The One Woman Part 39

"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 ma.s.s, 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 pa.s.sed 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, d.a.m.ned 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 grat.i.tude 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 un.o.bserved. 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 pa.s.sionate 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 ma.s.s 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 G.o.d'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 G.o.d, 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d'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 G.o.d'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."