"You say you wasn't, then what was you talking about? I'd like to know."

"Well, that's for me to know and you to find out," Ann said, goaded to anger. "I don't have to tell you all I know and think. Now, you go on about your business, Jane Hemingway, and let me alone."

"I'll never let you alone as long as there's a breath left in my body,"

Jane snarled. "You know what you are; you are a disgrace to the county.

You are a close-fisted, bad woman-as bad as they make them. You ought to be drummed out of the community, and you would be, too, if you didn't have so much ill-gotten gains laid up."

There was a pause, for Jane was out of breath. Ann leaned over the fence, crushing her sheet of paper in her tense fingers. "I'll tell you something," she said, her face white, her eyes flashing like those of a powerful beast goaded to desperation by an animal too small and agile to reach-"I'll tell you one thing. For reasons of my own I've tried to listen to certain spiritual advice about loving enemies. Jesus Christ laid the law down, but He lived before you was born, Jane Hemingway.

There isn't an angel at G.o.d's throne to-day that could love you. I'd as soon try to love a hissing rattlesnake, standing coiled in my path, as such a dried-up bundle of devilment as you are. Could I hit back at you now? _Could_ I? Huh! I could tell you something, you old fool, that would humble you in the dust at my feet and make you crawl home with your nose to the earth like a whipped dog. And I reckon I'm a fool not to do it, when you are pushing me this way. You come to gloat over me because your rotten body feels a little bit stronger than it did. I could make you forget your dirty carca.s.s. I could make you so sick at the soul you'd vomit a prayer for mercy every minute the rest of your life. But I won't do it, as mad as I am. I'll not do it. You go your way, and I'll go mine."

Jane Hemingway stared wildly. The light of triumph had died out in her thin, superst.i.tious face. She leaned, as if for needed support, on the fence only a few feet from her enemy. Superst.i.tion was her weakest point, and it was only natural now for her to fall under its spell. She recalled Ann's fierce words prophesying some mysterious calamity which was to overtake her, and placed them beside the words she had just had hurled at her, and their combined effect was deadening.

"You think you know lots," she found herself saying, mechanically.

"Well, I know what I _know_!" Ann retorted, still furious. "You go on about your business. You'd better let me alone, woman. Some day I may fasten these two hands around that scrawny neck of yours and shake some decency into you."

Jane shrank back instinctively. She was less influenced, however, by the threat of bodily harm than by the sinister hint, now looming large in her imagination, that had preceded it. Ann was moving away, and she soon found herself left alone with thoughts which made any but agreeable companions.

"What can the woman mean?" she muttered, as she slowly pursued her way.

"Maybe she's just doing that to worry me. But no, she was in earnest-dead in earnest-both times. She never says things haphazard; she's no fool, either. It must be something simply awful or she wouldn't mention it just that way. Now, I'm going to let _this_ take hold of me and worry me night and day like the cancer did."

She paused and stood in the road panting, her hand, by force of habit, resting on her breast. Looking across the meadow, she saw Ann Boyd st.u.r.dily trudging homeward through the waist-high bulrushes. The slanting rays of the sun struck the broad back of the hardy outcast and illumined the brown cotton-land which stretched on beyond her to the foot of the mountain. Jane Hemingway caught her breath and moved on homeward, pondering over the mystery which was now running rife in her throbbing brain. Yes, it was undoubtedly something terrible-but what?

That was the question-what?

Reaching home, she was met at the door by Virginia, who came forward solicitously to take her shawl. A big log-fire, burning in the wide chimney of the sitting-room, lighted it up with a red glow. Jane sank into her favorite chair, listlessly holding in her hands the small parcel of green coffee she had bought at the store.

"Let me have it," Virginia said. "I must parch it and grind it for supper. The coffee is all out."

As the girl moved away with the parcel, Jane's eyes followed her.

"Should she tell her daughter what had taken place?" she asked herself.

Perhaps a younger, fresher mind could unravel the grave puzzle. But how could she bring up the matter without betraying the fact that she had been the aggressor? No, she must simply nurse her new fears in secret for a while and hope for-well, what could she hope for, anyway? She lowered her head, her sharp elbows on her knees, and stared into the fire. Surely fate was against her, and it was never intended for her to get the best of Ann Boyd in any encounter. Through all her illness she had been buoyed up by the triumphant picture of Ann Boyd's chagrin at seeing her sound of body again, and this had been the result. Instead of humiliating Ann, Ann had filled her quaking soul with a thousand intangible, rapidly augmenting fears. The cloud of impending disaster stretched black and lowering across Jane Hemingway's horizon.

Sam came in with a bundle of roots in his arms, and laid them carefully on a shelf. "I've dug me some sa.s.safras of the good, red variety," he said, over his shoulder, to her. "You folks that want to can spend money at drug stores, but in the fall of the year, if I drink plenty of sa.s.safras tea instead of coffee, it thins my blood and puts me in apple-pie order. But I reckon you don't want _your_ blood any thinner than them doctors left it. Right now you look as flabby and limber as a wet rag. What ails you, _anyway_?"

"I reckon I walked too far, right at the start," Jane managed to fish from her confused mind. "I'm going to be more careful in the future."

"Well, you'd better," Sam opined. "You may not find folks as ready to invest in your burial outfit as they was to prevent you from needing one."

x.x.xII

The following morning, in her neatest dress and white sun-bonnet, Virginia walked to Wilson's store to buy some sewing-thread. She was on her way back, and was traversing the most sequestered part of the road, where a brook of clear mountain water ran rippling by, and an abundance of willows and reeds hid the spot from view of any one approaching, when she was startled by Langdon Chester suddenly appearing before her from behind a big, moss-grown bowlder.

"Don't run, Virginia-for G.o.d's sake don't run!" he said, humbly. "I simply _must_ speak to you."

"But I told you I didn't want to meet you again," Virginia answered, sternly. "Why won't you leave me alone? If I've acted the fool and lowered myself in my estimation for all the rest of my life, that ought to be enough. It is as much as I can stand. You've simply got to stop following me up."

"You don't understand, Virginia," he pleaded. "You admit you feel different since that night; grant the same to me. I've pa.s.sed through absolute torment. I thought, after you talked to me so angrily the last time I saw you, that I could forget it if I left. I went to Atlanta, but I suffered worse than ever down there. I was on the verge of suicide.

You see, I learned how dear you had become to me."

"Bosh! I don't believe a word of it!" Virginia retorted, her eyes flashing, though her face was deathly pale. "I don't believe any man could really care for a girl and treat her as you did me that night. G.o.d knows I did wrong-a wrong that will never be undone, but I did it for the sake of my suffering mother. That's the only thing I have to lessen my self-contempt, and that is little; but you-you-oh, I don't want to talk to you! I want to blot it all-everything about it-from my mind."

"But you haven't heard me through," he said, advancing a step nearer to her, his face ablaze with admiration and unsatisfied pa.s.sion. "I find that I simply can't live without you, and as for what happened that awful night, I've come to wipe it out in the most substantial way a self-respecting man can. I've come to ask you to marry me, Virginia-to be my wife."

"To be your wife!" she gasped. "Me-you-_we_ marry-you and I? Live together, as-"

"Yes, dear, that's what I mean. I know you are a good, pure girl, and I am simply miserable without you. No human being could imagine the depth of my love. It has simply driven me crazy, along with the way you have acted lately. My father and mother may object, but it's got to be done, and it will all blow over. Now, Virginia, what will you say? I leave it all to you. You may name the place and time-I'm your slave from now on.

Your wonderful grace and beauty have simply captured me. I'll do the best I can to hold up my end of the thing. My cousin, Chester Sively, is a good sort of chap, and, to be frank, when he saw how miserable I was down there, he drew it out of me. I told him my folks would object and make it hot for me, but that I could not live without you, and he advised me to come straight home and propose to you. You see, he thought perhaps I had offended you in not making my intentions plainer at the start, and that when you knew how I felt you would not be so hard on me.

Now, you are not going to be, are you, little girl? After all those delicious walks we used to have, and the things you have at least let me believe, I know you won't go back on me. Oh, we'll have a glorious time!

Chester will advance me some money, I am sure, and we'll take a trip.

We'll sail from Savannah to New York and stay away, by George, till the old folks come to their senses. I admit I was wrong in all that miserable business. I ought to have given you that money and not made you come for it, but being a mad fool like that once doesn't prove I can't turn over a new leaf. Now, you try me."

He advanced towards her, his hand extended to clasp hers, but she suddenly drew back.

"I couldn't think of marrying you," she said, almost under her breath.

"I couldn't under any possible circ.u.mstances."

"Oh, Virginia, you don't mean that!" he cried, crestfallen. "You are still mad about being-being frightened that night, and that old hag finding out about it. No woman would relish having another come up at just such an awkward moment and get her vile old head full of all sorts of unfair notions. But this, you see-you are old enough to see that marriage actually puts everything straight, even to the bare possibility of anything ever leaking out. That's why I think you will act sensibly."

To his surprise, Virginia, without looking at him, covered her face with her hands. He saw her pretty shoulders rise as if she had smothered a sob. Hoping that she was moved by the humility and earnestness of his appeal, he caught one of her hands gently and started to pull it from her face. But, to his surprise, she shrank back and stared straight and defiantly in his eyes.

"That's the way _you_ look at it!" she cried, indignantly. "You think I hopelessly compromised myself by what I did, and that I'll have to tie myself to you for life in consequence; but I won't. I'd rather die. I couldn't live with you. I hate you! I detest you! I hate and detest you because you've made me detest myself. To think that I have to stand here listening to a proposal in-in the humiliating way you make it."

"Look here, Virginia, you are going too far!" he cried, white with the dawning realization of defeat and quivering in every limb. "You are no fool, if you _are_ only a girl, and you know that a man in-well, in my position, will not take a thing like this calmly. I've been desperate, and I hardly knew what I was about, but this-I can't stand this, Virginia."

"Well, I couldn't marry you," she answered. "If you were a king and I a poor beggar, I wouldn't agree to be your wife. I'd never marry a man I did not thoroughly respect, and I don't respect you a bit. In fact, knowing you has only shown me how fine and n.o.ble, by contrast, other men are. Since this thing happened, one man-" She suddenly paused. Her impulse had led her too far. He glared at her for an instant, and then suddenly grasped her hand and held it in such a tight, brutal clasp that she writhed in pain, but he held onto it, twisting it in his unconscious fury.

"I know who you mean," he said. "I see it all now. You have seen Luke King, and he has been saying sweet things to you. Ann Boyd is his friend, too, and she hates me. But look here, if you think I will stand having a man of that stamp defeat me, you don't know me. You don't know the lengths a Chester will go to gain a point. I see it all. You've been different of late. You used to like him, and he has been talking to you since he got back. It will certainly be a dark day for him when he dares to step between me and my plans."

"You are going entirely too fast," Virginia said, grown suddenly cautious. "There's nothing, absolutely nothing, between Luke King and myself, and, moreover, there never will be."

"You may tell that to a bigger fool than I am," Chester fumed. "I know there is something between you two, and, frankly, trouble is brewing for him. He may write his long-winded sermons about loving mankind, and bask in the praise of the sentimental idiots who dote on him, but I'll draw him back to practical things. I'll bring him down to the good, old-fashioned way of settling matters between men."

"Well, it's cowardly of you to keep me here by brute force," Virginia said, finally wresting her hand from his clasp and beginning to walk onward. "I've said there is nothing between him and me, and I shall not repeat it. If you want to raise a fuss over it, you will only make yourself ridiculous."

"Well, I'll look after _that_ part of it," he cried, beside himself with rage. "No mountain razor-back stripe of man like he is can lord it over me, simply because the sc.u.m of creation is backing up his shallow ideas with money. _I'll_ open his eyes."

And Langdon Chester, too angry and disappointed to be ashamed of himself, stood still and allowed her to go on her way. A boy driving a drove of mules turned the bend of the road, and Chester stepped aside, but when they had pa.s.sed he stood still and watched Virginia as she slowly pursued her way.

"Great G.o.d, how am I to stand it?" he groaned. "I want her! I want her!

I'd work for her. I'd slave for her. I'd do anything under high heaven to be able to call her my own-all my own! My G.o.d, isn't she beautiful?

That mouth, that proud poise of head, that neck and breast and form!

Were there ever such eyes set in a human head before-such a maddening lip, such a-oh, I can't stand it! I wasn't made for defeat like this.

Marry her? I'd marry her if it impoverished every member of my family.

I'd marry her if the honeymoon ended in my death. At any rate, I would have lived awhile. Does Luke King intend to marry her? Of course he does-he has _seen_ her; but _shall_ he? No, there is one thing certain, and that is that I could never live and know that she was receiving another man's embraces. I'd kill him if it d.a.m.ned me eternally. And yet I've played my last and biggest card. She won't marry me. She would _once_, but she won't _now_. Yes, I'm facing a big, serious thing, but I'll face it. If he tries to get her, the world will simply be too small for both of us to live in together."