 | A SOUL IS BORN The Foolish Virgin |  |
26. A SOUL IS BORN
It was more than a month after the experiment began before the Doctor ventured to hint of Jim's survival. He had waited patiently until Mary's strength had been fully restored and her mind filled with the new enthusiasm for motherhood. He could tell her now with little risk. And yet he ventured on the task with reluctance. He found her seated at her favorite window overlooking the deep blue valley of the Swannanoa, a volume of poetry in her lap.
He touched her shoulder and she smiled in cheerful response.
"You are content?" he asked.
"A strange peace is slowly stealing into my heart," she responded reverently. "I shall learn to love life again when my baby comes to help me."
"You remember your solemn promise?"
"Have I not kept it?" she murmured.
"Faithfully — and I remind you of it that you may
She lifted her eyes with a quick look of uneasiness, and studied his immovable face.
"You couldn't guess?" he laughed.
She shook her head in puzzled silence.
"Suppose I were to tell you," he went on evenly, "that I found a spark of life in your husband's body that morning and drew him back from the grave?"
Her eyes closed and she stretched her hand toward the Doctor.
He clasped the fingers firmly between both his palms, held and stroked them gently.
"You did save him?" she breathed.
"Yes."
"Thank God his poor old mother is not a murderer! But he is dead to me. I shall never see him again — never!"
"I thought you would feel that way," the Doctor quietly replied.
"You won't let him come here?" she asked suddenly.
"He won't try unless you consent — "
Mary shuddered.
"You don't know him — "
The Doctor smiled.
"I'm afraid you don't know him now, my child."
"He has changed?"
"The old, old miracle over again. He has been literally born again — this time of the spirit."
"It's incredible!"
"It's true. He's a new man. I think his reformation is the real thing. He's young. He's strong. He has brains. He has personality — "
Mary lifted her hand.
"All I ask of him is to keep out of my sight. The world is big enough for us both. The past is now a nightmare. If I live to be a hundred years old, with my dying breath I shall feel the grip of his fingers on my throat — "
She paused and closed her eyes.
"Forget it! Forget it!" the Doctor laughed. "We have more important things to think of now."
"He wishes to see me?"
"Begs every day that I ask you."
"And you have hesitated these long weeks?"
"Your strength and peace of mind were of greater importance than his happiness, my dear. Let him wait until you please to see him."
"He'll wait forever," was the firm answer.
Jim smiled grimly when his friend bore back the message.
"I'll never give up as long as there's breath in my body," he cried, bringing his square jaws together with a snap.
"That's the way to talk, my boy," the Doctor responded.
"Anyhow you believe in me, Doc, don't you?"
"Yes."
"And you'll help me a little on the way if it gets dark — won't you?"
"If I can — you may always depend on me."
Jim clasped his outstretched hand gratefully.
"Well, I'm going to make good."
There was something so genuine and manly in the tones of his voice, he compelled the Doctor's respect. A smaller man might have sneered. The healer of souls and bodies had come to recognize with unerring instinct the true and false note in the human voice.
His heart went out in a wave of sympathy for the lonely, miserable young animal who stood before him now, trembling with the first sharp pains of the immortal thing that had awaked within. He slipped his arm about Jim's shoulders and whispered:
"I'll tell you something that may help you when
"No!"
"Yes."
"God! — That's great, ain't it?"
Jim choked into silence and looked up at the Doctor with dimmed eyes.
"Say, Doc, you hit me hard when you brought what she said — but that's good news! Watch me work my hands to the bone — you know it's my kid and she can't keep me from workin' for it if she tries now can she?"
"No."
"There's just one thing that'll hang over me like a black cloud," he mused sorrowfully.
"I know, boy — your mother's darkened mind."
Jim nodded.
"When I see that queer glitter in her eyes it goes through me like a knife. Will she ever get over it?"
"We can't tell yet. It takes time. I believe she will."
"You'll do the best you can for her, Doc?" he pleaded pathetically. "You won't forget her a single day? If you can't cure her, nobody can."
"I'll do my level best, boy."
Jim pressed his hand again.
"Gee, but you've been a friend to me! I didn't know that there were such men in the world as you!"
For six months the Doctor watched the transplanted child of the slums grow into a sturdy manhood in his new environment. He snapped at every suggestion his friend gave and with quick wit improved on it. He not only discovered and developed a mica mine on his mother's farm, he invented new machinery for its working that doubled the market output. Within six weeks from the time he began his shipments the mine was paying a steady profit of more than five hundred dollars a month. He had made just one trip to New York and secretly returned to the police every stolen jewel and piece of plunder taken, with a full confession of the time and place of the crime. He had shipped his tools and machinery from the workshop on the east side before his sensational act and made good his departure for the South.
The tools and machinery he installed in a new workshop which he built in the yard of Nance's cabin. Here he worked day and night at his blacksmith forge making the iron hinges, and irons, shovels, tongs, fire sets and iron work complete for a log bungalow of seven rooms which he was building
The Doctor had lent Jim the blue-prints of his own home and he was quietly duplicating it with loving care. His wife might refuse to see him but he could build a home for their boy. For his sake she couldn't refuse it.
With childlike obedience Nance followed him every day and watched the workmen rear the beautiful structure under Jim's keen eyes and skillful hands. The man's devotion to his mother was pathetic. Only the Doctor knew the secret of his pitiful care, and he kept his own counsel.
| A SOUL IS BORN The Foolish Virgin | |