Books: The One Woman
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Thomas Dixon >> The One Woman
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Gordon listened with dreamy disgust.
"You've set up a man of straw. In this new world each would choose
his work and labour would be a joy," he answered, with lofty scorn.
The banker chuckled.
"No doubt they would all choose joyous jobs. But there would be a
surplus of joyous labourers hunting for joyful tasks, and a dearth
of fools looking for disagreeable work. In your pig paradise
everything must be fixed. There could be no uncertainty about the
future--no worry, or fret, or anxiety--hence no hopes or fears.
Man would be guaranteed food, clothes, shelter and children, just
as the chattel slave. There could be no inducement to work unless
compelled to, and no man except an idiot would do a disagreeable
task unless forced to do it. You must remember there could be
no lawyers or bankers, preachers or orators. The chief occupation
of your Labour Master would be the assignment of people he didn't
like to the hard, dirty jobs, and the granting of favourite tasks
to such people as made themselves agreeable to His Majesty. Witness
the master of the Russian Commune, who is notoriously the lord of
all the wives of the village."
Overman was still a moment, and then growled from the depths of
his being:
"I call this the lowest, the most degrading, the most bestial
nightmare the human mind ever dreamed!"
Gordon waved him off with an eloquent gesture.
"You have assumed that a free commonwealth of godlike men and women
would choose their worst units for their leaders."
"Nothing of the sort," he snapped. "I've supposed they would do the
inevitable--choose the strongest man who looks like the majority
and smells like the majority."
"A bad man would be removed," the dreamer quickly replied.
"What difference if your master be changed by an election now and
then? All the worse. If I am to be a slave, I prefer the old chattel
system with a master whose favour I could win and hold for life by
faithful service. The old slaves often loved their masters. Could
you love the Executive Officer of a Bureau for the Enforcement
of Labour? Do convicts become infatuated with their keepers? To
assassinate such a man would become a positive joy. How many years
of such life would it take to crush out of the human soul the last
spark of hope and aspiration and reduce man to a beast?"
"But we affirm the inherent divinity of man. You assume him to be
a child of the devil."
There was another silence, and then the banker's brow wrinkled.
"Affirm. Yes, you fellows are all orators. You must affirm else the
crowd will leave you. You never have doubts and fears. You always
know. Only affirm a thing enough and never try to prove it, and
thousands of fools will accept it at last as the word of God. That
is the secret of the power of all demagogues and emotional orators.
The slickest horse-thief that ever operated in the West was a
revivalist who migrated there with a tent. While he held the crowd
spellbound with his eloquence, his confederates loosed the horses
in the woods and got them to a safe place. Oratory is one of the
cheapest tricks ever played on man, but an everlastingly effective
one, because it is based on affirmation. Any man who is too
hard-headed and honest to affirm a thing he don't know and can't
know never leads a mob. They will only follow a man who speaks with
the sublime authority of knowledge he does not possess."
While Overman was talking Gordon's brow clouded as he watched Kate's
face flash with interest and a smile now and then play between her
eyes and lips.
"We seem to be developing another orator," he slowly answered.
Overman pursed his lips.
"I haven't wasted so much breath in a long time. Your French
programme stirred me. I wonder if you recalled the decline of the
French nation in modern times, and its causes, in arranging for
your conquest of France? A little while ago the Anglo-Saxon race
numbered but a few millions, and the Latin ruled the world. Now
the flag of the Anglo-Saxon flies over one-fourth the inhabitants
of the globe, his army can withstand the combined armies of the
world, his navy rules the sea, and his wealth is so great he could
buy the entire possessions of the rest of mankind. Why? Because he
developed the most powerful individual man in history, while other
races have sought refuge in the herd idea of communal interests.
I noticed you never preach now from the old text, 'What shall it
profit a man if he gain the whole world and forfeit his life?' Why
save the world if you destroy man?"
But Gordon had ceased to listen to Overman. With his great
blue-veined fist clenched on his chin and a new gleam of light in
his steel-gray eyes he was watching his wife's face.
CHAPTER XXIV
COURTIER AND QUEEN
Overman was quick to detect the hostility of his friend's unusual
silence, and hastily rose.
"Excuse me, old boy," he said, apologetically, "if I've hit too
hard. I think the world of you in spite of your fool theories. You
know that."
"Don't worry, Mark," he answered, carelessly. "I haven't been
listening to you at all. I've been thinking of something else.
Life's too short to pay any attention to your big Philistine jaw."
The banker smiled.
"Well, you have the instrument handy with which Samson slew the
Philistine."
"Yes, if you would only loan it to me. Goodnight."
When he had gone, Kate leaned back on the lounge and said with
evident amusement:
"You forgot something in parting with your old schoolmate."
"Yes, I thought it quite unnecessary to tell him to drop in any
time, unless you wish to let the front room."
A tremor of catlike fun slyly played about her mouth.
"And yet women have been called fickle. Mr. Overman was no college
chum of mine."
"No; but he is evidently trying to make up for it now."
A low musical laugh seemed to come from the depth of Kate's spirit.
"And I thought I was pleasing you by neglecting my Bohemians and
cultivating your powerful friend."
"Still it is not necessary to hang on his words with such melting
interest," he said, with quiet emphasis.
She looked up sharply and a gleam of cruelty flashed from her blue
eyes and struck the steel-gray in his. Beneath the quiet words
of the man and woman there was raging the mortal struggle of will
and personality, the woman in fierce rebellion, his iron egotism
demanding submission.
"'Oh, I see," she purred, softly. "There is to be but one man-god,
arrayed and beautiful, if I may quote your formula. There may be
many women-gods in paradise. I saw Ruth in the Temple the first
Sunday you spoke, hanging on your words as the voice of the Lord."
Gordon flushed and turned uneasily in his chair.
"I'd as well be frank with you, Kate. Overman is coming to this
house too often. I was shocked beyond measure when I failed to find
you in your accastomed seat on the Sunday of the dedication of the
Temple. I was told you were in the gallery with him."
She straightened herself up suddenly.
"You took the pains to find that out?"
"Yes."
She fixed on him a look of scorn.
"And stooped to ask an usher instead of asking me? You, who boldly
say to the world that I am your free comrade, the mate and equal
of man?"
"An odd way you took to show comradeship in such an hour," he
answered, doggedly.
"Am I a slave, to sit in solemn rapture at your feet and await your
nod?"
"You seemed to eagerly await the nod of another man to-night."
She laughed.
"Am I not your serene-browed Grecian goddess whose untamed eyes of
primeval womanhood proclaim the end of slave marriage?"
Gorden winced, scowled and was silent.
"I like the beautiful ceremony you invented. I've memorised every
word of it," she said, teasingly.
He sat for several minutes sullenly looking at her with a strange
fire in his eyes, now and then moistening his lips as though they
burned.
At length he said: "It will be necessary for you to go to his office
to-morrow to sign papers in the transfer of the deed of the Temple
to me. The lawyers informed me to-day that everything was in
readiness for your signature. After this event there will be no
business requiring your further attendance at his bank."
She closed her eyes lazily.
"I am not going to sign any such deed," came the firm answer.
Gordon turned pale, nervously fumbled at his watch-chain and
stammered:
"Kate, you don't mean this?"
"I do."
The man hesitated, as though stunned.
"After your announcement to the world, and all that has passed
between us, would you humiliate me by the withdrawal of your gift?"
She lifted her beautiful brows.
"Humiliate you? Surely I have honoured you with the richest gift
woman can bestow on man: myself. The ownership of property can
have no meaning after this. I claim my rights as your equal. Your
eloquence and genius give you power. This money is scarcely its
equivalent. You have your Temple, and I still have my fortune. Its
investment in this building has enhanced its value. What more can
you ask?"
"The fulfilment of your word of honour to the cause of truth," he
firmly answered.
She smiled.
"Nonsense! You were my cause, my truth--the god I worshiped. I
desired you. Now at closer range the aureole has slightly faded,
though you are as handsome as ever, Frank, dear. What is money between
us? We are equals. I will take the worry of financial details off
your shoulders and leave you free for your inspiring work."
Gordon's eyes grew soft; he went over to the lounge on which she
was resting, sat down and slipped his arm about her.
The full lips smiled with conscious cruelty.
He bent and kissed her passionately.
"You are my priceless treasure, my dear. I am honoured in your
beauty and love. Money is nothing to me, so long as you are mine."
She drew his head down and kissed him in a sudden burst of intensity.
"You know I love you, Frank!"
"And we must not quarrel," he said, wistfully, slipping to his
knees with one arm still encircling her waist. "You and I have
gone through too much for harsh words or thoughts to ever shadow
our life. But you must give me more of your time, and other men
less. A growing uneasiness and the loss of the sense of finality
in life are robbing me of my capacity for thought and work."
"Not so bad as that surely," she cried, with teasing laughter.
"You're not afraid of losing me?"
"No; but you will promise?" he asked, tenderly.
She placed one of her arms about his neck, a soft warm hand under
his chin, and, still laughing, slowly kissed him and murmured:
"I'll do just what I please, and you may do the same."
CHAPTER XXV
THE IRONY OF FATE
Morris King had ended a brilliant campaign for the Governorship
of New York with victory. The entire ticket was elected by large
pluralities.
The campaign had given scope to his ability, and he more than
fulfilled the hopes of his friends. From the moment of his election,
he became the leader of the party in the nation, and began at once
the work of strengthening his position as a Presidential possibility.
Yet in the din and clash of this battle in which his personal
fortunes, his future career, and perhaps the destiny of a great
national party hung, he had not forgotten Ruth.
He made it a point every day, wherever he was, or whatever the task
or excitement of the hour, to write her a love letter. Sometimes
it was only a few lines hastily scrawled while on the train between
stations where he addressed the crowds at each stop. Sometimes he
sent a dainty box of flowers.
She never replied to his letters or little gifts. But it made
no difference. He kept steadily on the course he had mapped out,
dogged, purposeful, persistent.
The night of the election, when he received the first assurance of
his success, before he spoke to any of his lieutenants or received
a single congratulation, he closed his door, locked it, and called
Ruth over his telephone, which he had connected with her house by
special secret arrangement that afternoon.
He recognised her soft contralto voice, and his hand trembled with
the joy of the triumph which he felt brought him nearer to his
heart's desire.
He was so excited he could not speak for a moment, and again the
low soft voice called,
"What is it? Who is it?"
"This is Morris, Ruth. My door is locked, and this is a private
wire connected with your house; I am alone with you and God. I am
the Governor-elect of New York. I have spoken to no one until I
tell you. One word from you I will prize more than all the shouts
of the world with which the streets will ring in a moment."
There was a movement of the phone at the other end.
"With all my heart I congratulate you, Morris. You are a great man.
I can never tell you how deeply I feel the delicate honour you pay
me."
The man sighed and his voice was husky with emotion.
"Ah! Ruth, if you only meant that conventional phrase, 'with all my
heart,' I'd be the happiest man in the world to-night. But I must
go; the boys are trying to beat the door down. My success I lay at
your feet, my love. When you hear the shouts of hosts and see the
sky red to-night with illuminations, remember that it is all for
you. I am yours.--Good-by."
She sat at her window long past the hour of midnight and watched
the blaze of rockets from end to end of Manhattan, over Brooklyn,
and from the farthest sand-beaches of Coney Island, dreaming with
open eyes, soft with tears, of the mystery of love and life.
The unterrified Democracy of the great city had gone mad with joy
over their daring young leader's success. She could hear the distant
murmur of the tumult of thousands of shouting, screaming men packed
around Tammany Hall, filling Fourteenth Street in solid mass, jamming
Union Square and Madison Square and surging round the Madison Square
Garden, where a jollification meeting of twenty thousand cheering,
excited men was in progress. It sounded like the boom and roar of
some far-off sea breaking on the rocks and echoing among the cliffs.
All Harlem was ablaze with bonfires now, and the tumult of horns
and shouting boys filled the streets on Washington Heights.
She sighed and rested her dimpled chin in her hand.
"Surely, I must be a foolish woman to cling to Frank and reject
the glory and strength of this old sweetheart's chivalrous love!
I cannot help it. He is my husband. I love him. Perhaps he may
need me some dark night in life. Who knows? If he calls, I will be
ready."
The year had proved a trying one to Ruth. The sensation of
the completion of the Temple and the stir made by its dedication
had increased Gordon's fame, and the story of her sorrow had been
repeated again and again. A hundred petty details, utterly false,
had been added as the story had passed from paper to paper, until
she was afraid to look in a public print lest she find her own
name staring her in the face. From the Socialist point of view, she
was attacked as a blatant scold who had made her husband's life
intolerable, until he had been rescued by the beautiful woman
who was now his wife. By the conservative press, she was timidly
defended, damned by faint praise and humiliated by pity.
The children, growing rapidly, were beginning to feel the mother's
position. In the public schools, the story of her life and desertion
by her husband had tipped the tongues of the spiteful with poison,
and Lucy had come home more than once trying to conceal from her
mother the hurt of her sensitive child's soul.
Morris King, now the distinguished Governor-elect, hastened to
press his suit.
Her faithful knight, he was now laying lovingly at her feet the
tribute of a powerful man's life.
To every worldly view of her position and future his suit was
a temptation well nigh resistless. His love had stood the test of
years. He would worship her as his wife as he had worshiped her
as his ideal. She knew this by an intuition as unerring as that by
which she knew she could never love him as she loved Gordon. And
yet she felt a singular dependence on him, and a tender gratitude
for the protection he had given her life.
He knew his position was strong, and pressed it with quiet intensity.
He was careful that his attentions should not become the subject
of public comment, and the tongue of gossip cause her pain. Not
for one moment did he doubt that he would win.
The Sunday before his inauguration he spent with her, and, much to
his disgust, she insisted on going to the Pilgrim Church.
"Of all churches, Ruth, for heaven's sake don't go there," he
pleaded, with impatience.
"Yes," she quietly answered. "I've tried the others. I don't
seem at home. I've ceased to mind what any one there thinks. The
congregation has changed completely in the past two years, Deacon
Van Meter tells me. He called to see us the other day to ask after
the children and my financial welfare, offering to help me in any
way his experience could serve me. He has aged very much lately,
and the death of his wife seems to have completely broken the old
man's heart. He has withdrawn from business entirely. My sorrow seems
to have touched him in a very tender spot. He begged me in such an
earnest way to come back to the church and join in its work, I've
made up my mind to go."
King rubbed his hand over his head hopelessly.
"Well, if you've made up your mind, you will go. Ruth, you are the
hardest-headed woman to have such a beautiful spirit I ever knew."
The dark eyes smiled into his face.
"You may go with me, Morris."
He took up his cane and coat.
"I'll grudge the minutes I can't talk, but I'll sit and look at
you. You are growing more beautiful every day, Ruth. I am grateful
for the honour you are going to do me in attending the inauguration.
I'll agree to anything you say to-day."
They slipped into a seat under the gallery unobserved. The new
usher did not recognise either Ruth or her distinguished escort.
The services moved her with a strange power. In every hymn she
heard the deep rich voice of Gordon as she had seen him so often
stand in that pulpit. The swell of the organ's full notes throbbed
with his memory. The man she heard was no longer the new pastor,
but her beloved, and she was living over again the sweet days of
the past when he was her own and she had filled his life.
The preacher was reading the most beautiful psalm in the language
of man: "The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to
lie down in green pastures: He leadeth me beside the still waters.
He restoreth my soul."
A strange peace came over her as the music of these grand old
sentences, throbbing with the passionate faith of centuries, swept
her heart.
He was reading from the old Bible that rested on the same golden
lectern pulpit Gordon had hurled behind him that awful day in their
history. The same crimson cloth he had twisted into a shapeless
mass and thrown aside once more hung from its front. She could see
a ragged break in the gold of the cross where his enormous hand
had crushed it that day.
The thought of God's eternal life and unchanging purpose, binding
all time within His mighty plan, soothed her spirit. Men might
come and go behind that pulpit and from its pews, but the Church
of God, symbol of the eternal, would go on forever. In the deep
rhythm of the psalm to which she listened she felt the heart-beat
of its continuous unbroken life stretching back to creation's dawn
and on until Time shall roll into the ocean of Eternity.
Suddenly the red blood leaped from her heart with a thought, "What
God hath joined together man cannot put asunder!"
King's face grew somber as he saw her elation.
He knew that some mysterious spirit had suddenly dropped a veil
between them.
When they returned home she was very quiet and her dark eyes shone
with unusual brilliance.
"Ruth, you are thinking of that man," he said, with a scowl.
She nodded gently.
King trembled and his fists clenched.
"I could kill him, the great egotistical brute! How strange the
madness that binds a woman to the man to whom she first surrenders!
I sometimes think it is the most blind, pathetic and tragic instinct
that ever shadowed the soul of a human being. It is degrading. You
are a woman of character and intelligence. You must shake off this
peasant's mania."
She shook her head with a yearning, mystic look.
"I believe God had a great purpose when He made a woman's heart
like that. I love him. My very soul and body have become in some
mysterious way one with him."
King's eyes blazed.
"Yet he flaunts his love for another woman in your face."
She flinched as from a blow, but answered tenderly.
"Yes; he is mad now. The flesh has mastered the spirit in its struggle
for the moment. She holds his body"--a pause and a smile--"but his
soul is mine. He may not know it now. He will some day. I know it,
and I abide God's time."
"How long can you hold such a delusion, I wonder?" he asked, with
angry amazement.
"Forever." she softly whispered.
He drew himself up with grim force.
"I am going to win you, Ruth," he said, slowly lingering with his
lips over her name as though he could taste its sweetness.
He looked at her beautiful face and figure tenderly and with an
intensity that gave to his eyes a strange glitter.
She turned from him with a sigh and gazed on Gordon's portrait
hanging over the mantel.
"No, Morris. I have made up my mind to play my part in harmony with
Love's eternal law. If the world is full of discord, I will still
make the sweetest music my soul can sing. I will not try to drown
the din, but in my own way sing in perfect time with the beat of
God's heart. Perhaps some soul beside me on life's way will catch
the note, and it will not be in vain. This may be a blind instinct,
but it is not degrading. He who counts the beat of a sparrow's
wing, teaches the stork her appointed time, and whispers his call
to the swallow in the autumn wind, will not lead me astray."
The man shaded his eyes with his hand as though to hide their
misery.
"You are throwing your sweet life away," he said, reproachfully.
"But I shall find it again. When I see the fury of murder in your
eyes, and gaze into the gulf of fierce passions into which Frank has
descended, I cannot seek my own happiness. The sense of motherhood,
the feeling of kinship to all women, brings to me again the certainty
that I am right, that one great love unto death can alone give the
soul peace and strength, and give to man and the world happiness."
He bent forward quickly.
"But if he were dead you might love me?"
"Not as I love him."
"He is dead a thousand times to you and your life," he cried,
bitterly. "He is your wilful murderer. You will see this by and
by, and I will win you. I will be content with such love as you
can give me. Mine will be so full, so tender, so warm it will be
resistless."
She shook his hand kindly and bade him good-by.
"I will send a carriage for you and the children to-morrow. You
will go to the capital with me in my private car."
"I'd rather not, Morris, but I have promised you, and it shall be
so."
The ceremony of the inauguration was the most elaborate seen at
Albany in years.
Tammany came to the capital thirty thousand strong, and thirty
thousand strong they marched through the streets, with their shining
silk hats glistening in the sun and their lusty throats shouting for
their leader. They had voted the ticket faithfully, and sometimes
too often the same day, unkind critics had said, in the years of
the past, but for the first time in generations they had placed a
full-fledged Grand Sachem of their own Great Wigwam in the Governor's
chair, and they made the welkin ring. In the joy of their faces,
the steady hoof-beat of their big feet on the pavement and the
stalwart pride with which they marched, one saw the secret of their
victory. They were in dead earnest. Politics was the breath they
breathed and the blood that fed their hearts.
King felt the contagion of their loyalty and enthusiasm, and his
inaugural address was inspired and inspiring.
He placed Ruth and the children in choice seats near the speaker's
stand, and in every movement of his body, every word and accent,
from the moment he appeared till the last shout of his victorious
henchmen died away, he was conscious of her presence.
She could feel the intensity of his powerful will pressing upon
her in this triumph he was deliberately laying at her feet.
When the ceremonies were over, and his address was being flashed
over a thousand wires, he sent the children for a drive, and
showed Ruth over the stately executive mansion. He knew the hour
was propitious, and he had planned to make a desperate attempt to
win some sort of promise from her for their future.
"Now, Ruth," he said, softly, "sit here on this sofa by the open
fire. We will be alone for awhile. I've something to show you."
His face was still aglow from the excitement of his triumph. He
drew from his inner pocket an official envelope tied with a piece
of ribbon.
She leaned over with interest, thinking he was going to read to
her some scheme of legislation on which he had been at work.
Instead he drew out a package of her old letters and a lot of faded
flowers--every scrap of paper and trinket she had ever given him
in her life. He showed her each one, and gave the history of every
flower, when she had given it to him, and what she had said.
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