The Foolish Virgin
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Thomas Dixon >> The Foolish Virgin
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She looked at him, blinking her eyes and trying to
smile.
"Where the devil have you been, old gal?" he asked nervously.
"Nowhere," she answered evasively.
"You've been mighty quiet on the trip anyhow. I
see you've brought something back from nowhere."
Nance glanced down at the jug she carried in her
left hand and laughed.
"What is it?" he asked.
"Nothin'----"
"Nothin' from nowhere sounds pretty good to me when
I see it in a brown jug on Christmas Eve. You're all
right, old gal! I was just going to ask if you had a
little mountain dew. You're a mind reader. I'll bet
the warehouse you keep that stored in is some snug
harbor--eh?"
"They ain't never found it yit!" she giggled.
"And I'll bet they won't--bully for you!"
She took down a tin cup from a shelf and placed it
beside the jug.
"Another glass, sweetheart----"
The old woman stared at him in surprise, walked to
the shelf and brought another tin cup.
"What do ye want with two?" she asked in surprise.
Jim moved toward the stool beside the table.
"Sit down."
"Me?"
"Sure. Let's be sociable. It's Christmas Eve,
isn't it?"
"Yeah!" Nance answered cheerfully, taking her seat
and glancing timidly at her guest.
Jim seized the jug, poured out two drinks of corn
whiskey, handed her one and raised his:
"Well, here's lookin' at you, old girl."
He paused, lowered his cup and smiled.
"But say, give me a toast." He nodded toward the
shed-room. "I'm on my honeymoon, you know."
His hostess laughed timidly and glanced at him from
the corners of her eyes. She wished to be sociable and
make up as best she could for her rudeness on their
arrival.
"I ain't never heard but one fur honeymooners," she
said softly.
"Let's have it. I've never heard a toast for
honeymooners in my life. It'll be new to me--fire
away!"
Nance fumbled her faded dress with her left hand
and laughed again.
"'May ye live long and prosper an' all yer troubles
be LITTLE ONES!'"
She laughed aloud at the old, worm-eaten joke and
Jim joined.
"Bully! Bully, old girl--bully!"
He lifted his cup and drained it at one draught and
Nance did the same.
He seized the jug and poured another drink for each.
"Once more----"
He leaned across the table.
"And here's one for you." He squared his body and
lifted his cup:
"To all your little ones--no matter how big they
are!"
Jim drained his liquor without apparently noticing
her agitation, though he was watching her keenly from
the corner of his eye.
The cup she held was lowered slowly until the
whiskey poured over her dress and on the floor. Her
thin figure drooped pathetically and her voice was the
faintest sob:
"I--I--ain't got--none!"
"I heard you had a boy," Jim said carelessly.
The drooping figure shot upright as if a bolt of
lightning had swept her. She stared at him in
tense silence, trying to gather her wits before
she answered.
"Who told you anything about me?" she demanded
sternly.
"A fellow in New York," Jim continued with studied
carelessness--"said he used to live down here."
"He LIVED down here?" she repeated blankly.
"Yep--come now, loosen up and tell us about the
kid."
"There ain't nuthin' ter tell--he's dead," she
cried pathetically.
"He said you deserted the child and left him to
starve."
"He said that?" she growled.
"Yep."
He was silent again and watched her keenly.
She fumbled her dress and glanced nervously across
the table as if afraid to ask more. Unable to wait for
him to speak, she cried nervously at last:
"Well--well--what else did he say?"
"That he took the little duffer to New York and
raised him."
"RAISED him?"
She fairly screamed the words, springing to her
feet trembling from head to foot.
"Till he was big enough to kick into the streets to
shuffle for himself."
"The scoundrel said he was dead."
Her voice was far away and sank into dreamy
silence. She was living the hideous, lonely years
again with a heart starved for love.
Jim's voice broke the spell:
"Then you didn't desert him?" The man's eyes held
hers steadily.
She stared at him blankly and spoke with rushing
indignation:
"Desert him--my baby--my own flesh and blood?
There's never been a minute since I looked into his
eyes that I wouldn't 'a' died fur him."
She paused and sobbed.
"He had such pretty eyes, stranger. They looked
like your'n--only they wuz puttier and bluer."
She lifted her faded dress, brushed the tears from
her cheeks and went on rapidly:
"When I found his drunken brute of a daddy was a
liar and had another wife, I wouldn't live with him.
He tried to make me but I kicked him out of the house--
and he stole the boy to get even with me." Her voice
broke, she dropped her head and choked back the tears.
"He did get even with me, too--he did," she
sobbed.
Jim watched her in silence until the paroxysm had
spent itself.
"You think you'd know this boy now if you found
him?"
She bent close, her breath coming in quick gasps.
"My God, mister, do you think I COULD find
him?"
"He lives in New York; his name is Jim Anthony."
"Yes--yes?" she said in a dazed way. "He called
hisself Walter Anthony--he wuz a stranger from the
North and my boy's name was Jim." She paused and bent
eagerly across the table. "New York's an awful big
place, ain't it?"
"Some town, old gal, take it from me."
"COULD I find him?"
"If you've got money enough. You said you'd know
him. How?"
"I'd know him!" she answered eagerly. "The last
quarrel we had was about a mark on his neck. He wuz a
spunky little one. You couldn't make him cry. His
devil of a daddy used to stick pins in him and laugh
because he wouldn't cry. The last dirty trick he tried
was what ended it all. He pushed a live cigar agin his
little neck until I smelled it burnin' in the next
room. I knocked him down with a chair, drove him from
the house and told him I'd kill him if he ever put
his foot inside the door agin.
He stole my boy the next night--but he'll carry
that scar to his grave."
"You'd love this boy now if you found him in New
York as bad as his father ever was?" Jim asked with a
curious smile.
"Yes--he's mine!" was the quick, firm answer.
Jim watched her intently.
"I looked Death in the face for him," she went on
fiercely. "I'd dive to the bottom o' hell to find him
if I knowed he wuz thar---- But what's the use to
talk; that devil killed him! I've waked up many a
night stranglin' with a dream when I seed the drunken
brute burnin' an' beatin' an' torturin' him to death.
The feller you've heard about ain't him. 'Tain't no
use to make me hope an' then kill me----"
"He's not dead, I tell you. I know."
Jim's voice rang with conviction so positive the
old woman's breath came in quick gasps and she smiled
through her eager tears.
"And I MIGHT find him?"
"IF you've got money enough! Money can do
anything in this world."
He opened the black bag, thrust both hands into it
and threw out a handful of yellow coin which
he allowed to pour through his fingers and rattle
into a tin plate which had been left on the table.
Her eyes sparkled with avarice.
"It's your'n--all your'n?" she breathed hungrily.
"I'm taking it down South to invest for a fool who
thinks"--he stopped and laughed--"who thinks it's bad
luck to keep money that's stained with blood----"
Nance started back.
"Got blood on it?"
Jim spoke in confidential appeal.
"That wouldn't make any difference to you, would
it?"
She shook her gray locks and glanced at the pile of
yellow metal, hungrily.
"I--I wouldn't like it with blood marks!"
He lifted a handful of coin, clinked it musically
in his hands and held it in his open palms before her.
"Look! Look at it close! You don't see any blood
marks on it, do you?"
Her eyes devoured it.
"No."
He seized her hand, thrust a half-dozen pieces into
it and closed her thin fingers over it.
"Feel of it--look at it!"
Her hands gripped the gold. She breathed quickly,
broke into a laugh, caught herself in the middle of it,
and lapsed suddenly into silence.
"Feels good, don't it?" he laughed.
Nance grinned, her uneven, discolored gleaming
ominously in the flicker of the candle.
"Don't it?" he repeated.
"Yeah!"
He lifted another handful and threw it in the air,
catching it again.
"That's the stuff that makes the world go 'round.
There's your only friend, old girl! Others promise
well--but in the scratch they fail."
"Yeah--when the scratch comes they fail!" Nance
echoed.
"Money never fails!" Jim continued eagerly. "It's
the god that knows no right or wrong----"
He touched the pile in the plate and drew the bag
close for her to see.
"How much do you guess is there?"
Nance gazed greedily into the open bag and looked
again at the shining heap in the plate.
"I dunno--a million, I reckon."
The man laughed.
"Not quite that much! But enough to make you rich
for life--IF you had it."
The old woman turned away pathetically and shook
her gray head.
"I wouldn't have to work no more, would I?"
Her thin hands touched the faded, dirty dress.
"And I could buy me a decent dress," her voice sank
to a whisper, "and I could find my boy."
"You bet you could!" Jim exclaimed. "There's just
one god in this world now, old girl--the Almighty
Dollar!"
He paused and leaned close, persuasively:
"Suppose now, the man that got that money had to
kill a fool to take it--what of it? You don't get big
money any other way. A burglar watches his chance,
takes his life in his hands and drills his way into a
house. He finds a fool there who fights. It's not his
fault that the man was born a fool, now is it?"
"Mebbe not----"
"Of course not. A burglar kills but one to get his
pile, and then only because he must, in self-defence.
A big gambling capitalist corners wheat, raises the
price of bread and starves a hundred thousand children
to death to make his. It's not stained with blood.
Every dollar is soaked in it! Who cares?"
"Yeah--who cares?" Nance growled fiercely.
Jim smiled at his easy triumph.
"It's dog eat dog and the devil take the hindmost
now!"
"That's so--ain't it?" she agreed.
"You bet! Business is business and the best man's
the man that gets there. Steal a hundred dollars, you
go to the penitentiary--foolish! Don't do it. Steal a
million and go to the Senate!"
"Yeah!" Nance laughed.
"Money--money for its own sake," he rushed on
savagely--"right or wrong. That's all there is in it
today, old girl--take it from me!"
He paused and his smile ended in a sneer.
"Man shall eat bread in the sweat of his brow?
Only fools SWEAT!"
Nance turned her face away, sighed softly, glancing
back at Jim furtively.
"I reckon that's so, too. Have another drink,
stranger?"
She poured another cup of whiskey and one for
herself. She raised hers as if to drink and deftly
threw the contents over her shoulder.
Jim seized the jug and poured again.
"Once more. Come, I've another toast for you.
You'll drink this one I know."
He lifted his cup and rose a little unsteadily.
Nance stood with uplifted cup watching him.
"As the poet sings," he began with a bow to the old
woman:
"France has her lily, England the rose,
Everybody knows where the shamrock grows--
Scotland has her thistle flowerin' on the hill,
But the American Emblem--is a One Dollar Bill!"
He broke into a boisterous laugh.
"How's that, old girl?"
"That's bully, stranger!"
He lifted high his cup.
"We drink to the Almighty Dollar!"
"To the Almighty Dollar!" Nance echoed, clinking
her cup against his."
He drained it while she again emptied hers over her
shoulder.
"By golly, you're all right, old girl. You're a
good fellow!" he cried jovially.
"Yeah--have another?" she urged.
She filled his cup and placed it on his side of the
table. His eye had rested on the gold. He ignored the
invitation, lifted a handful of gold and dropped it
with musical clinking into the plate.
"Blood marks--tommyrot!" he sneered.
"Yeah--tommyrot!" she echoed. "That's what I say,
too!"
Jim wagged his head sagely:
"Now you're talking sense, old girl!"
He leaned across the table and pointed his finger
straight into her face.
"And don't you forget what I'm tellin' ye tonight--
get money, get money!"
He stopped suddenly and a sneer curled his lips.
"Oh I Get it `fairly'--get it `squarely'--but
whatever you do--by God!--GET IT!"
His uplifted hand crashed downward and gripped the
gold. His fingers slowly relaxed and the coin clinked
into the plate.
Nance watched him eagerly.
"Yeah, that's it--get it," she breathed slowly.
Jim lifted his drooping eyes to hers.
"If you've GOT it, you're a god--you can do no
wrong. Nobody's goin' to ask you HOW you got it;
all they want to know is HAVE you got it!"
"Yeah, nobody's goin' to ask you HOW you got
it, Nance repeated, "they just want to know HAVE
you got it! Yeah--yeah!"
"You bet!"
Jim's head sank in the first stupor of liquor and
he dropped into the chair.
The old woman leaned eagerly over the plate of gold
and clutched the coin with growing avarice. Her
fingers opened and closed like a bird of prey. She
touched it lovingly and held it in her hands a long
time watching Jim's nodding head with furtive glances.
She dropped a handful of coin into the plate and
watched its effect on the drooping head.
He looked up and his eyes fell again.
"Bed-time, I reckon," Nance said.
"Yep--pretty tired. I'll turn in."
The old woman glided sidewise to the table near the
kitchen door, picked up the lantern and started to feel
her way backwards through the calico curtains.
"See you in the mornin', old gal," Jim drawled--
"Christmas mornin'--an' I got somethin' else to tell ye
in the mornin'----"
Again his head sank to the table.
"All right, mister--good night!" Nance answered,
slowly feeling her way through the opening, watching
him intently.
Jim lifted his head and nodded heavily for a
moment. His hand slipped from the table and he drew
himself up sharply and rose, holding to the table for
support.
He picked up the plate of coin, poured it back in
the bag, snapped the lock and walked with the bag
unsteadily to the couch. He placed the bag under
the pillow and pressed the soft feathers down over it,
turned back to the table and extinguished the candle by
a quick, square blow of his open palm on the flame.
He staggered to the couch, pushed the coats to the
floor, dropped heavily, drew the lap-robe over him and
in five minutes was sound asleep.
CHAPTER XIX
NANCE'S STOREHOUSE
The cabin was still. Only the broken sobbing of the
woman in the little shed-room came faint and low on old
Nance's ears.
She slipped from the kitchen into the shadows of a
tree near the house and listened until the sobbing
ceased.
She crept close to the shed and stood silent and
ghost-like beside its daubed walls. Immovable as a cat
crouching in the hedge to spring on her prey, she
waited until the waning moon had sunk behind the crags.
She laid her ear close to a crack in the logs from
which she had once pushed the red mud to let in the
light. All was still at last. The sobbing had
stopped. The young wife was sound asleep.
She had wondered vaguely at first about the crying,
but quickly made up her mind that it was only a lover's
quarrel. She was glad of it. The girl would bar her
door and sulk all night. So much the better.
There would be no danger of her entering the living-
room where Jim slept.
She would wait a little longer to make sure she was
asleep. A half hour passed. The white-shrouded figure
stood immovable, her keen ears tuned for the slightest
sounds from within.
The stars were shining in unusual brilliance. She
could see her way through the shadows even better than
in full moon. A wolf was crying again for his mate
from a distant crag. She had grown used to his howls.
He had come close to her cabin once in the day-time.
She had tried to creep on him and show her
friendliness. But he had fled in terror at the first
glimpse of her dress through the parting underbrush.
An owl was calling from his dead tree-top down the
valley. She smiled at his familiar, tremulous call.
Her own eyes were wide as his tonight. No sight or
sound of Nature among the crags about her cabin had for
her spirit any terror. The night was her mantle.
She added to the meager living which she had wrung
from her mountain farm by trading with the illicit
distillers of the backwoods of Yancey County. Too
ignorant to run a distillery of her own, she had stored
their goods with such skill that the hiding-place
had never been discovered. She loved good
whiskey herself. She had tried to find in its fiery
depths the dreams of happiness life had so cruelly
denied her.
The hiding-place of this whiskey had puzzled the
revenue officers of every administration for years.
They had watched her house day and night. Not one of
them had ever struck the trail to her storehouse.
The game had excited her imagination. She loved
its daring and danger. That there was the slightest
element of wrong or crime in her association with the
moonshiners of her native heath had never for a moment
entered her mind. It was no crime to make whiskey.
This was the first article of the creed of the true
North Carolina mountaineer. They had from the first
declared that the tax levied by the Federal Government
on the product of their industry was an infamous act of
tyranny. They had fought this tyranny for two
generations. They would fight it as long as there was
breath in their bodies and a single load of powder and
buckshot for their rifles.
Nance considered herself a heroine in the pride of
her soul for the shrewd and successful defiance she had
given the revenue officers for so many years.
She had been too cunning to even allow one of
her own people to know the secret of her store house.
For that reason it had never been discovered. She
always stored the whiskey temporarily in the potato
shed or under the cabin floor until night and then
alone carried it to the place she had discovered.
She laughed softly at the thought of this deep
hiding-place tonight. Its temperature never varied
winter or summer. Not a track had ever been left at
its door. She might live a hundred years and, unless
some spying eye should see her enter, its existence
could never be suspected.
She tipped softly into the kitchen, walked to the
door of the living-room and listened to the even, heavy
breathing of the man on the couch.
Once more the faint echo of a sob in the shed
beyond came to her keen ears. She stood for five
minutes. It was not repeated. She had only imagined
it. The girl was still asleep.
She turned noiselessly back into the kitchen, put a
box of matches in her pocket, felt her way to the low
shelf on which she had placed the battered lantern,
picked it up and shook it to make sure the oil was
sufficient.
She stepped lightly into the yard, pushed open the
gate of the split-board garden fence, walked
along the edge to the corner and selected a spade
from the tools that leaned against the boards.
Carrying the spade and unlighted lantern in her
left hand, she glided from the yard into the woods.
Her right hand before her to feel for underbrush or
overhanging bough, she made her way rapidly to the
swift-flowing mountain brook.
Arrived at the water whose musical ripple had
guided her steps, she removed her shoes and placed them
beside a tree. She wore no stockings. The faded skirt
she raised and tucked into her belt. She could wade
knee deep now without hindrance.
Seizing the spade and lantern, she made her way
slowly and carefully downstream for three hundred yards
and paused beside a shelving ledge which projected
half-way across the brook.
She paused and listened again for full ten minutes,
immovable as the rock on which her thin, bony hand
rested. The stars were looking, but they could only
peep through the network of overhanging trees.
Feeling her way along the rock until the ledge rose
beyond her reach, she bent low and waded through a
still pool of eddying water straight under the
mountain-side for more than a hundred feet. Her
extended right hand had felt for the stone ceiling
above her head until it ran abruptly out of reach.
She straightened her body and took a deep breath.
Ten steps she counted carefully and placed her bare
feet on the dry rock beyond the water.
Carefully picking her way up the sloping bank until
she reached a stretch of soft earth, she sank to her
hands and knees and crawled through an opening less
than three feet in height.
"Thar now!" she laughed. "Let 'em find me if they
can!"
She lighted her lantern and seated herself on a
boulder to rest--one hundred and fifty feet in the
depths of a mountain. The cavern was ten feet in
height and fifty feet in length. The projecting ledges
of rock made innumerable shelves on which a merchant
might have displayed his wares.
The old woman was too shrewd for that. Her jugs
were carefully planted in the ground behind two fallen
boulders, and their hiding-place concealed by a layer
of drift which she had gathered from the edge of the
water. She had taken this precaution against the day
when some curious explorer might stumble on her secret
as she had found it hunting ginsing roots in the woods
overhead. Her foot had slipped suddenly through a hole
in the soft mould. She peered cautiously below and
could see no bottom. She dropped a stone and heard it
strike in the depths. She made her way down the
side of the crag and found the opening through the
still eddying waters. The hole through the roof she
had long ago plugged and covered with earth and dry
leaves.
She carried her lantern and spade to the further
end of her storehouse and dug a hole in the earth about
two feet in depth. The earth she carefully placed in a
heap.
"That's the place!" she giggled excitedly.
She left her lantern burning, dropped again on the
soft, mould-covered earth and quickly emerged on the
stone banks of the wide, still pool. Her hand high
extended above her head, she waded through the water
until she touched the heavy ceiling, lowered her body
again to a stooping position and rapidly made her way
out into the bed of the brook.
She passed eagerly along the babbling path and
stopped with sure instinct at the tree beside whose
trunk she had placed her shoes.
In five minutes she had made her way through the
woods and reached the house. She tipped into the
kitchen and stood in the doorway or the living-room
watching her sleeping guest. The even breathing
assured her that all was well. Her plan couldn't
fail. She listened again for the sobs in the shed-
room.
She was sure once that she heard them. Five
minutes passed and still she was uncertain. To avoid
any possible accident she tipped back through the
kitchen, circled the house and placed her ear against
the crack in the logs.
The girl was sobbing--or was she praying? She
crouched beside the wall, waited and listened. The
night wind stirred the dead leaves at her feet. She
lifted her head with a sudden start, laughed softly and
bent again to listen.
CHAPTER XX
TRAPPED
The sobbing in the little room was the only sound that
came from one of the grimmest battle-fields from which
the soul of a woman ever emerged alive.
To the first rush of cowardly tears Mary had
yielded utterly. She had fallen across the high-puffed
feather mattress of the bed, shivering in humble
gratitude at her escape from the horror of blindness.
The grip of his claw-like fingers on her throat came
back to her now in sickening waves. The blood was
still trickling from the wound which his nails had made
when she tore them loose in her first mad fight for
breath.
She lifted her body and breathed deeply to make
sure her throat was free. God in heaven! Could she
ever forget the hideous sinking of body and soul down
into the depths of the black abyss! She had seen the
face of Death and it was horrible. Life, warm and
throbbing, was sweet. She loved it. She hated
Death.
Yes--she was a coward. She knew it now, and didn't
care.
She sprang to her feet with sudden fear. He might
attack her again to make sure that her soul had been
completely crushed.
She crept to the door and felt its edges.
"Yes, thank God, there's a place for the bar!" She
shivered.
She ran her trembling fingers carefully along the
rough logs and found it in the corner. She slipped it
cautiously into the iron sockets, staggered to the bed
and dropped in grateful assurance of safety for the
moment. She buried her face in the pillow to fight
back the sobs. How great her fall! She could crawl on
her hands and knees to Jane Anderson now and beg for
protection. The last shred of pretense was gone. The
bankrupt soul stood naked and shivering, the last rag
torn from pride.
What a miserable fight she had made, too, when put
to the test! Ella had at least proved herself worthy
to live. The scrub-woman had risen in the strength of
desperation and killed the beast who had maimed her.
She had only sunk a limp mass of shivering, helpless
cowardice and fled from the room whining and pleading
for mercy.
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