The One Woman | Page 5

his hand, his face drawn into deep lines of weariness.
When she saw the look of pain in his face her eyes softened.
"What I fear of you, Frank, is not your intention, but your performance. You mean well, but you never could resist a pretty woman."
"In a sense, no. If I could, I never would have married."
The faintest suggestion of a smile played about her eyes and then faded.
"I wonder what pretty speeches you said to the stranger to-night? You have such charming manners with a woman."
He looked at her appealingly and she stared at him without reply.
"For God's sake, Ruth, end this scene. If you only knew how tired I am to-night--tired in body, in heart and soul. I think the past week has been the most trying of my whole life. It opened with a newspaper attack on me inspired by Van Meter. You know how sensitive I am to such criticism.
"Saturday came without a moment for preparation for the great crowds I knew would be present to-day after that attack on me. Instead of work yesterday, a procession of people, hungry and suffering, were at the door from morning until night. All their burdens they poured out to me; All their wrongs and grievances against God and man became mine.
"On Saturday night the trustee meeting was held to discuss our building project. 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. When I drew a picture of its great auditorium thronged with thousands of eager faces, Van Meter coolly interrupted me with the remark:
"'We don't want such trash elbowing our old parishioners out of their pews. We've had too much of it already. With all your mob, the pew-rents have fallen off.'
"My first impulse was that of Christ when he took a whip in the temple. I wanted to knock him down. Instead, I rushed out of the house and left him victorious.
"I waked this morning with the burden of all this week's horror choking me, waked to the consciousness that in a few hours thousands of faces would be looking up to me with hungry souls to be fed. Well, I had nothing to give them except my own heart's blood, and so to-day I tore my heart open for them to devour it. True, I didn't preach the Bible except as its truth had passed into my own soul's experiences. When I preach such sermons I always quit with the sense of utter helplessness, exhaustion and failure. Could my bitterest enemy read my heart in that hour he would cry out for pity.
"I never so felt the crushing burden of all that crowd of people as to-day. I've heard so much of their sorrows and struggles the past week. I felt that the city was a great beast in some vast arena of time, that I was alone, naked and unarmed, on the sands, struggling with it for the life of the people, while my enemies looked on. As never before, I heard the rush of its half-crazed millions, its crash and roar, saw its fierce brutality, its lust, its cruelty, its senseless scramble for pleasure, its indifference to truth, its millions of to-day but a symbol of the millions gone before and the trampling millions to come, and I felt I was a failure. I felt that I was pitching straws against a hurricane, only to find them blown back into my face. I came down out of that pulpit with the weariness of a thousand years crushing my tired body and soul, feeling that I could never speak again, or struggle against the tide any more--that I was broken, bruised and done for all time, and I came home feeling so--"
He paused a moment and a sigh caught his voice. His wife's face had softened and a tear was quivering on her long eyelashes.
"I came home thus worn out to-night hoping for a word of cheer, yet knowing it would be days before I could recover from the sheer nerve-agony I had endured. What a reception you have given me! And for what? A beautiful woman stopped to tell me my message had not been in vain, that it had made for her a light on life's way, and that the prayers in which I had tried to realise as my own, the people's thoughts