The One Woman Part 7

"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 a.s.sault 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 a.s.sistant 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 a.s.sumed 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, G.o.d 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 doc.u.ments, 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."