The One Woman Part 31

"We are here to-day, called by a sacrament, not in the conventional sense, but in the elemental meaning of the word which reflects the mind and the being of the Eternal. Human life incarnates G.o.d. We are not met here to inaugurate a marriage. Words can add nothing to the sublime fact of the union of two souls. This is the supreme sacrament of human experience. It proclaims its inherent divinity.

This oneness no more begins to-day than G.o.d does. Time loses its meaning, but there is no yesterday or to-morrow in the harmony and rhythm of two such souls. Love holds all the years that have been and are to be.

"This is a day of joy--overflowing, unsullied, serene, a day of hope, a day of faith. It is a day of courage and of cheer, and to the world it speaks a gospel of freedom and fellows.h.i.+p. It proclaims the dawn of a higher life for all, the sanct.i.ty and omnipotence of love. It a.s.serts the elemental rights of man. These friends of ours announce to-day their marriage.

"Inasmuch as Frank Gordon and Kate Ransom are thus united in love, I announce that they are husband and wife by every law of right and truth, and pray for them the abiding gladness that dwells in the heart of G.o.d forever."

Kate's mother kissed her and cried in the old-fas.h.i.+oned way, and they sailed next day for a bridal tour abroad.

CHAPTER XX

AN OLD SWEETHEART

Ruth had fulfilled Gordon's prediction. She had lifted up her head and serenely entered her new and trying life.

The year had brought many bitter days, but she had bravely met each crisis. She had hoped to maintain her members.h.i.+p in the Pilgrim Church, and with humility and earnestness returned to her duties.

The new pastor had given her a hearty greeting, but the task was beyond her strength. She found that she no longer held her former social position--in fact, that she had no social status. The best people of the church were coolly polite and clumsily sympathetic.

She preferred their coolness. The poorer people were frankly afraid of her. The innocent victim of a tragedy, the world held that she was somehow to blame--perhaps was equally guilty with the man. She suddenly found herself outside the pale of polite society.

She was stunned at first by this brutal att.i.tude of the world. To women of weaker character such a blow had often proved fatal in this defenseless hour. To her it was a stimulus to higher things.

She fled to the solitude of her home and found refuge in the laughter of her children. She cried an hour or two over it, and then swept the thought from her heart, lifted up her proud little head and moved on the even tenor of her way.

But greater troubles awaited. She had no business training and met with misfortune in the management of her property.

Morris King had been her attorney, since she first came to New York, in the management of a small trust estate. He had always refused any fee, and she had accepted this mark of his faithfulness to their youthful romance simply and graciously. Secure in Gordon's love, she had long since ceased to consider the existence of any other man as a being capable of love. Marriage had engulfed her whole being and life, past, present, future.

But the tender light in King's eyes when he called to see her on her arrival from the South was unmistakable.

She was startled and annoyed, curtly dismissed him as her attorney and undertook the management of her own business affairs.

Within six months she had invested her estate in stocks that had ceased to pay an income and were daily depreciating.

When her support failed, she advertised for pupils to teach in her home, obtained two scholars, and they were from parents whose ability to pay was a matter of doubt. But she had bravely begun and hoped to succeed.

When King saw her pathetic little advertis.e.m.e.nt he threw aside his pride and called promptly to see her.

He was a muscular young bachelor of thirty-seven. A heavy shock of black hair covered his head, and his upper lip was adorned by a handsome black moustache.

He was a leader of the Tammany Democracy, a member of a firm of lawyers, and had served one term in Congress.

He had made himself famous in a speech in the National Convention in which he had attacked the reform element of his own party seeking admission with such violence, such insolent and fierce invective, he had captured the imagination of his party in New York. He was slated as the machine candidate for Governor of the Empire State and was almost certain of election. Visions of the White House, ghosts which ever haunt the Executive Mansion at Albany, were already keeping him awake at night.

He was a man of strong will, of boundless personal ambitions, and in politics he was regarded as the most astute, powerful and unscrupulous leader in the state. His personal habits were simple and clean to the point of aceticism. His political enemies declared in disgust that he had no redeeming vices. He was a teetotaler, and yet the champion of the saloon and the idol of the saloon-keepers'

a.s.sociation. He did not smoke or gamble, and was never known to call on a woman except as a business duty.

In his profession he was honest, dignified, purposeful and successful.

He had landed in New York fourteen years before with ten cents in his pocket, and his income now was never less than twenty thousand dollars a year. He had received a single fee of fifty thousand dollars in a celebrated case.

Before coming to New York he was a poor young lawyer in the village of Hampton, Virginia, just admitted to the bar. But the law did not seriously disturb his mind. His real occupation was making love to Ruth Spottswood, who lived across the street in a quaint old Colonial cottage. If any client ever attempted to get into his office, it was more than he knew. He was too busy with Ruth to allow other people's troubles to interfere with the work of his life.

He had taken her to the ball at the Hygeia the night she met Gordon, little dreaming that this long-legged Yankee parson from the West, who did not even know how to dance, would hang around the edges of the ballroom and take her from him. They were engaged after the child fas.h.i.+on of Southern girls and boys--always with the tacit understanding that if they saw anybody they liked better it could be broken at an hour's notice.

The next day when he called Ruth said with a laugh:

"Well, Morris, our engagement ends at three o'clock this afternoon.

A handsomer man is going to call. You must clear out and attend to your business."

"Oh, hang the law, Ruth. I'll sit out under the trees and write you a poem till this Yankee goes."

"No, I don't propose to be handicapped. We are not engaged any more, and you can't come till I tell you."

He put up a brave fight, selling his law books to buy candy and pay the livery bill for buggy rides, but it was all in vain.

At last, when she told him she was going to marry Gordon and the day had been fixed, he turned pale, looked at her long and tenderly and stammered:

"I hope you will be very happy, Ruth. But you've killed me."

"Don't be silly," she cried. "Go to work and be a great man."

He closed his law office and went over to Norfolk, debating the question of suicide or murder. He walked along the river-front to pick out a place to jump overboard, but the water looked too black and filthy and cold. He saw a steamer loading, boarded her, and landed in New York with ten cents in his pocket and not a friend on earth that he knew.

He had never spoken a word of love to a woman since. Ambition was his G.o.d, and yet, mingled with its fierce cult, its conflicts and turmoil, he had cherished a boyish loyalty to Ruth's last words as she dismissed him.

"Be a great man," she had said. He would--and he had dreamed that some day, perhaps, he might say to her: "Behold, I am your knight of youthful chivalry. Your command has been my law. It is all yours."

The day she had curtly dismissed him as her attorney he was elated with the first a.s.surance his a.s.sociates had given him that he would be the next Governor of New York. Her unexpected rebuff had cut his pride to the quick. The old hurt was bruised again, and by a woman who had been deserted by a cavalier husband. He had sworn in the wrath of a strong man he would go this time and never return.

And now he was hurrying back to her side and cursing himself for being a fool.

She greeted him cordially.

"I'm glad to see you, Morris," she frankly said--she had always called him by his first name. "I've gotten into deep waters since I sent you away so foolishly. I would have sent for you, but I was afraid you were angry and would not come. I've had about as many humiliations as I can bear for awhile."

He looked at her reproachfully.

"You did treat me shamefully, Ruth, after years of faithful service.

I don't know why. I might guess if I tried. When I saw that pitiful card this morning, I knew what it meant. So I've come back to take charge of your business. And you can't run me away with a stick. I am going to look after your property and make it earn you a living."

"It is very good of you, and I am grateful," she replied, gently.

"How much are your stocks worth?"