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Thomas Dixon >> The One Woman
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17 This eBook was produced by Charles Aldarondo and Carrie Fellman.
THE ONE WOMAN
A STORY OF MODERN UTOPIA
BY
THOMAS DIXON, JR.
ILLUSTRATED BY
B. WEST CLINEDINST
DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF MY MOTHER
(1834-1902)
TO WHOSE SCOTCH LOVE OF ROMANTIC LITERATURE I OWE THE HERITAGE OF
ETERNAL YOUTH
CONTENTS
I. The Man and the Woman
II. Visions in the Night
III. The Banker and His Fad
IV. The Shorthorn Deacon
V. The Cry of the City
VI. The Puddle and the Tadpole
VII. A Stolen Kiss
VIII. Sweet Danger
IX. The Spider
X. The Black Cat
XI. An Answer to Prayer
XII. Out of the Shadows
XIII. A Broken Heart-String
XIV. The Voice of the Siren
XV. Goest Thou to See a Woman?
XVI. The Parting
XVII. The Thought That Sweeps the Century
XVIII. A Voice from the Past
XIX. The Wedding of the Annunciation
XX. An Old Sweetheart
XXI. Freedom and Fellowship
XXII. A Scarlet Flame in the Sky
XXIII. The New Heaven
XXIV. Courtier and Queen
XXV. The Irony of Fate
XXVI. At Close Quarters
XXVII. Venus Victrix
XXVIII. The Growl of the Animal
XXIX. Bulldog and Mastiff
XXX. The Cloud's Silver Lining
XXXI. A Lace Handkerchief
XXXII. A Lifetime in a Day
XXXIII. The Verdict
XXXIV. The Appeal
XXXV. Between Two Fires
XXXVI. Swift and Beautiful Feet
XXXVII. The Kiss of the Bride
List of Illustrations
"Her tapering fingers rested on his broad foot."
"About her personality there was a haunting charm, the breath of
a soul capable of the highest heroism."
"Little ringlets of hair curling about her face as though scorched
by the warmth of the red blood below."
"Ripped it open, tore it from his arms, and threw it on the floor."
"Her arms stole around his neck."
"A faint cry came from the full lips."
"Driving his great fingers into his throat."
"A cheer suddenly burst from the crowd and echoed through the
court-room."
Leading Characters of the Story
Scene: New York-Time: The Present
RUTH GORDON . . . The One Woman
REV. FRANK GORDON . . A Social Dreamer
KATE RANSOM . . . The Other Woman
MARK OVERMAN . . . .A Banker
MORRIS KING . . Ruth's Old Sweetheart
ARNOLD VAN METER . . A Shorthorn Deacon
BARRINGER . . Assistant District Attorney
CHAPTER I
THE MAN AND THE WOMAN
"Quick--a glass of water!" A man sprang to his feet, beckoning to
an usher.
When he reached the seat, the woman had recovered by a supreme
effort of will and sat erect, her face flushed with anger at her
own weakness.
"Thank you, I am quite well now," she said with dignity.
The man settled back and the usher returned to his place and stood
watching her out of the corners of his eyes, fascinated by her
beauty.
The church was packed that night with more than two thousand people.
The air was hot and foul. The old brick building, jammed in the
middle of a block, faced the street with its big bare gable. The
ushers were so used to people fainting that they kept water and
smelling-salts handy in the anterooms. The Reverend Frank Gordon
no longer paused or noticed these interruptions. He had accepted
the truth that, while God builds the churches, the devil gets the
job to heat, light and ventilate them.
The preacher had not noticed this excitement under the gallery,
but had gone steadily on in an even monotone very unusual to his
fiery temperament.
A half-dozen reporters yawned and drummed on their fingers with their
pencils. The rumour of a brewing church trouble had been published,
but he had not referred to it in the morning, and evidently was
not going to do so to-night.
Toward the close of his sermon he recovered from the stupor with
which he had been struggling and ended with something of his usual
fervour.
He was a man of powerful physique, wide chest and broad shoulders,
a tall athlete, six feet four, of Viking mould, hair blond and
waving, steel-gray eyes, a strong aquiline nose and frank, serious
face.
He had been called from a town in southern Indiana to the Pilgrim
Congregational Church in New York when, on its last legs, it was
about to sell out and move uptown. He had created a sensation, and
in six months the building could not hold the crowds which struggled
to hear him.
His voice was one of great range and its direct personal tone put
him in touch with every hearer. Before they knew it his accents
quivered with emotion that swept the heart. Emotional thinking
was his trait. He could thrill his crowd with a sudden burst of
eloquence, but he loved to use the deep vibrant subtones of his
voice so charged with feeling that he melted the people into tears.
His face, flashing and trembling, smiling and clouding with hidden
fires of passion, held every eye riveted. His gestures were few and
seemed the resistless burst of enormous reserve power--an impression
made stronger by his great hairy blue-veined hands and the way
he stood on his big, broad feet. He spoke in impassioned moments
with the rush of lightning, and yet each word fell clean-cut and
penetrating.
An idealist and dreamer, in love with life, colour, form, music and
beauty, he had the dash and brilliancy, the warmth and enthusiasm
of a born leader of men. The impulsive champion of the people, the
friend of the weak, he had become the patriot prophet of a larger
democracy.
A passion for music, and a fad for precious stones, especially
pearls and opals, which he carried in his pockets and handled with
the tenderness of a lover, were his hobbies. He had in a marked
degree the peculiar power of attracting children and animals, and
all women liked him instinctively from the first.
But to-night he was not himself. After a brief prayer at the close
of the sermon he dismissed the crowd with the announcement of an
after-meeting for those personally interested in religion.
As the people poured out through the open doors the unceasing roar
of the great city's life swept in drowning the soft strains of
the organ--the jar and whir of wheels, the wheeze of brakes, the
tremor of machinery, the rumble of cab, the clatter of hoof-beat,
the cry of child and hackman, the haunting murmur of millions like
the moan of the sea borne on breezes winged with the odours of
saloon and kitchen, stable and sewer--the crash of a storm of brute
forces on the senses, tearing the nerves, crushing the spirit,
bruising the soul, and strangling the memory of a sane life.
Gordon frowned and shivered as he sat waiting for the crowd to go,
and a look of depression swept his face.
These after-meetings for personal appeal were a regular feature
of his ministry. He held them every Sunday evening, no matter how
tired he was or how hopeless the effort might seem. When the doors
were closed about a hundred people had gathered in the centre of
the church near the front.
He rose from his chair behind the altar-rail with an evident effort
to throw off his weariness. He had laid aside his pulpit robe,
a tribute to ritualism that this church had dragooned him into
accepting.
"My friends," he began slowly and softly, with his hands folded
behind him, "first a few words of testimony from any who can witness
to the miracle of the Spirit in our daily life. We are crushed
sometimes with the brutal weight of matter, and yet over all the
Spirit broods and gives light and life. Who can bear witness to
this miracle?"
"I can!" cried a man, who rose trembling with deep feeling.
His high, well-moulded forehead showed the heritage of intellectual
power. His eyes, soft and tender as a woman's, had in their depths
the record of a great sorrow.
Taking his watch out of his pocket, he looked at it a moment, and,
as the tears began to steal down his face, spoke in a tremulous
voice.
"Seven years, four months, three days and six hours ago the Spirit
of God came to my poor lost soul and found it in a dirty saloon on
the East Side. I was dead--dead to shame, dead to honour, dead to
love, dead to the memory of life. I was so low I found scant welcome
in hell's own port, the saloon. They knew me and dreaded to see
me. I had served time in prison, and when I drank I was an ugly
customer for the bravest policeman to meet alone.
"Ragged, dirty, blear-eyed, besotted, I was seated on a whisky
barrel wondering how I could beat the barkeeper out of a drink,
when a sweet-faced boy came up and handed me a card of this church's
services.
"I don't know how it happened, but all of a sudden it came over
me--where I was, and what I was, and what I once had been--a boy
with a face like that, with a Christian father and mother who loved
me as their own life, and then how I had gone down, down in drink
from ditch to ditch and gutter to gutter to the bottomless pit.
"I jumped down off that whisky barrel and washed my face. That
night I found this church, and the Spirit of God, here in one of
these after-meetings, led my soul to the foot of the cross of Jesus
Christ. I looked up into His beautiful face--the fairest among ten
thousand--the one altogether lovable, and I heard Him say, as to
the thief of old, 'This day shalt thou be with me in Paradise.'
"From that day, hour and minute I've been a living man, a miracle
of grace and love. I have not touched a drop of liquor since, and
these hands, which had not earned an honest cent for years, have
handled thousands of dollars of other people's money and not one
penny has ever stuck to them. I am the living witness that God's
spirit can raise man from the dead, and Jesus Christ keep him unto
life!"
He sat down, crying.
Gordon lifted his hand and said, "Let us bow our heads a moment in
silent prayer while every heart opens the door to the Spirit."
At the close of the service he passed the man who had spoken and
pressed his hand.
"Ah, Edwards, old boy, you knew I needed that to-night. God bless
you!"
Jerry Edwards smiled and nodded.
"A lady wishes to speak to you in the study, sir," the sexton said
to him.
He looked around for his wife to tell her to wait, but she had
gone.
His study opened immediately into the auditorium at the foot of
the pulpit stairs. As he entered, a young woman of extraordinary
beauty, elegantly and quietly dressed, advanced to meet him and
shook his hand in a friendly, earnest way.
"Doctor, I've waited patiently to-night to see you," she said. "I've
been coming to hear you for six months, and yet I have never told
you how much good you have done me; and I specially wish to tell
you how sorry I am that my stupid weakness to-night interrupted
you. I think I came near fainting. It was so close and hot--and,
pardon me if I say it--I suddenly got the insane idea that you were
about to faint in the pulpit."
"Well, that is strange," interrupted Gordon, looking at her with
deepening interest. "You have the gift of the sympathetic listener.
I noticed no disturbance, but I did come near fainting. I have had
a hard day--one of fierce nerve-strain."
She looked at him curiously.
"Then I don't feel so badly, now that I know my idea was not incipient
insanity," she said, smiling. "I've quite made up my mind to send
back to Kentucky for my forgotten church-letter. I've seen all
fashionable society in New York can offer and I am weary of its
vacuity. I've been disillusioned of a girl's silly dreams, but
there are some beautiful ones in my heart I've held. I can't tell
you how your church and work have thrilled and interested me.
I have never heard such sermons and prayers as yours. You give to
the old faiths new and beautiful meaning. Every word you have spoken
has seemed to me a divine call."
"And you cannot know how cheering such a message is to me to-night,"
he thoughtfully replied, studying her carefully.
"I never could summon courage to come up and speak to you before,
but your sermon this morning swept me off my feet. It was so simple,
so heartfelt, so sincere, and yet so close in its touch of life,
I felt that you had opened your very soul for me to see my own in
its experiences. It will be a turning point in my life."
She spoke with a quiet seriousness, and Gordon felt that he had
never seen a face of such exquisite grace.
With a promise that he would call to see her within the week, she
left.
He stood for a moment gazing at her name, "Miss Kate Ransom," on
the card she gave him, his mind aglow with the consciousness of
her remarkable beauty, the famous Kentucky type, and yet a distinct
variation.
Her figure was full and magnificent in the ripe glory of youth, a
delicate face, the blonde's colour, thick, waving auburn hair that
seemed brown till the light blazed through its deep red tints,
violet-blue eyes, cordial and smiling, at once mysterious, magic,
friendly, gravely candid. Her skin was smooth as a babe's, with the
delicate creamy satin of the blonde flashing the scarlet tints of
every emotion. Her lips were cherry-red, and as she listened they
half parted with a lazy suggestion of tenderness and love; while
the face was one of refined mentality, as unconscious as a child's
of its splendid beauty.
Her gait was proud and careless, telling of perfect health and
stores of untouched vital powers, a movement of the body at once
strong, luxurious, insolently languid, rhythmic and full of dumb
music. It was when she moved that she expressed the consciousness
of power, a gleam of cruelty, a challenge that was to man an added
charm.
"What a woman!" he exclaimed aloud, as he drew on his coat. "The
kind of a woman who enraptures the senses, drugs the brain and
conscience of the man who responds to her call--the woman about
whom men have never been able to compromise, but have always killed
one another!"
His wife opened the door for him in silence.
"Who was that woman, Frank?" she asked at length, her long, dark
lashes blinking rapidly.
"What woman, Ruth?"
"The beauty I saw glide softly into your study."
Gordon smiled as he sank into a chair in the library.
"Miss Kate Ransom, a stranger I never met before."
"You seem a magnet for strange women, and your church their Mecca."
"Yes, and strange men. God knows New York, with its dead and deserted
churches, needs such a Mecca."
"You promised to call, of course?"
"Certainly; it's my business. The Church needs every friend and
every dollar to be had on Manhattan Island."
"And the distinguished young pastor of the Pilgrim Church needs
the smiles of all beautiful women. His wife is a little faded with
worry and care for his children, while crowds hang on his eloquence
and silly women sigh into his handsome face. Ah, Frank, before we
came to New York you had eyes only for me. The city, the crowd and
the flattery of fools have turned your head. You are letting go of
all things you once held. Now the Bible is 'literature.' You are
sighing for the freedom of a 'larger life.' Where will it end? I
wonder if you have weighed marriage in the balances and found it
wanting?"
Gordon rose with a sigh, walked slowly to the window and looked
down on the city lying below. Their little home was perched on the
cliffs of Washington Heights.
The smile had died from his handsome face and his tall figure was
stooped with exhaustion. He raised one hand and brushed back a stray
lock from his forehead, across which a frown had slowly settled.
"By all means keep your hair adjusted," his wife continued
sarcastically. "The women are all in love with that blond hair.
And it is so effective in the pulpit. If you were not six feet four
it might be effeminate, but I assure you it is the secret of your
strength. I trust you will be wiser than Samson."
Gordon smiled.
"You have quit the old faiths," she continued rapidly, "and gone
to preaching Christian Socialism. You have driven the best members
of the church away, and made the press your enemy. That mob which
hails you a god will turn and curse you. You will never build
your marble dream out of such stuff. Both your sermons to-day will
make your trustees more hostile. There was no Bible in them--only
personalities and rank Socialism. I saw that woman in front of me
drinking it all in as the inspired gospel."
Gordon winced and his brow clouded.
"I gave up everything for you--home, talents, friends," she went
on. "Now that I am thirty-one, it is the new face that charms."
"You did give up a very particular friend for me," Gordon remarked
teasingly. "I only learned recently that you were once engaged to
Mr. Morris King, your faithful attorney, and that you threw him
over for an athletic parson with blond hair and a smile, yet I
have never chided you about this little secret. Mr. King is still
a romantic bachelor. He has not been initiated into the joys of a
Sunday sermon at 10 P. M., with his wife in the pulpit. He has much
to live for."
Her lips quivered and her eyes grew dim.
"Come, come, my dear; you know that I love you and that I am
faithful to you. But such words and scenes as these may destroy
the tenderest love at last. Words, even, are deeds."
"How philosophical! Quite like one of the epigrams of your chum,
Mark Overman, of whose cruel tongue you're so fond. I wonder you
don't make Mr. Overman a deacon in the new order of your church."
Gordon sank back into the chair and thoughtfully shaded his brow
with his hand, his face drawn into deep lines of weariness.
When she saw the look of pain in his face her eyes softened.
"What I fear of you, Frank, is not your intention, but your performance.
You mean well, but you never could resist a pretty woman."
"In a sense, no. If I could, I never would have married."
The faintest suggestion of a smile played about her eyes and then
faded.
"I wonder what pretty speeches you said to the stranger to-night?
You have such charming manners with a woman."
He looked at her appealingly and she stared at him without reply.
"For God's sake, Ruth, end this scene. If you only knew how tired
I am to-night--tired in body, in heart and soul. I think the past
week has been the most trying of my whole life. It opened with a
newspaper attack on me inspired by Van Meter. You know how sensitive
I am to such criticism.
"Saturday came without a moment for preparation for the great crowds
I knew would be present to-day after that attack on me. Instead
of work yesterday, a procession of people, hungry and suffering,
were at the door from morning until night. All their burdens they
poured out to me; All their wrongs and grievances against God and
man became mine.
"On Saturday night the trustee meeting was held to discuss our
building project. Van Meter led the opposition with skill. When I
poured out my soul's dream to them of a great temple of marble, a
flaming centre of Christian Democracy instead of the old brick barn
we call a church--a temple that would flash its glory from the sky
above the sordid materialism that is crushing the lives and hearts
of men, telling in marble song of God, of immortality, of faith and
hope and love--they stared at me in contempt until I felt the blood
freeze in my veins. When I drew a picture of its great auditorium
thronged with thousands of eager faces, Van Meter coolly interrupted
me with the remark:
"'We don't want such trash elbowing our old parishioners out of
their pews. We've had too much of it already. With all your mob,
the pew-rents have fallen off.'
"My first impulse was that of Christ when he took a whip in the
temple. I wanted to knock him down. Instead, I rushed out of the
house and left him victorious.
"I waked this morning with the burden of all this week's horror
choking me, waked to the consciousness that in a few hours thousands
of faces would be looking up to me with hungry souls to be fed.
Well, I had nothing to give them except my own heart's blood, and
so to-day I tore my heart open for them to devour it. True, I didn't
preach the Bible except as its truth had passed into my own soul's
experiences. When I preach such sermons I always quit with the sense
of utter helplessness, exhaustion and failure. Could my bitterest
enemy read my heart in that hour he would cry out for pity.
"I never so felt the crushing burden of all that crowd of people
as to-day. I've heard so much of their sorrows and struggles the
past week. I felt that the city was a great beast in some vast
arena of time, that I was alone, naked and unarmed, on the sands,
struggling with it for the life of the people, while my enemies
looked on. As never before, I heard the rush of its half-crazed
millions, its crash and roar, saw its fierce brutality, its lust,
its cruelty, its senseless scramble for pleasure, its indifference
to truth, its millions of to-day but a symbol of the millions
gone before and the trampling millions to come, and I felt I was
a failure. I felt that I was pitching straws against a hurricane,
only to find them blown back into my face. I came down out of that
pulpit with the weariness of a thousand years crushing my tired
body and soul, feeling that I could never speak again, or struggle
against the tide any more--that I was broken, bruised and done for
all time, and I came home feeling so--"
He paused a moment and a sigh caught his voice. His wife's face
had softened and a tear was quivering on her long eyelashes.
"I came home thus worn out to-night hoping for a word of cheer,
yet knowing it would be days before I could recover from the sheer
nerve-agony I had endured. What a reception you have given me! And
for what? A beautiful woman stopped to tell me my message had not
been in vain, that it had made for her a light on life's way, and
that the prayers in which I had tried to realise as my own, the
people's thoughts and hopes and fears had been a revelation to her,
and because I smiled--"
His wife was again staring at him with the glitter of jealousy. He
saw it and ceased to speak.
He suddenly sprang to his feet and walked to the door. Taking down
his hat and light overcoat from the rack, he said, as though to
himself:
"We will spend the night under different roofs."
As he passed toward the door there was a faint cry fiom within
scarcely louder than a whisper, tense with agony and pitiful in
its pleading accents;
"Frank, dear, please come back!"
But when she summoned strength to rush to the door, crying with
terror she had never known before "Frank! Frank!" he had turned
the corner and disappeared.
CHAPTER II
VISIONS IN THE NIGHT
Gordon walked rapidly with the quick stride of the trained athlete.
Walking was a pet exercise.
His mind was now in a whirl of fury. He had never before given
away to passion in a quarrel with his wife. They had been married
twelve years, and, up to the birth of their boy, four years before,
had lived as happily as possible for two people of strong wills.
Discord had slowly grown as his fame increased. His wife was now
jealous of almost every woman who spoke to him.
They had quarreled before, but he had always kept a clear head
and laughed her out of countenance. These quarrels had ended with
tears and kisses and were forgotten until the next.
To-night somehow every thrust found his most sensitive spots. He
wondered why? Dimly conscious of a curious interest in the woman
who had spoken so sweetly to him at the close of his service, he
wondered if his wife divined the fact by some subtle power their
long association had developed and sharpened.
His enthusiasm for the Socialistic ideal was fast becoming an
absorbing passion, and was destined to lead him into strange company.
His wife felt this, resented it, and, becoming more and more
conservative, the gulf between them daily widened and deepened.
He cared nothing for her ridicule of his blond locks. He wore them
half in defiance of conventionality and half in whimsical love for
the picture of a beautiful mother from whom he had inherited them.
"What could have possessed her to-night?" he slowly muttered as he
emerged from Central Park and swung into Fifth Avenue. "Am I really
losing my grasp of truth because I am giving up traditional dogmas?
Has God given to her soul the power to look inside my heart and
find its secret thoughts? Why does she keep asking me if I have
lost faith in marriage? Never in word or deed have I hinted at such
a thing."
And yet the memory of that beautiful woman, with a voice like
liquid music, friendly, soothing, reassuring, kept echoing through
his soul.
As the tumult of passion died in the glow of the walk in the open
air he became conscious of the life of the city again. The avenue
was a blaze of light. Its miles of electric torches flashed like
stars in the milky way.
He passed under dozens of awnings before palatial homes in front of
which stood lines of carriages. The old Dutch and English ancestors
of these people were once faithful observers of the Sabbath. Now they
went to church in the mornings as a form of good society and held
their receptions in the evenings. Some of them employed professional
vaudeville artists to enliven their Sunday social bouts.
New York, proud imperial Queen of the Night, seemed just waking
to her real life, a strange new life in human history--a life that
had put darkness to flight, snuffed out the light of moon and star,
laughed at sleep, twin sister of Death, and challenged the soul of
man to live without one refuge of silence or shadow.
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