The Foolish Virgin
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Thomas Dixon >> The Foolish Virgin
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Perhaps she was busy in the kitchenette and the
noise from the street made it impossible to hear.
He placed his hand on the doorknob.
From the darkness of the hall, in a quick, tiger
leap, Ella threw herself on him and grappled for his
throat.
"What are you doing at that door, you dirty thief?"
she growled.
"Here! Here! What'ell--what's the matter with
you?" he gasped, gripping her hands and tearing them
from his neck. "I'm no thief!"
"You are! You are, too!" she shrieked. "I heard
you sneak in the door downstairs--heard you slippin'
like a cat upstairs! Get out of here before I call a
cop!"
She was savagely pushing him back to the landing of
the stairs. With a sudden lurch, Jim freed himself and
gripped her hands.
"Cut it! Cut it! Or I'll knock your block off!
I've come to take my girl to ride----"
He drew a match and quickly lighted the gas as
Mary's footstep echoed on the stairs below.
"Well, she's coming now--we'll see," was the sullen
answer.
Ella surveyed him from head to foot, her one eye
gleaming in angry suspicion.
Mary sprang up the last step and saw the two
confronting each other. She had heard the angry voices
from below.
"Why, Ella, what's the matter?" she gasped.
"He was trying to break into your room----"
Jim threw up his hands in a gesture of rage, and
Mary broke into a laugh.
"Why, nonsense, Ella, I asked him to come! This is
Mr. Anthony,"--her voice dropped,--"my fiance."
Ella's figure relaxed with a look of surprise.
"Oh, ja?" she murmured, as if dazed.
"Yes--come in," she said to Jim. "Sorry I was out.
I had to run to the grocer's for the Kitty."
Ella glared at Jim, turned and began to light the
other hall lamps without any attempt at apology.
Jim entered the room with a look of awe, took in
its impression of sweet, homelike order and recovered
quickly his composure.
"Gee, you're the dandy little housekeeper! I could
stay here forever."
"You like it?"
"It's a bird's nest " He glanced in the mirror and
saw the print of Ella's fingers on his collar. "Will
you look at that?" he growled.
"It's too bad," she said, sympathetically.
"You know I thought a she-tiger had got loose from
the Bronx and jumped on me."
"I'm awfully sorry," she apologized. "Ella's very
fond of me. She was trying to protect me. She
couldn't see who it was in the dark."
"No; I reckon not," Jim laughed.
"I've changed our plans for the evening," she
announced. "We won't go to ride tonight. I want you
to bring my best friend to dinner with us at Mouquin's.
Go after her in the car. I want to impress her----"
"I got you, Kiddo! She's goin' to look me over--
eh? All right, I'll stop at the store and get a clean
collar. I wouldn't like her to see the print of that
tiger's claw on my neck."
"There's her address the Gainsborough Studios.
Drop me at Mouquin's and I'll have the table set in one
of the small rooms upstairs. I'll meet you at the
door."
Jim glanced at the address, put it in his pocket
and helped her draw on her heavy coat.
"You'll be nice to Jane? I want her to like you.
She's the only real friend I've ever had in New York."
"I'll do my best for you, little girl," he
promised.
He dropped her at the wooden cottage-front on Sixth
Avenue near Twenty-eighth Street, and returned in
twenty minutes with Jane.
As the tall artist led the way upstairs, Jim
whispered:
"Say, for God's sake, let me out of this!"
"Why?"
"She's a frost. If I have to sit beside her an
hour I'll catch cold and die. I swear it; save me!
Save my life!"
"Sh! It's all right. She's fine and generous when
you know her."
They had reached the door and Mary pushed him in.
There was no help for it. He'd have to make the most
of it.
The dinner was a dismal failure.
Jane Anderson was polite and genial, but there was
a straight look of wonder in her clear gray eyes that
froze the blood in Jim's veins.
Mary tried desperately for the first half-hour to
put him at his ease. It was useless. The attack of
Ella had upset his nerves, and the unexpressed
hostility of Jane had completely crushed his spirits.
He tried to talk once, stammered and lapsed into a
sullen silence from which nothing could stir him.
The two girls at last began to discuss their own
affairs and the dinner ended in a sickening failure
that depressed and angered Mary.
The agony over at last, she rose and turned to Jim:
"You can go now, sir--I'll take Jane home with me
for a friendly chat."
"Thank God!" he whispered, grinning in spite of his
effort to keep a straight face.
"Tomorrow?" he asked in low tones.
"At eight o'clock."
Jim bowed awkwardly to Jane, muttered something
inarticulate and rushed to his car.
The two girls walked in silence through Twenty-
eighth Street to Broadway and thence across the Square.
Seated in her room, Mary could contain her pent-up
rage no longer.
"Jane Anderson, I'm furious with you! How could
you be so rude--so positively insulting!"
"Insulting?"
"Yes. You stared at him in cold disdain as if he
were a toad under your feet!"
"I assure you, dear----"
"Why did you do it?"
The artist rose, walked to the window, looked out
on the Square for a moment, extended her hand and laid
it gently on Mary's shoulder.
"You've made up your mind to marry this man,
honey?"
"I certainly have," was the emphatic answer.
Jane paused.
"And all in seven days?"
"Seven days or seven years--what does it matter?
He's my mate--we love--it's Fate."
"It's incredible!"
"What's incredible?"
"Such madness."
"Perhaps love is madness--the madness that makes
life worth the candle. I've never lived before the
past week."
"And you, the dainty, cultured, pious little saint,
will marry this--this----"
"Say it! I want you to be frank----"
"Perfectly frank?"
"Absolutely."
"This coarse, ugly, illiterate brute----"
"Jane Anderson, how dare you!" Mary sprang to her
feet, livid with rage.
"I asked if I might be frank. Shall I lie to you?
Or shall I tell you what I think?"
"Say what you please; it doesn't matter," Mary
interrupted angrily.
"I only speak at all because I love you. Your
common-sense should tell you that I speak with
reluctance. But now that I have spoken, let me beg of
you for your father's sake, for your dead mother's
sake, for my sake--I'm your one disinterested friend
and you know that my love is real--for the sake of your
own soul's salvation in this world and the next--don't
marry that brute! Commit suicide if you will--jump off
the bridge--take poison, cut your throat, blow your
brains out--but, oh dear God, not this!"
"And why, may I ask?" was the cold question.
"He's in no way your equal in culture, in
character, in any of the essentials on which the
companionship of marriage must be based----"
"He's a diamond in the rough," Mary staunchly
asserted.
"He's in the rough, all right! The only diamond
about him is the one in his red scarf--`Take it from
me, Kiddo! Take it from me!'"
Her last sentence was a quotation from Jim, her
imitation of his slang so perfect Mary's cheeks flamed
anew with anger.
"I'll teach him to use good English--never fear.
In a month he'll forget his slang and his red scarf."
"You mean that in a month you'll forget to use good
English and his style of dress will be yours. Oh,
honey, can't you see that such a man will only drag you
down, down to his level? Can it be possible that you--
that you really love him?"
"I adore him and I'm proud of his love!"
"Now listen! You believe in an indissoluble
marriage, don't you?"
"Yes----"
"It's the first article of your creed--that
marriage is a holy sacrament, that no power on earth or
in hell can ever dissolve its bonds? Fools rush in
where angels fear to tread, my dear! They always
have--they always will, I suppose. This is peculiarly
true of your type of woman--the dainty, clinging girl
of religious enthusiasm. You're peculiarly susceptible
to the physical power of a brutal lover. Your soul
glories in submission to this force. The more coarse
and brutal its attraction the more abject and joyful
the surrender. Your religion can't save you because
your religion is purely emotional--it is only
another manifestation of your sex emotions."
"How can you be so sacrilegious!" the girl
interrupted with a look of horror.
"It may shock you, dear, but I'm telling you one of
the simplest truths of Nature. You'd as well know it
now as later. The moment you wake to realize that your
emotions have been deceived and bankrupted, your faith
will collapse. At least keep, your grip on common-
sense. Down in the cowardly soul of every weak woman--
perhaps of every woman--is the insane desire to be
dominated by a superior brute force. The woman of the
lower classes--the peasant of Russia, for example,
whose sex impulses are of all races the most violent--
refuses with scorn the advances of the man who will not
strike her. The man who can't beat his wife is beneath
contempt--he is no man at all----"
Mary broke into a laugh.
"Really, Jane, you cease to be serious you're a
joke. For Heaven's sake use a little common-sense
yourself. You can't be warning me that my lover is
marrying me in order to use his fists on me?"
"Perhaps not, dear,"--the artist smiled; "there
might be greater depths for one of your training and
character. I'm just telling you the plain truth
about the haste with which you're rushing into
this marriage. There's nothing divine in it. There's
no true romance of lofty sentiment. It's the simplest
and most elemental of all the brutal facts of animal
life. That it is resistless in a woman of your culture
and refinement makes it all the more pathetic----"
The girl rose with a gesture of impatience.
"It's no use, Jane dear; we speak a different
language. I don't in the least know what you're
talking about, and what's more, I'm glad I don't. I've
a vague idea that your drift is indecent. But we're
different. I realize that. I don't sit in judgment on
you. You're wasting your breath on me. I'm going into
this marriage with my eyes wide open. It's the
fulfillment of my brightest hopes and aspirations.
That I shall be happy with this man and make him
supremely happy I know by an intuition deeper and truer
than reason. I'm going to trust that intuition without
reservation."
"All right, honey," the artist agreed with a smile.
"I won't say anything more, except that you're fooling
yourself about the depth of this intuitive knowledge.
Your infatuation is not based on the verdict of your
deepest and truest instincts."
"On what, then?"
"The crazy ideals of the novels you've been
reading--that's all."
"Ridiculous!"
"You're absolutely sure, for instance, that God
made just one man the mate of one woman, aren't you?"
"As sure as that I live."
"Where did you learn it?"
"So long ago I can't remember."
"Not in your Bible?"
"No."
"The Sunday school?"
"No."
"Craddock didn't tell you that, did he?"
"Hardly----"
"I thought not. He has too much horse-sense in
spite of his emotional gymnastics. You learned it in
the first dime-novel you read."
"I never read a dime-novel in my life," she
interrupted, indignantly.
"I know--you paid a dollar and a quarter for it--
but it was a dime-novel. The philosophy of this school
of trash you have built into a creed of life. How can
you be so blind? How can you make so tragic a
blunder?"
"That's just it, Jane: I couldn't if your
impressions of his character were true. I
couldn't make a mistake about so vital a question. I
couldn't love him if he really were a coarse,
illiterate brute. What you see is only on the surface.
He hasn't had his chance yet----"
"Who is he? What does he do? Who are his people?"
"He has no people----"
"I thought not."
"I love him all the more deeply," she went on
firmly, "because of his miserable childhood. I'll do
my best to make up for the years of cruelty and hunger
and suffering through which he passed. What right have
you to sit in judgment on him without a hearing?
You've known him two hours----"
Jane shrugged her shoulders.
"Two minutes was quite enough."
"And you judge by what standard?"
"My five senses, and my sixth sense above all. One
look at his square bulldog jaw, his massive neck and
the deformity of his delicate hands and feet! I hear
the ignorant patois of the East Side underworld. I
smell the brimstone in his suppressed rage at my
dislike. There's something uncanny in the sensuous
droop of his heavy eyelids and the glitter of his
steel-blue eyes. There's something incongruous in
his whole personality. I was afraid of him the moment
I saw him."
Mary broke into hysterical laughter.
"And if my five senses and my intuitions contradict
yours? Who is to decide? If I loved him on sight----
If I looked into his eyes and saw the soul of my mate?
If their cold fires thrill me with inexpressible
passion? If I see in his massive neck and jaw the
strength of an irresistible manhood, the power to win
success and to command the world? If I see in his
slender hands and small feet lines of exquisite
beauty--am I to crush my senses and strangle my love to
please your idiotic prejudice?"
Jane threw up her hands in despair.
"Certainly not! If you're blind and deaf I can't
keep you from committing suicide. I'd lock you up in
an asylum for the insane if I had the power to save you
from the clutches of the brute."
Mary drew herself erect and faced her friend.
"Please don't repeat that word in my hearing--
there's a limit to friendship. I think you'd better
go----"
Jane rose and walked quickly to the door, her lips
pressed firmly.
"As you like--our lives will be far apart from
tonight. It's just as well."
She closed the door with a bang and reached the
head of the stairs before Mary threw her arms around
her neck.
"Please, dear, forgive me--don't go in anger."
The older woman kissed her tenderly, glad of the
dim light to hide her own tears.
"There, it's all right, honey--I won't remember it.
Forgive me for my ugly words."
"I love him, Jane--I love him! It's Fate. Can't
you understand?"
"Yes, dear, I understand, and I'll love you
always--good-by."
"You'll come to my wedding?"
"Perhaps----"
"I'll let you know----"
Another kiss, and Jane Anderson strode down the
stairs and out into the night with a sickening,
helpless fear in her heart.
CHAPTER VIII
JIM'S TRIAL
The quarrel had left Mary in a quiver of exalted rage.
How dare a friend trample her most sacred feelings!
She pitied Jane Anderson and her tribe--these modern
feminine leaders of a senseless revolution against
man--they were crazy. They had all been disappointed
in some individual and for that reason set themselves
up as the judges of mankind.
"Thank God my soul has not been poisoned!" she
exclaimed aloud with fervor. "How strange that these
women who claim such clear vision can be so stupidly
blind!"
She busied herself with her little household, and
made up her mind once and for all time to be done with
such friendships. The friendship of such women was a
vain thing. They were vicious cats at heart--not like
her gentle Persian kitten whose soul was full of sleepy
sunlight. These modern insurgents were wild, half-
starved stray cats that had been hounded and
beaten until they had lapsed into their elemental brute
instincts. They were so aggravating, too, they
deserved no sympathy.
Again she thanked God that she was not one of
them--that her heart was still capable of romantic
love--a love so sudden and so overwhelming that it
could sweep life before it in one mad rush to its
glorious end.
She woke next morning with a dull sense of
depression. The room was damp and chilly. It was
storming. The splash of rain against the window and
the muffled roar from the street below meant that the
wind was high and the day would be a wretched one
outside.
They couldn't take their ride.
It was a double disappointment. She had meant to
have him dash down to Long Beach and place the ring on
her finger seated on that same bright sand-dune
overlooking the sea. Instead, they must stay indoors.
Jim was not at his best indoors. She loved him behind
the wheel with his hand on the pulse of that racer.
The machine seemed a part of his being. He breathed
his spirit into its steel heart, and together they
swept her on and on over billowy clouds through the
gates of Heaven.
There was no help for it. They would spend
the time together in her room planning the future.
It would be sweet--these intimate hours in her home
with the man she loved.
Should she spend a whole day alone there with him?
Was it just proper? Was it really safe? Nonsense!
The vile thoughts which Jane had uttered had poisoned
her, after all. She hated her self that she could
remember them. And yet they filled her heart with
dread in spite of every effort to laugh them off.
"How could Jane Anderson dare say such things?" she
muttered angrily. "`A coarse, illiterate brute!' It's
a lie! a lie! a lie!" She stamped her foot in rage.
"He's strong and brave and masterful--a man among men--
he's my mate and I love him!"
And yet the frankness with which her friend had
spoken had in reality disturbed her beyond measure.
Through every hour of the day her uneasiness increased.
After all she was utterly alone and her life had been
pitifully narrow. Her knowledge of men she had drawn
almost exclusively from romantic fiction.
It was just a little strange that Jim persisted in
living so completely in the present and the future. He
had told her of his pitiful childhood. He had
told her of his business. It had been definite--the
simple statement he made--and she accepted it without
question until Jane Anderson had dropped these ugly
suspicions. She hated the meddler for it.
In the light of such suspicions the simplest,
bravest man might seem a criminal. How could her
friend be blind to the magnetism of this man's powerful
personality? Bah! She was jealous of their perfect
happiness. Why are women so contemptible?
She began a careful study of every trait of her
lover's character, determined to weigh him by the
truest standards of manhood. Certainly he was no
weakling. The one abomination of her soul was the type
of the city degenerate she saw simpering along Broadway
and Fifth Avenue at times. Jim was brave to the point
of rashness. No man with an ounce of cowardice in his
being could handle a car in every crisis with such cool
daring and perfect control. He was strong. He could
lift her body as if it were a feather. His arms
crushed her with terrible force. He could earn a
living for them both. There could be no doubt about
that. His faultless clothes, the ease with which he
commanded unlimited credit among the automobile
manufacturers and dealers--every supply store on
Broadway seemed to know him--left no doubt on that
score.
There was just a bit of mystery and reserve about
his career as an inventor. His first success that had
given him a start he had not explained. The big deal
about the new carburetor she could, of course,
understand. He had a workshop all his own. He had
told her this the first day they met. She would ask
him to take her to see it this afternoon. The storm
would prevent the trip to the Beach. She would ask
this, not because she doubted his honesty, but because
she really wished to see the place in which he worked.
It was her workshop now, as well as his.
For a moment her suspicions were sickening.
Suppose he had romanced about his workshop and his
room? Supposed he lived somewhere in the squalid slums
of the lower East Side and his people, after all, were
alive? Perhaps a drunken father and a coarse, brutal
mother--and sisters----
She stopped with a frown and clenched her fists.
She would ask Jim to show her his workshop. That
would be enough. If he had told her the truth about
that she would make up to him in tender abandonment of
utter trust for every suspicion she harbored.
The car was standing in front of her door. He
waved for her to come down.
"Jump right in!" he called gayly. "I've got an
extra rubber blanket for you."
"In the storm, Jim?" she faltered.
"Surest thing you know. It's great to fly through
a storm. You can just ride on its wings. Throw on
your raincoat and come on quick! I'm going to run down
to the Beach. Who's afraid of an old storm with this
thing under us?"
Her heart gave a bound. Her longing had reached
her lover and brought him through the storm to do her
bidding. It was wonderful--this oneness of soul and
body.
She was happy again--supremely, divinely happy.
The man by her side knew and understood. She knew and
understood. She loved this daring spirit that rose to
the wind--this iron will that brooked no interference
with his plans, even from Nature, when it crossed his
love.
The sting of the raindrops against her cheek was
exhilarating. The car glided over the swimming roadway
like a great gray gull skimming the beach at low tide.
Her soul rose. The sun of a perfect faith and love was
shining now behind the clouds.
She nestled close to his side and watched him
tenderly from the corners of her half-closed eyes, her
whole being content in his strength. The idea of
dashing through a blinding rain to the Beach on such a
day would have been to her mind an unthinkable piece of
madness. She was proud of his daring. It would be
hers to shield from the storms of life. She loved the
rugged lines of his massive jaw in profile. How could
Jane be such a fool as to call him ugly!
The weather, of course, prevented them from walking
up the Beach to their sand-dune. The walk would have
been all right--but it was out of the question to sit
down there and give her the ring in the pouring rain.
She knew this as well as he. She knew, too, that he
had the ring in his pocket, though he had carefully
refrained from referring to it in any way.
He led her to a secluded nook behind a pillar in
the little parlor. The hotel was deserted. They had
the building almost to themselves. A log fire crackled
in the open fireplace, and he drew a settee close. The
wind had moderated and the rain was pouring down in
straight streams, rolling in soft music on the roof.
He drew the ring from his pocket.
"Well, Kiddo, I got it. The fellow said this was all
right."
He held the tiny gold band before her shining
eyes.
"Slip it on!" she whispered.
"Which one?"
"This one, silly!"
She extended her third finger, as he pressed the
ring slowly on.
"Seems to me a mighty little one and a mighty cheap
one, but he said it was the thing."
"It's all right, dear," she whispered. "Kiss me!"
He pressed his lips to hers and held them until she
sank back and lifted her hand in warning.
"Be careful!"
"Whose afraid?" Jim muttered, glancing over his
shoulder toward the door. "Now tell me what day--
tomorrow?"
"Nonsense, man!" she cried. "Give me time to
breathe----"
"What for?"
"Just to realize that I'm engaged--to plan and
think and dream of the wonderful day."
"We're losing time----"
"We'll never live these wonderful hours over again,
dear."
Jim's face fell and his voice was pitiful in its
funereal notes: "Lord, I thought the ring settled it."
"And so it does, dear--it does-----"
"Not if that long-legged spider that took dinner
with us the other night gets in her fine work. I'll
bet that she handed me a few when you got home?"
Mary was silent.
"Now didn't she?"
"To the best of her ability--yes--but I didn't mind
her silly talk."
"Gee, but I'd love to give her a bouquet of poison
ivy!"
"We had an awful quarrel----"
"And you stood up for me?"
"You know I did!"
"All right, I don't give a tinker's damn what
anybody says if you stand by me! In all this world
there's just you--for me. There's never been anybody
else--and there never will be. I'm that kind."
"And I love you for it!" she cried, with rapture
pressing his hand in both of hers.
"What did she say about me, anyhow?"
"Nothing worth repeating. I've forgotten it."
Jim held her gaze.
"It's funny how you love anybody the minute you lay
eyes on 'em--or hate 'em the same way. I wanted to
choke her the minute she opened her yap to me."
"Forget it, dear," she broke in briskly. "I want
you to take me to see your workshop tomorrow--will
you?"
A flash of suspicion shot from the depths of his
eyes.
"Did she tell you to ask me that?"
"Of course not! I'm just interested in everything
you do. I want to see where you work."
"It's no place for a sweet girl to go--that part of
town."
"But I'll be with you."
"I don't want you to go down there," he sullenly
maintained.
"But why, dear?"
"It's a low, dirty place. I had to locate the shop
there to get the room I needed for the rent I could
pay. It's not fit for you. I'm going to move uptown
in a little while."
"Please let me go," she pleaded.
He shook his head emphatically.
"No."
She turned away to hide the tears. The first real,
hideous fear she had ever had about him caught her
heart in spite of every effort to fight it down. His
workshop might be a myth after all. He had failed in
the first test to which she had put him. It was
horrible. All the vile suggestions of Jane Anderson
rushed now into her memory.
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