“Great goodness!” ejaculated the commercial traveller.
“Well, you bet, the devil was to pay,” went on the storekeeper 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 she and her family had kept back all the 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 damned 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 had never 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 passing 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 pass along the road billed to a big house in Atlanta. This went on for several years, and then it was noticed that she was accumulating 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 good purpose, for she knew how to work it. She hired negroes for cash, when others were paying in old clothes and scraps, 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 associates 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 passing 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. God Himself has failed to do that, but I won’t forget this—never—never!’”