At dusk that day Ann Boyd went out to search for a missing cow. She crossed the greater part of her stretch of meadow-land in the foggy shadows, and finally found the animal mired to the knees in a black bog hidden from view by the high growth of bulrushes. Then came the task of releasing the patient creature, and Ann carried rails from the nearest fence, placing them in such a way that the cow finally secured a substantial footing and gladly sped homeward to her imprisoned calf.

Then, to escape the labor of again pa.s.sing through the clinging vines and high gra.s.s of the marsh, Ann took the nearest way to the main road leading from the store on to Jane Hemingway's cottage. She had just reached the little meeting-house, and a hot flush of anger at the memory of the insult pa.s.sed upon her there was surging over her, when, happening to glance towards the graveyard in the rear of the building, she saw Virginia Hemingway and Langdon Chester, quite with the air of lovers, slowly walking homeward along a path which, if more rugged, led more directly towards the girl's home. Ann Boyd started and then stared; she could hardly credit the evidence of her sight-Virginia Hemingway and the scapegrace son of that man, of all men, together!

"Ah, ha!" she exclaimed, under her breath, and, falling back into the bushes which bordered the roadside, she stood tingling from head to foot with a new and unexpected sensation, her eager eyes on the loitering pair. "So _that's_ it, is it? The young scamp has picked _her_ out, devil that he is by blood and birth. Well, I might have known it. Who could know better than me what a new generation of that cursed stock would be up to? Right now he's the living image of what his father was at the same age. He's lying to her, too, with tongue, eyes, voice, and very bend of body. Great G.o.d, isn't she pretty? I never, in my best day, saw the minute that I could have held a candle to her, and yet they all said-but that makes no difference. I wonder why I never thought before that he'd pick her out. As much as I hate her mammy, and her, too, I must acknowledge she's sweet-looking. She's pure-minded, too-as pure of thought as I was away back there when I wore my hair in a plait. But that man will crush your purity, you little, blind kitten, crush it like a fresh violet under a horse's hoof; _he'll_ teach you what life is.

That's the business the Chesters are good at. But, look! I do believe she's holding off from him." Ann crept onward through the bushes to keep pace with the couple, now and then stretching her neck or rising to her full height on tiptoe.

"He hasn't been on her track very long," she mused, "but he has won the biggest part of his battle-he's got her to meet him privately. A sight of this would lay her old mammy out stiff as a board, but she'll be kept in the dark. That scamp will see to that part of the affair. But she'll know in the end. Somebody will tell her the truth. Maybe the girl will herself, when the awful, lonely pinch comes and there is no other friend in sight. _Then_, Jane Hemingway, it will all come home to you. Then you'll look back on the long, blood-hound hunt you've given another woman in the same plight. The Almighty is doing it. He's working it out for Jane Hemingway's life-portion. The girl is the very apple of her eye; she has often said she was the image of herself, and that, as her own marriage and life had come to nothing, she was going to see to it that her only child's path was strewn with roses. Well, Langdon Chester is strewing the roses thick enough. Ha, ha, ha!" the peering woman chuckled. "Jane can come along an' pick 'em up when they are withered and crumble like powder at the slightest touch. Now I really will have something to occupy me. I'll watch this thing take root, and bud, and leave, and bloom, and die. Maybe I'll be the first to carry the news to headquarters. I'd love it more than anything this life could give me.

I'd like to shake the truth in Jane Hemingway's old, blinking eyes and see her unable to believe it. I'd like to stand shaking it in her teeth till she knew it was so, and then I honestly believe I'd fall right down in front of her and roll over and over laughing. To think that I, maybe _I_ will be able to flaunt the very thing in her face that she has all these years held over me-the very thing, even to its being a son of the very scoundrel that actually bent over the cradle of my girlhood and blinded me with the lies that lit up his face."

A few yards away the pair had paused. Chester had taken the girl's hand and was gently stroking it as it lay restlessly in his big palm. For a moment Ann lost sight of them, for she was stealthily creeping behind the low, hanging boughs of the bushes to get nearer. She found herself presently behind a big bowlder. She no longer saw the couple, but could hear their voices quite distinctly.

"You won't even let me hold your hand," she heard him say. "You make me miserable, Virginia. When I am at home alone, I get to thinking over your coldness and indifference, and it nearly drives me crazy. Why did you jerk your hand away so quickly just now?"

"I don't see what you were talking to a drummer about me for, in a public place like that," the girl answered, in pouting tones.

"Why, it was this way, Virginia-now don't be silly!" protested Chester.

"You see, this Masters and I were at college together, and rather intimate, and down at the store we were standing talking when you came in the front to buy something. He said he thought you were really the prettiest girl he had ever seen, and he was begging me to introduce him to you."

"Introduce him!" Virginia snapped. "I don't want to know him. And so you stood there talking about me!"

"It was only a minute, Virginia, and I couldn't help it," Chester declared. "I didn't think you'd care to know him, but I had to treat him decently. I told him how particular your mother was, and that I couldn't manage it. Oh, he's simply daft about you. He pa.s.sed you on the road this morning, and hasn't been able to talk about anything since. But who could blame him, Virginia? You can form no idea of how pretty you are in the eyes of other people. Frankly, in a big gathering of women you'd create a sensation. You've got what every society woman in the country would die to have, perfect beauty of face and form, and the most remarkable part about it is your absolute unconsciousness of it all.

I've seen good-looking women in the best sets in Augusta and Savannah and Atlanta, but they all seem to be actually making up before your very eyes. Do you know, it actually makes me sick to see a woman all rigged out in a satin gown so stiff that it looks like she's encased in some metallic painted thing that moves on rollers. It's beauty unadorned that you've got, and it's the real thing."

"I don't want to talk about myself eternally," said Virginia, rather sharply, the eavesdropper thought, "and I don't see why you seem to think I do. When you are sensible and talk to me about what we have both read and thought, I like you better."

"Oh, you want me to be a sort of Luke King, who put all sorts of fancies in your head when you were too young to know what they meant. You'd better let those dreams alone, Virginia, and get down to everyday facts.

My love for you is a reality. It's a big force in my life. I find myself thinking about you and your coldness from early morning till late at night. Last Monday you were to come to the Henry Spring, and I was there long before the time, and stayed in agony of suspense for four hours, but I had my walk for nothing."

"I couldn't come," Ann Boyd heard the sweet voice say. "Mother gave me some work to do, and I had no excuse; besides, I don't like to deceive her. She's harsh and severe, but I don't like to do anything she would disapprove of."

"You don't really care much for me," said Langdon-"that is the whole thing in a nutsh.e.l.l."

Virginia was silent, and Ann Boyd bit her lip and clinched her hands tightly. The very words and tone of enforced reproach came back to her across the rolling surf of time. She was for a moment lost in retrospection. The young girl behind the bushes seemed suddenly to be herself, her companion the dashing young Preston Chester, the prince of planters and slave-holders. Langdon's insistent voice brought back the present.

"You don't care for me, you know you don't," he was saying. "You were simply born with all your beauty and sweetness to drag me down to despair. You make me desperate with your maddening reserve and icy coldness, when all this hot fire is raging in me."

"That's what makes me afraid of you," Virginia said, softly. "I admit I like to be with you, my life is so lonely, but you always say such extravagant things and want to-to catch hold of me, and kiss me, and-"

"Well, how can I help myself, when you are what you are?" Chester exclaimed, with a laugh. "I don't want to act a lie to you, and stand and court you like a long-faced Methodist parson, who begins and ends his love-making with prayer. Life is too beautiful and lovely to turn it into a funeral service from beginning to end. Let's be happy, little girl; let's laugh and be merry and thank our stars we are alive."

"I won't thank my stars if I don't go on home." And Virginia laughed sweetly for the first time.

"Yes, I suppose we had better walk on," Langdon admitted, "but I'm not going out into the open road with you till I've had that kiss. No, you needn't pull away, dear-I'm going to have it."

The grim eavesdropper heard Virginia sharply protesting; there was a struggle, a tiny, smothered scream, and then something waked in the breast of Ann Boyd that lifted her above her sordid self. It was the enraged impulse to dart forward and with her strong, toil-hardened hands clutch the young man by the throat and drag him down to the ground and hold him there till the flames she knew so well had gone out of his face. Something like a prayer sprang to her lips-a prayer for help, and then, in a flush of shame, the slow-gained habit of years came back to her; she was taking another view-this time down a darkened vista.

"It's no business of mine," she muttered. "It's only the way things are evened up. After all, where would be the justice in one woman suffering from a thing for a lifetime and another going scot free, and that one, too, the daughter of the one person that has deliberately made a life miserable? No, siree! My pretty child, take care of yourself, I'm not your mother. If she would let me alone for one minute, maybe her eyes would be open to her own interests."

Laughing pleasantly over having obtained his kiss by sheer force, Langdon, holding Virginia's reluctant hand, led her out into an open s.p.a.ce, and the watcher caught a plain view of the girl's profile, and the sight twisted her thoughts into quite another channel. For a moment she stood as if rooted to the ground behind the bushes which had shielded her. "That girl is going to be a hard one to fool," she muttered. "I can see that from her high forehead and firm chin. Now, it really _would_ be a joke on me if-if Jane Hemingway's offspring was to avoid the pitfall I fell into, with all the head I've got. Then, I reckon, Jane _could_ talk; that, I reckon, would prove her right in so bitterly denouncing me; but will the girl stand the pressure? If she intends to, she's made a bad beginning. Meeting a chap like that on the sly isn't the best way to be rid of him, nor that kiss; which she let him have without a scratch or loss of a hair on his side, is another bad indication. Well, the game's on. Me 'n' Jane is on the track neck to neck with the wire and bandstand ahead. If the angels are watching this sport, them in the highest seats may shed tears, but it will be fun to the other sort. I'm reckless. I don't much care which side I amuse; the whole thing come up of its own accord, and the Lord of Creation hasn't done as much for my spiritual condition as the Prince of Darkness. I may be a she-devil, but I was made one by circ.u.mstances as naturally as a foul weed is made to grow high and strong by the manure around its root.

And yet, I reckon, there must be _some_ dregs of good left in my cup, for I felt like strangling that scamp a minute ago. But that may have been because I forgot and thought he was his daddy, and the girl was me on the brink of that chasm twenty years wide and deeper than the mystery of the grave of mankind. I don't know much, but I know I'm going to fight Jane Hemingway as long as I live. I know I'm going to do that, for I know she will keep her nose to my trail, and I wouldn't be human if I didn't hit back."

The lovers had moved on; their voices were growing faint in the shadowy distance. The gray dusk had fallen in almost palpable folds over the landscape. The nearest mountain was lost like the sight of land at sea.

She walked on to her cow that was standing bellowing to her calf in the stable-lot. Laying her hand on the animal's back, Ann said: "I'm not going to milch you to-night, Sooky; I'm going to let your baby have all he wants if it fills him till he can't walk. I'm going to be better to you-you poor, dumb brute-than I am to Jane Hemingway."

Lowering the time-worn and smooth bars, she let the cow in to her young, and then, closing the opening, she went into her kitchen and sat down before the fire and pushed out her water-soaked feet to the flames to dry them.

In an iron pot having an ash-covered lid was a piece of corn-pone stamped with the imprint of her fingers, and on some smouldering coals was a skillet containing some curled strips of fried bacon. These things Ann put upon a tin plate, and, holding it in her lap, she began to eat her supper. She was normal and healthy, and therefore her excitement had not subdued her appet.i.te. She ate as with hearty enjoyment, her mind busy with what she had heard and seen.

"Ah, old lady!" she chuckled, "you can laugh fit to split your sides when a loud-mouthed preacher talks in public about burning benches, but your laugh is likely to come back in an echo as hollow as a voice from the grave. If this thing ends as I want it to end, I'll be with you, Jane, as you've managed to be with me all these years."

Till far in the night Ann sat nursing her new treasure and viewing it in all its possible forms, till, growing drowsy, from a long day of fatigue, she undressed herself, and, putting on a dingy gray night-gown, she crept into her big feather-bed.

"It all depends on the girl," was her last reflection before sleep bore her off. "She isn't a bit stronger than I was at about the same age, and I'll bet the Chester power isn't a whit weaker than it was. Well, time will tell."

Late in the night she was waked by a strange dream, and, to throw it out of mind, she rose and walked out into the entry and took a drink of water from the gourd. She had dreamed that Virginia had come to her bedraggled and torn, and had cried on her shoulder, and begged her for help and protection. In the dream she had pressed the girl's tear-wet face against her own and kissed her, and said: "I know what you feel, my child, for I've been through it from end to end; but if the whole world turns against you, come here to me and we'll live together-the young and old of the queerest fate known to womankind."

"Ugh!" Ann e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, with a shudder. "I wonder what's the matter with me." She went back to bed, lay down and drew her feet up under the sheets and shuddered. "To think I'd have a dream of that sort, and about _that woman's_ child!"

IX

It was the first Sunday in June. Mrs. Waycroft came along the stony hill-side road that slanted gently down from her house to Ann Boyd's. It was a dry, breezeless morning under an unclouded sun, and but for the earliness of the hour it would have been hot.

"I was just wondering," she said to Ann, whom she found in the back-yard lowering a pail of b.u.t.ter into the well to keep it cool-"I was just wondering if you'd heard that a new man is to preach to-day. He's a Mr.

Calhoun, from Marietta, a pretty good talker, I've heard."

"No, I didn't know it," said Ann, as she let the hemp rope slowly glide through her fingers, till, with a soft sound, the pail struck the dark surface of the water forty feet below. "How am I to hear such things?

Through the whole week, unless you happen along, I only have a pack of negroes about me, and they have their own meetings and shindigs to go to."

Mrs. Waycroft put her hand on the smooth, wooden windla.s.s and peered down into the well. "This is a better place, Ann, to keep milk and b.u.t.ter cool than a spring-house, if you can just make folks careful about letting the bucket down. I got my well filled with milk from a busted jug once, when one of the hands, in a big hurry, pushed the bucket in and let it fall to the water."

"n.o.body draws water here but me," said Ann. She had fixed her friend with a steady, penetrating stare. She was silent for a moment, then she said, abruptly: "You've got something else to say besides that about the new preacher; I have got so I read you like a book. I watched you coming along the road. I could see you over the roof of the house when you was high up in the edge of the timber, and I knew by your step you had something unusual on your mind. Besides, you know good and well that I'd never darken the door of that house again, not if forty new preachers held forth there. No, you didn't come all the way here so early for that."

The other woman smiled sheepishly under her gingham bonnet.

"I'm not going to meeting myself," she said, "and I reckon I was just talking to hear myself run on. I'm that away, you know."

"You might learn not to beat the Old Nick around a stump with a woman like me," said Ann, firmly. "You know I go straight at a thing. I've found that it pays in business and everything else."

"Well, then, I've come to tell you that I'm going over to Gilmer to-morrow to see my brother and his wife."

"Ah, you say you are!" Ann showed surprise against her will. "Gilmer?"

"Yes, you see, Ann, they've been after me for a long time, writing letters and sending word, so now that my crop is laid by I've not really got a good excuse to delay; seems like everything tends to pull me that way whether or no, for Pete McQuill is going over in the morning with an empty wagon, and, as he's coming back Thursday, why, it will just suit.

I wouldn't want to stay longer than that."

The two women stood staring at each other in silence for a moment, then Ann shrugged her powerful shoulders and averted her eyes.