Ann Boyd: A Novel

by Will N. Harben

Joe Boyd's embarrassment of a moment before returned. He twisted his hands together again. "Yes; it's like this, Ann," he went on, awkwardly: "a short time back Lawson's mother and father got onto the fact that you were in good circumstances, and it made the biggest change in them you ever heard of. They talked it all over the settlement. They are hard up, and they couldn't talk of anything but how much you was worth, and what you had your money invested in, and the like. After they got onto that, they never—never paid no attention to what had been—been circulated—your money covered all that as completely as a ten-foot snow. Instead of turning up their noses, as Nettie was afraid they would do, it only made them brag about how well their boy had done, and what a fool I was. They tried all sorts of ways to get Nettie interested in some scheme to attract your attention, but Nettie would just cry and take on and refuse to come over here or to write to you."

"I understand"—Ann stroked her compressed lips with an unsteady hand—"I understand. I've never been a natural mother to her; she couldn't come to me like that. But you say they turned against you."

"Yes. You see, the Lawsons got an idea—the old woman did, in particular, from something she'd picked up—that it was me that stood between you and Nettie. They thought you and me had had such a serious falling-out that a proud woman like you never would have anything to do with Nettie as long as I was about, and that the best thing was to shove me off so the reconciliation would work faster. The truth is, they said that would please you."

"I see, I see," Ann said. "And they set about putting you at the poor-farm."

"Yes; they seemed to think that was as good a place as any. And they could get all the proof necessary to put me there, for I hadn't a cent to my name nor a whole rag to my back; and, Ann, for the last three months I haven't been able to do a lick o' work. I've had a strange sort of hurting all down my left side, and my right ankle seems affected in the same way."

Ann Boyd suddenly turned away. Through the window she had seen the wind blowing one of her sheets from the fence, and she went out and put it in place. He limped out into the sunlight and stood at the little, sagging gate a few yards from her. Something of his old dignity and gallantry of manner was on him: he still held his hat in his hand, his thin, iron-gray hair exposed to the warm rays of the sun.

"Well, I'd better be going, Ann," he said. "There is no telling when somebody might come along and see me here, and start the talk you hate so much. I come all the way here to tell you how low and mean I feel for taking Jane Hemingway's word instead of yours, and how plumb sorry I am. You and me may never meet again this side of the Seat of Judgment, and I'll say this if I never speak again. Ann, the only days of perfect happiness I ever had was here with you, and, if all of it was to do over again, I'd suffer torture by fire rather than believe you anything but an angel from heaven. Oh, Ann, it was just my poor, weak inferiority to you that made me misjudge you. If I'd ever been a real man—a man worthy of a woman like you—I'd have snapped my fingers at all that was said, but I was obeying my laws, as you say. I simply wasn't deep enough nor high enough to do you justice."

He drew the little gate ajar and dragged his tired feet through the opening. The fence was now between them. She looked down the road. A woman under a sun-bonnet and little shawl was coming towards them. By a strange fatality it was Jane Hemingway, but she was not to pass directly by them, as her path homeward turned sharply to the left a hundred yards below. They both recognized her.

"I don't know fully what you mean, Joe," Ann said, softly, "but if you mean by what you just said that you'd be willing now to—to come back—if that's what you mean, I'd have something to say that maybe, in justice to myself, I ought to say."

"Would I come back? Would I? Oh, Ann, how could you doubt that, when you see how miserable and sorry I feel. God knows I'd never feel worthy of you; but if you would—if you only could—let me stay, I—"