Her words and tone struck him like a material missile well-aimed and deliberately hurled. There was a dignity and firm finality in her bearing which he felt could not be met with his old shallow suavity and seductive flattery. From credulous childhood she seemed, in that brief period, to have grown into wise maturity. If she had been beautiful in his eyes before, she was now, in her frigid remoteness, in her thorough detachment from their former intimacy, far more than that.

"Well, I meant no harm," he found himself articulating, almost in utter bewilderment. "I only thought that somebody pa.s.sing might-"

"Might see me with you?" she flashed out, with sudden anger. "What do I care? I came out here just now and gave a tramp something to eat. If they see you here, I suppose it won't be the first time a girl has been seen talking to a man in front of her own home."

"I didn't mean to offend you," he stammered, at the end of his resources; "but I've been utterly miserable, Virginia."

"Oh! is that so?" she sneered.

"Yes, I have. I feel awfully bad about what took place. I wanted to give you that money for your mother, and that night when I finally got rid of those meddlesome devils and-"

"In the name of Heaven, stop!" Virginia cried. "I simply will not stand here and talk about that."

"But I have the money still," he said, feebly. "You kept your word in coming for it, and I want to keep mine."

"I wouldn't touch a cent of it to save my life," she hurled at him. "If my mother lay before my eyes dying in agony and your money would save her, I wouldn't have it. I wouldn't take it to save my soul from perdition."

"You are making it very hard for me," he said, desperately; and then, with a frankness she could not have looked for even from his coa.r.s.est side, he went on pa.s.sionately: "I'm only a man, Virginia-a human being, full of love, admiration, and-pa.s.sion. Young as you are, I can't blame you, and, still you _did_ encourage me. You know you did. I'm nearly insane over it all. I want you, Virginia. These meetings with you, and the things you have let me say to you, if you have said nothing yourself, have lifted me to the very sky. I simply cannot bear up under your present actions, knowing that that old woman has been talking against me. I am willing to do anything on earth to set myself right. I admire you more than I ever dreamed I could admire a woman, and my love for you is like a torrent that nothing can dam. I must have you, Virginia. The whole thing has gone too far. You ought to have thought of this before you agreed to come to my house alone at night, when you knew I was-when you knew I had every reason to expect that you-"

"Stop!" she cried, with white lips and eyes flashing. "You are a coward, as well as a scoundrel! You are daring to threaten me. You have made me hate myself. As for you, I despise you as I would a loathsome reptile. I hate you! I detest you! I wake up in the night screaming in terror, fancying that I'm again in that awful room, locked in like a slave, a prisoner subject to your will-waiting for you to bid good-night to your drunken friends-locked in by your hand to wait there in an agony of death. Love you? I hate you! I hate the very low-browed emptiness of your face. I hate my mother for the selfish fear of death which blinded me to my own rights as a woman. Oh, G.o.d, I want to die and be done with it!"

She suddenly covered her impa.s.sioned face with her hands and shook convulsively from head to foot.

"Oh, Virginia, don't, don't make a mountain out of a molehill," he began, with a leaning towards his old, seductive persuasiveness. "There is nothing to feel so badly about. You know that Ann Boyd got there before I-I-"

"That's all _you_ know about it," she said, uncovering eyes that flashed like lightning. "When I went there, with no interest in you further than a silly love of your honeyed words and _to get your money_, I did what I'll never wipe from my memory."

"Virginia"-he tried to a.s.sume a light laugh-"this whole thing has turned your head. You will feel differently about it later when your mother comes back sound and well. Ann Boyd is not going to tell what took place, and-"

"And you and I will have a secret of that nature between us!" she broke in, furiously. "That's got to blacken my memory, and be always before me! You are going to know _that_ of me when-when, yes, I'll say it-when another man whose shoes you are unworthy to wipe believes me to be as free from contact with evil as a new-born baby."

Chester drew his brows together in sudden suspicion.

"You are referring to Luke King!" he snapped out. "Look here, Virginia, don't make this matter any more serious than it is. I will not have a man like that held up to me as a paragon. I have heard that he used to hang around you when you were little, before he went off and came back so puffed up with his accomplishments, and I understand he has been to see you recently, but I won't stand his meddling in my affairs."

"You needn't be afraid," Virginia said, with a bitterness he could not fathom. "There is nothing between Luke King and myself-absolutely nothing. You may rest sure that I'd never receive the attentions of a man of his stamp after what has pa.s.sed between me and a man of your-"

She paused.

He was now white with rage. His lower lip hung and twitched nervously.

"You are a little devil!" he cried. "You know you are driving me crazy.

But I will not be thrown over. Do you understand? I am not going to give you up."

"I don't know how you will help yourself," she said, moving back towards the door. "I certainly shall never, of my own free will, see you alone again. What I've done, I've done, but I don't intend to have it thrown into my face day after day."

"Look here, Virginia," he began, but she had walked erectly into the house and abruptly closed the door. He stood undecided for a moment, and then, crestfallen, he turned away.

XXVIII

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 c.o.c.ked 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 att.i.tude," 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 h.e.l.l 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 G.o.d 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, n.o.body 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 circ.u.mstances 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 circ.u.mstances 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."