The Foolish Virgin
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Thomas Dixon >> The Foolish Virgin
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"Oh, if I only could!"
"Why not?"
"I couldn't impose such a burden on you!" she
faltered.
"You would confer on me the highest honor, if you
will allow me to direct you in this experiment."
There was no mistaking his honesty and earnestness.
There was no refusing the appeal.
"You really wish me to stay?" she asked.
"I beg of you to stay! You will bring to me a new
inspiration--new faith--new courage to fight. Will
you?"
She extended her hand.
"Yes."
"And you will agree to follow my instructions?"
"Absolutely."
"Good. We begin from this moment. I give you my
first orders. Forget that James Anthony ever lived.
Forget the tragedy of Christmas Eve. You are going to
be a mother. All other events in life pale before this
fact. God has conferred on you the highest honor
He can give to mortal. Keep your soul serene, your
body strong. You are to worry about nothing----"
"I must pay you for this extra expense I impose,
Doctor. I have a thousand dollars in bank in New
York," she interrupted.
"Certainly, if you will be happier. My home is now
your sanitarium. You are my patient. Your board will
cost me about eight dollars a week. All right. You
can pay that if you wish.
"Take no thought now except on the business of
being a mother. I will make myself your father, your
brother, your guardian, your physician, your friend and
companion. I will give you at once a course of
reading. You are to think only beautiful thoughts, see
beautiful things, dream beautiful dreams, hear
beautiful music. I'm going to make you climb these
mountain peaks with me for the next three months and
live among the clouds. I'm going to refit your room
with new furniture and pictures and place in it a
phonograph with the best music. When you are strong
enough you can work for me three hours a day as my
secretary. You use the typewriter?"
"I'm an expert----"
"Good! I'm writing a book which I'm going to
call `The Rulers of the World.' It is a study of
Motherhood. I am one who believes that the redemption
of humanity awaits the realization by woman of her
divine call. When woman knows that she is really a co-
creator with God in the reproduction of the race, a new
era will dawn for mankind. You promise me faithfully
to obey my instructions?"
"Faithfully."
"You're a wonderful subject on which to make an
experiment. You are young--in the first dawn of the
glory of womanhood. Your body is beautiful, your mind
singularly pure and sweet. You must give me at once
the full power of your will in its concentration on
Truth and Beauty. The success or failure of this
experiment will depend almost entirely on your
mentality and the use you make of it during these
months in which your babe is being formed. Whatever
the shape of the body there is one eternal certainty--
only YOUR mind can reach the soul of this child.
If the father were the veriest fiend who ever existed
and should concentrate his mind to the task, not one
thought from his darkened soul could reach your babe!
YOUR mind will be the ever-brooding, enfolding
spirit forming and fashioning character."
He paused and his deep brown eyes flashed with
enthusiasm.
"Think of it! You are now creating an immortal
being whose word may bend a million wills to his. And
you are doing this mighty work solely by your mind.
The physical processes are simple and automatic.
"The first lesson you must learn and hold with
deathless grip is that thoughts are things. A thought
can kill the body. A thought can heal the body. If I
am successful as a physician it is because I use this
power with my patients. With some I use drugs, with
others none. With all I use every ounce of mental
power which God has given me. You will remember this?"
"Yes."
He walked to the shelves and drew down a volume of
poetry.
"Read these poems until you are tired today--then
sleep. I'll give you a good novel tomorrow and when
you've read it, a volume of philosophy. When we climb
the peaks, I'll give you a study of these rocks that
will tell you the story of their birth, their life, and
their coming death. We'll learn something of the birds
and flowers next spring. We'll dream great dreams and
think great thoughts--you and I--in these
wonderful days and weeks and months which God shall
give us together."
She looked up at him through her tears:
"Oh, Doctor, you have not only saved a miserable
life: you have saved my soul!"
CHAPTER XXVI
A SOUL IS BORN
It was more than a month after the experiment began
before the Doctor ventured to hint of Jim's survival.
He had waited patiently until Mary's strength had been
fully restored and her
mind filled with the new enthusiasm for motherhood. He
could tell her now with little risk. And yet he
ventured on the task with reluctance. He found her
seated at her favorite window overlooking the deep blue
valley of the Swannanoa, a volume of poetry in her lap.
He touched her shoulder and she smiled in cheerful
response.
"You are content?" he asked.
"A strange peace is slowly stealing into my heart,"
she responded reverently. "I shall learn to love life
again when my baby comes to help me."
"You remember your solemn promise?"
"Have I not kept it?" she murmured.
"Faithfully--and I remind you of it that you
may not forget today for a moment that your work
is too high and holy to allow a shadow to darken your
spirit even for an hour. I have something to tell you
that may shock a little unless I warn you----"
She lifted her eyes with a quick look of
uneasiness, and studied his immovable face.
"You couldn't guess?" he laughed.
She shook her head in puzzled silence.
"Suppose I were to tell you," he went on evenly,
"that I found a spark of life in your husband's body
that morning and drew him back from the grave?"
Her eyes closed and she stretched her hand toward
the Doctor.
He clasped the fingers firmly between both his
palms, held and stroked them gently.
"You did save him?" she breathed.
"Yes."
"Thank God his poor old mother is not a murderer!
But he is dead to me. I shall never see him again--
never!"
"I thought you would feel that way," the Doctor
quietly replied.
"You won't let him come here?" she asked suddenly.
"He won't try unless you consent----"
Mary shuddered.
"You don't know him----"
The Doctor smiled.
"I'm afraid you don't know him now, my child."
"He has changed?"
"The old, old miracle over again. He has been
literally born again--this time of the spirit."
"It's incredible!"
"It's true. He's a new man. I think his
reformation is the real thing. He's young. He's
strong. He has brains. He has personality----"
Mary lifted her hand.
"All I ask of him is to keep out of my sight. The
world is big enough for us both. The past is now a
nightmare. If I live to be a hundred years old, with
my dying breath I shall feel the grip of his fingers on
my throat----"
She paused and closed her eyes.
"Forget it! Forget it!" the Doctor laughed. "We
have more important things to think of now."
"He wishes to see me?"
"Begs every day that I ask you."
"And you have hesitated these long weeks?"
"Your strength and peace of mind were of greater
importance than his happiness, my dear. Let him wait
until you please to see him."
"He'll wait forever," was the firm answer.
Jim smiled grimly when his friend bore back the
message.
"I'll never give up as long as there's breath in my
body," he cried, bringing his square jaws together with
a snap.
"That's the way to talk, my boy," the Doctor
responded.
"Anyhow you believe in me, Doc, don't you?"
"Yes."
"And you'll help me a little on the way if it gets
dark--won't you?"
"If I can--you may always depend on me."
Jim clasped his outstretched hand gratefully.
"Well, I'm going to make good."
There was something so genuine and manly in the
tones of his voice, he compelled the Doctor's respect.
A smaller man might have sneered. The healer of souls
and bodies had come to recognize with unerring instinct
the true and false note in the human voice.
His heart went out in a wave of sympathy for the
lonely, miserable young animal who stood before him
now, trembling with the first sharp pains of the
immortal thing that had awaked within. He slipped his
arm about Jim's shoulders and whispered:
"I'll tell you something that may help you
when the way gets dark--the wife is going to bear
you a child."
"No!"
"Yes."
"God!---- That's great, ain't it?"
Jim choked into silence and looked up at the Doctor
with dimmed eyes.
"Say, Doc, you hit me hard when you brought what
she said--but that's good news! Watch me work my hands
to the bone--you know it's my kid and she can't keep me
from workin' for it if she tries now can she?"
"No."
"There's just one thing that'll hang over me like a
black cloud," he mused sorrowfully.
"I know, boy--your mother's darkened mind."
Jim nodded.
"When I see that queer glitter in her eyes it goes
through me like a knife. Will she ever get over it?"
"We can't tell yet. It takes time. I believe she
will."
"You'll do the best you can for her, Doc?" he
pleaded pathetically. "You won't forget her a single
day? If you can't cure her, nobody can."
"I'll do my level best, boy."
Jim pressed his hand again.
"Gee, but you've been a friend to me! I didn't
know that there were such men in the world as you!"
For six months the Doctor watched the transplanted
child of the slums grow into a sturdy manhood in his
new environment. He snapped at every suggestion his
friend gave and with quick wit improved on it. He not
only discovered and developed a mica mine on his
mother's farm, he invented new machinery for its
working that doubled the market output. Within six
weeks from the time he began his shipments the mine was
paying a steady profit of more than five hundred
dollars a month. He had made just one trip to New York
and secretly returned to the police every stolen jewel
and piece of plunder taken, with a full confession of
the time and place of the crime. He had shipped his
tools and machinery from the workshop on the east side
before his sensational act and made good his departure
for the South.
The tools and machinery he installed in a new
workshop which he built in the yard of Nance's cabin.
Here he worked day and night at his blacksmith forge
making the iron hinges, and irons, shovels, tongs, fire
sets and iron work complete for a log bungalow of seven
rooms which he was building on the sunny slope of
the mountain which overlooks the valley toward
Asheville.
The Doctor had lent Jim the blue-prints of his own
home and he was quietly duplicating it with loving
care. His wife might refuse to see him but he could
build a home for their boy. For his sake she couldn't
refuse it.
With childlike obedience Nance followed him every
day and watched the workmen rear the beautiful
structure under Jim's keen eyes and skillful hands.
The man's devotion to his mother was pathetic. Only
the Doctor knew the secret of his pitiful care, and he
kept his own counsel.
CHAPTER XXVII
THE BABY
The last roses of summer were bursting their topmost
buds into full bloom on the lawn of the Doctor's
bungalow. The martins that built each year in the
little boxes he had set on poles around his garden were
circling and chattering far up in the sapphire skies of
a late September day. Their leaders had sensed the
coming frost and were drilling for their long march
across the world to their winter home. The chestnut
burrs were bursting in the woods. The silent sun-
wrapped Indian Summer had begun. Not a cloud flecked
the skies.
A quiet joy filled the soul of the woman who smiled
and heard her summons.
"You are not afraid?" the Doctor asked.
She turned her grateful eyes to his.
"The peace of God fills the world--and I owe it all
to you."
"Nonsense. Your sturdy will and cultivated mind
did the work. I merely made the suggestion."
"You are not going to give me an anesthetic, are
you?" she said evenly.
"Why did you ask that?"
"Because I wish to feel and know the pain and glory
of it all."
"You don't wish to take it?"
"Not unless you say I should."
"What a wonderful patient you are, child! What a
beautiful spirit!" He looked at her intently. "Well,
I'm older and wiser in experience than you. I'm glad
you added that clause `unless you say I should.' I'm
going to say it. After all my talks to you on our
return to the truths and simplicity of Nature you are
perhaps surprised. You needn't be. I'm going to put
you into a gentle sleep. Nature will then do her
physical work automatically. I do this because our
daughters are the inheritors of the sins of their
mothers for centuries. The over-refinement of nerves,
the hothouse methods of living, and the maiming of
their bodies with the inventions of fashion have made
the pains of this supreme hour beyond endurance. This
should not be. It will not be so when our race has
come into its own. But it will take many generations
and perhaps many centuries before we reach the ideal.
No physician who has a soul could permit a woman of
your physique, your culture and refinement to walk
barefoot and blindfolded into such a hell of physical
torture. I will not permit it."
He walked quietly into his laboratory, prepared the
sleeping powders and gave them to her.
Six hours later she opened her eyes with eager
wonder. Aunt Abbie was busy over a bundle of fluffy
clothes. The Doctor was standing with his arms folded
behind his back, his fine, clean-shaven face in profile
looking thoughtfully over the sun-lit valley. There
was just one moment of agonized fear. If they had
failed! If her child were hideous--or deformed! Her
lips moved in silent prayer.
"Doctor?" she whispered.
In a moment he was bending over her, a look of
exaltation in his brown eyes.
"Tell me quick!"
"A wonderful boy, little mother! The most
beautiful babe I have ever seen. He didn't even cry--
just opened his big, wide eyes and grunted
contentedly."
"Give him to me."
Aunt Abbie laid the warm bundle in her arms and she
pressed it gently until the sweet, red flesh touched
her own. She lay still for a moment, a smile on her
lips.
"Lift him and let me look!"
"What a funny little pug nose," she laughed.
"Yes--exactly like his mother's!" the Doctor
replied.
She gazed with breathless reverence.
"He is beautiful, isn't he?" she sighed.
"And you have observed the chin and mouth?"
"Exactly like yours. It's wonderful!"
CHAPTER XXVIII
WHAT IS LOVE?
Eighteen months swiftly passed with the little mother
and her boy still in Dr. Mulford's sanitarium. She had
allowed herself to be persuaded that he had the right
to be her guide and helper in the first year's training
of the child.
The boy had steadily grown in strength and beauty
of body and mind. The Doctor persuaded her to spend
one more winter basking in his sun-parlor and finishing
the final chapters of his book. Her mind was
singularly clever and helpful in the interpretation of
the experiences and emotions of motherhood.
She had stubbornly resisted every suggestion to see
her husband or allow him to see the child. The Doctor
had managed twice to give Jim an hour with the baby
while she had gone to Asheville on shopping trips. He
was rewarded for his trouble in the devotion with which
the young father worshiped his son. The Doctor
watched the slumbering fires kindle in the man's deep
blue eyes with increasing wonder at the strength and
tenderness of his newfound soul.
Jim had completed the furnishing of the bungalow
with the advice and guidance of his friend, and every
room stood ready and waiting for its mistress. He had
insisted on making every piece of furniture for Mary's
room and the nursery adjoining. The Doctor was amazed
at the mechanical genius he displayed in its
construction. He had taken a month's instruction at a
cabinet maker's in Asheville and the bed, bureau,
tables and chairs which he had turned out were
astonishingly beautiful. Their lines were copied from
old models and each piece was a work of art. The iron
work was even more tastefully and beautifully wrought.
He had toiled day and night with an enthusiasm and
patience that gave the physician a new revelation in
the possibility of the development of human character.
His friend came at last with a cheering message.
He began smilingly:
"I'm going to make the big fight today, boy, to get
her to see you."
"You think she will?"
"There's a good chance. Her savings have all
been used up from her bank account in New York. She is
determined to go to her father in Kentucky. I'll have
a talk with her, bring her over to the bungalow, show
her through it on the pretext of its model construction
and then you can tell her that you built it with your
own hands for her and the baby. You might be loafing
around the place about that time."
Jim's hand was suddenly lifted.
"I got ye, Doc, I got ye! I'll be there--all day."
"Don't let her see you until I give the signal."
"Caution's my name."
"We'll see what happens."
Jim pressed close.
"Say, Doc, if you know how to pray, I wish you'd
send up a little word for me while you're talkin' to
her. Could ye now?"
"I'll do my best for you, boy--and I think you've
got a chance. She's been watching the blue eyes of
that baby lately with a rather curious look of unrest."
"They're just like mine, ain't they?" Jim broke in
with pride.
"Time has softened the old hurt," the Doctor went
on. "The boy may win for you----"
The square jaw came together with a smash.
"Gee--I hope so. I'll wait there all day for you
and I'm goin' to try my own hand at a little prayer or
two on the side while I'm waiting. Maybe God'll think
He's hit me hard enough by this time to give me another
trial."
With a friendly wave of his hand the Doctor hurried
home.
He found Mary seated under the rose trellis beside
the drive, watching for his coming. The day was still
and warm for the end of April. Birds were singing and
chattering in every branch and tree. A quail on the
top fence-rail of the wheat field called loudly to his
mate.
The boy was screaming his joy over a new wagon to
which Aunt Abbie had hitched his goat. He drove by in
style, lifted his chubby hand to his mother and
shouted:
"Dood-by, Doc-ter!"
The Doctor waved a smiling answer, and lapsed into
a long silence.
He waked at last from his absorption to notice that
Mary was day-dreaming. The fair brow was drawn into
deep lines of brooding.
"Why shadows in your eyes a day like this, little
mother?" he asked softly.
"Just thinking----"
"About a past that you should forget?"
"Yes and no," she answered thoughtfully. "I was
just thinking in this flood of spring sunlight of the
mystery of my love for such a man as the one I married.
How could it have been possible to really love him?"
"You are sure that you loved him?"
"Sure."
"How did you know?"
"By all the signs. I trembled at his footstep.
The touch of his hand, the sound of his voice thrilled
me. I was drawn by a power that was resistless. I was
mad with happiness those wonderful days that preceded
our marriage. I was madder still during our
honeymoon--until the shadows began to fall that fatal
Christmas Eve." She paused and her lips trembled.
"Oh, Doctor, what is love?"
The drooping shoulders of the man bent lower. He
picked up a pebble from the ground and flicked it
carelessly across the drive, lifted his head at last
and asked earnestly:
"Shall I tell you the truth?"
"Yes--your own particular brand, please--the truth,
the whole truth and nothing but the truth."
"I'll try," he began soberly. "If I were a poet,
naturally I would use different language. As I'm
only a prosaic doctor and physiologist I may shock your
ideals a little."
"No matter," she interrupted. "They couldn't well
get a harder jolt than they have had already."
He nodded and went on:
"There are two elemental human forces that maintain
life--hunger and love. They are both utterly simple,
otherwise they could not be universal. Hunger compels
the race to live. Love compels it to reproduce itself.
There has never been anything mysterious about either
of these forces and there never will be--except in the
imagination of sentimentalists.
"Nature begins with hunger. For about thirteen
years she first applies this force to the development
of the body before she begins to lay the foundation of
the second. Until this second development is complete
the passion known as love cannot be experienced.
"What is this second development? Very simple
again. At the base of the brain of every child there
is a vacant space during the first twelve or fifteen
years. During the age of twelve to fourteen in girls,
thirteen to fifteen in boys, this vacant space is
slowly filled by a new lobe of the brain and with its
growth comes the consciousness of sex and the
development
of sex powers.
"This new nerve center becomes on maturity a
powerful physical magnet. The moment this magnet comes
into contact with an organization which answers its
needs, as certain kinds of food answer the needs of
hunger, violent desire is excited. If both these
magnets should be equally powerful, the disturbance to
both will be great. The longer the personal
association is continued the more violent becomes this
disturbance, until in highly sensitive natures it
develops into an obsession which obscures reason and
crushes the will.
"The meaning of this impulse is again very simple--
the unconscious desire of the male to be a father, of
the female to become a mother."
"And there is but one man on earth who could thus
affect me?" Mary asked excitedly.
"Rubbish! There are thousands."
"Thousands?"
"Literally thousands. The reason you never happen
to meet them is purely an accident of our poor social
organization. Every woman has thousands of true
physical mates if she could only meet them. Every man
has thousands of true physical mates if he could only
meet them. And in every such meeting, if mind and
body are in normal condition, the same violent
disturbance would result--whether married or single,
free or bound.
"Marriage therefore is not based merely on the
passion of love. It is a crime for any man or woman to
marry without love. It is the sheerest insanity to
believe that this passion within itself is sufficient
to justify marriage. All who marry should love. Many
love who should not marry.
"The institution of marriage is the great
SOCIAL ordinance of the race. Its sanctity and
perpetuity are not based on the violence of the passion
of love, but something else."
He paused and listened to the call of the quail
again from the field.
"You hear that bob white calling his mate?"
"Yes--and she's answering him now very softly. I
can hear them both."
"They have mated this spring to build a home and
rear a brood of young. Within six months their babies
will all be full grown and next spring a new alignment
of lovers will be made. Their marriage lasts during
the period of infancy of their offspring. This is
Nature's law.
"It happens in the case of man that the period of
infancy of a human being is about twenty-four
years. This is the most wonderful fact in nature.
It means that the capacity of man for the improvement
of his breed is practically limitless. A quail has a
few months in which to rear her young. God gives to
woman a quarter of a century in which to mold her
immortal offspring. Because the period of infancy of
one child covers the entire period of motherhood
capacity, marriage binds for life, and the sanctity of
marriage rests squarely on this law of Nature."
He paused again and looked over the sunlit valley.
"I wish our boys and girls could all know these
simple truths of their being. It would save much
unhappiness and many tragic blunders.
"You were swept completely off your feet by the
rush of the first emotion caused by meeting a man who
was your physical mate. You imagined this emotion to
be a mysterious revelation which can come but once.
Your imagination in its excited condition, of course,
gave to your first-found mate all sorts of divine
attributes which he did not possess. You were `in
love' with a puppet of your own creation, and
hypnotized yourself into the delusion that James
Anthony was your one and only mate, your knight, your
hero.
"In a very important sense this was true.
Your intuitions could not make a mistake on so
vital an issue. But you immediately rushed into
marriage and your union has been perfected by the birth
of a child. Whether you are happy or unhappy in
marriage does not depend on the reality of love.
Happiness in marriage is based on something else."
"On what?"
"The joy and peace that comes from oneness of
spirit, tastes, culture and character. I know this
from the deepest experiences of life and the widest
observation."
"You have loved?" she asked softly.
"Twice----"
A silence fell between them.
"Shall I tell you, little mother?" he finally asked
quietly.
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