The Foolish Virgin
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Thomas Dixon >> The Foolish Virgin
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THE FOOLISH VIRGIN
by THOMAS DIXON
TO
GERTRUDE ATHERTON
WITH GRATITUDE AND ADMIRATION
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I. A FRIENDLY WARNING
II. TEMPTATION
III. FATE
IV. DOUBTS AND FEARS
V. WINGS OF STEEL
VI. BESIDE THE SEA
VII. A VAIN APPEAL
VIII. JIM'S TRIAL
IX. ELLA'S SECRET
X. THE WEDDING
XI. "UNTIL DEATH"
XII. THE LOTOS-EATERS
XIII. THE REAL MAN
XIV. UNWELCOME GUESTS
XV. A LITTLE BLACK BAG
XVI. THE AWAKENING
XVII. THE SURRENDER
XVIII. TO THE NEW GOD
XIX. NANCE'S STOREHOUSE
XX. TRAPPED
XXI. THE DEVIL'S DISCIPLE
XXII. DELIVERANCE
XXIII. THE DOCTOR
XXIV. THE CALL DIVINE
XXV. THE MOTHER
XXVI. A SOUL IS BORN
XXVII. THE BABY
XXVIII. WHAT IS LOVE?
XXIX. THE NEW MAN
LEADING CHARACTERS OF THE STORY
MARY ADAMS, An Old-Fashioned Girl.
JIM ANTHONY, A Modern Youth.
JANE ANDERSON, An Artist.
ELLA, A Scrubwoman.
NANCE OWENS, Jim Anthony's Mother.
A DOCTOR, Whose Call was Divine.
THE BABY, A Mascot.
THE FOOLISH VIRGIN
CHAPTER I
A FRIENDLY WARNING
Mary Adams, you're a fool!"
The single dimple in a smooth red cheek smiled in
answer.
"You're repeating yourself, Jane----"
"You won't give him one hour's time for just three
sittings?"
"Not a second for one sitting----"
"Hopeless!"
Mary smiled provokingly, her white teeth gleaming
in obstinate good humor.
"He's the most distinguished artist in America----"
"I've heard so."
"It would be a liberal education for a girl of your
training to know such a man----"
"I'll omit that course of instruction."
The younger woman was silent a moment, and a flush
of anger slowly mounted her temples. The blue eyes
were fixed reproachfully on her friend.
"You really thought that I would pose?"
"I hoped so."
"Alone with a man in his studio for hours?"
Jane Anderson lifted her dark brows.
"Why, no, I hardly expected that! I'm sure he
would take his easel and palette out into the square in
front of the Plaza Hotel and let you sit on the base of
the Sherman monument. The crowds would cheer and
inspire him--bah! Can't you have a little common-
sense? There are a few brutes among artists, as there
are in all professions--even among the superintendents
of your schools. Gordon's a great creative genius. If
you'd try to flirt with him, he'd stop his work and
send you home. You'd be as safe in his studio as in
your mother's nursery. I've known him for ten years.
He's the gentlest, truest man I've ever met. He's
doing a canvas on which he has set his whole heart."
"He can get professional models."
"For his usual work, yes--but this is the head of
the Madonna. He saw you walking with me in the Park
last week and has been to my studio a half-dozen times
begging me to take you to see him. Please, Mary dear,
do this for my sake. I owe Gordon a debt I can never
pay. He gave me the cue to the work that set me on
my feet. He was big and generous and helpful when I
needed a friend. He asked nothing in return but the
privilege of helping me again if I ever needed it. You
can do me an enormous favor--please."
Mary Adams rose with a gesture of impatience,
walked to her window and gazed on the torrent of
humanity pouring through Twenty-third Street from the
beehives of industry that have changed this quarter of
New York so rapidly in the last five years. She turned
suddenly and confronted her friend.
"How could you think that I would stoop to such a
thing?"
"Stoop!"
"Yes," she snapped, "--pose for an artist! I'd as
soon think of rushing stark naked through Twenty-third
Street at noon!"
The older woman looked at her flushed face,
suppressed a sharp answer, broke into a fit of laughter
and threw her arms around Mary's neck.
"Honey, you're such a hopeless little fool, you're
delicious! You know that I love you--don't you?"
The pretty lips quivered.
"Yes."
"Could I possibly ask you to do a thing that would
harm a single brown hair of your head?"
The firm hand of the older girl touched a
rebellious lock with tenderness.
"Of course not, from your point of view, Jane
dear," the stubborn lips persisted. "But you see it's
not my point of view. You're older than I----"
Jane smiled.
"Hoity toity, Miss! I'm just twenty-eight and
you're twenty-four. Age is not measured by calendars
these days."
"I didn't mean that," the girl apologized. "But
you're an artist. You're established and
distinguished. You belong to a different world."
Jane Anderson laid her hand softly on her friend's.
"That's just it, dear. I do belong to a different
world--a big new world of whose existence you are not
quite conscious. You are living in the old, old world
in which women have groped for thousands of years. I
don't mind confessing that I undertook this job of
getting you to pose for Gordon for a double purpose. I
wished to do something to repay the debt I owe him--but
I wished far more to be of help to you. You're living
in the Dark Ages, and it's a dangerous thing for a
pretty girl to live in the Dark Ages and date her
letters from New York to-day----"
"I don't understand you in the least."
"And I'm afraid you never will."
She paused suddenly and changed her tone.
"Tell me now, are you happy in your work?"
"I'm earning sixty dollars a month--my position is
secure----"
"But are you happy in it?"
"I don't expect to teach school all my life," was
the vague answer.
"Exactly. You loathe the sight of a school-room.
You do the task they set you because your father's a
clergyman and can't support his big family. You're
waiting and longing for the day of your deliverance--
isn't it so?"
"Perhaps."
"And that day of deliverance?"
"Will come when I meet my Fate!"
"You'll meet him, too!"
"I will----"
Jane Anderson shook her fine head.
"And may the Lord have mercy on your poor little
soul when you do!"
"And why, pray?"
"Because you're the most helpless and defenseless
of all the things He created."
Mary smiled.
"I've managed to take pretty good care of myself
so far."
"And you will--until the thunderbolt falls."
"The thunderbolt?"
"Until you meet your Fate."
"I'll have someone to look after me then."
"We'll hope so anyhow," was the quick retort.
"But can't you see, Jane dear, that we look at life
from such utterly different angles. You glory in your
work. It's your inspiration--the breath you breathe.
I don't believe in women working for money. I don't
believe God ever meant us to work when He made us
women. He made us women for something more wonderful.
I don't see anything good or glorious in the fact that
half the torrent of humanity you see down there pouring
through the street from those factories and offices is
made up of women. They are wage-earners--so much the
worse. They are forcing the scale of wages for men
lower and lower. They are paying for it in weakened
bodies and sickly, hopeless children. We should not
shout for joy; we should cry. God never meant for
woman to be a wage-earner!"
A sob caught her voice and she paused.
The artist watched her emotion with keen
interest.
"Neither do I believe that God means to force woman
at last to do the tasks of man. But she's doing them,
dear--and it must be so until a brighter day dawns for
humanity. The new world that opens before us will
never abolish marriage, but it has opened our eyes to
know what it means. You refuse to open yours. You
refuse to see this new world about you. I've begged
you to join one of my clubs. You refuse. I beg you to
meet and know such men of genius as Gordon----"
"As an artist's model!"
"It's the only way on earth you can meet him. You
stick to your narrow, hide-bound conventional life and
dream of the Knight who will suddenly appear some day
out of the mists and clouds. You dream of the Fate God
has prepared for you in His mysterious Providence.
It's funny how that idea persists even today in novels.
As a matter of fact we know that the old-fashioned girl
met her Fate because her shrewd mother planned the
meeting--planned it with cunning and stratagem. You're
alone in a great modern city, with all the conditions
of the life of the old regime reversed or blotted out.
Your mother is not here. And if she were, her schemes
to bring about the mysterious meeting of the Fates
would be impossible. You outgrew the limits of your
village life. Your highly trained mind landed you in
New York. You've fought your way to a competent living
in five years and kept yourself clean and unspotted
from the world. Granted. But how many men have you
met who are your equals in culture and character?"
Jane paused and held Mary's gaze with steady
persistence.
"How many--honest?"
"None as yet," she confessed.
"But you live in the one fond, imperishable hope!
It's the only thing that keeps you alive and going--
this idea of your Fate. It's an obsession--this
mysterious Knight somewhere in the future riding to
meet you----"
"I'll find him, never fear," the girl laughed.
"Of course you will. You'll make him out of whole
cloth if it's necessary. Our ideals are really the
same when you come to analyze my wider outlook."
The artist paused and laughed softly.
"The same?" the girl asked incredulously.
"Certainly. Mine is based on intelligence,
however--yours on blind instinct perverted and twisted
by the idiotic fiction you read morning, noon and
night."
"I don't see it," Mary answered emphatically.
"Your ideal is fame, achievement, the applause of the
world--mine just a home and a baby----"
Jane laughed softly.
"And that's all you know about me?"
"Isn't it true?"
"You've been in this room five years, haven't you?"
the older girl asked musingly.
"Yes----"
"And though you've kept your lamp trimmed and
burning, you haven't yet seen a man whom you could
recognize as your equal."
"I'm only twenty-four."
"In these five years I've met a hundred men my
equal."
"And smashed the conventions of Society whenever
you saw fit."
"Without breaking a single law of reason or common-
sense. In the meantime I've met two men who have
really made love to me. I thought I loved one of
them--until I met the other. The second proved himself
to be an unprincipled scoundrel. If I had held your
views of life and hated my work, I would have married
this man and lived to awake in a prison whose only door
was Death. But I loved my work. Life meant more than
one man who was not worth an hour's tears. I turned
to my studio and he slipped back into the gutter where
he belonged. I'll meet MY Fate some day, too,
dear. I'm waiting and watching--but with clear eyes
and unafraid. I'll know mine when he comes, I shall
not be blinded by passion or the fear of drudgery.
Can't you see this bigger world of realities?"
The dimple flashed again in the smooth red cheek.
"It's not for me, Jane. I'm just a modest little
home body. I'll bide my time----"
"And eat your foolish heart out here between the
narrow walls of this cell you've built for yourself. I
should think you'd die living here alone."
The girl flushed.
"I'm not lonely----"
"Don't fib! I know better. Your birds and kitten
occupy daily about thirty minutes of the time that's
your own. What do you do with the rest of it?"
"Sit by my window, watch the crowds stream through
the streets below, read and dream and think----"
"Yes--read love stories and dream about your
Knight."
"Well?"
"It's morbid and unhealthy. You've hedged
yourself about with the old conventions and imagine
you're safe--and you are--until you meet HIM!"
"I'll know how to behave--never fear."
"You mean you'll know how instantly to blindfold,
halter and lead him to the Little Church Around the
Corner?"
Mary moved uneasily.
"And what else should I do with him?"
"Compare him with other men. Weigh him in the
balances of a remorseless common-sense. Study him
under a microscope and keep your reason clear. The
girl who rushes into marriage in a great city under the
conditions in which you and I live is a fool. More
girls are ruined in New York by marriage than by any
other process. The thunderbolt out of the blue hasn't
struck you yet, but when it does----"
"I'll tell you, Jane."
"Will you, honestly?"
The question was asked with wistful tenderness.
"I promise. And you mustn't think I don't
appreciate this visit and the chance you've given again
to enter the `big world' you're always telling me
about. I just can't do it, dear. It's not my world."
"All right, my little foolish virgin, have it your
own way. When you're lonely, run up to my studio
to see me. I won't ask you to pose or meet any of the
dangerous men of my circle. We'll lock the doors and
have a snug time all by ourselves."
"I'll remember."
The clock in the Metropolitan Tower chimed the hour
of five, and Jane Anderson rose with a quick, business-
like movement.
"Don't hurry," Mary protested. "I know I've been
stubborn, but I've been so happy in your coming. I do
get lonely--frightfully lonely, sometimes--don't think
I'm ungrateful----"
"You're dangerously beautiful, child," the artist
said, with enthusiasm. "And remember that I love you--
no matter how silly you are--good-by."
"You won't stay for a cup of tea? I meant to ask
you an hour ago."
"No, I've an engagement with a dreadful man whom
I've no idea of ever marrying. I'm going to dinner
with him--just to study the animal at dose range."
With a jolly laugh and quick, firm step she was
gone.
Mary snatched the kitten from his snug bed between
the pillows of the window-seat and pressed his fuzzy
head under her chin.
"She tempted us terribly, Kitty darling, but we
didn't let her find out--did we? You know deep down in
your cat's soul that I was just dying to meet the
distinguished Gordon--but such high honors are not for
home bodies like you and me----"
She dropped on the seat and closed her eyes for a
long time. The kitten watched her wonderingly sure of
a sudden outbreak with each passing moment. Two soft
paws at last touched her cheeks and two bright eyes
sought in vain for hers. The little nose pressed
closer and kissed the drooping eyelids until they
opened. He curled himself on her bosom and began to
sing a gentle lullaby. For a long while she lay and
listened to the music of love with which her pet sought
to soothe the ache within.
The clock in the tower chimed six.
She lifted her body and placed her head on a pillow
beside the window. The human torrent below was now at
its flood. Two streams of humanity flowed eastward
along each broad sidewalk. Hundreds were pouring in
endless procession across Madison Square. The cars in
Broadway north and South were jammed. Every day she
watched this crowd hurrying, hurrying away into the
twilight--and among all its hundreds of thousands not
an eye was ever lifted to hers--not one man or
woman among them cared whether she lived or died.
It was horrible, this loneliness of the desert in
an ocean of humanity! For the past year it had become
an increasing horror to look into the silent faces of
this crowd of men and women and never feel the touch of
a friendly hand or hear the sound of a human voice in
greeting.
And yet this endless procession held for her a
supreme fascination. Somewhere among its myriads of
tramping feet, walked the one man created for her. She
no more doubted this than she doubted God Himself. It
was His law. He had ordained it so. She had grown so
used to the throngs below her window and so loved the
little park with its splashing fountain that she had
refused to follow her landlady uptown when the
brownstone boarding-house facing the Square had been
turned into a studio building.
Instead of moving she had wheedled the landlord
into allowing her to cut off a small space from her
room for a private bath and kitchenette, built a box
couch across the window large enough for a three-
quarter mattress and covered it with velour. For five
dollars a week she had thus secured a little home in
which was combined a sitting-room, bed-room, bath and
kitchenette.
It had its drawbacks, of course. The Professor
downstairs who taught music sometimes gave a special
lesson at night, and the Italian sculptor who worked on
the top floor used a hammer at the most impossible
hours. But on the whole she liked it better than the
tiresome routine of boarding. She was not afraid at
night. The stamp-and-coin man who occupied the first
floor, lived with his wife and baby in the rear. The
janitress had a room on the floor above hers. Two
elderly women workers of ability in the mechanical arts
occupied the rear of her floor, and a dear little fat
woman of fifty who drew designs for the New England
weavers of cotton goods lived in the room adjoining
hers.
She had never spoken to any of these people, but
Ella, the janitress, who cleaned up her place every
morning, had told her their history. Ella was a
sociable soul, her face an eternal study and an
inscrutable mystery. She spoke both German and English
and yet never a word of her own life's history passed
her lips. She had loved Mary from the moment she
cocked her queer drawn face to one side and looked at
her with the one good eye she possessed. She was
always doing little things for her comfort--and never
asked tips for it. If Mary offered to pay she smiled
quietly and spoke in the softest drawl: "Oh,
that's nothing, child-- Ach, Gott im Himmel--nein!"
This one-eyed, homely woman who cleaned up her room
for three dollars a month, and Jane Anderson, were the
only friends she had among the six million people whose
lives centered on Manhattan Island.
Man had yet to darken her door. The little room
had been carefully fitted, however, to receive her
Knight when the great event of his coming should be at
hand.
The box couch was built of hard wood paneling and
was covered with pillows of soft leather and silk. The
bed-clothes were carefully stored in the locker beneath
the mattress cushion. No one would ever suspect its
use as a bed. The bathroom was fitted with a bureau
and no signs of a sleeping apartment disfigured the
effect of her one library, parlor, and reception-room.
A desk and bookcase stood at either end of the box
couch. The bookcase was filled with fiction--love
stories exclusively.
A large birdcage swung from a staple in the window
and two canaries peered cautiously from their perches
at the kitten in her lap. She had trained him to
ignore this cage.
The crowds below were thinning down. A light
snow was falling. The girl lifted her pet and kissed
his cold nose.
"We must get our own dinner tonight, Mr.
Thomascat--it's snowing outside. And did you hear what
she said, Kitty dear--`More girls are ruined by
marriage in New York than by any other process!' A
good joke, Kitty!--You and I know better than that if
we do live in our own tiny world! We'll risk it some
day, anyhow, won't we?"
The kitten purred his assent and Mary bustled over
the little gas stove humming an old love song her
mother had taught her in a far-off village in Kentucky.
CHAPTER II
TEMPTATION
Her kitchenette was a model of order and cleanliness.
The carpenter who built its neat cupboard and fitted
the drawers beneath the tiny gas range, had outdone
himself in its construction. He had given the wood-
work four coats of immaculate white paint without extra
charge. Mary had insisted on paying for it, but he
waved the proffered money aside with a gesture that
spoke louder than words:
"Pooh! That's nothing to what I'd like to do for
you."
She was not surprised when he called the following
Saturday and stood at her door awkwardly fumbling his
hat, trying to ask her to spend the afternoon and
evening at Coney Island with him. There was no
mistaking the manner in which he made this request.
She had refused him as gently as possible--a big,
awkward, good-natured, ignorant boy he was, with
the eyes of a St. Bernard dog. He apologized for his
presumption and never repeated the offense.
Somehow her conquests had all been in this class.
The tall, blushing German youth from the butcher's
around the corner had been slipping extra cuts into her
bundle and making awkward advances until she caught him
red-handed with a pound of lamb chops which he failed
to explain. She read him a lecture on honesty that
discouraged him. It was not so much what she said, as
the way she said it, that wounded his sensitive nature.
The ice man she had not yet entirely subdued. Tony
Bonelli had the advantage of pretending not to
understand her orders of dismissal. He merely smiled
in his sad Italian way and continued to pack her ice-
box so full the lid would never close.
She was reminded at every turn tonight of these
futile conquests of the impossible. They all smelled
of the back stairs and the kitchen. Her people had
been slaveholders in the old regime of southern
Kentucky. A kindly tolerant contempt for the
pretensions of a servant class was bred in the bone of
her being.
And yet their tribute to her beauty had its
compensations. It was the promise of triumph when he
for whom she waited should step from the throng and
lift his hat. Just how he was going to do this without
a breach of the proprieties of life, she couldn't see.
It would come. It must come. It was Fate.
In twenty minutes her coffee-pot was boiling, the
lamb chops broiled to perfection and she was seated
before the dainty, snow-white table, the kitten softly
begging at her feet. Half an hour later, every dish
and pot and pan was back in its place in perfect order.
She prided herself on her mastery of the details of
cooking and the most economical administration of every
dollar devoted to housekeeping. She studied cooking in
the best schools the city afforded. She meant to show
her Knight a thing or two in this line when the time
came. His wife would not be an ignorant slattern, the
victim of incompetent servants. No servant could fool
her. She would know the business of the house down to
its minutest detail.
Not that she loved dish-washing and pot-polishing
and scrubbing. It was simply a part of the Game of
Life she must play in the ideal home she would build.
There was no drudgery in it for this reason. She was a
soldier on the drill grounds preparing for the battle
on the successful issue of which hung her happiness and
the happiness of the one of whom she dreamed. She
might miss some of the dangerous fun which Jane
Anderson could enjoy without a scratch, but she would
make sure of the fundamental things which Jane would
never stop to consider.
She threw herself on the couch in her favorite
position against the pillows, drew the kitten into her
arms and hugged him violently.
"It's all right, Mr. Thomascat; we'll show them,"
she purred softly. "We'll see who wins at last, the
eagle who soars or the little wren in the hedge close
beside the garden wall--we'll see, Kitty--we'll see!"
The room was still, the noise of the street-cars
below muffled with the first soft blanket of snow. The
street lamps flickered in the wind with a pale subdued
light that scarcely brought out the furnishings of her
nest. She was in the habit of dreaming in this window
for hours with only the light from the lamps on the
street.
The Square, deserted by its tramp lovers, lay white
and still and cold. The old battle with the Blue
Devils was on again within. The fight with Jane had
been easy. She had always found it easy to face
temptation in the concrete. The moment Satan appeared
in human shape she was up in arms and ready for the
fray. It was this silent hour she dreaded when the
defenses of the soul were down.
There was no use to lie to herself. She was
utterly lonely and heartsick.
She had guarded the portals of life with religious
care--with a care altogether unnecessary as events had
proved. There had been no crush of rude men to assault
her. Only an awkward carpenter, a butcher's boy and
the ice man! It was incredible. Of all the men whose
restless feet pressed the pavements of New York, not
one, save these three, had apparently cared whether she
lived or died.
The men whom she met in her duties in the
schoolroom she had found utterly devoid of imagination
and beneath contempt. They had each been obviously on
guard against the machinations of the female of the
species. They had, each of them, shown plainly their
fear and hatred of women teachers. The feeling was
mutual. God knows she had no desire to encroach on
their domain any longer than absolutely necessary.
Perhaps she was making a mistake. The thought was
strangling. Only the girl who waived conventions in
the rushing tide of the modern city's life seemed to
live at all. The others merely existed. Jane
Anderson lived! There could be no mistake about that.
She had mastered the ugly mob. Its cruel loneliness
was to her a thing unknown. But Jane was an
exception--the one woman in a thousand who could defy
conventions and yet keep her soul and body clean.
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