Books: The One Woman
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Thomas Dixon >> The One Woman
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"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."
[Illustration: "Driving his great fingers into his throat."]
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.
CHAPTER XXX
THE CLOUD'S SILVER LINING
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.
CHAPTER XXXI
A LACE HANDKERCHIEF
The next morning the lulls between the gusts of wind grew longer
and the wind-waves shorter. The snow ceased to fall and the shadows
on the clouds began to brighten with the glow of the sun behind
them.
The city stirred and shook off its white robe of death. The woman
looked at the wounded man with a stifled moan.
"It's no use, Ruth," he said, feebly. "I can't escape. I've got to
face it."
"What will they do to you, Frank?" she asked, in misery.
"I don't know," he answered, brokenly. "I killed him in the heat
of passion in a fight. But I'll be tried for murder."
The officers came and read the warrant of arrest. The dark, tense
figure, erect, with defiant face wreathed in midnight hair, stood
by his bedside and held his hand.
Her great eyes glowed and gleamed as though a young lioness stood
guard over a wounded cub.
Behind the bars in murderers' row the weeks and months were dragging
slowly to the day of trial. The rush and roar and fever of the city
were now a memory as he sat in brooding silence.
The press was hostile, and reporters worked daily with an army of
detectives to find every scrap of evidence against him, and as the
day fixed for his arraignment drew near, story after story appeared
in the more sensational journals, written with the clearest purpose
of influencing the mind of every possible juryman.
Ruth's heart sank with anguish as she read these stories, but
they stirred her to more vigorous action. She read every newspaper
carefully and followed every clue of reporter and detective to
anticipate its influence.
Not a day passed but that she carried to the man behind the bars
a message of courage and cheer.
Gordon would sit and watch for that one face whose light was hope
until it became the only reality in a universe of silence and
darkness. His whole life seemed to focus now on the little face with
its dimpled chin and shy, tremulous lips smiling into his cell.
The soft contralto voice, even when it sank to the lowest notes of
melancholy, was full of tenderness and caressing feeling. As he
touched her tapering fingers on the steel bars and watched the red
blood mount until her delicate ears shone like transparent shells
in the dark mass of her hair, visions of their life together would
rise until the past few years seemed the memory of a delirium.
He studied her with increasing fascination. The illuminating
power of restraint had developed new forces in his sensitive mind.
How marvelous she seemed, walking toward his cell with gentle yet
triumphant footfall, her face aglow with tenderness and love, and
how his soul leaped those bars and embraced her!
Many friends on whom he had counted had failed. She had never
failed. Her resources were endless, her energy infinite. She would
have fought all earth combined without a tremor. And yet those who
came in contact with her felt a gentleness that touched with the
softness of a caress.
The day before the trial her face glowed with hope.
"Frank, our lawyers are sure we will win!" she cried, with joy.
"Barringer has determined to rest the case on the charge of wilful
murder. And if he does the jury will acquit you. There is only one
shadow of uncertainty."
The dark eyes clouded and a gleam of fire flashed from their depths.
"I know," he said, sorrowfully.
"We can't find whether that woman is going on the witness stand
against you. I've tried in vain to get one word from her lips."
She brushed a tear from her eyes with a lace handkerchief. The man
saw it was the mate to the one she had given him stained with her
blood the day he had deserted her.
When, she turned to go, he felt for the cot behind him as though
blind, fell on his face and burst into sobs.
CHAPTER XXXII
A LIFETIME IN A DAY
The court-room was crowded to suffocation. The corridors were jammed,
the pavements, park and street outside a solid mass of humanity.
The prison van plowed its way through the throng. Gordon stepped
out, with handcuffs jingling on his wrists, and straightened his
giant figure between the two officers who led him.
A cheer suddenly burst from the crowd and echoed through the
court-room.
There was no mistaking that cry. He had heard it before. He knew.
He had killed a banker. They were glad of it and proud of him. In
muttered curses and cheers they said so. He was the champion of a
class, and the murder of an enemy had made him a hero. No matter
the right or wrong. Down with every banker--what did they care!
Ruth met him in the anteroom, followed him into the prisoner's dock
and took her place by his side.
The bill of indictment was read.
"The People against Frank Gordon."
With terrible memories the title rang through his soul. The people,
for whom he had fought, for whom he had suffered, worked and dreamed,
had put him on trial for his life. What a strange fate! The faces
grew dim, and a sense of illimitable and awful ruin crushed him.
A soft hand stole gently into his, and its warmth cleared his brain.
He looked around the room and, to his surprise, saw dozens of people
he had helped in his ministry of the Pilgrim Church. Just in front
of him sat a woman who, under the inspiration of his preaching,
had given her fortune to found an orphanage for homeless girls,
and was spending her life in happy service as its presiding genius.
She nodded and smiled, and her eyes filled with tears.
There was a stir in the group of lawyers behind him, and the old
woman who had kissed him the day Ruth was watching pushed to his
side, seized his hand, choked, and could say nothing. She had come
all the way from Virginia to cheer him.
Ludlow, his faithful deacon, he saw, and near him sat Van Meter.
The little black eyes were solemn and the mouth drawn with sorrow.
Over against the wall, jammed in the crowd, he saw Jerry Edwards,
who was still telling the story of his life with reverent wonder
and love. He clasped both hands together, shook them over the heads
of the crowd, and smiled.
A feeling of awe came over him as he thought of the eternity of
man's deeds, going on and on forever, whatever might be his own
fate.
He looked curiously at Barringer, the young Assistant District
Attorney, who was conducting the case against him. In the dark-brown
eyes, keen and piercing, there was deadly hostility. He had become
famous as a relentless public prosecutor. He came of a long line
of great lawyers of the old South, and the breath of a court-room
was born in his nostrils. Gordon was chilled by the cold, clear
ring of his penetrating voice.
While the jury was being impaneled, Ruth sat by Gordon, eagerly
trying to see the invisible secrets of every juror's soul who faced
the man she loved.
The court ruled that Socialists were disqualified to sit on the
case.
When the twelve men were selected she scanned their faces with
searching gaze for the signs of life or death. Their names all
seemed strange. She could make nothing out of them.
The opening address of Barringer choked her with fear. In
cold-blooded words he told the jury of the certainty of the guilt
of the prisoner. His manner was earnest, dignified and terrible in
its persuasive assurance.
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