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 membership 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 attitude 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 advertisement 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'
association. 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 fashion 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 god, 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 assurance his associates 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?"
"About forty thousand dollars, I'm told. But I can't sell them.
They are not listed on the Exchange."
"I'll sell them for you, and by the end of the week have your money
paying you an income of two hundred dollars a month. Send those
two children home. You were not made for a school-teacher."
He looked at her with intensity, and she lowered her eyes in
embarrassment.
He sprang to his feet and walked swiftly to the window, and then
came back and sat down beside her.
"Ruth," he said, impulsively, "it's no use in my trying to lie to
you. We might as well understand one another at once. Of course,
I know why you sent me away."
"Please, Morris, don't say any more," she pleaded.
"Yes, I will," he cried. "I love you. How could I keep you from
seeing it in my eyes, when you were free at last, and I knew you
might be mine?"
"You must not say this to me!" she protested.
He scowled and pursed his lips.
"I will. I am coming to this house when I please. I am going
to give you the protection of my life. Every dollar I have, every
moment of my time shall be yours if you need it. Ah, Ruth, how I
have loved you through the desolate years since you sent me away!
Men have called me cold and selfish and ambitious, when I was lying
awake at night eating my heart out dreaming of you. Every hour of
work, every step I've climbed in the struggle of life, was with
your face smiling on me from the past. All my hopes and ambitions
I owe to you. The last message you spoke to me has been my guiding
star. And when this man threw you from him as a cast-off garment--you,
the beautiful queen of my soul--I would have killed him but for
the fierce joy that now I could win you!"
She shook her head and a look of pain overspread her face.
"I know what you will say," he went on rapidly. "You need not
protest. I will be patient. I will wait, but I will win you. I've
sworn it by every oath that can bind the soul. I have no other
purpose in life. I'm going to be the Governor of New York simply
because I'm going to lift you from the shame this man has heaped
upon you and make you the mistress of the Governor's mansion of
this mighty state. Washington is but one step from Albany. My dream
is for you. I will be to you the soul of deference and of tender
honour. Your slightest wish will be my law, I will be silent if
you command. But you cannot keep me away. If you leave me, I will
follow you to the ends of the earth."
Ruth was softly crying.
"You must not cry, my love. I will make your life glorious, and
light every shadow with the tenderness of a strong man's worship."
"And you love me like this when another has robbed my soul and body
of their treasures and cast me aside?" she asked, wistfully.
His mouth suddenly tightened and his eyes flashed.
"Yes, and I'd love you so if you were broken and every trace of
beauty gone. My love would be so warm and tender and true it would
bring back the light into your eyes, the roses to your cheeks, and
life even to your dead soul."
"How strange the ways of God!" she exclaimed, through her tears.
He looked at her with yearning tenderness.
"But you are not old or broken, Ruth. You have grown more beautiful.
This great sorrow has smoothed from your face every line of
fretfulness and worry, and lighted it with the mystery and pathos
of an unearthly beauty. It shines from your heroic soul until your
whole being has come into harmony with it. I loved you in the past;
I worship you now."
She turned on him a look of gratitude.
"Worry and jealousy did exhaust me. I am glad you see in my face
and form the change reflected from within. It is very sweet to me,
this flattery you pour on my broken heart. I thank you, Morris.
You have restored my self-respect and given me strength. It is an
honour to receive such love from an honest man. You must not think
ill of me if I tell you I cannot love you."
"I'll make you!" he cried, fiercely. "You cannot cling to the memory
of a man so base and false."
"He is my husband. I love him."
King flushed with anger.
"He is not your husband. He has deserted you, lured by the beauty
of another woman."
A gleam of fire flashed from her eyes, melting into a soft light.
"Yes, I know, marriage is an ideal, the noblest, most beautiful.
We have not yet attained its purity in life. Man is only struggling
toward its perfection. We will not attain it by lowering the ideal,
but by lifting up those who are struggling toward it. Another
marriage while Frank lives would be possible for me only when I
ceased to feel the meaning of sin and shame. I will never regret
my life. I have cast all bitterness out of my heart. Better the
happiness and pain of a glorious love than never to have known its
joy. I have lived."
"And I will yet teach you to live more deeply," he firmly said.
She shook her head and looked at him sadly out of her dark eyes
from which the storm had cleared at last. They beamed now with the
steady light of a deep spiritual tenderness.