The One Woman Part 28

Gordon looked over the seething ma.s.s of excited men with exultant response.

He flushed and his big fists involuntarily closed. He had felt in his face the breath of the spirit that is driving the century before it.

CHAPTER XVIII

A VOICE FROM THE PAST

From a college town in Indiana the aged father, William Gordon, Professor Emeritus of History and Belles Lettres, hurried to New York to see his son.

When he read the Sunday morning papers, which reached him about three o'clock, he pooh-poohed the wild reports the a.s.sociated Press had sent out from New York announcing the separation from Ruth and linking his son's name in vulgar insinuations with another woman.

He hastened to find the telegraph operator, and got him to open the office. He sent a long telegram to Frank, urging on him the importance of correcting these slanderous reports immediately.

He walked about the town to see his friends and explain to them.

"It's all a base slander," he said, drawing himself up proudly. "My son's success has been so phenomenal, he has made bitter enemies.

The press has published these lies out of malice. His popularity is the cause of it. I have wired him. He will correct it immediately."

But when he failed to receive a denial, and the Monday's press confirmed the facts with embellishments, he quietly left home and hastened to New York.

He was a man of striking personality, a little taller than his distinguished son, six feet four and a half inches in height. Now, in his eighty-fifth year, he still walked with quick, nervous step, and held himself erect with military bearing. His face was smooth and ruddy, and his voice, in contrast with his enormous body, was keen and penetrating. When he rose in a church a.s.sembly his commanding figure, with its high nervous voice, caught every eye and ear and held them to the last word.

He was the most popular man that had ever occupied a chair in the faculty of Wabash College. He taught his cla.s.ses regularly until he was eighty years old, and when he quit his active work he was still the youngest man in spirit in the inst.i.tution. He read with avidity every new book on serious themes, and he was not only the best read man in the college town--he was the best informed man on history and philosophy in the state, if not in the entire West.

He had the gift of sympathy with the mind of youth that fascinated every boy who came in contact with him. His genial and beautiful manners, his high sense of honour, the knightly deference he paid his students, his enthusiasm in the pursuit of knowledge, his quenchless thirst for truth, were to them a source of boundless admiration and loyalty.

The one supreme pa.s.sion of his age was love for his handsome son and pride in his achievements. He had married late in life, and Frank's mother had died in giving him birth. The tragedy had crushed him for a year and he went abroad, leaving the child with a nurse.

But on his return he gave to the laughing baby, with the blond curling hair of his mother, all the tenderness of his love for the dead, and his sorrow tinged his whole after life with sweetness and romance.

The only evidence of advancing age was his absentmindedness from boylike brooding over the days of his courts.h.i.+p and marriage and his day dreams about his long-lost love. He recognised it at once and laid down his cla.s.s work.

Gordon met him at the Grand Central Depot with keenest dread and embarra.s.sment. Hurrying out of the crowd, they boarded a downtown car on Fourth Avenue.

The old man glanced uneasily about and said:

"Son, isn't this car going down the avenue?"

"Yes, father. We are going to my hotel."

"Hotel? I don't want to go to a hotel. I want to go to your house.

I want to see Ruth and the children at once."

"We'll go to my study at the church first, then, and I'll explain to you."

The old man's brow wrinkled, and he pressed his lips tightly together to keep them from trembling.

Gordon was glad he had not yet given orders for the removal of his study, and when they entered he drew the lid of his roll-top desk down quickly, that his father might not see Kate's picture where he had once seen Ruth's.

"Of course, my boy," the old man began, "I know there is some terrible mistake about this. I told my friends so at the College.

But I couldn't wait for a letter, and I couldn't somehow understand your telegram. I'm getting a little old now, so I hurried on to see you. I'm sure if you and Ruth have quarreled you can make up and begin over again. Lovers' quarrels are not so serious."

"No, father, our separation is final."

The old man raised his hand in protest.

"Nonsense, boy, you have an iron will and Ruth a fiery temper, but a more lovable and beautiful spirit was never born than your wife.

I was so proud of her when you brought her home! Of all the women in the world, I felt she was The One Woman G.o.d had meant for the mother of your children. In every way, mentally and physically, she is your complement and mate. Your differences only make the needed contrast for perfect happiness."

"But we have drifted hopelessly apart, father,"

"My son, the man and woman whom G.o.d hath made one in the beat of a child's heart cannot get hopelessly apart. It's a physical and moral impossibility. Do you mean to tell me that if your mother had lived after your birth, and we had bowed together over your cradle, height or depth, things past, present or to come, or any other creature, could have torn us asunder? You must make up this foolish quarrel. You must be patient with her little jealousies.

It's natural she should feel them when you are the centre of so many flattering eyes."

Gordon saw it was useless to avoid the heart of the difficulty.

So with all the earnestness and eloquence he could command he told his father the history of Kate Ransom's work in the church, the growth of their love, the drifting apart from Ruth, and the final dramatic climax of the day that she gave the money to build the Temple.

The old man with fine courtesy listened attentively, now and then brus.h.i.+ng away a tear, and sighing.

"And so, father," he concluded, "a divorce is the only possible end of it all."

"And what has Ruth to say?" he asked, pathetically.

"She has accepted the situation, and at my request will bring the suit."

"And you will marry this other woman while Ruth lives?"

"Yes, father, and our union will be a prophecy of a redeemed society in which love, fellows.h.i.+p, Comrades.h.i.+p and brotherhood shall become the laws of life."

The old man's brow wrinkled in pain.

"But the family at which you aim this blow, my son, is the basis of all law, state, national, and international. It is the unit of society, the basis of civilisation itself. To destroy it is to return to the beast of the field."

"It must be modified in the evolution of human freedom, father."

"But, my son, it is the law of the Lord, and the law of the Lord is perfect!" the old man cried, with his voice quivering with anguish and yet in it the triumphant ring of the prophet and seer.

"Yes, father, your view of the law," the younger man quietly answered.

"My boy, since man has written the story of his life, saint and seer, statesman and chieftain, philosopher and poet have all agreed on this. There can be nothing more certain than that my view is true."

"Just as men have agreed on delusions and traditions in theology, but you now see as clearly as I how foolish many of these things are."