The One Woman.
by Thomas Dixon.
CHAPTER I
THE MAN AND THE WOMAN
"Quick--a gla.s.s of water!" A man sprang to his feet, beckoning to an usher.
When he reached the seat, the woman had recovered by a supreme effort of will and sat erect, her face flushed with anger at her own weakness.
"Thank you, I am quite well now," she said with dignity.
The man settled back and the usher returned to his place and stood watching her out of the corners of his eyes, fascinated by her beauty.
The church was packed that night with more than two thousand people.
The air was hot and foul. The old brick building, jammed in the middle of a block, faced the street with its big bare gable. The ushers were so used to people fainting that they kept water and smelling-salts handy in the anterooms. The Reverend Frank Gordon no longer paused or noticed these interruptions. He had accepted the truth that, while G.o.d builds the churches, the devil gets the job to heat, light and ventilate them.
The preacher had not noticed this excitement under the gallery, but had gone steadily on in an even monotone very unusual to his fiery temperament.
A half-dozen reporters yawned and drummed on their fingers with their pencils. The rumour of a brewing church trouble had been published, but he had not referred to it in the morning, and evidently was not going to do so to-night.
Toward the close of his sermon he recovered from the stupor with which he had been struggling and ended with something of his usual fervour.
He was a man of powerful physique, wide chest and broad shoulders, a tall athlete, six feet four, of Viking mould, hair blond and waving, steel-gray eyes, a strong aquiline nose and frank, serious face.
He had been called from a town in southern Indiana to the Pilgrim Congregational Church in New York when, on its last legs, it was about to sell out and move uptown. He had created a sensation, and in six months the building could not hold the crowds which struggled to hear him.
His voice was one of great range and its direct personal tone put him in touch with every hearer. Before they knew it his accents quivered with emotion that swept the heart. Emotional thinking was his trait. He could thrill his crowd with a sudden burst of eloquence, but he loved to use the deep vibrant subtones of his voice so charged with feeling that he melted the people into tears.
His face, flashing and trembling, smiling and clouding with hidden fires of pa.s.sion, held every eye riveted. His gestures were few and seemed the resistless burst of enormous reserve power--an impression made stronger by his great hairy blue-veined hands and the way he stood on his big, broad feet. He spoke in impa.s.sioned moments with the rush of lightning, and yet each word fell clean-cut and penetrating.
An idealist and dreamer, in love with life, colour, form, music and beauty, he had the dash and brilliancy, the warmth and enthusiasm of a born leader of men. The impulsive champion of the people, the friend of the weak, he had become the patriot prophet of a larger democracy.
A pa.s.sion for music, and a fad for precious stones, especially pearls and opals, which he carried in his pockets and handled with the tenderness of a lover, were his hobbies. He had in a marked degree the peculiar power of attracting children and animals, and all women liked him instinctively from the first.
But to-night he was not himself. After a brief prayer at the close of the sermon he dismissed the crowd with the announcement of an after-meeting for those personally interested in religion.
As the people poured out through the open doors the unceasing roar of the great city"s life swept in drowning the soft strains of the organ--the jar and whir of wheels, the wheeze of brakes, the tremor of machinery, the rumble of cab, the clatter of hoof-beat, the cry of child and hackman, the haunting murmur of millions like the moan of the sea borne on breezes winged with the odours of saloon and kitchen, stable and sewer--the crash of a storm of brute forces on the senses, tearing the nerves, crushing the spirit, bruising the soul, and strangling the memory of a sane life.
Gordon frowned and shivered as he sat waiting for the crowd to go, and a look of depression swept his face.
These after-meetings for personal appeal were a regular feature of his ministry. He held them every Sunday evening, no matter how tired he was or how hopeless the effort might seem. When the doors were closed about a hundred people had gathered in the centre of the church near the front.
He rose from his chair behind the altar-rail with an evident effort to throw off his weariness. He had laid aside his pulpit robe, a tribute to ritualism that this church had dragooned him into accepting.
"My friends," he began slowly and softly, with his hands folded behind him, "first a few words of testimony from any who can witness to the miracle of the Spirit in our daily life. We are crushed sometimes with the brutal weight of matter, and yet over all the Spirit broods and gives light and life. Who can bear witness to this miracle?"
"I can!" cried a man, who rose trembling with deep feeling.
His high, well-moulded forehead showed the heritage of intellectual power. His eyes, soft and tender as a woman"s, had in their depths the record of a great sorrow.
Taking his watch out of his pocket, he looked at it a moment, and, as the tears began to steal down his face, spoke in a tremulous voice.
"Seven years, four months, three days and six hours ago the Spirit of G.o.d came to my poor lost soul and found it in a dirty saloon on the East Side. I was dead--dead to shame, dead to honour, dead to love, dead to the memory of life. I was so low I found scant welcome in h.e.l.l"s own port, the saloon. They knew me and dreaded to see me. I had served time in prison, and when I drank I was an ugly customer for the bravest policeman to meet alone.
"Ragged, dirty, blear-eyed, besotted, I was seated on a whisky barrel wondering how I could beat the barkeeper out of a drink, when a sweet-faced boy came up and handed me a card of this church"s services.
"I don"t know how it happened, but all of a sudden it came over me--where I was, and what I was, and what I once had been--a boy with a face like that, with a Christian father and mother who loved me as their own life, and then how I had gone down, down in drink from ditch to ditch and gutter to gutter to the bottomless pit.
"I jumped down off that whisky barrel and washed my face. That night I found this church, and the Spirit of G.o.d, here in one of these after-meetings, led my soul to the foot of the cross of Jesus Christ. I looked up into His beautiful face--the fairest among ten thousand--the one altogether lovable, and I heard Him say, as to the thief of old, "This day shalt thou be with me in Paradise."
"From that day, hour and minute I"ve been a living man, a miracle of grace and love. I have not touched a drop of liquor since, and these hands, which had not earned an honest cent for years, have handled thousands of dollars of other people"s money and not one penny has ever stuck to them. I am the living witness that G.o.d"s spirit can raise man from the dead, and Jesus Christ keep him unto life!"
He sat down, crying.
Gordon lifted his hand and said, "Let us bow our heads a moment in silent prayer while every heart opens the door to the Spirit."
At the close of the service he pa.s.sed the man who had spoken and pressed his hand.
"Ah, Edwards, old boy, you knew I needed that to-night. G.o.d bless you!"
Jerry Edwards smiled and nodded.
"A lady wishes to speak to you in the study, sir," the s.e.xton said to him.
He looked around for his wife to tell her to wait, but she had gone.
His study opened immediately into the auditorium at the foot of the pulpit stairs. As he entered, a young woman of extraordinary beauty, elegantly and quietly dressed, advanced to meet him and shook his hand in a friendly, earnest way.
"Doctor, I"ve waited patiently to-night to see you," she said. "I"ve been coming to hear you for six months, and yet I have never told you how much good you have done me; and I specially wish to tell you how sorry I am that my stupid weakness to-night interrupted you. I think I came near fainting. It was so close and hot--and, pardon me if I say it--I suddenly got the insane idea that you were about to faint in the pulpit."
"Well, that is strange," interrupted Gordon, looking at her with deepening interest. "You have the gift of the sympathetic listener.
I noticed no disturbance, but I did come near fainting. I have had a hard day--one of fierce nerve-strain."
She looked at him curiously.
"Then I don"t feel so badly, now that I know my idea was not incipient insanity," she said, smiling. "I"ve quite made up my mind to send back to Kentucky for my forgotten church-letter. I"ve seen all fashionable society in New York can offer and I am weary of its vacuity. I"ve been disillusioned of a girl"s silly dreams, but there are some beautiful ones in my heart I"ve held. I can"t tell you how your church and work have thrilled and interested me.
I have never heard such sermons and prayers as yours. You give to the old faiths new and beautiful meaning. Every word you have spoken has seemed to me a divine call."
"And you cannot know how cheering such a message is to me to-night,"
he thoughtfully replied, studying her carefully.
"I never could summon courage to come up and speak to you before, but your sermon this morning swept me off my feet. It was so simple, so heartfelt, so sincere, and yet so close in its touch of life, I felt that you had opened your very soul for me to see my own in its experiences. It will be a turning point in my life."