Ann Boyd: A Novel

by Will N. Harben

These hot reflections and secret plans for revenge finally died away and were followed by a state of mind that, at its lowest ebb, amounted to a racking despair he had never known. Something told him that Ann Boyd had spoken grim truth when she had said that Virginia would never again fall under his influence, and certainly no woman had ever before so completely absorbed him. Up to this moment it had been chiefly her rare beauty and sweetness of nature that had charmed him, but now he began to realize the grandeur of her character and the depths to which her troubles had stirred his sympathies. As he recalled, word by word, all that had passed between them in regard to her nocturnal visit, he was forced to acknowledge that it was only through her absorbing desire to save her mother that she, abetted by her very purity of mind, had been blindly led into danger. He flushed and shuddered under the lash of the thought that he, himself, had constituted that danger.

He went to bed, but scarcely closed his eyes during the remainder of the night, and the next morning was up before the cook had made the fires in the kitchen range. He hardly knew what he would do, but he determined to see Virginia at the earliest opportunity and make an honest and respectful attempt to regain her confidence. He would give her the money she so badly needed—give it to her without restrictions, and trust to her gratitude to restore her faith in him. He spent all that morning, after eating a hasty breakfast, on a near-by wooded hill-side, from which elevation he had a fair view of Jane Hemingway's cottage. He saw Virginia come from the house in search of the cow, and with his heart in his mouth he was preparing to descend to meet her, when, to his consternation, he saw that she had joined Ann Boyd at the barn-yard of the latter, and then he saw the two go into Ann's house together. This augured ill for him, his fears whispered, and he remained at his post among the trees till the girl came out of the house and hastened homeward. For the next two days he hung about Jane Hemingway's cottage with no other thought in mind than seeing Virginia. Once from the hill-side he saw her as she was returning from Wilson's store, and he made all haste to descend, hoping to intercept her before she reached home, but he was just a moment too late. She was on the road a hundred yards ahead of him, and, seeing him, she quickened her step. He walked faster, calling out to her appealingly to stop, but she did not pause or look back again. Then he saw a wagon filled with men and women approaching on the way to market, and, knowing that such unseemly haste on his part and hers would excite comment, he paused at the roadside and allowed her to pursue her way unmolested. The next day being Sunday, he dressed himself with unusual care, keenly conscious, as he looked in the mirror, that his visage presented a haggard, careworn aspect that was anything but becoming. His eyes had the fixed, almost bloodshot stare of an habitual drunkard in the last nervous stages of downward progress. His usually pliant hair, as if surcharged with electricity, seemed to defy comb and brush, and stood awry; his clothes hung awkwardly; his quivering fingers refused to put the deft touch to his tie which had been his pride. At the last moment he discovered that his boots had not been blacked by the negro boy who waited on him every morning. He did this himself very badly, and then started out to church, not riding, for the reason that he hoped Virginia would be there, and that he might have the excuse of being afoot to join her and walk homeward with her. But she was not there, and he sat through Bazemore's long-winded discourse, hardly conscious that the minister, flattered by his unwonted presence, glanced at him proudly all through the service.

So it was that one thing and another happened to prevent his seeing Virginia till one morning at Wilson's store he heard that Jane Hemingway had, in some mysterious way, gotten the money she needed and had already gone to Atlanta. He suffered a slight shock over the knowledge that Virginia would now not need the funds he had been keeping for her, but this was conquered by the thought that he could go straight to the cottage, now that the girl's grim-faced guardian was away. So he proceeded at once to do this. As he approached the gate, a thrill of gratification passed over him, for he observed that Sam Hemingway was out at the barn, some distance from the house. As he was entering the gate and softly closing it after him, Virginia appeared in the doorway. Their eyes met. He saw her turn pale and stand alert and undecided, her head up like that of a young deer startled in a quiet forest. It flashed upon him, to his satisfaction, that she would instinctively retreat into the house, and that he could follow and there, unmolested even by a chance passer-by, say all he wanted to say, and say it, too, in the old fashion which had once so potently—if only temporarily—influenced her. But with a flash of wisdom and precaution, for which he had not given her credit, she seemed to realize the barriers beyond her and quickly stepped out into the porch, where coldly and even sternly she waited for him to speak.

"Virginia," he said, taking off his hat and humbly sweeping it towards the ground, "I have been moving heaven and earth to get to see you alone." He glanced furtively down the road, and then added: "Let's go into the house. I've got something important to say to you."

Still staring straight at him, she moved forward till she leaned against the railing of the porch. "I sha'n't do it," she said, firmly. "If I've been silly once, that is no reason I'll be so always. There is nothing you can say to me that can't be spoken here in the open sunlight."

Her words and tone struck him like a material missile well-aimed and deliberately hurled. There was a dignity and firm finality in her bearing which he felt could not be met with his old shallow suavity and seductive flattery. From credulous childhood she seemed, in that brief period, to have grown into wise maturity. If she had been beautiful in his eyes before, she was now, in her frigid remoteness, in her thorough detachment from their former intimacy, far more than that.

"Well, I meant no harm," he found himself articulating, almost in utter bewilderment. "I only thought that somebody passing might—"

"Might see me with you?" she flashed out, with sudden anger. "What do I care? I came out here just now and gave a tramp something to eat. If they see you here, I suppose it won't be the first time a girl has been seen talking to a man in front of her own home."

"I didn't mean to offend you," he stammered, at the end of his resources; "but I've been utterly miserable, Virginia."

"Oh! is that so?" she sneered.