Historical Newspapers of South Carolina

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/ 4+fijrJi t ********* By CHARLES M. SHELDON, Author of “In His Steps,” “Robert Hardy’s Seven Days,” Etc. Copurit/ht, 1001, bu Charles M. Sheldon <$>“ y.Jr ^ CHAPTER I. -:n <2 “i'ou hace xnhiethino mure to mu " HE great city rose about him like a mountain with a multitude of ambig uous canyons lead ing off into unex plored distances. The roar of its traf fic was persistent and spoke in various voices the lan guage of bitter toil, of physical energy and of careless pleasure seeking. At no time in all his life had he seemed to feel the burden of his responsibility for others as at this moment. He had come to the place where he could no longer endure the strife between duty and inclination, between personal ease and personal ministry to a world that offered him little expectation of re ward its he ministered to it. The strug gle which had led up to his final pre cipitation of the crisis had been a struggle almost empty of bitterness, but overflowing with pain. He was conscious as he stood on the steps of his father's house, about to turn his hack on all the traditions of his fa ther’s name and business, that there was no hatred in his soul and no re sentment in his heart. What he was about to leave did not find as much place in his mind as what he was about to seek. He was not troubled over any loss to himself, but he faced with a deep seriousness worthy of the event certain well defined questions relative to his future. As he finally went down the steps and became a part of the human current that flowed down the street the city seemed to absorb him into its turbulent myste- riousness and to bear him along, a part of its restlessness, a portion of its eternal destiny. ******* Rufus Cordon looked over at his son. “I don’t see that the trip has hurt you any. You look heartier, John, than I ever saw you before.” “It has been a great trip for me, fa ther,” replied John Gordon, returning his father’s look earnestly, “and 1 am very grateful to you for it. The ocean voyage toned me up wonderfully.” “Just what you needed.” The older man spoke with a heartiness that seemed to cause the younger to shrink back a little in his chair as if in antici pation of something different. “I re member the first time I went across. I was just about as much run down us you were when you finished at the uni versity. Six months in Germany and Switzerland made a new’ man of me. But we’ve missed you, John—Mary and I." John Gordon looked out of the win dow before he answered. “You’ve been very kind to me. You have always been kind to me. All that makes it hard for rne tp say something 1 ought to say.” The father looked sharply at the son, and there was a moment’s pause. “Well, go on,” Rufus Gordon said as his son seemed to wait for him to speak. “In the first place,” John Gordon be gan slowly, “I must refuse your offer of a position in the bank, t cannot by any possibility accept it.” There was another expressive silence between the two men. and Rufus Gor don shut his eyes firmly together, while his face hardened gradually. “1 received your letter just before sailing from Liverpool, father.” John Gordon continued, “and 1 believe 1 ap preciate your plan for my future. But it is all impossible. I am going to dis appoint you tn every particular, but that is because you caanot under stand”— Rufus Gordon made no movement of any kind, not even when his sou stop ped abruptly and looked over at him as If expecting a reply. To one who knew him as his son did the utter ab sence of any sign of ^motion in the face of what was in reality a tremen dous blow at his family pride indicat ed simply the hard, unyielding nature of the man. “Of course I don’t expect you to un derstand—I anticipate nothing. But you have brought me up to tell the truth, and 1 am simply telling it now ns it must be told, when I say that i cannot and will not accept the life you mapped out for me in your letter. It would be worse than a mockery for me to attempt such a caieer. It would be death io my whole nature. It would cot across every principle cf my life, every conviction that has e’ er prompt ed me to be of use in the world.” Rufus Gordon finally spoke after his son had been s'lent a long time. “We’ve been over all this more or less before. I hoped yonr trip abroad would take some of ytur foolishness out of yon. It seems It hasn’t. Well, what do you expect to do?” 'i’he question was Want. It was more —it was brutal. John Gordon rose and began walk ing up and down. Ills father sat look ing at him coldly, but curiously, as if studying some peculiar characteristic that for the first time had begun to af fect him. “Fathei\” John Gordon finally ex claimed. “you will never understand my •choice. 1 wondered all the way home whether it was worth while to try to explain myself. But you have a right to know why I refuse your offer and why I make choice of the career I must follow.” Rufus Gordop gave no sign of assent, but his sou went on speaking with growing feelnig that at times rose into genuine passion; yet at no point did he lose coiurol of himself either in voice or in manner. “I am not judging you, father, w hen 1 say that a life that is content to ex pend its greatest energies in money making is a life that has not only no attrartions for me, but it has a positive repulsion. To spend the day in a com petitive strife that seeks to get more and i lore, largely at the expense of the weak and helpless; to-spend night after ’fight in divssing up in tine cloth ing ; nil heing amused, to live only with those select companions who ai'e able to lire * 1 s and t l as wed as we are. to a: f t < f and abso- o iiii* ennd'.tions of ■:;:i bein's in this • no ideals higher ! standard and no he p!\ lut( ■ :-it- I ill pnyMcai appo- growing h ’Tor to beautiful house.” d Uiid the room, led with elegance te, with only here pa.-. ...as D , ; t’ • < tne. We I eo in : Jo’.o ‘ i’.lc.: • • < which wi. fni'ids and great good t:r amHtliere a siigg. .ion of a barbaric lap* into the vulgarity of over display. “We have servants, carriages, yachts, sunnie r residences—luxuries of all de scriptions. Out of all the wealth of our lives we give a fraction of income to so call *d charity. We are all three of us church meml#*rs. We pay a large sum nominally to church expenses. We do not give anything of our per sonal lives or personal enthusiasm to church or Christian work. The whole of our family life has revolved about ourselves—utir eating, dressing, enter taining and money making. What have we ever done for this city where we li\%‘? How much of service pre senting real sacrifice have we ever given to help solve any of its real hu man problems? We live from day to day as if there were no such thing in America as poverty or intemperance or injustice or inequality or greed or child murder. The w’ealth that buys things seems to be our dally god. The prayers we say in church have no moaning because we do not moan them. The very charity we dispense is an act of proxy which represents no thought, no sacrifice and no human affection. We give because it is cus tomary or as a means of silencing (God pity us!) our waking consciences that in spite of us sometimes remind us that there is a human brotherhood. “Day after da*y, with monotonous treadmill regularity, follows one func tion after another—receptions, teas, theaters, concerts, gayeties, self, self, self—while the city grows up in its po litical life, rotten, vile, uncared for by the money grubbers so long as too much blackmail is not levied on the business in which we are engaged. Practically we have said all those years to this city, where our money has been made: ‘We care nothing for your real life. All that we want out of you Is a living for ourselves, a luxuri ous living. Let the preachers and the philanthropists and the professional reformers see to all the painful and disagreeable details of human misery and social wrong. We are too busy with our money making to he dis- turbed by erics for justice or righteous ness.’ Father, you know this is the sort of life you plan for me #> perpetu ate. Your ambition for me is to have me enter the bank, to become an ex- pert In finance, to marry and manage a luxurious, proud, exclusive establish ment and train my children to follow on In the same path, keeping the name of the Gordons as a social and finan cial word to speak in the city and in select circles ns a synonym for distln- gir ihed wealth and high breeding, uu- mixcd with any vulgar association with common humanity. I say such a career fills me with horror. I feel as if all these years I had been living under the condemnation of an aqgry God, and 1 cannot and I will not any longer live such a life. You have no right to ask me to do it. I have no right to at tempt it.” “Is that your answer to my ques thin? 1 asked you what you were go ing to do.” Rufus Gordon had not moved a mus cle during bis son’s talk, and he spoke a w in an easy, contemptuous manner. .John Gordon came up to the side of the table opposite his father and looked keenly across at him. Then lie turned away and went over to one of the great windows and looked out on the f”shioialile avenue. When he finally turned around and faced his father again, he was astonished to see him rising from his chair and coming over toward him. In all his knowledge of his father, John Gordon had never known him before to exhibit so much feeling. Probably neither man fully ujilc-rstood tin* event. Afterward, in going over the scene, John Gordon could not avoid a feeling of suspicion as to its genuineness, but be had never known his father to play a part, and, in fact, considered him quite incapable of it. However that may be, Rufus Gordon now began an appeal to his son that for the time being had considerable in fluence over him. “John,” lie began, holding out his hands, although when the son stepped forward as if to meet him affection ately he droppe d his arms quickly to his sides, “you are my only son, and I— depend on you. It has been the ambi tion of my life to s<;e you succeeding to the place which I now occupy. I do not understand what you have just been saying. It bus no meaning to me. In that sense, what you say is very true— we can never understand each other. But you would have independence in the position I offer you and for which you have been trained. If you wanted to experiment in these matters of social problems, as you call them, you would have the money and your place in soci ety to heli» you. But if you step out side the circle in which we belong you will ha vo no standing and no influence. But it is not dear to me yet what your plans are, in case you finally decide to reject my plans for you.” He stopped suddenly, and John Gor don. looking eagerly and with growing astonishment into his father’s face, noted for the first time signs of grow ing age in the deep wrinkles about the eyes, the bent shoulders and a slight but noticeable shaking of one hand as the long white lingers fumbled at the watch chain. He had never lie fore en tertained the idea that his father was an old man. Rufus Gordon had al ways been so upright of carriage, so firm and steady on his, feet, so decided in his movements, that none of his ac quaintances had yet thought of age in their thought of him. What he now saw had something to do with the manner in which John Gordon an- swered his father's question. “My plans, father? I have none— that is, none that you would call by that name. Perhaps as far as I have gone my plans are summed up in my love for the people.” “Love for the people?” Rufus Gor don repeated the words and took a step toward his son. “Y'ou love the people, then, more than your old father! For the people you would do what you would not do for me! And who are the people? Masses of the envious, the des perate, the thriftless, the irresponsible. Are we to blame for their condition? Y’ou talk of social wrongs; But who makes them possible but the people themselves?” John listened in astonishment. In all their conversation his father had never before spoken so. There was a strain almost of mildness in his manner. “John,” he continued with a soften ing of accent and manner that deep ened the son’s astonishment, “jou can not do anything. I said I did not un derstand you or your motives. I know enough, however, to know that if you go oitt into the world to do the things of which you dream, yoh will misera bly fail, and the result will be pain and disgrace for me, for us all. 1 love you, John. Perhaps you have not known this. But”— Rufus Gordon turned and walked back to the place where he had been sitting by the table. When, he lifted his face again toward John Gordon, it was the same cold, proud, hard face with which he had listened to his son’s Indictment of his own iwid his father's V social selfishness. John Gordon was so confused by this scene and his father’s manner that he stood irresolutely silent by the win dow. The whole incident seemed fan tastically unreal, it was so unlike any thing his father had ever done before. He had just turned from the window to speak • when a voice in the next room began to sing: “The sadness that grows with the years Is a sadness that will not depart; It is close to the fountain of tears, For it lies at the depth of the heart.” The singer appeared at the doorway and called out in u clear but somewhat hard tone: “John, will you go with me this evening? Mr. Penwell sends word that he cannot go owing to a sudden sum mons out of town.” “What is it, Mary?” John Gordon spoke a fleet ionat ely. “Ravoll in ‘The Edge of the Sword.’ ” John Gordon looked grave, and his sistei’ swiftly noted his hesitation. “What’s the matter with you, John? Since you retnrued from abroad you act so queer. Don’t you want to go with me? Ravoll is perfectly splendid In the part.” “The play is”— John Gordon hesi tated to characterize it. In reality it was rotten in its whole ethical purpose and teaching. “Everybody goes,” Mary exclaimed petulantly. “Of course, If you won't go wb’i tne, it will spoil my evening. I hud 1 %u expecting It so.” Rufus Gordon spoke. “I’ll go with you, Mary, if you want me to.” “Ob, will you? That’s a good father. She turned toward hint, nut lo*)tcd over her shoulder at her brother with a ges ture of rejection. John Gordon looked at 4 ,l1h‘ two In silence that reg.steml In his mind what had practically become the most pain ful experience of his whole life, the growing knowled of his estrange ment fia in all his home loves. “But I have chosen,” he kept saying to him self. “I have chosen. I cannot go back now.” The trilling incident of the theater and his sister's misunder standing of iiis attituoe toward it was only a single illustration out of a hun dred o her things that made the whole social career unbearable to him. The fact that this particular play was dis tinguished by the acting of the most brilliant actor of the age did not re lieve the play Itself of the condemna tion that rested upon it for being too impure and suggestive for any self re specting man or woman to behold its movement on the stage. Y’et the wealth and fashion and culture of the city ap plauded the acting and praised the ac tor. The press contained columns of commendation for the scenery, the cos tumes, the spirited presentation from an artistic and dramatic point of view and a mild sentence or two of rebuke fi* - the character of the play itself. What more could one ask by way of allurement to go and see and hear something which was a little doubtful in its moral setting, but splendid in its physical and intellectual sweep of. pow er? M;ii’y had risen and was going back into the other rooir singing gaylyg “For ;t lied at the depth of ths heart,” when John Gordon spoke again. “Father, will you wait here a few moments? I wish to have a little talk with Mary. And I would like to finish our confi renco.” he hesitated, but Ru fus Gordon answered as he went over to a writing desk, “FU be here when ydu are through.” He sat down and began to write, while John and Mary went together into.the next room. “Mary, I want to talk seriously with you.” John Gordon began as Mary com menced to sing in a mocking tone, “The sadness that grows with th< years “No! Xo! Listen to me once, jus. this once, Mary, with seriousness. Y’o i know we have played together ai. 1 lightly treated the world all then? years. But it cannot go on forev r. I have come to a place, Mary, win e I must choose between father and y hi and the work of iny life. It is no play ing matter now.” “Why, what are you going to do?” It was the same question his father had asked and it presented again the same mental difficulty to John Gor don. If his father failed 1o understand ills son’s motives, his sister was, if anything, far loss capable of knowing what her brother had in mind. “I am going—I am going to—God help me, I do not yet know all—but I cannot live this life any longer. What do we do, Mary, but make playtime of life? And the people are beginning to wake up from their sleep of the ages and stretch their limbs with more and more consciousness of power. We shall he playthings to them, if we do not love them and go to work. That is all we shall be fit for—playthings—that is all we have ever done—play—and it is murder to play all the time in a world like ours.” “What’s the matter with you, John? What makes you act so? You talk like one of these socialists, these hor rid men that are always making so much fuss alwut rich people and—and \ V ' v) • - A rh "John, will you ejowlth me this eveningt” al} that!” Mary spoke with a touch of petulance as near excitement or an ger as she generally became under strong temptation. “L am one, Mary,” replied John Gor don quietly. “What! A socialist! You! John Gordon!” The girl spoke in genuine astonishment. And with a gesture of real fear she moved away and stood looking at him as if seeing something new and strange in him. “You don’t need to be afraid of me, Mary.” John said with a slight smile. “1 can’t'explain it all to you. But all my views have changed within the last few months. It is not possible for me to continue the business that father lias built up. He Inis been so deeply set upon it that 1 know my refusal to make his plans my own lias angered him beyond forgiveness. You know, father well enough to know that 1 can not expect anything from him in the way of encouragement in the career I have planned.” “Why, you have not / told me at all what you plan to do!” exclaimed his sister hopelessly. “I am going to work for the people! I am going to”— ,^olin Gordon paused as a vision of his future, mibtlike, but In rugged out line, grew on the screen of bis imagina tion. “The people!” There it was; ignorant, some of it. but hourly rising into a desperate intelligence, which, undirected, would prove its own and the city’s destruction. “The people,” toiling, sweating, acting figures in the great luman drama that were neither supernumeraries nor leading parts, but sj Aital to the whi le movement of the tragedy that it all was destined to sweep'on to its final act. with them as resultant cause! ’’The people,” vague, hut certain, full of unwritten histories, hut making all history possible, and bearing in face and attitude the weal or woe of republics! “The people,” driven in herds one day, leading the masses the next, while all problems of life surged up and down the throng ing highways, entanglements caused by murderous greed, by inherited cus toms, by the physical passions that know no education of refinement line to civilization! “The people,” born of the soil, but molded by the city, some of it to starve and riot and drink and grow indifferent to the very wrongs that made it what it was, and he, John Gordon, the son of Rufus Gordon, the great financier, the man of “deals” and “combines” and “operations”—and he, John Gordon, was going to devote his young manhood to “the people,” to the training and directing of this mis- directod giant, because (he smiled at its strange possibility), because he had grown to love it. a love taught him by personal religious experience, so real, so profound, that he knew it dug a gulf as deep as space between his father and his sister and himself. Nothing but a similar experience on their part could ever fill the gulf, nothing but a similar miracle of regeneration could ever make him understood by them. Mary had gone over to the piano and was humming the tune she had been singing when she interrupted the talk between father and brother. After a moment John Gordon went over and put his hand on his sister’s shoulder.. “All through?” she said, turning about from the piano. There were tears in John Gordon’s eyes as he looked down at her. When he spoke, it was very gently. “It all means, of course, that 1 am going away. Do you understand that, Mary? This will not be my home any more. It will not be possible for me to live here and do”— “It's all very strange to me, John,” said his sister. “You have every chance in the world and you prefer to throw it away for—for a lot of people who don’t care.” “They will care.” “What good if they do, John?” His sister suddenly turned toward him very much as his father had, and laid her hand on his arm. “John, the people will not care. What can you do? Surely we are not to blame for all the wrong in the city. I heard what you said to father. It is simply absurd to think that we are responsible for the way tilings go. And it is nonsense to think you can do anything. Think how it will look in print! ‘John Gordon, the reformer! John Gordon, the .social ist!’ ” “Don't, Mary! It will lie hard enough without your sneer.” “1 did not mean to sneer.” She seemed honestly grieved, and ho in stantly leaned over and kissed her check. But even as he did so he knew she had turned away from him a little, and when he raised his head she did not look up or return his caress. lie still stood by her silently, realizing each moment more keenly the chasm that stretched between them owing to his religions experience. “Where are you going to live? You say you cannot live here with us any more?” his sister finally asked. “I don’t know.” “Will you live with the people?”, “It is passible.” “It is absurd. I don't understand.” “You cannot.” He said it with a sadness that realized the futility of explanations. “And of course Ludla will go with you! She is such a lover of the peo ple.” “Lue'Ja!” “You have forgotten her?” “No!” And yet he had—at least he had absorbed all his thought for the time about his home relations and had not reckoned on facing this question of the relation which would exist bc- tween himself and the woman who had promised to be his wife when he had asked her as John Gordon, son of Rufus Gordon. What would she say now to John Gordon, reformer? lie sat down and put ids hands over his face, while Mary watched him cu riously, very much as the father had done. “Luella is very might enjoy living studying problems, tradictions.” “That is true,” John Gordon whis pered to himself as he lifted np his face. “Luella thinks a good deal of you, John.” “That is true, too,” he .whispered to himself again. “Still, when you think how Luella has been brought up you can’t be sur prised if she should refuse to do some things, especially if they mean loss of social standing. Love must be reason able.” “And unreasonable,” said John Gor don, with a faint smile. “Love bear cth all tilings.” Mary Gordon stared at her brother. “Of course anything is possible. But Luella”— Klie smiled to herself and thou stared at. her brother, and then carelessly turned about and began to slug: "Ob, the sadness that grows with the years:'* JpUfe' John Gordon turned toward the,other room, hut before he had gone out Mary rose and came quickly up to him. “This is uot goodby, John?” “Yes.” He turned and looked at her earnestly. “Of course” —she hesltate/J — “of proud. * Still, she in the slums and She is full of con course the reason I don’t show mor feeling is because I cannot believe you are really going to leave us for good. You will try the reforming business a little while, and after you have Darned that you cannot do anything you will come back and let father work out his plan for you, which, I must say. is far more sensible than what you propose. So I don’t Intend to say goodby, John, and I hope Luella will bo as good to ! you as I am.” She instantly went back to the piano, ; sat down and began to sing and play i gnyly. John Gordon looked at her ijor a moment, then went into the othB room and found his father still writing there. lie went up to the desk and waited until his father laid down his pen. “Well?” he said as he lifted his head and looked up at his son. “Y'ou have something more to say?” There was not a hint in the tone or manner to suggest to John Gordon any affection or feeling. He was not sur prised. He had not expected anything. But he put out his hand toward his father almost like one who is sinking and sees some floating object swept out of roach on a receding wave. “You understand, father, that I do not ask anything of you. Grand mother's share of the Waller estate is due me next year. I will take care of myself until then.” Rufus Gordon did not speak, and John Gordon continued: “All this—my action is and always will be strange to you, father. The re ligious experience through which I passed while abroad makes any other course impossible for ;ne. As I said to you before, the life we have been liv ing in this city seems now to he u monstrous life for civilized people to live. The term Christian has no mean ing at al! unless it means service, sac rifice. sharing in some real sense with tli(’ world's needs. The civilization which means simply getting all it can out of the world instead of putting all it can into it is a civilization that can not he called Christian. My soul is un able to rest, my life cannot go on with such contradictions torturing it. That is the reason, father, that our ways di vide. Would to God that we could see and walk together!” The cry was wrung from him by a sharp and sudden pain that took ac count of the fact of blood kinship. It was t'.:" cry of human fellowship, the (xclamalion of a personality that had a'- ■ iiiar*' d great stress on the value of c mpaniotiship. But there was no cry !'•( i i the m iti who sat coldly look ing at him. Rufus Gordon was a father, lint he was also that personification of the net product of our un-Christian methods he was crystallized selfish ness—none the less selfish lava use civ ilized. all the more selfish because it was more effective in civilized form. Ignorant self is not so destructive us educated self. “Is there anything more?” Rufus Gordon asked the ques.ion as a busi ness proposition to close an interview that was taking valuable time needed for more important transactions. "Nothing more except that I hope you will—you will not bear any hard feelings toward me. Oh. father!” John Gordon suddenly exclaimed, taking a step toward the impassive figure. “You said you loved me. Cannot you/believe iu me and the life I have chosen?” For a moment over the hard face there swept a tremor. It was gone in a moment and Rufus Gordon answered slowly: “You have chospn. When you change your mind, you may conic and see me about it." “I shall never change my mind.” “That is all, then?” “Yes. except that my love for you and Mary is still the same. Some time, when you have felt what I have, you will believe as I do.” Rufus Gordon made no answer, and John Gordon slowly turned to leave the room. “1 will arrange to have my things taken over to Barton's. I am going to stay witli him until I arrange for my permanent quarters.” He left the room and went upstairs, where he busied himself with packing the few possessions he had brought home with him from abroad. During it all his highly Imaginative and even poetical nature took account of the prosaic mid matter of fact way in which he was taking leave of the house win re he was born and of the home in which he had been reared. There had been no melodrama tie dis inheritance of him by his father, al though he knew him well enough to know that the life he had chosen, di rectly contrary to his father's lifelong wishes, praetically swept him outside the financial thought, so far as Rufus Gordon was concerned. The impossibil ity of staying iu a home, with all its acts of disobedience to the greatest rule 'of life, was what made the removal of John Gordon absolutely imperative. That this removal was taking place without the outward spoken words of tragedy made the real action no less real or painful. When he finally came downstairs, he found no one iu the house. At first he felt strangely oppressed. Afterward he felt relieved. He had chosen his life, as he had said, and his choice had seri ously begun. As he laid ins hand on the door to open it the consciousness of his uncertainty regarding Luella Marsh swept out of his thought even the sense ths* he was actually bidding goodby to the home he had known for thirty years. Would this woman he loved as never in all Ids life before— Would she ^choose the life he had chosen? She was rich, or her father was. She was gifted, an aristocrat by birth and training, a woman of strong and original personality, with many Impulses not yet known even to John Gordon, lie was almost startled at the sudden realization that he was In igno-j ranee concerning her actual character so far as the present crisis was con- (