Boyd lowered his s.h.a.ggy head. There was a piteous flicker of despair in the lashes of the eyes Ann had once loved so well.

"It's mortgaged to the hilt, Ann," he gulped, "and next Wednesday if I can't pay down five hundred to Carson in Darley, it will go under the hammer. That will bust Nettie's love business all to flinders. Old Lawson's got Sam under his thumb, and he'll call it off. Nettie knows all about it. She's no fool for a girl of her age; she found out about the debt; she hardly sleeps a wink, but mopes about with red eyes all day long. I thought I had trouble away back when me 'n' you-away back there, you know-but I was younger then, and this sorter seems to be _my_ fault."

Ann fell to quivering with excitement as she reached for a chair and leaned upon it, her stout knee in the seat, her strong, bare arms resting on the back.

"Right here I want to ask you one question, Joe Boyd, before we go a step further. Did Mary Waycroft make a proposal to Nettie-did Mary Waycroft hint to Nettie that maybe I'd be willing to help her along in some substantial way?"

The farmer raised a pair of shifting eyes to the piercing orbs above him, and then looked down.

"I believe she did something of the sort, Ann," he said, reluctantly, "but, you see-"

"I see nothing but _this_," Ann threw into the gap left by his sheer inability to proceed-"I see nothing but the fact that my proposition scared her nearly to death. She was afraid it would get out that she was having something to do with me, and now, if I do rescue this land from public sale, I must keep in the background, not even let her know where the money is coming from."

"I didn't say _that_," Boyd said, heavily stricken by the combined force of her tone and words. "The-the whole thing's for _you_ to decide on.

I've tussled with it till I'm sick and tired. I wouldn't have come over if I hadn't thought it was my bounden duty to lay it before you. The situation has growed up unforeseen out of my trouble and yours. If you want the girl's land to go under hammer and bust up her marriage, that's all right. I won't cry about it, for I'm at the end of my rope. You see, law or no law, she's yore natural flesh and blood, jest as she is mine, an' she wasn't-the girl wasn't responsible fer what you an' me tuck a notion to do away back there. The report is out generally that everything you touch somehow turns to gold-that you are rolling in money. That's the reason I thought it was my duty-by G.o.d, Ann Lincoln"-his eyes were flashing with something like the fire which had blazed in them when he had gone away in his health and prime-"I wouldn't ask you for a red cent, for myself, not if I was dying for a mouthful of something to eat. I'm doing this because it seems right according to my poor lights. The child's happiness is at stake; you can look at it as you want to and act as you see fit."

Ann bit her lip; a shudder pa.s.sed over her strong frame from head to foot. She lowered her big head to her hands. "Sometimes," she groaned, "I wish I could actually curse G.o.d for the unfairness of my lot. The hardest things that ever fell to the fate of any human being have been mine. In agony, Jesus Christ prayed, they say, to let His cup pa.s.s if possible. _His_ cup! What _was_ His cup? Just death-that's all; but _this_ is a million times worse than death-this here crucifixion of pride-this here forcing me to help and protect people who deny me, who shiver at a hint of my approach, yelling 'Unclean, unclean!' like the lepers outside the city gates-beyond the walls that encompa.s.s accepted humanity. Joe Boyd"-she raised her face and stared at him-"you don't no more know me than you know the stars above your head. I am no more the silly girl that you married than I am some one else. I learned the lesson of life away back there when you left in that wagon with the child of my breast. I have fought a long battle, and I'm still fighting.

To me, with all my experience, you-you poor little thing-are a baby of a man. You had a wife who, if she _does_ say it, had the brain of a dozen such men as you are, and yet you listened to the talk of a weak, jealous, disappointed woman and came and dared to wipe your feet on me, spit in my face, and drag my name into the mire of public court. I made no defence then-I don't make any now. I'll never make any. My life shall be my defence before G.o.d, and Him only. I wish it could be a lesson to all young women who are led into misfortune such as mine. To every unfortunate girl I'd say, 'Never marry a man too weak to understand and appreciate you.' I loved you, Joe Boyd, as much as a woman ever loved a man, but it was like the love of a strong man for a weak, dependent woman. Somehow I gloried in your big, hulking helplessness. What I have since done in the management of affairs I wanted to do for you."

"Oh, I know all that, Ann, but this is no time or place to-"

"But it's _got_ to be the time and place," she retorted, shaking a stiff finger in his face. "I want to show you one side of this matter. I won't mention names, but a man, an old man, come to me one day. He set there on my door-step and told me about his life of his own free will and accord, because he'd heard of mine, and wanted to comfort me. He'd just buried his wife-a woman he'd lived with for thirty-odd years, and big tears rolled down his cheeks while he was talking. He said he was going to tell me what he'd never told a living soul. He said away back, when he was young, he loved his wife and courted her. He saw that she loved him, but she kept holding off and wouldn't give in till he was nearly distracted; then he said her mother come to him and told him what the trouble was. It was because the girl had had bad luck like I did. She loved him and wanted to make him a good wife, but was afraid it would be wrong. He said he told the girl's mother that it made no difference to him, and that he then and there promised never on this earth to mention it to her, and he never did. She was the woman he lived with for a third of a century in holy wedlock, and who he couldn't speak of without shedding tears. Now, Joe Boyd, here's my point-the only difference I can see in that woman's conduct and mine is that I would have told you, but I didn't think you was the kind of a man to tell a thing like that to. I didn't think you was strong enough, as a man, but I thought your happiness and mine depended on our marriage, and so after you had dogged my steps for years I consented. So you see, if-if, I say-you had gone and let the old matter drop, you wouldn't have been in the plight you are now, and our child would have had more of the things she needed."

"There are two sides to it," Boyd said, raising a sullen glance to her impa.s.sioned face. "And that reminds me of an old man I knew about. He was the best husband that ever walked the earth. He loved his wife and children, and when he was seventytwo years of age he used to totter about with his grandchildren all day long, loving them, with his whole heart. Then one day proof was handed him-actual proof-that not a speck of his blood flowed in their veins. He was hugging one of the little ones in his arms when he heard the truth. Ann, it killed him. That's t'other side. You nor me can't handle a matter as big and endless as that is. The Lord G.o.d of the universe is handling ours. We can talk and plan, but most of us, in a pinch, will do as generations before us have done in sech delicate matters."

"I suppose so." Ann's lips were white; there was a wild, hunted look in her great, staring eyes.

"I tried to reason myself out of the action I finally took," Boyd went on, deliberately, "but there was nothing else to do. I was bothered nigh to death. The thing was running me stark crazy. I had to chop it off, and I'm frank to say, even at this late day, that I don't see how I could have done otherwise. But I didn't come here to fetch all this up.

It was just the other matter, and the belief that it was my duty to give you a chance to act on it as you saw fit."

"If her wedding depends on it, the farm must be saved," Ann said, quietly. "I give away money to others, why shouldn't I to-to her? I'll get a blank and write a check for the money."

He lowered his head, staring at the flames. "That's for you to decide,"

he muttered. "When the debt is paid the land shall be deeded to her.

I'll die rather than borrow on it again."

Ann went to the clock on the mantel-piece and took down a pad of blank checks and a pen and bottle of ink. Placing them on the table, she sat down and began to write with a steady hand and a firm tilt of her head to one side.

"Hold on!" Boyd said, turning his slow glance upon her. "Excuse me, but there's one thing we haven't thought of."

Ann looked up from the paper questioningly. "What is that?"

"Why, you see, I reckon I'd have to get that check cashed somewhere, Ann, and as it will have your name on it, why, you see, in a country where everybody knows everybody else's business-"

"I understand," Ann broke in-"they would know I had a hand in it."

"Yes, they would know that, of course, if I made use of that particular check."

Ann Boyd rested her ma.s.sive jaw on her hand in such a way as to hide her face from his view. She was still and silent for a minute, then she rose, and, going to the fire, she bent to the flame of a pine-knot and destroyed the slip of paper.

"I don't _usually_ keep that much money about the house," she said, looking down on him, "but I happen to have some hidden away. Go out and get your horse ready and I'll bring it to you at the fence."

He obeyed, rising stiffly from his chair and reaching for his worn slouch hat.

He was standing holding his bony horse by the rein when she came out a few minutes later and gave him a roll of bills wrapped in a piece of cloth.

"Here it is," she said. "You came after it under a sense of duty, and I am sending it the same way. I may be made out of odd material, but I don't care one single thing about the girl. If you had come and told me she was dead, I don't think I'd have felt one bit different. It might have made me a little curious to know which of us was going next-you, me, or her-that's all. Good-bye, Joe Boyd."

"Good-bye, Ann," he grunted, as he mounted his horse. "I'll see that this matter goes through right."

XVIII

Colonel Preston Chester and his son Langdon were at breakfast two days after this. The dining-room of the old mansion was a long, narrow chamber on the first floor, connected with the brick kitchen outside by a wooden pa.s.sage, roofed, latticed at both sides, and vine-grown. The dining-room had several wide windows which opened on a level with the floor of the side veranda. Strong coffee, hot biscuits, and birds delicately browned were brought in by a turbaned black woman, who had once been a slave in the family, and then she discreetly retired.

The old gentleman, white-haired, pink and clear of complexion, and wearing a flowing mustache and an imperial, which he nervously clutched and twisted in his soft fingers, was not in a good humor.

"Here I am ready to go to Savannah, as I promised, to pay a visit and bring your mother back," he fumed, "and now find that you have taxed my credit at the bank so heavily with your blasted idleness and poker debts that they actually gave me a lecture about my financial condition. But I've certainly headed you off, sir. I left positive orders that no check of yours is to be honored during my absence."

"You did that, father? Why-"

"Of course I did it. I can't put up with your extravagance and d.a.m.nable habits, and I don't intend to."

"But, father, I've heard you say you cost your parents on an average of four thousand dollars a year before you got married, and-"

"Don't begin that twaddle over again," roared the Colonel in his coffee-cup. "What my father did for me in those easy times has nothing to do with our condition in the present day. Besides, it was the custom of the times to live high, while now it's coming to be a disgrace to be idle or to have luxuries. We've got to work like the rest at something or other. Here's that Luke King back from the West with enough money to install his whole gang of white trash in one of the best places in the entire river valley, and is conducting a paper in Atlanta that everybody is talking about. Why, blast it all, I heard Governor Crawford say at the Capital City Club the other day that if he-mind you, the governor of the State-if he could get King's influence he would be re-elected sure.

Think of that, when I put a fortune into your education. You are doing nothing for your name, while he's climbing like that on the poor chances he had."

"Oh, he had education, such as he needed," Langdon replied, with a retaliatory glance at his father. "Ann Boyd sent him to school, you know."

The old man's eyes wavered; he drank from his cup silently, and then carefully wiped his mustache on his napkin. It was not the first time Langdon had dared to p.r.o.nounce the woman's name in his presence, and it looked as if the Colonel dreaded further allusions.

"Well, I've got to make the trip to Savannah," he said, still avoiding his son's glance, and trying to keep up his att.i.tude of cold reproof. He was becoming convinced that Langdon was acquiring a most disagreeable habit of justifying his own wild conduct by what he had heard of his father's past, and this was decidedly irritating to the planter, who found enough to reproach himself with in reflecting upon what he had gone through without being held accountable for another career which looked quite as bad in the bud and might bear even worse fruit.

"Yes, I think myself, all jokes aside, that you ought to go," Langdon said. "I'll do the best I can to keep things straight here. The hunting will be good, and I can manage to kill time. You'll want to take along some spending money, father. Those old chums of yours down there will draw you into a poker game sure."

"I'll cut that out, I reckon"-the Colonel smiled in spite of himself.

Langdon was such a copy of what he had been at the same age that it seemed, under stress of certain memories, almost wrong to reprove him.

"No, I've sworn off from cards, and that's one thing I want you to let alone. I don't want to hear of your having any more of those all-night carouses here, leaving bullet-holes in your grandfather's portrait, as you and your dissolute gang did the last time I was away. It's a wonder to me you and those fellows didn't burn the house down."

At this juncture Langdon was glad to see the overseer of the plantation on the veranda, and the Colonel went out to give him some instructions.

Two nights later, when he had seen his father off at the door and turned back into the great, partly lighted house, Langdon set about thinking how he could spend the evening and rid himself of the abiding sense of loneliness that had beset him. He might stroll over to Wilson's store, but the farmers he met there would be far from congenial, for he was not popular with many of them, and unless he could meet, which was unlikely at night, some drummer who would play poker freely with the funds of the house he represented against Langdon's ready promises to pay, his walk would be fruitless. No, he would not go to the store, he decided; and still he was in no mood, at so early an hour, for the solitude of his room or the antiquated library, from the shelves of which frowned the puritanical books of his Presbyterian ancestors. Irresolute, he had wandered to the front veranda again, and as he stood looking eastward he espied, through the trees across the fields and meadows, a light. It was Jane Hemingway's kitchen candle, and the young man's pulse beat more rapidly as he gazed at it. He had occasionally seen Virginia outside the house of evenings, and had stolen chats with her. Perhaps he might have such luck again. In any case, nothing would be lost in trying, and the walk would kill time. Besides, he was sure the girl was beginning to like him; she now trusted him more, and seemed always willing to talk to him. She believed he loved her; who could doubt it when he himself had been surprised at his tenderness and flights of eloquence when inspired by her rare beauty and sweetness? Sometimes he believed that his feeling for the beautiful, trustful girl was a love that would endure, but when he reflected on the difference in their stations in life he had grave and unmanly doubts. As he walked along the road, the light of Jane's candle, like the glow of a fire-fly, intermittently appearing and disappearing ahead of him through the interstices of the trees and foliage, the memory of the gossip about his father and Ann Boyd flashed unpleasantly upon him. Was he, after all, following his parent's early bent? Was family history repeating itself? But when the worst was said about that affair, who had been seriously injured? Certainly not the easy-going Colonel, surely not the st.u.r.dy pariah herself, who had, somehow, turned her enforced isolation to such purpose that she was rich in the world's goods and to all appearances cared not a rap for public opinion.