Books: The One Woman
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Thomas Dixon >> The One Woman
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"That's the only sensible thing you've said to me."
"And the only immoral thing; for if you and Van Meter ever agree
you will both do some tall lying."
"I think I'll take your advice and see him, anyhow."
CHAPTER IV
THE SHORTHORN DEACON
Gordon and Overman came into town on the four o'clock express. They
sat down in opposite seats near the centre of the car.
Neither of them noticed Van Meter, who also lived at Babylon in the
summer, board the train as it pulled out of the station. He was a
pompous little man, short and red-faced, with gray side whiskers
and bald head. His eyes were sharp and beady and shined like
shoe-buttons. Piety and thrift were written all over him. As a
deacon he passed the bread and wine at the Lord's Table on Sunday,
with his black eyes half closed, dreaming of cornering the bread
market of the world on Monday. For him New York was the centre of
the universe, and the Stock Exchange was the centre of New York.
The rest of this earth was provincial, tributary soil. He had gone
abroad, but rarely ventured beyond Philadelphia or Coney Island on
this side. He was the presiding officer of the Stock Exchange and
the President of the Metropolitan Bible and Tract Society. He took
himself very seriously.
As they got out of the car at Long Island City, Gordon said to him:
"Deacon, I wish to have a talk with you tomorrow. Shall I call at
your home or office?"
"Come down to the office at two o'clock; I'll be out at night,"
Van Meter answered briskly.
The next day Gordon walked from the church down Fourth Avenue to
Union Square and down Broadway to the Battery. It was a glorious day
in early spring. The air had in it yet the cool breath of winter,
but the electric thrill of coming life was in the soft breezes
that came from the South, where flowers were already blooming and
birds singing. The hucksters were selling sweet violets and the
cry of the strawberry man echoed along the side streets.
Fourth Avenue was piled with builders' material. The old brick
homes were crumbling and steel-ribbed monsters climbing into the
sky from their sites.
"Progress everywhere but in the churches," muttered Gordon. "The
Church alone seems dead in New York."
Broadway was one vast river of humanity. As far as the eye could
reach the throng engulfed the pavements and overflowed into the
streets between the curbs, mingling with the mass of cars, cabs,
trucks and wagons. On either side towered the interminable miles
of business houses whose nerves and arteries reach to the limits
of the known world, savage and civilised. Behind those fronts sat
the engineers of industry with their hands on the throttles of the
world's machinery, their keen eyes and ears alert to every sound
of danger in the ceaseless roar around them.
Shadowy and far away seemed the Spirit world from those hurrying,
rushing, cursing, struggling men. And yet the earth was quivering
beneath them with the shock of spiritual forces. The age of miracles
was only dawning.
He felt like climbing to the tower of one of those great temples
of trade and shouting to the throng to lift up their heads from
the stones below and beyond the line of towering steel and granite
see the Glory of God. And as he thought how little that crowd would
heed it if he did, he felt himself in the grip of Titanic forces
of Nature sweeping through time and eternity, and that he was but
an atom tossed by their fury.
As he passed the City Hall his eye rested on the towering castles
of the metropolitan newspapers. He could feel in the air the throb
of their presses, the whir of their wheels within wheels telling
the story of a day's life, wet with tears of hope and love, or
poisoned with slander and falsehood, their minarets and domes the
flaming signs in the sky of a new power in history, a menace to
the life of the ancient Church and its priesthood. Was this power
a threat to human liberty, or the highest expression of its hope?
Only the future would reveal. What silent forces crouched behind
those towers with their throbbing cylinders the world could only
guess as yet.
He walked past old Castle Garden where so many weary feet have
landed and found hope.
His heart filled with patriotic pride. Far out in the harbour stood
Liberty Enlightening the World, lifting her torch among the stars,
her face calm and majestic, gazing serenely out to sea.
"Land of faith and hope--my country!" he exclaimed. "Here the
commonest man has risen from the dust and proved himself a king.
Home of the broken-hearted, the tyrant-cursed, the bruised, the
oppressed, within thy magic gates the miracle of life has been
renewed!"
He looked out on the great emerald harbour gleaming in the sunlight,
its sky-line white with clouds and penciled with the pennant-tipped
masts of a thousand ships flying the flags of every nation of the
earth. His soul was flooded again with the sense of the city's
imperial splendour, stretching out her hand to grasp the financial
scepter of the world, already the second city of the earth, a
kingdom mightier than Caesar ruled and richer than Croesus dreamed.
He came back to Wall Street, and, as he turned into the narrow
lane, felt its power shadow his imagination.
"After all," he muttered, "Van Meter is not far wrong in his idea
of the omnipotence of this street."
The Deacon's office was plainly furnished. He was seated at an
old-fashioned mahogany desk, evidently a relic of his Knickerbocker
past. Born in New York sixty years before, he was popularly reckoned
a multimillionaire, though his wealth was overestimated. Compared
to the big-brained, eagle-eyed men who had come from the West and
mastered Wall Street, Van Meter was really a pygmy.
He greeted Gordon politely.
"Delighted to welcome you, Doctor, to my office. This is the first
call you have ever honoured me with downtown."
"I've been to your home often, Deacon."
"But somehow you've always been shy of Wall Street," said Van Meter,
expansively. "I suppose you look on us down here somewhat as the
old-time preacher regarded the saloon-keeper. You should know us
better. This alley is the jugular vein of the nation, and the Stock
Exchange its heart. We have a President and Congress at Washington,
and some very handsome buildings there. It is supposed to be the
capital of the republic. A political myth! Here is the capital. The
money centre is the seat of government. The Southern Confederacy
failed, not for lack of soldiers or generals of military genius,
but because it had no money."
Van Meter's stature grew taller and his eyes larger as Gordon felt
the truth of his words.
"Well, Deacon, I wish to know you better. I'm afraid I've not always
been fair to you as the senior officer of the church and one of
its oldest members."
"I haven't worried over it," he replied quickly.
"I know you in your home life," Gordon continued. "You are a faithful
and tender husband and father. If you were to die to-morrow, your
servants would stand sobbing at the doorway when I entered. You
are one of the kindest men in your individual life."
"Thanks. I hardly thought you would say so much."
"Then you have misjudged me. The only criticism I've ever made
of you has been as a part of our social and economic order. This
is a question, it seems to me, we might differ about and still be
friends. Now, I wish you to tell me honestly, face to face, why
you object to me as the pastor of your church?"
"You wish me to be perfectly frank?" he asked, with his black eyes
twinkling.
"Perfectly so. You couldn't say anything that would anger me. I am
too much in earnest."
"Well, to begin with, you don't preach the simple gospel."
"No; but I do preach the gospel of Christ."
"Your reference to the strike amongst the women shirt-makers in
New York drove one of the richest men out of our church."
"Yes; I saw him jump up and go out during the service. The women
were making shirts for his house at thirty-five cents a dozen,
finding their own thread and using their own machines. I said if I
found one of those shirts in my house I'd put it in the fire with
a pair of tongs, and I would. I'd be afraid to touch a seam lest
I felt the throb of a woman's bruised fingers in it."
The Deacon softly stroked his whiskers.
"It was an unfortunate remark. He contributed $500 a year to the
church. He has gone where the simple gospel of Christ is preached."
"Yes, so simple that he can sleep through it and know that it will
never touch his life," Gordon said with a sneer. "What's the use to
talk about mustard plaster? I say apply it to the place that hurts."
"You preach Evolution. I don't like the idea that man is descended
from a monkey."
"The weight of scholarship sustains the theory."
"Well, my idea is, if it's true, the less said about it the better.
And then you lack dignity out of the pulpit."
"Even so, Deacon, the most dignified man I ever saw was a dead
man--a dead New Yorker. What we need in the church is life."
"But you have departed from the faith of our fathers."
"Perhaps," Gordon said, with a twinkle in his eye, "if you mean
our famous fathers who 'landed first on their knees and then on
the aborigines.'"
Van Meter ignored the remark.
"You said one day that in America we had but two classes, the masses
and the asses. That sentence cost the church a thousand dollars in
pew-rents. I think such assertions blasphemous."
"Well, it's true."
"I don't think so; and if it were, it don't pay to say such things."
"Am I only to preach the truths that pay?"
"We hired you to preach the simple gospel of Christ."
"Pardon me, Deacon; I am not your hired man. I chose this church
as the instrument through which I could best give my message to
the world. I answer to God, not to you. The salary you pay me is
not the wage of a hireling. My support comes from the free offerings
laid on God's altar."
"We call them pew-rents. You are trying to abolish this system,
as old as our life, and allow a mob of strangers to push and crowd
our old members out of their pews."
"I believe the system of renting pews un-Christian and immoral-a
mark of social caste."
"And that's why I think you're a little crazy. Even your best
friends say you're daft on some things."
"So did Christ's."
The Deacon's face clouded and his black eyes flashed.
"From denouncing private pews you have begun to denounce private
property. Our church is becoming a Socialist rendezvous and you
a firebrand." "Deacon, you have allowed your commercial habits to
master your thinking, your religion and your character. In your
home, you are a good man. In Wall Street," he smiled, "pardon me,
you are a highwayman, and you carry the ideals and methods of the
Street into your duties as a churchman."
"Pretty far apart for a pastor and deacon, then, don't you think?"
"You ran the preacher away who preceded me, too," mused Gordon.
The Deacon's eyes danced at this acknowledgment of his power.
"He was a little slow for New York. You are rather swift."
Gordon rose and looked down good-naturedly on the shining bald head
as he took his leave.
"I suppose we will have to fight it out?"
"It looks that way. My kindest regards to Mrs. Gordon."
CHAPTER V
THE CRY OF THE CITY
Kate Ransom entered the church with enthusiasm. Even Van Meter,
learning that she lived on Gramercy Park and was a woman of wealth,
congratulated Gordon on the event.
She organized a working-girls' club and became its presiding genius.
Her beauty and genial ways won every girl with whom she came in
contact. Her club became at once a force in Gordon's work, absolutely
loyal to his slightest wish. She formed a corps of visitors and
asked to be allowed to help in his pastoral work.
"Before we begin," she said, "let me be your assistant for a day.
I wish to see the city as you see it, that I can direct my girls
with intelligence."
On the day fixed, she acted as usher for his callers at the church.
The President of his boys' club was admitted first to tell him
a saloon had been opened next door to their building in spite of
their protest to the Board of Excise.
Gordon frowned.
"It's no use to waste breath on the Board. They know that saloon
is within the forbidden number of feet from our church. But as the
Governor of New York has recently said, 'Give me the vote of the
saloons; I don't mind the churches,' go down to this lawyer and
tell him to insist on an indictment of Crook, the Chairman of the
Board, for the violation of his oath of office."
"It's no use, sir," said Anderson, his assistant. "I've been to
see him. He tells me there were three indictments for penitentiary
offenses pending against Crook when the Mayor promoted him to be
Chairman of the Board. Three courts have pronounced him guilty,
but the new Legislature is going to pass an ex-post facto law to
relieve him of his term in prison."
"Then try him with one more indictment and include the whole Board
of Excise this time. We will let them know we are alive."
Kate ushered in a slatternly little woman, dirty, ugly, cross-eyed
and her face red from weeping. "Please, Doctor, come quick. They've
got Dan. They knocked him in the head, dragged him down the stairs
and flung him in the wagon. He's in jail, and they say they'll have
him in Sing Sing in a week. He ain't done a thing. You're the only
friend we've got in the world."
"On what charge did they arrest him, Mrs. Hogan?"
"Just a lot o' policemen charged on him with billies!"
"But why did they do it?"
"It's the policeman on the beat who's got a grudge agin him. He
swore he'd land him in Sing Sing. And if you can't stop him, he'll
do it."
Gordon wrote a note to a lawyer and handed it to her.
"Go to this lawyer and tell him to take the case."
"Dan's a friend of mine," he explained to Kate. "I've taken him out
of the hospital three times from delirium tremens, and found work
for him a dozen times. But he can't hold his job. Everything seems
against him.
"'It's me face, Doctor,' he tells me in despair. 'When they see
me they won't stand me. Me wife's cross-eyed, or she'd 'a' never
married me. I was tin years prowlin' up an' down the earth seekin'
a woman. But I couldn't catch one. She'd 'a' got away from me if
she could 'a' seed straight.'"
Kate laughed and ushered in a young woman with blond hair and an
ill-fitting dress. She walked as in a dream, and there was a strange
look in her eye.
"I hope you are feeling better to-day, Miss Alice."
She made no reply, but seated herself wearily, while Gordon drew
a cheque for fifty dollars and handed it to her. She placed it
mechanically in her purse.
"I hope you are making progress in your art now that you have a
comfortable studio," he said kindly.
"I want to see him," she replied in a low voice.
"But I can't give you his address, When he came to me, conscience
stricken, and told me that you were wandering about the streets of
New York ill and half starved, and placed this fund at my disposal,
he stipulated that he would pay it only so long as you let him
alone. You promised me last month to stop writing letters to the
general post-office."
"I can't help it. I love him. I don't want this money; I want him."
"But you know he is married."
"He said he'd get a divorce. I love him. I'll be his servant, his
dog--if he will only see me and speak to me. Tell me where to find
him. I believe all men are friends to one another."
Kate, waiting behind the curtain which cut off Gordon's desk, could
hear distinctly.
When the young woman emerged she led her into the adjoining room,
and there was the sound of a kiss at the door as she left.
An aged father and mother came, dressed in their best clothes, and
very timid.
"We have a great sorrow, Doctor," the father began tremulously.
"We are strangers in New York. We hate to trouble you. But we heard
you preach, and you seemed to get so close to our hearts we felt
we had known you all our lives."
He paused and the mother began to brush the tears from her eyes.
"Our boy is a medical student here. We were proud of him--all we
had dreamed and never seen, all we had hoped to be and never been
in life, we expected to see in him. We skimped and saved and gave
him an education. Sometimes we didn't have much to eat at home,
but we didn't care. Did we, Ma?"
The mother shook her head.
"Then we mortgaged the farm and sent him here to study three years
and be a great doctor."
He paused, bent low and covered his face with his hands.
"And now, sir, he's taken to drink, and they tell us at the college
he won't get his diploma! And we thought, after we heard you, maybe
you could see him, get hold of him, and help us save him. He's all
we've got. The rest are dead."
Gordon looked away and his lips quivered.
"You'll help us, Doctor?"
"I'll do the best I can for you, my friends. It's such a sad old
story in this town that one gets hardened to it till we see it in
some fresh revelation of anguish like yours."
He took the name and address and the old man and woman went out,
softly crying.
A widow came to tell him of an assault on her twelve-year-old
daughter.
"And because the brute is a rich man on an avenue," she sobbed,
"they've turned him loose with a fine. I'm poor and ignorant, and
I'm not a member of your church, but all the people are talking
about you in our neighbourhood, and told me you were a friend of
the weak, and I'm here."
He called his assistant in.
"Anderson, do you know anything of this case? How could such a
thing be?"
"I've looked into it. It's just as she tells you. The man was
arraigned before a police magistrate, who had no power to try such
a case. He was allowed to plead under an assumed name-John Stevens,
of Newark, New Jersey, fined and discharged. I informed the city
editor of the Herald of the case; he detailed a reporter, who
wrote it up. He left out the man's real name. Nothing has come of
it. Our courts have become so debased, God only knows what they
will do next. We have a police judge now who is the owner of five
disreputable dives, which he runs every day and Sunday. He sits down
on the bench on Monday and discharges the cases against his saloons.
We've another, who was drunk in the gutter, with two warrants out
for his arrest, when the Boss made him a judge. What can we expect
from such courts?"
He sent her away with the premise to consult the best legal talent.
A little frousle-headed woman, carrying a bag full of documents,
then explained to him that she was the inventor of a process for
preserving dead bodies, meats and eggs by treating them with the
purifying ozone of the air, and wished him to organise a company,
make her president, and act as her secretary.
"It's the greatest invention ever conceived by the human mind,"
she explained, as she spread out scores of letters and testimonials
from men who had tested it, and many who had signed anything to
get rid of her.
"Madam, if your process can only be applied to the city government
of New York you will deserve a monument higher than the Statue of
Liberty. But I'm afraid there's not enough ozone in the atmosphere."
He had to call help to get her out, and then she only went after
she got the loan of five dollars to tide her over the week.
A theological student with an open hatchet face, from the western
plains, on his way to Moody's school at Northfield, asked for money
to get there.
"I had a-plenty," he explained, "but I met a man who asked me to
change a bill for him. He got the change, but I'm looking for him
to get the bill. I don't know, to save my life, how he got away.
I still have his umbrella that he asked me to hold."
Gordon smiled and loaned him the money.
"I don't ask you for any references. You are the real thing, my
boy."
A woman in mourning, whom he recognised immediately from her
published pictures, asked him to champion the cause of her son,
who was under sentence of death.
Gordon readily recalled the case as a famous one. He had followed
it with some care and was sure from the evidence that the young
man was guilty.
For a half hour she poured out her mother's soul to him in piteous
accents.
"My dear madam," he said at last, "I cannot possibly undertake such
work."
"Then who will save him? I've tramped the streets of New York for
six months and appealed to every man of power. Your voice raised in
protest against this shameful and unjust death will turn the tide
of public opinion and save him. You can't refuse me!"
"I must refuse," he answered firmly.
She turned pale, and her mouth twitched nervously. He looked into
her white face with a great pity and a feeling of horror swept
his heart. The pathos and the agony of the tragedy filled him with
strange foreboding. In his imagination he could hear the click of
handcuffs on his own wrists and feel the steel of prison bars on
his own hands as he peered through the grating toward the gate of
Death.
But he was firm in his refusal, and she left with words of bitterness
and reproach.
After a long procession of people, sick, and most of them out of
work, he was surprised to see one of his own deacons approach with
a look of dejection.
"Why, Ludlow, what ails you?"
"Sorry to trouble you, Pastor, but I've lost my place. You see,
I'm more than fifty years old, and though I've worked for my firm
twenty years, they laid me off for a younger man. I'm ruined unless
I can get work. I've four people dependent on me. I've come to ask
you to see the Manager of the new department store and get me a
place. I've been there three times, but I can't get to the Manager."
"I'll do it to-day, Deacon. Let me know when you need anything."
After two hours of this work, he left, with Kate Ransom, for his
round of visits.
She looked at him as he started smilingly from the church.
"And you have gone through with this every day for ten years?"
"Of course."
"While I have been around the corner laughing and dancing with
a lot of idiots. And you seem as cheerful as though you had been
listening to ravishing music!"
"Yes, I must be cheerful."
"How do you endure it? Yet it fascinates me, this life--in touch
with drama more thrilling than poets dream. It seems to me I'm just
beginning to live. I am very grateful to you."
He looked into her face, smiling.
"The gratitude is on my side. You are going to be more popular than
the pastor."
"I'm sure you will not be jealous."
"Hardly, as long as I hear the extravagant things you are telling
your girls about loyalty to the leader."
She blushed and turned her violet eyes frankly on him.
"I believe in loyalty."
He answered with a look of gratitude.
"We must go first to that store for Ludlow. He's the best deacon
in the church, a staunch friend, a loyal, tireless worker."
Gordon waited patiently at the store a half hour and succeeded in
reaching the Manager. As they left, he said to Kate:
"Did you see that crowd of two hundred men waiting at his door?"
"Yes; what were they doing there?"
"Waiting their turn to see the Manager. They will come back
to-morrow, and next day and next day, just like that. I felt mean
to sneak in ahead of them by a private door because my card could
open it. The Manager gave me a note to the head of the department
Ludlow wishes to enter and asked him to suspend the rule against
men fifty years of age and give my man a trial. In return for this
favour he coolly asked me to deliver a lecture before his employees
that will cost me a week's work. I had to do it. The head of the
department who read the note told me to send Ludlow to see him,
but he scowled at me as though he would like to tear my eyes out.
He will put him on and discharge him in a month for some frivolous
offense."
They boarded a Broadway car and got off at City Hall Park.
"Where are you going down here?" she asked.
"To a building that collapsed yesterday and killed thirty working
people. That house was condemned fifteen years ago by the Inspector.
But its owner was a friend of the Boss, and it stood till it fell
and killed those people."
The street was blocked by the fire department playing their streams
on the smouldering ruins, while gangs of men worked cleaning away
the rubbish and searching for dead bodies.
A crowd of relatives and friends were pressing close to the ropes.
Many of them had stood there all night, crazed with grief, wringing
their hands, hoping and praying they might find some token of love
left of those dear to them, and yet hoping against hope that they
might find nothing and that their beloved would appear, saved by
some miracle.
Gordon had promised a mother whose daughter was missing to help
her in the search. She did not know where her own child worked.
She only knew it was downtown near the City Hall. A building had
fallen in, and she had not come home.
Just as they approached the ruins a body was found and brought to
the enclosure for identification. The mother recognized her daughter
by an earring. She flung herself across the black-charred trunk
with a shriek that rang clear and soul-piercing above the roar and
thunder of the city's life at high tide. Above the rumble of car,
the rattle of wagon, the jar of machinery, the tramp and murmur of
millions the awful cry pierced the sky.
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