The Foolish Virgin
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Thomas Dixon >> The Foolish Virgin
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The offer she had made had proved a terrible
temptation. The artist who had asked with such
eagerness to use her head for his portrait of the
Madonna on the canvas he was executing for the new
cathedral, had long appealed to her vivid imagination.
Two prints of his famous work hung on her walls. She
had always wished to know him. He had married a
Southern girl.
That was just the point--he WAS married!
No girl could afford to be shut up alone in a
studio with a fascinating married man for three hours--
or half an hour. What if she should fall in love with
him at first sight! Such things had happened. They
could happen again. Only tragedy could be the end of
such an event. It was too dangerous to consider for a
moment.
She would have consented had it been possible for
Jane to chaperon her. That would have been obviously
ridiculous. No artist with any self-respect would
tolerate such a reflection on his honesty. No girl
could afford to confess her fears in this brazen
fashion.
The necessity for her refusal had depressed her
beyond any experience she had passed through in the
dreary desert of the past five years.
She lifted the sleeping kitten and whispered
passionately:
"Am I a silly fool, Kitty? Am I?"
The tears came at last. She lay back on the
pillows and let them pour down her cheeks without
protest or effort at self-control. Every nerve of her
strong, healthy body ached for the love and
companionship of men which she had denied herself with
an iron will. At nineteen it had been easy. The sheer
animal joy in life had been enough. With the growth of
each year the ache within had become more and more
insistent. With each ripening season of body and mind,
the hunger of love had grown more and more maddening.
How long could she keep up this battle with every
instinct of her being?
She rose at last, determined to go to Jane, confess
that she had been a fool, and step out into the new
world, New York's world, and begin to live.
She seized her hat and furs and put them on with
feverish haste.
"God knows it's time I began--I'll be an old maid
in another year and dry up--ugh!"
She looked in the quaint oval mirror that hung
beside her door and lifted her head with a touch of
pride.
She had reached the street and started for the
Broadway car before she suddenly remembered that Jane
was "dining with a dangerous man."
She couldn't turn back to that little room tonight
without new courage. Her decision was instantaneous.
She couldn't surrender to the flesh and the devil by
yielding to Jane.
She would go to prayer-meeting!
Religion had always been a very real thing in her
life. Her father was a Methodist presiding elder. She
would have gone to the meeting tonight in the first
place but for the snow. Dr. Craddock, the new
sensational pastor of the Temple, was giving a series
of Wednesday-night talks that had aroused wide interest
and drawn immense crowds.
His theme tonight was one that promised all sorts
of sensations--"The Woman of the Future." The only
trouble with the Doctor was that the substance of his
discourses sometimes failed to make good the startling
suggestions of his titles. No matter--she would go.
She felt a sense of righteous pride infighting her
way to the church through the first storm of the
winter.
In spite of the snow the church was crowded. The
subject announced had evidently touched a vital spot in
modern life. More people were thinking about "The
Woman of the Future" than she had suspected. The crowd
sat with eager, upturned faces.
The first half-hour's prayer and song service had
just begun. Mary joined in the singing of the stirring
evangelistic hymns with enthusiasm. Something in their
battle-cry melody caught her spirit instantly tonight
and her whole being responded. In ten minutes she was
a good shouting Methodist and supremely happy without
knowing why. She never paused to ask. Her nature was
profoundly religious and she had been born and bred in
the atmosphere of revivals. Her father was an
aggressive evangelist both in his character and methods
of work, and she was his own daughter--a child of
emotion.
The individuals in the eager crowd which packed the
popular church meant nothing to her personally. They
had passed before her unseeing eyes Sunday after Sunday
the past five years as mere shadows of an unknown world
which swallowed them up the moment they reached the
street. She had never seen the inside of one of their
homes. Not one of them had drawn close enough to her
to venture an invitation.
Two of the stewards she knew personally--one a
bricklayer, the other a baker on Eighth Avenue. The
preacher she had met in a purely formal way as the
bishop of the flock. She liked Dr. Craddock. He was
known in the ministry as a live wire. He was a man of
vigorous physique--just turning fifty, magnetic,
eloquent and popular with the masses.
Mary was curious tonight as to what the preacher
would say on "The Woman of the Future." The Methodist
Church had been a pioneer in the modern Feminist
movement, having long ago admitted women to the full
ordination of the ministry. Craddock, however, had
been known for his conservatism in the woman movement.
He abhorred the idea of woman's suffrage as a dangerous
revolution and the fact that he consented to treat the
topic at all was a reluctant confession of its menacing
importance.
With keen interest, the girl saw him rise at last.
A breathless hush fell on the crowd. He walked
deliberately to the edge of the platform and gazed into
the faces of the people.
"I have often been asked," he slowly began, "where
I get my sermons." He paused and laughed. "I'll be
perfectly honest with you. Sometimes I get them from
the Bible--sometimes from the book of life. The
genesis of this talk tonight is very definite. I found
it in the liquid depths of a little girl's eyes. She
asked a simple question that set me thinking--not only
about the subject of her query but on the vaster issues
that grew out of it. She looked up into my face the
other night after my call for volunteers for the new
mission we are beginning in the slums of the East Side,
and asked me if the girls were not going to be given
the chance to do something worth while in this church's
work.
"I couldn't honestly answer her off-hand and in my
groping I forgot the child and her question. I saw a
vision--a vision of that broader, nobler future toward
which human civilization is now swiftly moving.
"I say deliberately that it is swiftly moving,
because the progress of the world during the last fifty
years has been greater than in any five hundred years
of the past.
"The older I grow the stronger becomes my
conviction that the problems of the age in which we now
live cannot be solved by masculine brain and brawn
alone. The problems of the city and the nation and the
great fundamental social questions that involve the
foundations of modern life will find no solution until
the heart and brain of woman are poured into the
crucible of our test.
"They talk about a woman's sphere
As though it had a limit:
There's not a place in earth or heaven,
There's not a task to mankind given,
There's not a blessing or a woe,
There's not a whisper yes or no,
There's not a life, or death, or birth
That has a feather's weight of worth
Without a woman in it!
"The difference between a man and a woman is one
that makes them the complementary parts of a perfect
unit. God made man in His own image--male and female.
The person of God therefore combines these two elements
unseparated. The mind of God is both male and female.
In man we have the strength which lifts and tugs and
fights the elements. This is the aspect turned
primarily toward matter. In woman we have the finer
qualities of the Spirit turned toward the source of all
spirit in God. The idea of a masculine deity is a
false assumption of the Dark Ages. God is both male
and female.
"I used to wonder why Jesus Christ was a man, until
I realized that the Incarnation expressed the depth of
human need. God stooped lower in assuming the form of
man. The form of the divine revelation through Jesus
Christ was determined solely by this depth of human
need----"
For half an hour in impetuous eloquence, in telling
incidents wet with tears and winged with hope, he held
his listeners in a spell. It was not until the burst
of applause which greeted his closing sentence had died
away that Mary Adams realized that another landmark had
toppled before the onrushing flood of modern Feminism.
The conservatism of Doctor Craddock had yielded at last
to the inevitable. He, too, had joined the ranks of
the prophets who preach of a Woman's Day of
Emancipation.
And yet it never occurred to her that this fact had
the slightest bearing on her personal outlook on life.
On the contrary she felt in the spiritual elation of
the triumphant eloquence of her favorite preacher a
renewal of her simple religious faith. At the bottom
of that religion lay the foundation of life itself--her
conception of marriage as the supreme and only
expression of woman's power in the world.
She walked back to her home on the Square, in a
glow of ecstatic emotion.
Surely God had miraculously saved her this night
from the wiles of the Devil! No matter what this
eloquent discourse had meant to others, it had renewed
her faith in the old-fashioned woman and the old-
fashioned ways of the old-fashioned home. Her vision
was once more clear. She was glad Jane Anderson had
come to put her to the test. She had been tried in the
fires of hell and came forth unscorched.
She stood beside her window dreaming again of the
home she would build when her Knight should stand
before her revealed in beauty no words could describe.
The moon was shining now in solemn glory on the white-
shrouded Square. Temptation had only strengthened the
fiber of her soul. She knelt in the moonlight beside
her couch and prayed that God should ever keep her
faith serene. She rose with a sense of peace and joy.
God would hear and answer the cry of her heart. The
City might be the Desert--it was still God's world and
not a sparrow that twittered in those bare trees or
chattered on her window-ledge in the morning could fall
to the ground without His knowledge. God had put this
deathless passion in her heart; He could not deny
it expression. She could bide His time. If the day of
her deliverance were near, it was good. If God should
choose to try her faith in loneliness and tears, it was
His way to make the revelation of glory the more
dazzling when it came.
She drew the covering about her warm young body
with the firm faith that her hour was close at hand,
and fell asleep to dream of her Knight.
CHAPTER III
FATE
Mary waked next morning with the delicious sense of
impending happiness. A wonderful dream had come to
thrill her half-conscious moments, repeating itself in
increasing vividness and beauty with each awakening.
The vision had been interrupted by the unusual noise of
the snow machines on the car tracks, and yet she had
fallen asleep after each break and picked up the
rapturous scene at the exact moment of its
interruption.
She was married and madly in love with her husband.
His face she could never see quite clearly. His
business kept him away from home on long trips. But
his baby was always there--a laughing, wonderful boy
whose chubby hands persisted in pulling her hair down
into her face each time she bent over his cradle to
kiss him.
Ella was chattering in German to someone on the
stairs. She wondered again for the hundredth time
how this poor, slovenly, one-eyed, ill-kempt creature,
scrub-woman and janitress, could speak two languages
with such ease. Her English, except in excitement,
seemed equally fluent with her German. How did such a
woman fall so low? She was industrious and untiring in
her work. She never touched liquor or drugs. She was
kind and thoughtful and watched over her tenants with a
motherly care for which no landlord could pay in
dollars and cents. She was on her knees on the stairs
now, scrubbing down the steps to be crowded again with
muddy feet from the street below.
Mary lay for half an hour snuggling under the warm
blankets, weaving a romance about Ella's life. A great
love for some heroic man who died and left her in
poverty could alone explain the mystery that hung about
her. She never spoke of her life or people. Mary had
ventured once to ask her. A wan smile flitted across
the haggard face for a moment, and she answered in low
tones that closed the subject.
"I haven't any people, dear," she said slowly.
"They are dead long ago."
The girl wondered if it were really true. In her
joy this morning she felt her heart go out to the
pathetic, drooping figure on the stairs. She
wished that every living creature might share the
secret joy that filled her soul.
She drew the kitten from his nest beside her pillow
and rubbed her cheek against his little cold nose. He
always waked her with a kiss on her eyelids and then
coiled himself back for a tiny cat-nap until she could
make up her mind to rise.
She sprang from the couch with sudden energy and
stretched her dainty figure with a prodigious yawn.
"Gracious, Kitty, we must hurry!" she cried,
thrusting her bare feet into a pair of embroidered
slippers and throwing her blue flannel kimono on over
her night-dress.
The coffee-pot was boiling busily when she had
bathed and dressed. Each detail of her domestic
schedule was given an extra care this morning. The
stove was carefully polished, each pot and pan placed
in its rack with a precision that spoke an unusual joy
within the heart of the housewife.
And through it all she hummed a lullaby that
haunted her from the memories of a happy childhood.
Breakfast over, the kitten fed, the birds given
their bath, their sand and seed, she couldn't stop
until the whole place had been thoroughly cleaned
and dusted. Exactly why she had done this on Thursday
morning it was impossible to say. Some hidden force
within had impelled her.
Then back into the dream world her mind flew on
joyous wings. It was a sign from God in answer to
prayer. Why not? The Bible was full of such
revelations in ancient times. God was not dead because
the world was modern and we had steam and electricity.
The routine of school was no longer dull. Around each
commonplace child hung a halo of romance. They were
love-children today. She wove a dream of tenderness,
of chivalry, and heroic deeds about them all. She
searched each face for some line of beauty caught in
the vision of her own baby who had looked into her
heart from the mists of eternity.
Three days passed in a sort of trance. Never had
she felt surer of life and the full fruition of every
hope and faith. Just how this marvelous blossoming
would come, she could not guess. Her chances of
meeting her Fate were no better than at any moment of
the past years of drab disillusionment, and yet, for
some reason, her foolish heart kept singing.
Why?
There could be but one answer. The event was
impending. Such things could be felt--not reasoned
out.
She applied herself to her teaching with a new
energy and thoroughness. She must do this work well
and carry into the real life that must soon begin the
consciousness of every duty faithfully performed.
A boy asked her a question about a little flower
which grew in a warm crevice of the stone wall on which
the iron fence of the school yard rested. She blushed
at her failure to enlighten him and promised to tell
him on Monday.
Botany was not one of her tasks but she felt the
tribute to her personality in his question, and she
would take pains to make her answer full and
interesting.
Saturday afternoon she hurried to the Public
Library, on Fifth Avenue and Forty-second Street, to
look up every reference to this flower.
The boulevard of the Metropolis was thronged with
eager thousands. Handsome men and beautifully dressed
women passed each other in endless procession on its
crowded pavements. The cabs and automobiles, two
abreast on either side, moved at a snail's pace, so
dense were the throngs at each crossing. Her fancy was
busy weaving about each throbbing tonneau and
limousine a story of love. Not a wheel was turning in
all that long line of shining vehicles that didn't
carry a woman or was hurrying to do a woman's bidding.
Her hero was coming, too, somewhere in the crowd
with his gloved hand on one of those wheels. She could
feel his breath on her cheek as he handed her into the
seat by his side and then the sudden leap of the car
into space and away on the wings of lightning into the
future!
She ascended the broad steps of the majestic
building with quick, springing strength. She loved
this glorious library, with its lofty, arched ceilings.
The sense of eternity that brooded over it and filled
the stately rooms rested and inspired her.
Besides, she forgot her poverty in this temple of
all time. Within its walls she belonged to the great
aristocracy of brains and culture of which this palace
was the supreme expression. And it was hers. Andrew
Carnegie had given the millions to build it and the
city of New York granted the site on land that was
worth many millions more. But it was all built for her
convenience, her comfort and inspiration. Every volume
of its vast and priceless collection was hers--hers to
hold in her hands, read and ponder and enjoy. Every
officer and manager in its inclosure was her
servant--to come at her beck and call and do her
bidding. The little room on Twenty-third Street was
the symbol of the future. This magnificent building
was the realization of the present.
She smiled pleasantly to the polite assistant who
received her order slip, and took her seat on the
waiting line until her books were delivered.
This magnificent room with its lofty ceilings of
golden panels and drifting clouds had always brought to
her a peculiar sense of restful power. The
consciousness of its ownership had from the first been
most intimate. No man can own what he cannot
appreciate. He may possess it by legal documents, but
he cannot own it unless he has eyes to see, ears to
hear, and a heart to feel its charm. This appreciation
Mary Adams possessed by inheritance from her student
father who devoured books with an insatiate hunger.
Nowhere in all New York's labyrinth did she feel as
perfectly at home as in this reading-room. The quiet
which reigned without apparent sign or warning seemed
to belong to the atmosphere of the place. It was
unthinkable that any man or woman should be rude or
thoughtless enough to break it by a loud word.
This room was hers day or night, winter or
summer, always heated and lighted, and a hundred
swift, silent servants at hand to do her bidding.
Around the room on serried shelves, dressed in leather
aprons, stood twenty-five thousand more servants of the
centuries of the past ready to answer any question her
heart or brain might ask of the world's life since the
dawn of Time.
In the stack-room below, on sixty-three miles of
shelves, stood a million others ready to come at her
slightest nod. She loved to dream here of the future,
in the moments she must wait for these messengers she
had summoned. In this magic room the past ceased to
be. These myriads of volumes made the past a myth. It
was all the living, throbbing present--with only the
golden future to be explored.
Her number flashed in red letters on the electric
blackboard.
She rose and carried her books to the seat number
assigned her near the center of the southern division
of the room on the extreme left beside the bookcases
containing the dictionaries of all languages.
Her seat was on the aisle which skirted the
shelves. She found the full description of the flower
in which she was interested, made her notes and
closed the volume with a lazy movement of her slender,
graceful hand.
She lifted her eyes and they rested on a
remarkable-looking young man about her own age who
stood gazing in an embarrassed, helpless sort of way at
the row of ponderous volumes marked "The Century
Dictionary."
He was evidently a newcomer. By his embarrassment
she could easily tell that it was the first time he had
ever ventured into this room.
He looked at the books, apparently puzzled by their
number. He raised his hand and ran his fingers
nervously through the short, thick, red hair which
covered his well-shaped head.
The girl's attention was first fixed by the strange
contrast between his massive jaw and short neck which
spoke the physical strength of an ox, and the slender
gracefully tapering fingers of his small hand. The
wrist was small, the fingers almost feminine in their
lines.
He caught her look of curious interest and to her
horror, smiled and walked straight to her seat.
There was no mistaking his determination to speak.
It was useless to drop her eyes or turn aside. He
would certainly follow.
She blushed and gazed at him in a timid,
helpless fashion while he bent over her seat and
whispered awkwardly:
"You look kind and obliging, miss--could you help
me a little?"
His tone was so genuine in its appeal, so
distressed and hesitating, it was impossible to resent
his question.
"If I can--yes," was the prompt answer.
"You won't mind?" he asked, fumbling his hat.
"No--what is it?"
Mary had recovered her composure as his distress
had increased and looked steadily into his steel blue
eyes inquiringly.
"You see," he went on, in low hurried tones, "I'm
all worked up about the mountains of North Carolina--
thinkin' o' goin' down there to Asheville in a car, an'
I want to look the bloomin' place up and kind o' get my
bearin's before I start. A lawyer friend o' mine told
me to come here and I'd find all the maps in the
Century Dictionary. The man at the desk out there told
me to come in this room and look in the shelves on the
left and take it right out. Gee, the place is so big,
I get all rattled. I found the Century Dictionary on
that shelf----"
He paused and smiled helplessly.
"I thought a dictionary was one book--there's a
dozen of 'em marked alike. I'm afraid to pull 'em all
down an' I don't know where to begin-- COULD you
help me--please?"
"Certainly, with pleasure," she answered, quickly
rising and leading the way back to the shelf at which
he had been gazing.
"You want the atlas volume," she explained, drawing
the book from the shelf and returning to the seat.
He followed promptly and bent over her shoulder
while she pointed out the map of North Carolina, the
position of Asheville and the probable route he must
follow to get there.
"Thanks!" he exclaimed gratefully.
"Not at all," she replied simply. "I'm only too
glad to be of service to you."
Her answer emboldened him to ask another question.
"You don't happen to know anything about that
country down there, do you?"
"Why, yes. I know a great deal about it----"
"Sure enough?"
"I've been through Asheville many times and spent a
summer there once."
"Did you?"
His tones implied that he plainly regarded her
as a prodigy of knowledge. His whole attitude
suggested at once the mind of an alert, interested boy
asking his teacher for information on a subject near to
his heart. It was impossible to resist his appeal.
"Why, yes," Mary went on in low, rapid tones. "My
people live in the Kentucky mountains."
He bent low and gently touched her arm.
"Say, we can't talk in here--I'm afraid. Would it
be asking too much of you to come out in the park, sit
down on a bench and tell me about it? I'll never know
how to thank you, if you will?"
It was absurd, of course, such a request, and yet
his interest was so keen, his deference to her superior
knowledge so humble and appealing, to refuse seemed
ungracious. She hesitated and rose abruptly.
"Just a moment--I'll return my books and then we'll
go. You can replace this volume on the shelf where we
got it."
"Thank yoo, miss," he responded gratefully.
"You're awfully kind."
"Don't mention it," she laughed.
In a moment she was walking by his side down the
smooth marble stairs and out through the grand entrance
into Fifth Avenue. The strange part about it was, she
was not in the least excited over a very unconventional
situation. She had allowed a handsomely groomed,
young, red-haired adventurer to pick her up without the
formality of an introduction, in the Public Library.
She hadn't the remotest idea of his name--nor had he of
hers--yet there was something about him that seemed
oddly familiar. They must have known one another
somewhere in childhood and forgotten each other's
faces.
The sun was shining in clear, steady brilliancy in
a cloudless sky. The snow had quickly melted and it
was unusually warm for early December. They turned
into the throng of Fifth Avenue and at the corner of
Forty-second Street he paused and hesitated and looked
at her timidly:
"Say," he began haltingly, "there's an awful crowd
of bums on those seats in the Square behind the
building--you know Central Park, don't you?"
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