x.x.xIII

The following morning, after spending a restless, troublous night in reflecting over the protestations and threats of Langdon Chester, Virginia went frequently to the rear door of the house and looked out towards Ann Boyd's domicile in the hope of seeing her new friend. It was a cool, bleak day. The skies were veiled in thin, low-hanging, gray clouds which seemed burdened with snow, and sharp gusts of wind bore the smoke from the chimney down to the earth and around the house in lingering, bluish wisps. Finally her fitful watch met its reward, and she saw Ann emerge from her house and trudge down towards the cotton-field between the two farms. Hastily looking into the kitchen, and seeing that her mother was busily engaged mashing some boiled sweet-potatoes into a pulpy mixture of sugar, b.u.t.ter, and spices, with which to make some pies, Virginia slipped out of the house and into the cow-lot. Here she paused for a moment, her glance on the doorway through which she had pa.s.sed, and then, seeing that her leaving had not attracted her mother's attention, she climbed over the rail-fence and entered the dense thicket near by. Through this tangle of vines, bushes, and briers she slowly made her way, until, suddenly, the long, regular rows of Ann's dead cotton-stalks, with their empty boles and withered leaves, stretched out before her. And there stood Ann, crumbling a sample of the gray soil in her big, red hand. She heard Virginia's approach over the dry twigs of the wood, and looked up.

"Oh, it's you!" she exclaimed. "I didn't know but what it was another catamount that had got out of its beat up in the mountains and strayed down into civilization."

"I happened to see you leave your house and come this way," Virginia said, somewhat embarra.s.sed, "and so I-"

"Yes, I came down here to take one more look at this field and make up my mind whether to have it turned under for wheat or try its strength on cotton again. There was a lots of fertilizer put on this crop, child. I can always tell by the feel of the dirt. That's the ruination of farming interests in the South. It's the get-a-crop-quick plan that has no solid foundation. An industrious German or Irishman can make more off of an acre than we can off of ten, and be adding value to the property each year. But did you want to see me about-anything particular?"

"It seems like I'm born to have trouble," Virginia answered, with heightening color and a studious avoidance of the old woman's keen glance.

"I see; I reckon your mother-"

"No, it's not about her," Virginia interrupted. "In fact, it's something that I could not confide in her."

"Well, you go ahead and tell me about it," Ann said, consolingly, as she threw the sample of soil down and wiped her hand on her ap.r.o.n. "I think it's powerful odd the way things have turned around, anyway. Only a few days ago if anybody had told me I'd ever be half-way friendly with a daughter of Jane Hemingway, I'd have thought they was clean off their base. I'm trying to act the impartial friend to you, child, but I don't know that I can. The trouble is, my flesh is too weak. It's only fair to tell you that I come in the breadth of a hair the other day of betraying you outright to your mammy. She met me down the road and drove me too far. She caught me off my guard and came at me in her old, catlike way, spitting and snarling-a thing I'm not proof against. She was gloating over me. I'm ashamed to say it to a sweet, trusting face like yours, but she came charging on me at such a rate that she drove away my best intentions and made me plumb forget what I was trying to do for you."

Ann hung her head for a moment, almost sheepishly kicking a cotton-stalk from its mellow hill with the toe of her shoe.

"Don't bother about that," Virginia said, sweetly. "I know how she can exasperate any one."

"Well, I'm satisfied I won't do to trust in the capacity of a friend, anyway," Ann said, frankly. "I reckon I would be safe with anybody but that woman. There is no use telling you what I said, but I come in an inch of giving you plumb away. I come that nigh injuring a pure, helpless little thing like you are to hit her one sousing lick. As it was, I think I cowed her considerable. She's superst.i.tious, and she broods as much over an imaginary trouble as a real one. The Lord knows I've been busy enough in my life tackling the genuine thing."

"I wanted to tell you," Virginia said, "that ever since Langdon Chester got back from Atlanta he has been trying to meet me, and-"

"The dirty scamp!" Ann broke in, angrily. "I told him if he ever dared to-"

"Wait a minute, Mrs. Boyd!" Virginia put out her hand and touched the old woman's arm. "He seems awfully upset over what has happened. I never saw any one change so completely. He looked very thin, his eyes were bloodshot, and he shook all over like a man who has been on a long spree. Mrs. Boyd, he came-and I'm sure he was serious-to ask me to marry him."

"Marry him? Why, child, you don't mean _that_-surely you don't mean-"

"I only know what he said," Virginia declared. "He says he is absolutely miserable over it all and wants me to marry him. His cousin, Chester Sively, advised him to propose to me, and he did. He says he loves me, and that nothing else will satisfy him."

"Well, well, well!" Ann exclaimed, as her great, astonished eyes bore down on Virginia's face. "I thought he was a chip off of the old block, but maybe he's got a little streak of good in him, and yet, let me study a minute. Let's walk on down to the spring. I want to see if it doesn't need a new gum-the old one is about rotted out. Well, well, well!"

They strolled along the fence, side by side, neither speaking till the spring was reached. There was a rustic bench near by, and Ann sat down on it, putting out her hand and drawing the girl to a seat at her side.

"Yes, there may be a streak of good," she went on. "And yet that may be just another phase of bad. You must be very careful, child. You have no idea how beautiful you are. He may mean what he says, all right enough, but maybe he isn't being led by the best motive. I know men, I reckon, about as well as any other woman of my age. Now, you see, it may be like this: Langdon Chester brought to his aid all the _foul_ means he could command to carry his point and failed. Maybe, now, he's just reckless enough and his pride is cut deep enough to make him resort to fair means rather than be plumb beat to a finish. If that's so, marrying him would be a very risky thing, for as soon as his evil fires smouldered he'd leave you high and dry. He'd convince himself he'd married below his standard, and go to the dogs-or some other woman. Sometimes I think there isn't no real love, like we read about in story-books. I believe a man or a woman will love their own offspring in a solid, self-sacrificing way, but the sort of love that makes a continuous happy dream of marriage is powerful rare. It's generally one-sided and like a damp fire that takes a lot of fanning and fresh kindling-wood to keep going. But what did you tell him, I wonder?"

"Why, I refused him," Virginia answered.

"You did? You don't tell me! And how did his high and mighty lordship take that, I wonder?"

"It made him awfully mad. He almost swore at me, and took hold of my hand roughly. Then, from something I happened to say, he imagined that I was in love with-with some one else, and he made awful threats of what he might do."

"Ah, I see, I see, I see!" Ann muttered, as if to herself, her slow, thoughtful glance on her broad lands, which stretched out through the murky atmosphere. "It's wonderful how much your life is like mine used to be. The other night, lying in bed, I got to studying over it all, and it suddenly flashed on me that maybe it is the divine intention that I was to travel that rough road so I'd know how to lead you, that was to come on later, over the pits I stumbled in. And with that thought I felt a strange sort of peaceful contentment come over me. You see, I'm nearly always in a struggle against my inclination to treat Jane Hemingway's daughter half decent, and such thoughts as those kind o' ease my pride.

If the Lord is making me pity you and like you, maybe it's the devil that is trying to pull me the other way. That's why I'm afraid I won't do to trust, wavering about like I am. In this fight I haven't the slightest idea which influence is going to win in the end. In a tight pinch I may be tempted to use our very friendship to get even with your mammy. When she faces me with that confident look in her eye and that hateful curl to her lip, I loose my grip on all that's worth a red cent in me."

"You couldn't do a wrong thing to save your life," said Virginia, putting out her hand and taking that of her companion.

"Don't you bet too high stakes on that," Ann replied, deeply touched.

"I'm no saint. Right now I'm at daggers' points with nearly every neighbor I've got, and even my own child over the mountain. How I ever got this way with you is a mystery to me. You certainly were the last one I'd 'a' lifted a finger to help, but now-well, well-I reckon I'd worry a lots if you met with any further misfortune. But you are keeping back something, child. Did Langdon Chester seem to think that other '_somebody_' could possibly be Luke King?"

Virginia flushed and nodded. "He seemed to think so, Mrs. Boyd."

Ann sighed. She was still holding Virginia's hand, and she now began timidly to caress it as it lay on her knee.

"I don't like the way it's turned out a bit," she said. "The Chester stock can't stand being balked in anything; they couldn't bear to be beat in love by a poor, self-made man like Luke, and great, big trouble may be brewing. Langdon might push a row on him. Luke is writing all sorts of things against the evil of war and fighting and the like, but under pressure he'd resent an insult. I'd hate to see him plumb mad.

Then, again, Langdon might sink low enough to actually throw that imprudence of yours at him. If he did, that would be a match to powder.

If Luke was a preacher and stood in the pulpit calling up mourners, he'd step down and act on that sort of an invitation. Virginia, if ever a man loved a woman, he loves you. His love is one of the exceptions to the rule I was talking about just now, and it seems to me that, no matter how you treat a man like that other scamp, you won't have a right to refuse Luke King. The truth is, I'm afraid he never could stand it. He's set his great, big, gentle soul on having you for his helpmeet, and I don't believe you will let any silly notion ruin it all. He's got brain enough to tackle the biggest human problems and settle them, but he'll never give his heart out but once."

Virginia withdrew her hand and swept it across her face, as if to brush away the flush upon it.

"I can never be his wife," she faltered. She paused, turned her face away, and said, in a low tone: "I am not good enough. I deliberately flirted with Langdon Chester. I used to love to have him say sweet things to me, and I led him on. I've no excuse to make. If I had been good enough to be the wife of a man like Luke King, I'd never have been caught in that trap, even to save my mother, for if I'd acted differently he'd never have done what he did. It's all my fault. If Langdon Chester is upset and bent on trouble, I'm the cause of it. If it results in unhappiness to the-to the n.o.blest and best man I ever knew, it will all be my fault. You needn't try to comfort me, Mrs. Boyd. I tell you I'd rather die than have Luke King know all that has happened, and G.o.d knows I'd never be his wife otherwise. So that is the end of it."

Ann was silent for several minutes, then she said: "I feel like you are wrong somehow, and yet I don't exactly know how to make you see it my way. We must both study over it. It's a problem, and no little one.

There is one thing certain: I'll never advise you to start married life on deception of any kind. I tried that, with the best intentions, and it was the worst investment I ever made."

x.x.xIV

During this conversation Sam Hemingway had returned to the house from his field. He had an armful of white, silky, inside leaves of cornhusks closely packed together, and these he submerged in a washtub full of water, in the back-yard, placing stones on them to hold them down.

"What are you about now?" his sister-in-law asked, as she appeared in the doorway of the kitchen.

"Now, what could a body be about when he's wetting a pa.s.sle of shucks?"

he answered, dryly. "I'm going to make me some stout horse-collars for spring ploughing. There ain't but one other thing a body could make out of wet shucks, and that's foot-mats for town folks to wipe their feet on. Foot-mats are a dead waste of money, for if fewer mats was used, women would have to do more sweeping and not get time to stand around the post-office watching men as much as they do. I reckon it's the way old daddy Time has of shifting women's work onto men's shoulders. I'll bet my hat that new-fangled churn that fellow pa.s.sed with yesterday was invented by a man out o' pure pity for his s.e.x."

"I was wondering where Virginia went to," Jane said, as if she had not heard his philosophical utterances. "I've been all round the house looking for her, even to the barn, but she's disappeared entirely."

Sam shrugged his shoulders significantly. He placed the last stone on the submerged husks and drew himself up erect. "I was just studying," he drawled out, "whether it ud actually do to tell you where she is at this minute. I'd decided I'd better not, and go on and finish this work. From what I know about your odd disposition, I'd expect one of two solitary things: I'd expect to see you keel over in a dead faint or stand stock-still in your tracks and burn to a cinder from internal fires."

"Sam, what do you mean?" The widow, in no little alarm, came towards him, her eyes fixed steadily on his.

"Well, I reckon you might as well know and be done with it," he said, "though you'll be sure to let them pies burn afterwards. Jane, your only child is right now a-sitting on the bench at the gum spring, side by side with Ann Boyd. In fact, as well as I could see from the rise I was on in my potato-patch, I'd 'a' took my oath that they was holding hands like two sweethearts."

"I don't believe a word of it," Jane gasped, turning pale. "It might have been Virginia with somebody else, but not _that_ woman."

"I wouldn't mistake Ann Boyd's solid shape and blue linsey frock ten miles off," was the cold comfort Sam dispensed in his next remark. "If you doubt what I say, and will agree not to jump on Ann and get yourself drawed up at court for a.s.sault and battery, with intent to _get killed_, you may go look for yourself. If you'll slip through the thicket, you can come up on 'em unbeknownst."

With a very grave look on her emaciated face, Jane Hemingway, without wrap for her thin shoulders or covering for her gray head, strode across the yard and into the bushes. Almost holding her breath in dire suspense and with a superst.i.tious fear of she knew not what, she sped through the wood, briers and thorn-bushes clutching at her skirt and wild grape-vines striking her abreast and detaining her. Presently she was near enough to the spring to hear voices, but was, as yet, unable to see who was speaking. Then she became fearful lest the dry twigs with which the ground was strewn, in breaking under her feet, would betray her presence, and she began, with the desperate caution of a convict escaping from prison, to select her way, carefully stepping from one patch of green moss to another. A few paces ahead of her there was a group of tall pines, and the earth beneath their skeleton boughs was a veritable bed of soft, brown needles. She soon gained this favorable point of progress, and sped onward as noiselessly as the gentle breeze overhead. Suddenly, through the bushes, she caught a gleam of color, and recognized the dark-blue skirt Ann Boyd wore so constantly, and-her heart stood still, for, ma.s.sed against it, was the light gray of Virginia's dress. Ah, there could be no shadow of a doubt now. Sam was right, and with bowed head and crouching form Jane gave bewildered ear to words which caused her blood to stand still in her veins.