"Yes, I've thought a lots about it, child," she heard Ann saying. "I can't make it out at all, but I really love you more than I do my own daughter. I reckon it was the divine intention for me and you to have this secret between us, and pity one another like we do. I can't help it, but when you tell me you love me and think I'm good and the best friend you've got on earth, why, it is the sweetest sound that ever fell on human ear."

There was a pause. Jane Hemingway held her breath; her very soul hung on the silence. Then, as if from the dun skies above the shaft descended, as if dropped from the lips of the Avenging Angel. It was the child of her own breast uttering sounds as inexplicable, as d.a.m.ning to her hopes, as if the gentle, tractable girl had approached her bed in the dead hours of night and said: "Mother, I've come to kill you. There is no way out of it. I must take your life. I am stronger than you. You must submit. Ann Boyd has willed it so. Mother, I am Retribution!"

"Yes, I do love you, with all my heart," were the words Jane heard. "I can't help it. You have been kinder to me, more considerate of my feelings, than my own mother. But I will make amends for all her cruelty towards you. I'll love you always. I'll go to my grave loving you. You are the best woman that ever lived. Suffering has raised you to the skies. I have never kissed you. Let me now-_do, do_ let me!"

As if in a horrible dream, Jane Hemingway turned back homeward. Without knowing why, she still moved with the same breathless caution. Hers was a dead soul dragging a body vitalized only by sheer animal instinct to escape torture. To escape it? No, it was there ahead-it was here, encompa.s.sing her like a net, yonder, behind, everywhere, and it would stretch out to the end of time. She told her benumbed consciousness that she saw it all now. It was not the cancer and its deadly effect that Ann had held over her that hot day at the wash-place. No wonder that Ann had not told her all, for that would have marred her comprehensive and relentless plans. Ann's subtle plot had been to rob her enemy of the respect and love of her only child. Jane had succeeded in tearing from Ann Boyd's arms her only offspring, and Ann, with the cunning of her great, indefatigable brain, had devised this subtle revenge and carried it through. She had won over to herself the love and respect, even reverence, of her enemy's child. It had been going on in secret for a long time, and even now the truth was out only by sheer accident. Jane Hemingway groaned aloud in agony and self-pity as, with her gray head down, she groped homeward. What was there to do now? Nothing! She was learning her final grim lesson in the realization that she was no possible match for her rival. How well she now recalled the fierce words Ann had hurled at her only a few days since: "Could I hit back at you now? Could I? Huh! I could tell you something, Jane Hemingway, that would humble you to the dust and make you crawl home with your nose to the earth like a whipped dog." Ah, it was true, only too true! Humbled?

It was more than that. Pride, hope, even resentment, was gone. She now cowered before her enemy as she had so recently before death itself. For once she keenly felt her own supreme littleness and stood in absolute awe of the mighty personality she had been so long and audaciously combating.

Reaching the fence which bounded her own property, Jane got over it with difficulty. She seemed to have lost all physical strength. She saw Sam behind the house, under the spreading, leafless boughs of an apple-tree, repairing a break in the ash-hopper. She could not have explained what impulse prompted it, but she paused in front of him, speaking in a tone he had never heard from her before. "Sam," she said, a stare like the glaze of death in her eyes, "don't you mention this to my child; do you hear me? Don't you tell Virginia what we've found out. If you do you'll get your foot into something you'll be sorry for. Do you hear me, man?

This is my business-_mine_, and not a thing for you to treat lightly. If you know what's good for you, you'll take my hint and not meddle."

"Well, I never!" Sam exclaimed. "Good Lord, woman, what have them two folks done to you down there. I never saw you look so plumb flabbergasted in my life."

"Never you mind about that," Jane said. "You remember what I said and don't meddle with what doesn't concern you."

"Well, she kin bet I won't," Sam mused, as he stood looking after her, as she disappeared through the doorway into the kitchen. "This is one of the times, I reckon, that I'll take her advice. Some'n' big has taken place, or is about to take place, if I'm any judge."

Jane sank into a chair in the kitchen and softly groaned as she cast her slow eyes about her. Here all seemed sheer mockery. Every mute object in the room uttered a cry against her. The big, open fireplace, with its pots and kettles, the cupboard, the cleanly polished table, with the row of hot pies Sam had rescued from the coals and placed there to cool, the churn, the milk and b.u.t.ter-jars and pans, the pepper-pods hanging to the smoked rafters overhead-all these things, which had to do with mere subsistence, seemed suddenly out of place among the things which really counted. Suddenly Jane had a faint thrill of hope, as a thought, like a stray gleam of light penetrating a dark chamber, came to her. Perhaps, when Virginia was told that Ann Boyd had only used her as a tool in a gigantic and subtle scheme of revenge against her own flesh and blood, the girl would turn back to her own. Perhaps, but it was not likely. Ann Boyd had never failed in any deliberate undertaking. She would not now, and, for aught Jane knew to the contrary, Virginia might be as confirmed already in her enmity as the older woman, and had long been a dutiful and observant spy. It was horrible, but-yes, Jane was willing to admit that it was fair. The worm had turned, and its sting was equal to the concentrated pain of all Ann Boyd's years of isolated sufferings.

x.x.xV

In about half an hour Virginia returned home. She pa.s.sed Sam under the apple-tree, where he now had a big pot full of sh.e.l.led corn and lye over an incipient fire preparing to make whole-grained hominy, and hastened into the kitchen, where Jane sat bowed before the fire.

"Is there anything I can do, mother?" she inquired.

There was a pause. Mrs. Hemingway did not look up. In some surprise, Virginia repeated her question, and then Jane said, calmly and deliberately:

"Yes; there is something you can do. You can get out of my sight, and _keep_ out of it. When I want anything from you, I'll call on you."

Virginia paused, dumfounded, and then pa.s.sed out into the yard and approached her uncle.

"Can you tell me," she asked, "if anything has gone wrong with mother?"

Sam gave her one swift glance from beneath his tattered, tent-shaped wool-hat, and then, with his paddle, he began to stir the corn and lye in the pot.

"I reckon," he said, after a momentary struggle over a desire to tell the plain truth instead of prevaricating, "if you don't know that woman by this time, Virgie, it's your own fault. I'm sure I don't try to keep up with her tantrums and sudden notions. That woman's died forty-seven times in her life, and been laid out and buried ten. Maybe she's been tasting them pies she was cooking, and got crooked. You let a body's liver be at all sluggish and get a wad o' sweet-potato dough lodged inside of 'em, and they'll have a sort of jim-jams not brought on by liquor. I reckon she'll cough it down after a while. If I was you, though, I'd let her alone."

Jane was, indeed, acting strangely. Refusing to sit down to the mid-day meal with them, as was her invariable custom, she put on her bonnet and shawl and, without a word of explanation, set off in the direction of Wilson's store. She was gone till dusk, and then came in with a slow step, pa.s.sed through the sitting-room, where Sam had made a cheerful fire, and went on to her own room in the rear of the house. Virginia rose to follow her solicitously, but Sam put out a detaining hand, shifting his pipe into the corner of his mouth.

"I'd let her alone if I was in your place," he said. "Let her go to bed and sleep. She'll get up all right in the morning."

"I only wanted to see if there was anything I could do for her,"

Virginia said, in a troubled tone. "Do you suppose it is a relapse she is having? Perhaps she has discovered that the cancer is coming back.

The fear of that would kill her, actually kill her."

"I don't think that's it," said Sam, impulsively; "the truth is, Virginia, she-" He pulled himself up. "But maybe that _is_ it. Anyway, I'd let her alone."

Darkness came down. Virginia spread the cloth in the big kitchen and put the plates and dishes in their places, and then slipped to the door of her mother's room. It was dark and still.

"Supper is on the table, mother," she said; "do you want anything?"

There was a sudden creaking of the bed-slats, a pause, then, in a sullen, husky voice, Jane answered, "No, I _don't_; you leave me alone!"

"All right, mother; I'm sorry to have disturbed you. Good-night."

Sam and his niece ate alone in the big room by the wavering light of the fire. The wind had risen on the mountain-top, and roared across the fields. It sang dolefully in the pines near by, whistled shrilly under the eaves of the house, and scurried through the open pa.s.sage outside.

After the meal was over, Sam smoked a pipe and thumped off to bed, carrying his shoes in his hand. Virginia buried the remains of the big back-log in the hot ashes, and in the darkness crept into her own room, adjoining that of her mother, and went to bed.

Jane Hemingway was not sleeping; she had no hope of a respite of that sort. She would have doubted that she ever could close her eyes in tranquillity till some settlement of the life-crushing matter was reached. What was to be done? Only one expedient had offered itself during her aimless walk to the store, where she purchased a spool of cotton thread she did not need, and during her slow return along the road and the further hours of solitude in her darkened chamber, and that expedient offered no balm for her gashed and torn pride. She could appeal to the law to protect her innocent daughter from the designing wiles of a woman of such a reputation as Ann Boyd bore, but, alas! even Ann might have foreseen that ruse and counted on its more deeply stirring Virginia's sympathies and adding to her faith. Why she had not at once denounced her child for her filial faithlessness she could not have explained, unless it was the superst.i.tious dread of having Virginia's infidelity reconfirmed. Of course, she must fight. Yes, she'd have to do that to the end, although her shrewd enemy had already beaten her life-pulse dead in her veins and left her without a hope of adequate retaliation. Going to law meant also that it was her first public acknowledgment of her enemy's prowess, and it meant, too, the wide-spread and humiliating advertis.e.m.e.nt of the fact that Virginia had died to her and been born to the breast of her rival; but even that must be borne.

These morose reflections were broken, near midnight, by a step in the pa.s.sage outside. The door was opened softly, and Virginia, in her night-robe, came in quietly and approached the bed.

"I know you are not asleep, mother," she said, tremulously. "I've heard you rolling and tossing ever since I went to bed."

Jane stared from her hot pillow for an instant, and then slowly propped herself up on her gaunt, quivering elbow. "You are not asleep either, it seems," she said, hollowly.

"No, I couldn't for thinking about you," Virginia replied, gently, as she sat down on the foot of the bed.

"You couldn't, huh! I say!" Jane sneered. "Huh, _you_! It's a pity about you!"

"I have reason to worry," Virginia said. "You know the doctors told you particularly not to get depressed and downhearted while you are recovering your strength."

"Huh! what do they mean by prescribing things that can't be reached under the sun? They are idiots to think I could have peace of mind after finding out what I did this morning. I once had a cancer in the flesh; I've got one now in my heart, where no knife on earth can reach it."

There was a pause. The eyes of the mother and daughter met in the half-darkness of the room. There was a lull in the whistling of the wind outside. Under the floor a hen with a brood of chickens was clucking uneasily and flapping her wings in the effort to keep her brood warm.

Across the pa.s.sage came the rasping sound of Sam's snoring, as unconscious of tragedy as he had been in his cradle, and yet its creeping shadow lay over his placid features, its bated breath filled the air he was breathing. Virginia leaned forward wonderingly, her lips parted and set in anxiety.

"You are thinking about the debt on the farm?" she ventured. "If that's it, mother, remember-"

"The debt on this paltry shack and few acres of rocky land? Huh! if that was all I had to complain about I'd bounce out of this bed and shout for joy. Oh, Lord, have mercy on me!"

"Then, mother, what-" Virginia drew herself up with a start. Her mother, it now struck her, had said her trouble was due to a discovery she had made that morning. What else could it be than that her mother had accidentally seen her in company with Ann Boyd? Yes, that was it, and Virginia hastily told herself that some satisfying explanation must be made, some plausible and pacifying reason must be forthcoming that would allay her mother's anger, but it was hard to lie, in open words, as she had been doing in act. The gentle girl shuddered before the impending ordeal and clinched her hands in her lap. Yes, it was hard to lie, and yet the truth-the _whole_ truth-was impossible.

"Mother," she began, "you see-I suppose I'll have to confess to you that Mrs. Boyd and I-"

"Don't blacken your soul with lies!" her mother hurled at her, furiously. "I slipped up in a few feet of you both at the spring and saw you kissing her, and heard you tell her you loved her more than anybody in the world, and that she'd treated you better than I ever did, and that she was the best woman that ever lived. Explain all that, if you can, but don't set there and lie to me who gave you what life you've got, and toiled and stinted and worked my hands to the bone to raise, you and let you hold your own with others. If there's a speck of truth in you, don't deny what I saw with my own eyes and heard with my two ears."

"I'll not deny it, then," Virginia said. She rose and moved to the small-paned window and stood with her face turned away. "I have met Mrs.

Boyd several times and talked to her. I don't think she has ever had justice done her by you and her neighbors; she is not rightly understood, and, feeling that you have been all along the chief influence against her, and have always kept her early trouble stirred up, I felt like being her friend as well as I could, and at the same time remain true to you."

"Oh, you poor, poor little sniffling idiot!" Jane said, as she drew her thin legs out from the coverings and rested her feet on the floor and leaned forward. "All this time you've been thinking, in your grand way, that you were doing a kindness to her, when she was just using you as a tool, to devil me. Huh! didn't she throw it up to me once at the wash-place where she and I met? She told me to my teeth that something was coming that would bring my face to the earth in shame. I thought she knew about the cancer, and was gloating over it; but she wasn't speaking of that, for when I came back from Atlanta, sound and whole, she hurled her hints at me again. She said she knew nothing about the cancer at that time, but that she still knew something that would make me slink from the faces of men and women like a whipped hound. I discovered what she meant to-day. She meant that because my testimony had something to do with Joe Boyd's leaving with _her_ child, she had won over _mine_ to herself. That's been her mean and sneaking plot all this time, in which she has been decoying you from a respectable roof and making you her easy tool-the tool with which she expected to stab at my pride and humble me in the eyes of everybody."

"Mother, stop!" Virginia turned and sat down again on the bed. "That woman shall not have another-not one other-_false_ charge piled up around her. G.o.d knows I don't see how I can tell you _all_ the truth, but it is due to her now. It will more than justify her, and that's my duty. Listen, and don't interrupt me. I want to go straight through this, and when I have finished you may turn from me and force me to go to her for a home. You have never dreamed that I could do what I am about to confess I did. I am not going to excuse myself, either. What I did, I did. The shame of it, now that I see clearly, is killing me. No, stop! Let me go on. I have been receiving the attentions of Langdon Chester in secret. After the first time you saw us together and objected so strongly, I told him not to come to the house again; but, like many another silly girl, I was hungry for admiration, and met him elsewhere.

I loved to hear the nice things he said, although I didn't always believe them. He-he tried to induce me to do a number of imprudent things, which, somehow, I was able to refuse, as they concerned my own pleasure alone; but then you began to worry about the money to go to Atlanta on. Day by day you grew more and more despondent and desperate as every effort failed, and one day, when you were down at the lowest ebb of hope, he told me that he-do you understand, mother?-Langdon Chester told me that he thought he could get up the money, but that no one must know that he-"