The Foolish Virgin

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"That's just the trouble: you can't do it with your
fists. You can't compel the respect of cultured
men and women by physical force. We've got to win with
other weapons."

"All right, Kiddo--dope it out for me," he
responded lazily. "Dope it out----"

Her lips quivered with the painful recognition of
the task before her. Yet when she spoke, her voice was
low and sweet and its tones even. She gave no sign to
the man whose heavy form rested in her arms.

"Then from today we must begin to cut out every
word of slang--it's a bargain?"

"Sure, Mike--I promised!"

"Cut `Sure Mike!'"

She raised her finger severely.

"All right, teacher," he drawled. "What'll we put
in Sure Mike's place? I've found him a handy man!"

"Say `certainly.'"

Jim grinned good-naturedly.

"Aw hell, Kiddo--that sounds punk!"

"And HELL, Jim, isn't a nice word----"

"Gee, Kid, now look here--can't get along with out
HELL--leave me that one just a little while."

She shook her head.

"No."

"No?"

"And PUNK is expressive, but not suited to
parlor use."

"All right--t'ell with PUNK!" He turned and
looked. "What's the matter now?" he asked.

"Don't you realize what you've just said?"

"What did I say?"

She turned away to hide a tear.

He threw his arms around her neck and drew her lips
down to his.

"Ah, don't worry, Kiddo--I'll do better next time.
Honest to God, I will. That's enough for today. Just
let's love now. T'ell with the rest."

She smiled in answer.

"You promise to try honestly?"

He raised his hand in solemn vow.

"S'help me!"

Each day's trial ended in a laugh and a kiss until
at last Jim refused to promise any more. He grinned in
obstinate, good-natured silence and let her do the
worrying.

She watched him with growing wonder and alarm. He
gradually lapsed into little coarse, ugly habits at the
table. She tried playfully to correct them. He took
it good-naturedly at first and then ignored her
suggestions as if she were a kitten complaining at his
feet.

She studied him with baffling rage at the mystery
of his personality. The long silences between them
grew from hour to hour. She could see that he was
restless now at the isolation of their sand-island
home. The queer lights and shadows that played in his
cold blue eyes told only too plainly that his mind was
back again in the world of battle. He was fighting
something, too.

She was glad of it. She could manage him better
there. She would throw him into the company of
educated people and rouse his pride and ambition. She
heard his announcement of their departure on the eighth
day with positive joy.

"Well, Kiddo," he began briskly, "we've got to be
moving. Time to get back to work now. The old town
and the little shop down in Avenue B have been calling
me."

"Today, Jim?" she asked quickly.

"Right away. We'll catch the first train north,
stop two days, Christmas Eve and Christmas, in
Asheville, and then for old New York!"

The journey along the new railroad built on
concrete bridges over miles of beautiful waters was one
of unalloyed joy. They had passed over this stretch of
marvelous engineering at night on their trip down and
had not realized its wonders. For hours the train
seemed to be flying on velvet wings through the ocean.

She sat beside her lover and held his hand. In
spite of her enthusiasm, he would doze. At every turn
of entrancing view she would pinch his arm:

"Look, Jim! Look!"

He would lift his heavy eyelids, grunt good-
naturedly and doze again.

In the dining-car she was in mortal terror at first
lest he should lapse into the coarse table manners into
which he had fallen in camp. She laid his napkin
conspicuously on his plate and saw that he had opened
and put it in place across his lap before ordering the
meals.

The moment he found himself in a crowd, the lights
began to flash in his eyes, his broad shoulders lifted
and his whole being was at once alert and on guard. He
followed his wife's lead with unerring certainty.

She renewed her faith in his early reformation,
though his character was a puzzle. He seemed to be
forever watching out of the corners of his slumbering
eyes. She wondered what it meant.

CHAPTER XIII

THE REAL MAN

They arrived in Asheville the night before Christmas
Eve. Jim listened to his wife's prattle about the
wonderful views with quiet indifference.

They stopped at the Battery Park Hotel, and she
hoped the waning moon would give them at least a
glimpse of the beautiful valley of the French Broad and
Swannanoa rivers and the dark, towering ranges of
mountains among the stars. She made Jim wait on the
balcony of the room for half an hour, but the clouds
grew denser and he persisted in nodding.

His head dipped lower than usual, and she laughed.

"Poor old sleepy-head!"

"For the love o' Mike, Kiddo--me for the hay.
Won't them mountains wait till morning?"

"All right!" she answered cheerily. "I'll pull you
out at sunrise. The sunrise from our window will be
glorious."

He rose and stretched his body like a young, well
fed tiger.

"I think it's prettier from the bed. But have it
your own way--have it your own way. I'll agree to
anything if you lemme go to sleep now."

She rose as the first gray fires of dawn began to
warm the cloud-banks on the eastern horizon, stood
beside her window and watched in silent ecstasy. Jim
was sleeping heavily. She would not wake him until the
glory of the sunrise was at its height. She loved to
watch the changing lights and shadows in sky and valley
and on distant mountain peaks as the light slowly
filtered over the eastern hills.

She had recovered from the depression of the last
days of their camp. The journey back into the world
had improved Jim's manners. There could be no doubt
about his ambitions. His determination to be a
millionaire was the lever she now meant to work in
raising his social aspirations.

Why should she feel depressed?

Their married life had just begun. The two weeks
they had passed on their honeymoon had been happy
beyond her dreams of happiness. Somehow her
imagination had failed to give any conception of the
wonder and glory of this revelation of life. His
little lapses of selfishness on their sand island
no doubt came from ignorance of what was expected of
him.

For one thing she felt especially thankful. There
had been no ugly confessions of a shady past to cloud
the joy of their love. Her lover might be ignorant of
the ways of polite society. He was equally free of its
sinister vices. She thanked God for that. The soul of
the man she had married was clean of all memories of
women. The love he gave was fierce in its unrestrained
passion--but it was all hers. She gloried in its
strength.

She made up her mind, standing there in the soft
light of the dawn, that she would bend his iron will to
her own in the growing, sweet intimacy of their married
life and threw her fears to the winds.

The thin, fleecy clouds that hung over the low
range of the eastern foreground were all aglow now,
with every tint of the rainbow, while the sun's bed
beyond the hills was flaming in scarlet and gold.

She clapped her hands in ecstasy.

"Jim! Jim, dear!"

He made no response, and she rushed to his side and
whispered:

"You must see this sunrise--get up quick, quick,
dear. It's wonderful."

"What's the matter?" he muttered.

"The sunrise over the mountains--quick--it's
glorious."

His heavy eyelids drooped and closed. He dropped
on the pillow and buried his face out of sight.

"Ah, Jim dear, do come--just to please me."

"I'm dead, Kiddo--dead to the world," he sighed.
"Don't like to see the sun rise. I never did. Come on
back and let's sleep----"

His last words were barely audible. He was
breathing heavily as his lips ceased to move.

She gave it up, returned to the window and watched
the changing colors until the white light from the
sun's face had touched with life the last shadows of
the valleys and flashed its signals from the farthest
towering peaks.

Her whole being quivered in response to the beauty
of this glorious mountain world. The air was wine.
She loved the sapphire skies and the warm, lazy,
caressing touch of the sun of the South.

A sense of bitterness came, just for a moment, that
the man she had chosen for her mate had no eye to see
these wonders and no ear to hear their music. During
the madness of his whirlwind courtship she had gotten
the impression that his spirit was sensitive to
beauty--to the waters of the bay, the sea and the
wooded hills. She must face the facts. Their stay on
the island had convinced her that he had eyes only for
her. She must make the most of it.

It was ten o'clock before Jim could be persuaded to
rise and get breakfast. She literally pulled him up
the stairs to the observatory on the tower of the
hotel.

"What's the game, Kiddo? What's the game?" he
grumbled.

"Ask me no questions. But do just as I tell you;
come on!"

Her face was radiant, her hair in a tangle of
riotous beauty about her forehead and temples, her eyes
sparkling.

"Don't look till I tell you!" she cried, as they
emerged on the little minaret which crowns the tower.

"Now open and see the glory of the Lord!" she cried
with joyous awe.

The day was one of matchless beauty. The clouds
that swung low in the early morning had floated higher
and higher till they hung now in shining billows above
the highest balsam-crowned peaks in the distance.

In every direction, as far as the eye could
reach, north, south, east, west, the dark ranges
mounted in the azure skies until the farthest dim lines
melted into the heavens.

"Oh, Jim dear, isn't it wonderful! We're lucky to
get this view on our first day. It's such a good
omen."

Jim opened his eyes lazily and puffed his cigarette
in a calm, patronizing way.

"Tough sledding we'd have had with an automobile
over those hills," he said. "We'll try it after lunch,
though."

"We'll go for a ride?" she cried joyfully.

"Yep. Got to hunt up the folks. The mountains
near Asheville!" he said with disgust. "I should say
they are near--and far, too. Holy smoke, I'll bet we
get lost!"

"Nonsense----"

"Where's the Black Mountains, I wonder?" he asked
suddenly.

"Over there!" She pointed to the giant peaks
projecting here and there in dim, blue waves beyond the
Great Craggy Range in the foreground.

"Holy Moses! Do we have to climb those crags
before we start?"

"To go to Black Mountain?"

"Yes. That's where the lawyer said they
lived, under Cat-tail Peak in the Black Mountain
Range--wherever t'ell that is."

"No, no! You don't climb the Great Craggy; you go
around this end of it and follow the Swannanoa River
right up to the foot of Mount Mitchell, the highest
peak this side of the Rockies. The Cat-tail is just
beyond Mount Mitchell."

"You've been there?" he asked in surprise.

"Once, with a party from Asheville. We spent three
days and slept in caves."

"Suppose you'd know the way now?"

"We couldn't miss it. We follow the bed of the
Swannanoa to its source-----"

"Then that settles it. We'll go by ourselves. I
don't want any mutt along to show us the way. We
couldn't get lost nohow, could we?"

"Of course not--all the roads lead to Asheville.
We can ask the way to the house you want, when we reach
the little stopping place at the foot of Mount
Mitchell."

"Gee, Kid, you're a wonder!" he exclaimed
admiringly. "Couldn't get along without you, now could
I?"

"I hope not, sir!"

"You bet I couldn't! We'll start right away. The
roads will give us a jolt----"

He turned suddenly to go.

"Wait--wait a minute, dear," she pleaded. "You
haven't seen this gorgeous view to the southwest, with
Mount Pisgah looming in the center like some vast
cathedral spire--look, isn't it glorious?"

"Fine! Fine!" he responded in quick, businesslike
tones.

"You can look for days and weeks and not begin to
realize the changing beauty of these mountains, clothed
in eternal green! Just think, dear, Mount Pisgah,
there, is forty miles away, and it looks as if you
could stroll over to it in an hour's walk. And there
are twenty-three magnificent peaks like that, all of
them more than six thousand feet high----"

She paused with a frown. He was neither looking
nor listening. He had fallen into a brown study; his
mind was miles away.

"You're not listening, Jim--nor seeing anything,"
she said reproachfully.

"No--Kiddo, we must get ready for that trip. I've
got a letter for a lawyer downtown. I'll find him and
hire a car. I'll be back here for you in an hour.
You'll be ready?"

"Right away, in half an hour----"

"Just pack a suit-case for us both. We'll
stay one night. I'll take a bag, too, that I have
in my trunk."

It was noon before he returned with a staunch
touring car ready for the trip. He opened the little
steamer trunk which he had always kept locked and took
from it a small leather bag. He placed it on the
floor, and, in spite of careful handling, the ring of
metal inside could be distinctly heard.

"What on earth have you got in that queer black
bag?" she asked in surprise.

"Oh, just a lot o' junk from the shop. I thought I
might tinker with it at odd times. I don't want to
leave it here. It's got one of my new models in it."

He carried the bag in his hand, refusing to allow
the porter who came for the suit-case to touch it.

He threw the suit-case in the bottom of the
tonneau. The bag he stowed carefully under the
cushions of the rear seat. The moment he placed his
hand on the wheel of the machine, he was at his best.
Every trace of the street gamin fell from him. Again
he was the eagle-eyed master of time and space. The
machine answered his touch with more than human
obedience. He knew how to humor its mood. He
conserved its power for a hill with unerring accuracy
and threw it over the grades with rarely a pause
to change his speeds. He could turn the sharp curves
with such swift, easy grace that he scarcely caused
Mary's body to swerve an inch. He could sense a rough
place in the road and glide over it with velvet touch.

A tire blew out, five miles up the stream from
Asheville, and the easy, business-like deliberation
with which he removed the old and adjusted the new, was
a revelation to Mary of a new phase of his character.

He never once grunted, or swore, or lost his poise,
or manifested the slightest impatience. He set about
his task coolly, carefully, skillfully, and finished it
quickly and silently.

His long silences at last began to worry her. An
invisible barrier had reared itself between them. The
impression was purely mental--but it was none the less
real and distressing.

There was a look of aloof absorption about him she
had never seen before. At first she attributed it to
the dread of meeting his kinsfolk for the first time,
his fear of what they might be like or what they might
think of him.

He answered her questions cheerfully but
mechanically. Sometimes he stared at her in a cold,
impersonal way and gave no answer, as if her
questions were an impertinence and she were not of
sufficient importance to waste his breath on.

Unable at last to endure the strain, she burst out
impatiently:

"What on earth's the matter with you, Jim?"

"Why?" he asked softly.

"You haven't spoken to me in half an hour, and I've
asked you two questions."

"Just studying about something, Kiddo, something
big. I'll tell you sometime, maybe--not now."

Slowly a great fear began to shape itself in her
heart. The real man behind those slumbering eyes she
had never known. Who was he?

CHAPTER XIV

UNWELCOME GUESTS

While she was yet puzzling over the strange mood of
absorbed brooding into which Jim had fallen, his face
suddenly lighted, and he changed with such rapidity
that her uneasiness was doubled.

They had reached the stretches of deep forest at
the foot of the Black Mountain ranges. The Swannanoa
had become a silver thread of laughing, foaming spray
and deep, still pools beneath the rocks. The fields
were few and small. The little clearings made scarcely
an impression in the towering virgin forests.

"Great guns, Kiddo!" he exclaimed, "this is some
country! By George, I had no idea there was such a
place so close to New York!"

She looked at him with uneasy surprise. What could
be in his mind? The solemn gorge through which they
were passing gave no entrancing views of clouds or sky
or towering peaks. Its wooded cliffs hung
ominously overhead in threatening shadows. The scene
had depressed her after the vast sunlit spaces of sky,
of shining valleys and cloud-capped, sapphire peaks on
which they had turned their backs.

"You like this, Jim?" she asked.

"It's great--great!"

"I thought that waterfall we just passed was very
beautiful."

"I didn't see it. But this is something like it.
You're clean out of the world here--and there ain't a
railroad in twenty miles!"

The deeper the shadows of tree and threatening
crag, the higher Jim's strange spirit seemed to rise.

She watched him with increasing fear. How little
she knew the real man! Could it be possible that this
lonely, unlettered boy of the streets of lower New
York, starved and stunted in childhood, had within him
the soul of a great poet? How else could she explain
the sudden rapture over the threatening silences and
shadows of these mountain gorges which had depressed
her? And yet his utter indifference to the glories of
beautiful waters, his blindness at noon before the most
wonderful panorama of mountains and skies on which she
had ever gazed, contradicted the theory of the poetic
soul. A poet must see beauty where she had seen
it--and a thousand wonders her eyes had not found.

His elation was uncanny. What could it mean?

He was driving now with a skill that was
remarkable, a curious smile playing about his drooping,
Oriental eyelids. A wave of fierce resentment swept
her heart. She was a mere plaything in this man's
life. The real man she had never seen. What was he
thinking about? What grim secret lay behind the
mysterious smile that flickered about the corners of
those eyes? He was not thinking of her. The mood was
new and cold and cynical, for all the laughter he might
put in it.

She asked herself the question of his past, his
people, his real life-history. The only answer was his
baffling, mysterious smile.

A frown suddenly clouded his face.

"Hello! Ye're running right into a man's yard!"

Mary lifted her head with quick surprise.

"Why yes, it's the stopping place for the parties
that climb Mount Mitchell. I remember it. We stayed
all night here, left our rig, and started next morning
at sunrise on horseback to climb the trail."

"Pretty near the jumping-off place, then," he
remarked. "We'll ask the way to Cat-tail Peak."

He stopped the car in front of the low-pitched,
weather-stained frame house and blew the horn.

A mountain woman with three open-eyed, silent
children came slowly to meet them.

She smiled pleasantly, and without embarrassment
spoke in a pleasant drawl:

"Won't you 'light and look at your saddle?"

The expression caught Jim's fancy, and he broke
into a roar of laughter. The woman blushed and laughed
with him. She couldn't understand what was the matter
with the man. Why should he explode over the simple
greeting in which she had expressed her pleasure at
their arrival?

Anyhow, she was an innkeeper's wife, and her
business was to make folks feel at home--so she laughed
again with Jim.

"You know that's the funniest invitation I ever got
in a car," he cried at last. "We fly in these things
sometimes. And when you said, `Won't you 'light,'"--he
paused and turned to his wife--"I could just feel
myself up in the air on that big old racer's back."

"Won't you-all stay all night with us?" the soft
voice drawled again.

"Thank you, not tonight," Mary answered.

She waited for Jim to ask the way.

"No--not tonight," he repeated. "You happen to
know an old woman by the name of Owens who lives up
here?"

"Nance Owens?"

"That's her name."

"Lord, everybody knows old Nance!" was the smiling
answer.

"She ain't got good sense!" the tow-headed boy
spoke up.

"Sh!" the mother warned, boxing his ears.

"She's a little queer, that's all. Everybody knows
her in Buncombe and Yancey counties. Her house is
built across the county line. She eats in Yancey and
sleeps in Buncombe----"

"Yes," broke in the boy joyously, "an' when the
Sheriff o' Yancey comes, she moves back into Buncombe.
She's some punkin's on a green gourd vine, she is--if
she ain't got good sense."

His mother struck at him again, but he dodged the
blow and finished his speech without losing a word.

"Could you tell us the way to her house?"

"Keep right on this road, and you can't miss it."

"How far is it?"

"Oh, not far."

"No; right at the bottom o' the Cat's-tail," the
boy joyfully explained.

"He means the foot o' Cat-tail Peak!" the mother
apologized.

"How many miles?"

"Just a little ways--ye can't miss it; the third
house you come to on this road."

"You'll be there in three shakes of a sheep's
tail--in that thing!" the boy declared.

Jim waved his thanks, threw in his gear, and the
car shot forward on the level stretch of road beyond
the house. He slowed down when out of sight.

"Gee! I'd love to have that kid in a wood-shed
with a nice shingle all by ourselves for just ten
minutes."

"The people spoil him," Mary laughed. "The people
who stop there for the Mount Mitchell climb. He was a
baby when I was there six years ago"--she paused and a
rapt look crept into her eyes--"a beautiful little
baby, her first-born, and she was the happiest thing I
ever saw in my life."

Her voice sank to a whisper.

A vision suddenly illumined her own soul, and she
forgot her anxiety over Jim's queer moods.

Deeper and deeper grew the shadows of crag,
gorge, and primeval forest. The speedometer on the
foot-board registered five miles from the Mount
Mitchell house. They had passed two cabins by the way,
and still no sign of the third.

"Why couldn't she tell us how many miles, I'd like
to know?" Jim grumbled.

"It's the way of the mountain folk. They're
noncommittal on distances."

He stopped the car and lighted the lamps.

"Going to be dark in a minute," he said. "But I
like this place," he added.

He picked his way with care over the narrow road.
They crossed the little stream they were trailing, and
the car crawled over the rocks along the banks at a
snail's pace.

An owl called from a dead tree-top silhouetted
against an open space of sky ahead.

"Must be a clearing there," Jim muttered.

He stopped the car and listened for the sounds of
life about a house.

A vast, brooding silence filled the world. A wolf
howled from the edge of a distant crag somewhere
overhead.

"For God's sake!" Jim shivered. "What was that?"

"Only a mountain wolf crying for company."

"Wolves up here?" he asked in surprise.

"A few--harmless, timid, lonesome fellows. It
makes me sorry for them when I hear one."

"Great country! I like it!" Jim responded.

Again she wondered why. What a queer mixture of
strength and mystery--this man she had married!

He started the car, turned a bend in the road, and
squarely in front, not more than a hundred yards away,
gleamed a light in a cabin window--four tiny panes of
glass.

"By Geeminy, we come near stopping in the front
yard without knowing it!" he exclaimed. "Didn't we?"

"I'm glad she's at home!" Mary exclaimed. "The
light shines with a friendly glow in these deep
shadows."

"Afraid, Kiddo?" he asked lightly.

"I don't like these dark places."

"All right when you get used to 'em--safer than
daylight."

Again her heart beat at his queer speech. She
shivered at the thought of this uncanny trait of
character so suddenly developed today. She made an
effort to throw off her depression. It would vanish
with the sun tomorrow morning.

He picked his way carefully among the trees and
stopped in front of the cabin door. The little house
sat back from the road a hundred feet or more.

He blew his horn twice and waited.

A sudden crash inside, and the light went out. He
waited a moment for it to come back.

Only darkness and dead silence.

"Suppose she dropped dead and kicked over the
lamp?" Jim laughed.

"She probably took the lamp into another room."

"No; it went out too quick--and it went out with a
crash."

He blew his horn again.

Still no answer.

"Hello! Hello!" he called loudly.

Someone stirred at the door. Jim's keen ear was
turned toward the house.

"I heard her bar the door, I'll swear it."

"How foolish, Jim!" Mary whispered. "You couldn't
have heard it."

"All the same I did. Here's a pretty kettle of
fish! The old hellion's not even going to let us in."

He seized the lever of his horn and blew one
terrific blast after another, in weird, uncanny
sobs and wails, ending in a shriek like the last
cry of a lost soul.

"Don't, Jim!" Mary cried, shivering. "You'll
frighten her to death."

"I hope so."

"Go up and speak to her--and knock on the door."

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