The flames of those burning cars, leaping into the skies above the tops of the storm-tossed trees, had lighted some dark places in Gordon’s soul, and he was sobered by the revelation.
The clasp of Ruth’s arms about his neck, the warm touch of her plump figure, the pressure of her lips on his, and the passionate murmur of the low contralto voice in his ears, “My own dear love!” thrilled him with tenderest memories.
He sat by Kate’s side brooding over the days and nights of their married life. Baffled and puzzled, his mind would come back with everlasting persistence to the strange feeling that held him to Ruth—a subtle and sweet mystery, the most intimate relation the soul and body can ever bear on earth, the union in love in the morning of life and its tender blossoming into a living babe.
He began to ask himself had not their being mingled somehow in essence? Had they not been really united by that vital process which sometimes makes married people grow to look alike, and often to die on the same day?
Intimately he knew this little woman, to her deepest soul secrets, and yet she had still eluded him, and now revealed subtle spiritual and physical charms he had never seen nor felt before.
He was conscious at the same time of a new feeling of repulsion on Kate’s part, and the thought filled him with nervous foreboding. Whatever change her disillusion had brought, his own physical infatuation for her was, if possible, deeper and more unreasonable.
She could not make him quarrel, but he would sit doggedly gloating over her beauty, his gray eyes flashing and gleaming with the fever for possession that is the soul of murder.
He was not long left in doubt as to the turn her thoughts had taken from the crisis through which she had passed. Her drawing-room was crowded. These receptions were protracted until long past midnight, and he had never seen her so gay or reckless in manner.
She dressed with a splendour never affected before, and received the attentions of Overman with a favour so marked it could not escape the eye of the most casual observer. She made not the slightest effort to conceal it, and her manner was so plain a challenge to Gordon he was stunned by its audacity.
Overman felt this challenge in her mood, and, alarmed, withdrew from the scene. He did not return to the house during the week, and on Saturday he received a dainty perfumed note from her by messenger. It was the first missive he had ever received from a woman.
He turned it over in his broad hand, touched it nervously, and opened it with his fingers trembling as he recognised her handwriting.
“My Dear Mr. Overman: I have been sorely disappointed in not seeing you again this week. I write to command your presence Sunday morning at ten o’clock to accompany me to the Temple, if I choose to go, and to dine with me. Sincerely, KATE RANSOM GORDON.”
He wrote an answer accepting and then sat holding this note in his hand as though it were something alive. For an hour he paced back and forth in his office alone, screening his eye behind his bushy brows, wrinkling his forehead, twisting his mouth, and now and then thrusting his hand into his collar and tugging at it, as though he were choking.
Gordon’s new study was in the dome of the Temple commanding a wonderful view of the great city, its rivers and bays, and the long dim line of the open sea beyond the towers of Coney Island. It was his habit to take an early breakfast on Sunday mornings and spend the three hours before his services there.
When Overman reached the house at ten o’clock, clouds had obscured the sun, The air was wet and penetrating, and charged with the premonition of storm. He felt nervous, excited and irritable.
The maid showed him into the spacious library, where a cheerful fire of red-hot coals glowed, and his spirits rose.
He stood before the fire without removing his top coat, and the maid said:
“Mrs. Gordon says to make yourself comfortable. The day is so raw she will not go out. She will be down in a moment.”
He removed his coat, sank into an easy chair, and began to wonder what could be the meaning of that note. He knew intuitively that he was approaching a crisis in his life.
He felt a sense of anxiety and discomfort at the idea of spending the morning alone with his friend’s wife. Yet he told himself he had no choice—it was fate. A woman had arranged it.
When Kate entered the room, he sprang to his feet with a cry of amazement at the vision of radiant beauty sweeping with sinuous step to meet him. He had never seen her so conscious of power or with better reason for it.
She was dressed in a gown of pink-and-white filmy stuff, which clung to her form, revealing its beautiful lines from the rounded shoulders to the tips of her dainty slippers. The sleeves were open to the elbow, showing the magnificent bare arms. From the shoulders, soft diaphanous draperies hung straight down the length of her figure, revealing by contrast more sharply the graceful curves of the body. The throat was bare, and her smooth ivory neck glowed in round fulness against the background of her hair falling in waves of fiery splendour.
Around her shapely waist hung a double cord of silver, knotted low in front and drawn below the knee by heavy tassels.
The effect of the dress was simplicity itself. There was not a superfluous ruffle or ribbon. Its sole design was not to attract attention to itself, but to reveal the superb charms of the woman who wore it, with every breath she breathed, every step, and every gesture.
The rhythmic music of her walk—quick, strong, luxurious—breathed an excess of vitality. The full lips were smiling and her cheeks aflame with pleasure at his admiration.
Her eyes spoke straight into his with a candour that was unmistakable. They knew what they desired and said so aloud. They had thrown scruples to the winds, and in untamed, primeval strength gazed on life with daring freedom.
Overman stammered and cleared his throat, bowed, and blushed.
She took both his hands cordially and smiled into his face.
“Why didn’t you come back to see me this week?”
He hesitated, disconcerted.
“I know,” she went on rapidly, leading him to a lounge by the fire.
“You saw the jealousy in Frank’s big baby face and you stayed away—now, honestly!”
He pulled nervously at his moustache and his eye twinkled.
“That’s about the size of it.”
“Well, I’m not a child and you are not. We are both full grown. I am thirty-one years old. I am not Frank Gordon’s slave, nor his property. I am a free woman by his own words. And I am going to be free.”
Overman glanced at the door.
“Oh! You needn’t try to run,” she laughed. “I’ve got you to-day. You can’t get away, and I’m going to tell you something. Can you guess what it is?”
The banker began to tremble.
Kate paused, leaned back in the easy chair she had drawn close in front of him, placed both of her dazzling arms behind her head, burying them in the mass of auburn hair, a picture of lazy tenderness and dreamy languor.
“Can’t you guess?” she repeated.
“I’m not so bold as to dare,” he answered, gravely.
“I will dare,” she said, eagerly leaning forward and bending so close he caught the perfume of her hair.
The blood rushed in surging tumult to his face.
“When I found myself caught in that wreck,” she began in slow, mellow tones, “it flashed over me that I had been leading a sham life. I, who profess freedom, had been living a slave to form. One desire, the most intense, the most passionate, the most wilful I had ever known was ungratified. Do you know the one thing I asked when the past and present and future flashed before me in a moment?”
She paused, caught her breath, and gave him a look of passionate intensity.
“I only asked for one hour face to face with a great masterful man I know, that I might say the unsaid things, dare, and live the utmost reach of my heart’s desire.”
Her voice wavered and hesitated. Then, with calm, laughing audacity, she said in sweet, sensuous tones:
“I love you, and you love me—loved me from the first moment you looked into my eyes! Is it not so?”
Overman rose awkwardly, pale as death, his great breast heaving with emotion, and looked again helplessly toward the door.
Kate leaped forward with a laugh, seized his hand, and felt it tremble in her grasp.
“Is it not so?” she repeated, beneath her breath.
He looked down into her shining eyes, sighed, and suddenly swept her to his heart. Her arms circled his massive neck and their lips met.
“Kiss me again,” she whispered. “Again! Crush me—kill me if you like! I could die in your arms! Tell me that you love me!”
“I’ve loved you always,” he said slowly. “But why did you do this thing? Frank is my best friend. I would have died sooner than betray him.”
“Yes, I know,” she cried, impetuously; “that’s why I told you. I have no scruples. I am free. It is our compact. I’m done with his maudlin sentiment. I have chosen you. You are my master, my king. I am yours.”
“Tragedy to me as it is,” he said, with a smile, “it seems too sweet and wonderful to be true, that the most beautiful woman on this earth should love a gnarled brute like me. How is it possible?”
She smoothed his rugged face with her soft hand, drew his head down and kissed tenderly the sightless eye that had caused him so many bitter hours of anguish in life.
The strong man’s body for the first time shook with sobs. And the woman soothed him as a child.
“You are my soul’s mate,” she cried, in a transport of tenderness. “Frank Gordon is no longer my husband. You are my beloved, my chosen one. I will never recognise him again. We will separate from this hour. I am yours and you are mine.”
Overman took her hand and, still trembling, said:
“Do you know what that means?”
“Yes,” she answered, eagerly. “I know you will be my lord and master, and I desire it. I am sick of sentimentalism.”
“It means exactly that,” he said, with emphasis. “Out of this bog of fool’s dreams I will lift you forever, my own, the one priceless treasure around which I will draw the circle of life and death.”
“Yes, yes, I know,” she cried, in a glow of ecstatic feeling. “I desire it so. I wish you to be my master. Your service will be sweet; your savage strength will be my joy.”
And while they sat planning their future life, Gordon’s footstep echoed in the hall.
When Gordon entered the library he glanced uneasily at his wife and she smiled in insolent composure.
Overman rose hastily.
“Sorry the weather was so threatening I couldn’t persuade your wife to go to the Temple, Frank.”
“Yes, the rain is pouring in torrents and it’s getting colder,” he answered, rubbing his hands before the fire.
“I’ll not stay to dinner; I’ve an engagement at my club,” the banker said, briskly.
The one eye ran from the man to the woman in embarrassment at the threatening silence. Kate walked with him to the door.
“You will return at seven o’clock,” she said, in even tones.
“If you command it,” he coolly answered.
“I do. We will have our parting this afternoon. He can remove to his old quarters at the hotel. I will receive you alone, and we will arrange for the divorce and our marriage.”
“Promptly at seven,” he said, crushing her hand in his parting grasp.
Gordon ate his dinner in obstinate quiet, now and then looking at his wife’s dazzling beauty with fevered yearning in his eyes.
When she rose from the table he said:
“I wish to speak with you in the library, my dear.”
“Very well, I’ll be down directly,” she carelessly replied.
He paced the floor for half an hour, and rang for the maid.
“Tell your mistress I am waiting,” he said, abruptly.
The maid did not return, and his anger grew with each lengthening minute.
At the end of an hour, Kate appeared.
He fixed her with a look of angry amazement.
“Well, what is it?” she asked, impatiently.
“Why did you keep your maid and send no answer to me?”
“I was writing a letter. Are you a king? What is it?” she repeated, coldly.
“I wish to say something of the utmost importance both to you and to me, and to another man,” he said slowly, in a voice pulsing with a storm of emotion.
The violet eyes danced and laughed in his face.
“So tragic?” she asked, mockingly.
He locked his big hands nervously behind him, stood before the fire, and a scowl settled over his face.
“Yes,” he said, with quiet force. “More than you understand, I fear. I have had enough of Mark Overman in this house.”
The fair face flushed with excitement. She walked quickly up to him, paused, and slowly pointed to the door.
“Very well. This is my house. You know the way to the hotel, or shall I ring for my maid to show you?”
He stared at her in a stupor, and a sense of sickening terror choked him.
“Kate, are you crazy?” he stammered.
“Never was more myself than in this moment of perfect freedom,” she replied, defiantly.
His great jaws snapped in silent ferocity, and his hairy hands closed slowly like the claws of a bear. He planted his big feet apart, and the sparks flew from the gray eyes that seemed to crouch now behind his brows.
“What do you mean?” he sullenly asked.
The woman drew back with uncertainty, chilled by the tone of his voice.
“Just what I said,” she answered, with returning courage. “This is my house. I am a free woman. I mean to do what I please. Permit me to repeat your own words from the ceremony of Emancipation, and lest I shock you later, announce that I love Mr. Overman—”
“Kate!” he cried, in bitter reproach.
“Yes, and he loves me. I announce to you this unity of our Eves. For months it has made us one. May I repeat your ceremony? I have memorised it perfectly. ‘Human life incarnates God. 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. There is no yesterday or to-day in the harmony and rhythm of two such souls. Love holds all the years that have been and are to be.’”
She paused, smiled, and went on:
“‘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,’ With joy I announce to you my approaching marriage to your friend and schoolmate, Mark Overman, a man in whose strength I glory, whom I shall delight to call my lord and master.”
Trembling from head to foot, the veins on his neck and hands standing out like steel cords, Gordon said in a hoarse whisper:
“Kate, darling, this is a cruel joke! You are teasing me.”
Again she laughed, sat down lazily, and threw her arms behind her head.
“I never was more serious in my life,” she quietly replied.
He hesitated a moment, his eyes devouring her beauty, stepped quickly to her side, knelt and took her hand.
She snatched it roughly, pushed him from her, and cried angrily:
“Don’t touch me!”
He attempted to take her hand and place his arm about her.
She sprang up, repulsing him with rage.
“It is all over between us. You are not my husband. I love another.”
He arose, walked back to the fireplace and leaned his elbow on the mantel. A wave of agony and blind rage swept him. And then the memory of the hour he spent in such a scene with Ruth caught him by the throat. He could feel the soft touch of her tapering fingers on his big foot as she lay prostrate on the floor before him.
He turned with a shiver toward Kate, who was still gazing at him with insolent languor.
Again his eyes swept the lines of her superb form with the wild thirst for possession that means murder. Two bright red spots appeared on his cheeks.
With slow vehemence he said:
“And do you think the man lives who will dare to take you from me?”
“Dare? I will dare to turn you out of this house. I have chosen the man, and made love to him as his equal. His scruples as your friend bound him. They do not bind me. Thank yourself if this means a tragedy. You challenged the world in your strength. You proclaimed freedom in comradeship. Under the old laws of life, this man would have cut his right arm off rather than betray you. You invited him here. Has he no rights—have I no rights you must respect under such conditions?”
He ignored her question and continued to look at her in stubborn, curious silence.
“Do you know what you are saying?” he asked, brusquely.
“Certainly. Repeating to you the secrets you have taught me.”
“Well, I’ll teach you something more before this drama has ended, young woman,” he said, with a touch of ice in his tones.
She gave an angry toss of her head and cried with sneering emphasis:
“Indeed!”
“Yes. I’ll show you, if you push me to it, what a return to the freedom of nature really means. I, too, have had some illuminations in the past months.”
She laughed again.
“Ah, Frank, you are a born preacher, and your threats are scarcely melodramatic; they are merely idiotic.”
The gray eyes grew somber. He drew his right arm up until its muscles stood a huge twisted knot, fairly bursting through his sleeve, seized her hand roughly and held it with iron violence on his arm.
“It’s worth your while to take note of that,” he said, steadily disregarding her angry effort to withdraw her hand. “It’s made out of threads of steel—that muscle. Few men are my equal. I am talking to you in the insolence of physical strength that proclaims me a king—a savage viking, if you like, but none the less a king.”
She attempted again to free her arm from his brutal grip.
“Be still,” he growled. “I feel throbbing in my veins to-day the blood of a thousand savage ancestors who made love to their women with a club and dragged them to their caves by the hair—yes, and more, the beat of impulses that surged there with wild power before man became a man.”
With a sob of rage, she tore herself from his grasp.
“Oh, you brute!” she cried, stiffening her figure to its full height, her dark-red hair falling in ruffling ringlets about her ears and neck, as she rubbed her arm where his hand had left the blue finger-prints.
“I warn you,” he said, his voice sinking lower and lower into a mere growl. “I am your husband. You are my wife. Whatever may have been my dreams, I’m awake now. Man once aroused is an animal with teeth and claws and Titanic impulses, huge and fateful forces that crush and kill all that comes between him and his two fierce elemental desires, hunger and love.”
The splendid form of the woman shook with anger. Her eyes ablaze, her cheeks scarlet, her voice sobbing and breaking with wrath, she said:
“And did you call it that when you threw your little wife into the street for me? Is this your boasted freedom—freedom for man’s desires alone?”
“I warn you,” he repeated, ignoring her question. “You will bring that man into this house again at the peril of his life and yours.”
“Yes, you are talking to a woman now,” she hissed. “Babbler, preacher, parson, coward! Why did you not say this to him?”
“I’ll say it in due time,” he answered, deliberately folding his arms. “In the meantime, I will inform you, as you are in search of a master, that I am your master and the master of this house.”
With a stamp of her foot, she swept from the room, throwing over her shoulder the challenge:
“We shall see!”
Gordon remained in the house during the entire afternoon.
Kate called a boy and sent two messages. One of them summoned her lawyer, the same polite gentleman who had brought the wonderful message from that house a few years before.
At 6:30 Gordon went to his study. The wind had risen steadily and was blowing now a gale from the northwest, and he could feel the cut of hail mixed with the raindrops. It was fearful under foot, and he knew his crowd would be small.
His mind was in a whirl of nervous rage.
“Bah! It’s this infernal storm in the air,” he cried, in disgust.
A feeling of suffocation at last mastered him. He turned the service over to an assistant, left the Temple, and returned to Gramercy Park with feverish step.
Overman was in the library in earnest consultation with Kate.
They both sprang to their feet as he hurriedly entered, and he could see that Kate was trembling with excitement and dread.
The banker was cool and insolent.
Gordon walked quickly to Kate’s side and spoke in icy tones of command.
“Go to your room. I have something to say to this gentleman it will not be necessary for you to hear.”
She hesitated and glanced inquiringly at Overman.
“Certainly; it’s best,” came his low, quick answer.
The hesitation and appeal to the new master were not lost on Gordon. He squared his gigantic shoulders, and wet his lips as if to cool them.
“Very well,” she said, facing Gordon. “Before I go I wish to announce to you that it will not be convenient for you to spend another night in this house. If you do not go, I will.”
He bowed politely and waved her away with a graceful gesture.
“That will do. I do not care to hear any more.”
Kate turned and quickly left the room.
“Won’t you sit down?” Gordon said, offering Overman a chair with excessive courtesy.
“Thanks; I prefer to stand,” he answered, gruffly.
The single eye was fixed on the man opposite in a steady blaze, following every step and every movement in silence.
Gordon took his place by Overman’s side, thrust his big thumbs into his vest at the armpits, and looked off into space.
“It’s no use, Mark, for us to mince words,” he began, in even, clear tones. “I understand the situation perfectly.”
“Then the solution should be easy under your code,” the banker dryly remarked.
“All I ask of you now,” Gordon continued, quietly, “as my best friend, is to let my wife alone. Is that a reasonable request?”
“No,” was the emphatic answer. “Did I seek your wife? Yet nothing could have wrung from me the secret of my love had you not flung the challenge in my face again and again; and even then my love for you sealed my lips until she broke the spell to-day with words that cannot be unsaid.”
Gordon’s face and voice softened.
“Granted, Mark, I’ve been a fool. I know better now. I appeal to your sense of honour and our long friendship. Let this scene end it. Let us return to the old life and its standards.”
The big neck straightened.
“Then go back,” he flashed, in tones that cut like steel, “to the wife of your youth and the mother of your children!”
Gordon’s fist clenched; he was still a moment, and when he spoke his voice was like velvet.
“It’s useless to bandy epithets, or to argue, Mark. I don’t reason about this thing. I only feel. My passion is very simple, very elemental. It flouts logic and reason. This woman is mine. I have paid the price, and I will kill the man who dares to take her. Do you understand?”
The banker gave a sneering laugh, and twisted the muscles of his mouth.
“Yes, I understand, and I’m not fainting with alarm. You will be a preacher and a poser to the end.”
“I have appealed to your principles and your sense of honour first,” Gordon repeated, in a subdued voice.
The one eye was closed with a smile.
“Principles! Sense of honour! What principles? What sense of honour? I agree that, under the old view of marriage as a divine sacrament and a great social ordinance, sacrifice of one’s desires for the sake of humanity might be noble. But in this paradise into which you have thrust me, with an invitation on your own door for all the world to enter and contest your position, and with you yourself shouting from the housetop freedom and fellowship—-Sense of honour? Rubbish!”
“I can see,” snapped Gordon, “that one such beast as you is enough to transform heaven into hell.”
Overman slowly pulled his moustache, and a grin pushed his nose upward.
“Exactly. I am the one odd individual your scheme overlooked—a normal human being with the simplest rational instincts, a clear brain and the muscle big enough to enforce a desire.”
“The muscle test is yet to come,” Gordon coldly interrupted.
The banker shrugged his shoulders.
“I suppose so. And you know, Frank, the fear of man is an emotion I have never experienced.”
Gordon bent quickly toward him, his face quiet and pale, and said in muffled accents:
“Well, you who have never feared man, listen. Get out of this house to-night, give up my wife, never speak to her again or cross my path, or else—” a pause—“I am going to disarm you, bend your bulldog’s body across my knee by an art of which I am master, close your jaw with this fist on your throat, and break your back inch by inch. Will you go?”
Overman surveyed the questioner with scorn.
“When the woman who loves me tells me to go. This is her house!” he coolly sneered.
Again the voice opposite sank to velvet tones.
“Very well, we are face to face without disguise, beast to beast. You haven’t the muscle to take her. She is mine. I gave for her the deathless love of a wife, two beautiful children, a name, a career, a character, and the life of the man who gave me being, who died with a broken heart. For her I turned my back upon the poor who looked to me for help, forgot the great city I loved, overturned God’s altars, scorned heaven and dared the terrors of hell. Do you think that I will give her up? I own her, body and soul. I’ve paid the price.”
He paused a moment, quivering with passion. “I know,” he went on, “I was a fool floundering in a bog of sentiment. But you—one-eyed brute—you were never deceived about anything. You set your lecherous eye on her from the first and determined to poison her mind and take her from me.”
“And I will take her,” came the fierce growl from the depths of his throat, “and lift her from the mire into which you have dragged her peerless being.”
The man opposite gave a quick, nervous laugh.
“Well, I, who have dreamed the salvation of the world and lost my own soul, may sink to-night, but, old boy”—he paused and laughed hysterically—“I’ll pull down with me into hell as I go one Wall Street banker!”
“Talk is cheap,” Overman hissed. “Make the experiment. You’re keeping a lady waiting.”
Gordon stepped quickly to the desk and picked up two ivory-handled daggers with keen ten-inch blades, used as paper knives, and handed one to Overman.
“These little toys,” he said, playfully, “were a wedding present from my wife on our second anniversary.”
“Which wife?” snarled the big, sneering mouth.
Gordon went on meditatively.
“They are the finest Italian steel—sharp medicine for friends to take and give, but it will cure our ills. I never quite understood before what you meant by the fighting instinct when I used to watch you fasten those little devilish points on your Game chickens. I know now. I feel it throb in every nerve and muscle. The impulse to kill you is so simple and so sweet, it would be a crime against nature to deny it.”
Overman threw his head to one side, frowned and peered at the man before him curiously.
“Do you ever get tired of preaching? The articulation of wind is a strange mania!”
“Pardon me if I’ve tired you,” came the answer in mellow tones. “You’ll need a long rest after to-night, and you’ll get it.”
Gordon locked the doors, placed the blower over the flickering embers in the grate, and put his hand on the electric switch.
“I am going to put this light out for the sake of the comradeship and chivalry we once held in common. I could kill you at one blow from that blind side of your head. I’ll fight you fair. That is a bow to the higher law in the preliminary ritual of nature. But down below, in these muscles, throb forces older than the soul, that link us in kinship to the tiger and the wolf”—his voice sank to a dreamy monotone. “You sneaked into my home in the dark to rob me of my own. In the dark, we will settle on the price. I paid for this treasure an immortal soul. It’s worth as much to you.”
He turned the switch, and then darkness and silence that could be felt and tasted—only the thrash of the storm against the blinds without.
With catlike tread they began to move around the room on the velvet carpet. They made the circuit twice, and found they were following each other. They both stopped, apparently at the same moment, wheeled, and again made the round in a circle without meeting, now and then stumbling against a piece of furniture.
Gordon suddenly stopped, held his breath, and waited for his enemy to overtake him. He could hear Overman’s heavy breathing at each muffled step. When he approached so close he could feel the movement of his body in the air, he suddenly sprang on him, plunging the dagger in his body, and bore him to the floor, knocking the blower from the grate in the struggle.
Over and over on the velvet carpet, dimly lighted now from the glowing coals, they rolled, growling, snarling, cursing in low, half-articulate gasps, thrusting the steel into flesh and bone, nerve and vein and artery.
Gordon suddenly plunged his dagger with a crash in Overman’s shoulder, snatched at it, and broke it smooth at the hilt.
Throwing his opponent to one side by a quick movement, he sprang to his feet, and as Overman rose, fastened his enormous hairy left hand on his throat and closed it with the clutch of a bear. His enemy writhed and plunged the steel twice to the hilt in Gordon’s breast before his big right hand found the knife and wrenched it from his grasp.
Then slowly, silently, inch by inch, he bent the banker’s body over his knee, driving his great fingers into his throat, until the spinal column snapped with a dull crack.
The limp form sank to the floor, and the two big hands clutched the throat until every finger left its black print as if branded red hot into the massive neck.
A quick knock, and Kate’s excited voice called:
“Open this door!”
Throwing the body behind the desk in the centre of the room, he felt for the switch, turned on the light, unlocked the door, stepped back and said:
“Come in.”
Kate quickly opened the door and rushed into the room. He locked it and put the key in his pocket without a word.
She turned on him a face blanched with speechless horror as he slowly advanced on her in silence, his eyes wide open, cold and set.
The blood was running down across his cheek in a stream from a wound in the upper edge of his high forehead.
She stood dumb with physical fear.
He came close, in laboured breath, his face still sick and white with the desire to kill.
The voice was hard and metallic with the vibrant ring of steel.
“Say your prayers, young woman,” he said, slowly. “You are going on a long journey from whence no traveler has yet returned.”
She staggered and caught a chair, trembling and shivering.
“Frank, dear, have you gone mad?” she gasped.
“Yes, I went mad in this house one day at the sight of your devil’s beauty, and I have been mad from that hour. Now we have come to the end.”
“You will not kill me?” she begged, in piteous fear. “I cannot die; I am afraid. Surely you love me; you cannot—”
He seized her wrists and she cowered with a scream. He held them in one hand and with the other swept her magnificent hair around her throat, grasped it in his iron fist, and thus choking her, thrust the shivering figure backward into the chair.
She managed to free her hands, threw her arms around his neck, and tried to smother him with kisses.
“Frank, dear, I’ll love you. Surely you will not kill me. Have pity for all that I have been to you in the past—”
“Hush,” he said softly, putting his big hand over her full lips. “Why such childish terror? Love has its moments of sublime cruelty. This impulse to kill is only the awful desire for utter possession, the climax of love. I’ll go with you. Neither life nor death shall take you from me.”
With a tremulous moan, she sank into a swoon in his arms.
He loosed the hair from her throat, paused, and looked tenderly at the still white face.
Then he sighed, groaned and kissed her.
“No, no, no, no; not that!” he cried, beneath his breath. “How beautiful she is! I brought her to this. Yes, I was the master of her heart and life. I could have made her anything, angel or devil. I have made her what she is—One last kiss”—he bent and gently touched her lips—“and this the end.”
With tenderness he laid her on the lounge, loosed her corsage, smoothed gently the tangled hair from her white face, closed the door, and went to his room.
He bathed the blood from his forehead and bound it with a piece of plaster. His head began to swim. A sharp pang shot through his breast, and he felt he was suffocating.
He began to shiver with the instinctive desire to escape, threw some things into a bag he usually carried, stopped and scowled with uncertainty.
“What’s the use? What is there to live for?”
Yet the big muscular hands kept on at their task.
An hour later he struggled and staggered up the hill through the black, roaring storm and rang Ruth’s doorbell.
Ruth had spent the Sunday in a desperate struggle with the Governor. Long and tenderly he had pleaded for a pledge that would bind her. He had been sure of the note of hesitation and uncertainty in her voice when she left Albany on the day of his inauguration.
He finally left her with the firm avowal:
“I am going to win, Ruth. You might as well make up your mind to it.”
She smiled and said “Good-night.”
When she went upstairs a low sob came from the nursery and she tipped into the room.
For the past year Lucy would often sit for an hour at a time in reverie, and then lift her little face to her mother with the question:
“Where is Papa?”
Since their return from the railway accident she had never asked again. She only sat now and looked into her mother’s face with dumb pain.
Ruth soothed her to sleep, and was standing by her window trying to look out into the storm, which was lashing great sheets of wet snow against the glass.
The bell in the kitchen rang feebly.
She listened. Some one was fumbling at the front door, but the roar of the wind drowned the noise.
The bell rang loud and clear. She sprang to the stairs and went down with quick, nervous step. She fastened the chain-latch, opened the door an inch, and the dim light of the hall flashed on Gordon’s haggard, blood-stained face.
She flung the door open, drew him quickly within, slammed and bolted it.
Throwing her arms around his dripping form, she drew him down and kissed his cold lips.
“Frank, my darling, what is it?” she cried, in breathless amazement.
“You must help me, Ruth, dear,” he gasped. “We had a fight. I have killed Overman. If you can hide me for a few days, I can escape. I don’t deserve it—but I know that you love me—”
“Yes, yes,” she sobbed, kissing his hand, “through life and death, through evil report and good report!”
She put him to bed, washed and dressed his wounds. One of them, an ugly hole over his left lung, kept spouting bruised blood as he breathed. The dark eyes grew dim as she watched it.
“Oh! Frank, I must have a doctor,” she said, tremulously.
“No, Ruth; I can sleep now. I’ll be better in the morning. A doctor will know me.”
“But I have one I can trust,” she replied, pressing his hand.
He shook his head, closing his eyes.
“You can’t stand up against the wind and sleet. It’s awful. You can’t walk a block. Don’t try it.”
She watched his mouth twitch with pain.
“I will try it,” she answered, firmly. “Lucy will watch with you till I get back.”
When Ruth called and told her, the little hands clasped, a cry burst from her heart, and she kissed her mother impulsively.
While his daughter sat by the bedside gently stroking his big blue-veined hand, Gordon dozed in sleep and Ruth crept out into the wild night on her mission of love.
She was half an hour going and coming four blocks. Three times the wind threw her on the freezing pavements. When she climbed up her own steps her clothing was shrouded in an inch of snow and ice, her cheeks were red and swollen, and her hands were bleeding, but a smile played about her lips. The doctor was coming.
He assured her that the wounds were not fatal, and left instructions for dressing them. A few days of rest and all danger would be past.
Through the night, while the wind howled and moaned and roared, the mother and daughter sat by the bedside and smiled into each other’s faces.
The meaning of the tragedy had not yet dawned on Ruth. She only knew that her beloved had come, that she was soothing and ministering to him, and her heart was singing its song of triumphant love. The long night of the soul was over. The morning had come. The storm without was on another planet.
As they watched he began to talk in fevered half-dream, half-delirium words, phrases and broken sentences that revealed the inner yearnings and conflicts of his soul.
“Silly fool,” he muttered. “Beauty-marvelous—Ruth-dear dark eyes-I-love-her.”
As day approached, Ruth began to dread its message. Already she could see the officers at the door.
When day broke she tried to look out of the window, and could only see across the street. The park and the city below were blotted out. The whole world seemed one white, swirling, howling smother of snow. The wind came in long gusts of shrieking fury. She could count its pulse-beats in the lulls which were growing shorter. And, child of the sea that she was, she knew that the advancing cyclone had not reached its climax. She breathed a prayer of relief. They could not find him to-day.
The cook did not come. Not a milk-wagon or bread-cart echoed through the street. Not a call of newsboy, whistle of postman, or cry of a schoolboy. The house-girl had not come. Ruth descended to the kitchen, made a fire, and cooked breakfasts. With her own hands she was serving her Love, and her heart was singing.
At ten o’clock, she looked out of her window, and the snow was piled to the second story of the houses opposite, which were receiving the full fury of the blast.
The wind was visible. It blew in white, roaring sheets of snow, howling, whistling, screaming, shrieking. Tin roofs, signs, battered chimney-tops, blinds, awnings, brackets, flagpoles, sheet-iron eaves and every odd and end began to crash and rain in the streets and bury themselves in the drifts.
The woman’s heart rode on the wings of the storm. Her beloved was hiding safe beneath its white feathers. She wondered if any one else in all the world were singing for joy with its wild music.
For three hours of the morning, struggling men had braved the storm and fought to reach their places of business. Shouts, curses, calls, laughter, the screams of boys, at first; and then defeat, silence and the roar of the wind.
Street-cars were piled on their sides, and the tracks jammed with debris and mountains of snow.
At eleven o’clock, from Manhattan there was no Jersey or Brooklyn. The ferries were still. The great dead Bridge hung swaying in the dark sky, a white festoon of ice and snow, like a jeweled garland swung from heaven to soften the terrible beauty of a frozen world. The waters below were lashed into a white smother of spray. The air cut like a knife with the sand blown from the flying waves of the distant beaches.
Policemen crouched and shivered in barred doorways. The storm had caged every thief, burglar and murderer, as it had sheathed the claws of every bear and wolf on the distant mountain-side.
The snow was piled over the tops of the doors of the City Hall and Court House. There was no Mayor, no court, no jury.
The Stock Exchange was closed, the Custom House and Sub-Treasury silent, and every school without teacher or scholar. Every depot was placarded, and not a wheel was moving. Not a newspaper found its way to a home, or a single piece of mail arrived in New York, or was sent from it, or delivered within its gates. Every telegraph and telephone office was silent and the fire department was paralysed.
The elevated trains crawled and slipped and stalled and fought on their steel trestles till ten o’clock, and the last wheel stopped and froze.
At three o’clock a Staten Island ferry-boat ventured her nose out of her slip. The wind snapped off both flag-staffs and smokestack, hurled them into space, caught her in its mighty claws, dragged her helpless across the bay and flung her on the Staten Island shore.
Wherever men could gather they talked in low, helpless and bewildered tones.
The storm signal, set by the Weather Bureau, was torn to shreds and the wind-gage hurled into the sky as it registered eighty-two miles an hour.
On the mountains of Colorado and over the plains of Dakota it had begun, a fine, misty rain sweeping eastward, throwing out its soft skirmish-line of breezes, drawn by the summons of the Storm King far out on the waste of the sea. And then the king had blown his frozen breath on the earth and the mighty city had been blotted from the map and its tumult stilled in soft white death.
Ruth drew Gordon to the window against which the sparrows crouched and shivered, that he might watch the storm’s wild pranks.
“After all,” the wounded man cried, “it has been conquered, the rushing, tumultuous city! Beyond the rim of man’s map of the world broods in silence the One to whom its noise is the rustle of a leaf and this wind but a sigh of His breath! What can endure?”
His eyes rested on the smiling, lovelit face of Ruth, and he forgot the storm in the deeper wonder of a pure woman’s love.