For two weeks longer Jane Hemingway, to the inexplicable sorrow of her
gentle and mystified daughter, kept the seclusion of her room. The
curtains of the single window looking out on the yard in the rear were
constantly drawn, and, though the girl sometimes listened attentively
with her ear to the wall, she heard no sound to indicate that her mother
ever moved from her bed or her chair at the fireplace, where she sat
enveloped in blankets. She had allowed Virginia to push a plate
containing her meals three times a day through the door, but the things
were promptly received into the darkness and only sullen silence was the
invariable response to the frequent inquiries the girl made.
One morning Sam stopped his niece in the yard near the well, a droll,
half-amused expression on his face. "Do you know," he said, "that I
believe I'd 'a' made a bang-up detective if I'd given time to it."
"Do you think so?" Virginia said, absently.
"Yes, I do," he replied. "Now, I'm going to give you an instance of what
a body can discover by sticking two and two together and nosing around
till you are plumb sure you know what a certain thing means. Now, you
are a woman--not an old one, but a woman all the same--and they are
supposed to see what's at the ends of their noses and a heap beyond, but
when it comes to detective work they are not in it. I reckon it's
because they won't look for what they don't want to see, and to make a
good detective a body must pry into everything that is in sight. Well,
to come down to the case in hand, you've been sticking grub through that
crack in the door to your mammy, who put herself in limbo several weeks
ago, but in all that time you haven't seen the color of her cheeks to
know whether the fare is fattening her or thinning her down to the bone.
In fact, you nor me, on the outside, hain't supposed to know a blasted
thing about what's going on in there. But--and there's where detective
work comes in--one morning--it was day before yesterday, to be
accurate--I took notice that all the stray cats and ducks and chickens
had quit basking on the sunny side of the house and was staying around
your mammy's window. Now, thinks I, that's odd; that's not according to
the general run; so I set in to watching, and what do you reckon? I
found out that all them Noah's Ark passengers, of the two and four
footed sort, had assembled there to get their meals. Your mammy was
regularly throwing out the dainty grub you fixed for her. I laid in wait
nigh the window this morning and saw her empty the plate. I went close
and took a look. She had just nibbled a bit or two, like the pecking of
a sparrow, out of the centre of the bread-slices, but she hadn't touched
the eggs nor the streak-o'-lean-streak-o'-fat you thought she set such
store by. Good Lord, Virgie, don't you think the thing's gone far
enough--having a drove of cats fed on the fat o' the land, when me and
you are living on scraps?"
"Uncle"--Virginia's startled eyes bore down on him suddenly--"what does
it mean?"
"Mean? Why, that there'll be a passle of cats on this place too fat to
walk, while me 'n' you'll be too lean to cast a shadow if we stood side
by side in the sun."
"Oh, uncle, do you suppose she is worse?" Virginia asked, in deep
concern.
"I don't know," Sam said, seriously, "my Pinkerton job ended with the
discovery of them cat banquets, but I've about reached _one_ opinion."
"And what is that?" the girl asked, anxiously, as she bent towards her
uncle.
"Why, I think maybe she's so mad and set back by all that's happened
that she's trying to starve herself to death to get even."
"Oh, uncle, don't say that!" Virginia cried--"don't! don't!"
"Well, then, you study it out," he said. "It's too much for me."
That morning Virginia quietly slipped over to Ann Boyd's and confided
the new phase of the situation to her sympathetic friend, but Ann could
not account for Jane's strange conduct, and Virginia returned home no
wiser than she had left. However, at the fence she met Sam. His face was
aglow with excitement.
"What you reckon?" he said. "The bird has flown."
"Mother, you mean?"
"Yes, she's skipped clean out. It was this way: Pete Denslow drove past
about twenty minutes ago in his empty two-horse wagon, and I hollered
out to him and asked him where-away. He pulled up at the gate and said
he was going over the mountain to Gilmer after a load of ginseng to
fetch back to Darley. Well, sir, no sooner had he said that than your
mammy piped up from her dungeon, where she stood listening at a crack,
and said, said she, sorter sheepish-like: 'Sam, ask him if he will let
me go with him; I promised to go see Sally Maud Pincher over there the
first time any wagon was passing, and I want to go.' Well, I told Pete,
and he looked at the sun and wanted to know how long it would take her
to get ready. She heard him, and yelled out from the door that she'd be
out in five minutes, and, bless you, she was on the seat beside him in
less time in her best clothes and carpet-bag in hand. She was as white
in the face as a convict out taking a sunning, and her gingham looked
like it was hanging from a hook on her neck, she was that thin. She
never said a word to me as she went by. At first I thought she was plumb
crazy, but she had the clearest eye in her head I ever saw, and she was
chattering away to Pete about the weather as if he was an unmarried man
and she was on the carpet."
"Oh, uncle, what do you think it means?" Virginia sighed, deeply
worried.
"Why, I think it's a fine sign, myself," said Sam. "I'm not as good a
judge of women as I am of mules--though a body ought to know as much of
one as the other--but I think she's perhaps been wanting to get a breath
of fresh air for some time and didn't like to acknowledge she was tired
of cave-life. Over there at Pincher's, you see, she can slide back into
her old ways without attracting attention by it."
"And she didn't leave a word of directions to me?" the girl said, sadly.
"Not a word," was the droll reply. "I didn't say good-bye to her myself.
To tell the truth, I had noticed that she'd forgot to put up a snack for
her and Pete to eat on the way, and I was afraid she might remember it
at the last minute and take what little there was left for you and me."
But Jane evidently had something to attend to before paying her promised
visit to Sally Maud Pincher, for on their arrival at the village of
Ellijay, the seat of the adjoining county, she asked her obliging
conveyer to put her down at the hotel, where she intended to spend the
night. It was then about five o'clock in the afternoon, and she went
into the little office, which looked like a parlor in a farm-house, and
registered her name and was given a room with a sky-blue door and
ceiling and whitewashed walls, at the head of the stairs. She sat after
that at the window, looking out upon the dreary street and the lonely,
red-clay road leading up the mountain, till it grew dark. She went down
to the dining-room when the great brass bell was rung by a negro boy who
shook it vigorously as he walked through the hall and around the house,
but she had no appetite--the long, jolting journey over the rough road
had weakened rather than stimulated her faint physical needs, and so she
took only a glass of milk, into which she had dropped a few morsels of
bread, eating the mixture with a spoon like a child.
"If I'm going to do this thing," she mused, as she sat on her bed in her
night-dress and twisted her hair in a knot, "the quicker it's over the
better. When I left home it seemed easy enough, but now it's
awful--simply awful!"
She slept soundly from sheer fatigue, and was up the next morning and
dressed before the hotel cook, an old woman, had made a fire in the
range. She walked down-stairs into the empty hall and out on the front
veranda, but saw no one. The ground was white with frost and the
mountain air was crisp and cutting, but it seemed to have put color into
her cheeks. Going through the office, where she saw no one, she went
into the dining-room just as the cook was coming in from the adjoining
kitchen.
"Good-morning," Jane said. "I've got about four miles to walk, and, as
I've lately been down sick in bed, I want to sorter take it slow and get
an early start. I paid my bill before I went to bed last night,
including breakfast, and if you could give me a slice of
bread-and-butter and a cup of coffee that will be all I want."
"Well, I can get them ready in a minute," said the woman, "but I'd hate
to do a four-mile walk on as little as that."
"I've been sort of dieting myself," Jane said, perhaps recalling her
past bounty to the cats and chickens at the window of her room, "and I
don't need much."
"Well, all right," said the cook, spreading a napkin at one end of a
long table; "you set down here and I'll supply you in a few minutes. The
landlord leaves me in charge here till he gets up. He's a late sleeper;
he was out last night at the trial of the moonshiners. You say you paid
for breakfast in your bill. I think it's a shame. If he wasn't so easy
to make mad, I'd go shake him up and get some of your money back. I
don't happen to tote the key to the cash-drawer. I reckon you paid
seventy-five cents for supper, bed, and breakfast--'s., b., and b.,' we
call it for short--and you are entitled to a full round--meat, eggs,
fish (in season), batter-cakes or waffles, whichever it is. Our
waffle-irons are split right half in two, and we just give batter-cakes
now; but folks know the brand clean to Darley. You ought to see the
judge tackle 'em during court week; him and the district-attorney had a
race the other night to see which could eat the most. I had three pans
running, and such a smoke of burning lard in the kitchen you couldn't
have seen a white cat in an inch of your nose. The whole jury and a lots
of witnesses under guard of the sheriff was allowed to look on. The
judge beat. The lawyer got so full he couldn't talk, and that was the
signal to call a halt. I was glad, for old Mrs. Macklin was waiting in
the kitchen to try to hear if there was any chance to save her son, who
was being tried for killing that feller in the brick-yard last summer.
Ever' time I'd come in for fresh cakes she'd look up sorter pitiful-like
to see if I'd heard anything. They'd already agreed to send 'im up for
life, but I didn't know it. Yes, you ought to have a quarter of that
money back, _anyway_. Unless a knife and fork is used, I make a habit,
when it's left to me, not to charge a cent, and you don't look like you
are overly flush."
"No, but I'm satisfied as it is," Jane said, as she finished her bread
and milk. "I didn't expect to get it for any less."