The Foolish Virgin
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Thomas Dixon >> The Foolish Virgin
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She could never respect herself again. The
scene came back in vivid flashes. His eyes,
glowing like two balls of blue fire, froze the blood in
her veins--his voice the rasping cold steel of a file.
And this coarse, ugly beast had held her in the spell
of love. She had clung to him, kissed him in rapture
and yielded herself to him soul and body. And he had
gripped her delicate throat and choked her into
insensibility, dropping her limp form from his hands
like a strangled rat. She could remember the half-
conscious moment that preceded the total darkness as
she felt his grip relax.
He would choke and beat her again, too. He had
said it in the sneering laughter at the door.
"A good little wife now and it's all right!"
And if you're not obedient to my whims I'll choke
you until you are! That was precisely what he meant.
That he was capable of any depth of degradation, and
that he meant to drag her with him, there could be no
longer the shadow of a doubt.
She could not endure another scene like that. She
sprang to her feet again, shivering with terror. She
could hear the hum of the conversation in the next
room. He was persuading his mother to join in his
criminal career. He was busy with his oily tongue
transforming the simple, ignorant, lonely old
woman into an avaricious fiend who would receive his
blood-stained booty and rejoice in it.
He was laughing again. She put her trembling hands
over her ears to shut out the sound. He had laughed at
her shame and cowardice. It made her flesh creep to
hear it.
She would escape. The mountain road was dark and
narrow and crooked. She would lose her way in the
night, perhaps. No matter. She could keep warm by
walking. At dawn she would find her way to a cabin and
ask protection. If she could reach Asheville, a
telegram would bring her father. She wouldn't lose a
minute. Her hat and coat were in the living-room. She
would go bareheaded and without a coat. In the morning
she could borrow one from the woman at the Mount
Mitchell house.
She crept cautiously along the walls of the room
searching for a door or window. There must be a way
out. She made the round without discovering an opening
of any kind. There must be a window of some kind high
up for ventilation. There was no glass in it, of
course. It was closed by a board shutter--if she could
reach it.
She began at the door, found the corner of the room
and stretched her arms upward until they touched the
low, rough joist. Over every foot of its surface
she ran her fingers, carefully feeling for a window.
There was none!
She found an open crack and peered through. The
stars were shining cold and clear in the December sky.
The twinkling heavens reminded her that it was
Christmas Eve. The dawn she hoped to see in the woods,
if she could escape, would be Christmas morning. There
was no time for idle tears of self-pity.
The one thought that beat in every throb of her
heart now was to escape from her cell and put a
thousand miles between her body and the beast who had
strangled her. She might break through the roof! As a
rule the shed-rooms of these rude mountain cabins were
covered with split boards lightly nailed to narrow
strips eighteen inches apart. If there were no
ceiling, or if the ceiling were not nailed down and she
should move carefully, she might break through near the
eaves and drop to the ground. The cabin was not more
than nine feet in height.
She raised herself on the footrail of the bed and
felt the ceiling. There could be no mistake. It was
there. She pressed gently at first and then with all
her might against each board. They were nailed hard
and fast.
She sank to the bed again in despair. She had
barred herself in a prison cell. There was no escape
except by the door through which the beast had driven
her. And he would probably draw the couch against it
and sleep there.
And then came the crushing conviction that such
flight would be of no avail in a struggle with a man of
Jim's character. His laughing words of triumph rang
through her soul now in all their full, sinister
meaning.
"The world ain't big enough for you to get away
from me, Kiddo!"
It wasn't big enough. She knew it with tragic and
terrible certainty. In his blind, brutal way he loved
her with a savage passion that would halt at nothing.
He would follow her to the ends of the earth and kill
any living thing that stood in his way. And when he
found her at last he would kill her.
How could she have been so blind! There was no
longer any mystery about his personality. The slender
hands and feet, which she had thought beautiful in her
infatuation, were merely the hands and feet of a thief.
The strength of jaw and neck and shoulders had made him
the most daring of all thieves--a burglar.
His strange moods were no longer strange. He
laughed for joy at the wild mountain gorges and crags
because he saw safety for the hiding-place of priceless
jewels he meant to steal.
There could be no escape in divorce from such a
brute. He was happy in her cowardly submission. He
would laugh at the idea of divorce. Should she dare to
betray the secrets of his life of crime, he would kill
her as he would grind a snake under his heel.
A single clause from the marriage ceremony kept
ringing its knell--"until DEATH DO US PART!"
She knelt at last and prayed for Death.
"Oh, dear God, let me die, let me die!"
Suicide was a crime unthinkable to her pious mind.
Only God now could save her in his infinite mercy.
She lay for a long time on the floor where she had
fallen in utter despair. The tears that brought relief
at first had ceased to flow. She had beaten her
bleeding wings against every barrier, and they were
beyond her strength.
Out of the first stupor of complete surrender, her
senses slowly emerged. She felt the bare boards of the
floor and wondered vaguely why she was there.
The hum of voices again came to her ears. She
lay still and listened. A single terrible sentence she
caught. He spoke it with such malignant power she
could see through the darkness the flames of hell
leaping in his eyes.
"Nobody's going to ask you HOW you got it--all
they want to know is HAVE you got it!"
She laughed hysterically at the idea of reformation
that had stirred her to such desperate appeal in the
first shock of discovery. As well dream of reforming
the Devil as the man who expressed his philosophy of
life in that sentence! Blood dripped from every word,
the blood of the innocent and the helpless who might
consciously or unconsciously stand in his way. The man
who had made up his mind to get rich quick, no matter
what the cost to others, would commit murder without
the quiver of an eyelid. If she had ever had a doubt
of this fact, she could have none after her experience
of tonight.
She wondered vaguely of the effects he was
producing on his ignorant old mother. Her words were
too low and indistinct to be heard. But she feared the
worst. The temptation of the gold he was showing her
would be more than she could resist.
She staggered to her feet and fell limp across
the bed. The iron walls of a life prison closed about
her crushed soul. The one door that could open was
Death and only God's hand could lift its bars.
CHAPTER XXI
THE DEVIL'S DISCIPLE
Hour after hour Nance stood beside the wall of the
shed-room and with the patience of a cat waited for the
sobs to cease and the girl to be quiet.
Mary had risen from the bed once and paced the
floor in the dark for more than an hour, like a
frightened, wild animal, trapped and caged for the
first time in life. With growing wonder, Nance counted
the beat of her foot-fall, five steps one way and five
back--round after round, round after round, in
ceaseless repetition.
"Goddlemighty, is she gone clean crazy!" she
exclaimed.
The footsteps stopped at last and the low sobs came
once more from the bed. The old woman crouched down on
a stone beside the log wall and drew the shawl about
her shoulders.
A rooster crowed for midnight. Still the restless
thing inside was stirring. Nance rose uneasily.
Her lantern was still burning in her storehouse under
the cliff. The wick might eat so low it would explode.
She had heard that such things happened to lamps. It
was foolish to have left it burning, anyhow.
She glided noiselessly from the house into the
woods, entered her hidden door exactly as she had done
before, extinguished the lantern, placed it on a
shelving rock and put a dozen matches beside it.
In ten minutes she had returned to the house and
crouched once more against the wall of the shed.
The low, pleading voice was praying. She pressed
her ear to the crack and heard distinctly. She must be
patient. Her plan was sure to succeed if she were only
patient. No woman could sob and pray and walk all
night. She must fall down unconscious from sheer
exhaustion before day.
The old woman slipped into the kitchen, took up the
quilt which she had spread on the floor for her bed,
wrapped it about her thin shoulders and returned to her
watch.
Again and again she rose, believing her patience
had won, and placed her ear to the crack only to hear a
sound within which told her only too plainly that the
girl was yet awake. Sometimes it was a sigh, sometimes
she cleared her throat, sometimes she tossed
restlessly. One spoken sentence she heard again and
again:
"Oh, dear God, have mercy on my lost soul!"
"What can be the matter with the fool critter!"
Nance muttered. "Is she moanin' for sin? To be shore,
they don't have no revival meetings this time o' year!"
She had known sinners to mourn through a whole
summer sometimes, but never in all her experience in
religious revivals had a mourner carried it over into
winter. The dancing had always eased the tension and
brought a relapse to sinful thoughts.
The hours dragged until the roosters began to crow
for day. It would soon be light.
She must act now. There was no time to lose. She
pressed her ear to the crack once more and held it five
minutes.
Not a sound came from within. The broken spirit
had yielded to the stupor of exhaustion at last.
With swift, cat's tread Nance circled the cabin and
entered the kitchen. The quilt she carefully spread on
the floor leading to the entrance to the living-room,
crossed it softly and stood in the doorway with her
long hands on the calico hangings.
For five minutes she remained immovable and
listened to the deep, regular breathing of the
sleeping man. Her wits were keen, her eyes wide.
She could see the dim outlines of the furniture by the
starlight through the window. Small objects in the
room were, of course, invisible. To light a candle was
not to be thought of. It might wake the sleeper.
She knew how to make the light without a noise or
its rays reaching his face. He had startled her with
the electric torch because of its novelty. She was no
longer afraid. She would know how to press the button.
He had left the thing lying on the table beside the
black bag. He might have hidden the gold. He would
not remember in his drunken stupor to move the electric
torch.
She glided ghost-like into the room. Her bare feet
were velvet. She knew every board in the floor. There
was one near the table that creaked. She counted her
steps and cleared the spot without a sound.
Her thin fingers found the edge of the table and
slipped with uncanny touch along its surface until her
hand closed on the rounded form of the torch.
Without moving in her tracks she turned the light
on the table and in every nook and corner of the room
beyond. She slowly swung her body on a pivot, flashing
the light into each shadow and over every inch of
floor, turning always in a circle toward the couch.
Satisfied that the object she sought was nowhere in
the circle she had covered, she moved a step from the
table and winked the light beneath it. She squatted on
the floor and flashed it carefully over every inch of
its boards from one corner of the room to the other and
under the couch.
She rose softly, glided behind the head of the
sleeping man and stood back some six feet, lest the
flash of the torch might disturb him. She threw its
rays behind the couch and slowly raised them until they
covered the dirty pillow on which Jim was sleeping.
There beneath the pillow lay the bag with its precious
treasure. He was sleeping on it. She had feared this,
but felt sure that the whiskey he had drunk would hold
him in its stupor until late next morning.
She crouched low and fixed the light's ray slowly
on the bag that her hand might not err the slightest in
its touch. She laid her bony fingers on it with a
slow, imperceptible movement, held them there a moment
and moved the bag the slightest bit to test the
sleeper's wakefulness. To her surprise he stirred
instantly.
"What'ell!" he growled sleepily.
She stood motionless until he was breathing again
with deep, even, heavy throb. Gliding back to the
table, she flashed the light again on the bag and
studied its position. His big neck rested squarely
across it. To move it without waking him was a
physical impossibility.
Here was a dilemma she had not fully faced. She
had not believed it possible for him to place the bag
where she could not get it. Her only purpose up to
this moment had been to take it and store it safely
beneath the soft earth in the inner recess of the cave.
He would miss it in the morning, of course. She would
express her amazement. The bar would be down from the
front door. Someone had robbed him. The money could
never be found.
She had made up her mind to take it the moment he
had convinced her that his philosophy of life was true.
His eloquence had transformed her from an ignorant old
woman, content with her poverty and dirt, into a
dangerous and daring criminal.
There was no such thing as failure to be thought of
now for a moment. The spade in the inner room of her
store-house could be put to larger use if necessary.
With the strength of the madness now on her she could
carry his body on her back through the woods. The
world would be none the wiser. He had quarreled
with his wife, and left her in a rage that night. That
was all she knew. The sheriff of neither county could
afford to bother his head long over an insolvable
mystery. Besides, both sheriffs were her friends.
Her decision was instantaneous when once she saw
that it was safe.
She smiled over the grim irony of the thing--his
words kept humming in her ears, his voice, low and
persuasive:
"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!"
On the shelf beside the door was a butcher knife
which she also used for carving. She had sharpened its
point that night to carve her Christmas turkey next
day.
She raised the torch and flashed its rays on the
shelf to guide her hand, crept to the wall, took down
the knife and laid the electric torch in its place.
Steadying her body against the wall, her arms
outspread, she edged her way behind the couch and bent
over the sleeping man until by his breathing she had
located his heart.
She raised her tall figure and brought the
knife down with a crash into his breast. With a
sudden wrench she drew it from the wound and crouched
among the shadows watching him with wide-dilated eyes.
The stricken sleeper gasped for breath, his
writhing body fairly leaped into the air, bounded on
the couch and stood erect. He staggered backward and
lurched toward her. The crouching figure bent low,
gripping the knife and waiting for her chance to strike
the last blow.
Strangling with blood, Jim opened his eyes and saw
the old woman creeping nearer through the gray light of
the dawn.
He threw his hands above his head and tried to
shout his warning. She was on him, her trembling hand
feeling for his throat, before he could speak.
Struggling, in his weakened condition, to tear her
fingers away, he gasped:
"Here! Here! Great God! Do you know what you're
doing?"
"I just want yer money," she whispered. "That's
all, and I'm a-goin' ter have it!"
Her fingers closed and the knife sank into his
neck.
She sprang back and watched him lurch and fall
across the couch. His body writhed a moment in agony
and was still.
Holding the knife in her hand, she tore open the
bag and thrust her itching fingers into the gold,
gripping it fiercely.
"Nobody's goin' to ask ye how ye got it--they just
want to know HAVE ye got it--yeah! Yeah----"
The last word died on her lips. The door of the
shed-room suddenly opened and Mary stood before her.
CHAPTER XXII
DELIVERANCE
The first dim noises of the tragedy in the living-room
Mary's stupefied senses had confused with a nightmare
which she had
been painfully fighting.
The torch in Nance's hand had flashed through a
crack into her face once. It was the flame of a
revolver in the hands of a thief in Jim's den in New
York. She merely felt it. Her eyes had been gouged
out and she was blind. A gang of his coarse companions
were holding a council, cursing, drinking, fighting.
Jim had sprung between two snarling brutes and knocked
the revolver into the air. The flame had scorched her
face.
With an oath he had slapped her.
"Get out, you damned little fool!" he growled.
"You're always in the way when you're not wanted.
Nobody can ever find you when there's work to be
done----"
"But I can't see, Jim dear," she pleaded. "I
do not know when things are out of place----"
"You're a liar!" he roared. "You know where every
piece of junk stands in this room better than I do. I
can't bring a friend into that door that you don't know
it. You can hear the swish of a woman's skirt on the
stairs four stories below----"
"I only asked you who the woman was who came in
with you, Jim----"
His fingers gripped her throat and stopped her
breath. Through the roar of surging blood she could
barely hear the vile words he was dinning into her
ears.
"I know you just asked me, you nosing little devil,
and it's none of your business! She's a pal of mine,
if you want to know, the slickest thief that ever
robbed a flat. She's got more sense in a minute than
you'll ever have in a lifetime. She's going to live
here with me now. You can sleep on the cot in the
kitchen. And you come when she calls, if you know
what's good for your lazy hide. I've told her to
thrash the life out of you if you dare to give her any
impudence."
She had cowered at his feet and begged him not to
beat her again. The fumes of whiskey and stale beer
filled the place.
Jim turned from her to quell a new fight at
the other end of the room. Another woman was
there, coarse, dirty, beastly. She drew a knife and
demanded her share of the night's robberies. She was
trying to break from the men who held her to stab Jim.
They were all fighting and smashing the furniture----
She sprang from the bed with a cry of horror. The
noise was real! It was not a dream. The beast inside
was stumbling in the dark. His passions fired by
liquor, he was fumbling to find his way into her room.
She rushed to the door and put her shoulder against
the bar, panting in terror.
She heard his strangling cry:
"Here! Here! Great God! Do you know what you're
doing?"
And then his mother's voice, mad with greed, cruel,
merciless:
"I just want yer money--that's all, an' I'm goin'
to have it!"
She heard the clinch in the struggle and the dull
blow of the knife. In a sudden flash she saw it all.
He had succeeded in rousing Nance's avarice and
transforming her into a fiend. Without knowing it she
was stabbing her own son to death in the room in which
he had been born!
She tried to scream and her lips refused to move.
She tried to hurry to the rescue and her knees turned
to water.
Gasping for breath, she drew the bar from her
prison door and walked slowly into the room.
Nance's tall, bony figure was still crouched over
the open bag, her left hand buried in the gold, her
right gripping the knife, her face convulsed with
greed--avarice and murder blended into perfect hell-lit
unity at last.
Jim lay on his back, limp and still, obliquely
across the couch, his breast bared in the struggle, the
blood oozing a widening scarlet blot on his white
shirt. His head had fallen backward over the edge and
could not be seen.
Without moving a muscle, her body crouching, Nance
spoke:
"You wuz awake--you heered?"
"Yes!"
The gleaming eyes burned through the gray dawn, two
points of scintillating, hellish light fixed in purpose
on the intruder.
She had only meant to take the money. The fool had
fought. She killed him because she had to. And now
the sobbing, sniveling little idiot who had kept her
waiting all night had stuck her nose into some
thing that didn't concern her. If she opened her
mouth, the gallows would be the end.
She would open it too. Of course she would. She
was his wife. They had quarreled, but the simpleton
would blab. Nance knew this with unerring instinct.
It was no use to offer her half the money. She didn't
have sense enough to take it. She knew those pious,
baby faces--well, there was room for two in the cave
under the cliff. It was daylight now. No matter; it
was Christmas morning. No man or woman ever darkened
her door on Christmas day. She could hide their bodies
until dark, and then it was easy. She would be in New
York herself before anyone could suspect the meaning of
that automobile in the shed or the owners would trouble
themselves to come after it.
Again her decision was quick and fierce. Her hand
was on the bag. She would hold it against the world,
all hell and heaven.
With the leap of a tigress she was on the girl, the
bag gripped in her left hand, the knife in her right.
To her amazement the trembling figure stood stock
still gazing at her with a strange look of pity.
"Well!" Nance growled. "I ain't goin' ter be
took now I've got this money--I'm goin' to New York ter
find my boy!"
She lifted the knife and stopped in sheer stupor of
surprise at the girl's immovable body and staring eyes.
Had she gone crazy? What on earth could it mean? No
girl of her youth and beauty could look death in the
face without a tremor. No woman in her right senses
could see the body of her dead husband lying there red
and yet quivering without a sign. It was more than
even Nance's nerves could endure.
She lowered the knife and peered into the girl's
set face and glanced quickly about the room. Could she
have called help? Was the house surrounded? It was
impossible. She couldn't have escaped. What did it
mean?
The old woman drew back with a terror she couldn't
understand.
"What are you looking at me like that for?" she
panted.
Mary held her gaze in lingering pity. Her heart
went out now to the miserable creature trembling in the
presence of her victim. The blow must fall that would
crush the soul out of her body at one stroke. The gray
hair had tumbled over her distorted features, the
ragged dress had been torn from her throat in the
struggle and her flat, bony breast was exposed.
"You don't--have--to--go--to--New York--to--find--
your--boy!" the strained voice said at last.
Nance frowned in surprise and flew back at her in
rage.
"Yes I do, too--he lives thar!"
The little figure straightened above the crouching
form.
"He's here!"
Nance sank slowly against the table and rested the
bag on the edge of the chair. Its weight was more than
she could bear. She tried to glance over her shoulder
at the body on the couch and her courage failed. The
first suspicion of the hideous truth flashed through
her stunned mind. She couldn't grasp it at once.
"Whar?" she whispered hoarsely.
Mary lifted her arm slowly and pointed to the
couch.
"There!"
Nance glared at her a moment and broke into a
hysterical laugh.
"It's a lie--a lie--a lie!"
"It's true----"
"Yer're just a lyin' ter me ter get away an give me
up--but ye won't do it--little Miss--old Nance is too
smart for ye this time. Who told you that?"
"He told me tonight!"
"He told you?" she repeated blankly.
"Yes."
"You're a liar!" she growled. "And I'll prove it--
you move out o' your tracks an' I'll cut your throat.
My boy's got a scar on his neck--I know right whar to
look for it. Don't you move now till I see--I know
you're a liar----"
She turned and with the quick trembling fingers of
her right hand tore the shirt back from the neck and
saw the scar. She still held the bag in her left hand.
The muscles slowly relaxed and the bag fell endwise to
the floor, the gold crashing and rolling over the
boards. She stared in stupor and threw both hands
above her streaming gray hair.
"Lord God Almighty!" she shrieked. "Why didn't I
think that he wuz somebody else's boy if he weren't
mine!"
The thin body trembled and crumpled beside the
couch.
The girl lifted her head in a look of awe as if in
prayer.
"And God has set me free! free! free!"
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