FREEDOM AND FELLOWSHIP
The six months abroad which Gordon and Kate had spent in love's
dreaming and drifting had been the fulfilment to the man of the
long-felt yearnings of his fierce subconscious nature.
To the woman it had been the revelation of a new heaven and a new
earth. She had found herself, the real self, at whose first meeting
in the kiss of a man she had trembled. She was no longer afraid.
The elemental clear-eyed goddess had taken possession. She had
claimed her own, the throne of a queen, and the man who had dreamed
of kingship was her courtier.
She was smiling at him in conscious power, her violet eyes flashing
with mystery and magic, the sunlight of Italy gleaming through her
dark red hair, her full lips half parted with dreamy tenderness,
and her sinuous body moving with indolent grace.
"To be your slave is crown enough for man," he cried.
"And I am in heaven," she answered, proudly.
"Only, thus, in perfect freedom," he said, in rapture, "is the
fulness of life. Beauty and harmony and love are of God. Surely this
is communion with Him--the joy of embraces, the touch of sunlight,
the glory of form and colour, the magic of music, the poetry of
love, the ecstacy of passion, the kiss of the senses--He is in all
and over all."
"Can such happiness be eternal?" she asked, under her breath.
He kissed her softly.
"If God be infinite."
They reached New York the first week in November, and Gordon returned
to his work with renewed zeal.
The success of his movement was a source of continued surprise and
fear to the more thoughtful students of social and religious life.
But Gordon had found on his return an increasing amount of friction
between opposing groups in his church which was a source of intense
surprise and annoyance. Two factions had broken into an open
quarrel in his absence. He found it necessary to devote a large
part of his time to smoothing out these quarrels between men who
had come together with the principles of unity and fellowship as
the foundation of their association. He saw with disgust that he
was gathering a crowd of cranks, conceited and stupid, vain and
ambitious for fame and leadership. It was all he could do to prevent
a battle of Kilkenny cats.
He discovered that many things glittered at a banquet to celebrate
universal brotherhood which did not pan out pure gold in the experiment
of life. He had heard at such a love feast an aristocratic poet
extoll in harangue the unwashed Democracy, a Walking Delegate read
a poem, a Jew quote the Koran with unction, a Mohammedan eulogise
Monogamy, a Single-Taxer declare himself a Democrat, a Socialist
glorify Individualism, and an Anarchist express his love for Order.
But he found next day that as a rule the Egyptian resumed the use
of garlic and the hog went back to his wallow.
He found to his chagrin that mental freedom could be made a cloak for
the basest mental slavery, and that the most hide-bound dogmatist
on earth is the modern crank who boasts his freedom from all dogmas.
He found the Liberal to be the most illiberal and narrow man he
had ever met.
The absurdity of allowing this mob of Kilkenny cats any authority
in his church he saw at once. His dream of triumphant Democracy
faded.
He seized the helm at once.
Without a moment's hesitation he threw out twenty ringleaders of
as many factions and restored order. Under such conditions he dared
not even incorporate his society under the laws of the state as a
religious body lest these incongruous elements control its property
and wreck its work. He continued to expend the vast funds needed for
his Temple in his wife's name, leaving its legal ownership vested
in her as before.
Within a few months the extraordinary beauty and vivacity of his
wife made their house on Gramercy Park the rendezvous of a brilliant
group of free-lances and Bohemians. Her mother and father had
moved to a house on the opposite side of the park. Men and women
of genius in the world of Art and Letters who cared nought for
conventions had crowded her receptions. She was nattered with the
pleasant fiction that she had restored the ancient Salon of France
on a nobler basis.
The increase of her social duties required more and more of her time
at the dressmaker's, and left less and less for work in Gordon's
congregation.
At first he had watched this social success with surprise and pride,
and then with an increasing sense of uneasiness for its significance
in the development of her character.
The sight of half a dozen handsome men bending over her, enchanted
by her beauty, and the ring of her laughter at their wit, irritated
him. He had not been actor enough to conceal from her the gleam
of, worry in his eyes and the accent of fret in his voice at these
functions. She observed, too, that he attended them with regularity,
however important might be the work which called him outside.
He was anxious for her to cultivate a few of his intimate friends,
but this crowd of strange men and women bored him.
He was especially anxious that she should meet Overman, and by
her magnetism and beauty crush him into the acknowledgment of the
sanity and right of his course.
But Overman had promised without coming.
Gordon was at his bank on Wall Street again urging him to call.
"It's no use to talk, Frank," he said, testily. "All I ask of women
is to be let alone."
"But, you fool, I want you to meet my wife. She's not a woman
merely. She's the wife of an old college chum, the better half by
far."
Overman pulled his moustache, a humorous twinkle in his eye.
"Well, how many halves are there to you? I've met the other half
once before. This makes one and a half," he said, peering at his
friend with his single eye.
Gordon laughed.
"Yes, I am large."
"I've my doubts whether you're quite large enough for the job you've
undertaken."
"You're a pessimist."
Overman's face brightened and his mouth twisted.
"Yes, the more I see of men, the more stock I take in chickens.
I've a rooster at home now that can whip anything that ever wore
feathers, and he's so ugly I love him like a brother."
"Shut up about roosters," Gordon growled. "Will you come to see me
and meet my wife?"
Overman turned his eye on his friend, frowning.
"Frank, I'm afraid of the atmosphere. There's enough dynamite in
'Freedom and Fellowship' to blow up several houses. I don't like to
get mixed up with women in any sort of fellowship--to say nothing
about freedom and fellowship."
"Well, I've asked my wife to call by the bank here for me to-day
and I'm going to introduce you."
Overman did not hear this statement, for his head was turned to
one side and he was peering out of his window on Broad Street with
excited interest.
He sprang to his feet, suddenly exclaiming:
"Well, what the devil is the matter?"
"What is it?" Gordon asked, stepping to the window.
It had begun to snow on an inch of ice which was still clinging to
the stone pavements. At the corner of Broad and Wall Streets the
ground dips sharply, forming a difficult crossing.
Gordon saw his wife approaching the bank, laughing. She was dressed
in a sealskin cloak which reached to the ground. Its great rolling
collar of ermine covered her full breast and stretched upward almost
to her hat, rearing its snowy background about her heavy auburn
hair, which seemed about to fall and envelop her form. She wore an
enormous hat of white fur bent in graceful curves.
She was close to the building now, and her blue eyes were dancing
and her cheeks flushed with laughter. The perfect grace and rhythm
of movement could be seen even through the heavy seal cloak, whose
sheen changed with each touch of her figure.
"Look at the idiots!" cried Overman, excitedly. "So busy stretching
their necks to see a woman, there's five piled up on the ice. They're
ringing for the ambulance. She's fractured one man's skull, broken
another's leg, and, by the pale-faced moon, I believe she's killed
one. And you're after me to meet another woman--great Scott, look,
she's coming in here!"
"Well, she won't hurt you."
"I don't know!"
Overman made a break to reach his inner office when Gordon seized
his arm.
"Stop, you fool," he thundered; "it's my wife. She's calling by
for me, and you're going to meet her, if I have to knock you down
and sit on you."
There was no help for it. He heard the rustle of the silk lining
of her cloak and she was at the door.
She shook Overman's hand heartily, her violet eyes smiling in such
a friendly candid way he was at once put at ease.
"I am so glad to see you," she said, earnestly. "I've heard Frank
speak of you so often and laugh over your college ups and downs.
I feel I've known you all my life. And then he says you're such a
woman-hater--"
"He's a grand liar, Mrs. Gordon," he interrupted, suddenly colouring.
"I never said anything of the kind in my life. I'm a great admirer
of the fair sex!"
"Then you must prove it by coming to dinner with us to-night and
admiring me the whole evening."
"Nothing could give me greater pleasure," he answered, bowing his
big neck with an ease and grace Gordon noted with amazement.
When they left, Overman walked to the window and watched them thread
their way through the crowd.
"Holy Moses and the angels--what a woman!" he said, softly whistling.
"By the beard of the prophet, no wonder!"
Long after they disappeared he stood, looking without seeing, as
if in a dream.