Jr. Thomas Dixon

“ Gordon took her hot hand in his massive grasp and said:
“We believe, friends, in fellowship. We have asked you to-night to share with us the sacrament of the unity of our lives which we thus announce. For years this unity has made us one. We thus make it manifest unto the world. In the woman I have chosen as my comrade, behold the living soul of serene-browed Grecian goddess and German seeress of old, whose untamed eyes of primeval womanhood, the equal and the mate of man, proclaim the end of slave-marriage and the dawn of perfect love.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 passion 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. ”

“ His voice sank to a whisper, he leaned over and placed his trembling hand on Gordon’s arm and added:
“I once felt the impulse to kill a man. It was natural, elemental and all but overpowering. Remember that civilisation itself is impossible without tradition. I know that progress is made only by its modification in growth. But growth is not destruction, and progress is never backward to beast or savage. Marriage is not a mere convention between a man and a woman, subject to the whim of either party. It is a divine social ordinance on which the structure of human civilisation has been reared. ”

“ 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. ”

“ CHAPTER XXI — 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 turned from him with a sigh and gazed on Gordon’s portrait hanging over the mantel.
“No, Morris. I have made up my mind to play my part in harmony with Love’s eternal law. If the world is full of discord, I will still make the sweetest music my soul can sing. I will not try to drown the din, but in my own way sing in perfect time with the beat of God’s heart. Perhaps some soul beside me on life’s way will catch the note, and it will not be in vain. This may be a blind instinct, but it is not degrading. ”

“ For the first time there came into his soul the sweet and terrible realisation that his own flesh and blood had become one with Ruth’s in the greatest miracle of earth, the heart of a woman—a woman who could live and suffer and whose heart could break even as her mother’s! Her eyes were all his, her hair a perfect mixture of the pigments with which theirs had been coloured. The strength of the man trembled with tender pride and wonder as he looked at her—his living marriage vow, written out before his eyes in a beautiful poem of flesh and blood. ”

“ Gordon replied, dreamily. “Mark, I’m sorry for the poverty of your life. The man who has not loved is not a man. He is a monstrosity out of touch of sympathy with the race. You cannot understand me when I tell you that our love is so pure, so wonderful, so perfect, it is its own defense.”
“Indeed! Which love? For Ruth or Kate? Frank, I marvel at the childlike simplicity of your folly and your mental antics to justify it. It’s enough to make that cat laugh that broke up your sermon.” ”

“ His nature responded to art and luxury as quickly as to the sensuous voice of Nature in the glory of her summer’s splendour.
There was something in this glittering beauty, cold and cruel, that appealed to him. He always felt at home in such surroundings. Beneath his idealism and love of humanity there was still hidden somewhere the nerve of an Epicurean.
When Kate appeared, dressed for tea, simply but richly, with her splendid neck and shoulders bare and little ringlets of hair curling about her face as though scorched by the warmth of the red blood below, he felt the picture complete. ”

“ The Socialist preacher said:
“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 God. 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 God does. Time loses its meaning, but there is no yesterday or to-morrow in the harmony and rhythm of two such souls. ”

“ The old brick homes were crumbling and steel-ribbed monsters climbing into the sky from their sites.
“Progress everywhere but in the churches,” muttered Gordon. “The Church alone seems dead in New York.”
Broadway was one vast river of humanity. As far as the eye could reach the throng engulfed the pavements and overflowed into the streets between the curbs, mingling with the mass of cars, cabs, trucks and wagons. On either side towered the interminable miles of business houses whose nerves and arteries reach to the limits of the known world, savage and civilised. ”

“ Overman had appeared on the scene of Kate’s life in a peculiar crisis. Married two years, she had passed through the period of love’s ecstacy which woman finds first in self-surrender. She had just reached the point of sex growth when a revolt against man’s dominion became inevitable.
This mood of revolt was made stronger by Gordon’s fret over her social gatherings. In the dim light of the pulpit, preaching with mystic elation, he had seemed to her a god. Now, in the full blaze of physical possession, the divine glow had paled about his brow. ”

“ Van Meter led the opposition with skill. When I poured out my soul’s dream to them of a great temple of marble, a flaming centre of Christian Democracy instead of the old brick barn we call a church—a temple that would flash its glory from the sky above the sordid materialism that is crushing the lives and hearts of men, telling in marble song of God, of immortality, of faith and hope and love—they stared at me in contempt until I felt the blood freeze in my veins. ”

“ Gordon winced.
“No. I am going to form a union with this beautiful woman which shall be a prophecy and a propaganda of the freedom of the race, when comrade life shall forget the ancient fears, each shall be free to find and love his own, love be loosed from tragedy, doubt or moan, each life be its own, original and masterful, each man a god, arrayed and beautiful!” ”

“ He could feel in the air the throb of their presses, the whir of their wheels within wheels telling the story of a day’s life, wet with tears of hope and love, or poisoned with slander and falsehood, their minarets and domes the flaming signs in the sky of a new power in history, a menace to the life of the ancient Church and its priesthood. Was this power a threat to human liberty, or the highest expression of its hope? ”

“ When I see the fury of murder in your eyes, and gaze into the gulf of fierce passions into which Frank has descended, I cannot seek my own happiness. The sense of motherhood, the feeling of kinship to all women, brings to me again the certainty that I am right, that one great love unto death can alone give the soul peace and strength, and give to man and the world happiness. ”

“ And then the king had blown his frozen breath on the earth and the mighty city had been blotted from the map and its tumult stilled in soft white death.
Ruth drew Gordon to the window against which the sparrows crouched and shivered, that he might watch the storm’s wild pranks.
“After all,” the wounded man cried, “it has been conquered, the rushing, tumultuous city! Beyond the rim of man’s map of the world broods in silence the One to whom its noise is the rustle of a leaf and this wind but a sigh of His breath! What can endure?” ”

“ Gordon not coming?”
“No; I couldn’t persuade her. She took our chicks to the seashore.”
As the boat moved swiftly up the great river in the fresh morning air and the breeze blowing down its channel strengthened, they sat together on the after deck and watched the dead souls of the little ones stir with life under the kiss of the wind and the caress of the music.
In the park they spread out in the whispering stillness of the woods. Nature breathed the sweet breath of her life into their hearts again and they began to twist their queer little faces and try to laugh. ”

“ Kate Ransom had attempted no close analysis of her absorbing interest in Gordon’s work. The change in her life from weariness to thrilling interest had been its own justification. Wealth had robbed her of the mystery and charm of accident. The future was fixed; there could be no unknown. The men she had met in society were mere fops, or expert butlers who wrote books on etiquette. Life was a problem for them of what the tailors could do.
She had been isolated from humanity. ”

“ Barringer’s speech to the jury was one of fierce and terrible eloquence. Every art of persuasion, every trick of oratory, every force of personality he used with pitiless power. In ridicule, sarcasm, invective, pathos and logic, his voice rose and fell, pulsed and quivered, or rang with the peal of a trumpet. He held the jury in the hollow of his hand for four hours, while Ruth stared at him with her heart in her throat, every word cutting her flesh like a knife or smashing the tissues of her brain with the force of a bludgeon. ”

“ The strain on your nerves is too great. This maggot of Socialism in your brain is the trouble. It is the mark of mental and moral breakdown, the fleeing from self-reliant individual life into the herd for help. You call it ‘brotherhood,’ the ‘solidarity of the race.’ Sentimental mush. It’s a stampede back to the animal herd out of which a powerful manhood has been evolved. This idea is destroying your will, your brain, your religion, and will finally sap the moral fiber of your character. It is the greatest sentimentalist.”
Gordon grunted. ”

“ Gordon scowled.
“Why not? You propose to go back to forest life.”
“I propose to make human society a vast brotherhood,” the preacher cried, with a wave of his arm.
“Well, don’t forget that Cain killed his brother Abel for less than a woman’s smile.”
“Society is lost unless some great upheaval shall clear the rubbish and we build new foundations on truth and fellowship and freedom.”
Overman put his hand on Gordon’s knee.
“Frank, I’m a godless, crusty bachelor, but I read history. Destroy the integrity of the family and the salt of the earth is lost. The whole thing will rot.” ”

“ Gordon ignored his interruption, and his voice thrilled with passionate eloquence.
“We have abolished crowns and scepters. It is a moral and physical absurdity that, in a democracy, a whiskered babe, whose labour value to society is just ten dollars a week, should inherit millions of dollars that give him the power over men more terrible, absolute and irresponsible than a Caesar ever wielded over the empire of the world. No wonder our papers shiver when these babes sneeze, and report their daily life with servile pride.” ”