound. I discovered what
she meant to-day. She meant that because my testimony had something to
do with Joe Boyd's leaving with _her_ child, she had won over _mine_ to
herself. That's been her mean and sneaking plot all this time, in which
she has been decoying you from a respectable roof and making you her
easy tool--the tool with which she expected to stab at my pride and
humble me in the eyes of everybody."
"Mother, stop!" Virginia turned and sat down again on the bed. "That
woman shall not have another--not one other--_false_ charge piled up
around her. God knows I don't see how I can tell you _all_ the truth,
but it is due to her now. It will more than justify her, and that's my
duty. Listen, and don't interrupt me. I want to go straight through
this, and when I have finished you may turn from me and force me to go
to her for a home. You have never dreamed that I could do what I am
about to confess I did. I am not going to excuse myself, either. What I
did, I did. The shame of it, now that I see clearly, is killing me. No,
stop! Let me go on. I have been receiving the attentions of Langdon
Chester in secret. After the first time you saw us together and objected
so strongly, I told him not to come to the house again; but, like many
another silly girl, I was hungry for admiration, and met him elsewhere.
I loved to hear the nice things he said, although I didn't always
believe them. He--he tried to induce me to do a number of imprudent
things, which, somehow, I was able to refuse, as they concerned my own
pleasure alone; but then you began to worry about the money to go to
Atlanta on. Day by day you grew more and more despondent and desperate
as every effort failed, and one day, when you were down at the lowest
ebb of hope, he told me that he--do you understand, mother?--Langdon
Chester told me that he thought he could get up the money, but that no
one must know that he--"
"Oh, my God, don't, don't, don't!" Jane groaned. "Don't tell me that
you--"
"Stop! let me go on," Virginia said, in a low, desperate tone. "I'm
going to tell the whole horrible thing and be done with it forever. He
said he had sent his best horse to Darley to sell it, and that the man
would be back about ten o'clock at night with the money. He told me,
mother, that he wanted me to slip away from home after you went to sleep
and come there for the money. I didn't hesitate long. I wanted to save
your life. I agreed. I might have failed to go after I parted with him
if I'd had time to reflect, but when I came in to supper you were more
desperate than ever. You went to your room praying and moaning, and kept
it up till you dropped asleep only a few minutes before the appointed
time. Well, I slipped away and--_went_."
"Oh, God have mercy on me--mercy, mercy, mercy!" Jane groaned. "You went
there to that man!"
Virginia nodded mutely and then continued her recital. Jane Hemingway's
knees bent under her as she stood holding to the bedpost, and she slowly
sank to the floor a few feet away. With a low, moaning sound like a
suffering dumb brute, she crawled on her hands and knees to her daughter
and mutely clutched the girl's cold, bare ankles. "You say he locked you
in his _bedroom_!" she said, in a rasping whisper. "_Locked_
you--actually _locked_ you in! Oh, Lord have mercy!"
"Then, after a long wait," the girl went on, "in which I was praying
only for the money, mother--the money to save your life and put you out
of agony--I heard steps, first on the stairs and then at the door.
Somebody touched the latch. The door held fast. Then the key was turned,
and as I sat there with covered face, now with the dread of death upon
me for the first time, somebody came in and stood over me."
"The scoundrel! The beast!" Jane's hands slipped from their hold on the
girl's ankles and fell; her head and shoulders sank till her brow
touched the floor.
"A hand was laid on my head," Virginia went on. "I heard a voice--"
"The fiend from hell!" Jane raised her haggard face and glaring eyes.
"Don't, don't tell me that he dared to--"
"It was Mrs. Boyd, mother--Ann Boyd," said Virginia.
"Ann Boyd!" Jane groaned. "I see it now; _she_ was at the bottom of it;
it was all _her_ doing. _That_ was her plot. Ah, God, I see it now!"
"You are mistaken," the girl said. "She had accidentally overheard my
agreement to go there, and came for no other reason than to save me,
mother--to save me."
"To save you?" Jane raised herself on her two hands like a four-footed
animal looking up from its food. "Save your" she repeated, with the
helpless glare of insanity in her blearing eyes.
"Yes, to save me. She was acting on impulse, an impulse for good that
she was even then fighting against. When she heard of that appointment
she actually gloated over it, but, mother, she found herself unequal to
it. As the time which had been set drew near, she plunged out into the
night and got there only a few minutes before--"
"In time--oh, my God, did you say _in time_?" Jane gasped, again
clutching her daughter's ankles and holding desperately to them.
"Yes, in time to save me from all but the life-long consciousness of my
awful indiscretion. She brought me away, and after that how could I be
other than a grateful friend to such a noble creature?"
"In time--oh, my God, in _time_!" Jane exclaimed, as she sat erect on
the floor and tossed her scant hair, which, like a wisp of tow, hung
down her cheek. Then she got up stiffly and moved back to the bed as
aimlessly as if she were wandering in her sleep.
"There is no use in my saying more, mother." Virginia rose and turned to
the door. "I'm going back to my room. You can think it all over and do
as you please with me. I deserve punishment, and I'm willing to take
it."
Jane stared at her from her hollow eyes for a moment, then she said:
"Yes, go! I never want to see you again; Ann Boyd saved you, but she is
now gloating over _me_. She'll call it heaping coals of fire on my head;
she'll brag to me and others of what she's done, and of what I owe her.
Oh, I know that woman! You've escaped one thing, but have made me face
another worse than death. Go on away--get clear out of my sight. If you
don't I'll say something to you that you will remember all your life."
"Very well, mother." Virginia moved to the door. Her hand was on the
latch, when, with a startled gasp, her mother called out:
"Stop!--stop! For God's sake don't you dare to tell me that I went to
Atlanta and bought back my life with that young scoundrel's money; if
you do, as God is my Judge, I'll strike you dead where you stand."
"No, I refused to take it," Virginia said. "He came to me afterwards and
begged me to accept it, but I refused."
"Then how under the sun--" Jane began, but went no further.
Virginia turned in the doorway and stood still; a look of resigned
despair was on her. "You may as well know _all_ the truth," she said. "I
promised not to tell, but you really ought to know this, too. Mother,
Ann Boyd, gave me the money. The woman you are still hounding and hating
earned the money by the sweat of her brow that saved your life."
"Ann Boyd! Oh, my God, and to think you can stand there and tell me
that! Get out of my sight. You have acted the fool all along, and
humiliated me in the dust by your conduct. You are no child of mine. It
was all a plot--a dirty, low plot. She has used you. She has used me.
She is laughing at us both right now. Oh, I know her! Get out of my
sight or I'll forget myself and--go, I tell you!"