Books: The One Woman
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Thomas Dixon >> The One Woman
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"It will be tough on that beautiful woman, the scandal--by George,
it's a pity," the reporter sighed.
"But it will be a great day for the little black-eyed spitfire wife
of his he's been neglecting for the past year. Her revenge will be
sweet. I've been sorry enough for her."
"I wonder if she will promptly sue for a divorce?"
"Yes; you can write that down without an interview," the Deacon
replied.
Ruth had come raging in anger against her husband. But the cold words
of these men, whispering in the dark their joy over his downfall,
stopped the beat of her heart.
She could see the big cruel headlines in the morning paper, holding
her beloved up to shame in the hour of his triumph. Surely this
would be what he deserved. But she loved him--yes, good or bad,
she loved him. He was the hero of her girl's soul, the father of
her beautiful children, and in spite of all his coldness and neglect
he was her heart's desire.
And the feeling came crushing down upon her that perhaps she
had failed somehow to do her whole duty. She had been wilful and
fretful and had not kept in touch and sympathy with his work. She
had demanded a perfect love and loyalty, and in agony she asked
herself if she had given as much as she had demanded. Had she not
thought too much of her own rights and wrongs and too little of
his hopes and burdens? And perhaps because of this he was to be
crushed at a blow, and his enemies laugh at his calamity and give
to her their maudlin pity.
She could hear the sweet strains of the organ in the church and
the soprano singing the Gloria.
She held her hand on her heart for a moment, as though it were
breaking, and suddenly her soul was born anew.
Out of the shadows of self and self-seeking she lifted up her head
into the sunlight of a perfect love, a love that suffereth long
and is kind, vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, seeketh not
its own, believeth all things, endureth all things--love that never
faileth.
"Lord, have mercy on me, and help me--I must save him!" she cried
in agony.
Rapidly retracing her steps, she passed back into the street and
around the block to the front of the church.
To her joy she encountered no one. The Deacon was so sure of his
triumph he had withdrawn his detectives from the street and had
them massed as witnesses in the Sunday-school room. He was sure
they would emerge by that way, for it was Gordon's usual way of
exit, and the choir was still singing in the church.
With feverish haste she applied the key to the spring lock of the
door for the members' entrance and passed noiselessly down the
aisle in the shadows under the gallery, unobserved by the choir.
Only the lights about the organ were burning.
When she reached the door of the study she paused.
What if she found him with his arms about her and his lips on hers?
Could she control herself? Would she not spring on the woman, with
all the tiger of her hot Southern blood from centuries of proud
ancestry tingling in her tapering fingers, and tear those blue
eyes from her head? She must be sure. No; it was over now. She had
conquered self. She would save him.
Slipping the key softly into the lock, she entered and stood a
moment, her stormy eyes burning a deep, steady fire.
They were studying a map of the city with eager interest in the
location of the Temple and did not see or hear her.
As she saw them thus, a sense of gratitude soothed her excitement
and gave perfect control of her voice.
"Frank," she said quietly.
"Ruth!" he exclaimed in amazement, striding toward her, while Kate
blushed and, with dilated eyes, stared at her, dumb with fear of
a scene of violence.
"Yes," she continued in even, rapid tones, "I have come, in love,
not anger, to save you both from shame and disgrace. That room
behind you is full of detectives and reporters. They are waiting
for the choir to leave to find you here alone. They sent for me
to give a fitting climax to the scene. They have your photograph
already, Miss Ransom, and the reporter is preparing his article on
the hidden Priestess of the new Temple."
"Oh, I thank you!" Kate cried, trembling.
"Keep your thanks. I do this from no regard for you. Frankly, I
hate you--hate and envy yoi your terrible beauty that has robbed
me of that which I hold dearer than life."
"But I do not hate you, Mrs. Gordon. I have for you only the
kindliest feelings," Kate protested.
"I prefer your hatred. But we have no time for talk."
Ruth quickly removed her hat and cloak and handed them to Kate.
"Exchange with me and pass quickly out of the church by the little
front door. Keep under the shadows of the gallery and the choir
cannot see you."
In a moment it was done, and Gordon faced his wife alone.
"My dear, that was a beautiful deed you have just done."
"Don't say 'my dear' to me again until we have come to an understanding
of this meeting," his wife said, closing her lips firmly.
"As you will," he gravely answered.
"When we are at home to-night alone I will hear your explanation."
"What you have told me is of such importance I cannot go home
to-night. I must see friends who will reach that newspaper in time
to know what Van Meter can have printed. It may keep me the whole
night."
"Very well; it will not be the first night I have spent alone,"
she answered bitterly.
"I will go with you to the elevated station, and will be home
certainly early in the morning."
They stepped from the study, and Gordon turned the electric switch,
filling the room with a blaze of light.
Van Meter and his men blinked in amazement at the sight of the
preacher and his wife quietly walking toward them.
"You contemptible old sneak!" he hissed. "How dare you crawl into
this room to spy on me?"
"I thought I had good reasons for being here," he spluttered,
nervously clearing his throat.
"Well, you thought a lie as your father, the devil, did before
you."
"Apparently a mistake somewhere," stammered the Deacon, looking
sheepishly at Mrs. Gordon. "And I'd like to explain to you, sir,
that I didn't bring that cat."
"Well, cat or no cat, I give you a parting warning. We will not
meet again in this church, and if I ever catch you sneaking around
me I'll take a whip and thrash you as I would a cur, you little
ferret-eyed imp of hell!"
The Deacon cowered beneath the furious giant figure and beckoned
to the detectives.
Gordon and his wife passed by them and out into the night.
CHAPTER XIII
A BROKEN HEART-STRING
The press next morning devoted entire pages to the sensation in
the Pilgrim Church. Portraits of Gordon, his life and theories,
sketches of the extraordinary scene in his pulpit, a full stenographic
report of his address which he had carefully corrected at midnight,
portraits of his wife and children, pictures of the old church,
its reading-rooms, clubhouses and coffee-house, were exploited.
His letter of resignation and the gift of a millon dollars for
building a vast Temple of Humanity, that would be a forum of free
thought in the heart of the metropolis, were the subject of separate
editorials in every paper.
Speculation as to the identity of this mysterious millionaire, who
had apparently deserted the army of entrenched wealth to support
this daring young revolutionist, filled columns. But it was all
the wildest guessing. Many of the greater magnates hastened to deny
with emphasis that they were in any way connected with the scheme.
Several of them denounced the preacher as a dangerous man whose
wild theories threatened social order. Gordon breathed a sigh of
relief when he found not a line hinting at Kate Ransom's part in
the drama or linking his name with hers.
After two o'clock, when he finished his last conference with the
reporters and his friends, he went to a hotel where he was not
known. He spent the rest of the night pacing the floor fighting
to a finish the battle between the memory of Ruth and his children
and his fierce new passion.
Just before dawn he lay down and fell asleep, dreaming of Kate.
The battle between the flesh and the spirit had ended.
He slept until noon, ate a hasty breakfast, called at the Ransom
house a moment, and hurried to his home.
His wife had read the morning papers with increasing amazement at
the sensation created, and a sense of impending tragedy began to
crush her. For hours she had been walking back and forth from her
window watching for his approach, until now she dreaded to see him.
At the sound of his footstep she recalled the fact that she was
the judge and he the culprit in the scene to be enacted. She had
demanded an explanation of the meaning of the meeting with this
woman, and she would have it. If his excuse were good she would
be generous in her love and beg him to begin once more their old
life, even if she threw the last shred of pride to the winds and
made herself his veriest slave. And yet her heart misgave her. She
felt herself lost and ruined before the battle began, but determined
to play her part bravely.
She watched him over the banisters as he stepped into the hall and
greeted the children with unusual tenderness.
He took Lucy's little form up and placed her arms around his neck.
"Now hug me long, and hard, and kiss me sweet," he whispered.
The child squeezed his neck and, placing her hands on his cheeks,
softly kissed his lips and eyes as she had often seen her mother
do. He ran his hand gently through her brown curls that seemed a
perfect mixture of her mother's and his own, and Ruth thought his
hand trembled as he kissed her again.
"I never saw you quite so beautiful, my baby, as this morning," he
said, as he placed her on the floor.
When he entered the room upstairs Ruth had recovered her composure
and stood waiting, her petite figure drawn to its full height, her
anxious face unusually thin, her eyes, set in the dark rings of
a sleepless night, looking blacker and stormier than ever in the
shadows of her disheveled hair.
"Sorry I could not come sooner, Ruth," he began, with evident
embarrassment. "But I did not get to sleep until just before day,
and I was so exhausted I slept until noon."
"Let us waste no words," said the soft, round voice. "I have waited
long; I am waiting still for ycur explanation. Why was that woman
in your study alone with you last night at half-past ten o'clock?"
"You wish to know the whole truth?"
"I demand it."
"Very well," he replied deliberately. "The immediate reason is a
secret of great importance, I must ask you to guard it sacredly."
"I've kept a dark one in my soul. You have had no cause to complain."
"The morning papers are full of wild speculation as to the millionaire
who gave that immense sum to build the Temple. Miss Ransom gave
the money."
"Impossible!" she gasped.
"So I thought at first. A lawyer came in the afternoon and told me
of the gift without a hint of its author. In answer to a request
on a card asking that I inform her of the results of my appeal, I
called at her house---"
"Before you called at your own or informed your wife," she interrupted
with bitterness.
"Yes; you have ceased to care about rny work. But there was another
and more urgent reason why I called,"
"Doubtless!" she cried impatiently.
"When the import of this gift fully dawned on me, the fulfilment
of my grandest hopes in the very moment of defeat (for the popular
subscription was a failure), I was overwhelmed with gratitude to
God. I fell on my knees and thanked Him. And then, Ruth--"
He paused and looked at her wistfully in pity for the little weak
figure that would reel beneath the blow of his words.
"And then what?" she asked quickly.
Gordon lowered his chin and rested it on his hand, while a dreamy
tone came into his voice, softening it to its lowest notes, and a
trance-like look overspread his face.
"And then I recalled that I had been deceiving you and myself and
another. I faced for the first time honestly the fact that I was
madly in love with a woman not my wife--"
Ruth went white, gave an inarticulate groan, staggered and sank
into a chair near him, sobbing in agony.
"Oh! Frank, for the sake of Jesus, the friend of the weak, who
loved little children, whose name you have so often spoken, have
mercy on me! Do not tell me any more. I am only a woman--I cannot
bear it!"
"But the truth is best, Ruth. You must hear it," he went on rapidly.
"I asked God to forgive me for the wrong I had done you and her.
I said I would tear that love out of my soul if it killed me, and
be true to my marriage vow. I went there to tell her this and ask
her to put the ocean between us. I found that she loved me even
as I loved her, and she promised. As I started to leave the house,
never to enter it again, I saw the card of the lawyer on her table,
and the truth flashed over me that she had made this sacrifice of
her fortune--greater than I had dreamed--for me and my work, and
that because of this I was leaving her forever. It was more than
I could bear or ask her to bear. I faced anew the facts. Our love
has grown cold. We are no longer congenial. Your ways have ceased
to be mine. It is wrong to love one woman and live with another.
We must separate."
"No, no, no, no, Frank, dear, my husband, my love, my own. Not
this. You do not mean it!" she groaned, as she sank to the floor,
buried her face in her arms and stretched out her hand until her
tapering fingers rested on his broad foot.
He bent and took her hand as though to lift her.
Suddenly the fever of her hot fingers trembling with overpowering
passion, the moisture of her hand, and the tremor of her convulsed
body swept his memory with the pain and rapture of his hour with
Kate.
Still holding her fingers, he slipped his watch from his pocket
with the other hand and glanced quickly at its face to see if it
were time for his return to the Ransom house.
"Come, Ruth, this is very painful to me. You must not humiliate
yourself so. You have pride and the heritage of noble blood."
She sprang to her feet and stared at him, with infinite yearning in
her eyes, gave a faint cry, half anguish, half despair, and threw
herself into his arms, holding him with passionate violence while
she smothered his lips and eyes with kisses.
He attempted gently to draw her arms from his neck.
"No, you shall not," she cried, holding him convulsively. "I will
not let you go. You are my husband--my own, my love, the hero of
my girl's dreams, the father of my babies. I have no pride. I will
do anything for you if you will only love me."
"But, Ruth, if I have ceased to love you--"
"Don't, don't say it!" she shrieked, placing her hand on his lips.
"I will not hear it. You do love me. This woman has lured you with
her devil's beauty, and thrown her spell over your baser nature.
Ah, Frank, dear, tell me that you love me! Lie to me as meaner
men lie to their women. Such a lie I'll hold an honour before the
awful shame of desertion. You cannot humiliate me so. See, dear, I
am at your feet. Have mercy on me. Do not ask me to bear more than
I can endure. Am I not the mother of your children?"
Gordon frowned and withdrew her arms from his neck.
"All this is very painful, Ruth. You cannot mean it. You know I
have tried to be honest. I hate a lie. I could not tell one if I
tried. You cannot love me and ask this infamy. I could never lift
up my head again as a leader and teacher of men and know I was a
wilful liar."
The little figure shivered.
"But, Frank, I can't give you up. It was the touch of your hand,
the music of your voice that first awoke my woman's soul. You are
my mate. You cannot know the young mother-wonder, pain and joy
that thrilled my heart as I first bent over Lucy's face, your dear
eyes in hers smiling at me. Our very flesh became one in Nature's
miracle of love."
"And yet our lives have somehow drifted apart, Ruth."
"But not so far, dear, as this woman has made you believe," she
answered tenderly. "I have been selfish and resentful, but I will
make it all up. I will lift up my head and be cheerful--live for
you, work for you, think only of you, ask nothing for myself but
only your presence and your love."
"But if I have given it to another--"
Again she put her hand on his lips.
"But you have not. It is madness. You could not forget our life.
Last night I lay alone in silence, with wide-open eyes, dreaming it
all over again. This woman I know is more beautiful than I--three
years younger; her hair is gold, mine the raven's. She is fair and
full and tall, and I am dark and small; but, Frank, dear, love is
more than eyes and hair and lips and form. We have been made one
in our flesh and blood and inmost soul. There is no other man than
you for me. There is no music save your voice."
"Yet, if you feel this for me, and I thus wait in love on another,
how can I live the lie?"
"Can you forget the sunlit days of our past?" she pleaded wistfully.
"When you lay on the sands of the beach in old Virginia and held
my hand while I read to you, idly dreaming through that wonderful
summer before our first-born came sailing into port from God's
blue sea! You said I was beautiful then. And you were so tender and
gracious in your strength. No other woman can ever be to you this
first girl-mother."
Her voice melted into a sob. She tried to go on and bit her swollen
lips.
Then she rose quietly, and walked to the window and looked down at
the city below, whose roar had drowned the music of her life.
He sat silent, waiting for her to regain her strength. He knew
that he had the power of hypnotic suggestion over her in his iron
will, and that she was beginning to recognise the inevitable.
She turned and faced him again, the hungry fires in her eyes
burning with mystic radiance. A tiny stream of blood ran down from
her lip and stood in the dimple of her chin. She drew a delicate
lace handkerchief from her bosom and wiped the blood away until it
ceased to flow. And then in low accents she said:
"You are going to leave me, my love. I feel the cold chill on my
heart. It is God's will; I bow to it. One look into your dear eyes,
one last embrace, one farewell kiss, and you will be gone. A little
gift I will make you in this, the saddest, lowliest hour my soul
has ever known. This handkerchief, stained with blood from lips
you have kissed so tenderly in the past--that bled to-day because
I tried to keep back the cries of a broken heart. I ask that you
keep this as a token of my love."
She handed it to him and Gordon placed it in his pocket with a
sigh, brushing a tear from his own eyes.
CHAPTER XIV
THE VOICE OF THE SIREN
Gordon left the house with a lingering look at Ruth's window
and turned his face toward Gramercy Park, where another woman was
waiting for his footstep.
He had suffered intensely in the scene with his wife. He did not
believe it possible that she retained such power over him. He drew
a deep breath of relief that it was over. Her pride would come
to the rescue; for he knew that with her tenderness she combined
strength, and with her delicacy, supreme energy.
The exaltation of his great victory of yesterday welled within him
and drowned the sense of pain. It had been the most momentous day
of his life. Visions of his Temple with gorgeous dome of gold--rising
in the sky from its pile of gleaming marble rose before his fancy.
He could hear the peal of the grand organ, the swell of the chorus
choir, and the response from five thousand eager faces before him.
He was speaking with inspiration as never before. He was leading
not a forlorn hope against overwhelming odds, but a triumphant host
of free, godlike men and women to certain victory.
He thought of the love that filled the heart of the woman to whom
he was hurrying, that she should do this unheard of thing while
yet breathing the breath of the capital of Mammon.
And then there stole over him, as oil on slumbering fires, the
memory of her kisses, the melting languor of her eyes, the odour
of her hair, the fever of her creamy flesh, until his senses reeled
as drunk with wine. A smile played about his lips; he quickened his
pace, lifted his head high, his nostrils dilated wide; he looked
dreamily over the housetops into the sky and saw only the face of
a woman.
He was in the grip of superhuman impulses. In the quickened throb
of his heart and the rush of his blood was the sweep of subconscious
forces of nature playing their role in the cosmic drama of all
sentient life, laughing at man's laws, making and unmaking the
history of races and worlds.
He was justifying his desires now in his new-found Social philosophy,
which he had studied closely since Overman's suggestion of its
scope.
He knew instinctively that between these elemental impulses and
the Moral Law there was war. He would reconcile them by leading a
revolution that should decree a new basis for the Moral Law itself.
He would make these very subconscious forces the expression of the
highest Moral Law. It suddenly flashed over him that this was the
key to the paradox of life. He would be the prophet of the new era,
and this beautiful woman his comrade in leadership in the Social
Revolution it must bring.
His face flushed with the new enthusiasm, and the glorious autumn
day about him seemed one with his spirit. The sky was cloudless
with fresh breezes sweeping over the seas from the south.
When he stepped to the downtown platform his eye wandered up and
down Twenty-third Street and Sixth Avenue and lingered on rivers
of women, below.
His own drama, his million-dollar gift, the enormous sensation it
had made in the morning press, had not produced a ripple on this
swirling tide of flesh. They crowded the windows filled with feathers
and hats, elbowed and jostled one another on the pavements, pushed
and squeezed and trampled each other's feet and skirts fighting
for standing room around the Monday bargain counters, oblivious of
the existence of the spiritual world, church, God, or devil.
Again the ceaseless roar of the city, calm and fierce as the sea,
one with its eternity of life, stunned him with its immensity and
its indifference. He felt himself once more but an atom lost in
the surging tides that beat on these stone pavements, worn by the
surge of myriads dead and waiting for the throb of hosts unborn.
What did they care? If he were to drop dead that moment, in the
morning of his manhood, with the shout of victory on his lips, they
would not lift an eye from their gaze on hat or ribbon to watch
his funeral cortege trot to the cemetery. A brief obituary and he
would be forgotten.
"After all," he mused, "Nature will have her way about this old
world and its destiny. Self-development is the first law of life,
not self-effacement."
His brow clouded for a moment as he recalled Kate's strange reserve
and shrinking at his morning visit. Would she, womanlike, at the
last moment contradict herself and withhold the full surrender of
life? It was impossible, and yet he felt a vague fear. At any rate,
he had burned the bridges behind. His way was clear. He would bring
to bear every power he possessed to win her, and in the vanity of
his powerful manhood he laughed with the certainty of victory.
When he greeted Kate and bent to kiss her she drew back, blushed
and firmly said:
"No; we have had our moments of madness."
And the man smiled.
"I mean it," she said, shaking her head.
"You will change your mind. It's a woman's way. Those moments of
bliss, so intense it was pain, when our souls and bodies met in a
kiss, have made a new world for you and me."
"But we will keep ourselves pure and unspotted," she answered
slowly. "All night I fought this battle alone. Our love is a hopeless
tragedy."
"It shall not be so for you, my shining one."
"There are others," she said, nervously clasping her hands, "whose
lives are linked with ours. The face of your wife I saw last night
will forever haunt me with its pathos. I've seen your children
once--so like you, and yet so like her."
"Even so. Life has no meaning now except that you are mine and I
am yours."
"But may you not be mine in a nobler way than the cheap surrender
to our senses? We can love and suffer and wait. You love me. It is
enough."
"But, Kate, my dear, there can be no middle course between right
and wrong, a lie and the truth."
She fixed on him an intense look.
"Have you told her?"
"Yes, and we have separated as man and wife. She leaves for Florida
for the winter. She has agreed at my request to secure a divorce,
and you and I will marry under the new forms of Social freedom.
Our union will be a prophecy of the revolution that shall redeem
society."
"You are doing a great wrong," she protested, her full red lips
drawn with pain. "When I think of your wife and children, of her
tears and reproaches, I am sick with fear."
"Perfect love will cast out fear. The world is large. The soul is
large. Lift up your head and be yourself. You said to me in this
room once you were not afraid."
"Yes; I had not kissed you then, or felt the bliss and agony of your
strong arms about me. Now, I am afraid of you"--her voice sank to
a tense whisper--"and I am afraid of myself!"
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