"She"s about the sharpest and in many ways the strongest woman in the state," said the store-keeper, with a sigh. "Good Lord, Masters, she"s been my main-stay ever since I opened this shack, and now to think because that loud-mouthed Bazemore, who expects me to pay a good part of his salary, takes a notion to rip her up the back in meeting, why-"
"Oh, I see!" cried the drummer-"I understand it now. I heard about that at Darley. So _she"s_ the woman! Well, I"m glad _I_ got a good look at her. I see a lot of queer things in going about over the country, but I don"t think I ever ran across just her sort."
"She"s had a devil of a life, Masters, from the time she was a blooming, pretty young girl till now that she is at war with everybody within miles of her. She"s always been a study to me. She"s treated me more like a son than anything else-doing everything in her power to help me along, buying, by George, things sometimes that I knew she didn"t need because it would help me out, and now, because I didn"t get up in meeting last Sunday and call that man down she holds me accountable. I don"t know but what she"s right. Why should I take her hard-earned money and sit still and allow her to be abused? She"s simply got pride, and lots of it, and it"s bad hurt."
"But what was it all about?" the drummer inquired.
"The start of it was away back when she was a girl, as I said," began the store-keeper. "You"ve heard of Colonel Preston Chester, our biggest planter, who lives a mile from here-old-time chap, fighter of duels, officer in the army, and all that?"
"Oh yes, I"ve seen him; in fact, I was at college at the State University with his son Langdon. He was a terrible fellow-very wild and reckless, full half the time, and playing poker every night. He was never known to pay a debt, even to his best friends."
"Langdon is a chip off of the old block," said Wilson. "His father was just like him when he was a young man. Between you and me, the Colonel never had a conscience; old as he now is, he will sit and laugh about his pranks right in the presence of his son. It"s no wonder the boy turned out like he did. Well, away back when this Mrs. Boyd was a young and pretty girl, the daughter of honest, hard-working people, who owned a little farm back of his place, he took an idle fancy to her. I"m telling you now what has gradually leaked out in one way and another since. He evidently won her entire confidence, made her believe he was going to marry her, and, as he was a dashing young fellow, she must have fallen in love with him. n.o.body knows how that was, but one thing is sure, and that is that he was seen about with her almost constantly for a whole year, and then he stopped off suddenly. The report went out that he"d made up his mind to get married to a young woman in Alabama who had a lot of money, and he did go off and bring home the present Mrs.
Chester, Langdon"s mother. Well, old-timers say young Ann Boyd took it hard, stayed close in at home and wasn"t seen out for a couple of years.
Then she come out again, and they say she was better-looking than ever and a great deal more serious and sensible. Joe Boyd was a young farmer those days, and a sort of dandy, and he fell dead in love with her and hung about her day and night, never seeming willing to let her out of his sight. Several other fellows, they say, was after her, but she seemed to like Joe the best, but nothing he"d do or say would make her accept him. I can see through it now, looking back on what has since leaked out, but n.o.body understood it then, for she had evidently got over her attachment for Colonel Chester, and Joe was a promising fellow, strong, good-looking, and a great beau and flirt among women, half a dozen being in love with him, but Ann simply wouldn"t take him, and it was the talk of the whole county. He was simply desperate folks say, going about boring everybody he met with his love affair. Finally her mother and father and all her friends got after her to marry Joe, and she gave in. And then folks wondered more than ever why she"d delayed, for she was more in love with her husband than anybody had any reason to expect. They were happy, too. A child was born, a little girl, and that seemed to make them happier. Then Mrs. Boyd"s mother and father died, and she came into the farm, and the Boyds were comfortable in every way.
Then what do you think happened?"
"I"ve been wondering all along," the drummer laughed. "I can see you"re holding something up your sleeve."
"Well, this happened. Colonel Chester"s wife was, even then, a homely woman, about as old as he was, and not at all attractive aside from her money, and marrying hadn"t made him any the less devilish. They say he saw Mrs. Boyd at meeting one day and hardly took his eyes off of her during preaching. She had developed into about the most stunning-looking woman anywhere about, and knew how to dress, which was something Mrs.
Chester, with all her chances, had never seemed to get onto. Well, that was the start of it, and from that day on Chester seemed to have nothing on his mind but the good looks of his old sweetheart. Folks saw him on his horse riding about where he could get to meet her, and then it got reported that he was actually forcing himself on her to such an extent that Joe Boyd was worked up over it, aided by the eternal gab of all the women in the section."
"Did Colonel Chester"s wife get onto it?" the drummer wanted to know.
"It don"t seem like she did," answered Wilson. "She was away visiting her folks in the South most of the time, with Langdon, who was a baby then, and it may be that she didn"t care. Some folks thought she was weak-minded; she never seemed to have any will of her own, but left the Colonel to manage her affairs without a word."
"Well, go on with your story," urged the drummer.
"There isn"t much more to tell about the poor woman," continued Wilson.
"As I said, Chester got to forcing himself on her, and I reckon she didn"t want to tell her husband what she was trying to forget for fear of a shooting sc.r.a.pe, in which Joe would get the worst of it; but this happened: Joe was off at court in Darley and sent word home to his wife that he was to be held all night on a jury. The man that took the message rode home alongside of Chester and told him about it. Well, I reckon, all h.e.l.l broke out in Chester that night. He was a drinking man, and he tanked up, and, as his wife was away, he had plenty of liberty.
Well, he simply went over to Joe Boyd"s house and went in. It was about ten o"clock. My honest conviction is, no matter what others think, that she tried her level best to make him leave without rousing the neighborhood, but he wouldn"t go, but sat there in the dark with his coat off, telling her he loved her more than her husband did, and that he never had loved his wife, and that he was crazy for her, and the like. How long this went on, with her imploring and praying to him to go, I don"t know; but, at any rate, they both heard the gate-latch click and Joe Boyd come right up the gravel-walk. I reckon the poor woman was scared clean out of her senses, for she made no outcry, and Chester went to a window, his coat on his arm, and was climbing out when Joe, who couldn"t get in at the front door and was making for the one in the rear, met him face to face."
"Great goodness!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the commercial traveller.
"Well, you bet, the devil was to pay," went on the store-keeper, grimly.
"Chester was mad and reckless, and, being hot with liquor, and regarding Boyd as far beneath him socially, instead of making satisfactory explanations, they say he simply swore at Boyd and stalked away.
Dumfounded, Boyd went inside to his miserable wife and demanded an explanation. She has since learned how to use her wits with the best in the land, but she was young then, and so, by her silence, she made matters worse for herself. He forced her to explain, and, seeing no other way out of the affair, she decided to throw herself on his mercy and make a clean breast of things her and her family had kept back all that time. Well, sir, she confessed to what had happened away back before Chester had deserted her, no doubt telling a straight story of her absolute purity and faithfulness to Boyd after marriage. Poor old Joe! He wasn"t a fighting man, and, instead of following Chester and demanding satisfaction, he stayed at home that night, no doubt suffering the agony of the d.a.m.ned and trying to make up his mind to believe in his wife and to stand by her. As it looks now, he evidently decided to make the best of it, and might have succeeded, but somehow it got out about Chester being caught there, and that started gossip so hot that her life and his became almost unbearable. It might have died a natural death in time, but Mrs. Boyd had an enemy, Mrs. Jane Hemingway, who had been one of the girls who was in love with Joe Boyd. It seems that she never had got over Joe"s marrying another woman, and when she heard this scandal she nagged and teased Joe about his babyishness in being willing to believe his wife, and told him so many lies that Boyd finally quit staying at home, sulking about in the mountains, and making trips away till he finally applied for a divorce. Ignorant and inexperienced as she was, and proud, Mrs. Boyd made no defence, and the whole thing went his way with very little publicity. But the hardest part for her to bear was when, having the court"s decree to take charge of his child, Boyd came and took it away."
"Good gracious! that was tough, wasn"t it?" exclaimed the drummer.
"That"s what it was, and they say it fairly upset her mind. They expected her to fight like a tiger for her young, but at the time they came for it she only seemed stupefied. The little girl was only three years old, but they say Ann came in the room and said she was going to ask the child if it was willing to leave her, and they say she calmly put the question, and the baby, not knowing what she meant, said, "Yes."
Then they say Ann talked to it as if it were a grown person, and told her to go, that she"d never give her a thought in the future, and never wanted to lay eyes on her again."
"That was pitiful, wasn"t it?" said Masters. "By George, we don"t dream of what is going on in the hearts of men and women we meet face to face every day. And that"s what started her in the life she"s since led."
"Yes, she lived in her house like a hermit, never going out unless she absolutely had to. She had an old-fashioned loom in a shed-room adjoining her house, and night and day people pa.s.sing along the road could hear her thumping away on it. She kept a lot of fine sheep, feeding and shearing them herself, and out of the wool she wove a certain kind of jean cloth which she sold at a fancy figure. I"ve seen wagon-loads of it pa.s.s along the road billed to a big house in Atlanta.
This went on for several years, and then it was noticed that she was acc.u.mulating money. She was buying all the land she could around her house, as if to force folks as far from her as possible, and she turned the soil to a good purpose, for she knew how to work it. She hired negroes for cash, when others were paying in old clothes and sc.r.a.ps, and, as she went to the field with them and worked in the sun and rain like a man, she got more out of her planting than the average farmer."
"So she"s really well off?" said the drummer.
"Got more than almost anybody else in the county," said Wilson. "She"s got stocks in all sorts of things, and owns houses on the main street in Darley, which she keeps well rented. It seems like, not having anything else to amuse her, she turned her big brain to economy and money-making, and I"ve always thought she did it to hit back at the community. You see, the more she makes, the more her less fortunate neighbors dislike her, and she loves to get even as far as possible."
"And has she had no a.s.sociates at all?" Masters wanted to know.
"Well, yes, there is one woman, a Mrs. Waycroft, who has always been intimate with her. She is the only-I started to say she was the only one, but there was a poor mountain fellow, Luke King, a barefoot boy who had a fine character, a big brain on him, and no education. His parents were poor, and did little for him. They say Mrs. Boyd sort of took pity on him and used to buy books and papers for him, and that she really taught him to read and write. She sent him off to school, and got him on his feet till he was able to find work in a newspaper office over at Canton, where he became a boss typesetter. I"ve always thought that her misfortune had never quite killed her natural impulses, for she certainly got fond of that fellow. I had an exhibition of both his regard and hers right here at the store. He"d come in to buy something or other, and was waiting about the stove one cold winter day, when a big mountain chap made a light remark about Mrs. Boyd. He was a head taller than Luke King was, but the boy sprang at him like a panther and knocked the fellow down. They had the bloodiest fight I ever saw, and it was several minutes before they could be separated. Luke had damaged the chap pretty badly, but he was able to stand, while the boy keeled over in a dead faint on the floor, bruised inside some way. The big fellow, fearing arrest, mounted his horse and went away, and several of us were doing what we could with cold water and whiskey to bring the boy around when who should come in but Ann herself. She was pa.s.sing the store, and some one told her about it. People who think she has no heart and is as cold as stone ought to have seen her that day. In all my life I never saw such a terrible face on a human being. I was actually afraid of her.
She was all fury and all tenderness combined. She looked down at him in all his blood and bruises and white face, and got down on her knees by him. I saw a great big sob rise up in her, although her back was to me, and shake her from head to foot, and then she was still, simply stroking back his damp, tangled hair. "My poor boy," I heard her say, "you can"t fight my battles. G.o.d Himself has failed to do that, but I won"t forget this-never-never!""
"Lord, that was strong!" said Masters. "She must be wonderful!"
"She is more wonderful than her narrow-minded enemies dream of,"
returned the store-keeper. "You see, it"s her pride that keeps her from showing her fine feelings, and it"s her secluded life that makes them misunderstand her. Well, she brought her wagon and took the boy away.
That was another queer thing," Wilson added. "She evidently had started to take him to her house, for she drove as far as the gate and then stopped there to study a moment, and finally turned round and drove him to the poor cabin his folks lived in. You see, she was afraid that even that would cause talk, and it would. Old Jane Hemingway would have fed on that morsel for months, as unreasonable as it would have been. Ann sent a doctor, though, and every delicacy the market afforded, and the boy was soon out. It wasn"t long afterwards that Luke King went to college at Knoxville, and now he"s away in the West somewhere. His mother, after his father"s death, married a trifling fellow, Mark Bruce, and that brought on some dispute between her and her son, who had tried to keep her from marrying such a man. They say Luke told her if she did marry Bruce he"d go away and never even write home, and so far, they say, he has kept his word. n.o.body knows where he is or what he"s doing unless it is Mrs. Boyd, and she never talks. I can"t keep from thinking he"s done well, though, for he had a big head on him and a lot of determination."
"And this Mrs. Hemingway, her enemy," said the drummer, tentatively, "you say she was evidently the woman"s rival at one time. But it seems she married some one else."
"Oh yes, she suddenly accepted Tom Hemingway, an old bachelor, who had been trying to marry her for a long time. Most people thought she did it to hide her feelings when Joe Boyd got married. She treated Tom like a dog, making him do everything she wanted, and he was daft about her till he died, just a couple of weeks after his child was born, who, by-the-way, has grown up to be the prettiest girl in all the country, and that"s another feature in the story," the store-keeper smiled. "You see, Mrs. Boyd looks upon old Jane as the prime cause of her losing her _own_ child, and I understand she hates the girl as much as she does her mother."
A man had come into the store and stood leaning against a show-case on the side devoted to groceries.
"There"s a customer," said the drummer; "don"t let me keep you, old man; you know you"ve got to look at my samples some time to-day."
"Well, I"ll go see what he wants," said Wilson, "and then I"ll look through your line, though I don"t feel a bit like it, after losing the best regular customer I have."
The drummer had opened his sample-case on the desk when Wilson came back.
"You say the woman"s husband took the child away," remarked the drummer; "did he go far?"
"They first settled away out in Texas," replied Wilson, "but Joe Boyd, not having his wife"s wonderful head to guide him, failed at farming there, and only about three years ago he came back to this country and bought a little piece of land over in Gilmer-the county that joins this one."
"Oh, so near as that! Then perhaps she has seen her daughter and-"
"Oh no, they"ve never met," said Wilson, as he took a sample pair of men"s suspenders from the case and tested the elastic by stretching it between his hands. "I know that for certain. She was in here one morning waiting for one of her teams to pa.s.s to take her to Darley, when a peddler opened his pack of tin-ware and tried to sell her some pieces I was out of. He heard me call her by name, and, to be agreeable, he asked her if she was any kin to Joe Boyd and his daughter, over in Gilmer. I could have choked the fool for his stupidity. I tried to catch his eye to warn him, but he was intent on selling her a bill, and took no notice of anything else. I saw her stare at him steady for a second or two, then she seemed to swallow something, and said, "No, they are no kin of mine." And then what did the skunk do but try to make capital out of that. "Well, you may be glad," he said, "that they are no kin, for they are as near the ragged edge as any folks I ever ran across." He went on to say he stayed overnight at Boyd"s cabin and that they had hardly anything but streak-o"-lean-streak-o"-fat meat and corn-bread to offer him, and that the girl had the worst temper he"d ever seen. Mrs. Boyd, I reckon, to hide her face, was looking at some of the fellow"s pans, and he seemed to think he was on the right line, and so he kept talking. Old Joe, he said, had struck him as a good-natured, lazy sort of come-easy-go-easy mountaineer, but the girl looked stuck up, like she thought she was some better than appearances would indicate. He said she was a tall, gawky sort of girl, with no good looks to brag of, and he couldn"t for the life of him see what she had to make her so proud.
"I wondered what Mrs. Boyd was going to do, but she was equal to that emergency, as she always has been in everything. She held one of his pans up in the light and tilted her bonnet back on her head, I thought, to let me see she wasn"t hiding anything, and said, as unconcerned as if he"d never mentioned a delicate subject. "Look here," she said, thumping the bottom of the pan with her finger, "if you expect to do any business with _me_ you"ll have to bring copper-bottom ware to me. I don"t buy shoddy stuff from any one. These pans will rust through in two months.
I"ll take half a dozen, but I"m only doing it to pay you for the time spent on me. It is a bad investment for any one to buy cheap, stamped ware.""
IV
Mrs. Jane Hemingway, Ann Boyd"s long and persistent enemy, sat in the pa.s.sage which connected the two parts of her house, a big, earthernware churn between her sharp knees, firmly raising and lowering the bespattered dasher with her bony hands. She was a woman past fifty; her neck was long and slender, and the cords under the parchment-like skin had a way of tightening, like ropes in the seams of a tent, when she swallowed or spoke. Her dark, smoothly brushed hair was done up in the tightest of b.a.l.l.s behind her head, and her brown eyes were easily kindled to suspicion, fear, or anger.
Her brother-in-law, Sam Hemingway, called "Hem" by his intimates, slouched in from the broad glare of the mid-day sun and threw his coat on a chair. Then he went to the shelf behind the widow, and, pouring some water into a tin pan from a pail, he noisily bathed his perspiring face and big, red hands. As he was drying himself on the towel which hung on a wooden roller on the weather-boarding of the wall, Virginia Hemingway, his niece, came in from the field bringing a pail of freshly gathered dewberries. In appearance she was all that George Wilson had claimed for her. Slightly past eighteen, she had a wonderful complexion, a fine, graceful figure, big, dreamy, hazel eyes, and golden-brown hair, and, which was rare in one of her station, she was tastily dressed. She smiled as she showed her uncle the berries and playfully "tickled" him under the chin.
"See there!" she chuckled.
"Pies?" he said, with an unctuous grin, as he peered down into her pail.