"You must take tea with us to-night," she said, as they stepped from the boat.

His wife would not return for supper and he consented.

It was not the first time he had spent an hour at the table of the Ransom household. Mrs. Ransom deemed herself honoured by his visits, and his chats with the invalid father about books were bright spots in his life.

Kate had sent the stringed band from the boat to the house and stationed them in the conservatory opening into the dining-room.

The tender strains of the music, the splash of a fountain mingled with the songs of birds in their cages, the gleam of silver and diamond flash of cut gla.s.s, gave Gordon's senses a soothing contrast to the wild beauty of the woods. 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.

She chatted with him before entering the dining-room.

Her manner was always flattering and frankly gracious, but to-night there was an added note of warmth and familiar comradeship. Never had he seen her so charming and so resistless. Always intensely conscious of her s.e.x, she seemed to have the power to-night of communicating to the man before her that consciousness so intimately, so directly and yet so delicately that he was led captive.

With scarcely a spoken word their relationship leaped the s.p.a.ce of years. The quiver of her eyelid, the dilation of a nostril, little inarticulate exclamations, the turn of her head, the rising and falling of her bosom, the flash of her violet eyes, the subtle perfume of her hair or the graceful movement of her magnificent form spoke the language of life deep and rhythmic which no words have ever expressed.

He went home, on fire with the dream of an ideal life and work with such a woman of supreme beauty.

CHAPTER IX

THE SPIDER

The pa.s.sing of a year added immensely to the fame of the pastor of the Pilgrim Church. His sermons now reached twenty millions of people through the daily press every Monday morning. It had become necessary to issue tickets of admission to the members and admit them by a small door that was cut beside the large ones.

Van Meter had ceased to be of sufficient importance for serious notice. The growth of Gordon's influence within the year had been so rapid, he found he had set out to fight a flea with artillery.

The old man felt his eclipse with bitterness. He had quit talking much, but writhed in silent fury at the sight of this tall athlete with his conquering gray eyes and smooth, serious face. Yet he was a regular attendant. The preacher's eloquence, the vibrant tones of his voice, full of pa.s.sion, or trembling with prophetic zeal, and the whole drama of a living militant church with this daring revolutionist at its head, risen from the grave of the old, fascinated him in spite of his hatred.

In the local development of the church Kate Ransom had become, next to the pastor, the most important factor. She had shown strong administrative talent, had organized kindergartens, night-schools for teaching domestic science to girls, established a reading-room, and opened a coffee house on the corner near the church, fitting it up with the magnificence of a saloon, with free lunch counter, music and singing. It was crowded with working-men and women every night.

Her work had brought her in daily contact with Gordon, and their comradeship had become so constant and so sweet that neither of them dared face the problem of its meaning.

To the woman the man had become little less than her G.o.d. Their daily life, its hopes, its poetry, its dreams of social and civic salvation, were enough in themselves: she did not a.n.a.lyse or question.

For the man, this fair woman, beautiful in face and form beyond the flight of his fancy, and loyal in the worship of his strength, as the soul of the strong man ever desires of his ideal woman, she had become a daily inspiration. And yet he had not acknowledged this even in a whisper of his soul.

In the meanwhile, his wife's interest in music had ceased, and she was rarely seen at the church on Sundays or at its weekday functions.

She had withdrawn from its life and had settled into a state of somber resentment.

She would frequently sit through a meal eating little, speaking in monosyllables, her black eyes staring, wide open, and yet seeing nothing, looking past the things that bound her, back into the sunlit years of girlhood, or forward into the future whose shadow's chill she felt already on her soul. Often he found her at night seated by the window in the dark alone, looking down on the city below.

She had ceased to ask him of his work or plans and he no longer troubled her with their discussion. Their lives were separated by an ever-widening gulf.

Stimulated by a sermon he had preached in August of the previous summer, when the death-rate was at its highest, a wave of reform had swept over New York. In his sermon he had arraigned the city government in terms so trenchant and terrible the people had rallied as to a trumpet call to battle.

A resistless movement for the overthrow of a corrupt administration took the city by storm. Day and night with voice and pen, with all the fire and pa.s.sion of his magnetic personality, he had led these a.s.saults.

Complete success crowned the movement. The reform Mayor was elected by a large majority.

Ten months had pa.s.sed and the net results were discouraging. Police scandals ran riot as of yore; gambling, drinking and the social evil flourished as before; and the press, that had valiantly and almost unanimously championed Reform, now exhausted upon it the vocabulary of abuse.

Gordon was disgusted and sickened and felt that one of his fairest dreams had been shattered forever.

The reaction from this reform programme had thrown him more than ever back upon his ideas of a Socialistic revolution which should destroy Commercialism itself, and he had become its enthusiastic champion.

Kate Ransom had followed his change of views with keenest sympathy.

She had read every book after him and had responded to his every mood.

"No; we're on the wrong tack, with our half-way measures and our fitful charities," he said to her.

"We must go deeper. We must make the Fatherhood of G.o.d and the Brotherhood of Man our daily life, not merely a poetic theory.

"We have hundreds of beautiful-souled men and women giving their lives in sacrifice for the city's poor and fallen. They seem to make little impression on its ocean of misery. We are bailing out the sea with teaspoons."

"I feel you are right, as you always are," she responded, unconscious of the contradiction.

"The Brotherhood of Man and the Solidarity of the Race we must make vital realities. Greed, commercialism, compet.i.tion and the monopolistic instincts are the cause of all this crime and misery and confusion. Love, not force, must rule the world."

"And you are the prophet to lead humanity into this Kingdom of Love," she said, her eyes enfolding him with their soft blue light.

"I fear I'm too great a coward for such a task. The man who does it must break with the past, become accursed for the truth's sake, defy social law and convention, breast the storm of the world's hate, die despised, and wait for a n.o.bler generation to place his name on the roll of the world's heroes."

"It is your work," she cried with elation.

"It's a lonely way for the soul to travel."

"You will have one loyal follower the blackest hour of the darkest night that comes."

A curious smile played around her full lips, and he looked away, afraid to say anything.

"Yes, I know that," he softly answered. "And I'm more afraid for that very reason."

"I'm not afraid." Her voice rang clear and thrilling.

"I wonder if you know the meaning of such words; or if you are thinking of one thing and I of another?" he slowly asked.