 | FATE The Foolish Virgin |  |
3. 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
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
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
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
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
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
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,
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
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
"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
"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
"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
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?"
Mary smiled.
"Quite well — I've spent many happy hours in its quiet walks."
"You know that place the other side of the Mall — that ragged hill covered with rocks and trees and mountain laurel?"
"I've been there often."
"Would you mind going there where it's quiet — I've such a lot o' things I want to ask you — you won't mind the walk, will you?"
"Certainly not — we'll go there," Mary responded in even, business-like tones.
"Because, if you don't want to walk I'll call a cab, if you'll let me — "
"Not at all," was the quick answer. "I love to walk."
It was impossible for the girl to repress a smile at her ridiculous situation! If any human being had told her yesterday that she, Mary Adams, an old-fashioned girl with old-fashioned ideas of the proprieties of life, would have allowed herself to be picked up by an utter stranger in this unceremonious way, she would have resented the assertion as a personal insult — yet the preposterous and impossible thing had happened and she was growing each moment more and more deeply interested in the study of the remarkable youth by her side.
He was not handsome in the conventional sense. His features were too strong for that. An enemy might have called them coarse. Their first impression was of enormous strength and exhaustless vitality. He walked with a quick, military precision and planted his small feet on the pavement with a
The one feature that puzzled her was the size of his hands and feet. They were remarkably small and remarkable for their slender, graceful lines.
His eyes were another interesting feature. The lids drooped with a careless Oriental languor, as though he would shut out the glare of the full daylight, and yet the pupils flashed with a cold steel-blue fire. One look into his eyes and there could be no doubt that the man behind them was an interesting personality.
She wondered what his business could be. Not a lawyer or doctor or teacher certainly. His timidity in handling books was clear proof on that point. He was well groomed. His clothes were made by a first-class tailor.
Her heart thumped with a sudden fear. Perhaps he was some sort of criminal. His questions may have been a trick to lure her away. . . .
They had just crossed the broad plaza at Fifty-ninth Street and entered the walkway that leads to the Mall.
She stopped suddenly.
"It's too far to the hill beyond the Mall," she
"Sure, if you say so," he agreed.
He accepted the suggestion so simply, she regretted her suspicions, instantly changed her mind and said, smiling:
"No, we'll go on where we started. The long walk will do me good."
"All right," he laughed; "whatever you say's the law. I'm the little boy that does just what his teacher says."
She blushed and shot him a surprised look.
"Who told you that I was a teacher?" she asked, with a smile.
"Lord, nobody! I had no idea of such a thing. It never popped into my head that you do anything at all. You know, I was awful scared when I spoke to you?"
"Were you?" she laughed.
"Surest thing you know! I'd 'a' never screwed up my courage to do it if you hadn't 'a' looked so kind and gentle and sweet. I just knew you couldn't turn me down — "
There was no mistaking the genuineness of the apology for his presumption. She smiled a gracious
He broke into a laugh and lifted his hand in the sudden gesture of a traffic policeman commanding a halt.
"What is it?" she asked.
"You know I was so excited I clean forgot to introduce myself! What do you think o' that? You'll excuse me, won't you? My name's Jim Anthony. I'm sorry I can't give you any references to my folks. I haven't any — I'm a lost sheep in New York — no father or mother. That's why I'm so excited about this trip I'm plannin' down South. I hear I've got some people down there."
He stopped suddenly as if absorbed in the thought. Her heart went out to him in sympathy for this confession of his orphaned life.
"I'm Mary Adams," she smiled in answer. "I'm a teacher in the public schools."
"Gee — that accounts for it! I thought you looked like you knew everything in those books. And you've been to Asheville, too?"
"Yes."
"Suppose it's not as big a burg as New York?"
"Hardly — it's just a hustling mountain town of about twenty-five thousand people."
"Lot o' swells from around New York live down there, they tell me."
"Yes, the Vanderbilts have a beautiful castle just outside."
"Some mountains near Asheville?"
"Hundreds of square miles."
"Mountains in every direction?"
"As far as the eye can reach, one blue range piled above another until they're lost in the dim skies on the horizon."
"Gee, it may be pretty hard to find your folks if they just live in the mountains near Asheville?"
"Unless your directions are more explicit — I should think so."
"You know, I thought the mountains near Asheville was a bunch o' hills off one side like the Palisades, that you couldn't miss if you tried. I've never been outside of New York — since I can remember. I'd love to see real mountains."
The last sentence was spoken in a wistful pathos that touched Mary with its irresistible appeal. Her mother instincts responded to it in quick sympathy.
"You've missed a lot," she answered gravely.
"I'll bet I have. It's a rotten old town, this New York — "
He paused, and a queer light flashed from his steel eyes.
"Until you get your hand on its throat," he added, bringing his square jaws together.
Mary lifted her face with keen interest.
"And you've got it by the throat?"
"That's just what — little girl!" he cried, with a ring of pride. "You see, I'm an inventor and I won a little pile on my first trick. I've got a machine-shop in a room eight-by-ten over on the East Side."
"A machine-shop all your own?"
"Yep."
"I'd like to see it some day."
He shook his head emphatically.
"It's too dirty. I couldn't let a pretty girl like you in such a place." He paused and resumed the tone of his narrative where she interrupted him. "You see, I've just put a new crimp in a carburetor for the automobile folks. They're tickled to death over it and I've got automobiles to burn. Will you go to ride with me tomorrow?"
The teacher broke into a joyous laugh.
"Why do you laugh?" he asked awkwardly.
"Well, in the language of New York, that would be going some, wouldn't it?"
"And why not, I'd like to know?" he cried with scorn. "Who's to tell us we can't? You've no kids to bother you tomorrow. I'm my own boss. You've seen Asheville, but you've never seen New York until you sit down beside me in a big six-cylinder racing car I'm handlin' next week. Let me show it to you. I'll swing her around to your door at eight o'clock. In twenty-five minutes we'll clear the Bronx and shoot into New Rochelle. There'll be no cops out to bother us, and not a wheel in sight. It'll do you good. Let me take you! I owe you that much for bein' so nice to me today. Will you go with me?"
Mary hesitated.
"I'll think it over and let you know."
"Got a telephone?"
"No."
"Then you'll have to tell me before I go — won't you?"
"I suppose so," she answered demurely.
They passed the big fountain beyond the Mall and skirted the lake to the bridge, crossed, walked along the water's edge to the laurel-covered crags and found a seat alone in the summer house that hides among the trees on its highest point.
The roar of the city was dim and far away. The
"You'd almost think you're in the mountains up here, now wouldn't you?" he asked, after a moment's silence.
"Yes. I call this park my country estate. It costs me nothing to keep it in perfect order. The city pays for it all. But I own it. Every tree and shrub and flower and blade of grass, every statue and bird and animal in it is mine. I couldn't get more joy out of them if I had them inclosed behind an iron fence, and the deed to the land in my pocket — not half as much, for I'd be lonely and miserable without someone to see and enjoy it all with me."
"Gee, that's so, ain't it? I never looked at it like that before."
He gazed at her a long time in silent admiration, and then spoke briskly.
"Now tell me about this North Carolina and all those miles and square miles of mountains."
"You've a piece of paper and pencil?"
He lifted his hand school-boy fashion:
"Johnny on the spot, teacher!"
A blank-book and pencil he threw in her lap and leaned close.
"Tear the leaves out, if you like."
"No, I'll just draw the maps on the pages and leave them for you to study."
With deft touch she outlined in rough on the first page, the states of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Virginia and North Carolina, tracing his possible route by Trenton, Philadelphia, Wilmington, Dover, Norfolk and Raleigh, or by Washington, Richmond, and Danville to Greensboro.
"Either route you see," she said softly, "leads to Salisbury, where you strike the foothills of the mountains. It's about two hundred miles from there to Asheville and `The Land of the Sky.'"
For two hours she answered his eager, boyish questions about the country and its people, his eyes wide with admiration at her knowledge.
The sun was sinking in a sea of scarlet and purple clouds behind the tall buildings beside the Park before she realized that they had been talking for more than two hours.
She sprang to her feet, blushing and confused.
"Mercy, I had no idea it was so late."
"Why — is it late?" he asked incredulously.
"We must hurry — "
She brushed the stray ringlets of hair from her forehead, laughed and hurried down the pathway.
They crossed the Park and took the Madison Avenue line to Twenty-third Street. They were silent in the car. The roar of the traffic was deafening after the quiet of the summer house among the trees.
"I can see you home?" he inquired appealingly.
"We get off at Twenty-third Street."
They stood on the steps at her door beside the Square and there was a moment's awkward silence.
He lifted his hat with a little chivalrous bow.
"Tomorrow morning at eight o'clock in my car?"
She smiled and hesitated.
"You'll have a bully time!"
"It's Sunday," she stammered.
"Sure, that's why I asked you."
"I don't like to miss my church."
"You go to church every Sunday?" he asked in amazement.
"Yes."
"Well, just this once then. It'll do you good. And I'll drive as careful as a farmer."
"All right," she said in low tones, and extended her hand:
"Good night — "
"Good night, teacher!" he responded with a boyish
She rushed up the stairs, her cheeks aflame, her heart beating a tattoo of foolish joy.
She snatched the kitten from sleep and whispered in his tiny ear:
"Oh, Kitty dear, I've had such an adventure! I've spent the happiest, silliest afternoon of my life! I'm going to have a more wonderful day tomorrow. I just feel it. In a big racing automobile if you please, Mr. Thomascat! Sorry I can't take you but the dust would blind you, Kitty dear. I'm sorry to tell you that you'll have to stay at home all day alone and keep house. It's too bad. But I'll fix your milk and bread before I go and you must promise me on your sacred Persian cat's honor not to look at my birds!"
She hugged him violently and he purred his soft answer in song.
"Oh, Kitty, I'm so happy — so foolishly happy!"
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