The One Woman (Dixon, 1903)/Chapter 36
For three months Ruth went back and forth from Sing Sing to Albany, battling with the Governor for Gordon's life and cheering the condemned man with her courage and love.
The fatal day of the execution had come, and she was to wage the last battle of her soul for the life of her love with the man who loved her.
It was a day of storm. The spring rains had been pouring in torrents for a week and the wind was now dashing against the windows blinding sheets of water.
A carriage stopped before the Governor's Mansion, and two women wrapped in long cloaks leaped quickly out. The Governor was at his desk in his office.
There was the rustle of a woman's dress at his door. He looked and sprang to his feet, trembling.
He threw one hand to his forehead as though to clear his brain, and caught a chair with the other.
Advancing swiftly toward him, he saw the white vision of Ruth Spottswood the night of the ball when he had lost her. The same dress, the same rounded throat, only the bust a little fuller, and the same beautiful bare arms with the delicate wrists and tapering fingers. The great soulful eyes, with just a gleam of young sunshine in their depths, and the same flowers on her breast. She walked with lithe, quick grace, and now she was talking in the low sweet contralto music that had echoed in his soul through the years.
"Please, Governor," she was saying, as her hot hand held his, "save my father!"
The man's eyes were blinking, and he put one hand to his throat as though he were about to choke. He looked past the white figure of the girl and saw her mother kneeling in the corner of the room, the tears streaming down her face and her lips moving in prayer.
In quick tones he called:
"Ruth!"
She leaped to her feet and was before him in a moment, with scarlet face, dilated eyes and disheveled hair.
"You've won. I give it up."
Ruth pressed both hands to her breast and caught her breath to keep from screaming.
He pressed the button on his desk. The clerk appeared.
"Write out a full pardon for Frank Gordon, and call the warden of Sing Sing!"
Ruth dropped to her knees, crying:
"O Lord God, unto thee I give praise!"
In a moment the clerk hurried back to the Governor's side and in startling tones whispered:
"The wires are down, sir. I can't get the warden."
The Governor snatched his watch from his pocket.
"There is no train for two hours. Order me a special!"
The despatcher flashed his command for a clear track as far as the wires would work, and within fifteen minutes the great engine with its single coach dashed across the bridge and plunged down the grade toward Sing Sing, roaring, hissing, screaming its warnings above the splash and howl of the storm.
The Governor sat silent with his head resting on his hand, shading his eyes.
Ruth, still and pale, gazed out the car window, and, shivering, closed her eyes now and then over the vision of a cold dead face she feared to see at the journey's end.
They had made fifty miles in fifty minutes, and not a word had been spoken.
The Governor looked at his watch and leaned over:
"Cheer up, Ruth. We are making a mile a minute through the storm, over slippery rails. We will make it in time."
Suddenly the emergency brakes came down with a crash, every wheel was locked, and the train slid heavily on the track, hissing, grinding, swaying, the steel rails blazing with sparks.
The Governor sprang from the car.
"We're blocked by a wreck, sir," the conductor said, touching his cap. "The high water has undermined the track on the river bank."
Within twenty minutes the engine in front of the wreck was secured, Ruth and Lucy were in the cab, and the engineer and fireman stood reading their orders.
"Gentlemen, I am the Governor," said a voice by their side.
They looked up.
"This is a matter of life and death. The life of a man—and the life of the little pale woman I helped into your cab. Put this engine into Sing Sing by five minutes to two o'clock and I'll give you a thousand dollars. Five hundred for each of you."
The engineer smiled.
"We'll do it for you, sir, without money. We voted for you."
The Governor pressed their hands.
Down the storm-clouded track the engine flew with throbbing heart of steel and breath of fire like a panting demon. Back and forth over the spongy rails she swayed, her mighty ribs cracking as she lurched and jumped and plunged. But the fireman in his flannel shirt, dripping with perspiration, never paused, as with steady stroke he fed her roaring mouth; and the engineer, with his hand on her pulse, leaned far out of the cab with his eyes fixed on the flying track. ······· The hour for the condemned man was at hand. He had asked the warden as a special favour to do his duty without delay at the appointed time.
Gordon was ready, dressed with his old fastidious distinction to the last detail of his toilet. He had spent the entire night before writing to Ruth the last chapter in a secret diary he had kept and given to the warden for her.
The warden read the death warrant with halting lips. He had been strangely drawn to this tall young giant with his premature gray hairs. Gordon's words of lyric fire to him of the mysteries of life and death had thrown a spell over his imagination. He was going to kill him now with the horrible feeling that he was his own brother.
"Come, my friend," Gordon said to him, cheerfully, "you promised me there should be no delay. I've a child's eagerness now to push the black curtains aside and see what lies beyond. I've often dreamed and wondered. In a few minutes I shall know. I hear it calling me, that unknown world of silence, beauty and mystery. Let us make haste."
But the feet of the jailer were of lead. He would stop and hold his lower lip tightly under his teeth, as though in pain.
At last they were in the dim chamber that is the vestibule of death. The cap had been drawn over his face and the leather straps buckled on his wrists legs.
The warden put his hand on the electric switch.
There was a shout and a stir without, the thump of hurrying feet, and the butt of a guard's gun thundered against the door.
The warden sprang forward.
"Stop! The Governor!" he heard faintly shouted through the deep-padded panels.