On the Saturday following Gordon’s drama with Kate and his wife, his dream of secrecy was rudely shattered. Van Meter’s ferret eyes, by the aid of his detectives, had fathomed the mystery of Kate Ransom’s appearance in the study and her more mysterious disappearance.
They found that Gordon had separated from his wife, after a terrific scene; that he was a daily visitor to the Ransom house; and that his great patron was none other than the young mistress of the Gramercy Park mansion.
All day long he was beseiged by reporters. Ruth was compelled to hire a man to stand on the doorstep to keep them out. The Ransom house was barred, but Gordon could not escape.
He saw at once that they knew so much it was useless to make denials, and he prepared a statement for the press, giving the facts and his plans for the future in a ringing address. He submitted it to Kate for her approval, and at three o’clock gave it out for publication.
Their love secret had not been fathomed, but it had been guessed. He feared the reports would be so written that it would be read between the lines and a great deal more implied.
His revolutionary views on marriage and divorce and the fact that he was from Indiana, a state that had granted the year before nearly five thousand divorces, one for every five marriages celebrated,—were made the subject of special treatment by one paper. They submitted to him proofs of a six-column article on the subject, and asked for his comments. He was compelled to either deny or repeat his utterances advocating freedom of divorce, and finally was badgered into admitting that this feature was one of the fundamental tenets of Socialism.
He was not ready for the full public avowal of this principle, but he was driven to the wall and was forced to own it or lie. He boldly gave his position, and declared that marriage was a fetish, and that its basis on a union for life without regard to the feelings of the parties was a fountain of corruption, and was the source of the monopolistic instincts that now cursed the human race.
“Yes, and you can say,” he cried, “that I propose to lead a crusade for the emancipation of women from the degradation of its slavery. Love bound by chains is not love. Love can only be a reality in Freedom and Fellowship.”
This single sentence had changed the colouring of the whole story as it appeared in the press on Sunday morning, and was the key to the tremendous sensation it produced.
The next day long before the hour of service the street in front of the Pilgrim Church was packed with a dense crowd.
The police could scarcely clear the way for the members’ entrance. Within ten minutes from the time the large doors were opened every seat was filled and hundreds stood on the pavements outside, waiting developments, unable to gain admission.
So many statements had been made, and so many vicious insinuations hinted, Gordon was compelled to lay aside his sermon and devote the entire hour to a defense of his position.
The crowd listened in breathless stillness, but he knew from the first he had lost their sympathies and that he was on trial. Unable to tell the whole truth, his address was as lame and ineffective as his outburst the Sunday before had been resistless. When he dismissed the crowd he noticed that some of his warmest friends were crying.
As he came down from the pulpit, Ludlow took him by the hand and, with trembling voice, said:
“Pastor, you know how I love you?”
What he did not say was more eloquent than a thousand words, and it cut Gordon to his inmost soul. He knew his failure had been pathetic, and that his enemies were laughing over the certainty of his ruin.
It angered him for a moment as he looked over the silent crowd filing out of his presence and out of his life.
He cursed their stolid conservatism.
“The average man does not aspire to liberty of thought,” he mused with bitterness, “but slavery of thought. The mob must have its fixed formulas easy to read, requiring no thought. Well, let them go.”
Suddenly a confused murmur, with loud voices mingled, came through the doors of the vestibules. The exits were blocked, and the moving crowd halted and recoiled on itself as if hurled back by the charge of an opposing army, and a cheer echoed over their heads.
The people inside, who had been halted, stretched their necks to see over the heads of those in front, crying:
“What is it?”
“What’s the matter?”
“It sounds like a riot,” some one answered near doors.
Gordon wedged himself through the mass that had been thrown back on the advancing stream and reached the doorway. He was astonished to find packed in the street more than five thousand men, evidently working-men and Socialists. They had been quick to recognise his position in the vigorous statement he had given to the press.
When Gordon’s giant figure appeared between the two opposing forces a wild cheer rent the air.
A Socialist leaped on the steps beside him and, lifting his hat above his head, cried:
“Now again, men, three times three for a dauntless leader, a free man in the image of God, who dares to think and speak the truth!”
Three times the storm rolled over the sea of faces, and every hat was in the air.
Gordon lifted his big hand and the tumult hushed.
“My friends, I thank you for this mark of your fellowship. At the old Grand Opera House, next Sunday morning, the seats will be yours. You will get a comrade’s welcome. I will have something to say to you that may be worth your while to hear.”
The crowd, who had never seen or heard him, were impressed by his magnificent presence and his trumpet voice. They liked its clear ringing tones and its consciousness of power.
The unexpected demonstration restored his self-respect and blotted out the aching sense of failure.
His few words were greeted with tumultuous applause, renewed again and again. The air was charged with the electric thrill of their enthusiasm.
Gordon looked over the seething mass of excited men with exultant response.
He flushed and his big fists involuntarily closed. He had felt in his face the breath of the spirit that is driving the century before it.
From a college town in Indiana the aged father, William Gordon, Professor Emeritus of History and Belles Lettres, hurried to New York to see his son.
When he read the Sunday morning papers, which reached him about three o’clock, he pooh-poohed the wild reports the Associated Press had sent out from New York announcing the separation from Ruth and linking his son’s name in vulgar insinuations with another woman.
He hastened to find the telegraph operator, and got him to open the office. He sent a long telegram to Frank, urging on him the importance of correcting these slanderous reports immediately.
He walked about the town to see his friends and explain to them.
“It’s all a base slander,” he said, drawing himself up proudly. “My son’s success has been so phenomenal, he has made bitter enemies. The press has published these lies out of malice. His popularity is the cause of it. I have wired him. He will correct it immediately.”
But when he failed to receive a denial, and the Monday’s press confirmed the facts with embellishments, he quietly left home and hastened to New York.
He was a man of striking personality, a little taller than his distinguished son, six feet four and a half inches in height. Now, in his eighty-fifth year, he still walked with quick, nervous step, and held himself erect with military bearing. His face was smooth and ruddy, and his voice, in contrast with his enormous body, was keen and penetrating. When he rose in a church assembly his commanding figure, with its high nervous voice, caught every eye and ear and held them to the last word.
He was the most popular man that had ever occupied a chair in the faculty of Wabash College. He taught his classes regularly until he was eighty years old, and when he quit his active work he was still the youngest man in spirit in the institution. He read with avidity every new book on serious themes, and he was not only the best read man in the college town—he was the best informed man on history and philosophy in the state, if not in the entire West. He had the gift of sympathy with the mind of youth that fascinated every boy who came in contact with him. His genial and beautiful manners, his high sense of honour, the knightly deference he paid his students, his enthusiasm in the pursuit of knowledge, his quenchless thirst for truth, were to them a source of boundless admiration and loyalty.
The one supreme passion of his age was love for his handsome son and pride in his achievements. He had married late in life, and Frank’s mother had died in giving him birth. The tragedy had crushed him for a year and he went abroad, leaving the child with a nurse. But on his return he gave to the laughing baby, with the blond curling hair of his mother, all the tenderness of his love for the dead, and his sorrow tinged his whole after life with sweetness and romance.
The only evidence of advancing age was his absentmindedness from boylike brooding over the days of his courtship and marriage and his day dreams about his long-lost love. He recognised it at once and laid down his class work.
Gordon met him at the Grand Central Depot with keenest dread and embarrassment. Hurrying out of the crowd, they boarded a downtown car on Fourth Avenue.
The old man glanced uneasily about and said:
“Son, isn’t this car going down the avenue?”
“Yes, father. We are going to my hotel.”
“Hotel? I don’t want to go to a hotel. I want to go to your house. I want to see Ruth and the children at once.”
“We’ll go to my study at the church first, then, and I’ll explain to you.”
The old man’s brow wrinkled, and he pressed his lips tightly together to keep them from trembling.
Gordon was glad he had not yet given orders for the removal of his study, and when they entered he drew the lid of his roll-top desk down quickly, that his father might not see Kate’s picture where he had once seen Ruth’s.
“Of course, my boy,” the old man began, “I know there is some terrible mistake about this. I told my friends so at the College. But I couldn’t wait for a letter, and I couldn’t somehow understand your telegram. I’m getting a little old now, so I hurried on to see you. I’m sure if you and Ruth have quarreled you can make up and begin over again. Lovers’ quarrels are not so serious.”
“No, father, our separation is final.”
The old man raised his hand in protest.
“Nonsense, boy, you have an iron will and Ruth a fiery temper, but a more lovable and beautiful spirit was never born than your wife. I was so proud of her when you brought her home! Of all the women in the world, I felt she was The One Woman God had meant for the mother of your children. In every way, mentally and physically, she is your complement and mate. Your differences only make the needed contrast for perfect happiness.”
“But we have drifted hopelessly apart, father,”
“My son, the man and woman whom God hath made one in the beat of a child’s heart cannot get hopelessly apart. It’s a physical and moral impossibility. Do you mean to tell me that if your mother had lived after your birth, and we had bowed together over your cradle, height or depth, things past, present or to come, or any other creature, could have torn us asunder? You must make up this foolish quarrel. You must be patient with her little jealousies. It’s natural she should feel them when you are the centre of so many flattering eyes.”
Gordon saw it was useless to avoid the heart of the difficulty. So with all the earnestness and eloquence he could command he told his father the history of Kate Ransom’s work in the church, the growth of their love, the drifting apart from Ruth, and the final dramatic climax of the day that she gave the money to build the Temple.
The old man with fine courtesy listened attentively, now and then brushing away a tear, and sighing.
“And so, father,” he concluded, “a divorce is the only possible end of it all.”
“And what has Ruth to say?” he asked, pathetically.
“She has accepted the situation, and at my request will bring the suit.”
“And you will marry this other woman while Ruth lives?”
“Yes, father, and our union will be a prophecy of a redeemed society in which love, fellowship, Comradeship and brotherhood shall become the laws of life.”
The old man’s brow wrinkled in pain.
“But the family at which you aim this blow, my son, is the basis of all law, state, national, and international. It is the unit of society, the basis of civilisation itself. To destroy it is to return to the beast of the field.”
“It must be modified in the evolution of human freedom, father.”
“But, my son, it is the law of the Lord, and the law of the Lord is perfect!” the old man cried, with his voice quivering with anguish and yet in it the triumphant ring of the prophet and seer.
“Yes, father, your view of the law,” the younger man quietly answered.
“My boy, since man has written the story of his life, saint and seer, statesman and chieftain, philosopher and poet have all agreed on this. There can be nothing more certain than that my view is true.”
“Just as men have agreed on delusions and traditions in theology, but you now see as clearly as I how foolish many of these things are.”
“But, my son, new theology or old theology, Bible or no Bible, Heaven or no Heaven, Hell or no Hell, God or no God, it is right to do right!” Again his high nervous voice rang like a silver trumpet.
“I am trying to do right.”
“Yet greater wrong than this can no man do on earth—lead, captivate the soul and body of a gracious and innocent girl, teach her the miracle of love in motherhood, and then desert her for a fairer and younger face.”
“But, father, I cannot live a lie.”
“Then you will cherish, honour, love and protect your wife until death; and the old marriage ceremony read, ‘until death us depart.’ Your vow is eternal and goes beyond the physical incident of death itself.”
“Yet how can I control the beat of my heart? We must go back to the reality of Nature and her eternal laws, in spite of illusions and theories,” maintained the younger man.
“Ah, my boy, these things you call illusions I call the great faiths of our fathers, the revelation of God. Call them what you will, even if we say they are illusions, they are blessed illusions. They are the steel bars behind which we have caged the crouching, blind and silent forces of nature, fierce, savage and cruel as death.”
His voice sank to a whisper, he leaned over and placed his trembling hand on Gordon’s arm and added:
“I once felt the impulse to kill a man. It was natural, elemental and all but overpowering. Remember that civilisation itself is impossible without tradition. I know that progress is made only by its modification in growth. But growth is not destruction, and progress is never backward to beast or savage. Marriage is not a mere convention between a man and a woman, subject to the whim of either party. It is a divine social ordinance on which the structure of human civilisation has been reared. It cannot be broken without two people’s consent and the consent of society, and then only for great causes which have destroyed its meaning.”
“But I have begun to question, father, whether our civilisation is civilised and worth preserving?”
“And would you civilise it by giving free rein to impulses of nature that are subconscious, that lead direct to the reign of lust and murder? Is not man more than brute? Has he not a soul? Is the spirit a delusion? Ah, my boy, do you doubt my love?”
“I know that you love me.”
“Yes, with a love you cannot understand. You can touch no depths to which I will not follow with that love. But I’d rather a thousand times see you cold in death than hear from your lips the awful words you have spoken in this room here this morning with the face of Jesus looking down upon us from your walls.”
He seemed to sink into a stupor for several moments, and was silent as he gazed into the glowing grate.
At length he said:
“You must take me to your house. I will spend a few days with Ruth and the children.”
Gordon could not face the meeting between his father and Ruth. He accompanied him to the door and gently bade him good-by, promising to call the next day.
A singularly beautiful love the old man had bestowed on Ruth, and she on him; for he was resistless to all the young. When he kissed her as Frank’s bride he seemed to have first fully recovered his spirits from the shadows of his own tragedy. In her great soft eyes with the lashes mirrored in their depths, her dimpled chin and sensitive mouth, her refined and timid nature, the grace and delicacy of her footsteps, he saw come back into life his own lost love. Above all, he was fascinated by her spiritual charm, haunting and vivid. He had never tired of boasting of his son’s charming little wife, and he loved her with a devotion as deep as that he gave his own flesh and blood.
When she entered the room, in spite of his efforts at control, he burst into tears as he kissed her tenderly and slipped his arm softly around her.
“Ruth, my sweet daughter!” he sobbed.
“Father, dear!”
“You must cheer up, my little one; I’ve come to help you.”
“You must not take it so hard, father. It will all come out for the best. God is not dead; He will not forget me. I’m a tiny mite in body, but you know I’ve a valiant soul. You must cheer up.”
She led him gently to a seat.
“I’ll bring the children now; they’ll be wild with joy when I tell them grandfather is here.”
But at the sight of the children the old man broke completely down and sat with his great head sunk on his breast.
He drew Ruth down and whispered:
“Take them away, dear. It’s too much. I—can’t see them now.”
When she returned from the nursery, he said:
“Come, Ruth, sit beside me and tell me about it, and I’ll see my way clearer how to help you.”
She drew a stool beside his chair, leaned her head against his knee, took one of his hands in hers, and, while his other stroked her raven hair, she gently and without reproach told him all.
When she had finished, his eyes were heavy with grief beyond the power of tears.
“And my boy told you to—take—this—money, Ruth?” he slowly and sorrowfully asked.
“Yes, father.”
“Do you know an honest lawyer, dear?”
“Yes; an old friend of mine, Morris King.”
“Call him over your telephone immediately, and take me to your desk. My fortune is not large, as the world reckons wealth—perhaps fifty thousand dollars carefully saved during the past thirty years of frugal living. It shall be yours, my dear.”
“But, father, you must not take it from yourself in your age!”
“Are you not my beloved daughter? And do not your babies call me grandfather? It’s such a poor little thing I can do. I’ve enough in bank to last me to the journey’s end, and I’ll stay near to watch over you. I can have no other home now.”
The lawyer came within an hour, and the will was duly witnessed.
He handed it to Ruth and she kissed and thanked him.
He wandered about the house in a helpless sort of way for half an hour, sighing. His great shoulders for the first time in his long life lost their military bearing and drooped heavily.
Ruth watched him pace slowly back and forth with his hands folded behind him, his head sunk in a stupor of dull pain, wondering what she could do or say to cheer him, when he suddenly stopped and sank into a heap on the floor.
The doctor came and shook his head.
“He may regain consciousness, Mrs. Gordon, but he cannot live.”
Ruth called the hotel and summoned Frank. He was out and did not get the message until five o’clock. When he reached the house, she was by the bedside. The old man was holding her hand and talking in a half-delirious way to his friends, explaining to them how impossible that these wild reports could be true about his son.
Soon after Gordon came he regained consciousness. Taking him by the hand he said:
“Well, my boy, my work is done. I have fought a good fight. I have kept the faith. I love you always. You will not forget—right or wrong, you are my heart’s blood and your mother’s, dearer to me than life. When I go from this lump of clay, if you will open my breast you will find an old man’s broken heart, and across the rent your name will be written in the ragged edges. How handsome you are to-night! How fair a lad you were! Such face and form and high-strung soul, the heart of an ancient knight come back to earth, I used to boast! God’s grace is wonderful, His ways past finding out. When we seem forsaken, He is but preparing larger blessings on some grander plan whose end we do not see. He is my shepherd; I shall not want. He leadeth me—I rest in Him.”
As the twilight wrapped the great city in its gray shadows, slowly deepening into night, he fell asleep.
At the end of a year from the death of Gordon’s father the divorce was granted, and Ruth elected to retain her married name.
The Temple of Man was rapidly rising. The building fronted three hundred feet on each cross street. Its great steel-ribbed dome, modeled on the capitol at Washington, was slowly climbing into the sky from the centre to dominate the architecture of the Metropolitan district.
The success of Gordon’s meetings in the old Grand Opera House had been enormous. Its four thousand seats were filled and every inch of standing-room the police would allow. The religious element in Socialism had found in him its high priest. His eloquence, his magnetism, his daring, his aggressive and radical instinct for leadership made him at once their idol.
The prestige given him by the rapid building of his magnificent Temple in the heart of the wealth and splendour of the Metropolis, and the crush for admission by strangers who had read of him and his work, were adding daily to his power.
His bold avowal of love for Kate Ransom, and his determination to win and marry her by a new ceremony of “announcement,” which should challenge the forms of civilisation, had stilled the tongue of gossip and made him the hero of the sentimental.
At the same time it had made him the object of bitter attack by the conservative forces of society, and the violence of these attacks daily added importance to his every act.
His triumphant appeal to the masses against the classes was making him a master spirit of the modern mob that has humbled king, emperor and pope, at whose breath statesmen tremble, and at whose feet coward and sycophant of every cult cringe and fawn.
With fierce enthusiasm he proclaimed, “Now is Eternity. To reach Heaven we must build a new earth, and lo! we are in Heaven.”
The response from sullen working-men who had hitherto held aloof from Socialism and its leaders was remarkable. With the fiery zeal of the pioneer of a religious movement he preached in season and out of season his new faith, and proselyted with success even among those who scoffed.
He gave a new emphasis to the dogma of the Immanence of God, the charming Pantheism of which appealed to the childlike minds of the people. With mystic fervour he proclaimed the unity of life, and in all and over all and working through all—God! In bud and flower, in sun and storm, in dewdrop and star, in man and beast, in soul and body, the divine everywhere. As never before he glorified the body and its beauty as the incarnation of God, His veritable image. The advent of every child he hailed as great a miracle as the birth of the Babe of Bethlehem.
Life itself became an ever-growing wonder, and existence an infinite joy. Gradually he began to ridicule the theology of “Sin.” “Sin” he declared a figment of the human mind. The sin which is the wilful and persistent violation of known law he ignored.
He proclaimed the advent of the Kingdom of Love universal, all embracing, all conquering.
His marriage to Kate Ransom by the new ceremony he had devised commanded the attention of the world. Its romance, and the tragedy of a broken heart behind it, at once interested the average mind; and its social and religious challenge appealed to the thoughtful.
It was announced to be a marriage without form or ceremony. It was celebrated on a Saturday evening, that his friends among the working-men might attend.
It was early in May. The grass was green behind the high iron bars of Gramercy Park, and the trees were putting on their new satin robes. The air was warm with the sensuous languor of spring. The rain poured in torrents, but the Ransom mansion was a blaze of light, and a canopy with rubber roof stretched down the high brownstone steps across the sidewalk to the curbing.
It was past the appointed time, the last carriage had long since snapped its silver lock beside the awning, and still the bride and groom tarried. The guests were assembled in the great parlours, and a band in the conservatory, from which floated the perfume of flowers in full bloom, was softly playing primitive love melodies, simple, tender and full of. mysterious beauty.
Besides the personal friends of the bride, the. guests assembled were a remarkable group.
A churchless clergyman who had become a Socialist, and whose church building was for sale, was on hand to make the “Announcement.” A handsome poet, a disciple of William Morris and a man of international fame, was there. Socialists, Anarchists, Theosophists, Spiritualists, Buddhists, Communists, Single-Taxers, Walking Delegates, Presidents of Labour-Unions, editors of Radical papers, Ethical gymnasts, and lecturers mingled in the throng.
Kate refused to allow Gordon to see or speak to her before her entrance. They had agreed to make no elaborate preparations. She was to prepare no traditional wedding trousseau. They were simply to stand by each other’s side before their friends, greet them with the announcement of their love and unity of life, and receive their congratulations.
When she at length summoned Gordon, he was amazed to see her arrayed in the most magnificent conventional bridal dress he had ever seen.
A frown clouded his brow for an instant, and then melted into a smile as his eyes feasted on the barbaric splendour of her beauty.
She stood silent and thoughtful, with her arms folded in front across the lines of her voluptuous form, her head poised high, erect as an arrow. Her mass of dark red hair rolled upward in a great curling wave from her face. From its crest a bunch of orange blossoms gleamed, clasping the filmy veil which fell, a white cascade, over the wilderness of delicate lace forming her train. She had turned half around, and this great train of shimmering stuff enveloped her feet and swept out in graceful curve into the room. The collar, which completely covered her rounded neck, was made of rows of linked opals, and a necklace of pearls rested on her beautiful breast, spreading out in heart shape, with a single strand encircling the neck.
Her face was tragic in its seriousness. A new and charming melancholy shadowed her violet eyes, causing the heavy lashes to droop till their shadows showed on the creamy velvet of her cheek. Her mouth, with scarlet lips drawn close, was earnest and solemn as he had never seen it.
With the regal bearing of a queen she looked at him thoughtfully without a word. She was giving him his first lesson in perfect freedom and perfect equality of will. She had changed her mind at the last moment and determined to be the bride her girlhood dreams had pictured.
But the man saw only the ripened, luscious woman in the hour of supreme surrender, and gazed in rapture. So superb was her health, so rich and vital the splendid figure, no conventional art of bridal costumer could confine or conceal the glory of its beauty.
“You see, my beloved,” she said. “I am not going to promise to obey, so I have chosen with this old conceit to disobey your first expressed wish. Do you like me thus?”
“You are glorious!” he answered, smiling.
“And my father will give me away, and you will place a ring on my hand when you make your little speech, before I respond.”
He bowed gracefully. “As you will, my dear.”
He would have promised anything.
As they entered the hall leading to the crowded parlours, the organ in the music-room suddenly burst into the strains of the Wedding March, and again she looked seriously into his face, and he laughed.
“My beautiful rebel, I’ll tame you in due time, never fear!”
“And you’re not angry?”
“Angry? I am more madly in love than ever.”
And she flushed in triumph.
When they had entered the room, the invalid father rose, pale and trembling, and, in accordance with Kate’s wishes, declared:
“My friends, I announce to you that I have given my daughter to be married unto this man.”
Gordon took her hot hand in his massive grasp and said:
“We believe, friends, in fellowship. We have asked you to-night to share with us the sacrament of the unity of our lives which we thus announce. For years this unity has made us one. We thus make it manifest unto the world. In the woman I have chosen as my comrade, behold the living soul of serene-browed Grecian goddess and German seeress of old, whose untamed eyes of primeval womanhood, the equal and the mate of man, proclaim the end of slave-marriage and the dawn of perfect love.”
He placed the ring on her hand, and Kate responded:
“This is the day and the hour that we have chosen to announce to you our union.”
The Socialist preacher said:
“We are here to-day, called by a sacrament, not in the conventional sense, but in the elemental meaning of the word which reflects the mind and the being of the Eternal. Human life incarnates God. We are not met here to inaugurate a marriage. Words can add nothing to the sublime fact of the union of two souls. This is the supreme sacrament of human experience. It proclaims its inherent divinity. This oneness no more begins to-day than God does. Time loses its meaning, but there is no yesterday or to-morrow in the harmony and rhythm of two such souls. Love holds all the years that have been and are to be.
“This is a day of joy—overflowing, unsullied, serene, a day of hope, a day of faith. It is a day of courage and of cheer, and to the world it speaks a gospel of freedom and fellowship. It proclaims the dawn of a higher life for all, the sanctity and omnipotence of love. It asserts the elemental rights of man. These friends of ours announce to-day their marriage.
“Inasmuch as Frank Gordon and Kate Ransom are thus united in love, I announce that they are husband and wife by every law of right and truth, and pray for them the abiding gladness that dwells in the heart of God forever.”
Kate’s mother kissed her and cried in the old-fashioned way, and they sailed next day for a bridal tour abroad.
Ruth had fulfilled Gordon’s prediction. She had lifted up her head and serenely entered her new and trying life.
The year had brought many bitter days, but she had bravely met each crisis. She had hoped to maintain her membership in the Pilgrim Church, and with humility and earnestness returned to her duties. The new pastor had given her a hearty greeting, but the task was beyond her strength. She found that she no longer held her former social position—in fact, that she had no social status. The best people of the church were coolly polite and clumsily sympathetic. She preferred their coolness. The poorer people were frankly afraid of her. The innocent victim of a tragedy, the world held that she was somehow to blame—perhaps was equally guilty with the man. She suddenly found herself outside the pale of polite society.
She was stunned at first by this brutal attitude of the world. To women of weaker character such a blow had often proved fatal in this defenseless hour. To her it was a stimulus to higher things. She fled to the solitude of her home and found refuge in the laughter of her children. She cried an hour or two over it, and then swept the thought from her heart, lifted up her proud little head and moved on the even tenor of her way.
But greater troubles awaited. She had no business training and met with misfortune in the management of her property.
Morris King had been her attorney, since she first came to New York, in the management of a small trust estate. He had always refused any fee, and she had accepted this mark of his faithfulness to their youthful romance simply and graciously. Secure in Gordon’s love, she had long since ceased to consider the existence of any other man as a being capable of love. Marriage had engulfed her whole being and life, past, present, future.
But the tender light in King’s eyes when he called to see her on her arrival from the South was unmistakable.
She was startled and annoyed, curtly dismissed him as her attorney and undertook the management of her own business affairs.
Within six months she had invested her estate in stocks that had ceased to pay an income and were daily depreciating.
When her support failed, she advertised for pupils to teach in her home, obtained two scholars, and they were from parents whose ability to pay was a matter of doubt. But she had bravely begun and hoped to succeed.
When King saw her pathetic little advertisement he threw aside his pride and called promptly to see her.
He was a muscular young bachelor of thirty-seven. A heavy shock of black hair covered his head, and his upper lip was adorned by a handsome black moustache.
He was a leader of the Tammany Democracy, a member of a firm of lawyers, and had served one term in Congress.
He had made himself famous in a speech in the National Convention in which he had attacked the reform element of his own party seeking admission with such violence, such insolent and fierce invective, he had captured the imagination of his party in New York. He was slated as the machine candidate for Governor of the Empire State and was almost certain of election. Visions of the White House, ghosts which ever haunt the Executive Mansion at Albany, were already keeping him awake at night.
He was a man of strong will, of boundless personal ambitions, and in politics he was regarded as the most astute, powerful and unscrupulous leader in the state. His personal habits were simple and clean to the point of aceticism. His political enemies declared in disgust that he had no redeeming vices. He was a teetotaler, and yet the champion of the saloon and the idol of the saloon-keepers’ association. He did not smoke or gamble, and was never known to call on a woman except as a business duty.
In his profession he was honest, dignified, purposeful and successful. He had landed in New York fourteen years before with ten cents in his pocket, and his income now was never less than twenty thousand dollars a year. He had received a single fee of fifty thousand dollars in a celebrated case.
Before coming to New York he was a poor young lawyer in the village of Hampton, Virginia, just admitted to the bar. But the law did not seriously disturb his mind. His real occupation was making love to Ruth Spottswood, who lived across the street in a quaint old Colonial cottage. If any client ever attempted to get into his office, it was more than he knew. He was too busy with Ruth to allow other people’s troubles to interfere with the work of his life.
He had taken her to the ball at the Hygeia the night she met Gordon, little dreaming that this long-legged Yankee parson from the West, who did not even know how to dance, would hang around the edges of the ballroom and take her from him. They were engaged after the child fashion of Southern girls and boys—always with the tacit understanding that if they saw anybody they liked better it could be broken at an hour’s notice.
The next day when he called Ruth said with a laugh:
“Well, Morris, our engagement ends at three o’clock this afternoon. A handsomer man is going to call. You must clear out and attend to your business.”
“Oh, hang the law, Ruth. I’ll sit out under the trees and write you a poem till this Yankee goes.”
“No, I don’t propose to be handicapped. We are not engaged any more, and you can’t come till I tell you.”
He put up a brave fight, selling his law books to buy candy and pay the livery bill for buggy rides, but it was all in vain.
At last, when she told him she was going to marry Gordon and the day had been fixed, he turned pale, looked at her long and tenderly and stammered:
“I hope you will be very happy, Ruth. But you’ve killed me.”
“Don’t be silly,” she cried. “Go to work and be a great man.”
He closed his law office and went over to Norfolk, debating the question of suicide or murder. He walked along the river-front to pick out a place to jump overboard, but the water looked too black and filthy and cold. He saw a steamer loading, boarded her, and landed in New York with ten cents in his pocket and not a friend on earth that he knew.
He had never spoken a word of love to a woman since. Ambition was his god, and yet, mingled with its fierce cult, its conflicts and turmoil, he had cherished a boyish loyalty to Ruth’s last words as she dismissed him.
“Be a great man,” she had said. He would—and he had dreamed that some day, perhaps, he might say to her: “Behold, I am your knight of youthful chivalry. Your command has been my law. It is all yours.”
The day she had curtly dismissed him as her attorney he was elated with the first assurance his associates had given him that he would be the next Governor of New York. Her unexpected rebuff had cut his pride to the quick. The old hurt was bruised again, and by a woman who had been deserted by a cavalier husband. He had sworn in the wrath of a strong man he would go this time and never return. And now he was hurrying back to her side and cursing himself for being a fool.
She greeted him cordially.
“I’m glad to see you, Morris,” she frankly said—she had always called him by his first name. “I’ve gotten into deep waters since I sent you away so foolishly. I would have sent for you, but I was afraid you were angry and would not come. I’ve had about as many humiliations as I can bear for awhile.”
He looked at her reproachfully.
“You did treat me shamefully, Ruth, after years of faithful service. I don’t know why. I might guess if I tried. When I saw that pitiful card this morning, I knew what it meant. So I’ve come back to take charge of your business. And you can’t run me away with a stick. I am going to look after your property and make it earn you a living.”
“It is very good of you, and I am grateful,” she replied, gently.
“How much are your stocks worth?”
“About forty thousand dollars, I’m told. But I can’t sell them. They are not listed on the Exchange.”
“I’ll sell them for you, and by the end of the week have your money paying you an income of two hundred dollars a month. Send those two children home. You were not made for a school-teacher.”
He looked at her with intensity, and she lowered her eyes in embarrassment.
He sprang to his feet and walked swiftly to the window, and then came back and sat down beside her.
“Ruth,” he said, impulsively, “it’s no use in my trying to lie to you. We might as well understand one another at once. Of course, I know why you sent me away.”
“Please, Morris, don’t say any more,” she pleaded.
“Yes, I will,” he cried. “I love you. How could I keep you from seeing it in my eyes, when you were free at last, and I knew you might be mine?”
“You must not say this to me!” she protested.
He scowled and pursed his lips.
“I will. I am coming to this house when I please. I am going to give you the protection of my life. Every dollar I have, every moment of my time shall be yours if you need it. Ah, Ruth, how I have loved you through the desolate years since you sent me away! Men have called me cold and selfish and ambitious, when I was lying awake at night eating my heart out dreaming of you. Every hour of work, every step I’ve climbed in the struggle of life, was with your face smiling on me from the past. All my hopes and ambitions I owe to you. The last message you spoke to me has been my guiding star. And when this man threw you from him as a cast-off garment—you, the beautiful queen of my soul—I would have killed him but for the fierce joy that now I could win you!”
She shook her head and a look of pain overspread her face.
“I know what you will say,” he went on rapidly. “You need not protest. I will be patient. I will wait, but I will win you. I’ve sworn it by every oath that can bind the soul. I have no other purpose in life. I’m going to be the Governor of New York simply because I’m going to lift you from the shame this man has heaped upon you and make you the mistress of the Governor’s mansion of this mighty state. Washington is but one step from Albany. My dream is for you. I will be to you the soul of deference and of tender honour. Your slightest wish will be my law, I will be silent if you command. But you cannot keep me away. If you leave me, I will follow you to the ends of the earth.”
Ruth was softly crying.
“You must not cry, my love. I will make your life glorious, and light every shadow with the tenderness of a strong man’s worship.”
“And you love me like this when another has robbed my soul and body of their treasures and cast me aside?” she asked, wistfully.
His mouth suddenly tightened and his eyes flashed.
“Yes, and I’d love you so if you were broken and every trace of beauty gone. My love would be so warm and tender and true it would bring back the light into your eyes, the roses to your cheeks, and life even to your dead soul.”
“How strange the ways of God!” she exclaimed, through her tears.
He looked at her with yearning tenderness.
“But you are not old or broken, Ruth. You have grown more beautiful. This great sorrow has smoothed from your face every line of fretfulness and worry, and lighted it with the mystery and pathos of an unearthly beauty. It shines from your heroic soul until your whole being has come into harmony with it. I loved you in the past; I worship you now.”
She turned on him a look of gratitude.
“Worry and jealousy did exhaust me. I am glad you see in my face and form the change reflected from within. It is very sweet to me, this flattery you pour on my broken heart. I thank you, Morris. You have restored my self-respect and given me strength. It is an honour to receive such love from an honest man. You must not think ill of me if I tell you I cannot love you.”
“I’ll make you!” he cried, fiercely. “You cannot cling to the memory of a man so base and false.”
“He is my husband. I love him.”
King flushed with anger.
“He is not your husband. He has deserted you, lured by the beauty of another woman.”
A gleam of fire flashed from her eyes, melting into a soft light.
“Yes, I know, marriage is an ideal, the noblest, most beautiful. We have not yet attained its purity in life. Man is only struggling toward its perfection. We will not attain it by lowering the ideal, but by lifting up those who are struggling toward it. Another marriage while Frank lives would be possible for me only when I ceased to feel the meaning of sin and shame. I will never regret my life. I have cast all bitterness out of my heart. Better the happiness and pain of a glorious love than never to have known its joy. I have lived.”
“And I will yet teach you to live more deeply,” he firmly said.
She shook her head and looked at him sadly out of her dark eyes from which the storm had cleared at last. They beamed now with the steady light of a deep spiritual tenderness.