Ann Boyd Part 32

"Oh, my G.o.d, don't, don't, don't!" Jane groaned. "Don't tell me that you-"

"Stop! let me go on," Virginia said, in a low, desperate tone. "I'm going to tell the whole horrible thing and be done with it forever. He said he had sent his best horse to Darley to sell it, and that the man would be back about ten o'clock at night with the money. He told me, mother, that he wanted me to slip away from home after you went to sleep and come there for the money. I didn't hesitate long. I wanted to save your life. I agreed. I might have failed to go after I parted with him if I'd had time to reflect, but when I came in to supper you were more desperate than ever. You went to your room praying and moaning, and kept it up till you dropped asleep only a few minutes before the appointed time. Well, I slipped away and-_went_."

"Oh, G.o.d have mercy on me-mercy, mercy, mercy!" Jane groaned. "You went there to that man!"

Virginia nodded mutely and then continued her recital. Jane Hemingway's knees bent under her as she stood holding to the bedpost, and she slowly sank to the floor a few feet away. With a low, moaning sound like a suffering dumb brute, she crawled on her hands and knees to her daughter and mutely clutched the girl's cold, bare ankles. "You say he locked you in his _bedroom_!" she said, in a rasping whisper. "_Locked_ you-actually _locked_ you in! Oh, Lord have mercy!"

"Then, after a long wait," the girl went on, "in which I was praying only for the money, mother-the money to save your life and put you out of agony-I heard steps, first on the stairs and then at the door.

Somebody touched the latch. The door held fast. Then the key was turned, and as I sat there with covered face, now with the dread of death upon me for the first time, somebody came in and stood over me."

"The scoundrel! The beast!" Jane's hands slipped from their hold on the girl's ankles and fell; her head and shoulders sank till her brow touched the floor.

"A hand was laid on my head," Virginia went on. "I heard a voice-"

"The fiend from h.e.l.l!" Jane raised her haggard face and glaring eyes.

"Don't, don't tell me that he dared to-"

"It was Mrs. Boyd, mother-Ann Boyd," said Virginia.

"Ann Boyd!" Jane groaned. "I see it now; _she_ was at the bottom of it; it was all _her_ doing. _That_ was her plot. Ah, G.o.d, I see it now!"

"You are mistaken," the girl said. "She had accidentally overheard my agreement to go there, and came for no other reason than to save me, mother-to save me."

"To save you?" Jane raised herself on her two hands like a four-footed animal looking up from its food. "Save your" she repeated, with the helpless glare of insanity in her blearing eyes.

"Yes, to save me. She was acting on impulse, an impulse for good that she was even then fighting against. When she heard of that appointment she actually gloated over it, but, mother, she found herself unequal to it. As the time which had been set drew near, she plunged out into the night and got there only a few minutes before-"

"In time-oh, my G.o.d, did you say _in time_?" Jane gasped, again clutching her daughter's ankles and holding desperately to them.

"Yes, in time to save me from all but the life-long consciousness of my awful indiscretion. She brought me away, and after that how could I be other than a grateful friend to such a n.o.ble creature?"

"In time-oh, my G.o.d, in _time_!" Jane exclaimed, as she sat erect on the floor and tossed her scant hair, which, like a wisp of tow, hung down her cheek. Then she got up stiffly and moved back to the bed as aimlessly as if she were wandering in her sleep.

"There is no use in my saying more, mother." Virginia rose and turned to the door. "I'm going back to my room. You can think it all over and do as you please with me. I deserve punishment, and I'm willing to take it."

Jane stared at her from her hollow eyes for a moment, then she said: "Yes, go! I never want to see you again; Ann Boyd saved you, but she is now gloating over _me_. She'll call it heaping coals of fire on my head; she'll brag to me and others of what she's done, and of what I owe her.

Oh, I know that woman! You've escaped one thing, but have made me face another worse than death. Go on away-get clear out of my sight. If you don't I'll say something to you that you will remember all your life."

"Very well, mother." Virginia moved to the door. Her hand was on the latch, when, with a startled gasp, her mother called out:

"Stop!-stop! For G.o.d's sake don't you dare to tell me that I went to Atlanta and bought back my life with that young scoundrel's money; if you do, as G.o.d is my Judge, I'll strike you dead where you stand."

"No, I refused to take it," Virginia said. "He came to me afterwards and begged me to accept it, but I refused."

"Then how under the sun-" Jane began, but went no further.

Virginia turned in the doorway and stood still; a look of resigned despair was on her. "You may as well know _all_ the truth," she said. "I promised not to tell, but you really ought to know this, too. Mother, Ann Boyd, gave me the money. The woman you are still hounding and hating earned the money by the sweat of her brow that saved your life."

"Ann Boyd! Oh, my G.o.d, and to think you can stand there and tell me that! Get out of my sight. You have acted the fool all along, and humiliated me in the dust by your conduct. You are no child of mine. It was all a plot-a dirty, low plot. She has used you. She has used me. She is laughing at us both right now. Oh, I know her! Get out of my sight or I'll forget myself and-go, I tell you!"

x.x.xVI

The next morning Jane did not come out to breakfast. Virginia had it ready on the table and went to her mother's room to call her. There was no response. Opening the door, she saw Jane, fully dressed, standing at the window looking out, but she refused to speak when gently informed that breakfast was ready. Then Virginia went back to the kitchen, and, arranging some delicacies, a cup of coffee, and other things on a tray, she took it in and left it on her mother's table and retired, closing the door after her.

For a week Jane refused to leave her room or speak to her daughter.

Three times a day Virginia took her mother's food to her, always finding the window-shade drawn and the chamber dark.

One morning, about this time, Virginia happened to see Ann in her peanut-patch, a rich spot of ground below the old woman's barn-yard, and, seeing that she would be quite un.o.bserved, she put on her bonnet and shawl and joined Ann, who, with a long, narrow hoe, was carefully digging the peanuts from the hills, and pulling them out by the brown, frost-bitten vines, and shaking the earth from their roots and leaving them to dry and season in the open air.

"I never saw goobers to beat these," Ann said, proudly, as she held up a weighty bunch. "I reckon this patch will turn out a good hundred bushel.

I hit it just right; they tell me in town that they are bringing a fine price. I've been wondering what was the matter with you, child. You've been keeping powerful close in-doors."

Then, as Ann leaned on her smooth hoe-handle, Virginia told her frankly all that had taken place, leaving out nothing, and ending with her mother's self-incarceration and sullen mood.

"Well," Ann exclaimed, her brow ruffled with pained perplexity, "I hardly know what to say in the matter. I don't blame you for letting out the whole business after you once got started. That was just natural.

But don't worry about her. She'll pull through; she's tough as whitleather; her trouble's not of the body, but the mind. I know; I've been through enough of it. Mark my prophecy, she'll come out one of these days feeling better. She'll crawl out of her darkness like a b.u.t.terfly from its dead and useless husk. She'll see clearer out in the open light when once she strikes it. Look here, child. I don't want to look like a sniffling fool after all the hard rubs I've had in this life to toughen me, but I'm a changed woman. Reading Luke's wonderful articles every week, and remembering the things the boy has said to me off and on, had something to do with it, I reckon, and then this experience of yours on top of it all helped. Yes, I'm altered; I'm altered and against my natural inclination. That very woman is _the_ one particular human thorn in my flesh, and yet, yet, child, as the Lord is my Master, I mighty nigh feel sorry for her. I mighty nigh pity the poor, old, sin-slashed creature housed up there in solitary darkness with her bleeding pride and envy and hate. I pity her now, I reckon, because the way this has turned out hurts her more than any open fight she could have with me. I'd 'a' died long ago under all the slush and mire that was dabbed on me if I hadn't amused myself making money. I didn't have the social standing of some of these folks, but I had the hard cash, and the clink of my coin has been almost as loud as their taunts. But your ma-she's had very little substance all along, and that little has been dwindling day by day, till she finds herself without a dollar and owing her very life to a woman she hates. Yes, her lot is a hard one, and I'm sorry for her. I pity your mammy, child."

x.x.xVII

For two weeks longer Jane Hemingway, to the inexplicable sorrow of her gentle and mystified daughter, kept the seclusion of her room. The curtains of the single window looking out on the yard in the rear were constantly drawn, and, though the girl sometimes listened attentively with her ear to the wall, she heard no sound to indicate that her mother ever moved from her bed or her chair at the fireplace, where she sat enveloped in blankets. She had allowed Virginia to push a plate containing her meals three times a day through the door, but the things were promptly received into the darkness and only sullen silence was the invariable response to the frequent inquiries the girl made.

One morning Sam stopped his niece in the yard near the well, a droll, half-amused expression on his face. "Do you know," he said, "that I believe I'd 'a' made a bang-up detective if I'd given time to it."

"Do you think so?" Virginia said, absently.

"Yes, I do," he replied. "Now, I'm going to give you an instance of what a body can discover by sticking two and two together and nosing around till you are plumb sure you know what a certain thing means. Now, you are a woman-not an old one, but a woman all the same-and they are supposed to see what's at the ends of their noses and a heap beyond, but when it comes to detective work they are not in it. I reckon it's because they won't look for what they don't want to see, and to make a good detective a body must pry into everything that is in sight. Well, to come down to the case in hand, you've been sticking grub through that crack in the door to your mammy, who put herself in limbo several weeks ago, but in all that time you haven't seen the color of her cheeks to know whether the fare is fattening her or thinning her down to the bone.

In fact, you nor me, on the outside, hain't supposed to know a blasted thing about what's going on in there. But-and there's where detective work comes in-one morning-it was day before yesterday, to be accurate-I took notice that all the stray cats and ducks and chickens had quit basking on the sunny side of the house and was staying around your mammy's window. Now, thinks I, that's odd; that's not according to the general run; so I set in to watching, and what do you reckon? I found out that all them Noah's Ark pa.s.sengers, of the two and four footed sort, had a.s.sembled there to get their meals. Your mammy was regularly throwing out the dainty grub you fixed for her. I laid in wait nigh the window this morning and saw her empty the plate. I went close and took a look. She had just nibbled a bit or two, like the pecking of a sparrow, out of the centre of the bread-slices, but she hadn't touched the eggs nor the streak-o'-lean-streak-o'-fat you thought she set such store by.

Good Lord, Virgie, don't you think the thing's gone far enough-having a drove of cats fed on the fat o' the land, when me and you are living on sc.r.a.ps?"

"Uncle"-Virginia's startled eyes bore down on him suddenly-"what does it mean?"

"Mean? Why, that there'll be a pa.s.sle of cats on this place too fat to walk, while me 'n' you'll be too lean to cast a shadow if we stood side by side in the sun."

"Oh, uncle, do you suppose she is worse?" Virginia asked, in deep concern.

"I don't know," Sam said, seriously, "my Pinkerton job ended with the discovery of them cat banquets, but I've about reached _one_ opinion."

"And what is that?" the girl asked, anxiously, as she bent towards her uncle.

"Why, I think maybe she's so mad and set back by all that's happened that she's trying to starve herself to death to get even."