Title: John Rawn - Prominent Citizen
Author: Hough, Emerson
Language: English
As this book started as an ASCII text book there are no pictures available.


*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "John Rawn - Prominent Citizen" ***


[Frontispiece: (Rawn and Laura)]



  JOHN RAWN

  Prominent Citizen


  _By_
  EMERSON HOUGH

  _Author of_
  The Mississippi Bubble, 54-40 Or Fight
  The Purchase Price, Etc.



  WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY
  M. LEONE BRACKER



  INDIANAPOLIS
  THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
  PUBLISHERS



  COPYRIGHT 1912
  EMERSON HOUGH


  PRESS OF
  BRAUNWORTH & CO.
  BOOKBINDERS AND PRINTERS
  BROOKLYN, N. Y.



  TO
  WOODROW WILSON

  ONE OF THE LEADERS IN THE THIRD WAR OF
  AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE



  Contents


  BOOK I

  Chapter

  I Certain Notable Details in Genesis
  II Purely Incidental
  III In Victory Generous
  IV In Love Successful
  V In Adversity Triumphant
  VI Mr. Rawn Announces His Arrival
  VII The Difference Between Men
  VIII Power
  IX Change in Kelly Row
  X The Woodshed in Kelly Row
  XI The Test
  XII The Helpmeet


  BOOK II

  I The New Mr. Rawn
  II Graystone Hall
  III The Competencies of Miss Delaware
  IV At Headquarters
  V Their Master's Voice
  VI In Proper Person
  VII John Rawn, Prominent Citizen
  VIII A Princely Generosity


  BOOK III

  I The Extreme Monogamy of Mr. Rawn
  II Asparagus, Also Potatoes
  III The Silent Partner
  IV The Baker's Daughter


  BOOK IV

  I The Royal Progress of Mr. and Mrs. Rawn
  II Four Being No Company
  III The Step-Mother-in-Law
  IV The Second Current
  V Means to an End
  VI An Informal Meeting
  VII They Who Sow the Wind
  VIII They Who Water With Tears
  IX What Cheer of the Harvest?
  X Those Who Reap the Whirlwind
  XI The Means--And the End
  XII The Great John Rawn



JOHN RAWN


BOOK ONE


CHAPTER I

CERTAIN NOTABLE DETAILS IN GENESIS

I

One John Rawn is to be the hero of this pleasing tale; no ordinary
hero, as you might learn did you make inquiry of himself.  His history
must be set down in full, from beginning to culmination, from delicate
flowering to opulent fruitage, from early obscurity to later fame.
Such would be his wish; and the wishes of John Rawn long have been
commands.

For the most part the early history of any hero is of small
consequence.  We are chiefly concerned that he shall be tall and
shapely, mighty in war and love, and continuously engaged therein from
the first moment of his entrance on our scene.  Granted these
essentials, we customarily pass carelessly over any hero's youth, even
as lightly, perchance, over his ancestry.  Not so in the case of John
Rawn.  He himself would say, if asked, that no hero of so exceptional a
merit as his own could be thus lightly produced; that indeed not even
the three generations accorded to the making of a gentleman could be
called sufficient for the evolution of a personage of mold such as his.
Let us yield to a will so imperious, a wish so germane to our own
amiable intent.  Mr. Rawn shall have all the generations that he likes.



II

John Rawn might, in the caretaking plans of the immortal gods, have
been born at any time in the world's history, at any place upon the
world's surface.  He himself, had he been consulted, might have
suggested Rome, Greece, or mediæval England, as offering better field
for one of his kidney.  He might have indicated certain resemblances
between himself and persons who, through virtue given of the immortal
gods, have attained the purple, who have held permanent and admitted
ascendancy over their fellow-men.  As a matter of fact, however, John
Rawn was born in Texas--and of Texas at the very spot where, had it
been left to his own candid opinion, no John Rawn, no especial hero,
ought ever to have been born.  The village he honored by his birth--one
of seven which now contend over that claim to fame--was the very home
of democratic equality; and how could the home of democratic equality
be called typical environment for the production of a man believing in
the divine right of a very few?

Neither, had John Rawn been consulted in the matter, would he have
indorsed the plans of fate in respect to his ancestry any more than he
did the workings of the misguided stars in regard to his environment.
By right he should have been the offspring of parents for long
generations accustomed to rule, to command, to sway the destinies of
others.  Yet far from this was the truth in our hero's case.

Which of us can tell what is in an infant's mind?  At what day or hour
of a child's life does the consciousness of human values in affairs
first impinge upon the embryonic mentality?  At what date, first
feeling itself human and not plant, not oyster nor amoeba, can it
logically begin that reproach of its own parentage which to so many of
us is held as a personal right, convenient and pleasant because it
explains away so many things by way of human failures?  At what time,
at what moment of John Rawn's life did he, lying in his cradle, and
looking up for the first conscious time into the faces solicitously
bending above him, realize that after all, in spite of all the plans of
the watchful fates, here were no king and queen, no emperor and empress
assigned to him as parents, but only an humble Methodist preacher and
his still more humble wife?

Truly here was hard handicap even at the start, that of both birth and
environment, as he himself would have been first to admit.  Not that it
could daunt him, not that it could cause a soul like his to feel the
pangs of despair.  No; it meant only that much further to travel, that
much higher to climb.  This American republic was expressly framed for
such as Mr. Rawn.  The issue never was to be called in doubt.  From
that first hour of consciousness of his ego which marks the real birth
of a human soul, John Rawn must have said to himself that success was
meant for him; that not all the hostile array of circumstances, birth,
heredity and environment, could do more than temporarily balk his aim.
From the cradle, indeed for generations uncounted--as many as he
likes--before the cradle, John Rawn believed in himself.  How can we
fail to join him in that belief?



III

It was rarely that ever a smile enlivened the somewhat heavy features
of young John Rawn, even in the earliest stages of his babyhood.
Rarely did the mirth of any situation bring up in his face an answering
dawn of appreciation.  He was a serious child, as all admitted even
from the first.  He grew to be a grave boy, a solemn youth.  He made no
jests, nor smiled at those of others.  There was a corrugation between
his brows before he was twenty years of age.  In his declamations at
the exercises of the village school, his hand went instinctively into a
bosom not yet ten years of age; his forelock fell across his brow
before he was twelve; already his gestures were large and wide, his
voice prematurely deep before he had reached fourteen.  He was of that
temperament which, in accordance with the term, takes itself seriously.
It is astonishing what virtue lies in that habit.  The world, sometimes
for many years, indeed sometimes permanently, accepts seriously those
who seriously accept themselves.  Many of the most colossal asses ever
born have not "Ass" written on their tombstones, where righteously it
so very frequently belongs in the history of the great.



IV

Curious persons might have found certain explanations for these traits
in the calling, the temper and training of the father of John Rawn.  In
that time and place, a minister of the gospel was a man of whom all
stood in awe.  He was not much gainsaid, not much withstood, not much
disapproved.  His conclusions were announced for acceptance, not for
argument.  At best he was only to be avoided, if one dreaded the look
of the clerical eye, the denunciation of the clerical tongue.  Other
men might be met, might be antagonized, might be overcome by fist or
thumb or firearms, per example; not so the parson of the village church.

It is an excellent profession; that of minister of the gospel.  The
ranks of none offer better men than the best types of that profession,
large men, strong men, just men, not doing preaching for a business,
but really wishing to counsel and aid frail humanity as it marches
among the perpetual pitfalls, the perpetual hardships of human life.
It is an exceedingly good religion of itself, that merely of helping
your fellow-man, of saying something to soften and better him, of
giving to him something of hope and courage when he is in need of them.
Let us not argue whether or not a divine spirit can become mortal,
whether or not Christ was divine.  We know by virtue of abundant human
testimony that He was a great and kindly Man, a great and adorable
Human Being, the greatest of whom we know in all our human history.
And that man who makes the creed of the greatest of us all his own, who
lives kindly and helpfully and modestly, with no blare of trumpet,
doing simply and silently that which his human hands find to do; that
man nearest to the greatest Man of whom we know, the one who went
closest to making human life endurable, who took humanity farthest away
from the cruel creed of the jungle--that minister of the gospel, let us
say then, who lives as is possible for one of his calling to live, and
attains in that calling what may be attained, may be, and not
infrequently is, a splendid human being.

But he is worth our admiration when he is worth it; not necessarily
otherwise.  A minister of the gospel may not always be the central
figure of that religious fervor which has come sporadically and
spasmodically to men under many creeds, since man began to think aloud,
to doubt and despair in public, and to pray in company.  Besides, there
are ministers and ministers.  Some are men naturally large and are so
accepted.  Others, alas! bulk larger than really they are, by virtue of
the fact that always they apparently have prevailed; whereas, in truth,
they only have met small opposition.

'Tis a sweet fashion of life which allows us always to have our own
way!  Nor is it to be denied that when the preacher stands before the
flock, his disordered hair falling above his brow, his eyes flashing,
his breath sobbing in his emotion; when he hurls out questions to which
he knows there will be no answer; when he makes one assertion after
another to which he knows there is to be no contradiction; when he
rules, sways, expounds, glorifies, waxing greater in stature out of the
very situation in which he stands--let us not deny that he is then in
the way--the simple and forgivably human way--of coming more and more
into the belief that he himself is as great as the doctrines which he
expounds.  There are martyrs in history because of human convictions
which led them to contradict the church.  There are other and far more
numerous martyrs, made such because they dared not contradict it.

Given, then, a man of rawboned frame, of virile physical health, and of
pronouncedly good opinion of himself, this is perhaps the very
profession of all others which would be most apt to build up that man
in his own eyes into a personage of considerable stature.  Such a man
might easily regard himself as set apart from his fellow human
beings--a feeling which Christ Himself never had, nor any great man in
or out of history before Him or after Him.  It is understandable that
such a man, of such a profession, might be the very one to find his
philosophy feeding upon itself; with the net result of an inordinate,
ingrown egotism.  And this ingrown egotism in himself might, in the
case of his son, become an egotism congenital.  There are ministers of
the gospel, and other ministers of the gospel.  John Rawn, Senior, was
of this particular and less desirable sort.  We mention him, having
promised our hero all the analysis and all the generations he may
desire; and being, moreover, commendably anxious fully to account for
him and his many noteworthy peculiarities.



V

Had John Rawn, our hero, been able in his childhood to figure out that,
after all, God and the undying stars had no special grudge against him
in assigning his birth to a humble inland village; had he been able to
picture to himself his real value as a human unit; had he been able to
understand his own explanation,--that is to say this explanation of him
which we so patiently have given--had he been able to qualify his own
mind as that of a congenital egotist, and hence to see himself
naturally come by certain phases of his character--he might have smiled
and have been different.  He might one day have extended his hand to
his fellow-man understandingly, might have gone through life much as
other men indeed, dying simply and without much outcry about it, as
most of us do, and living with small disturbance of the world's
equilibrium, as most of us also do.  But in that deplorable case there
would have been no John Rawn as we know him, and no story about him
worth the telling.  Let us, therefore, beg to disagree even with him,
and not hold it as entire misfortune that he was born in an unstoried
spot, and of parents one of whom, by reason of his natural character
and of his calling, was wont to consider himself the partner, and not
necessarily the junior partner, of a Divine Providence.



CHAPTER II

PURELY INCIDENTAL

I

To be sure John Rawn had a mother, but that is merely an incidental
matter for one who really was brooded among the spheres, and who
accepted a mother only as a necessary means to incarnation.  We need
accord no more than scant time to a mere mother.

There was in the character of the elder Rawn's wife little to offset
the tendencies transmitted by the father.  Had she herself been a trace
further removed from the blind submission of a jungle past in
womanhood, it might have been that the offspring of these two had been
accorded a better insight into the real situation of mankind, might
perhaps even have been given a saving sense of humor, a better
valuation of human affairs as pertaining to himself, and of himself as
related to human affairs.  The truth, however, is that Mrs. Rawn, the
preacher's wife, was simply a preacher's wife.  She was a machine for
gratifying a certain part of her husband's nature, a well-nigh apogamic
contrivance for rearing children, an appliance for tending tables and
sweeping carpets, and going to prayer meetings, or perhaps--on rare and
much-coveted occasions--for acting as witness in parsonage marriage
ceremonies, the which might haply produce a fee from the bridegroom,
temporarily generous; which fee, in a moment of aberration, might even
pass from parson to parson's wife.  It is decreed that the background
of a ministerial life shall be of neutral hue, in order that the more
brilliantly shall shine the central figure of the scheme.  The minister
himself, unctuous, bland, grows less unctuous and bland as he turns
from some comelier sister to his own partner in life, colorless,
silent, dutiful, devoted.  There is but one family perihelion, and he
is the one planet thereat.  At most a pale and distant moon may circle
about him, perhaps concerned with domestic tides, but not admittedly
related to the affairs of night and day.

It is not known, nor is it important, whence Mrs. Rawn came, or how she
happened to marry her lord, John Rawn, Senior, the Methodist preacher
in the little Texas town.  They were married when they arrived at this
place, and had been for some years.  No one knows whence they came, no
man can tell whither they have gone.  John was the first child granted
to them as answer to his father's grumbling; the latter, very nobly and
righteously, dreading what calamity the world must suffer did none come
to perpetuate his race.  He was a great preacher.  He had swayed his
multitudes.  He had seen a hundred souls, as he termed them, grovelling
upon the floor in the height of some revival when the grace of the Lord
had moved itself mightily upon the people, thanks to him, partner upon
the ground, whose voice had prevailed thereabout.  It would cause any
just man to shudder--the mere thought of such merit lacking progeny.
But the prayers of the righteous avail much.  He had, at last, a son,
our hero; none less.



II

These necessary and essential preliminaries now all stand adjusted; and
we are able finally to say that John Rawn at least and at last was
born, silently, quietly, with small rebellion on the part of his
mother.  He lay there in his first cradle, silent, a trifle red, a
slight frown upon his face, a trace of gravity in his features, as he
ventured an introspective look within the confines of his couch, and
for the first time discovered that wholly interesting, remarkable,
indeed wonderful human being, Himself.

Having assured himself that he was here, John Rawn sighed, turned over
in his cradle, and presently fell asleep, well assured that, although
He had selected Texas for this event, God after all was in His heaven,
and that, in the circumstance, all in due time would be well with the
world.  Could any hero of his years have acted with a finer, a larger
generosity?



CHAPTER III

IN VICTORY GENEROUS

I

The youth of John Rawn early began to show that consistency in
character which marked him later in his life.  From the first, as we
have said, he took himself seriously; indeed, regarded himself with a
reverence akin almost to solemnity.  Plain wonder possessed his soul
when any event fell not wholly to his liking.  If the hand that rocked
his cradle failed from weariness, his reproof was not so much that of
anger or expostulation as that of an aggrieved surprise.  When first he
began to walk he gravely reserved to himself the spotlight of all solar
or sewing circles.  Ladies visiting the parsonage unconsciously
accepted his estimate of himself, even in those days.  Familiarities
were not for such a child as this.  It began to be rumored about that
here was one set apart for great things.  Most frequently parents are
alone in this manner of belief as to their offspring; but the severity
of countenance, the grave assuredness of young John Rawn, forced this
belief upon the entire community.  A calm, serene certainty of himself
was written on his brow.

Youth is for the most part irreverent of other youth, that is true, and
at times young Mr. Rawn was rudely handled by others of his age.  In
such cases tears came to his eyes forsooth, but not tears of mere anger
or anguish.  They were tears of surprise, of regret, of wonder!  His
protest, when he fled to the comfort of his mother's bosom, was not of
unmanly weakness, but of astonishment and incredulous surprise that any
should have smitten the Lord's anointed.  This surprise for the most
part prevented him either from turning the other cheek, or smiting the
cheek of the oppressor; one or the other of which courses, it must be
admitted, commonly is held admirable among men, and especially among
heroes.

In his younger school-days there was a way about young Mr. Rawn.  He
did not really care for plodding, yet he was aggrieved if not accorded
rank among his fellow pupils.  His spelling, not of the best in the
belief of others, seemed to him quite good enough, because it was his
own.  When sent to the foot of the class he departed thither with a
bearing wholly dignified and calm.

Even in these early days his features were in large mold, even then his
abundant hair fell across his brow.  His eyes were blue and prominent,
his nose distinct, his lower lip prominent, protruding and in times of
great emotion semi-pendulous.  Even thus early he seemed old, serious,
foreordained.  To tell a being such as this that he could not spell was
mere _lèse majesté_.  He stalked through school, set apart by fate from
his fellow-beings, amenable to few rules, superior to such restrictions
as commonly hedge in lesser souls orthographically, socially, or
otherwise.

Much of this might have been remedied by kindly application of
educational or parental rod, but young Mr. Rawn remained largely
unchastened.  His parents did not care to punish him, and his teacher
did not dare to do so.  Was he not the minister's son?  If his mother
had misgivings they were well concealed.  She herself only shuddered in
her soul when she heard the orotund voice of the master of the house
explain, in contemplation of his first born, "How much he is like me!"
Yes, he was like.  His mother knew how like.



II

At that time and in that part of the country this little western
village might have been called almost a little world of itself.
Estimates of men and affairs were such only as might grow out of the
soil.  The great world beyond was a thing but vaguely sensed of any who
dwelt here.  The town was apart from the nearest railway, in a section
where rural simplicity amounted at times almost to frontier savagery.
Now and then a lynching broke the quiet of the community.  The local
vices and virtues came out of a life but recently individual and
unrestrained.  It seemed only chance that young Rawn did not run wild,
like many other of the youth of that town, who, trained by custom in
arms and excess, disappeared from time to time, passing on to the
frontier, then not remote.

Why did not John Rawn naturally trend toward violence, why did the
frontier not call out to him?  There was one great reason--he was a
coward.

Cowardice is a trait sometimes handed down from father to son, indeed
most usually it comes of heredity or ill-health.  Sometimes it is
fought down by reason, sometimes it is long concealed by artifice.
Often it is hidden behind physical stature.  Most frequently it is left
unsuspected, sheltered behind an air of dignity.  Money conceals much
of it.  Young Rawn was much like his father before him.  Perhaps his
father never had stopped to think that personal conclusions were
matters he had never been called upon to carry to an end with any
fellow-man.  Peter Cartwright was no saint of his.  There was no need,
in his belief, to put spiritual or mental questions to the acid and
unpleasant test of physical contact.  The son, given by nature a
considerable stature and gravity for his years, continued in the same
fiction, not suspecting that it was fiction.  There were larger boys
than he, but chivalry restrained these.  There were smaller boys than
he, but these feared him by reason of the valor which it was supposed
he owned.  The ranks of life opened before him readily and easily.  He
stalked forward, with small opposition, accepted at his own estimate of
himself; as presently we shall set forth in many valuable instances.



III

It may be supposed that, in a rural community of this sort, living was
cut down pretty much to the bone of actual necessities.  There was no
excess of comfort, and, although there was little lack, luxury was a
thing undreamed.  Transportation was in that day costly and
inefficient, the world not so small then as it is now, so that there
was less interchange of the products of distant countries and
localities.  For instance, there were orange groves within three
hundred miles of this little village, yet rarely was an orange to be
seen there.  Flour, salt, coffee, bacon, Bibles, six-shooters,
essential things, were carried thither, not luxuries and trifles.  The
family was its own world.  In large part, it tilled its own fields and
ran its own factories.  Mrs. Rawn molded the candles which made the
bedroom lights and those by which she sewed--though not that by which
her husband read and wrote--in a kettle in the backyard at butchering
times, when suet came the parson's way.  She made her husband's long
black coats, building them upon some prehistoric pattern.  She made,
mended and washed his shirts, hemmed his stocks and darned his socks
for him.  Using the outworn ministerial cloth in turn, she made also,
in due time, the garments of the son and heir, even building for him a
cap, with ear-lappets, for winter use.  Her own garments might have
been seen by the most casual eye to have been the product of her own
hands.  Yet, this home was not much different from others, where
countless things then were done domestically which now are fabricated
in factories and purchased through many middlemen.  The lockstep of our
civilization was not then so fully in force.

Money was a rare commodity in any such community, and any manner of
personal indulgence was for but few.  If, for instance, there was beef
on the parsonage table, it was the parson alone who ate it, not his
wife.  Once he came home with two lemons, which had been given him,
perhaps as a peace-offering, by a generous storekeeper.  These he
ordered made forthwith into lemonade; the which, forthwith also, he
himself drank, offering none to the sharer of his joys; nor did she
find anything either unusual or reproach-worthy in this act.  You
wonder at these things?  They happened in another day, among people
with whom you could not be expected to be familiar--your fathers and
mothers; persons not in the least of our class.



IV

In these circumstances--since we have promised value in some specific
instance--a certain interest attaches to a little event which nowhere
else, save in some such village, would have been noted or could have
been possible.  The leading local merchant, in a burst of enterprise,
had imported a couple of clusters of bananas from New Orleans, the
first ever brought into the town.  For a time none of the citizens
purchased, and, indeed, it required the grudging gift of a banana or so
to establish a local demand.  Then--builded on the assurance of a wise
and much-traveled citizen who had once eaten a banana at Fort
Worth--the rumor of the bananas passed rapidly through the town.
Swiftly it became an important thing to announce to a neighbor that one
had eaten of this fruit.  In time, even children partook thereof.

At this time young Mr. Rawn was six years of age, and by reason of his
years and his social position at least as much entitled to bananas as
any of his like thereabout.  Yet, he had none.  The tragedy of this
wrung his mother's soul.  Was it to be thought that this, her son,
should be denied any of the good things of life, that he should have
less than equal enjoyment of life's privileges in the company of his
fellows?  The climax came when young Mr. Rawn himself approached his
mother's knee, with wonder and surprise upon his face, inquiring why
others had bananas, while he himself, the Lord's anointed, and son of
the Lord's anointed, had none.  It was at that time that his mother
somewhat furtively stole away down the village street.  She had a few
coppers, saved by such hook and crook as you and I may not know, and
these she now proposed to devote to a holy cause.

It was at about this same time, also, that there chanced to pass by, on
the sidewalk in front of the parsonage, two boys younger than John Rawn
himself.  These he regarded intently, for he saw from a distance that
each had some suspicious object in his hand.  His own suspicions became
certainties.  Here was visible proof that they, mere common persons,
were owners of specimens of that fruit whose excellence was rumored
throughout the town.  They ate, or were about to eat, while he did not!
They had luxuries while he had none!  They had not asked his
permission, yet they ate!  Form this picture well in your mind, oh,
gentle reader.  It is that of John Rawn and ourselves.

With great gravity and dignity young Mr. Rawn stalked down the brick
walk to the front gate of the parsonage yard.  Calmly, with no word,
but with uplifted hand--nay, merely by his stately dignity--he barred
the progress of these two.  They paused, uncertain.  Then he held out
his hand, and, with a growl of command, demanded of these others that
which they had regarded as their own.  He took it as matter of course
that Cæsar should have the things that were Cæsar's; and they who give
tribute to our Cæsars now, gave it then.

Having possession of these bananas, which as yet remained unbroken of
their owners, young Mr. Rawn showed them that, although these fruits
were unfamiliar to their former owners, they made no enigma to a person
of his powers.  As though he had done nothing else all his life, he
broke open the tender skin and removed the soft interior contents.
After this he handed back to each of his young friends the disrupted
and now empty skins.  Yet, with much kindness, he explained to both
that at the bottom of each husk or envelope there still remained some
portion of edible contents which, with care upon their part, might yet
be rescued.  They departed, wondering somewhat, but glad they had been
shown how this thing was done; even as you and I humbly thank our great
men for robbing us to-day.

Young Mr. Rawn, age six, turned now with much dignity back to the
gallery from which he had with much dignity come.  He seated himself
calmly upon the chair and began to eat that which had been given him of
fate, that which had been brought to Cæsar as a thing due to Cæsar.  He
ate until at last, wearied with his labors, he fell asleep.



V

Note now our humble moral in this short and simple detail of our hero's
early years.  He was at this moment more nearly full of bananas than
any other human being in all the village at that time.  Yet he had
attained that success at no price save that of the exercise of the
resources of his mind.  That is genius.  Let us not smile at young Mr.
Rawn.

His mother, stealing home by the back way with yet other bananas
concealed in her apron, presently came upon him and discovered that,
after all, her solicitude had not been, needful.  Her son slept, his
lower lip protruding, his features grave, his legs somewhat sprawled
apart, his mid-body somewhat distended, his head sunken forward, his
hands drooping at his side.  In one hand, clutched so tightly as to
have become a somewhat worthless pulp, his mother discovered the bulk
of several bananas; in short, the full quota which had been assigned to
two of his fellow-beings.  It was genius!

Even at that time there departed up the village street those which had
given tribute to Cæsar.  They regarded with a certain curiosity the
empty husks which had been returned to them--even as you and I regard
the husks accorded us by overgreat men to-day.  From time to time each
nibbled, with small return, although as per instructions, at the base
from which the main fruit had been broken.  Witness the difference
among men.  These had bananas for which something had been paid.  John
Rawn had many, better and bigger bananas, for which nothing at all had
been paid!  In return for them he had shown their late owners how to
open a banana.  For the later opening of that which in our parlance we
call the melon, John Rawn was now decently under way.  Already he was
showing himself to be a captain among men.

His mother looked upon him as he slept sprawled in his repletion and
made no attempt to remove the uneaten fruit from his hands; indeed,
made no query as to where he had obtained it.  She did not disturb his
slumbers.  "How like his father he is!" she whispered to herself,
mindful of certain lemons, certain beefsteaks, certain wedding fees,
certain gone and wasted years.  She did not say: "How dear he is, how
sweet, how manly, how brave, how decent, how chivalrous!"  No, with a
slight tightening of the lips as she turned back to find her belated
sewing, she spoke, as though to herself, and with no peculiar glorying
in her voice, "How like he is to his father!"   And so took up her
burden.



CHAPTER IV

IN LOVE SUCCESSFUL

I

"But, my dear--but Laura, you don't stop to think!" exclaimed a certain
young man to a certain young woman, at a somewhat interesting and
important moment of their lives.  "You certainly do not mean to say--to
tell me--to tell me!  Why--!"

He ceased, a gasp in his throat at the unbelievable effrontery of the
woman who faced him in this situation.  All he had asked of her was to
marry him.  And she had hesitated.  It was a thing incredible!

It was Mr. Rawn, our hero.  It could have been almost no one else who
could have sustained precisely this attitude at precisely such a time.
It was not despair, disappointment, anger, chagrin, pique, regret or
resentment that marked his tones, but surprise, astonishment!  Yes, it
must have been John Rawn.

As to the young woman herself, who now turned a somewhat pale face to
one side as she left her hand in his, she might have been any one of
many thousand others in that city.  Her hair was brown, her features
regular enough, her complexion nondescript, her garb non-committal.
Not a person of ancient lineage, you would have said, or of much
education in the world's ways, or of much worldly goods--these things
do not always come to a saleswoman of twenty-five, whose salary is six
dollars a week.  Yet her face had in it now a very sweet sort of
womanliness, her mouth a tender droop to it.  Her eyes shone with that
look which comes to a woman's eyes when first she hears the declaration
of man's love--the most glorious and most tragic moment in all a
woman's life.

The fates ordain which of these it shall be--glory or tragedy.  Laura
Johnson could not tell, cry in her soul as she might for some forecast
shadow from the land of fates to show, visibly, upon the subconscious
screen hidden in a girl's heart, the figure of the truth.  All this was
different from what she had pictured it to be.  She had thought that
love would come in some tender yet imperious way, that she would know
some sudden wave of content and trust and assuredness.  There was on
her plain, severe face, now a wistfulness that almost glorified it
after all.  For, indeed, our human loving is most dignified and
glorious in what it desires love to be.

He leaned again toward her, insistent, frowning, imperious.  This was
as she had planned.  What, then, lacked?  If she had sought for some
strong man to sweep her from her calm, why was she now so calm?  She
asked this swiftly, vaguely, wonderingly, demanding to be told by these
same fates which had implanted doubt in her heart, whether this was all
that she might ever hope, whether this insufficient fashion was the way
in which it came to all women--had come, always, to all the women of
the world.

"You surely do not stop to consider," he renewed.  "Why, look at me!"

She did look at him, turning about, pushing him away from her that she
might, in that one moment of a woman's privilege, look at the being
demanding of her her own life.  What she saw was not an ill-looking
young man of twenty-nine, of rather heavy features, rather a frowning
brow, a somewhat prominent light eye, a somewhat pendulous lower lip,
abundant darkish hair, abundant confidence in himself.  He was tallish,
well built, strong, seemed somewhat of a man, yes.  And he loved her.
At least he had said he did.

Laura Johnson did stop to consider.  She considered the face which she
saw in the glass beyond his shoulder--her own face, not strikingly
handsome.  "I might be any one of a hundred girls," she said to
herself.  "I might be any one of those other hundreds who might be
sought out instead of myself," said she.  "A girl of my looks and place
in life is not apt to have hundreds of opportunities.  And I am tired,
and puzzled.  And I want a home.  I want to stop worrying for myself.
I would rather worry for some one else.  I want to be--"  There she
paused.

She wanted to be a wife, loved, cherished, supported, comforted and
protected.  That was what she wanted, though the young of the female
sex do not know what they want or why they want it.  And certainly she
could choose only among the opportunities offered her.  This was her
first opportunity.  It might be her last.  Besides all of this, she was
a woman.  She had always obeyed men all her life, at home, in her daily
labors, everywhere.  And this man was so insistent, so assured, so
confident that this was the right and inevitable course for her--why,
he said it again and again--that surely--so she reasoned--she must be
crazed not to see that this was the appointed time, that this was the
appointed man.

She sighed a trifle as she laid aside the garment of her girlhood,
which had kept her sweet and clean for five and twenty years.  She
folded both her worn and rather bony hands, put them both in his, and
said, with a little smile that ought to have wrung his heart, "Well,
John, if--if it must be!"

He did not catch the little sob in her voice.  He never knew, either
then or at any other time in his life, what it was that lacked in her
voice, her face, in her heart, indeed.  He never knew, then or at any
other time, what a woman is, what she covets, longs for, craves,
desires, demands, requires passionately, prizes agonizingly to the
last, the very last.  He did not waste time to query over these
unimportant things.  He drew her to him with rude care, kissed her fair
and full, and then rose.

"Well, then, I'm sure we're going to do well together, Laura, dear."

She did not answer, but sat waiting, longing eagerly for something she
lacked, she knew not what.

John Rawn looked at his watch, turned for his hat, and remarked, "I'll
be here to-morrow night, dear, at half-past seven.  Right after supper."



II

Our hero, John Rawn, had grown up much as he was planned to be.  Since
we have been liberal in regard to his genesis before he arrived in the
little Texas town, let us be niggardly as to his exodus therefrom, for
that is less in importance.  It may be seen that he has grown, through
what commonplace conditions let us not ask.  As he himself never
stopped to think, after his arrival in St. Louis to seek his fortune,
whether or not his parents still were living, we ourselves need ask no
more than he.  Since he by now had well-nigh forgotten the scenes of
his youth, so may we forget them.  He had come to this northern city to
seek his fortune.  Here was a part of it, as he coolly reasoned.  What
is especially worth noting is that he still mentioned his evening meal
as supper--and not as dinner.

These twain, about to be one flesh, as witness their sober speech, both
ate supper, and not dinner, and had done so most of their lives.  They
came out of middle class circumstances, very similar in each case.
Their lives had been much similar.  They both had come to the city to
seek their fortunes.  She had found hers behind a dry-goods counter, he
his--temporarily and in sufferance, of course--as an ill-paid clerk in
a railway office.  They met now and then as they passed out for
luncheon, met betimes at evening as they started home.  For a time they
met also in the same boarding place, where they had rooms not far
apart.  It was perhaps propinquity that did it.  When this thought came
to Laura Johnson, with her first realization that perhaps this young
man was making love to her, or was apt to do so, she changed her
boarding place at once, actuated by some indefinable feeling of
delicacy.  She wanted to see if there were no better reason for
love-making than that of mere propinquity.  But he had followed; and
she was pleased at that, almost to the point of ascribing to herself
some charm which she herself had not suspected.  He came again and
again, daily, each night after supper, as he had said, in fact.  She
did not deny that she had made all pleasant for him to the best of her
ability.  And now he was going to come again, after the next supper;
only in a different rôle, that of her accepted suitor.



III

That was almost all there was about it.  What would you expect of two
ill-paid clerks, twenty-nine and twenty-five years of age?  What might
they have to hope for, more than for each other?  Why should the
ambition of either leap beyond what was there present, in its own
comprehensible world?  Why should they not keep on meeting day after
day, after supper?

Romance is by no means a necessary thing.  The truly necessary thing is
supper.  John Rawn knew this.



CHAPTER V

IN ADVERSITY TRIUMPHANT


I

It might with some justice be urged that, thus far in his life, Mr.
Rawn has shown little to distinguish him from his fellow-men; that
indeed his career has been commonplace almost to the point of lack of
interest to others.  There are many of us who have been born in this or
that small community, who have lived somewhat humdrum lives, have
married in a somewhat humdrum way, and who have, in like unspectacular
fashion, failed to achieve any distinguished success in affairs.  Yet,
did we restrict ourselves to this point of view, we must fail of our
purpose herein, just as Mr. Rawn himself would have failed had he
allowed himself no imagination in his view of himself.  For the man who
is commonplace and who is aware of the fact, the future is apt to have
but little hope, nor is his story apt to hold any interest.  In the
case of Mr. Rawn the reverse of this was true.  He did not rate himself
as commonplace.  Always he pictured himself as central figure in some
large scene presently to be staged.  His life was much like ours, and
ours are for the most part of small concern to others.  But John Rawn
heard Voices.  They spoke of himself.  He saw a Vision.  It was of
himself.  The trouble with us others is that we bashfully still the
voices and timidly wipe the image from our mirrors.  Let us pass all
these matters with reference to them as small as was Rawn's own.

John Rawn, then, married Laura Johnson, and they lived unhappily ever
after.  That is to say, she did.  As for her lord, he did not notice
his wife to any great extent after once they had settled down together,
but came to regard her as one of those incidents of life which classify
with food, clothing, the need of sleep.  He looked upon his wife much
as he did upon the weather.  Both happened, and both for the most part
were to be condemned.  Still, he took no active measures for the
abolishment of either.

He was a solemn man in his home, or at least for the most part a
silent.  Yet at times he became almost cheerful--when the talk fell
upon himself; indeed, he would explain to his wife, with much care and
elaboration, himself, his character, his virtues and his plans.  In his
household life he kept up the traditions in which he had been reared.
He ate all the beefsteak there was on the table when there was but
enough for one, which latter often was the case, for his wife had need
to be frugal.  At times he would purchase a solitary ticket to the
theater and go alone.  Yet he was generous, and always after his return
home he would with fine feeling tell his wife what he had seen.
Sometimes he spent a Sunday in the country, but, as he himself had been
first to state, he was never selfish about this.  He always would tell
his wife how green the grass had been, how sweet the songs of the
birds, how bright the sky.  Most of all he would tell of the song of
one small bird which sang continually in his ear, telling him of a
success which before long, in some way, was to be their own.  The
passing years left his wife a trifle thinner, a trifle more gray.  He
himself continued fresh, stalwart, strong.  Sometimes, coming back from
the theater or the country, after listening to the voice of this small
bird at his ear, he would smite with a heavy fist upon the family table
and say, "Why, Laura, look at me--look at me!"  After which a heavy
frown would come upon his face as of one conscious of tardiness in the
fashion of fate.  But he knew that he was a great man.



II

Now, what Laura, his wife, knew is not for us to say.  She held her
peace.  Never a word of complaint, or taunt, or reproach, or of longing
came to her lips.  Never did she repine at the situation of life which
held them for more than a dozen years after they were married--one of
perpetual monotony, of narrow, iron-bound restraint.  After some
incredible, some miraculous way of womankind, she managed to make the
ends meet, indeed even to overlap a trifle at each week-end.  She
smiled in the morning when he went away, smiled in the evening when he
returned, and if meanwhile she did not smile again throughout all the
day, at least she did her part.  A great soul, this of Laura Rawn; but
no greater than that of many another woman who does these things day
after day until the time comes for the grave, wherein she lies down at
last with equanimity and calm.  Without unduly flattering the vanity,
without overfeeding the egotism of her lord and master, at least Laura
Rawn was wise enough to see he could not be much changed.  Finding
herself thus situated, she accepted her case and spent her time doing
what could be done, not wasting it in seeking the impossible.  He was
her husband, that was all.  She knew no better way of life than to
accept that fact and make the most of it.  Which is tragedy, if you
please.



III

After the birth of Grace Rawn, their daughter, which occurred within
the first year of their wedded life, Laura Rawn had something to
interest her for the remainder of their days.  Her horizon widened now
immeasurably; indeed to the extent of giving her a world of her own
wherein she could dwell apart quite comfortably; one in which her
husband had no part.  Simple and just in her way of thought, she
accepted the truth that without married life, without her husband, this
new world could not have been her own.  Wherefore she credited him, and
in her child, somewhat reverenced him.  She was an old-fashioned wife.

As to the child herself, she grew steadily and normally into young
girlhood, in time into young womanhood, not given to much display,
reserved of judgment as well as of speech, ofttimes sullen in mood, yet
withal a step or so higher than her mother on the ladder of feminine
charm.  She had a clean, good family rearing, and a good grammar school
education.  At about the time her father came to be a man of middle
age, Grace fell into her place in the clerical machine of the railway
office where he worked; for very naturally, being an American girl of
small means, she took up shorthand, and was licensed to do violence.
At home she joined her mother in regard and attention for the master of
the house.



IV

Here, then, was simply a good, middle-class American family, offering
for some years little to attract the attention of those who dwelt about
them.  The head of this family, as he attained additional solidity of
figure, grew even heavier of brow, trod with even more stateliness
about his appointed duties.  It was a privilege for the other clerks
who labored near him to see such calm, such dignity.  On the street
John Rawn asked no pardons if he brushed against his fellow-man.  In
his business life, in his conduct upon the street-car, at the
restaurant table, anywhere, he helped himself as though of right, and
regarded the rights or preferences of others not at all.  The community
cream, the individual butter, he accumulated unto himself unsmilingly,
as once he had bananas in his youth.  Broad hints, deprecating smiles,
annoyed protests, all were lost upon him.  At forty-seven years of age
his salary was but one hundred and twenty-five dollars a month.  That
showed only the lack of wisdom of others, not unfitness in himself.
Had this been Greece, or Rome, or mediæval England, he would have shown
them who was entitled to the throne!  Indeed, he would show them that
yet.  He often told his wife and daughter as much.

Did we not know the genesis of Mr. Rawn, and did we not know full well
the divine right of kings, we might call this rather a curious frame of
mind for a man who dwelt in a small house with green blinds and a dingy
back yard, for whose conjoint charms he paid but twenty dollars a
month, on whose floors there was much efflorescence of art square, upon
whose be-lambrequined mantels showed few works of art beyond a series
of bisque shepherdesses and china dogs, on whose parlor table reclined
a Dying Gaul, and on whose boudoir walls hung an engraving of the Rock
of Ages.  But John Rawn bided his time.  He went on year after year,
grave and dignified, perhaps one new cross wrinkle coming in his
forehead with each Christmas, recorded by one more annual shepherdess
upon the family mantel.



V

And yet all this time success was lying in ambush, as it sometimes
does, ready to spring forth at the appointed hour.  At about this time
there occurred changes in the arrangement of the planets, the
juxtaposition of the spheres, which meant great alteration in the
affairs of John Rawn, of Kelly Row, who dwelt in a brick house six
miles out from the railway office where he had worked for twenty-four
years, and where he had risen in so brief a time all the way from forty
to one hundred and twenty-five dollars per month.

Let us dwell upon the picture for a moment, deliriously.  Could it be
possible that this man in time would own a large part of this railway
and of others?  Was it possible to predict a day when an army of clerks
and others, here or there, would stand ready to jump when Rawn cracked
over them a whip whose handle well fitted in his hand?  Could the time
be predicted, dreamed, imagined, when the president of this road, the
great Henry Warfield Standley, would spring to open the door for John
Rawn, twenty-four years a clerk, of whose existence he had not long
known?

Yet all these things actually did occur.  They could occur only in
America; but this is America.  They could occur only at the summons of
a megalomaniac selfishness, an inordinate lust of power; but here were
these, biding their time, in the seriously assured mind of an American
man; a man after all born of his age and of his country, and
representative of that country's typical ambition--the ambition for a
material success.

The lust of power--that was it!  The promise of power--that was what
the small bird had sung in John Rawn's ear!  The craving and coveting
of power--that was what quivered in the marrow of his bones, that put
ponderousness in his tread, that shone out of his eyes.

It was this, it was all of these, focused suddenly and unexpectedly by
the lens of accident into a burning point of certainty, which marked
the air and attitude of John Rawn one evening on his return to his home
at the conclusion of his day's work.  He almost stumbled as he entered
the door, heedless of the threshold.  He paced up and down the narrow
little hall, trod here and there almost as in a trance, muttering to
himself, before at last he stood in front of his wife and spread out
his arms--not for her, but for the imaginary multitude whom he
addressed in her.

"Laura," said he, "Laura, it's come!  I've got the idea.  It's going to
win.  We're going to be rich.  I've believed it all along, and I know
it now!  Laura, look at me--didn't I always tell you so--didn't I know?"

He stood before her, his shoulders back, his chin up, his brow
frowning, his lips trembling in simple, devout admiration of himself.
It was not defiance that marked his attitude.  John Rawn did not defy
the lightning.  He only wondered why the lightning had so long defied
him.



CHAPTER VI

MR. RAWN ANNOUNCES HIS ARRIVAL

I

For some time Mrs. Rawn said nothing in answer to her husband's
declaration.  She had known such things before.  Indeed, with woman's
instinct for deliberate self-deception, she sometimes in spite of her
own clear-sightedness had persuaded herself to feel a sort of
resentment at the conditions which so long had held her husband back;
had been sure, as so many wives are, that only a conspiracy of
injustice had thwarted him of success.  If only he could get his
chance!  That was the way she phrased it, as most wives do--and most
husbands.

But to-day there was something so sincere in his air as to take her
beyond her own forced insincerity with herself.  She caught conviction
from his tone.  There fell this time upon the sensitized plate of her
woman's nature some sort of shadow of events to come which left there a
permanent imprint as of the truth.

"What is it, John?" she demanded.  Her eye kindled, her voice had in it
something not of forced or perfunctory interest.  He caught these also,
in his exalted mood almost as sensitive as herself.

"Then you believe it at last!" he demanded, almost fiercely.  It was
the voice of his father speaking, demanding of a sinner whether or not
she had repented of her former fallen state.  "You begin to think that
after all I'll do something for us both?  Oh, well, I'm glad--"

"Why, John, I always thought so," she eluded mildly.  "When did I
ever--"

"Oh, I don't know that you ever said it in so many words," he grumbled,
"but of course I knew how you felt about it.  I suppose a woman can't
help that.  It was my part to succeed somehow, some time, in spite of
you.  I always knew I would."

He paced up and down, his coat tails back of the hands which he thrust
deep into his pockets.  "I'll tell you again, since I have never spoken
of this--for fear you'd think me just a little conceited about
myself"--he smiled in a manner of deprecation, never for an instant
catching the comedy of this, more than she herself displayed proof of
her own wish to smile--"I'll tell you anyhow, though you may think I've
got a bit of vanity about myself.  The truth is, I've always believed
in myself, Laura!  I've kept it hidden, of course--never let a soul
know that I thought myself the least bit different from anybody else.
_You_ didn't know it, even--and you're my wife.  I've been considered a
modest man all, my life.  Yet, Laura, here's the truth about it--I
_wasn't_, really!  I _did_ feel different from other men.  I didn't
feel just like an ordinary man.  I _knew_ I was not--and there's the
truth about it.  I don't know exactly how to tell you, but I've always
known, as sure as anything, that some day I'd be a rich man."



II

She sat looking at him seriously, her elbows resting on the table, her
gray eyes following him as he walked, his face serious, the imperious
lock of hair now fallen across his forehead.

"Not that I would let money itself be the only thing, my dear, as you
know," he went on nobly.  "I wouldn't do that.  Any man worth while has
larger ambitions than merely making money.  After I've made money
enough, for us--more than you ever dreamed about--after I've succeeded
and proved myself--then I'm going to do something for other men--my
inferiors in life, you know--the laboring men.  I suppose, after all,
people are pretty much alike in some ways.  Some men are stronger than
others, more fit to succeed; but they ought to remember that after all
they are the agents of Providence, that they are custodians, Laura,
custodians.  No man, Laura, no matter what his success, ought to be
wholly selfish.  He oughtn't to be--well, conceited about himself, you
know.  He ought to be _humble_."

She still looked after him, wondering whether, after all, he might not
be a trifle off his head; but the seriousness of his eye daunted her.

"As for us, we'll move up to Chicago first, in all likelihood; maybe
later to New York, for I suppose business will take us there a great
deal of the time.  As to where we'll make our home eventually, I hardly
know.  Sometimes I think we'll come back here and build a real house,
just to show these people who we were all the time.  Wherever we build,
we'll furnish, too.  I'm going to be a spender.  Oh, I've _longed_ for
it all my life--the feel of money going out between my fingers!  Not
all for ourselves, mind you.  Maybe you don't quite understand about
that--I couldn't expect you to.  But after I've done something for the
common people, I want to _build_ something--churches, monuments,
something that will stick and stay after you and I are gone, and tell
them who John Rawn was.  I want them to say, most of all, that he was a
_modest_ man, that he was a kind man, and not a selfish one--not a
_selfish_ man, Laura."



III

She nodded, looking at him fixedly, large-natured enough to be just in
the assembling of these crude and unformulated ambitions which she knew
tormented him.  "Yes, John," she said quietly.

The next instant his mood changed.

"But one thing they'll have to do!" he said, smiting a fist into his
palm.  "They'll have to admit that I _was_ John Rawn!  They'll have to
realize that success comes where it belongs.  _My_ brain, _my_ energy,
_my_ point of view, _my_ ability to command men, _my_ instinct for
leadership--they'll have to recognize all that.  I'll make them see who
we were all the time.  Why, Laura, we've just been walking along a flat
floor, more than twenty years, and now we're going to take the
elevator.  We'll go _up_ now, straight and fast.

"I'm going to make you happy now," he mused.  "You've been a good
enough wife.  I always said that to myself--'She's been a good wife.'
I'm going to show you that you didn't make any mistake that night when
you took me, only a railway clerk, with a salary of forty a month."

She did not remind him that, so far as she knew, he was still a railway
clerk, with a salary which in twenty years had not grown abnormally.
But now her own ambitions began to vault: first of all, the ambition of
a mother for her child.  She accepted all these vague statements as
convincing truths; for where we hope we are easily convinced.

"But how soon, John?  You see, there is Grace, our girl."

"She'll wear diamonds and real clothes."

"I wasn't thinking of that.  I was thinking of her education.  Grace
ought to go to some good girls' college in the East.  You see, you and
I didn't have so very much education, John," she smiled.

He frowned in answer.  "We didn't need so much, so far as that goes.
Books are not everything.  There's plenty of college men who don't
amount to anything."

"I didn't so much mean books.  But you see, John, we've lived rather
carelessly.  We've not been very conventional, we don't know very many
people, and--maybe--we don't know much how things are _done_, you see.
Now suppose we were giving a dinner, and you had to take out the guest
of honor--"

"Nonsense!  I reckon any guest'd feel honored enough to come to my
house.  I'm not worrying about that.  Cash in the bank is the main
thing for the guest of honor.  As for the girl, she'll have as much
education as we had, and that's enough."

"But I want her to be a lady, John."

"Can't she be?"

"I'll want her to marry well, John."

"Won't she?  If she has money, can't she?"

"But I want her to be prized for herself, for what she is."

"She'll be our daughter, and won't that be enough?"

"But herself!"

"She's our girl.  I don't see where she'd find better parents."

"I was just thinking--about her education--that a little finishing
would help her.  We wouldn't always live just as we are living now, and
she ought to be prepared for better things.  We read about things, but
what do we know about them?  Grace ought to know."

"I don't really join in your anxiety, Mrs. Rawn," said he largely, "but
that'll all come, if it's needful."

"It's needful now.  Grace'll be a young woman before long.  You see--"
she flushed painfully as she spoke--"I don't want to see her grow up
awkward.  I don't want her to feel as though she hadn't been used to
things, you know--to be ashamed of herself and her--her parents.  Not
that I care so much for myself--"

There were tears in her eyes--tears of reaction, of hope however badly
founded.  She had toiled long and patiently.

"Why, what's the matter, Laura?" asked her husband.

"I'm getting to be almost old, John--I'm almost an old lady now!  I've
got gray hairs.  I'm forty-five."

He shook her by the shoulders playfully.  "Nonsense!  We're almost of
an age, and I'm just beginning life.  Grace is only a child."

"She's eighteen past.  That's why I asked you how soon--tell me, have
they really raised your salary, John?  If we could only have two
thousand dollars a year it would be all in the world I should ask."

"Salary!" he guffawed.  "Two thousand dollars a year!  Say that much a
month, a week, a day!"

"You're crazy, John!  What do you mean?"  Indeed, some doubt of his
sanity now began to enter her mind.

"Read in the papers about the daily incomes of those big chaps, those
really great men back East, the fellows who run things.  Every one of
them made it out of nothing--not one of them had any one to give him a
start.  We've no right to say that I can't do as well as they have.
The start's the thing."

"But what has happened, then?  I never saw you so stirred up before in
all my life, John."

"I never have been."

"But what is sure--what can I depend on for Grace?"

"Death, taxes, and a woman's curiosity are all the sure things.  I
don't know anything else that is sure.  No man can give all the details
of his life in advance."

"In advance?"

"Oh, it hasn't all actually happened yet, of course.  I won't begin
wheeling home a wheelbarrow full of gold every night for quite a while.
But some day I may!"  His lips closed grimly.



IV

"Grace'll be a young woman before long," his wife still mused,
irrelevantly.

"Let that take care of itself.  I'll deliver the goods."

She allowed herself a smile.  "They are not delivered?"

He flushed at this.  "You think they never will be?  Very well, I'll
fight it out alone.  At least I believe in myself."

"But what's _happened_?  What do you mean, after all?"  She put her
hand upon his arm as he passed.  He flung himself into a chair opposite
her, his own elbows on the table as he faced her.

"You can't understand it, Laura; but listen.  There are two ways of
getting rich.  You can make money without brains in real estate, other
people building you up rich.  That's luck, not brains.  A great many of
the great fortunes--take Astor's, for instance, in New York--have been
made in that way.  But that's a fortune which you O.K. after it's made,
and you don't know anything about it in advance--it's too far in the
future.  You don't hear of the ones that are not made.  Astor used his
best judgment and bought land up the island, where he thought people
would go, but he didn't know they'd go there.  That's as much luck as
brains.  We call luck brains when it makes good.

"But there's another way of getting rich.  That means real _brains_,
and not luck.  It means deliberately figuring out what people are going
to do.  There is only so much room on the surface of the earth.  But
there's room in the air for millions and millions of basic ideas."

He gloomed across at her, but she kindled, as ready as ever to travel
with his thought.

"Look at a few of the big ideas which have paid," he said.  "Give the
people something they haven't had; get them so they have to have it!
Cinch it first, and sell it afterward--and you're going to get rich.
Granted an idea which takes hold on the daily life of the whole people,
and there's no way of measuring the money you can make.

"For instance, you couldn't put the world back to the place where it
could get along without refined oil, without steam and electric
transportation, and the telephone, and a thousand other things which
have made men rich--inventions which seemed little at first, but which
were universal after a while.  Oil, water, iron, wood, steel--we have
to have those things.  Cinch them and sell them.  That's the way to get
rich, my dear.  Get an idea, get to it first, and cinch it for your
own.  Then sell it.  Keep on selling it.  Give 'em something they've
got to have, after showing 'em they've got to have it.  Teach 'em what
they ought to have known without any teaching.  Some men teach and
others pay them for it.  After that, all you've got to do is to take it
away from them.  When you've taken away enough, make 'em crawl--make
'em _admit_ that you were greater than they were.  Then build your
monument and make them keep on remembering you.  After that--"

"And after _that_, John?" she said gently.



V

He did not hear her.  He sat staring, as though in the mirror of his
own mind.  At last he let his hand drop across the table.  She dropped
her own into his, timidly.

"Listen, Laura," he went on.  "I'll tell you a little of what I mean."

"Yes, John, I'm sure you will."

"What's the distinguishing thing about life to-day, my dear--the thing
that makes it different from that of the past?"

"Why, I don't know."

"A great many don't know.  They don't stop to _think_!  That's why so
many pass by the open door of success and never get inside.  Listen,
Laura.  Wait a minute--don't interrupt me.  _Speed_ is the thing
to-day.  Speed, speed, speed; and power!  Don't you see it all around
you, don't you feel it?  Can't you almost smell it, touch it, taste it?
It's on the street, in the house, in business, everywhere--we can't go
fast enough.  But we're going faster.  We'll go twice as fast."

"How do you know?  What do you mean?  Who told you, John?"

"That's my business.  That's my idea.  That's my invention.  That's how
I'm going to get rich.

"Laura, I'm going to make it possible to gear up our national life, to
double its present speed," he went on savagely.

"When they've got it, they'll think they always had it, and after that
they all will always have to have it.  I'll be there first.  I'll cinch
it, and I'll sell it.  That's my idea.  That's not luck.  It's brains,
brains, _brains_, Laura!"



VI

She leaned back in her chair, sighing.  "Do you think I could have a
silk dress, John?" she said at length, her mind overleaping vast
intermediate details.

"My God, woman!"

"Could we go to the theaters--I've always wanted to so much.  Could I
go into the country once in a while, where things are green?"

He made a despairing gesture at her inability to grasp the future.

"We could travel--could we go over to Europe--could we take Grace
there, John?"

"As often as you liked!"

"Could we have a new gate in the picket fence, if the landlord still
refused?"

"Oh, my God!"

She sat, trying to rise to the pitch of such ambition, but succeeded
only in remaining commonplace.  "How did you come across it, John?" she
asked after a little.

He smiled.  "What did I say about death and taxes and a woman's
curiosity?  The truth is, I picked it up from a word or so I heard in a
chance conversation--two young fellows from the engineering department
were talking something over.  That young chap named Halsey, just out of
some college, full of fads, you know.  He'd been reading something his
old professor had been monkeying over.  I got my idea then--the idea of
making any automobile go twice as fast as it does, any railway train,
anything else--of cutting out a lot of useless human labor, and setting
the power of gravitation to work."

"I thought you said this was your own idea?"

"It _is_ my own.  What is thrown away deliberately, and picked up, is
mine, if I see the value in it.  Young Halsey didn't know.  He's just a
visionary--nothing practical about him.  He couldn't see into this."

"Halsey--Charley Halsey of the offices?  He's been here--I think
Grace--you see, the Personal Injury office, where she works, is just
across the hall from the Engineering--"

"Well, it's no difference.  I'm going to take care of the affair
myself.  But it might be just as well if he came, once in a while.
Grace might do worse."

"But you heard him speak of it first?"

"I've just told you, yes, woman!  But there was nothing worked out.
I've got to furnish the time and money and brains and the plan of
working it out.  I've never said a word to him yet, of course, and I
don't want you to say a word."

Her face fell.  "I'm afraid I can't understand all these things, John.
But I should think you'd take Charley in as a partner.  That is, if
Grace--  Maybe he could help."

"A partner?  With me?  Laura, John Rawn has no partners."



VII

She rose after a time, her eyes not seeking his.

"Grace will be coming home directly," she said briskly.  "I must get
supper ready."

"One thing"--he raised a restraining hand--"keep quiet about this.
I've told you too much already."

For half an instant Laura Rawn almost wondered whether this thing might
not be true.  Such things had happened in this country.  Was there not
daily proof before her eyes?  And might not fortune reverse her wheel
for them also; might not lightning choose, as sometimes elsewhere it
had chosen, a humble and unimportant spot for its alighting?  Who can
read the plans of the immortal gods? asked the pagans of old.  Who,
asked Laura Rawn, devout Christian, can foresee the plans of a Divine
Providence?

As for John Rawn, he troubled but little over the immortal gods or over
a Divine Providence, feeling small need of the aid of either.  He had
himself.



CHAPTER VII

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MEN

I

Thus far, the Rawn planet had moved but in restricted orbit, to wit:
one bounded as to one extremity by the dingy yard and narrow walls of a
home rented at twenty dollars a month; at the other, by the still
dingier and more prosaic business surroundings of a railway's general
offices.  Narrow and dull enough the Rawn life had been, and in such a
life, lived on into middle age, you scarce could have blamed a man had
he settled back for ever into the grip of the upreaching fingers of
monotony.  The half mechanical and parrot-like repetition of set
phrases in a restricted line of business correspondence for Rawn
himself, day after day; the dull and endless round of homekeeping
duties for the wife--what but narrowness and dullness could come out of
life such as this?  Wherefore you should not have been surprised had
you been told that Grace Rawn was simply the outgrowth of this sort of
home, this sort of life, not much different from other girls of her
class.

We are coming more and more in America to use that word "class."  The
theory is that we came to this continent to escape class; but surely
class has followed us, and restricted us, and counted us out into elect
and damned, into those above and those below the salt.  Rather let us
say the truth, which is that class has followed us because we ourselves
have followed after class.

But continually the great laws of survival go on after their own
fashion.  In the production of human beings there continually are at
work the five laws of evolution, the five factors of heredity,
environment and selection, blended with variation and isolation.  These
five factors build human characters, continue ever to do their amazing
sums in life and success and survival.  Sometimes they produce a Grace
Rawn.



II

Perhaps it was the very factor of isolation that gave Grace Rawn her
quality.  She was a silent girl, somewhat reserved.  Silence and
reserve she got from her father's solemn self-absorption, her mother's
quiet self-abnegation.  She was softened in part by the gentle training
of her mother, who talked most when her husband was not present.

Grace Rawn stood two inches taller than her mother, and had a certain
severe distinction which covered many sins in shorthand.  Her brows
were dark and met above her eyes; and the latter, being somewhat
myopic, usually were covered by glasses--which also not infrequently
shield yet other multitudes of sins in stenography.  Her chin was well
out and forward.  Her jaw was rounded, her teeth white and good, her
carriage also good, if still a trifle stiff and awkward.  In air she
was slow and deliberate.  Her eyes were gray like her mother's, her
voice deep like her father's.  She was what would be called old for her
years, indeed a woman at sixteen.  Most would have placed her age some
years further on than the eighteen years which really were hers at this
time.

Grace Rawn could not be said to have any circle of friends.  Her soul
was eclectic.  In short, isolation, selection and variation, the three
less known laws of growth, had done as much for her as the more vaunted
factors of heredity and environment.  Self-contained, adequate enough
in appearance, although lacking that sort of magnetism which draws men
to women, she would have passed with small notice in the average
collection of her sex.  For such as these, propinquity comes as a
blessing in so far as natural selection is concerned.



III

In St. Louis, natural selection operated much as in the Silurian or the
Elizabethan, or eke the Jeffersonian age, choice being made from that
which offered at the family doorstep in either era.  In Kelly Row good
folk sat upon the doorstep of an eventide.  The evening assemblage upon
the Rawn front doorstep in Kelly Row grew larger as Grace grew older.
Certain young men came.  Why did they come?  Why do we walk about and
around a tree that hangs full in fruit not yet ripened, watching the
bloom on this, the texture of that, the size or probable flavor of
yonder example hanging as yet unfinished in the alchemy of the summer
sun?  At least the little company at times was larger on the Rawn front
stoop of an evening.  It all went on in the easy, careless, hopeful,
unconventional fashion of families of the Rawn class.  Let it be
remembered that class really is class in this country.  There seemed
little hope for Grace, therefore, other than in a marriage after the
stereotyped fashion of Kelly Row.  Perhaps if good fortune attended,
she might marry a man who, at middle age, might, like her father, be
drawing a salary of one hundred and twenty-five dollars a month; a
great man in the eyes of the world of Kelly Row, which lived on an
average of half that per month.



IV

In this evening company, as Laura Rawn had mentioned, occasionally
might have been found one Charles Halsey, himself now some twenty-four
years of age at next spring's lambing-time; as his father, a Missouri
farmer, would have said.  Halsey had come to the city, a serious-minded
youth, to seek his fortune, just as John Rawn had done at about the
time Halsey himself was born.  But whereas Rawn had concerned himself
little in books, Halsey had, by such means as only himself could have
told, managed a degree in engineering in what New England calls a
freshwater college, the same not so good as salt, yet, in Halsey's
belief better than none and cheaper than some.  Once out of college and
finding himself belated, he had thrust into the thick of the fray of
the business world to the best of his ability, though to his surprise
not setting the world into any conflagration.  These four years now, as
chance had had it, he had been engaged in the drafting department of
the engineer's offices in the same railway which employed John Rawn.  A
thoughtful young chap enough, and one held rather student than good
fellow by his fellow clerks, because for the most part he did not join
them in their dissipations, their cheap joys, their narrow ways of
thinking.  Also a chap regarded as not wholly desirable because he read
much, and because he had ideas.

Charles Halsey, as well as Grace Rawn, in some sort seemed to set the
laws of heredity and environment at defiance in favor of the lesser
factors in evolution.  He had originally no right to be anything but a
farm lad, yet he had dreams, and so had fought his way through college.
There, in the world of books, close to the world of thought, not far
from the world of art, he had become what some of us might have called
an idealist, what most of us would have called a fool, and now what all
of us would have called a failure.

A studious bent, a wide and unregulated way of reading, a vague,
inexact and untrained habit of mentality, took young Halsey, as it does
many another unformed mind, into studies of social problems for which
he was but little fitted, to wit: into imaginings about human
democracy, the inherent rights of man, and much other like folly.  The
questions of socialism, the rights and wrongs of capital, the
initiative, the referendum and the recall; the direct primary, the open
shop, and the living wage scale under the American standard--all these
and many other things occupied him as much as tangents, curves and
logarithms.  As a result of his inchoate research, he started out in
young manhood well seized of the belief--finely expressed in a certain
immortal but wholly ignored document known in our own history--that
there is a certain evenness in human nature before the eyes of the Lord.

A young engineer with small salary, and a theoretical cast of mind,
even though he reads text-books out of hours, has only himself to trust
for his upward climb in life.  Surely he might be better occupied in
wondering rather about his pull with the boss than about the eyes of
the Lord as bearing upon the future of this republic.  But, at any
rate, such was the plight of young Mr. Halsey.  And, such being the
nature and disposition of the doorstep-frequenting young, it chanced
that, although Grace Rawn really was not yet fledged beyond the
blue-tip stage of her final feathering, and although Mr. Halsey of the
Engineering, draftsman, himself still lacked the main quills which
support a man in his ultimate flight through life, they came more and
more to meet each other; after which, each in separate fashion came to
enjoy the meeting and to look forward to the next.

It was not unusual for Mr. Halsey, faring homeward from the office, to
meet Grace, also faring home, at the turn of the car track on Olive
Street.  Taking the same car they would travel, somewhat shy and
silent, until they reached the distant corner where those bound for
Kelly Row must leave the car.  Then, himself obliged by this to walk
perhaps a mile farther, he would join her, still shy and more or less
silent; and so perhaps again wander to that certain door in Kelly Row
where by that time, perhaps, both Mr. Rawn and his helpmeet were
sitting on the narrow porch.  He was always welcome there, because Rawn
knew him for a steady chap; and because, in Halsey's eyes, John Rawn
was considerable of a personage.  Rawn was aways ready to be consulted
by the young, and, like most failures, was not averse to giving
abundant good advice to others as to the problems of success.  Halsey,
reserved and not expansive of nature, a poor boy in college, always had
had a social world as narrow as this of Kelly Row; so that after all
the parties of both the first and the second part were traveling mostly
in their own class.  On the whole it was rather a dour assemblage, that
on the porch in Kelly Row.  None seemed to have any definite plan or to
suspect another of plan.  Life simply was running on, in the bisque
shepherdess, china dog, Dying Gaul and Rock of Ages way.



V

Let us except John Rawn.  He now had certain wide plans of his own, as
we shall see--indeed, as we have seen--and these had somewhat to do
with young Mr. Halsey himself.

Mr. Halsey himself was disposed at times rather to moroseness, not yet
having discovered the full relation of liver and soul--a delicate and
intimate association.  Sometimes despair oppressed him.

"Once in a while I get an idea," said he, one evening, "and I think it
might make good if I had a chance to put it over.  But what's the use?
I couldn't do anything with the best idea in the world, because I have
no time nor money to work one out.  I tell you, you've got to have
money or pull to get anywhere to-day.  This country's getting into a
bad way.  It doesn't look quite right to me, I tell you, the way human
beings are ground under to-day."

And yet it was out of precisely such talk as this that John Rawn
originally got the reason for the enthusiastic conversation with his
wife which earlier has been chronicled.  Behold the difference among
men!  Here was one who wanted to set all the world right, to discover
some panacea by which all men might rest in happiness for ever, by
which all men might succeed, might indeed prove themselves free and
equal, and entitled to, say, ten minutes out of the twenty-four hours
for the pursuit of happiness--innocent happiness, such as reading books
on electricity, socialism, the steaming quality of coke, or the
tortional strength of I-beams laid in concrete.  Here also, one lift
above him on the doorstep of Kelly Row, was another man, John Rawn,
who, thinking he was full of ideas, had none, but who had every
confidence in himself; a man who early in his youth had proved his
ability to leave to others the skin of their bananas while he himself
took the meat, and paid naught therefor.  Not much of a stage, thus set
in Kelly Row.  But this is the stage as it was set.



VI

Among these, there was one idea waiting to be born.  For, look you, the
air is full of ideas--even as John Rawn in ignorant truthfulness had
said.  They float all about us, unborn children in the ether of the
universe, waiting to be born, selecting this or that of us--you, me,
gently, for a parent; the most of them to be pushed back unknown,
unrecognized, into the frustrate void, and so left to await a better
time.  I doubt not that, at this time or that, each of us has had
offered to him, thus gently, thus unknown, some idea which would have
made any of us great, set us far above our fellow-man; ideas which for
all of that, perhaps would have revolutionized the world.  But we did
not know them.  What great things are left unborn, what great
discoveries remain unmade, no man may measure.  We do not lay hold upon
that thin and vaporous hand which touches our shoulder.  We do not
wrestle unwearied with the angel unto the coming of the dawn.  So we go
on, bruised and broken, and at length buried and forgot, most of us
never grasping these unseen things, not even having a hint of their
immaterial presences.  It is only as the jest-loving fates have it
that, once in a while, something in revolutionary thought drops to
earth, is caught by some materialistic mind, bred up by some
materialistic hand.

It must have been first at some chance meeting here on the doorstep in
Kelly Row that young Halsey let drop reference to an idea.  It was the
whisper of some passing wing in the universal ether, but he did not
know that.  It is not always the mind of the idealist which produces.
But now this thin, faint, mystic sound had fallen upon the material
mind of John Rawn, covetous, eager, receptive of any hint to further
his own interest, concerned not in the least with science, not in the
least with altruism, troubling not in the least over the fate of this
republic or the welfare of mankind, concerned only with his own fate,
interested only in his own welfare.  Whereupon John Rawn--barring that
certain prophetic outburst of his egotism with which he favored his
wife but recently--in silence had accepted this sign and taken it as
his own, devised for his use and behoof, and for that of none other
than himself.



VII

This difference, then, lay between Rawn of the Personal Injury
department of the railway office, and Halsey of the drafting offices;
Rawn believed in himself, Halsey had not yet figured out whether or not
he believed in anything.  They met on the doorstep at Kelly Row, and
out of their meeting many things began in Kelly Row which matured
swiftly elsewhere, and in surprising fashion.

We now come on, sufficiently swiftly, to the history of the birth and
organization of the International Power Company, Limited; a concern
which grew out of nothing except the five factors of
survival--environment, heredity, variation, selection and isolation.
Its cradle was in Kelly Row.



CHAPTER VIII

POWER

I

"Charles," said John Rawn one evening, with that directness of habit
which perhaps we have earlier noted, "I have been thinking over some
scientific problems."

"Yes?" replied Halsey.  "What is it--a patent car coupler?  There isn't
a fellow in our office who hasn't patented one, but I didn't know it
was quite so catching as to get into the Personal Injury
department--they only settle with the widows there."

"In my belief," went on Rawn, frowning at this flippancy, "I am upon
the eve of a great success, Charles."

"What sort of success, Mr. Rawn?" inquired Halsey, more soberly.

Rawn smiled largely.  "You will hardly credit me when I tell you,
almost all sorts of success!  To make it short, I have formed a power
company--a concern for the cheap generation and general transmission of
power.  In the course of a few months we'll proceed in the manufacture
of electrical transmitters and receivers for what I call the lost
current of electricity."

Halsey stood cold for a moment, and looked at him in amazement.

"You don't mean to say--why, that's precisely what _I've_ been thinking
of for so long."

"I don't doubt many have been thinking of it," rejoined Rawn.  "It had
to come.  These things seem to happen in cycles.  It's almost a toss-up
what man will first perfect an invention when once it gets in the air,
so to speak.  Now, this invention of mine has been due ever since the
developments in wireless transmission.  In truth, I may say that I have
only gone a little beyond the wireless idea.  What I have done is to
separate the two currents of electricity."

Halsey leaned against the wall.  "My God!" he half whispered.  He
smiled foolishly.

"Why, Mr. Rawn," he said finally, "I've been studying that, I don't
know how long--ever since the researches in my university were made
public.  I thought for some time I might be able to figure it out
further than our professors have as yet.  Pflüger, of Bonn, in Germany,
has been working for years and years on that theory of perpetual motion
in all molecules."

"Mollycules?  I don't know as I ever really saw any," hesitated Rawn.

"Very likely, Mr. Rawn!"

"I've never cared much for mere scientific rot," said Rawn, coloring a
trifle.  "That gets us nothing.  But what were you saying?"

Halsey's enthusiasm carried him beyond resentment and amusement alike.

"Molecules are everywhere, in everything, Mr. Rawn," he explained
gently; "and now we know they move, though we can see them only in mass
and as though motionless."

"I don't see how that can be," began Rawn; but checked himself.

Halsey smote his hand against the solid wall.  "It moves!" he
exclaimed.  "It's alive!  It vibrates--every solid is in perpetual
motion.  The dance of the molecules is endless.  It's in the air around
us, above us--power, power--immeasurable, irresistible power,
exhaustless, costless _power_!  All you have to do is to jar it out of
balance."

"Yes, I know.  That's what I've been getting at, precisely--"

"I was going to figure it out sometime," said Halsey ruefully.

"I _did_ figure it out!" said John Rawn sententiously.  "Moreover, I've
got the company formed."



II

"_You_--Mr. Rawn?  How did you manage that?  I didn't know that you--"
Halsey at last spoke.

"A great many haven't known about a great many things," said Rawn,
walking up and down, his hands in his pockets, his air gloomily
dignified.  "A few men always have to do the things which others don't
know about.  For instance, what did all the work of your
professors--what-d'ye-call-'ems--amount to?  Nothing at all.  Maybe
they'd print a paper about it.  That would about end it, just as it
ended it for you.  You admit you got the idea from them; but I say it
wasn't any idea at all.  I saw it--in the papers.  Didn't pay much
attention to it, because there's nothing in this scientific business
for practical men like me."

"I know, I know," Halsey nodded.  "That's true.  Here it all is."  He
took from his coat pocket a creased and folded newspaper page of recent
date.  "Here's the story--I was proud, because it was my own university
did the work:

"'That the molecules composing all material substances are constantly
in rapid motion, ricocheting against one another in the manner of a
collection of billiard-balls suddenly stirred up, the speed of the
air's components being about half that of a cannon ball, was the proof
announced to-day from the University of Chicago as a further
development of the experiments by Professor R. A. Threlkeld, which for
the last year have been attracting the attention of scientists from all
parts of the world.  The absolute nature of the proof, upon which
physicists all over the world have been working without result for
several years, was assented to by Professor Pflüger, of Bonn
University, Germany, who arrived in Chicago last Monday to witness the
demonstration.'"

He paused in his literal reading from the printed page.  "I told you
about Pflüger," he began.

"Yes, some Dutchman," assented Rawn graciously.  "They're great to dig."

Halsey, being in the presence of the man whom he proposed making his
father-in-law, was perforce polite, although indignant.  He went on
icily, with his reading, since he had begun it:

"'The belief that the molecules of which all matter is composed are in
a perpetual dance of motion has been held tentatively by scientists for
several years, but, owing to the general inability to make any progress
in proving it, considerable skepticism has developed among the
physicists of several of the leading scientific nations.  It was
generally known as the kinetic theory.  Professor Threlkeld's proof is
a further development of his experiments, showing electricity to be a
definite substance, which were announced last year and were pronounced
the most important discovery concerning the nature of electricity since
Benjamin Franklin.

"'The simple expedient of performing his experiments in almost a
complete vacuum--a method which had not occurred to scientists
before--was given by Professor Threlkeld as the foundation stone of his
discovery.  Minute drops of oil, sprayed into a vacuum chamber, one
side of which is of glass, demonstrate by their own motions the truth
of the theory.

"'Surrounded by the ordinary amount of air, the oil drops are bombarded
by moving air molecules in so many thousand places at once that their
motion is so rapid as to be invisible.  With few molecules of air
surrounding them, the drops are driven back and forth as though being
used as a punching-bag.

"'By reference to his previous experiments with drops of oil bombarded
by electrical ions, the motion of the oil drops has been found to be
precisely the same, showing the cause of the motion to be similar in
both cases.'"

"That's all right," said John Rawn, "all very well as far as it goes,
but it doesn't go far enough."



III

Halsey smiled.  "Well, here's what the discoverer says about it," he
commented.  "I reckon that's plain, too, as far as it goes:

"'For the benefit of the general public, Professor Threlkeld has
prepared the following statement concerning the experiments he has been
conducting:

"'"The method consisted in catching atmospheric ions upon minute oil
drops floating in the air and measuring the electrical charge which the
drops thus acquired.  This year the following extensions of this work
have been made:

"'"The action of ionization itself is now being studied, each of the
two electrical fragments into which a neutral molecule breaks up being
caught upon oil drops at the instant of formation.  This study has
shown that the act of ionization of a neutral air molecule always
consists in the detachment from it of one single elementary charge
rather than of two or three such charges.

"'"By suspending these minute oil drops in rarefied gases instead of in
air at atmospheric pressure, the authors have been able to make the oil
drops partake of the motions of agitation of the molecules to such an
extent that they can be seen by any observer to dance violently under
the bombardment which they receive from the flying air molecules.

"'"By measuring accurately the amount of the motion of agitation of the
oil drops and comparing it with the motions which they assume under the
influence of an electrical field because of the charge which they
carry, the authors have been able to make an exact and certain
identification, with the aid of computations made by Mr. Fletcher, of
the electrical charge carried by an atmospheric ion (and measured in
their preceding work), with the electrical charge carried by univalent
ions in solution.

"'"This work not only supplies complete proof of the correctness of the
atomic theory of electricity, but gives a much more satisfactory
demonstration than had before been found of the perpetual dance of the
molecules of matter."'"*


*With but a change of name, Mr. Halsey quoted literally from the
journal--The Author.



IV

"Fine!  Fine!  Charley!" interrupted Rawn sardonically.  "Everybody's
read that who cared to read it.  It's too dry for most folks.  It's
public; it's wide open, no secret about it.  But who wants it?  What
use has a mollycule and a drop of oil in a glass jar got in actual
business?  What ice does it cut?"

"I know--I know, Mr. Rawn; very little indeed.  But, one idea grows out
of another.  Now, what I was experimenting with was this same second
current of electricity--whatever it is.  It's got something to do--I
don't just know what--with this same movement of the molecules.  Now,
can't you see, something has got to move them.  If you've got perpetual
motion, you've got a perpetual power somewhere back at it, and a power
that is endless, universal--

"Mr. Rawn," he resumed earnestly, "when I got that far along, I got
to--well--sort of dreaming!  I followed that dance of the atoms on
out--into the universe--into the manifestation of--"

"Well, of what?"

"Of God!  Of Providence!  Of Something, whatever it is that begins and
perpetuates; _something that plans_!  Something that created.
Something that intends life and comfort and joy for the things It
created."



V

Rawn eyed him coldly.  "Charley," said he, "you're talking tommyrot!
You can't run this world into the spiritual world.  That's wrong.  It's
irreligious.  Besides, it's rot."

Halsey hardly heard him.  "So then I began to wonder what we'd find
yet, when we had that vast, universal power all for our own--all for
man, you know, Mr. Rawn.  Living's hard to-day, Mr. Rawn.  There's a
lot of injustice in the world nowadays.  So--well, I wondered if it
weren't nearly time that things should change.  We've always moved on
up--or thought we did, anyhow--so why shouldn't we keep on moving, keep
on making discoveries?"

"That's what _I_ thought, Charley!"

--"Something that would lighten the world's labor, and give the world
more time to think, more time to _grow_--to enjoy--well, to _love_, you
know--"

"Charley, you're nothing better than a damned Socialist!  You're siding
with the lower classes.  Labor!--There's always got to be labor, long
as the world lasts--always has been and always will be.  And some do
that sort of work, while others don't.  There are differences among
men.  Look at those professors--look at you!  A mollycule in a glass
jar--what'd it get you?  Did any of you form a company for the
perpetual sale of something that's everlasting and that don't cost
anything?  You didn't.  But _I_ did."

"Yes.  And it was my dream--but not as you state it, Mr. Rawn.  I
didn't want to sell it.  I wanted to _give_ it.  I wanted to do
something for the people, for humanity--for the country--you see.  That
is--"

"Humanity be damned!" broke in John Rawn brutally.  "You _can't_ do
anything for humanity--you can't make the weak men strong--it's God
A'mighty does that, Charley.  _Give_ it away, eh?  Well, let me have
the second current that costs nothing, and let me sell it for ever at
my own price--and I reckon I'll let you and your professor and Mr.
Dutchman, whatever his name is, trail along any way you like with your
mollycule in the glass jar.  I want canned _power_--definite,
marketable, something you can wrap up in a package and _sell_, do you
understand--_sell_ to those same laboring men that you're wasting your
sympathy on.  Work for _yourself_, my son, remember that; never mind
about humanity.  And I'll give you a chance, Charley--in my company,"
he added.



VI

"Is it a big company?" queried Halsey wearily.

"Twenty-five million dollars," answered John Rawn calmly.  And it is to
be remembered that at this time John Rawn was drawing a salary of one
hundred and twenty-five dollars a month, the highest pay he had ever
received in all his life; also that he was at this time a man
forty-seven years of age.  We have classes in America, but occasionally
the lines that separate one from the other prove susceptible of
successful attack at the hands of a determined man.  As Rawn stood
before Halsey, who only goggled and gasped at such statements as his
last, he seemed a determined man.

"We are going to dam the Mississippi River, a couple of hundred miles
above here at the ledges," Rawn remarked casually.  "For the time, that
will be our central power plant.  We will contract for a million and a
half dollars' worth of power each year in St. Louis alone.  That comes
down by regular wire transmission.  That is nothing, it's only a drop
in the bucket.  Our big killing is going to be with the other
scheme--the second current--the same idea you've been trifling with.
We'll go East with that."

"You seem to mean almost what I mean, when I talked with you long ago--"

"Do you think so?"  Rawn's tone was affable and he held out his hand.
"I should be happy indeed to think that we had been studying along the
same lines, Charles.  That will enable you all the better to understand
my own ideas and my business plans.  Of course--and I'll be frank with
you, Charles--Mrs. Rawn and I have doubted the wisdom of Grace's
engagement to a young man without means or prospects.  But I can give
you prospects, and you can make your own means.  I'll put you in our
central factory.  We need good men, of course, and I need you
especially, Charles.  In fact, I've had you in my eye."

"How do you mean?"

"Well, I shall be president of the concern."

Halsey smiled sardonically.  "The difference between men!"

"Pardon me, but you seem to think that you ought to stand in my shoes
in this matter, Charles.  I don't recall any warrant for that."  Rawn
spoke with asperity, aggrieved.  "Of course, we speak loosely of
certain things, all of us, and all of us have unformed wishes, all that
sort of thing.  I'm willing to admit, too, as I said before, that when
the time comes for a great idea to be discovered, it may be almost by
accident that it is discovered by this man or that.

"But now, as I take it, Charles," he continued, "you never had any
definite and exact idea of handling the unattuned current of
electricity which runs free in the air, and which--according to my
theory--can be taken down by the proper receivers and used
locally--harnessed, set to work; and retailed at a price.  That's the
wireless idea, of course, in one form.  It's the one big thing left for
big business to discover.  There's nothing left in timber, mines,
irrigation, railroads; cream's all off the country now.  But now here
comes this idea of mine, and it's bigger than any of those old ones.
_Money?_"  He threw out his hands.  "Were you working on this yourself,
my son?" he concluded.  "How singular!  But it's in the air."

"Not very much," said Halsey honestly.  "I didn't have time to work
steadily at it.  We're pretty busy in the office.  I did make a little
model, though.  I spent quite a lot of time on it, as I could."

"We are busy in our office, too," said Rawn grimly.  "But _I_ found
time.  We'll look over your model together, some day."



CHAPTER IX

CHANGE IN KELLY ROW

I

Unless the Day of Judgment shall, in its extraordinary phenomena,
accomplish that result, it is scarcely to be held probable that any
cataclysm inaugurated by God or man ever will essentially disturb the
placid business of simply being alive.  Vesuvius erupts; a few human
ants are scorched.  A city burns, and a few ant-hills perish.  An
earthquake rocks half a continent; the other half stands firm.  Nothing
much matters, and nothing happens.  That men fly in the air, that men
talk across seas by machines--as right presently they will talk mind to
mind, free of all mechanical hindrance--attracts no attention beyond
passing chronicle in the argot of the day.  The large things of the
age, of course, are the ball games and the encounters of the prize
ring.  Why should we think?  Why should we feel apprehension, whereas
we know full well that, come what may--unless that shall be, to wit:
the ball game, the prize fight, or the Day of Judgment--nothing really
can much matter, and nothing much can happen?

Nothing much happened in Kelly Row.  The old monotony of business and
domestic routine went on with no alteration.  Grace went with her
father daily to the common and accustomed scene of their labors; Mrs.
Rawn baked bread, roasted meat when meat could be afforded--for this
was in the America of to-day--swept the hall carpet and dusted off the
Dying Gaul; while as to Charles Halsey, he still read late at night and
made none too good use of India ink, try-square and straight-edge by
day.  No great disturbance was to be noted anywhere.  All that was
proposed was that the people should be--with a very commendable
benevolence--offered the opportunity of purchasing for ever, to the
behoof of a very few, something that had been given them free and for
ever by the will of God.  A simple thing, this, and of no consequence.
It ranked not even with an earthquake; certainly not with a ball game.



II

Yet, with sufficient steadiness, the plans for all this went forward,
and that with a commendable celerity also; for John Rawn now proved
himself no idler in a matter where his own welfare was concerned.  He
and Halsey very often, in their daily meetings, discussed their future
plans; Halsey none too happily.  Rawn consoled him.

"Never mind about it, Charles.  You shall be my right-hand man.  You'll
be able to understand my plans more perfectly than anybody else.  And
listen, Charles--" he laid a hand on the young man's shoulder, "I'm not
going to stand in the way of your own plans.  You and Grace shall marry
as soon as you like, after we get this thing going.  It won't be long.
I shall have abundant means."

"How ever _did_ you do it?" demanded the young man, even as his face
lightened at what seemed to him the most desirable news in the world.
He had just gained Grace's consent and her mother's, but dreaded to ask
that of her sterner parent.  "How in the world did you manage it, Mr.
Rawn?  You hadn't any money, and you hadn't any influence."

"I did it by force of conviction," answered John Rawn severely, setting
his knuckles on the table and leaning forward as he faced him.  "I did
it by my own original thoughts.  I impressed these other men with the
importance of my invention."



III

He strode up and down now, as he went on: "I'll tell you, Charles, so
that you can understand these things.  I suppose you do a certain
amount of reading on current events.  You must know, as we all do, what
a keen search there has been made by capitalists all over the country
for water power sites?  There are few who know to what extent the
greater power sites have been monopolized already--that's kept quiet,
and the people don't care.  Oh, I admire them, those leaders--those men
who see into the future--those men who are our kings in industry.  It's
_there_ I've wanted to stand all my life--among them, in their company,
shoulder to shoulder with them, even-up with them--or better.

"Of course, you know the newspapers and the magazines--all of them
managed by a lot of reformers who have no weight in the world of
affairs--have done all they could to thwart the plans of these brainier
men.  But they can't stop what's going to happen.  A few men are going
to control the resources of this country.  A few men are going to
administer the business affairs of this country.  It can't be stopped.
Even the Supreme Court realizes that now.  Congress learned it long
ago--the Senate proves it every day of the week.  My son, this
invention of mine is going to make that likelihood a certainty, a
certainty!  I want my place among those men, those few leaders who are
to control this country.  And I'm going to have it!"

Young Halsey, dull white, simply sat staring at him as he went on.

"We all know what the old ideas of fuel and power are--they're
obsolete.  Electricity is the power of the future, the power of to-day.
_Speed, speed, speed_ is what we want.  _Power, power, power_ is what
every industry needs, as well as what every man craves.

"Now, heretofore, the only question has been to get electricity over
the country, to distribute it cheaply.  The water powers manufacture it
well enough, but even water powers cost money; and there has always
been a limit to the range of transmission.  Now, when I set aside all
these old, costly, inefficient methods, and hand, ready-made, to the
great capitalists of this country the very answer to the last question
they have been asking, what is going to be the natural result?  When I
tell them that I can wipe out all this enormous industrial waste that
has been going on in power, what are they going to say to me?  Are they
going to kick me out of their offices?

"They didn't kick me out.  When I went to them--a few of them, men who
run our road--and told them that I could separate electricity into two
parts, two sorts, common and preferred, old and new, costly and cheap,
localized and wholly mobile--what were they going to say to me?  They
didn't kick _me_ out of the office!  They got up and locked the office
door.  That's what they did.  They were afraid I'd get away from them!

"They had thought of these things before--about as much as you have, I
reckon.  That is, they had _hoped_ something would be discovered some
time, by somebody.  But I told them that I could send one-half of this
divided power up into the air, now!  I said I could store it in the air
without cost to any one, and then take it down, at any manufacturing
plant, anywhere, any lighting plant, any enterprise using power,
whenever and wherever I pleased, at a cost not worth mentioning--and
now!  It was then they locked the office door, for fear I'd get away."



IV

"It's wonderful," said Halsey, warmly as he could.

"I told them that, as certainly as anything is certain, I could take
that stored charge out of the air, and set it at work in Chicago, or
Cleveland, or Pittsburgh, or Minneapolis, or where I liked.  I said I
could put in the scrap heap every factory run under the old and
obsolete power methods.  Then they began to sit up.  I had 'em pale
before I got through!  I tell you, Charles, I saw the president of this
railroad we have been working for look pale and sick when I, I, John
Rawn, one of his underpaid clerks--a man who had had enough trouble to
get to see him--who had to make some excuse to get to see him--stood up
right to his face and proved these things."

Halsey, duller white, listened on as Rawn talked on.

"Of course, they didn't believe it--he called in his crony, the general
traffic manager--that beast Ackerman--you see, they have some side
lines of investment together, on their personal account--and it makes
'em a lot more than their salaries.  But they were afraid not to
believe what I said.  They tried to talk and couldn't.  About all they
could say to me at the end of an hour or so was 'How much?'

"Then I _told_ them how much," concluded John Rawn.

"How much was it, then?" Halsey tried to smile, palely.

"That is not for me to say.  Business men handling large matters are
pledged to mutual secrecy.  The president of this railroad left for New
York yesterday.  I'm taking chances in telling you this much, and
promising you as much as I have.  I would not do it if I did not regard
you as one of my own family.  You must keep close in this, or else--"
A savage look came into Rawn's face, which he himself would scarcely
have recognized, a new trait in his nature, kept back all these years;
the savagery of the stronger having a weaker being in its power.

"Breathe a word of this, even to Grace," he said, "and it'll cost you
Grace, and it'll cost you more than that."



V

Halsey made no answer but to sit looking at him, his eyes slightly
distended.  He loved this girl.  If he must pay for that love, very
well.  Love was worth all a man could have, all a man could do.  He
loved a girl, and he was young.  Any price for her seemed small.

Rawn allowed his last remark to sink in before he resumed:

"It was some time ago that I went to these men.  They sent for me often
enough after that--"

"And could you prove it out?--"

"Wait a minute--don't interrupt me when I'm speaking."  Rawn raised an
imperious hand.  "They sent for me, yes; until at length the president
told me they hadn't known they had had this big and brainy a man right
at their elbows all the time.

"Then," he went on blandly, unctuously, "they showed me how
large-minded and generous great business men can be when you come to
know them.  The people don't know these great business men--why,
they're just as simple, and human, and kind!  They said they wanted to
identify me with their own fortunes.  For instance, they put me in for
five thousand shares of stock in a rubber company they are floating,
and some automobile stock.  The automobile industry is sure to grow.
That rubber stock alone would make me rich, I have no doubt."

"But what have you _done_?--"

"Wait a minute!  These men, it seems, are in with a lot of other
railroad men who are developing an oil field in lower California.  They
have been waiting till things got ripe.  They've got two or three
gushers capped out there that they're holding back until they get
ready.  They'll make millions out of that alone.  These men play in
with Standard Oil, and you know how strong their hold is since the
Supreme Court threw down the cards.  A salary!  _I_ a salary--what did
I make?  They have _their_ salaries, but what do such sums count with
men of real genius in affairs?

"Well, they put me in for some of those oil shares, too.  That alone
would make me rich.  I could stop right here, taking no chance, and be
_rich_, now, to-day.  It pays to trail in with the right bunch.  What
can the muckrakers do toward stopping men like that?

"I'm telling you things which of course I ought not to, but I know I
can trust you, Charles.  And, as I told you, I'm going to keep you
about me in the business.  I believe in you, my son.  We'll have plenty
of work to do together."

"Have you laid before them a complete plan, then, Mr. Rawn--how did you
figure it all out so soon?  I've worked on this a bit, and I never got
much beyond a model that didn't quite turn the trick."

"I would hardly be foolish," smiled John Rawn.  "They do not have my
secrets.  Let them complete their own plans.  Let them raise their
money.  Let them form their company.  Let them give me legally my
fifty-one shares of International Power for control--then I'll tell
them, not before.  It's a question whether they're big enough to stack
up in my class, that's all."

"Why, you're like the Keeley motor man!" grinned young Halsey.  "It
lasted--for a while.  But can you keep on putting this over with these
people?"

"The president of this railroad started for New York yesterday, I told
you!  We've not been idle.  Two months ago we told our Senators in
Congress what we wanted in the way of laws in the matter of our great
central power dam.  Work is going on in the state legislatures, both
sides of the river.  Money?  There's no trouble raising money in
America when you have a valid idea--no, not if it's only one-tenth as
good as this.  And this is the best and biggest monopoly this country
ever saw.  They'll _pay_ for an idea like this!"



VI

"It's an idea that'll rivet chains on this country!" broke out Halsey
suddenly, starting up.  "It's an idea that'll make still worse slaves
of this American people!"

"Yet just a while ago," said Rawn, with a fine air of Christian
fortitude, "you said that you were trying to get hold of this very same
idea."

"Yes, yes, I was!  I am!  I did!  But I wanted to take a burden off
from the shoulders of the world, not to put a greater there.  I wanted
to lessen the dread and despair that our people feel to-day.  I wanted
to work it out, I say, so that every man could have the benefit--and
_free_!"

"Every man is going to have it," remarked John Rawn grimly, "but _not_
free.  What did I tell you a while ago?  Get an idea, cinch it--and
then sell it!  The people can have this benefit, yes; but they'll _pay_
for it.  That's the way success is made."

"Ah, is it so?" was Halsey's answer.  He flung himself against the
table, his pale face thrust forward over his outspread arms.  "Success!
You mean only that the corporation grip on this country will be
stiffened more than any one ever dreamed.  That's what your idea means,
then?  That's your success?"

Rawn nodded.  "Of course.  That has to be.  Business conditions have
changed.  I told you, a few men are to control the destiny of this
country.  Individual competition--it's foolish now.  There are
differences among men.  We have to take the world as we find it, and
improve it if we can.  When a fortunate man hits upon some great
improvement in the living conditions of humanity, he gets rich.  That's
the way of life.  Why fight it?  Why not get on the right side, instead
of the wrong side of the world?  Why not trail in with the main bunch,
if that's where the money is?"

"Go on, then, go on!" said Halsey after a long while, the expression on
his face now changing.  "I'm going to trail in, as you say.  When does
the riveting begin?"

"The public will be taken in when the larger interests have completed
all their plans," answered John Rawn.  "The stock of International may
not go on the market for some time; indeed, I doubt if much of it ever
gets out beyond our fellows,--it's too good a thing to share with the
public.  I know what'll happen with my fifty-one per cent.--it'll stay
in my safety-box until John Rawn is in need of bread.

"We start with fifteen million bonds," he continued, "thirty millions
preferred stock, with a forty per cent., common, as a bonus.  It looks
as though the thing would be all inside.  The management--"

"But you?--You'll think me personal--"

"Not at all.  I'll hold the control."

"Of what?"

"_Of all of it_," said John Rawn, gently smiling, as he leaned his
knuckles on the dingy table in the dining-room in Kelly Row.

Halsey smiled at him, tapping his finger on the side of his head.  "I
see," said he.

"No, I'm not crazy.  _What_ do you think you see?"

"Things don't happen in that way, Mr. Rawn.  Inventors don't get off in
the money like that.  Don't tell me that."

"Right you are," said Rawn, dropping a clenched fist on the table top.
"_Inventors_ don't!  But men of that same class--men of grip and
grasp--_they_ do get off where the money is!  I'll show you.  They
won't rob John Rawn!"



VII

"Did they take it easy?" queried Halsey finally.

"Threatened to kill me, that was all!  As I said, they locked the door.
It was the traffic manager, Ackerman, who took it roughest.  We both
looked along his pistol barrel.  'All right,' I said.  'Shoot.  Kill
me, and what is there left?  You _can't_ take me in with you--it's only
a question whether I'll take _you_ in with _me_!

"'Now, you listen,' I said to Standley and Ackerman--and I wasn't
afraid of them--'I'll show you how to make something that everybody has
to have.  I'll put speed into the work of every laboring man--I'll
double his efficiency, double his hours and halve his pay, and I'll cut
off his ability to help himself.  I'll make labor unions impossible.
I'll gear up, pace up, stiffen up the whole theory of life and work, I
tell you, gentlemen,' said I, 'so that one hour will count for two, one
man will count for two, one wage will count for two!  Do you get me,
gentlemen?' I asked of them--just those two were in the office then,
and the door was locked behind me.  'You're big men,' said I, 'but
you're not as big as I am.  It's a cheap bluff about that gun,' I said
to Ackerman.  'Put it up.  You wouldn't dare kill me, or dare do
anything I didn't want you to.  I came to you because it was easier to
walk down this hall than it was to walk across the street.  Do you want
me to walk across the street?'"

Rawn chuckled gently; and now indeed he did present the very image of
self-confidence.  "Well, then, they saw it," said he finally.  "They
didn't want me to walk across the street!  Standley laughed at
Ackerman.  'No use to kill him yet,' says he.  I laughed then, we all
laughed.  'No, it wouldn't be any use,' said I to them.  'The question
is, how much I ought to give you.'

"Ackerman took it hard.  He's a bulldog sort of man.  'You're damned
impudent!' said he.  'I'll have you fired.'

"'I'm fired now!' says I to them.  'You think I'm only a common clerk.
Didn't both of you come up from clerking?  Can't I take you higher yet
than where you are now?'  The Old Man, Standley, nodded then; and
pretty soon he reached out and took my hand.  'Come in, son,' says he.
'You're on.'

"Well, that's nearly all there was about it, Charley.  I say to you,
too, 'Come in, son--you're on.'



VIII

"Now then," he went on in his monologue, "we're up to the wait while
the laws are being made, and while all the plans for financing the
proposition are going through.  We'll have to pro-rate this stuff with
the big railway companies, of course, and with the oil and steel
industries, and some of the other leading combinations--Standley and
Ackerman'll have no trouble, with their acquaintance among the big men
of the East.  You can't stop such men.  Give them this idea of mine and
you can't keep them from controlling this country.  These are things
that can't be altered."

"But it will alter the world!" exclaimed young Halsey, at last
beginning to arouse.  "Who knows how much power there is in the water
of even one big river?  You can use it over and over again.  Why, on
that one river--"

"Our river," said John Rawn, smiling.

"The people's river!" retorted Halsey fiercely.  "Their river!  God
made that river, and all the rest of them, for something, I don't know
what.  But it wasn't for this."

"It'll have to work," answered John Rawn.  "That river'll have to work
to earn its keep--they'll all have to!"

"And the country--the republic--what will become of it?"

"The republic?  That was a compromise.  We perhaps had to live through
that.  Conditions in government change."  Mr. Rawn spoke largely,
finely, with a nice appreciation of all values.

"My God!" whispered Halsey.  "What do you mean?"



IX

Rawn paid small attention to him, and he broke out yet more vehemently.
"But it is an enormous thing--you are dealing with the power of powers!
The great force of the world is gravitation.  It makes the world move,
keeps the sun in its place.  Water running down hill never tires.  _It_
doesn't know any eight-hour day."

"That term will cease to exist within two years," said John Rawn
grimly.  "It is a detestable thing.  It has hampered business long
enough."

"What do you mean?"

"There's no such thing as an arbitrary length for a day's work.  The
agreed day has lasted long enough.  Money is made by setting other men
to work for you, and then seeing that they do work.  When you have
something every man must use, when you've got the final whip-hand, it's
you who set the working day, and not those who work for you."

"You're talking of using what God gave to human beings, and talking of
making worse slaves of them to that gift.  That's monstrous, Mr. Rawn!"

"Is it, then?  To our notion it has been monstrous what these labor
combinations have tried to do.  Our great industrial leaders have been
used unjustly.  Yet labor is only mechanical power, that has to eat,
and sleep, and wear clothes.  _Our_ kind of power doesn't have to do
those things."

"But, Mr. Rawn!  if that were true--of course it can't be true--what
would there be left for the average man?  I say that a man has a right
to work when he likes, and a right to stop when he likes."

"Precisely; but the labor unions say that he must stop when they like.
Why don't you use your brains, Charles?  The old war was between
capital, that is to say, concentrated power, and labor, which is
unconcentrated power.  That war has held back business in this country
for years.  Now, when I told these men, Standley and Ackerman, that I
had something which would wipe out every labor union within a few
years--well, they _had_ to come in with me, that was all.  They _had_
to.



X

"The trouble with you," contended Rawn, himself now speaking fiercely
as he loomed and lowered above Halsey, "the trouble with all you
dreamers is that you have no real imagination.  What's the use talking
about the rights of the average man?  When did the average man ever
start or stop a revolutionary idea?  When these things come, they come,
and you can't help them.  They had machinery riots in Great Britain a
generation or two ago, but the spinning jennies stuck.  It's always
been so--progress sticks.  The people have to adjust.  But why should
capital keep on fighting labor, or truckling to it, or treating with
it, when we can take labor for nothing, as you just said, out of the
power of gravitation--send it where we like, practically for
nothing--labor that is power, labor that doesn't have to eat and
doesn't have to be paid wages?  I say if you had any imagination in
your soul, my son, you'd _rise_ to a thought like that."

"But that average man still must eat," said Halsey bitterly.

"Let him eat from our hands, then!" croaked John Rawn harshly.  "I tell
you, when I explained this thing--when I showed them what we had in our
hands, those big men broke into a sweat.  They could see it, if you
can't.

"But as for me," he continued, standing erect and spreading apart his
hands, his voice softened almost to tremulousness, "when I saw where
this thing really was going to put us all--in control of the labor
question--beyond the attacks of the muckraking brigade--beyond the
Supreme Court, if the time ever came for that--when I saw what perfect
political, legislative, and industrial control we'd have in all this
country--I say, when I realized what all this meant, I felt small and
_humble_--I did indeed.  I saw that I was only an instrument of
Providence, that's all.  The people?  Why, we'll be the custodians of
their welfare, that's all.  Some men are set apart, devoted to that
duty--humble agents of Providence, my son."



XI

A frown of consecrated unselfishness sat upon the brow of John Rawn.
The younger man sat looking at him, wondering whether there were not
here really some Homeric jest.  "I didn't know it was in you," said he,
rather unfortunately, at last, and hastened to cover: "That's right--it
_is_ imagination!"

Rawn raised a hand magnificently.  "Never mind as to that, Charles.  A
great many didn't know it was in me.  Why, a few months ago I told my
wife something of this.  She asked if I'd ever be rich enough to give
her a silk dress!  When the factory's up and the wheels are
moving--then I'll take her out to the place, and I'll say to her just
what you said to me--'You didn't think it was in me, did you?  But it
was!'  Women nearly always think their husbands can't do anything in
the world.  A silk dress!  My God!  And she wanted a new gate in the
picket fence, too."

"I didn't know that about women," said Halsey simply.  "I thought it
was the other way about."

"Well, well, I hope it may be that way in your case.  Listen, Charles.
I love my girl, Grace.  She has always been a good child.  I'm putting
you in a place where you can take good care of her.  I want you to
stick to her for ever, through thick and thin.  Remember, my son, that
your wife is your wife, and that nothing must separate you from her."

"Maybe it'll work out something after my idea, after all."  Halsey
spoke pleasantly as he could at this mention of Grace.

"We'll take our chances but what it will work out our way!" said John
Rawn, grinning in return.  "You want to work for _man_, do you?  Well,
I want men to work for _me_!"



XII

"But we've no quarrel," he said suddenly, wheeling about.  "We'll be
partners from the start.  There are some minor particulars to work out.
I've got to have some sort of shop out in the back yard.  Bring your
little machine there--the model you said would not quite work."

"How long before we begin, Mr. Rawn?" asked Halsey simply.

"I have my last pay envelope in my pocket now, to-day."

"Didn't they give you any capital to start with?"

"I did not dare ask it."

"But how much funds have you of your own?"

"Mighty little.  I've been kept down all my life.  It's been pretty
much week to week with me, although Laura's been a wonderful manager,
I'll say that."

"I've saved a little money," said Halsey, quietly as before.  "I even
believe Grace has saved her salary--eight a week.  You see, we were
making plans--here's my bank-book.  A little over five hundred.  How
much would you need, Mr. Rawn, to take care of you for the next few
days that you require for this work?"

"I've got to have some working models made, and it'll take some cash,"
said Rawn.  "I've hardly had time to work out all these things as yet.
All right.  All the more pleasure for you to feel that you had a hand
in it."

He reached across the table and took the dog-eared bank-book which
Halsey extended, and ran his eye down the column of pitiable figures.
The total was more than he himself had ever saved in all his life.  Yet
John Rawn stood there now calm, large and strong, and spoke in millions.



XIII

"All right, Mr. Rawn," said Halsey cheerfully.  "Take it along.  I'll
draw the balance out for you.  I reckon Grace and I won't have to wait
any longer this way than we would the other."

"Well, be mighty careful to keep things to yourself, that's all!" was
Rawn's answer.  "If you're going to be my son-in-law, you're going to
be loyal to my ideas.  One of my ideas is that a man has a right to
what he can take."

"Mr. Rawn, do you know anything about socialism?" asked Halsey suddenly.

"Not very much.  Why should I?"

"There's sort of a brotherhood, or chapter, or society, or what you'd
call it here, you know."

"I've heard so."

"And they let anybody who is interested come to the meetings--I've been
there often--did I ever tell you?  Our rooms are up-stairs over a
saloon, up under the rafters.  We have lanterns there, the way the
revolutionists used to have over in Europe, when they had to meet in
secret.  We have speakers there sometimes--from Milwaukee, New York,
even from Europe.  And I want to tell you it's astonishing what a talk
you'll hear there sometimes, from some chap that you wouldn't think had
it in him--just rough-dressed fellows that look as if they hadn't a
dollar in the world."

"They usually haven't," said John Rawn coldly.  "They want to get the
dollars of men like myself and my friends, who really have done
something in the way of developing this country.  But one thing sure,
you'll cut out that brotherhood business when you go to work with us.
The rights of man!--the future of this country!  Why, good God, boy,
with the grip you can get on business, with us to help you, what
difference does it make to you whether you call this a republic or
anything else?  What _is_ this republic?  That is, what _was_ it?"



XIV

Halsey sat staring at him fixedly for some time, without making answer.
Rawn, carelessly buttoning up in his pocket the bank-book, as though it
had been his own, rose at length and held out his hand.

[Illustration: (Halsey and Rawn)]

"You're a good boy, Charles," said he.  "You've done the best you knew,
and that's about all I've done.  You couldn't say, of course, that our
ideas have been the same in regard to this discovery, so I suppose we
can't wonder they are not the same in regard to its eventual
application.  Let's not argue about that.  We'll start out with our
little shop, the first thing."

The young man still looked at him, still withheld comment.  Rawn, once
more full of himself, almost forgot him now.  He stood erect, his arms
spread out, in a favorite posture, as though exhorting a multitude.  A
pleasant, gentle, generous smile spread over his countenance, a smile
which showed his content with himself, his future prospects, his past
performances.

"You ought to have been there with me, Charles, when I talked to old
Standley and his side partner, Ackerman.  _That_ was the big scene of
my whole life!"

"The big scene?" said Halsey, half musingly.  "No!  Maybe not.  We
don't know what there may be on ahead."

"Isn't that the truth!" assented John Rawn graciously.  "When a man of
brains and energy gets his start, there's no telling where he won't go,
or what he won't do.  Yes, that's the truth!"



CHAPTER X

THE WOODSHED IN KELLY ROW

I

The one astonishing thing about life, as we have but now mentioned, is
its utter commonplaceness.  It is a terrible thing to die, to end our
connection with life as we know it; yet folk die, and the world accepts
the fact with not more than a few hours' concern.  Folk are born, a
very wonderful thing, yet a common.  We flash messages across the
sea--as soon we shall across the ether, to other planets.  The latter
event will be but of brief interest.  We travel by impounded steam, and
have long ago ceased to marvel at that miracle.  Soon we will travel by
means of other power, at speeds inconceivable to-day.  Were that time
here we would not wonder.  It is all, all commonplace.  And none of us
does much thinking.  It is only over the unimportant things that we
ponder.  Thus, over a revolution in politics we chatter excitedly; but
the revolution in principles excites us not at all.  The revolution in
science, in thought, in life, is accepted, when it comes, with no
concern, as though belonging to us from time immemorial; as indeed it
did.

It was wholly within human practice that affairs should now go on at
Kelly Row much as they had always gone, in spite of the fact that Kelly
Row now harbored, in a certain woodshed back of the dingy Rawn abode,
ideas and deeds that had not earlier been known in Kelly Row routine.
Here Mr. Rawn and his intending son-in-law were carrying on experiments
whose most immediate result, in case of success, would be the
extrication of Mr. Rawn from rather an awkward situation; because,
although Mr. Rawn, in the usual and commonplace human fashion, had
taken as his own an idea when he saw it, he negligently had done so
forgetful of the fact that it still lacked many features as a definite
commercial proposition.



II

Rawn had told the truth regarding his resources.  He had but one
month's salary in his pocket when these final experiments began, and
for this money there was just as much need as there ever had been in
any other month; for Laura Rawn had quite as much use, at the going
scale of living, for one hundred and twenty-five dollars a month now,
as she had had for seventy-five dollars a month five years earlier.
Yet when Laura Rawn suggested a deferred payment on certain weekly
bills, the shopkeepers to whom she had been paying her stipend daily
for years demurred sorely.  The truth is that the poorest way in the
world to establish a credit is to pay bills in cash.  Foolishly allow a
man to see your cash, and he can see nothing else.  Pay him partly in
cash, partly in good checks, partly in bad ones, and partly not at all,
and he will trust you largely; this being a commercial truth not known
of all men, although worth knowing.  It may be seen, therefore, that
young Halsey's little capital of five hundred dollars was as important
as young Halsey's original idea; which latter Mr. Rawn had also
appropriated.

So now these two bought very considerable bundles of copper wire and
other things, and made several machines of this and the other shape,
and tried divers experiments which need not be set down here.  In all
this work young Halsey's manual skill and technical training
continually was in quest, John Rawn for the most part standing by and
frowning heavily, watching Jacob labor for the earning of Rachel: for
Halsey knew this surrender of his idea was the price of Grace.  Halsey
had little hope of ultimate success in his appliances.  Not so Rawn.
He had something akin to a feeling of certainty.



III

Differing thus--yet who shall say they were not partners, after all,
since all these things were true regarding them?--they at last emerged
from the woodshed in Kelly Row, after many long weeks, whose deeds we
need not further chronicle.  They carried into the front room of the
Rawn house in Kelly Row a small machine, which presently was to do
large things; that is to say, to save the self-respect of certain
prominent railway men who by this time were convinced that they had
been hypnotized to their disadvantage; and also to save the face of
John Rawn, although he had not known his face had needed saving.

This novel and mysterious little machine, with a glass jar underneath,
many coils and wheels within, and an odd, toothed crest of little
upreaching metal fingers, had been produced only at great cost, great
sacrifice.  It had seemed wholly right and reasonable that all of young
Halsey's five hundred dollars should disappear little by little, and it
had done so, long ago.  It seemed proper that the small savings which
Grace had deposited in a tin baking-powder can--for she was like her
mother, part ground-squirrel, and secretive--should also disappear
little by little, and they also had gone.  In some way, only the women
knew; how, they all had had enough to eat, so far as that meant
actually necessary food; but the entire Rawn family were a gaunt and
haggard, as well as a wearied and anxious quartette, when finally they
gathered about the little machine out of the woodshed.  Their play was
on one card, and the card was turned.  What was it?

If either of the women doubted, she held her peace.  Rawn did not
doubt.  He had been sure all along that Charles Halsey, engineer, would
work out his, Rawn's, idea.

And young Halsey, engineer, had done that very thing.  There is no roof
in all the world ever has covered a vaster and more epoch-making
thought than did the patched cover of the woodshed in Kelly Row.

On the afternoon of the day wherein they emerged from the woodshed,
these two, none too well clad, took the street-car to the city, Halsey
with a newspaper bundle under his arm.  In it was what Mr. Rawn called
his second-current motor, which comprised the basic idea of
International Power, soon to loom large in the business world.



CHAPTER XI

THE TEST

I

In the most commonplace way in the world, and quite as though he had
always done this very thing, Mr. Henry Warfield Standley, president of
the I. & D. A. Railway Co., warned in advance by Mr. Rawn's telephone,
came to the door himself.  Presently the three, Rawn, Halsey and the
president of the company for which both so long had worked, sat at the
long glass-covered table, where lay many papers.  The president pushed
a button and ordered the attendance of Mr. Theodosius Ackerman, the
general traffic manager; so that now they made four in company.  The
G.T.M., as he was known, had suffered great abrasion of the nerves by
the delay of Mr. Rawn to produce a machine done up in a newspaper or in
any way whatsoever, and he had joined the president in a disgusted
belief that in some way he had been made foolish.  He frowned now
savagely at John Rawn, and John Rawn now, his hat on his head, frowned
quite as savagely at him.

Very little was said, but after a time young Halsey nervously removed
the newspaper from his little machine, and displayed it uncovered on
the table, a ribbed and coiled and toothed little model, showing file
marks here and there, and resembling nothing in particular in the
world.  They four regarded it calmly, curiously, this machine destined
in the belief of some to double the length of the workman's day, to
halve the distance around the world, to make or break fortunes, to make
or break a country.  The president started to jest, but his voice shook
a trifle after all.  To the general traffic manager the contrivance
seemed absurdly small and inadequate.  He choked so much he could not
talk.  Rawn did not smile.  He continued his heavy frown.  Young
Halsey, tacitly elected spokesman by Rawn, cleared his throat as he
addressed the president of the road, for whom he still felt naught but
awe.

"We have put our receiver in tune with the dynamo in the basement of
this building, Mr. Standley," began he, finally.  Both the magnates
frowned at Mr. Halsey's presumption and turned to Mr. Rawn.  The latter
waved a large gesture.

"I forgot to say, gentlemen, that Mr. Halsey has aided me in working
out my model, and it is just as well he should explain my idea."
Halsey therefore went on:

"And now you can see right here, on the table before you, about all the
rest of it that we have.  It isn't attached to anything at all.  There
is no wired connection of any sort whatever.  Now if we can run that
electric fan over there with 'juice' that we can take right out of the
air--with the second current which we take out of the motor in the
basement--just as well as the primary current wired to the fan will run
it, why, then, it looks to me as though our receiver here ought to be
accepted as a working device."

The room was silent now.  They sat looking at him.  He resumed:

"Besides, this receiver is more powerful than you think.  I suppose I
could burst that fan wide open with it, by just wiring the two, after
disconnecting the original wiring of the fan to the house dynamo."

Halsey spoke very calmly, yet the hands of the president of the road,
resting on the edge of the table, trembled slightly.  The fighting red
had disappeared from the face of the G.T.M.  He was bluish gray, as
though deathly ill.  He was, however, the first to recover.  "Well, why
_don't_ you burst it, then?" he exclaimed savagely, mopping at his
forehead.



II

"Very well," said Halsey quietly.  "But first I suppose I ought to
explain just a little about the basic idea under this whole
proposition.  You see that table there--we regard it as motionless.  As
a matter of fact, it is full of nothing but motion, so tremendously
rapid that we are unconscious of it.  That wall yonder is nothing but a
continuous series of vibrations, of inconceivable rapidity.  This floor
is full of force, of energy.  It's all around us--energy, force, motion.

"In your studies in physics, gentlemen, you learned that heat and
motion are convertible.  And you learned about the resultant of
power--which always, so far as any accepted law of physics goes, is in
ratio to the distance through which applied.

"Now, what I've done," said Halsey--John Rawn frowned and coughed
heavily, but no one noticed him, and Halsey himself was unconscious of
using the first personal pronoun--"is just to cut off all need of
considering the distance through which force is applied.  Now, I don't
know whether I can make it entirely plain to you, except by physical
demonstration, but what I've done here is to carry further the idea of
wireless telegraphy.  We have here, to use an understandable figure of
speech, a receiver which is the equivalent of a sounding-board--a
sounding-board in tune to the vibrations of the second or free current
of electricity.

"Gentlemen, our idea was, in terms, that of harnessing up molecular
activity.  If we have done that, we have, of course, tapped the one
exhaustless reservoir of power."



III

The president of the railway had grown yet paler; but he nodded wisely,
and Halsey went on:

"There isn't any miracle in science that ought to cause us any wonder.
It took science a long time to learn that heat and motion are
interchangeable.  I strike a cold piece of iron with a moving hammer,
and the iron gets hot.  It was cold before, and there hasn't been any
fire near it.  That's just as wonderful a thing--although we all accept
it without question--as all that I've got here on the table before you.
If I can stop some of the free energy that is vibrating all around us,
I'm going to get either motion or heat out of it, and that's simple.
We have gone far enough to know that this little receiver here,
gentlemen, will arrest the free current of electricity, force, energy,
whatever you care to call it, that's in the air and which can be
multiplied and transmitted through the air.  Why and how it does that,
I can't just tell, myself.  No one has ever been able to explain
everything about the magnetic needle, but we use it just the same.  We
don't so much care what it is if we can use it."

"Not a damned bit!" growled the G.T.M.  "But can we?  Why don't you get
busy with that fan?"

Halsey rose and went over to the electric fan and snipped off a length
of the wire, so that the fan stood free and unattached on its shelf.
The loose wire he now busied himself in attaching to the fan and in
turn to the little model on the table.

"To my mind," said he, after finishing this work, and arresting a
finger above a little connecting lever in the side of the receiver,
"it's a very beautiful thought that underlies all this.  The forces
which run through this receiver will never grow tired.  Labor will be a
joy for them, a delight, as labor ought to be in any form.  Mr. Rawn
and I don't always quite agree about that," he smiled, still with his
finger above the little lever.  "What I hope to do is to change the
working-man from being an object back into being a man, so that labor
may be a joy and not a dread."

"Then we don't want it," grinned the president, feebly essaying a jest.
"Mr. Rawn and I were agreed that it would do just the other thing!"

"Well, go on with it!" growled Ackerman.  "I'm a busy man.  To hell
with the story!  We want results!"

Every man present sprang back from the little instrument on the table.
There came a slowly increasing purr of the motor, a series of intense
blue sparks showing at the toothed points of reception.  The blades of
the fan began to revolve faster and faster; so fast that at length both
eye and ear ceased to record their doings.  Then, after sight and sound
had failed to serve, there came a crash!

There was no fan on the shelf where it had stood.  Fragments of metal
were buried in the woodwork, in the wall.  John Rawn wiped the blood
from a cut on his cheek.  No one said anything.  It was quite
commonplace, after all.



IV

"You wished to see what it would do," said Halsey grimly.  "The power
seems to be there.  Any time you like, any amount you like.  And you
saw that it didn't come in here by wire--it was only transmitted from
the receiver, not to it.  The fan is broken, but the receiver is just
the way we left it.  Well, it looks as though we had settled a few
questions, doesn't it?"

Standley, pale, could only gasp, "Why, it's--it's dangerous!" he said.
"It's devilish!  Look there!"  He pointed at the blood on Rawn's face.
Rawn remained silent.

"There is no use applying undue force to a minor purpose," said Halsey,
"any more than there is in throwing on the high speed of a car going
down hill.  But our reserve is there, gentlemen, just the same.  By
increasing the size of our receivers we can develop power to turn any
amount of machinery that can be geared together--any number of
machines, large or small, at any place.  I only wanted to show what the
real power is in this device of ours.  Our receiver is very small, you
see."

They all remained silent for a time.  Standley at last drew a long
breath.

"We're saved!" said he.  "What do you say to it, Jim?"  This to
Ackerman.

"It looks like a go," said the latter, drawing a deep sigh.  "We've
seen enough right here to make good with our people back East; and
we've got enough right now to get the public in."

The president turned an agitated eye upon John Rawn.  "Mr. Rawn," said
he, "referring to the tenor of our earlier conversation, I desire to
say that we are not in the habit of giving the lion's share to
anybody--"

"Suit yourself," said John Rawn, smiling.

"But in this case, as I said to you at first, there's so much in this
if there's anything at all, that there's no use splitting hairs over
it."  He receded rapidly from the position he coveted but saw he could
not hold.

"We ought to begin work at once.  Er--Mr. Rawn, do you happen to have
any present need for any money--personally?"

"No," answered John Rawn calmly, "I am in no need of funds.  When the
organization is completed, and I begin my work as president of the
power company, I shall be glad to go on the pay-roll, of course.  I
should add now that I expect Mr. Halsey to be my general manager in the
mechanical department."

"In regard to salaries," said the president, hesitating, "we might
roughly sketch out something--"

"My own salary will be a hundred thousand dollars a year," said Mr.
Rawn quietly.  "I don't think we should ask Mr. Halsey to work for less
than five thousand.  Do you, gentlemen?"

"I've worked for less, myself," said Ackerman grimly.

"There shall be no haggling, gentlemen, no haggling," said the
president blandly.  "It shall be as Mr. Rawn suggests.  By the way, a
near call that, Rawn."

He waved a hand at the bloody cut on our hero's face.  That gentleman
drew a half sigh of unconscious triumph.  It was the first time any one
in that office had ever dropped the "Mister" from his name!  He saw
himself entering into the charmed circle.

"Suppose it had come a half inch closer?" suggested the president.

"It didn't," said John Rawn.  "It was never meant to."

"That's the talk!" drawled Ackerman.  "I'll tell you, Rawn, come in
to-morrow.  We'll get the patent lawyers and our corporation counsel,
and begin work on this thing."



V

That was all there was about it, the proceedings being wholly prosaic
and commonplace.  Mr. Halsey found again his newspaper, again wrapped
up his machine therein, took it under his arm, and hesitatingly turned
toward the door, the palest now, and most unhappy of them all.  He had
denied his own first-born.  He had publicly disclaimed ownership in
this idea.  Rawn was to have a hundred thousand dollars a year, he only
a twentieth of that.  Just where and how was Rawn twenty times as
valuable as himself, when all the time it had been he.--But then, what
matter?  Five thousand dollars a year and Grace!  What more could any
man desire than that?  He forced that to console him, forced himself to
believe it sordid to haggle on the price of love; and so passed down in
the elevator, out through the corridors to the street, without much
further speech to any.

"Charles," said his intended father-in-law, as they approached the
nearest corner, "do you happen to have a quarter left?  I feel somewhat
hungry, and for the time I have no money at all with me."



CHAPTER XII

THE HELPMEET

I

After all, Charles Halsey still was young enough to be happy.  There
are really very few delights for the man nearing middle age.  The
period of joy in living is confined to what time, passing upon the
crowded street, the young man notes the sidelong, half-concealed glance
of the unknown young woman, unconsciously taking in his goodliness, his
god-like-ness, such as that may be; or to what time the young woman, in
turn, after some such incident, turning by merest chance to look at
some passing cloud, or to note the brightness of the sky, finds that
some young man whom she but now passed also has turned about, by mere
chance, to examine the colors of the sky, and so by accident has
fastened gaze upon her instead!  As the grasshopper cometh on to be a
burden, the time arrives when this or that gray-browed man may gaze at
passing damsel and elicit no reward in turn.  Sitting in crowded
vehicle he glances above the rim of his paper, and suddenly smiles to
himself that his mature charms have riveted the attention of the young
girl across the aisle.  Happy moment--were it not that closer scrutiny
would prove the young girl's eye to be fixed, not upon middle age, but
upon ruddy-faced youth in the seat beyond!

No hope for Graybeard after middle age, when the grasshopper is a
burden; save such hope as may be his through the power of money.
Thenceforth perhaps remain for him only such self-deceits as that money
may purchase fidelity, joy, love, happiness of any sort; which deceits
end later on, in that hour of severe self-searching which remains for
each of us just before we depart for other spheres.  As for this
particular obloid sphere and its tenantry, there are two seasons--a
season of growth and flower, a season of seeding and decaying.  As for
delights, life passes at that indefinite period, from twenty-five to
fifty-five years of age, let us say, when the opposite sex, passing us
unknown upon the street, turns no longer the inadvertent sidelong gaze!



II

When John Rawn walked toward his home after the events of the meeting
last foregoing described, he cast few sidelong glances, and received
few.  If that were faithfulness to a worthy wife, make the most of it.
Upon the other hand note that, as Mr. Halsey trod the air on his way to
Kelly Row, his newspaper bundle under his arm, there did not lack
abundance of young women who saw him from the corner of the eye as he
passed on.  Forsooth, he was a young man of very adequate physical
appearance, clean, hard, high of cheek, square of shoulder, his hair
dark and long, his eye gray, direct, kindly.  His life hitherto had
been so narrow that he had lived well and wisely.  His powers were well
preserved, he remained physically clean and fit.  Rather a decent chap,
you would have called him, as he passed now, his strong chin well
forward, his eye shaft-like and strong in its glances.  Not an
extraordinary young man, perhaps, but certainly serving well enough to
show that youth speaks to youth; and that, when youth is past, all is
past.  Excepting--as John Rawn would have noted--the making of money;
which means not much to youth itself, but which means all to middle age.

Of all this very wise and useful philosophy, be sure, Mr. Halsey was
ignorant, or regarding it, was indifferent.  He had forgotten that
almost his last silver coin had furnished Mr. Rawn his last meal, in
which Halsey himself had not joined.  Grace!  That was in his mind.  He
was young.  Success was now at hand; because presently he should have
five thousand dollars a year in salary, and be married to the dearest
girl in all the world.  It is, always the dearest girl in all the
world, for men when they are less than thirty-five, say twenty-five
years of age.  But Halsey did not philosophize.  He was guided only by
some unconscious cerebration when he descended from the street-car and
bent his way toward Kelly Row.  He pulled up at the stoop of the third
house in that homely procession of brick abodes which rented for twenty
dollars a month--with no repairs by the landlord.



III

He found Grace at home, Mrs. Rawn also at home.  They came to meet him,
laid hold of him before he was well into the narrow little hall.  There
was that in his face, in his eyes, in his soul which told them that
success at last had come to Kelly Row.

He put his hand in Mrs. Rawn's, his arm about Grace's waist.  They two
were young, they were very happy.  Their hands were interclasped when
presently they all passed from the hall into the little parlor.  The
eyes of Grace Rawn became soft, luminous, tender.  The young man had
come into her life.  She was very happy.  She was young.  Ambition was
as yet unknown to her.  Her coin-current was not yet money; which of
all things has the very least of purchasing power.  She was almost
beautiful now.

Mrs. Rawn, grave, thin, careworn, bent by many trials, her hair gray
above her temples, her eyes dark-rimmed and, sunken somewhat under her
dark-arched brows, had seated herself upon the opposite side of the
room, waiting, her own joy visible in the silent illumination of her
face.  She, too, was very happy in her way; or rather, mildly
contented.  While almost every woman, at one or other period of her
life admires what is known as a wicked young man; the average mother
having a daughter about to be married admires rather what is known as a
good young man.  And Charles Halsey was what may be called comprised
within that loose and indefinite description, not always covering
admirable or manly qualities, but in this case serving very well.

"You've won, Charley," said Laura Rawn at last.  "It is true!  Thank
God!"

For these blessings about to be received, Mr. Rawn thanked himself;
Grace thanked Charles; Charles thanked Grace; only Laura Rawn had
nothing left to thank excepting an impersonal and remote deity.



IV

They sat for a time thus in the little parlor, amid an abomination of
desolation in black walnut horrors, tables done after a French king who
must have revolved in his grave at contemplation thereof, chairs
requiring nice feats in balancing upon their slippery haircloth floors,
a sofa of like sort, too large for one, yet not large enough for two.
There gazed down upon their love--as though in admiration as to love's
consequences--rows of bisque shepherdesses and china dogs.  The Dying
Gaul also bent on them a saddened gaze.  None the less, in spite of
all, young Halsey shamelessly maintained his position on the perilous
sofa, an arm around young Miss Rawn's waist.



V

Laura Rawn sat across the room, something still dangling from her grasp
which had been there when she met Halsey in the hall.  Halsey at length
caught sight of this object.  Glancing from the mother's hands toward
those of the daughter, Halsey caught up the latter, looking with close
scrutiny at what was now to be his own.  He found the ends of Grace's
fingers blackened and rough.  He glanced back again to her mother's
hands, worn with toil.  The ends of her fingers, also, grasping this
loose something, were blackened and rough.

"No more work for Grace," said he, lovingly tightening his clasp on the
fingers in his own.

"But I say--" this to Grace--"what makes your fingers so rough, dear?
I never did notice that before."

"You've not noticed anything for two months!" said Grace chidingly.
"Why, it's sewing, of course, that does it.  A needle roughens up one's
finger in spite of a thimble, don't you know?"

"You were sewing--for _us_?" he ventured daringly, yet blushing as he
spoke.  "A girl has a lot of sewing to do, I suppose--when
she's--getting ready.  But, Grace--I'm to have five thousand dollars a
year!  Five thousand!  No more sewing then for Grace, I'm thinking."

"Yes?" said Grace, smiling in her slow way.  "I think Ma and I would be
glad to believe we'd never have to see a needle again.  _She_ kept me
at it.  You see, Charley, we've been keeping the wolf from the front
door and the kitchen door, while you and Father were guarding the
woodshed."

"What do you mean?"  Then suddenly, "You don't tell me--you don't mean
that--?  Was _that_ what made your hands so rough, yours and Mrs.
Rawn's yonder?  What have you got there, Mrs. Rawn--something in silk?
Oh, a pair of braces, eh?  For me?  How nice of you."

Grace smiled again.  "I'll be jealous of Ma.  Shall I go and get my own
work to show you?"

"You mean for your father, of course--"

"Indeed, no.  Neither Pa nor you can afford silk embroidered braces,
Charles!  I've done six pairs this week, and Ma--well Ma must have done
a dozen.  She's wonderful."

"But what do you mean?" asked the young man, still puzzled.  Grace said
nothing further, but held up her blackened finger-tips and looked him
in the eye.  A blush of comprehension came to his face.

"You women!" he exclaimed.  "You've worked as hard as we did; and we
didn't know!"

"We had to do something," said Mrs. Rawn quietly.  "I tried a number of
things.  We could earn practically nothing in the sweatshop work.
Grace addressed envelopes here at home at night, for a while--but
that's what every other girl in all the city's doing, I think.  I saw
some of these embroidered things in the window of a men's furnishing
shop.  I went in and told the man I could do them as well as that for
twenty-five cents a pair.  We've had as much as thirty cents for some
of our best ones.  Why, dear me!  I hadn't done any work in silk for
years and years; but it all came back.  We earned quite a bit here.  It
kept the table."

"My God!" said Halsey.  "And I've been eating here!"



VI

"It was our part," said Laura Rawn.  "It was all we could do.  A woman
just has to do the best she can, you know.  Well, we helped."

"A woman has to do the best she can," repeated Laura Rawn gently,
seeing that this left Halsey awkward.  "If she's a true woman, she
tries to help.  I want that Grace should always think of it in just
that way."

That, it seemed, was the foolish philosophy of Laura Rawn; a philosophy
not often written on the docket of divorce courts, to be sure.  Perhaps
it is--or once was--inscribed on dockets elsewhere.



END OF BOOK ONE



BOOK TWO


CHAPTER I

THE NEW MR. RAWN

I

Some wise man has said that a man changes entirely each seven years of
his life, becoming wholly different in every portion, particle and atom
of his bodily bulk and losing altogether what previously were the
elements, parts, portions or constituent molecules which made himself.
So much as to the physical body.  In respect of epochal changes in a
man's character we may wholly approve the dictum of the philosopher,
though perhaps not agreeing to any specific seven-years period.  Thus,
in the case of John Rawn, the first stage of his career, in which he
lived without any very great alteration, occupied some seven and forty
years.  Yet it was a wholly different John Rawn who, at forty-eight,
found himself seated at the vast and shining desk of the president of
the International Power Company, in the city of Chicago.  The past was
so far behind him that he could not with the utmost mental striving
reconstruct the picture of it.  He was a wholly new, distinct and
different man.  The old and deadly days were gone.  There never had
been such a place as Kelly Row.  Fate had performed its miracle.  Here
was John Rawn, where alone he ever could have belonged--in a place of
power.

Surrounded by a delicious sense of his own fitness and competence,
smug, urbane, well-clad, basking in the balmy glow of his own glory,
exulting in his own proved ability to conquer fate, John Rawn, on his
first day as chief executive of the International Power Company, paused
for a time and leaned back in his chair, giving himself over to
luxurious imaginings.



II

There is no peculiar delight in owning power unless one may exercise
that power.  There being no dog present which he might kick out of the
way, John Rawn essayed other divertisements.  The harness of business
system was still rather new to him, at least the harness which pertains
to this stage of a business system.  He was happily unaware that he was
a lay figure here, with few actual duties beyond those of looking
impressive--happily ignorant that shrewder and more skilled minds than
his had seen to it that his official duties should be few and well
hedged about.  He had not as yet ever worked at a desk blessed with a
row of push buttons, and was ignorant as yet, and very naturally, in
regard to the particular function of each of these several buttons
whose mother of pearl faces now confronted him.  Resolving to take them
seriatim, he pushed the one farthest to the right; which, as it
chanced, was the one arranged to call to him his personal stenographer.

The door opened silently.  John Rawn, looked up and saw standing before
him a young woman whom he had never seen before.  "I beg pardon,
Madam," said he, half rising.  "I didn't know you were there.  How
did--is there anything I can do for you?"

"I am the stenographer assigned for your work, Mr. Rawn, until you
shall have concluded your own arrangements in the office," answered the
young woman.  Her voice was even and well controlled, her enunciation
perfect.  She was not in the least confused over this _contre-temps_,
else had the self-restraint not to notice it.  She stood easily,
note-book in hand, with no fidgeting, in such fashion that one must at
once have classified her as a well-poised human being.

Or, again, one might have said that here was a very beautiful human
creature.  She was almost tall, certainly and wholly shapely; young,
but fully and adequately feminine; womanly indeed in every well curved
line.  Her hands and feet, her arms--the latter now disclosed by half
sleeves--all were of good modeling.  Her hair, piled up in rather high
Grecian coiffure and confined by a bandeau of gold-brocaded ribbon, was
perhaps just in the least startling.  But you might not have noticed
that with disapproval had you seen the shining excellence of the hair
itself, brown, either dark or blonde as the light had it.  Her forehead
was oval, her chin also oval, the curve of the cheek running gently
into the chin like the bow moulding of a racing yacht.  Her teeth were
even and brilliant, her lips well colored, her eyes large and just a
trifle full, with thin lids, and in color blue; as you might have said
with hesitation, just as you might have been uncertain regarding the
blondness of her hair.  Over the eyes the brows were straight, brown,
well-defined.  Her nose--since one must particularize in all such
intimate matters--was a trifle thin, high in the bridge; thus
completing what lacked, if anything, to convey the aspect of a woman
aristocratic, reserved and dignified.



III

Virginia Delaware, Mr. Rawn's personal stenographer, was born the
daughter of a St. Louis baker.  She had, however, passed through that
epoch of her development and by some means best known to herself and
her family, had attained a good education, ended by three years in a
young ladies' finishing school in the East.  By what process of
reasoning she had considered that this was the proper field for her
ambitions, is something which need not concern us.  She was here; and
as she stood thus, easy, beautiful, competent, she was as much a new
and different Virginia Delaware from the Virginia Delaware of seven
years earlier date as was this new John Rawn different from the old.
The world moves.  Especially as to American girls does it move.

"I am the stenographer assigned to you, Mr. Rawn, until you shall have
concluded your own arrangements."  She spoke very quietly.  Rawn
recovered himself quickly.

"I was just about to say," he went on, "that I intended to have the boy
get my car ready.  Would you tell him to have it at the door in fifteen
minutes?  Then come back.  There are one or two little letters."

A few moments later the young woman was seated at a small table near
the end of the desk.  Without any nervousness she awaited his pleasure.

"I'll trouble you for that newspaper, if you don't mind, Miss--?"

"Miss Delaware."

"Yes, Miss Delaware.  Thank you!"

He glanced down the columns of the market reports.  "Take this," he
said, turning to the young woman.


"Chandler and Brown, Brokers, City.  Dear Sirs: Sell me two hundred
Triangle Rubber at three forty.  Yours truly."


She was up with him before he had finished his first official act.  He
turned again:


"Kitter, Moultrie & Johnson, Bakersfield, California.  Gents: Cinch all
the Guatemala shares you can at eight cents and draw on me if you need
any money.  Yours truly."


Mr. Rawn could not think of anything else.  Few details had been
allowed to reach his desk.  He was the last sieve in a really
well-arranged series of business screens.  But even in this brief test
he had a feeling that the new stenographer would prove efficient.  In
three or four minutes more he was yet better assured of that fact; for
before he could find his coat and hat she entered gently and laid the
completed letters on his desk:


"Messrs. Chandler and Brown, 723 Exchange Building, Chicago: Gentlemen:
Please sell for my account two hundred (200) shares Triangle Rubber, at
three hundred and forty dollars ($340) or the market, obliging, Yours
very truly."


"Messrs Kitter, Moultrie & Johnson, Bakersfield, California.
Gentlemen: Please buy for my account all the Guatemala Oil which you
can pick up at eight cents (8c).  You are at liberty to draw on me as
you require funds.  Allow two points margin.  Yours very truly."


"Very good," said Mr. Rawn.  A slight perspiration stood on his
forehead.  The young woman silently disappeared.  "Two points!" said
Mr. Rawn.  "By Jove!"



IV

Mr. Rawn remained well assured of several things.  First, that he was
going to make sixty-eight thousand dollars out of the Triangle Rubber
shares, which had been given him practically as a present, or as
"bonus," or as tribute, by Standley and Ackerman and their friends at
the inception of the International Power Company; second, that he might
perhaps make a quarter of a million out of his inside knowledge derived
from these same sources, regarding plans in Guatemala Oil; third, that
his new stenographer seemed to have a good head, and was not apt to be
forward.

Whereupon, having concluded his first wearying day's labor, Mr. Rawn
donned his well-cut overcoat and shining top hat, and with much dignity
passed out the private door of his office.  The elevator was crowded
with common people, among them, several persons of the lower classes.
Mr. Rawn felt that the president of a great corporation like
International Power ought by all rights to have an elevator of his own.
This conviction of the injustice wrought upon presidents was so borne
in upon him that, when he stepped up to the long and shining car which
the chauffeur held at the curb, his face bore a severe frown and his
lower lip protruded somewhat.  Feeling thus, he rebuked the chauffeur,
who touched his hat.

"You kept me waiting!" said John Rawn, glowering.  "I wait for no one."

The chauffeur touched his hat again.  "Very good, sir.  If you please,
where shall I drive?"

"Take me to the National Union Club," growled Mr. Rawn.  Already it may
easily be seen that one of Mr. Rawn's notions of impressing the world
with his importance was to be rude to his servants--a not infrequent
device among our American great folk.

The chauffeur touched his hat once more and sprang to his seat after
closing the door of the car.  In a few minutes Mr. Rawn was deposited
at the wide stairway of one of the most estimable clubs of the city;
where his name had been proposed by members of such standing in the
railway and industrial world that the membership committee felt but one
course open to them.

A boy took his hat and coat, following him presently with a check into
a wide room, well furnished with great chairs and small tables.  Rawn
stood somewhat hesitant.  He knew almost nobody.  Moreover, his club
frightened him, for it was his first, and it differed largely from
Kelly Row.  A fat man in one group gathered about a small table
recognized him and came forward to shake his hand.  "Join us, Mr.
Rawn?" he asked.  Some introductions followed, then another question,
relative to the immediate business in hand.

"You may bring me a Rossington," said Mr. Rawn, with dignity, "but
please do not have too much orange peel in it."  He spread his coat
tails with perhaps unnecessary wideness as he pushed back into the
great chair.  You or I might not have had precisely his air in
precisely these surroundings, but John Rawn had methods of his own.

"I've never liked too much orange peel," said he gravely, putting the
tips of his fingers together.  "The last time, I thought they had just
a trace too much.  A suspicion is all I ever cared for."

They listened to him with respect.  As a matter of fact, Mr. Rawn had
never tasted alcoholic beverages of any sort whatever until within the
year last past.  All the better for his physique, as perhaps one might
have said after a glance at these pudgier forms adjacent to him now.
All the better, too, for his nerves.  But it is not always the case
that the beginner in alcohol can drink less than one of ancient
acquaintance therewith; the reverse is often true.  In John Rawn's
system strong drink produced only a somber glow, a confident
enlargement of his belief in his own powers.  It never brought levity,
mirth, flippancy into his demeanor.



V

His acquaintances saw now in Mr. Rawn, the last member received into
their august affiliations, a man of breeding, long used to good things
in life, and trained to a nice discrimination.  Perhaps the fact that
he was the new president of the new International Power Company, a
concern capitalized at many millions and reputed to have one of the
best things going, may have brought added respect to the attitude of
some of those who sat about the little table.  Thus, one passed a gold
cigarette-box; yet another proffered selections from divers cigars, of
the best the club could provide; which was held thereabouts to be the
best that any club could provide.

"I was just telling Mason, here, when you came in, Rawn," said the
large man who had risen to greet him, "that at last it looks as though
that jumping-jack, Roosevelt, was down and out for good.  I always said
he'd get his before long.  Good God!  When you stop to think about it,
hasn't he been a menace to the prosperity of this country?"

"He certainly has been, the everlasting butter-in," ventured a
by-sitter.

"In my belief," said Rawn solemnly, "he hasn't the ghost of a show for
the nomination--not the ghost of a show!"

"Certainly not," assented the large man.  "He's been politically
repudiated in his own state and city for years, and now it's just
soaking into the heads of western men that he won't do.  He's been the
Old Man of the Sea on all kinds of business development.  In my belief,
half the labor troubles in this country are traceable to him--anyhow to
him and the confounded newspapers that keep stirring things up.
Progress!  If these progressives had their way, I reckon we'd all be
progressing backwards, that's where we'd be.  Look at all these new
men, too!  It makes me sick to think how our Senate is changing."  He
spoke of "our" Senate with a fine proprietary air.

"But there is talk that Roosevelt'll run again," said another speaker,
reaching for his second cocktail.

"No chance!" said the large man, who had had his second.  "This whole
fool movement for unsettling business is going to come to an end.
There never was a time when unsuccessful people were not discontented.
Let the people growl if they like.  They haven't got any reason.
Talk's cheap.  Let 'em talk."

"Money talks best," ventured John Rawn oracularly, nodding his head.
The others solemnly assented to this very original proposition.

"The business of this country," went on the large man, "has got nothing
to do with Teddy's ten commandments."

"I have no doubt," said John Rawn, "that Mr. Roosevelt has, as you say,
been the most disturbing cause in the unsettling of labor conditions
all over the country.  I've been following his speeches.  He's always
putting out that same old foolish doctrine about the equality of
mankind--a doctrine exploded long ago.  It's nothing short of criminal
to talk that way to the lower classes to-day--it only makes them more
unhappy.  What's the use in misleading the laboring man and making him
think he's going to get something he can't get?  I tell you, I believe
that at heart Roosevelt is a Socialist.  Anyhow, he's a stumbling-block
to the progress of this republic.  Why, in our own factory--"

"You're right," interrupted the first speaker.  "Absolutely right.
That sort of talk means ruin to the country.  I'd like to know what all
the men that make up these labor unions would do if we were to shut
down all the mills and factories and offices--where'd they get any
place to work if we didn't give it to them?  Yet they bite the very
hand that feeds them."

"It sometimes looks as though we'd lost almost the whole season's work
in the Senate," gloomily contributed another of the group.  "We've got
the tariff framed up to suit us, but how long will it last?  Besides,
what's the use of a tariff, if we're going to have strikes that
practically are riots and revolutions, all over the country?  Our
laboring men are not willing to work.  That's the trouble, I tell
you--all this foolishness about the brotherhood of man.  Oh, hell!"

"You have precisely my attitude, my friend," said John Rawn, turning to
him gravely.  "Precisely.  I have always said so."



VI

They all nodded now gravely as they sipped their second or third
cocktails.  Here and there a face grew more flushed, a tongue more
fluent.  The large man, colder headed, presently turned to Mr. Rawn.

"By the way, Rawn," said he, "I hear it around the street all the time
that you've got about the best thing there is going--this International
Power.  What's the meaning of all this talk, anyhow?  It's leaking out
that you're going to revolutionize the business world with all this
power-producing scheme of yours.  Some crazy newspaper child got lit up
the other day and printed a fake story about your plan of running wires
from the river over to Chicago!  Anything in that?--but of course there
isn't."

"Not as you state it," said John Rawn.  "We have a very desirable
proposition, however, in our belief."

--"Say yes!" broke in the smaller man across the table.  "But it looks
like you've got the Ark of the Covenant concealed, you keep it so
close.  None of the stock seems to get out.  You haven't listed
anything, and nobody can guess within a million dollars what a share is
worth."

"No," said John Rawn sententiously, "you couldn't.  I couldn't, myself.
I couldn't yet guess large enough."

"But they tell me it's reviving commerce all up and down the river--in
the old towns."

Mr. Rawn nodded assentingly, smiling.

"Newspaper story was that there was going to be some fly-by-night,
over-all, free-for-all _wireless_ transmission, and all that!  I say,
that was deuced good market work, wasn't it!  We all want in on that
killing when it comes.  But how are we going to get in on the killing
if there isn't any stock to be had, and if it isn't listed so the
public can be got in?"

"Standley and Ackerman got the lion's share," grumbled the large man,
explanatorily.

"Did they?" smiled John Rawn, showing his teeth a trifle.

"Well, of course that's the talk--I don't know anything about how the
facts are.  But when the time comes, let us in."

"Certainly," said Rawn easily.  "But we're not saying much just yet, of
course.  Just beginning."

"But now, was there anything in that crazy fool's newspaper story?"

"We're working on that idea," Rawn admitted, still smiling.



VII

They threw themselves back in their chairs and joined in a burst of
laughter.  "You're a wonder, Rawn!" said the large man admiringly.

The second cocktail had served to steady John Rawn.  "Why?" he inquired
evenly.

"Why, according to that story, every one of us manufacturers would be
put out of business.  We'd literally have to come and feed from your
hand when we wanted power, according to that."

"It would figure that way on one basis," admitted Rawn.  "That _would_
be something, wouldn't it?  Almost rather."

"Almost rather!" repeated the small man.  "I say, that's pretty good,
isn't it?  Well now, I'll tell you what; we'd almost rather you'd let
us in on the ground floor, m'friend!  No more coal bills, no more
walking delegates, no more strikes, no more Roosevelt 'n LaFol't!  Just
touch button.  Too bad, Rawn, you didn't go into fiction yourself--it
must have been you 'nvented that newspaper story, o' course."

"You have another guess," said John Rawn.  "But you haven't guessed big
enough yet.  I told you, I myself couldn't guess big enough."

The large man laughed, reached into his pocket and handed out a bunch
of keys.  "Take 'em along," said he.  "I might as well give you the key
to my office, also to my home--and maybe one or two others."  Some
smiled at this last remark.

"My keys against yours," said John Rawn keenly.  "You can take
everything I've got if the time doesn't come when our company will do
everything you're laughing at now.  But we're not after our friends.
Why couldn't we get together--and together get the public?"

"Fine!  _Now_ you converse," smiled the large man.

"I don't deny I've got an idea up my sleeve, and have had," continued
Rawn.  "I don't deny that we may make some tremendous changes in
business methods.  When you tell me we can't do these things, that my
idea won't make good, and all that, why, you almost make me talk.  Not
that I'm a talking man.  But International Power isn't after its
friends.

"But I'm just starting home now," he concluded.  "I only dropped in for
a moment.  We're just getting things begun and I'm rushed day and
night.  I'm rather a new man here in town as yet.  But I'll see you
often."

"The central offices will be here, then?" inquired the large man.

"Yes, our main headquarters will be here for a time."

"Oh, joy!  I'll drop in some time and have you do me up a choice line
of philosopher's stones, so that I can turn things into gold.  Why pay
rent?"  The large man laughed largely.

"Oh, all right," rejoined Rawn, also laughing.  "But our invention is
not so very wonderful.  The only wonder is, that 't hasn't been thought
of before.  Nothing is wonderful, you know."

"By Jove!  I'm just going to come in with you there," assented the last
speaker, suddenly sitting up in his chair.  "There isn't anything
stranger in the world than things that happen right along, every day.
Look here."

He pulled out of his waistcoat pocket some blue strips of paper.
"Tickets to the Aviation Meet.  Fifty-cent gate.  What do you see?
Why, you see men doing what men couldn't have been supposed to do a
little while ago.  It's easy now--and they do that--they really fly.  I
tell you, fellows, when you get about four drinks in you and begin to
think, this ain't just the world our daddies knew; and if it ain't,
what sort of world is it going to be that our sons will know?"

"Precisely," assented John Rawn, with affability.  "For instance, I'm
going out now to take my car home.  Nobody wonders at that.  What would
we all have thought of such speed ten or twelve years ago?  Speed,
gentlemen, speed--and power!  The man who has those has got the world
in the hollow of his hand."  With a nod, half negligent, he turned away.



VIII

"_Ave Cæsar!_" irreverently remarked a man with a gray mustache as Rawn
passed toward the cloak room.

"He sets me thinking, just the same," commented the large man
grumblingly.  "That fellow's a comer.  He's building him a fine place,
up the North Shore, they tell me.  His family must have had money,
'though it's odd, I never heard of him till just lately.  Who's going
to pay for his house?  Why, maybe we are!"

"Believe I'll go home for dinner to-night myself.  Haven't been home
for three days," yawned one.

--"And nights," added a smiling friend.

"Naturally.  But let's have another little drink.  I'm telling you,
fellows, that fellow Rawn has got me guessing, too."



CHAPTER II

GRAYSTONE HALL

I

Mr. Rawn's long and shiny car was waiting for him when he stepped with
stately dignity down the broad stair of the National Union Club.  His
chauffeur once more touched his hat, as he saw the hat of Mr. Rawn, so
much taller and shinier than his own.

Threading its path through the crowded traffic of the side streets, the
car presently turned up the long northbound artery of the great western
city.  Surrounded by a large and somewhat vulgar throng of similarly
large and shiny cars, it floated on, steadily, almost silently, until
most of the noises and the odors of the city were left behind; until at
last the blue of the great lake showed upon the right hand through
ranks of thin and straggling trees, supported by a thin and sandy soil.
Now appeared long rows of mansions, fronting on the lake, their
amusingly narrow and inadequate grounds backing out upon the dusty
roadway with its continual traffic of long, shiny and ofttimes vulgar
cars.  Miles of cars carried hundreds of men to miles of mansions.  In
less than an hour, from town to home, John Rawn also pulled up at the
entrance to his home.  Speed limits are not for such as Mr. Rawn.  This
residence, yet another of these pretentious mansions, top-heavy on its
inadequate delimitations, and done by one of the most ingenious
architects to be found for money, was as new, as hideous, as barbarous
as any that could be found in all that long assemblage of varied proofs
of architectural aberrations.  It was as new as Mr. Rawn himself.  The
brick walks were hardly yet firmly settled, the shrubs were not yet
sure of root, the crocus rows in the borders still showed gaps.  Large
trees, transplanted bodily, still were sick at heart in their new
surroundings.  The gravel under the new _porte cochêre_ still was red
and unweathered.  As to the house itself, it combined Japanese,
Colonial and Elizabethan architecture in nice modern proportions, the
architect having been resolved to earn his fee.  Many who passed that
way turned and pointed approving thumbs at the residence of Mr. John
Rawn, president of the International Power Company, a new man who had
come in out of the West, and who evidently was possessed of wealth and
taste.



II

Mr. Rawn knew that many occupants of other cars were noting him.  His
dignity was perfect as he left his car, not noticing that the chauffeur
once more touched his hat.  His dignity remained unbroken as he walked
up the Elizabethan steps, flanked by Japanese jars, and paused at the
Colonial door.  The door swung open softly.  His dignity was such that
he scarcely saw the man who took his coat and hat, and who received no
greeting from his master.  Calm, cold and scornful, as one well used to
such surroundings, he passed through the long central halls and stood
before the doubly glazed French window whose wide expanse fronted upon
the lake.  He came from inland parts, and he enjoyed this lake view he
had bought.  He did not hear the quiet footfall which approached over
the heavy rug.  Laura Rawn needed to speak to him the second time.

"Well," said he, turning and sighing, "how's everything?"

"Very well, John."

"Not so bad, eh?"  He jerked a thumb to indicate the lake.

"It's grand!" said his wife, yet with no vast enthusiasm in her tone.

"I should say it was grand!  Anyhow, there's nothing grander around
Chicago.  There's not very much here in the way of scenery.  Of course,
in New York--"

"Oh, don't let us talk of New York, John."

"Why?"

"I don't see how I could stand anything bigger or grander than this."

"Stand anything more?  Ha-hum!  Well, that's just about what I expected
you to say, Laura.  Sometimes I wonder if there ever was a man more
handicapped than I am.  Look at this!  What have I done for you?  Why,
I changed your whole life for you, as much as though you'd died and
been born into another world.  You couldn't have had all this if it
hadn't been for me.  You don't enjoy it.  You've got no use for it.  I
don't set even this for my limit.  I've got ambition, and I'm going up
as far as a man can go in this country.  If that means New York, all
right, when the time comes.  But what does my wife say?  'Oh, I
couldn't stand that!'  Stand it--why, I half believe, Laura, you wish
you were back in Kelly Row right now--I believe that's right where
you'd be this minute, if you had your choice."

"I would, John; if things could be the way they once were."

He only growled as he turned away petulantly.

"Of course I want to see you do well, get ahead, John, as far as ever
you can go.  And of course you'd never be happy to go back there again."

"Happy?--me--Kelly Row?  You'd see John Rawn dead and buried first!
I'd go jump in the lake if I thought I'd ever have to live again the
way we used to."

"I wonder how they are doing back there now," said Mrs. Rawn, in spite
of all, as though musing with herself.  "It's evening now, and the men
are just coming home from work.  I wonder if Jane English, next door to
us, has another baby this year.  She always had, you know.  And there's
the young woman, Essie Hannigan, who always used to wait on the steps
for her husband.  And the dogs; and the babies in the street.  And the
little trees without very many leaves on them--why, John, I can see it
all as plain as if it were right here.  This house of ours here is so
grand I can't understand it.  How did we get it, John?--when we worked
so long, so many years, and lived just like those others there?  It all
came at once.  Have you earned all this--in a year or so?  And how did
you get it almost finished, before we moved up here, while we still
were living in St. Louis--without either of us being here to watch the
carpenters?"

"I did it with _money_, Laura, that's how.  If you have money you can
get anything done you want; and you don't have to do it with your own
hands.  But don't say 'carpenters'--it was an _architect_ built this
house."

"It cost a _lot_ of money!"

"Not so much--I've not got in over two hundred and fifty thousand
dollars yet, even with most of the furnishings in."

"You're always joking nowadays, John.  Of course, you haven't made that
much."

"Well, no; that's a lot of money to take out of the investments of a
beginner.  I had to get accommodation for three-fourths of it."

"Accommodation?--"

"Well, mortgage, then--that's what they'd call it in Texas or Kelly
Row.  I couldn't tie up all my capital--that isn't business.  But what
does it amount to?  My salary is a hundred thousand a year; and I'm
making more than that on the side.  I didn't propose to come up here,
president of the International Power Company, and go to living in a
six-room flat.  I wanted a _house_.  You see."  He swept a wide gesture
again.

"It's not much like our little seven-room house in the brick block, is
it, John?"

"And you wish you were back there?  That's fine, isn't it?  How can I
do things for you if that's the way you feel?  You've never got into
the game with me, Laura,--you've never helped me; I've had to do it
all.  Yet look what I've done in the last two or three years!"

"Yes, John, I know I couldn't do much."

"You didn't do _anything_!  You don't do anything now!  You don't try
to go forward, you never _did_ try, you always hung back!  You've
always thought of your own selfish pleasure, Laura, and that's the
trouble with you.  A man busy all day with large matters, who comes
home tired and worn out, looks for a little help when he gets home.
What do I hear?  'I wish I was back in Kelly Row!'  Fine, isn't it?
I'll bet you a million dollars there isn't another woman in Chicago
that would feel the way you do.  You ought at least to have some sense
of gratitude, it seems to me."



III

Grieved at the injustice of life, Mr. Rawn turned his troubled face and
gazed out over the unexpressive expanse of water.  Laura Rawn said
nothing at the time, being a woman of large self-control.  At length
she laid a gentle hand upon her husband's shoulder.

"Why, John," said she, "I'd go to New York, if it was for the best.
You ought to know that I have your interests at heart--really, you
ought to know that, John.  I don't want to hinder you, not the least in
the world, John."

"But you _do_ hinder me.  You make me feel as though you were not in
the game with me, that you were holding back all the time.  I'm going a
fast gait.  I'm a rising man; but you ought to be in my company.  A man
doesn't like to feel that he's all alone in the world!"

"Why, John!  Why, _John_!"

But he never caught the poignant anguish of her tone.  "Why don't
people come here to see you?" he demanded.  "It's like a morgue.  And
by the time this place is done it'll cost pretty near another quarter
of a million."

"John!" she gasped.  "Where will you get it?"

He turned and waved at her an aggressive finger.  "I made it!" said he,
"and I'll make it.  I made a clean sixty-eight thousand dollars,
to-day, with a turn of my wrist.  I'll make the price of this house in
another two years, if all goes well.  When it starts, it comes fast.
There's nothing grows like money.  It rolls up like a snowball--for a
few men; and I'm one of the few!  It's easy picking for strong men in
the business world of America to-day--the game's framed up for them,
when they get in.  And one of these days I'm going in further.  We'll
see a life which will make all this"--he swept a wide hand about
him--"look like thirty cents."  His pendulous lower lip trembled in
emotion, precisely as might that of his father have trembled when he
addressed assembled and unrepentant gatherings of sinners.

"Well, John," said Laura Rawn, dropping into a chair and crossing her
hands in her lap, "you've done a lot for me, that's sure, more than I
have had any right in the world to expect.  I can't do much.  I'm only
going to try just all I can to keep up with you.  But now let's not
bother or worry any more about things.  Supper is just about ready."

"Dinner, you mean.  _Dinner_, Mrs. Rawn!"

She flushed a trifle.  "As I meant, dinner, yes.  You'll have time to
dress for dinner, if you like, but I wish you wouldn't, John.  I don't
mean to.  The truth is, I had the cook make to-night something you used
to be very fond of in the old days--a pot roast--shoulder of pork with
cabbage.  Somehow, it seemed to me that we wouldn't want to dress up
just for that, John."

"My God, no!"  The suffering John Rawn fell into a chair and dropped
his face between his hands, shaking his head from side to side.

"Isn't it all right, John?" she asked anxiously "What else should I
get?"

"Leave it to the cook, Laura--I mean the chef.  That's what he's _paid_
for.  Is there anything too good for us?"

"Not for you, John.  But I sometimes think," she went on slowly after a
while, "that I'm not entitled to so much as we have, when others have
so little--the same sort of people that we once were.  I don't
understand it.  I don't see where we _earned_ it.  Why, back there
where we came from, life is very likely just as hard as it ever was."

"Haven't _earned_ it!" gasped John Rawn--"I haven't _earned_ it?  Well,
listen at that, to my face!  Well, I'd like to ask you, Laura, if I
haven't earned this, what man ever _did_ earn his money?"

"Don't take me wrong, John dear.  I was just wondering how anybody
could ever earn so much."

"Well, don't get the habit of wondering."

"I like my things," said she softly, gazing about her.  "I've always
wanted nice things, of course.  I never thought we'd have a place like
this.  Then the trees, and the lake--why, it's like fairyland to me!"



IV

But Rawn turned a discontented face around at the ill-assorted
furnishings of Graystone Hall--as he had named his quasi-country place.
As in the case of the architect, the house decorator and furnisher had
had full license, and each had done his worst.

"Somehow these things don't seem just the way they are down at the
club!" he grumbled.  "I've been at other houses along in here, once in
a while, and somehow our things don't seem just like theirs.  It's not
my fault.  Surely you must see how busy I am all the time--I've not got
the time to take care of household matters, too."

He got up and took a turn or so about, gazing with dissatisfaction at
his household goods.  "They tell me that J. Pierpont Morgan picks up
what they call collector's pieces.  I've heard that lots of the big men
have in their houses these collector's pieces.  We've got to have some
of them here.  It won't do to have them say of us that we're anything
back of Morgan or anybody else.  If they think that of me, they don't
know John Rawn."

"Dinner is served, Mrs. Rawn," said a low voice at the farther side of
the room.  The butler stood respectful, at attention.

"_Mrs._ Rawn!" grumbled the master of the place.  "I'll train him
different!  Why don't he tell _me_?"

They passed into the wide dining-room, the butler now silently drawing
together the double curtains which covered the windows fronting the
lake.  Rawn seated himself frowningly at the table, with the customary
grumbling comment which he used to conceal his own lack of ease.  In
truth, he had never yet enjoyed a meal in his great house, and would at
this moment have been far more comfortable in his shirt sleeves at the
little table in Kelly Row, with the nearest butler a thousand miles
away for all of him.  The presence of this shaven, priest-like
personage behind him always sent a chill up his spine.  He half jumped
now as that icy individual coughed at his side, poured a little wine
into his first glass, and passed on to Mrs. Rawn.  Laura Rawn declined,
as was her custom, and the butler turned to fill his master's glass.

"You ought to drink wine, Laura," said the owner of Graystone Hall,
regardless of the butler's presence.  "Practically all the women do, I
notice.  Some smoke--cigarettes, I mean; not a corn-cob pipe.  But
then--" he raised his own glass and drained it at a gulp.  The butler
filled it again, and passed silently in quest of the beginnings of the
banquet whose _pièce de résistance_ had caused him and the second maid
to exchange wide grimaces of mirth beyond the door.



V

It could not have been called a wholly happy family gathering, this at
Graystone Hall.  Indeed, it lacked perhaps three generations, possibly
three aeons, of being happy.

With little more speech after the evening meal than they had had
before, an hour, perhaps, was passed in the room which the architect
called the library, Mrs. Rawn called the parlor, and Mr. Rawn called
the gold room.  Then Laura Rawn, as was her wont, passed silently
up-stairs to her own apartments--or her bedroom, as she called
it--widely removed, in the architect's plans, from those of her
husband.  One room, one couch, had served for both in Kelly Row.

The gray lake throbbed along its shore.  Night came down and softened
the ragged outlines of the scrawny trees which stood sentinels along
the front of this pile of stone and steel and concrete and wood, which
paid men had striven so hard to render into lines of home-likeness.  A
soft wind passed, sighing.  The lights of Graystone Hall went out, one
by one, while the evening still was young.



CHAPTER III

THE COMPETENCIES OF MISS DELAWARE

I

Two-thirds of the inhabitants of this world live in that unreal
atmosphere best described by the vulgar word of "bluff."  About
one-half the other third know that fact.  The first two-thirds, not
being able to determine which that latter half may be, exist in
continual fear that they may guess wrongly in these vulgar fractions,
and so make pretense where pretense is of no avail.  Shoddy fears
nothing so much as what vulgarly is called "the real thing;" but the
trouble with shoddy, the anxiety, nay, the agony of shoddy, bluff,
pretense, insincerity, whatever you care to call it, lies largely in
the fact that shoddy can not always tell when it has been discovered to
be shoddy.

There did not lack times in John Rawn's social life when he felt a very
considerable trepidation regarding himself.  He often looked at the
tall mansion houses which he passed on his daily journey to and from
his home, and wondered whether the occupants of some of them did not
live a life of which he was ignorant.  He wondered if, after all, there
might not be something money could not buy.

For instance, in regard to those collector's pieces of which he had
heard.  How could they be distinguished from other and less preferred
articles of furnishing?  Since he and his wife lacked judgment in such
matters, what was the remedy?  How could he set matters right without
discovering his own ignorance?  He was like an Indian, ashamed to learn.



II

Mr. Rawn was in an unusually abject mental state, one morning, some
months after he had taken charge of the headquarters offices of the
International Power Company.  It was not often he had much recourse to
spleen-venting beyond that of the disgruntled man, who most frequently
takes it out on the minor office force.  By this time he had learned
his battery of buttons, and now he pressed one after the other, in
order that he might express to the entire personnel of the office staff
his personal belief of their unfitness to exist, let alone to execute
business duties in a concern such as this.

He reserved one button for the last--the one farthest to the right upon
his glass-topped desk.  He knew what pressure upon that button would
bring, and he felt a curious shrinking, a timidity, when he reflected
upon that fact.  He knew he could cause to stand before him a vision of
calm, cool and somewhat superior femininity.  In a few short months Mr.
Rawn had learned to trust, to respect and to dread his assistant, Miss
Virginia Delaware.  In fact, it occurred to him at this very moment
that she might perhaps be one of that half of the other third who can
distinguish between pretense and the actual, between shoddy and the
valid article.

Yet though this thought gave him a manner of chill, there was with it
an attendant thought which caused him to glow with the joy of power.
By simply dropping his finger, he, John Rawn, could summon into his
presence the figure of a beautiful young woman--a woman not yet grown
old and gray; a woman of personal charm; a woman calm, cool and
superior.  He stretched his own large limbs, glanced at his rugged
frame, his somewhat lined face in the glass of the cloak-room door.  He
looked upon himself and saw that he was good; as God looked upon the
world when He made it.  He was of belief that a little gray hair at the
temples was no such bar after all in a man's appearance.



III

Rawn had lived a life singularly clean and innocent.  His youth had
been gawky, his manhood ignorant.  But now, somehow, somewhere, deep in
some unsuspected corner of his nature, John Rawn felt glowing something
heretofore unknown to him.  He did not know what it was.  At times it
seemed to him he could see opening out before him a new world of wide
and inviting expanses, a world of warmth and light and luxury and
color; in short, a world as unlike Kelly Row as you may well imagine,
inhabited by beings wholly different from those obtaining in Kelly Row.
And there, among all these, one....  It is to be seen, in fact, that
the life of the city began to open before John Rawn.  The soul of the
city is woman, as it was the soul of Rome.  Rawn was learning what
hitherto he had small opportunity to learn.  At times he leaned back in
luxurious realization of the fact that he, John Rawn, late railway
clerk, but born to the purple, could by a touch upon this certain plate
of mother-of-pearl call before him in reality a vision which sometimes
he saw within his mind.

John Rawn reached out and touched the last button to the right in the
row.  She appeared before him a moment later, silently, as calm, as
cool, as unsmiling and as dignified as was her wont.  Not even the
quiver of an eyelid evinced concern as to what her next duty was to be.



IV

In appearance Virginia Delaware might have won approval from a closer
critic than John Rawn.  Her face really was almost classical in its
lines, her poise and dignity now might have been that of some young,
clean-limbed wood-goddess of old.  She always seemed unfit for humdrum
duties.  Surely she had won the vast hatred of all her associates, who
had experienced no raise of salaries whatever, under the new régime;
whereas, it was well known that the president's secretary had had one,
two, or perhaps several.  These others detested all forward and
superior persons; as was their irreverent and wholly logical right.

"We have some letters this morning, Miss Delaware," began Rawn.  "You
couldn't quite take care of them all, eh?"

"We handled all we could, Mr. Rawn, I have referred a large number to
proper department heads, and answered quite a number.  It seemed better
to refer these for your own action."

"Business growing, eh?" said Rawn, turning around to his desk.  The
girl's reply was just properly enthusiastic for the business:

"It's wonderful the mail we get.  Inquiries come from all over the
country.  Yes, indeed, it seems to grow.  The idea goes like wildfire.
I never knew anything like it.  When we really have the installations
made, it will be only a question of administration."

Venturing nothing further, she seated herself at her table, book and
pencil in hand, ready to begin.  She did her work with a mechanical
steadiness and lack of personality which might have classified her as
indeed simply a cog in the vast machinery of the International Power
Company.  Rawn had gained facility in his own work, and had found in
himself a real faculty for prompt decision and speedy handling of
detail.  He went on now smoothly, mechanically, rapidly, almost
forgetful of everything but the series of problems before him, and
forgetting each of these as quickly as he took up the other.  He cast a
look of unconscious admiration of the girl's efficiency when at last,
finishing, he found her also finished with her part, and without having
caused him delay or interruption.  With no comment now, she took up the
finished letters which had been left for his signature.  Standing at
his side, she literally fed them through the mill of his desk, taking
away one signed sheet as she placed the other before him, smoothly,
impersonally, swiftly.  The work of the morning was beautiful in its
mechanical aspect.



V

The business system of "International" was shaking down into a smooth
and easy-running efficiency.  At the close of this work, Miss Delaware
remained wholly unruffled.  Turning toward her at last, John Rawn felt
that curious old feeling, half made up of chilling trepidation, half of
something quite different.  There seemed to be something upon his mind,
some business still unfinished.

"I was about to say, Miss Delaware," he began at length, "that I am, as
you know, a very busy man."

"Yes, sir," she said, evenly and impersonally.

"I have so many things to do, you see, that I don't get much time to
attend to little things outside of my business.  A man's business is a
millstone around his neck, Miss Delaware.  We men of--ahem!--of affairs
are little better than slaves."

"Yes, Mr. Rawn," she said gently.  "I can understand that."

"For instance, I don't even know, as long as I have been here in
Chicago, the names of the best firms of decorators, house furnishers,
that sort of thing--"

"Doesn't Mrs. Rawn get about very much, sir?"

"Mrs. Rawn unfortunately is not very well.  Also she has the habit of
delaying in such matters.  Then, as I don't myself have the time to
take care of everything--why, you see--"

Her eyebrows were a trifle raised by now.

--"So I was just wondering whether I couldn't avail myself of
your--your--very possible knowledge of these stores--shops, I mean."

"Oh, very well.  Yes, sir.  But I don't quite understand--"

"Well, I want to pick up some collector's pieces for my home, you see."

"Good pieces?  Yes, sir.  Of what sort?"

"Why, furniture--or--yes--some china stuff, I suppose.  Maybe--er--some
pictures."

"I see.  You've not quite finished the decorations of your new home,
Graystone Hall."

"Oh, you know the place?"

"Every one knows it, Mr. Rawn.  It is very beautiful."

"It ought to be beautiful inside and out.  To be brief about it, I know
I oughtn't to ask an assistant who is only receiving forty-five dollars
a week salary to act as expert for me in house decoration
matters--that's entirely outside your business, Miss Delaware.  At the
same time--"  Miss Delaware checked herself just in time not to mention
the salary figure which Mr. Rawn had stated.  If her oval cheek flushed
a trifle, her long lashes did not flicker.  This was ten dollars a week
more.  She had herself never once mentioned the matter of salary.



VI

"Of course, Mr. Rawn, I'd be willing to do anything I could," she said.
"I know the city pretty well, having lived here for some time.  If you
would rather have me use my time in that way, it would be a great
pleasure.  I like nice things myself, though of course I could never
have them.  I've just had to flatten my nose against the window-pane!"
She laughed, a low and even little burst of laughter, rippling; the
most personal thing she ever had been guilty of doing in the
office--then checked herself, colored, and resumed her perfect calm.

"Never mind about your other duties.  Take any time you like.  Go see
what you can find me in this town."

"As in what particular?"

"Well, take china.  I shouldn't mind having some ornamental jars,
vases--that sort of thing, you know."

"China's difficult, Mr. Rawn--one of the most difficult things into
which one can go.  There's a terrible range in it, you see.  It can be
cheap or very expensive, very grotesque or very beautiful.  There are
not many who know china.  I suppose we mean porcelains?"

"Yes, I know.  But what would you suggest, for instance, for my large
central room, which opens out upon the lake?"

"What is the color scheme, Mr. Rawn?"

"About everything the confounded builders and decorators could think
of," said Rawn frankly.  "I think they called it a gray-and-silver
motive.  I know there's something in white, with dark red for the doors
and facings."

Miss Delaware sat for a moment, a pencil against her lip, engaged in
thought.

"Well," said she at length, "I'm sure almost any of the good houses
would send you up what you liked.  There's everything in accord.  You
don't want anything that will 'swear,' as the phrase goes.  If I were
in your place, I would select a few really good pieces, and try them in
place, in the rooms."

"Yes, yes!  But where'll I get them?  How will I find them?  That's
why--"

"Mr. Rawn, there is really only one good selection in Oriental
porcelains in town to-day.  The large shops have their art rooms, of
course, but they're horrible, for the most part, although most of our
'best people' buy there--because they're fashionable.  There's a little
man on ---- street.  I just happened to see the things in his window as
I went by one day.  He has some beautiful pieces."

"And beautiful prices?"

"Much higher than you would need to pay at any of the larger places,
because these are genuine.  None of them ever had such pieces as
these--they wouldn't know them when they saw them.  You must remember,
Mr. Rawn, that if a piece of porcelain were only worth two dollars a
thousand years ago, and it was one, say, of a thousand others just like
it at that time, the loss by breakage of the other duplicates, and the
lowest kind of compound interest from then till now, would warrant
almost any sort of price you'd care to put on a real work of art--one
that has come down from so long a time ago."

"You've got a good business head!  You know the value of interest, and
few women do.  Now, all I want to know is, that I'm not being done.  I
don't so much care about the price.  But has this man anything in the
real goods, and if so, what would you suggest?"



VII

Miss Delaware's answer might have proved a trifle disconcerting, even
to one more critically versed than her employer.  "In my own taste, Mr.
Rawn," she said judicially, "there is nothing in the world so beautiful
as some of the old Chinese monochromes.  They come sometimes in the
most beautiful pale colors.  There is the _claire de lune_, for
instance--this little man has some perfectly wonderful specimens, three
or four, I think; one good-sized jar.  These pale blues grow on you.
They don't seem so absolutely stunning at first, but they'll go
_anywhere_; and they are beyond reproach in decoration.  The pieces I
saw are of the Sung dynasty; so they can't have been made later than
1300.  They came from U-Chon, in the Honan province.  I thought them
very fine, and from my acquaintance with porcelains, I believe them to
be genuine pieces."

"I know," said Rawn--he was perspiring rather freely--"But I confess I
never was very much in love with Chinese art."

"But we owe so _much_ to it, Mr. Rawn," she said with gentle
enthusiasm.  "We learned all we know of underglaze and overglaze from
the Chinese--the best of our old English china was not made in England,
but imported from the Orient, as you know.  Chippendale got many of his
own ideas in furniture decorations from the Chinese, and so did the
French--why, you'll see Parisian bronzes, ever so old, and you couldn't
tell whether they were made in France or China.  And _old_!  The man at
this little shop has one piece which he says certainly was made before
the Christian era.  If I were in your place, however, I would adhere,
say, to the Ming dynasty.  Then you'll get as low as 1644."

"You mean apiece?"

"Oh, no, sir," she said gently, not smiling at his mistake.  "I mean,
the Ming dynasty ended in the _year_ 1644."

"Of course--you didn't understand me."  Mr. Rawn perspired yet more.



VIII

"No--well, at least you'll find some good jars and vases of that
period," continued Miss Delaware.  "For instance, the Ching period of
that dynasty is very rich in the _famille-verte_, as the French
describe it--some splendid apple-greens can be had in this.  Then
there's one piece of that same period, I believe, of the
_famille-rose_.  It's a wonderful thing in egg shell porcelain, and I
don't believe its like can be found to-day in all the Lake Shore
Drive--or even Drexel Boulevard; and say what you like, Mr. Rawn, there
_are_ fanciers there!  In colors there is nothing to equal some of
these fine old pieces.  I wouldn't, of course, suggest the bizarre and
striking ones, but I'd keep down to the quiet and solid colors, of some
of the old and estimable periods.  I don't know much about art, of
course, but I've just happened to study a little bit into the old
porcelains.  I'd like to buy a few--for _somebody_!  I couldn't go very
far myself--when they come at a couple of thousand dollars apiece, for
some of the better examples!"

Rawn did not lack in gameness, and no muscle in his face changed as he
nodded.

"The main thing is not to make the wrong selection, Miss Delaware,"
said he.  "I wish you'd go around there to-morrow, if you find time,
and see if this man will not send up four or five of his better pieces.
I'll pass on them then."

"You may be sure of one thing, Mr. Rawn," said Miss Delaware, nodding
with emphasis, "they will be real collector's pieces, and any one who
knows about them will see what they are worth."

"All right, then.  You'll be saving me a lot of time if you'll take
care of that, Miss Delaware.  Now another thing.  As I told you, Mrs.
Rawn is ill a great deal of the time.  I want to make her a little
present--she must have--that is to say, I am desirous of sending her,
for her birthday, you know, something like a ring or a pendant, in good
stones.  Could you drop in at Jansen's and have their man bring me over
something this afternoon--I'll not have time to get out, I fear."

"Certainly, Mr. Rawn.  I'll be very glad, if I can be spared from the
office."

"That's all, Miss Delaware."

She passed out gently, impersonally.  Rawn found himself looking at the
door where she had vanished.



IX

It was perhaps an hour later that he re-opened the door himself in
answer to a knock.  Miss Delaware stood respectfully waiting.  "There
is a man from Jansen's waiting for you, Mr. Rawn," said she.

"Tell him to come in," said Rawn.  There rose from a near-by seat a
gray-haired, grave and slender man, of sad demeanor, who presently
removed from his pocket and spread out upon the glass top of John
Rawn's desk such display of gems as set the whole room aquiver with
light.  Rawn felt his own eyes shine, his own soul leap.  There always
was something in diamonds which spoke to him.

"Ah-hum!" said he, feigning indifference, "some pretty good ones, eh?"
He poked around among them with the end of his penholder, as the gray
and grave man quietly opened one paper package after another, and
exposed his wares.

John Rawn reached out and pushed the button farthest to the right in
the long row on his desk.  Miss Delaware came and stood quietly
awaiting his command.

Her eyes caught, in the next moment, the shivering radiance which now
flamed on the desk top, as Rawn poked around among the gems that lay
under the beams of the westering sun which came through the window.
Rawn turned quickly.  He thought he had heard a sigh, a sob.

Something in the soul of Virginia Delaware leaped!  For the first time
her eyes shone with brighter fire; for the first time she half-gasped
in actual emotion.  There was something in diamonds which spoke to her
also!

"Essence of power!" said John Rawn calmly, poking among the gems.  The
girl did not answer.  The salesman coughed gently: "I should say a
hundred and fifty thousand dollars worth there, Mr. Rawn," said he
respectfully.

The man whom he addressed turned to the girl who stood there, her eyes
dilated.  He half smiled.  "They're lovely!" said Virginia Delaware, in
spite of herself, and now unmasked.  "Absolutely lovely!  I love them!"

"Pick out two things there," said John Rawn sententiously, pushing
himself back from the desk.  "I should say this pendant.  Take a guess
at the rings.  What would Mrs. Rawn like; and what would about suit
Mrs. Rawn?"

She bent above the desk, her eyes aflame at the sight of the brilliance
that lay before her.  Something laughed up at her, spoke to her.  Her
bosom heaved a bit.

"I should say your choice is excellent, Mr. Rawn," said she at length,
gently, controlling herself.  "The pendant is beautiful, set with the
emeralds.  See that chain in platinum--it is a dear!  It's like a
thread of moonlight, isn't it?  And as for the rings, I'd take this
one, I believe, with the two steel-blue stones."

"How much?" said John Rawn, turning to the grave and gray salesman.

"The two pieces would cost you twenty-eight thousand dollars, sir," the
latter replied, gravely and impersonally.

"Miss Delaware," said John Rawn, taking from his pocket his personal
check book, "oblige me by making out a check for that amount.  Bring it
in to me directly--and have the boy call my car."



X

When John Rawn ascended the steps of his mansion house that night, he
fairly throbbed with the sense of his own self-approval.  There was
that in his pocket which, he thought, when worn by the wife of John
Rawn at any public place of display, would indicate what grade of life
he, John Rawn, had shown himself fit to occupy.  He lost no time in
summoning his wife, and with small adieu put in her extended hand the
little mass of trembling, shivering gems.  She gazed at them almost
stupefied.

"Well, well!" he broke out, "can't you say anything?  What about it?
They're yours."

"Oh, John!" she began.  "John!  What do you mean?  How could you--how
could I--"

He flung out his hand in a gesture of despair.  "Oh, there you go
again!  Can't you fall into line at _all_?"

"But John!  I've never done anything in all my life to deserve them, of
course.  Besides, I couldn't wear them--I really couldn't--I'd be
afraid!  And they wouldn't seem right--on me!"

"You've _got_ to wear them!" he retorted.  "We've got to go out once in
a while if I'm to play this game--we've got to go to shows, theaters,
operas, somewhere.  They've got to sit up and say that we've got some
_class_, Laura, I'm telling you!"

"But, John!  How would I look decked out in things like that?  I'm so
plain, common, you know."

"That's not the question.  Do you know how much these cost?"

"Why, no--maybe a thousand dollars, for all I know!"

"A thousand dollars!" groaned Rawn.  "Maybe they did!  Do you know what
I paid for what you've got in your hand, Laura?  Twenty-eight thousand
dollars!  That's all."

Impulsively she held out her hand to him.  "Take them back!" she
whispered.  "It isn't right."

For one moment he looked at her, and she shrank back from his gaze.
But Rawn's anger turned to self-pity.

"My own wife won't wear my diamonds," said he.  "This, for a man as
ambitious as I am, and a man who has done as much as I have!"

She came now and put her arms about his neck, the first time in years;
but not in thankfulness.  She looked straight into his eyes.  "John!"
she said.  "Oh, _John_!"  There was all of woman's anguish in her eyes,
in her voice.



CHAPTER IV

AT HEADQUARTERS

I

The International Power Company remained a puzzle in suspended
animation before the business world.  Its campaign, whatever it was,
went on behind closed doors and closed mouths.  The men who were
backing John Rawn were doing so with daring and courage, yet with
business discretion and business eagerness for results.  There was no
leak anywhere, but the capitalists who were showing their faith in the
basic idea of the company began to grow impatient because of the slow
advancement of the most important of their plans; those bearing on
wireless transmission from the central generating station on the
Mississippi River.

Rawn's duties at the central offices, as president of the company,
although steadily increasing, were still to very large extent
perfunctory matters of routine; but the president's office evinced very
early a singular efficiency in executive affairs.  Rawn's directors
looked on him with mingled approval and cautiousness, coming almost to
the belief that, if the progress of the central distributing plant, or
"Wireless No. 1," as it was known in the company's literature, did not
seem all it should be, at least the president of the company was not to
blame therefor.  They turned to the department of mechanical
installation; which brought Charles Halsey under investigation.



II

Halsey and his wife, John Rawn's daughter, had taken up their residence
in the small Chicago suburb in which the central plant had been
located.  Their cottage was a small one, and it was furnished much like
other cottages thereabout, occupied by salaried men, mechanics, persons
of no great means.  It retained something of the complexion of the old
quarters in Kelly Row.  The furniture was of imitation mahogany, the
pictures had been, for the most part, bought by mail, the decorations
were a jumble of inharmonious inadvertencies.  The two young folk,
their means as small as their tastes were undeveloped, gave themselves
small concern over architects' plans and "collectors' pieces."  They
were busy as are most young couples in the delights of their first
experiment in housekeeping; and Halsey himself now was deep in the
strong and somber delight of developing a beloved idea.

Naturally, Halsey was often taken to the central offices in the city
for conferences with the president of the company.  He frequently met
there Virginia Delaware, even at times gave dictation to her--a thing
he never failed to remember, but never remembered to mention in his own
home.  As do many men even in this divorceful age, he set aside
comparisons, forced himself into loyalty.  Moreover, he yet was very
young in married life, and always had lived in an atmosphere where man,
married or single, coveted not that which was his neighbor's.  It was
but unconsciously, as though moved only by force of gravitation, that
he drifted to Miss Delaware with his correspondence.  He said to
himself that it was because she was so efficient.  Yes, that was it, of
course, he assured himself, frowning when, once upon a time, he
detected a flush on his face in answer to a sudden question of his
soul.  Thereafter he went not infrequently to the general offices.



III

On one such occasion he found himself in the position known among
salaried workers as being "called upon the carpet" before "the old
man."  Rawn held a letter in his hand to which he referred as he chided
Halsey for the delays in his department of the work.

"Do you suppose I can stand for this sort of thing coming from New
York?" he began.  "What's the matter out there with you?"

"Just what we might expect," Halsey replied coolly.  "I've tried to cut
down the expenses, but the men won't take the cut in wages."

"Why won't they?"

Halsey smiled.  "They have a hundred answers for that.  One is, that
they can't live on the wages, and another is, that they want the union
scale."

"They'll never unionize our factory, Mr. Halsey!  If they did, we might
as well throw away all our money and tell them our secret at the
start--we'd be working for them, not they for us."

"That's all right, sir.  I think, myself, an open shop is safer for us.
But the unions make all sorts of disturbances.  I can't keep on a
steady crew; and unless I do, I have to start in and educate a new set
of men every week, or every day; and I have to be careful what I let
any of them know.  I can't help it, Mr. Rawn."

"Well, we'll _have_ to help it, that's all," Rawn retorted grimly.  "If
the unions want fight they can have fight, until we get to the place
where we can take all the fight out of them.  These laboring men want
to stop the whole progress of this country--they're a drag on the
industry of this country, a continuous tax on all consumers.  I'll show
them!  Once we get those motors installed, I'll make them crawl."



IV

"And yet, do you know, Charles," he went on a little later, his voice
almost trembling, "the _injustice_ of this conduct is what cuts me.
I've had it in my mind to _do_ something for the laboring men of this
country.  Of course, I've seen all along that the general introduction
of our motors into all sorts of industrial uses would throw hundreds
and thousands of laboring men out of employment--put them on the scrap
heap permanently.  What are they going to do then?  Some one's got to
feed them just the same, as you once said to me, long ago.  You talk
about problems!--Why, we haven't got to the great ones in this country
yet.  The cost of living certainly will climb when that day comes.  And
the scale of wages will go down, when we abolish the man who has only
muscle to sell.  How are they going to eat?

"Now, I've foreseen something of this, and planned for it.  These
people can't plan for themselves, and it's always got to be some
stronger mind that does the thinking.  You know, I was born in Texas.
I've always resolved to do something for that state; and, as I've just
told you, I've always had it in mind to do something for the laboring
man--that is to say, the man who sees himself just as he really is, and
who doesn't rate himself worth just the same as the fellow next door to
him, so much and no more.

"I've had my eye for some time on a tract of land down in Texas, forty
thousand acres.  It shall never be said of John Rawn that he forgot
either his state or his fellow-man in the time of his success.  When we
get our motors going here--it will be, of course, a few years before
the full effect of it all is felt--why then I'm going to colonize
hundreds of these discarded workmen on this land in Texas.  They can
put in their labor there, where it will be useful, and can produce a
living for themselves and a surplus for others.  In short, it has been
my plan to put them where they could continue to be useful to society.
I wouldn't want to see them _starve_!"  Mr. Rawn's lip quivered at this
thought.  He felt himself to be a very tender-hearted man.



V

"Yes," said Halsey grimly, "the Czar of Russia had some such notion
regarding the serfs.  Yet he freed them eventually."

"Nonsense!  They'll be not in the least serfs, but will simply be men
transferred by a higher intelligence to a plane of life which otherwise
they could not reach--a plane where they can be of use not only to
themselves but to others."

"You're always talking, my son," went on Rawn, harshly, "about helping
your fellow-man, loving him like a brother--human equality, and all
that sort of rot.  What have any of _you_ ever really done for each
other, I'd like to know, except to meet up there in garrets, with
lanterns hanging around, and discuss plans for taking away from
stronger men the property they have accumulated?  Now, I'm not going to
take it out in _talk_--I'm going to _do_ something for these people.
I'm going to make Texas the place for my colony, because I don't want
to deprive my native state of the credit of producing a man who had two
big ideas--cheap power, and common sense in labor.  There's two _big_
ideas."

"I wouldn't dare tell the men anything of that," was Halsey's comment.
"It's hard enough as it is."

"No, certainly not.  We'll just go on and take our chances with these
men; and they take their chances with us.  You have my instructions to
discharge any man who kicks on the wage cut, if he doesn't fire
himself.  The town's full of men with families, who aren't earning
enough to eat.  You can get all the help you want.  Tell them we're
open shop, and if they don't like it they can do their worst.  Let them
bring on their dynamite, if they want to try that--they can have all
the fight they want; and I'll stay with it until I see them crawl."

"There's something I don't understand about it, Mr. Rawn.  The men are
very sullen.  The foremen tell me that they never had so much trouble.
Of course, they don't understand it themselves, but it's just as though
our secret was getting out, and as if the men were afraid of cutting
their own throats when they build these machines.  Not that they
understand what it's all about--it's air tight yet, that's sure."

"You begin to see some of the practical results of your infernal
socialistic ideas, don't you, then?  You'll come to my notion of life
after a while."

"Mr. Rawn, what's the end of that?  What's the logical conclusion?"

"Well, I'll _tell_ you!  One end and logical conclusion is going to be
that I'll get some one to handle that factory if you can't; and he'll
handle it the way I tell him!"

"You want my resignation now?"

"I'd very likely take it if it weren't for Grace.  Besides, we've
started on this thing together; and moreover again, I want you, when I
go to New York, to see the directors and explain to them that their
impatience is all wrong."

"Is there much dissatisfaction down there?"

"Yes.  We've both got to run down East to-morrow night.  Go on out now,
and reserve four compartments on the limited."

"Four?"

"Yes--we'll want a place to eat and work on the road.  I've got to take
a stenographer along, of course.  Next year I'll have a car of my own."



VI

Halsey cast a quick glance at him, but still hesitated.  "I don't see
how I can well leave Grace right now," said he.  "It's near her time."

"You both take your chances about that," growled Rawn.  "Business
enterprises have to be born, as well as children.  The important things
come first.  The one important thing for you and me is to get down
there and see those cold-footed Easterners and tell them where they get
off in this business."

"Say three days--maybe I can get back in time, Mr. Rawn.  But I must
say that they're asking us both to show a good deal of loyalty to this
company."

"It's the only way to get success--fidelity to your employers, no
matter what comes.  Of course, I know how you feel, but business can't
wait on women."

"A woman doesn't always understand about business, Mr. Rawn.  They're
rather strange things, don't you think?  Grace doesn't talk much to
me--she never has.  Sometimes--"

Rawn raised a hand.  "Charles, never let me hear a word of doubt or
disloyalty regarding your wife!  No daughter of Grace's parents could
be anything but faithful and worthy.  You should return such loyalty
with love.  Never let anything shake you out of your duty to your own
wife--my girl Grace."

"Why do you say that?  We're married, and we're happy--and as you
know--"

"Very well.  I like to hear you speak in that way.  Always be gentle
and kind to your wife.  Of course, marriage may not seem always as it
was in the honeymoon days, my son."

"That's true," said Halsey suddenly.  "Do you know, I've thought that."

"What _right_ had you to think it?"

"Mr. Rawn, Grace is my wife and I love her.  But I'll confess the truth
to you--she acts as though we'd been married forty years.  She runs the
house well, but she--I can't explain to you what I mean.  She doesn't
seem _contented_ any more.  Of course, she loves me, and of course I
love her, and we're married, and all that; and then--"

"Charles, you surprise and grieve me.  Grace is my daughter.  She may
have self-respect and dignity, but she will never lack in dutifulness.
Did you ever stop to think, Charles, that you owe your place in life to
her?"

"I wasn't thinking of business, Mr. Rawn, and if you please, we'll not
discuss that.  I only spoke freely because of what we both know--in
fact, I'd rather stay home than go to New York with you.  If you took
along your assistant--Miss Delaware, I suppose?"

Rawn nodded.  "Yes, she has the details of the sub-companies well in
hand.  I want her along, just as I want you, so that all questions can
be answered as to details of the office and factory work, in case I
should not personally be familiar with them--as I think I am, for the
most part."

"Then you couldn't use the stenographer on the train--I mean the
regular one?"

"I could not, Mr. Halsey," said John Rawn icily.  "What business is it
of _yours_?"

"None in the least.  I was only thinking about any possible talk.
She's a very beautiful girl, and very--stunning.  Yes, on the whole,
Mr. Rawn, I think it better for me to go.  One day in New York ought to
do us, ought it not?"

Rawn nodded.  "Yes, we'll be back here on the fourth day, at worst.
I've got to have you down there to explain the different installations.
I am as impatient as anybody else.  I want to get to the place where
I'll be making some real money."

"I thought you had been," grinned Halsey.  "Your house, for instance?"

"Over a hundred and fifty thousand dollars in there now, and as much
more to go in later," said Rawn.  "I've spent over a half million
altogether, private, overheads and investments, since I went in with
this company.  My salary is only a hundred thousand, and no man ever
lives on his salary and lays up any money--he's got to make his start
on the side.  I've not done badly in that way.  I'm learning the market
from the inside.  I've had one killing after another--Oil,
Rubber--awfully good luck.  Charles, the next ten years in all
likelihood will see me a rich man, very rich.  I've not done badly now,
for the son of a Methodist preacher out of a little Texas town.  Let me
tell you something.  Money is easy to make when you get the start.  It
rolls, I tell you, it rolls up like a snowball.  It grows and
spreads--there's nothing like it in its power.  It's power itself!"



VII

Rawn rose, soon pausing in his excited walk, in his wonted posture,
feet apart, hands under his coat tails.  Halsey looked at him, frowning
half sullenly, as he went on.

"Ah, Charles, there's nothing like money as an ambition for a man!
When I hear you talking your folly, about this brotherhood of man--when
I see you worrying your small head about the future of this republic,
you make me smile!  What difference about the rest of the world if you
take care of _yourself_?  There's one brotherhood that's worth while,
and only one, and it isn't that of laboring men, of common men--it is
the brotherhood of big men who have made big money.  There's a union
for you, son!  It does not break, it does not snitch, it does not
strike.  It sticks, it hangs together--the union of big business men is
the only one worth while.  Come with me, and I'll show you some proof
of that."

Halsey looked at him, his eyes glittering, words of scorn rising to his
tongue; but he controlled himself.  "All right, Mr. Rawn," said he,
"I'll be ready to start to-morrow, and I'll count on getting back here
by the last of the week, at least.  Good day, sir."

He left the room quietly.  He was a handsome, stalwart young man, but
in some way his face did not look happy.  Rawn sat staring at the door
through which he had disappeared.  There came over his feelings some
sort of vague dissatisfaction or apprehension, he knew not what.

"I'm scared at something, just like those laborers," said he; "and when
there's no reason in the world, so far as any one can tell.  Pshaw!"



VIII

He flung himself around to his place at his desk, and in doing so
struck his hand against the pointed letter-opener which lay there.  A
tiny trickle of blood appeared, which he sought to staunch with his
handkerchief.  At last he raised his head with a grin, and remarked
half aloud, to himself, "When in doubt, touch the right-hand button!"

"Miss Delaware," said he an instant later, as his assistant appeared,
"I've cut my hand a little.  I wish you'd tell one of the boys to bring
me a basin of hot water, or some sticking plaster or something."

"If you will allow me, Mr. Rawn," she answered respectfully, "I think I
could fix that without trouble.  I have a little liquid ether and
collodion in my desk.  It usually will stop any small cut, and it keeps
it clean.

"All right," said Rawn, "anything to stop the bleeding--I must get to
work."

She reappeared a moment later with a small bottle and a pencil brush,
and bending over, proceeded to touch the tiny wound with the biting
liquid, with slight "Tch!" as she saw the hand wince under the
temporary sting.  Rawn looked at her with a singular expression.

"It's odd, Miss Delaware," said he, "that I was just saying to myself a
minute ago that I'd bet a thousand dollars that you had something
ready, at just the right time!  Thank you very much."

"By the way," he added, "I was just telling my son-in-law Mr. Halsey,
the superintendent of our works, that it's going to be necessary for
all three of us--that is to say, myself, Mr. Halsey and you--to start
for New York to-morrow afternoon.  I'll probably have to do some
letters on the train, and you would better see that a typewriter is
sent on--Mr. Halsey will give us the berth numbers in the morning, I
suppose.  Sorry to take you out of your work, but then--"

"I should like to go, above all things, Mr. Rawn," replied the young
woman, still respectfully.

"All right.  Of course, you go on company account.  Maybe you'll like
the change of work and scene.  Please bring along all the reports on
those Lower Valley instalments, and all the estimates we've been
working on here for the last few days.  It might be a good plan to have
your files for the last month go along, with your card indexes.  We've
got to show those people down there a thing or two.

"I suppose you know our superintendent, Mr. Halsey--my son-in-law," he
added.  "He's going, too."

"Oh, yes.  He's here often.  Sometimes I've done work for him, you
know.  He does a good, clear letter--but rather long.  He can't get
through so much in an hour as you can, Mr. Rawn."

When she had retired, Rawn was seized with an impulsive desire to raise
his secretary's salary again; but he reflected that it would hardly
do--although he was convinced that he had the most efficient assistant
on the Street.  He did not know she was thinking of Halsey at that
moment.

Singularly enough, Charles Halsey was thinking of Miss Delaware at
about that same time.  He was saying to himself, as he passed into the
hall after nodding to her: "By George, isn't she efficient!"
Practically all the male clerks would have agreed with him had they
heard him.  With equal strenuousness, all the female clerks would have
dissented.  After he had said to himself that Miss Delaware was
efficient, Halsey checked himself on the point of adding that she was
also something besides efficient.  He stopped the thought so sharply
that it stopped his stride as well.  There came to his mind the picture
of his wife, now soon to enter into woman's valley of the shadows.  He
paused, obliging his soul to render to his wife all honor, all homage,
all loyalty, all duty--indeed, all those things which a wife will trade
_en masse_ for just a little real spontaneous love.



CHAPTER V

THEIR MASTER'S VOICE

I

"That may all be very well," commented one of the members at the
directors' meeting of the International Power Company, held on the day
of Rawn's arrival in New York; "that may all be true, but what do we
know about the practical application?  I've heard of extracting gold
from sea water--and the fellow proved it right before your eyes!  The
world is full of these things, getting rich all at once, but usually
when we get to the bottom of it, there's the same old gold brick."

The speaker was rather a slight man, with dark pointed beard, a man
whose name swayed railway fortunes, but whose digestion was not worth
mentioning.  Silence greeted his comment.  A dozen pairs of eyes turned
toward John Rawn from different points about the long directors' table.
The speaker went on:

"I am ready to back anything I believe in, of course, and I must say I
believed in this--maybe because I wanted to, it looked so good.  It's
the pinkest, prettiest, sweetest scheme I ever saw, and that's the
fact.  But we don't _get_ anywhere with it.  We've been pouring money
into these Chicago works, and there's nothing doing.  We've been paying
you a pretty stiff salary, Mr. Rawn, and our total expenses have footed
up enormously.  We've got the work on the dam and on the central
transmission plant to show, yes, but that's all.  And that wasn't why I
went into this thing.  For one, I want to be shown a few things about
the Chicago installations.  It's that wireless receiver that's got us
all into this, and I want to know about that."

John Rawn made characteristic answer: "How much is your stock worth, in
your opinion, Van?" he demanded quietly.

"I'll just about call that bluff right here," broke out the dyspeptic
financier.  "I'll take sixty for all my holdings."

"How many shares?"

"I'm only in for three thousand."

"Push me that pen, Charles," commented John Rawn casually.  "I'll make
a memorandum of that," said he.  "It's a sale.  Will you please initial
it?  You shall have my check in due course."

The dyspeptic director hesitated for an instant.  "Put up or shut up!"
exclaimed John Rawn roughly.  "I'm going to buy you out, and throw you
out, right here.  We don't want any cold-foot sitting here with us.
This has got to be a bunch of fighting men, and we don't want any
quitters."

"I'll not stand for that!" began the dyspeptic.  "I want to say--"

"You'll say nothing, and you'll stand for that," retorted Rawn.  "I'll
get you the cash here in copper pennies if you like, inside of five
minutes.  O.K. that paper, and cancel your right to vote.  The meeting
isn't called to order yet, and the books are not closed."

"That's the talk!" growled a deep voice farther toward the end of the
table.  The general traffic man of earlier days, Ackerman, of St.
Louis, was the speaker.  "I'll take half of that myself, Rawn."

"Yes, and divide it with me, Ackerman," nodded Standley, the railway
president to whom Rawn had first brought his device.

The dissatisfied director paled yet more.  "Oh, well," said he, "if
that's the way you feel about it, I'll just call your bluff.  Here's my
initials; and you're welcome to my stock."

"Record it!" said Rawn tersely, throwing the memorandum across to the
treasurer.  "Have you got the stock here?"

"Yes, right in my inside pocket," retorted the other savagely.

"Pass it to the treasurer, then, if you please--that is to say, if you
will take the assurance of myself and these gentlemen that we'll take
up this memorandum."

"Oh, of course I'll do that," assented the other grudgingly.

"Then that'll be about all," said Mr. Rawn.  "And as this is to be a
directors' meeting, why, maybe--"

The dyspeptic financier was already reaching for his hat and coat.



II

"I want _all_ you gentlemen to feel," said John Rawn calmly, "that
there's a chance to lay down right here, if your feet are getting cold.
Better quit now than later on.  I won't work with men who haven't got
heart in this thing.  If any of you are scared, let me know.  I
couldn't take over all your stock myself, of course, but if you want to
let go, I believe I can swing another company organization."

They looked at him silently, here and there a gray head shaking in
negation.  Rawn's eye lighted.

"That's the idea!" said he; "we'll all sit tight."

He turned to catch the eye of the late director, who was now passing
toward the door.  "I'm going," said the latter importantly.

"And good riddance!" said John Rawn calmly.

"I'll take care of you for that, one of these days, Mr. Rawn!"

"Why not now?"

"You'll see what I'll do to you in the market!"

"The market be damned!" said John Rawn evenly.  "There isn't any
market.  There isn't anything to buy or sell.  If there is any stock
offered, I'm the market, right here and now.  Go on and do what you
can.  The more you talk of what you don't know about, the more you'll
boom this thing; so turn yourself loose, if you feel like it.  I've got
our superintendent here to prove this thing out--to the _directors_ of
this company, Mr. Van.  The meeting is informal, but it may be
instructive.  We can fill any vacancy on the board at some other time,
maybe."

A large, bearded man, with drooping lower eyelids, who sat across the
table, chuckled to himself gently as the ex-director slammed the door.

"Well, then--" said a tentative voice.

All these men were men of large affairs.  They would have spared no
time for this meeting had it not seemed to them much worth their while.

"Van's going to talk," said one voice.

"Let him talk about what he likes," rejoined Rawn.  "It's close
communion for the rest of us.  Well, then, have we all got cards?" he
demanded.

There was a grim look on each face along the table which suited the
fancy of the speaker.  "All right, then," said he.  "There are only two
or three of you who ever saw our device actually at work.  I've got my
report all brought up to date.  Mr. Halsey will tell you what he has
been doing in the works, how he has been handicapped, why we can not
turn over at once a completed installation of one of our motors.  We
know perfectly well that a great deal of money has been expended.  We
don't want you to put in that money unless you are satisfied of
returns, big returns.  Gentlemen, are you ready to see the gold brick?
Would you like to look at the little joker, or see if you can find the
pea under the shell?  If so, there will be further opportunity for
those who want to drop out.  But I'd very much prefer you'd drop out
now and not after our experiments."

There was no answer, beyond a growl from Ackerman, a twitched hand of
the bearded man.



III

Halsey rose and placed on the table the little model which he took from
the case at his side.  In principle, it was the same which had been
shown in the original demonstration at St. Louis, long before, although
in workmanship it was in this instance a trifle more finished, showing
more of shining brass and steel.  Halsey looked about hesitatingly.

"Shall we use the fan again?" he inquired of Mr. Rawn.

"Not on your life!" cried out Ackerman.  "No more fan bursting goes.
You'll put on the little railway, here on the table, as you were
showing me the other day."

"You gentlemen all know the general theory of the invention," Halsey
went on, again assuming the post of lecturer, which Rawn once more
graciously surrendered to him, waving a hand largely in his direction
as though in explanation to the others.  "It's simply the attuning of a
motor to the free electrical current in the air--the wireless idea, of
course.  You're posted on all this.  Now, I've got some little things
here which will show some of the applications of our idea.  We'll make
a little track, for a railway train, and we'll run its motor here with
current of our own, simply by our receiver for the free current.

"I've often thought of the applicability of our receivers to the use of
automobiles.  Any man could have one of these receivers in his own
garage, and could charge his own machine as he liked.  That's only one
use of the idea.  What is true regarding auto cars is true also of
plows, wagons, nearly all farm machinery.  One of these receivers which
you could carry around under your arm would do the work of many men, of
many horses.  With this model here I can, as Mr. Ackerman and Mr.
Standley will agree, burst that electric fan wide open, and with no
wire attachment for any current whatever.  And I think we can run this
little train of cars."

A sigh went around the table at these calm words.  These grave, gray
men looked intently, bending forward at the edge of the table as young
Halsey completed his mechanical arrangements.

"If this thing works," said the large, bearded man, leaning forward,
"where does it leave railway transportation?"

"It leaves it with us!" interrupted John Rawn.  "With us absolutely!"

"What's to hinder anybody from building all the railroads they want,
and making all the cars they want, and taking all the power they want
out of the air, as you say?"

"Nothing in the world to prevent," said John Rawn, "except the
solidarity of the railway men of this country.  If we take you all in
and if you all stand pat, what chance has any one else got, except
through buying power of us?  Of course, this thing would break us if
used against us.  But we don't propose to see it used that way.  Our
patents protect us."

"Go on," said the bearded man.  "Let's see the wheels go 'round."

They saw as much, and more.  Halsey's little car repeated its circuit
about the long table again and again, tirelessly, operated by power
taken from the unwired receiver.  Where the receiver got its power
Halsey explained in detail as he had done before.

The thing was there to show for itself.  As to the breadth of its
application, these men needed no advice.  They were accustomed to the
look ahead, to the weighing of wide possibilities.

"It's like the French conjurer, gentlemen," said John Rawn smiling.
"He operates with his sleeves rolled up.  'There is no _déception_, by
friends,' says he.  There's the whole works on the table right before
us.  If it isn't a tremendous thing I'm the worst fooled man in all
this world, and I'll be the worst broke man in the world."

"Toot!  Toot!" remarked a jovial voice from Standley's end of the
table.  "Start her up again, son--I never get tired of seeing that
thing go like the Chinaman's cable car."  Levity was a relief to them.
There is a certain strain, after all, in planning for the ownership of
a people, a republic.

Halsey again pushed down the lever, and again the dummy car ran around
and about the table on the curved track which had been laid for it.

"That's the travel of the future, gentlemen," said John, Rawn soberly,
at length.  "They can take it or leave it.  So can you."



IV

Silence fell on that group of gray, grave men.  The thing seemed to
them uncanny, although so simple.  They looked about, one at the other.
A sort of sigh passed about the room.  There sat at the table men who
represented untold millions of capital.  They were looking upon a
device which in the belief of all was about to multiply these millions
many-fold.  Their hands already inordinately full of power, they
contemplated yet more inordinate power.  They sat fascinated, silent,
sighing at the prospect, in a delicious half-delirium.  The forehead or
the upper lip of each was moist.

"You can't get away from it, fellows," said Standley, of St. Louis.
"I've tried to, my best, and I can't.  I felt just the way you do when
it was first put up to me--I didn't want to face the truth, it was so
big.  As soon as these two men went away from me my feet got cold; but
if they hadn't come back, I think I'd have jumped in the river.  I
_want_ to let go of this thing right here--it scares me.  But I just
can't, that's all."

They made no comment.  The atmosphere seemed strangely strained, tense.
An old and beardless man, thin, pallid, leaned against the table, his
eyes staring, his face almost corpse-like.  No voice was raised in
criticism or indeed in comment, but all sat weighing, pondering.  Rawn
was the first to break the silence.

"Gentlemen," said he, "of course this is the big part of our company
patents, and it is over this that we've met to-day.  You've been
doubting my executive ability.  I have shown you what the prize is that
we're working for---there it is on the table.  As to the difficulties
of pulling off a thing as big as this, they are bigger in this case
than could be expected or figured out in advance.  Our superintendent,
Mr. Halsey here, tells me that he is having a great deal of trouble in
labor matters.  The men are discontented, and what is worse, they're
_curious_, all the time.  We can't employ just any sort of
irresponsible labor, and we can't complete one machine--we've got to
bring them _all_ through, at once, together--indeed, got pretty near to
finish them all ourselves.  We can't take any people in on this secret,
of course.  It all takes time, and it all takes money.

"I've got my report here, all these pages, which I'll not trouble you
to read unless you like.  What I want to say is this: we've got our
power plant, and our wire transmitter system, and we're making money on
that, as everybody knows.  We can pay dividends on the old way of
transmitting power, developing the 'juice' by water power and peddling
it out by wire.  We can pay ten per cent., and a stock dividend every
year, for we are earning nineteen and eight-tenths per cent. now, on
wire work alone, not mentioning our exclusive franchises.  Nobody can
put a value on those.  Up to this time most of us have been contented
to reach out and get hold of water powers in the old way--that didn't
look so slow to us then as it does now.  If we should throw away,
entirely, this part of our device, we still would stand just as safe as
we ever would have stood.

"Again, suppose we wanted to play the market, and throw away every idea
of using this second current of electricity.  We could list this stock
to-morrow and make it the most active issue on the Street.  That's
plain to all of us.

"Again, let's reason over this matter and see whether it isn't
impatience and not distrust which is troubling all of us.  We haven't
really spent so very much money in the receiver installations.  There
isn't a stockyards firm in Chicago which doesn't put aside a bigger
appropriation every year for scientific experimenting than we're
putting into what is no experiment, but a certainty.  It is a drop in
the bucket, as my figures here show distinctly.

"Now, since these things are true, I just came down here to ask you
gentlemen what it is that you want?  You've been criticizing me.  We've
thought enough of this thing to plan legislation in Congress and in the
adjoining states where we are working.  We've been at a lot of trouble
one way or other.  We've wanted to get a grip on this country which
couldn't be shaken off by any political or industrial changes.  That's
just what I'm offering you here, gentlemen.  Pretty much the whole
business world will be yours.  _I_ brought you this, didn't I?  Now, do
you want a nice gold fence around the world with diamond tips to the
pickets; or what is it that you do want?  Up to this time you've wanted
what was impossible.  Now I've shown you that the impossible _is_
possible.  Here it is, on the table in front of you--here's the proof.
Unless I am drunk or crazy, the future governors of the United States
of America are sitting right here at this table."

He touched the glass top lightly, gently, with his finger-tips, which
had no tremor in them.  John Rawn was completely master of himself.



V

"But it _has_ cost a lot of money, Rawn," began one director
hesitatingly.

"That's a relative term," answered Rawn.  "I have all the details here
among my figures.  It is much or little, as you care to look at it--it
doesn't seem much to me.  We've run this thing down to rock-bed economy
all the time.  We cut our men a dollar a week last month, and it
started a riot.  We're trying to save all the money we can, of
course--it's my money that is being spent just the same as yours, my
time that is wasting, just the same as yours.  I'm as eager as you to
get my hands on this thing, and to get its hands on this country.  But
there's such a thing as losing by lack of confidence, and many and many
a good thing has been lost by lack of money backed by nerve.  What do
you want, gentlemen?  I can't do much more than I have done."

"And it's enough!" cried the bearded man, his voice harsh, strident
with his emotion.  "We've got to have it!  Let's stick, let's stick,
fellows!  They'll never shake us off.  There is absolutely no limit to
this thing."

"Is that still the way you feel, Jim?" asked Standley from his end of
the table.

"Yes, it is; how about it, gentlemen?" answered Ackerman's deep voice.

His eyes turned from one to the other, and found no dissent, although
the air of each man was earnest, almost somber.

"Shake hands, then!" called out the bearded man with enthusiasm, a man
who had swayed millions by the force of his own convictions before that
time.

"Let's all shake hands, then, gentlemen," said John Rawn.

They did so, each man reaching out his hands to his neighbor; Halsey,
of course, stepping back as not belonging to that charmed circle.  They
made a ring around that table of countless, untold millions, of
uncounted, unmeasured power.  Their faces would have made study
sufficient for the greatest painter of the world.  There was not a
young man present, not one whose face did not show lines deep graven,
whose hair was not white, or gray, or grizzled.  Many faces there were,
but from the eyes of each shone the same light.  The grasp of the hand
of each meant the same thing.  They stood, hand clasped to hand, soul
clasped to soul; greed and power clasped to greed and power.

"Move we 'journ," said Ackerman.  The president dropped the gavel on
the table top.



VI

Rawn finally escaping from the crowd of importunate reporters who
waited in the halls, at length broke away to go to his rooms.  He met
Halsey in the lobby.  The latter had in his hand a telegram, which
shook somewhat as he extended it.

"Well," said Rawn, turning toward him with a frown, "what is it?"

He read: "Charles S. Halsey, The Palatial, New York: Your child is a
girl.  The mother is doing well.  You would best return at once.  There
is a slight deformity.  You must share this grief with the mother when
she knows--"

Rawn dropped the message to the floor.  Halsey's face looked so
desperately old and sad that for one moment Rawn almost forgot his own
grief.  "You'd better go on home, Charley," he said.  "Too bad--to get
such news now!  But isn't that just like a woman!"



CHAPTER VI

IN PROPER PERSON

I

John Rawn stood looking at the unceasing throng which surged confusedly
through the corridors of the gilded hotel.  Warmth, music, a Babel of
voices, were all about.  There approached a little group of laughing
men coming from the carriage entrance, bound, no doubt, to a banquet
hall somewhere under the capacious roof.  One voice rose above the the
others as the group advanced.  There appeared, rapidly talking and
gesticulating as he came, a ruddy-faced, stocky figure, with head
close-cropped, jaw undershot, small eyes, fighting terrier make-up.

"I tell you, gentlemen, I'll compromise not in the least on this
matter!  It makes no difference what they do with the ticket or with
me.  There's only one way about these matters, and that's the right
way!  I care nothing whether this man be a rich man or a poor man.  The
only question is, whether he is _right_.  If he is not right, he will
never--I say to you, gentlemen--" this with close-shut jaw and fist
hard smitten into palm--"I say to you, it makes no difference who he is
or what he is, he'll never win through; and in the event you suffer
from us--"

He passed on, gesticulating, talking.  Men commented audibly, for there
was no mistaking a man idealized by some, dreaded by others, scorned by
none, anathematized by not a few.  He was to address that night a
meeting of independent politicians, so-called, here in the very house
of individualistic power, and many old-line members of his party had
their doubts, the fear of a new party being ever present in the
politician's mind--the same fear professional politicians, Whig,
Democrat, what-not, had of the new party formed before the Civil War at
the command of a people then claiming self-government as their ancient
right--as now they begin again to do, facing our third War of
Independence.

"Going strong, isn't he?" commented one sardonically, within Rawn's
hearing.

"That's all right, my friend," was the smiling answer of yet another.
"Strong enough to make a lot of you hunt your holes yet.  There's quite
a few people in this little old country outside this island--and
he'll--"

"Nonsense!  No chance, not the least chance in the world!"

"You underestimate this new movement," began the other.

"New movement!--you're 'progressive,' eh?  Got that bee?  A lot of good
it'll do you.  It will be simply a new line-up following our old and
time-tried political methods--it all comes to that, take my word.  The
people aren't in politics.  A lot of professionals do our governing for
us."

"All the same, there goes the people's candidate!"

"Take him and welcome," was the answer.  "Take your candidate.  We'll
eat him up--if he runs."

They also passed on down the hall, gesticulating, their voices
swallowed up with others, arising confusedly.  This and that couple or
group passed by, also talking, among them many persons obviously of
notoriety, importance or distinction, though unknown to their observer.
Rawn stood and watched them all.  The scene was to his liking.  The
stir, the confusion, appealed to him.  The flowering of the great
city's night life was here, such as that is.  It was the focus of our
country's civilization, such as that is.  Men worth millions passed,
shoulder to shoulder, a wondrous procession, such as that is.



II

And here and there, always moving and mingling with those men whose
reception or whose raiment announced them as persons of importance,
moved women, beautiful women, floating by, brightly, radiantly,
rustlingly--women blazing with jewels, women with bright eyes, women
whose apparel bespoke them as accepted integers of the city's vast
human sum.

Rawn stood studying the procession for a long time, eying group after
group carefully.  A conclusion was forming in his mind.  He was
learning that when a man has achieved power, success, wealth, notoriety
even, he turns with his next thought to some woman; and finds some
woman waiting.

Not, as he reflected, a woman grown old and gray.  Not a woman with
finger-tips blackened and roughened, of bowed figure and ill-fitting
garb, of awkward and unaccustomed air--not to that sort of woman who
would be noticed here for her lack of fitness in this place.  No,
rather, as he noticed, men of influence or position or power turned to
such women as these about him now--of distinct personality, of birth
and breeding, or at least of beauty; women shimmering in silks, blazing
in gems, women who looked up laughing as they passed, women young and
beautiful, whose voices were soft, around whom floated as they walked
some subtle fascination.

Rawn pondered.  He saw passing a few men whom he knew, all with women
whom he did not know.  In each case his new-formed rule seemed to hold
good; the exception being noted only in the bored and weary faces of
men accompanied by women perhaps rustling and blazing in silks and
diamonds, but not owning youth and fascination.

John Rawn found that power and beauty go hand in hand; that money and
beauty also go hand in hand--which is to say the same thing.  He began
to ponder upon youth, beauty and love as appurtenances of wealth,
success and power.

"That's the game!" he said half to himself.  "Why, look at those chaps.
They look pretty much alike, act pretty much alike, too.  When a man
has money to burn, there is only one way--and there it is!"



III

And then it occurred to John Rawn with sudden and unpleasing force
that, although he was among this throng, he was not of it.  Himself a
man of power, success, yes, even of wealth, he lacked in certain
betokening appurtenances thereto.  A not unusual wave of self-pity
crept slowly over him.  Why should he, a man of his attainments, lack
in any degree what others had?

He stood pondering, not wholly happy, until presently he felt, rather
than saw, a glance bent upon him by a man who passed, a stately and
well-garbed young woman upon his arm.  He was a man now in faultless
evening dress, yet easily to be recognized--none less, indeed, than the
dyspeptic director who so summarily had been dismissed by John Rawn
himself not three hours ago.  His dark face became even darker as he
saw the victor of that controversy standing here alone.  He smiled
sardonically.  To Rawn it seemed that he smiled because he saw the
solitary attitude of a man as good as himself, as fit as himself for
all the insignia of power, yet publicly self-confessed as lacking all
such insignia.  He started, flushed, frowned.  He had shown these men,
these influential magnates in New York, that he could be their master
upon occasion--he had mastered this man passing yonder.  Yet now he
stood here alone, with no woman to advertise his power to the world;
and men laughed at him!  No woman wore his silks, displayed his jewels.
He was John Rawn, born to the purple; yet he might be taken here for a
country merchant on his first trip from home....

He turned to the key-counter.  The clerk, with infallible
instinct--without his request--handed him the key to his room, not
lacking acquaintance with men of Mr. Rawn's acquaintance, and knowing
money when he saw it....  Rawn passed down the hall, went up two
flights in the elevator, turned into the left-hand corridor, and at
length knocked deliberately at a door where a light showed.



IV

"Come!" called a soft voice.  He knocked again, a trifle hesitant, and
looked down the corridor, each way.  The voice repeated, "Come!"  He
pushed open the door.

Virginia Delaware stood before her dressing-glass, her toilet for
evening completed except perhaps for a touch or two about her coiffure.
She turned now, and flushed as she saw her visitor.

"Mr. Rawn!" she exclaimed; "I thought it was the maid!  I had just
called her."

Rawn turned and shut the door.  "Never mind her," he said.  "I will be
gone in a minute.  I just wanted--"

"You must go!" she exclaimed.  "You ought not to have come--it is not
permitted--it is not right!"

"How stunning you look, Miss Delaware!" was all he said.  He had never
before seen her arrayed in keeping with these other lilies of the
field.  Indeed, his life had given him small acquaintance with
conventions, or those who practised them.  He had no mental process of
analysis as he gazed at her now, or he might have seen that after all
the young woman's costume was no more than one of filmy blue, draped
over a pure and lustrous white.  He could not have named the fashion
which drew it so daringly close at hip and hem as to reveal frankly all
the lines of a figure which needed not to dread revelation for its own
sake, whether or not for other sake.  He could not have guessed what
skill belonged to the hand that fashioned this raiment, could not have
told its cost.  To him the young woman was very beautiful; and he was
too much confused to be capable of analysis.  The corsage of the gown,
cut square and daringly deep, displayed neck and shoulders white as
those of any woman of any city.  Her figure gave lines had her costume
not aided.  She was beautiful, yes.



V

And there was something more, Rawn could not tell what.  There was some
air of excitement, of exaltation, some sort of fever about her, upon
her.  In her eyes shone something Rawn had never noticed there before.
Hastily he made such inventory as he might of unanalyzed charms.  He
arrived at his conclusion, which was, that Virginia Delaware would do!

"You could travel in fast company, my dear girl," said he approvingly.

"What do you mean?"  She turned upon him.

"That you could go quite a considerable pace, my dear girl.  You'll
_do_.  Let me see your hands!" he demanded.  And in spite of her he
coolly took up a hand, examining the shapely finger-tips.  He sighed.
No needle had blackened or roughened them, the typewriter keys had not
yet flattened them.  He stepped back, looked at her from head to foot,
appraising all her graces, valuing her height and roundness of figure.
There was small light in his eye other than that of judicial approval.
She bore out his theory.

"You surprise me!" was all he said.

"How do you mean, Mr. Rawn?--But you must go, you really must!"

There came a knock at the door.  Rawn's negative gesture was positive.
After a moment's hesitation the girl stepped to the door and spoke to
the maid.  "You may return again in a little while, maid," she said.
"I'm not quite ready now."  In turn she stood with her back against the
door, her own color rising.

"Oh, don't be uneasy," said John Rawn smiling.  "This is quite
considerable of a hotel, taking it as it is.  There won't be any
scandal over this."

"I don't think I understand you."

"I'm going in just five minutes.  But I want to say something to you in
the way of a business proposition, Miss Delaware."

"I'm sure I don't know what you mean."  Her head was high, her color
still rising.

"Nothing in the least wrong, my dear girl," said John Rawn.  "It's
simply a matter of business, as I said.  You're here as my assistant,
of course.  But did it ever occur to you that as you stand there now,
and as I stand here, we might pass in that crowd below there and not be
known by _any one_?"



VI

She still stood looking at him, her color high, undecided as to his
meaning even now as he went on.

"It would be rather a pleasant experience, perhaps, for you--as it
would be for me--just to mingle with that giddy throng--say, for
dinner.  Would you like to be part of it?  It's just a foolish thought
that came to me."

She turned to him, her eyes bright, her face eager.  "Could we, Mr.
Rawn?" she said.  "I'm crazy over it!"

"I see," he commented dryly.  "You were dressing to go down to dinner?"

"No, no, I couldn't afford to do that, of course.  I couldn't go alone,
and I had no company.  I wasn't going down at all.  I just dressed
up--to--to--"

"Just to look at yourself in the mirror, isn't that it, Miss Delaware?"

"Yes, it's the truth!"  She turned to him calmly at last, well in hand
again.  "I couldn't be one of them--couldn't be like those people down
below, so I did the best I could up here--I dressed as much like them
as I knew how.  I--I--I _imagined_!  I dreamed, Mr. Rawn.  I've never
known a real evening of that sort in all my life--but it's in my blood.
I want to go, I want to dine, and drink, and dance--I'm mad about it, I
know, but it's the truth!  I want what I can't have.  I want to be what
I'm not.  I don't know what's the reason.  It's in the air--maybe it's
in the day, in the country!"



VII

"Yes, it's the country," said John Rawn.  "We're all going a swift
pace, men and women both.  I don't blame you.  I understand you.  Now I
know what you want."

"What do you mean?"

"You want just about what _I_ want."

"But, Mr. Rawn--"

"It's the same thing--it's _power_ that you want, just as I do.  I feel
it in the air when I come near you.  You feel the same way when you
come near me!"

She nodded rapidly, her eyes narrowing.  "Yes, it's true!" she said.
"That's true."

"You want to have it within your ability to influence men, just as I
do, don't you, Miss Delaware?  That's what was in your soul when you
stood before your mirror there when I came in, wasn't it, Miss
Delaware?  You want to win, to succeed, to triumph, don't you, Miss
Delaware--you've got _ambition_?  Wasn't that your dream--isn't that
what you were imagining, as you stood there and looked in your glass?"

"Yes, yes, it's true, I know it!" she admitted panting.  "I know it, my
God! yes, I can't help it!  But what chance have I?"

"All sorts of chances, my dear girl.  I don't make mistakes.  I told
you this is a business proposition.  Now, then, tell me, why did you
tog out this way?"

"I did it because I had to.  I told you I couldn't help it.  It was in
my blood to-night!"

"Any man waiting anywhere, Miss Delaware?"

"On my word, no!  I wasn't even going downstairs.  But I told you I was
mad to be in that crowd, where the rich people are.  I wanted to hear
the music, I wanted to see them--I wanted to pretend for one night that
I was a part of it all!"

"You wanted to win--you coveted power!  Is it not true?"

"Yes!" she blazed fiercely.  And indeed at that moment the room seemed
full of some large influence, moving, throbbing all about them.



VIII

"I wanted that," the girl admitted.  "All the world does!"

"I suppose you wanted to see some strong man fall on his knees and beg
of you?"

"Yes."

"I am sorry, my dear, but I'll not do that.  But I understand.  So you
searched out these glad rags and tried yourself out before the mirror
there!  Very good!  You'll do!  Believe me--or ask any man in all this
city."

She nodded rapidly.  "Yes, you know it, now."

"Now, you're no more mad than I am," said John Rawn.  "You're as
cool-headed as I am, if I know women at all.  We think alike.  You're
young.  I'm young enough.  Where'd you get that gown?"

"I had it made--in an alley, in the city back home.  It cost as much as
I could afford.  Thirty dollars!"  She flung out the words scornfully.

"It looks three hundred; and I've seen worse below to-night that
probably cost three thousand.  But it's not yet quite complete--your
costume."

"It was the best I had.  You ought not to taunt me.  I stood here
facing myself.  I felt disappointed, bitter!  Yes, I'll admit that."

"You needn't be," said Rawn calmly.  He nodded to her bare and
unadorned neck, her hair which lacked brilliants, her fingers left
unjeweled.  The girl caught his meaning without further speech, and it
hurt her yet more.

"What could I do?  Why did you bring me here, Mr. Rawn?  You've made me
unhappy.  I've seen it, and I can't be a part of it.  It doesn't seem I
can go back there to work and be just the same any more, after seeing
the city here!  I tell you, it's got in my blood, all at once."

"No," he said evenly, "not again just the same.  We outgrow ourselves,
and can't go back.  I'm not the same man I once was."  He
half-unconsciously shifted to get a glimpse of himself in the mirror.

"But now, my business proposition is very simple.  It holds good for
one evening, Miss Delaware.  I was just going to propose that we forget
all this unhappiness, and do a little pretending for one night, say for
one hour or so."



IX

He fumbled in his waistcoat pocket, and drew out something which
suddenly flamed into dancing points and rays in the light that fell
upon it.  She stood motionless while he passed about her neck a tiny
thread, delicate as if spun of moonlight.  She held out her hand, and
he slipped over it a gleaming ring of gems.  She bent her head, and he
placed a sparkling ornament in her hair.  She had seen these jewels
before.  She turned to the glass now, her bosom heaving as she saw them
gleam at her own neck, her own hands, in her own hair.  She held out
her hands to look at them now, and the gems flashed back challenge to
her eyes, sparkling yet more brilliantly.

"It was nothing," said John Rawn tersely.  "That's all that lacked.
You're good as the best now.  I've seen no woman in this city that is
your equal in beauty.  You were born for this life.  Now do you
understand what I mean?  I say, you can carry it off!"

She turned to him, another woman, changing on the instant, something in
her eyes he had never seen before.  But in his own eyes there was at
the time nothing save the original calm and purposefulness.

"As I was saying, then, since we can both carry it off, why not do so
for an hour or so?  I've read somewhere of masquerades.  Why not try
it?"

She turned to him, flushed, radiant, but slightly frowning, puzzled,
studying him.  Rawn felt the query of her look, felt also something
stirring down in his nature which he grappled at once and was able to
suppress.  His voice was cool and low as it was before.

"It's a big crowd below, and we'll be lost in it.  I've learned already
that you can be discreet.  We'll drop down in there, where no one knows
us.  We'll try ourselves out, and see whether we'll do, here where the
test is hardest.  You're ambitious?  So am I.  This is the heart of the
world--the place of gratified ambitions.  What do you say, Miss
Delaware?  I've been looking around down there, and as nearly as I can
see, I'm the only man in this avenue worth a million dollars who at
this precise moment of the day isn't talking to some good-looking
woman!"

"You flatter me!" commented the girl.  He did not endeavor any analysis.

"Not in the least!  I simply talk sense and business to you.  I covet
what you covet, love what you love, want what you want.  Things which
are equal to the same thing ought to be equal to each other--for just a
little while, Miss Delaware.  Isn't it true?  If it is only play, why,
let's play at it.

"I forgot to tell you," he added, "that my son-in-law, Mr. Halsey, has
gone back to Chicago.  He was summoned by wire.  No one else knows us
both.  There wouldn't be one chance in many of our being seen by any
one here who knew either of us, and if so, what harm?  We'll go and
dine as well as the best of them, in the main room.  What do you say,
Miss Delaware?"



X

She stood facing him now, seeming years older than she had a few
moments before.  A very skilled observer might possibly have suspected
a certain new quality in the calmness of her eye.  Beautiful she
certainly was; alluring, irresistible in the ancient appeal of woman,
she certainly ought to have been, and would have been to any but this
particular man who now stood facing her, half smiling; a man of middle
age, gray about the temples, of heavy-browed eyes, strongly lined face,
of strong and bony frame; not an ill-looking or unmanly man one might
have said, though years older than this young woman who stood now
threading between her fingers the filmy moonshine chain which suspended
the points of flame that rose and fell upon her bosom.

At last she said, hesitating, and holding up the flaming pendant, "I'm
not to keep them?"

"No, Marguerite!" he smiled.  "This particular Papa Faust retains a
string on those jewels.  They have been seen elsewhere, my dear girl.
No, one night's use of them is all this business proposition carries,
my dear."

He began to be just a shade more familiar; but she looked at him, still
curiously helpless, because she found him strong where most men are
weak and defenseless.  He caught some sort of challenge in her attitude
and in spite of himself trod a half step forward....  She evaded him.
He heard her laughter rippling in the hall, and followed....  Soon they
were in the crowded lift, packed in against shirt front and aigrette,
silks and jewels, arms and bosoms bared for the evening's fray.



XI

It may be true that no gentleman is grown in less than three
generations, but it is not the case that it requires three generations
to produce an aristocrat; and here was simple and perfect proof of that
assertion.  Head waiters make no mistakes!  The head-waiter of the main
hall unhesitatingly took John Rawn and his companion to as good a table
as there was in the room.  He knew the air of distinction when he saw
it!

Heads, in plenty, of men and other women, turned as they passed through
in that careless throng of the world-wise and blasé.  They walked by
quietly, simply, took their places with no ostentation.  John Rawn had
bethought him earlier as to the dinner order.  He gave his directions
now quietly, without hesitation.

The two ate and drank discreetly, comported themselves, in fact, easily
as any of these scores of others.  They did not lean toward each other
and obviously talk secrets, they did not laugh uneasily and stare
about.  Among the many well-bred women in that room--where at least a
few such were present--none showed an easier accustomedness than
Virginia Delaware.  Her eagerness, her feverish anxiety, all now were
gone.  She was perfectly in hand.  It was her pleasure now only to
prove her fitness for such a scene, to comport herself as though she
had known no other surroundings than these in all her life.  Once more
the miracle of possibility in the young American woman was shown.

Rawn, discreet as his companion, looked on with approval.  "You're
_it_!" he once whispered across the table, as he bent above the menu.
"You _are_ the part!"  Suddenly there came to him out of this occasion
an additional surge of self-confidence.  Yes, he said to himself, he,
too, could travel this gait.  He could step easily into this life, the
summit of life in America--as he thought--as though born to it.  He
could spend money with the best.  He could obtain for himself as
beautiful a woman to wear his jewels as any man here in all this great
city.  He could as widely advertise his power, his wealth, as any of
these.  Did he not see envious eyes bent upon his companion and upon
himself?  It was done!  He had won!  He had succeeded!



XII

After all, it had been easy, as he had found so many things easy in the
test.  As to the young woman with him, John Rawn's cold heart went out
in admiration.  "By Jove!" he said, "she's a _lady_, that's what she
is.  She'd be--"  Yet it is to be noted that his admiration for this
young woman was primarily based not upon the usual impulses of men so
situated, but upon a vast self-respect, for that _he_ had placed her
here and so proved his own judgment to be good.  Some souls are slow to
any love but that of self, the approbation of self being the breath of
life to them.  Even the beauty of Virginia Delaware--and she was
beautiful--was swallowed up in John Rawn's love and admiration for
himself.

There was, thus far, no suggestion of impropriety between them, now or
later.  They dined long, deliberately and well.  Miss Delaware drank no
wine, Rawn himself only abstemiously.  The keenest delight of the
evening felt by either came not of food or drink.  The intoxication of
the city's night life fell upon them, entered their souls.  Distant and
low-voiced musical instruments set the air athrob with sensuous melody.
Flowers bloomed, jewels blazed, soft voices rose, wine added its
stimulus here and there.  Cut beyond this luxury, this sensuousness,
beyond the novelty of it, beyond the vague impulses of a common
humanity which runs through all the world, they felt the last and
subtle delight which comes with an admitted assuredness of self--the
consciousness of power and ability to prevail, the certainty of knowing
all the path, all the full orbit of the great.



XIII

As they sat thus calmly, apparently, as most might have said, old
habitués of scenes like this, apparently persons of wealth and
distinction, Rawn felt once more bent upon him the look of a passer-by.
There approached the table where they sat the couple he had seen
earlier that evening, a stately and beautiful young woman, whose
features now were a trifle more animated, whose eyes were brighter; and
with her the same dyspeptic director, sallow, with pointed dark beard.
His face flushed still more as he saw John Rawn and his companion.  He
turned an admiring gaze upon the latter, whom of course he did not
recognize.  Rawn caught the gaze.  It was the keenest delight of his
evening that he could smile back, showing his own teeth also.

"By Jove!" muttered the ex-director to himself.

"I beg pardon!" haughtily commented his own fair companion, who had
caught his gaze aside.  "You know that person?  Who is she?"

"I don't know, my dear--I'm just trying to think.  Her face--it looks
like the goddess on some stock certificate I've seen--"

"Indeed?"

"Yes, goddess with a handful of lightning bolts."

"Indeed?"

"Yes.  We might call her the 'Lady of the Lightnings' to-night.  She
surely does shine like the bright and morning star, the way she's
illuminated--eh, what?"

"Indeed?"

"Well, hang it all!  Yes.  She's a looker, too!"

"Indeed?"

"Yes, _indeed_!  And they both look like ready money."  The ex-director
gave a little laugh.

"You don't know them?" asked his companion, more placated as they
readied the corridor, where Virginia Delaware was at last out of sight.

"No, I don't know her--never saw her before, unless, as I said, in an
engraving.  Don't worry--I haven't got any of the engravings--now."

"Who is he?"

"Fellow by name of Rawn, from Chicago."

"Oh!"



CHAPTER VII

JOHN RAWN, PROMINENT CITIZEN

I

The blare and blaze of American life went on in all its capitals of
industry.  Buildings sprang up, factories poured their smoke
unceasingly into the sky.  Men ran hither and thither like ants, busy
about what seemed to them of importance.  Vast hives of heaped-up stone
twice daily poured out their population of small creatures, some of
them crippled, hurt, shorn in the battle of life, their faces pale,
their forms bowed and stunted before their time.  Out of the rich West
poured always a steady stream of the products of the soil and of the
mines, wealth unspeakable, dug from the resources of this admirable
country of ours.  Many produced it, a few controlled it, all required
it.

But there came a sort of hush over all the country, as though an
eclipse were passing, or some gloom cast by a cloud coming between
these cities and the sun.  Men said that business was not so good as it
should be, though the country was richer than ever.  None understood
the popular unrest.  Many pondered, many attempted to explain, but they
found all save the easy and obvious explanation.  The masses remained
morose, dissatisfied.  Pamphlets appeared.  In the journals pretending
to give voice to popular trend of thought there were now to be seen
many screeds from many unknown men.  Some men said that prices should
rise, others that rates of transportation should rise, but that wages
should decrease.  Others said that wages should increase--a few only of
these, not many; for those who needed most a larger wage were those
most dumb of expression, least able and least apt to make any public
protest.  Our proudest may be our poorest--our neediest our most silent.



II

In John Rawn's slowly growing factories near the western capital wages
did not rise.  He kept on his fight with the labor organizations.  For
this reason he met additional expense and additional delay in carrying
on his plans, but still waged war, relaxing not at all, meeting pickets
with policemen, force with force.  The popular discontent of the day
meant nothing to him.  His eye was fixed ahead.  To Halsey's complaints
on the one side, his directors' discreet grumbling on the other, he
paid as little attention on the one hand as upon the other.  John Rawn
had a dream, and he knew that his dream must come true.  His dream was
one of a wide-reaching and relentless power, shared by those few men
destined by fate to own the so-called American republic.  Let the
people do what they would, all they could.  This was his dream.  It had
come to him in all its fullness one evening in the great city of the
East.  He exulted.

As to the industrial situation in International Power, Rawn now began
to prove himself a good business man, and he received more and more the
grudged confidence of his associates, who came from almost every rank
of big business.  Through the aid and advice of these, his private
fortune began to mount up enormously.  So also did International Power
make money.  The only sore place of the directors' overstrained nerves
centered in affairs at the gaunt building in the suburb, where a dozen
mysterious machines, toothed and armed, cogged and coiled, still stood
in a state of half-completion, as inchoate and mysterious now as they
had been at their inception.  None of the workmen, none of the foremen,
could guess what they would look like when completed.

There was something else, which not the most suspicious guessed--_John
Rawn himself did not know!_  His success was a vast bubble.  Halsey was
the only man who ever had known the full secret of mantling one of the
miraculous receivers which they all had seen and all had accepted.
Rawn, bold enough, kept this to himself, although he feared to go to
Halsey and make any demands.  Halsey held grim peace for
months--indeed, for more than four years in all, counting from the
first motor made in the Kelly Row woodshed.  It was risky, but for once
Rawn dared make no desperate move.  Halsey talked little.  He was very
sad since the birth of his hunchbacked child.  Sometimes he talked to
Virginia Delaware about it; never to his wife, Grace.

And still the seven days' wonder of International Power remained to
puzzle the industrial world.  No inkling of the real intention of the
company ever got out.  There was, as Rawn had predicted, no market for
the stock, for the reason that it was not listed and for the further
reason that it was not sold.  It was held in a close communion of
hard-headed and close-mouthed men, and there were no confidences
betrayed.  The thing was too big to conform to ordinary rules.  In the
center of all this stood the figure of John Rawn, suddenly grown large
and strong.  He ruled his army, officers, staff and line, cavalry,
infantry and auxiliaries, as one born originally to command.  He
brooked neither parleying nor thwarting of his will--except in one
instance.  He never made any demands on Halsey, never gave him any
peremptory orders after that one day in the office, months earlier,
before Halsey made his first trip to New York.



III

These months seemed to have aged John Rawn, none the less.  He grew
grimmer and grayer, more taciturn and reserved.  At the clubs he was
one of the most talked-of men in town, and one who talked least
himself.  As his hair grew grayer at the temples, his jaw grew harder,
at the corner of his chin coming the triangular wrinkles which go with
hard-faced middle age.  Enigmatic, self-centered, he could not have
been called a happy man.  He smiled but rarely, joked not at all,
engaged in no badinage, told no stories, found no lighter side of life,
played no golf, had no vacations.  Like some vast engine of tremendous
driving power he went on his way, admired in a city and country full of
able men, as one competent to hold his own with the best and strongest
of them all.  And still of all his traits stood out the one of
self-confidence.  He played a game of enormous and continuous
risk--fundamental risk by reason of Halsey, incidental by reason of his
widely ballooned market operations; yet his nerve held.  Moreover, he
was learning the price of success--an absolute devotion to the means of
success.  When he learned that the child of his daughter was not a son,
but a girl, and that it was a hunchback for life, a sad-faced,
unsmiling child--he set his jaws for a moment, but said few words of
condolence, either to his daughter or her husband.  He did not smile
for three months after that, and never referred to this subject again,
after its first discussion with his wife at Graystone Hall; but it cost
him no time and no energy lost from business.  It only deepened in his
soul his growing hatred for Charley Halsey, the man whom he dared not
chide.



IV

In the headquarter offices a vast, smooth running business machine had
now been built up.  Rawn was an organizer.  The laxness and looseness
of the old railway offices in St. Louis, where he had got his business
schooling, were missing in the headquarters of International Power.
Employees had small time to gossip in business hours.  Out of business
hours, it is to be confessed, once in a while there was discussion as
to the salary of Miss Virginia Delaware, which was reported a wholly
instable affair.  It was rumored in stenographic circles that she had
taken to wearing very stunning evening gowns.  Yet not the most
captious--though willingness did not lack--could raise voice against
her, or couple her name with any other.  Rawn and she were never seen
together excepting during business hours; he never mentioned her name
in any company.  Once or twice a laughing voice at the National Union,
where rich men met in numbers, tried to create some sort of discussion
over Rawn's beautiful private secretary, but it was so suddenly stopped
by Rawn himself that it never was resumed.

Upon the other hand, few could speak in definite knowledge regarding
the domestic matters of John Rawn.  He was a man of mystery, though one
of known and admitted power.  He held what he gained; and, as there
must have been accorded to him strength of soul, grasp, readiness,
courage, he began to be accepted as one of the large figures of his day
alike in industry and finance.  He had by this time fully arrived in
the prominent citizen class in his chosen metropolis.  Did firemen
perish, John Rawn joined the list of those who aided the widows.  Was
some neighboring city swept by flames, again he joined--on the front
page of the papers--those who gave succor for the needy.  Did a famine
in India or China sweep off a million souls, John Rawn--on the front
page--aided the survivors.  He was a member of the leading clubs of the
city, a director of the board of the art institute.  He bought if he
did not occupy a box at the opera, and allowed his name to be mentioned
at the banquets offered by eager souls to celebrities of one sort or
another who proved themselves amenable to receptions, banquets,
addresses of welcome, and what-not, anything to bring lesser names into
print on any page, tails to any kite.  In short, John Rawn comported
himself as a prominent citizen should.  Ever he was the kite, never the
tail.  He loomed a large and growing figure in his little world.



V

Above all, there seemed something uncanny in the unvarying facility
with which Rawn made money.  There is no real explanation of the
difference in money-making power, except that some men make money and
some do not.  Rawn did, without any doubt or question.  Not lacking
ability and calmness in judgment, and not lacking full information such
as is accorded those said to be upon the sacred inside of the market,
he was in and out of Rubber, Coppers, Steel, at precisely the right
time.  His oil investments in California, played up and down in proper
symphony, had made him more than a million dollars, smoothly, easily,
simply.  The railways market was an open book to him, and Public
Utilities seemed something he could gage while others stood and
wondered.  There are times when some men win.  Rawn could not lose,
whether he dealt in Ontario Silvers, Arizona Coppers, anything he
liked.  He was in with the pack when, in these last fierce days of
individual and corporate greed, it finished pulling down a republic,
and battened, guzzled at the bowels of the quarry.  He partook with
these of a broad knowledge of the narrowing raw resources of the
country, and was in with them at the death.  He was one of those to get
hold of large acreages of the passing timber lands, he was counted with
those who sought the great coal fields for their own; ran true to
scent, with these, the trail of monopoly in any commodity which the
people more and more must need.  In the one matter of his relations
with a certain transcontinental railway, Rawn made a quarter million as
his share of the three-quarters of a billion taken in sales of mineral
lands from the railway's land-grant holdings.  That the grants had
covered only agricultural lands mattered little, for when the sleepy
government at Washington reluctantly took the trail, it was shown a
law, cunningly passed a few years earlier, which barred the republic,
by virtue of a six-year statute of limitations, from recovering any of
its own property!  John Rawn often laughed over that.  He laughed also
when the "suckers," as they called them, bit just as eagerly at
irrigation as they had at mines.  He often laughed--it was all so
ridiculously easy to pull down a country, when the running was in good
company!  He was a prominent citizen.

[Illustration: (Rawn and Laura)]



CHAPTER VIII

A PRINCELY GENEROSITY

I

Mr. Rawn went on with the pack.  He was in and out of the market.  His
money grew.  His ambition also grew.  He felt coming now upon him
another change.  He said to himself that he was now about to pass up,
into yet another era of his development.

One day, after his usual day's routine, he closed his office door, took
his car at the curb, dropped in at his club, imbibed the two cocktails
which were now his evening wont, and again emerging, nodded to his
chauffeur in the fashion which meant "Home!"  They passed on out again
through the floating crowd of various and often vulgar vehicles,
northbound--shrieking aloud in a vast united chorus, demanding speed,
speed, and yet more speed--along the throbbing arteries of the city's
population.  At last he stopped once more at the front of Graystone
Hall.  "Forty-five minutes, Dennis," said he to his driver, snapping
his watch.  "Twenty-one miles; you'll learn it after a while."

Mr. Rawn was in exceptional good humor.  He was at peace with the world
and with his conscience.  He looked about him now calmly, with
approbation in his gaze.  His gardeners had done wonders.  The walks
were solid and well kept, the greensward sound and flourishing.  These
late stubbed and desolate trees were now wide, green and branching.
The crocus borders were unbroken, the formal monochrome beds, here and
there upon the lawn, showed clean-cut and distinct.  The tall pillars
of his motley house even had a green veiling of ivy, swiftly grown by
art, and not by time.  On a terrace a bed of foliage plant, thirty feet
long, grew in the shape of a word--a magic word--"_Rawn_."  If any
passer-by wished knowledge as to the creator of all this, he might read
as he ran--"_Rawn_."

Rawn passed up the steps and looked out through the long hallway from
the rear of the house, or rather its real front, which lay upon the
lake shore.  Beyond, he could see the faint curl of the distant
steamers' smoke against the horizon.  He stopped for a moment, drinking
in the scene, of which he never tired.  There were birds twittering
softly in the trees about him.  He caught the breath of flowers, coming
to him from the halls within.  Yes, it was an abode suited for a
prominent citizen.

There came to meet him now the quiet footfall which he had come to
expect, not always patiently or with pleasure, as the natural end of
his day's labors; his wife, Laura, had never forgotten this daily
greeting of the old-fashioned wife to her husband, as the latter
returned at the close of his day's labor.



II

He stopped as he heard her slow tread upon the stair.  She was coming
to meet him.  She always did.  He, John Rawn, controller of men, a man
born to succeed and going yet higher, had only, after all, an
old-fashioned wife!

It was an emergency this evening.  He was accustomed to meet
emergencies.  He had come to-night prepared to meet this one.

"Laura," said he, after the servants had drawn the curtains and left
them alone in the central room, whither they had repaired after dinner;
"sit down here, I want to talk to you a while."

"Yes, John," said she quietly.  But she looked at him startled.  Her
face grew suddenly grave.  Be sure the brute advancing to the poll-ax
knows its fate.  That was the look in Laura Rawn's face now.  "Yes,
John," she said, knowing what blow was to be hers.

He motioned her to a seat beyond the little table and seated himself
opposite.  Reaching into a bulging pocket, he brought out a thick
bundle of folded papers; long, narrow papers, most of them green,
others brown, or pale pink.  He pushed this bundle across the table, so
that his wife must see it.  She reached out a hand, but did not look at
it.

"What is it, John?" she said.  Her hand tarried, her face went still
more weary and gray, became even of an ashier pallor than was its wont.

"It's a trifle, Laura," said John Rawn.  "Look at it.  There's bonds
and gilt-edge dividend-payers for just exactly _one million dollars_!"

"One million _dollars_, John!  What do you mean?"

"Look at it, see for yourself."

"But, John--what does it mean?"

"It means a great deal, Mrs. Rawn, a great deal for you.  It took some
work to make it on my part.  There are not ten men in this town to-day
who could draw out of their business clean, unhypothecated securities
for a million dollars.  I've seen to it that all these are registered
in your name.  It's my gift to you, without reservation."

"John, how could I thank you--but I don't want it!  I've not earned it,
I wouldn't know what to do with it.  You're always so--so kind, John,
with me.  But I can't take it!  It's not mine!"

"It is yours, Laura.  And you've got to take it!"

"But I don't want to!"

"I want no foolishness," he said sternly.  "That money is yours.  You
can use it as you like.  Of course, I will counsel with you as to
reinvestment the best I can.  I don't want to see the interest wasted.

"I don't ever want to see you in need," he went on.  "I don't counsel
loose investments.  My lawyers will also tell you what to do with your
money, and they'll put up to you a list of good, safe, savings-bank
investments, the kind that fools and sailors ought to have.  I'll help
you choose, if you like.  I don't want to be ungenerous.  This is your
estate."



III

"My _estate_!--But, John, I'm your wife!  I don't care for this money.
I don't understand it, and I don't want it.  I want to be your _wife_,
John, the way I always was--I want to help--I want to be useful to you
all the time, as I've always tried to be."

"Precisely, Laura, and I appreciate that feeling very much.  I feel the
same way.  I want to be as useful as I can to you.  We have always been
loyal to each other, faithful with each other; I know that.  There are
not ten men worth my money in this town to-day who can say what I
can--that they've been faithful to their wives as I have been to mine.
You've been a good woman, and you've worked hard.  You say you haven't
earned this money, but I think you have.  We've been useful, yes, to
each other.  But when we can't be any more, Laura, why then--"

The tears burst from her eyes now.  He frowned, that she should
interrupt him, but went on.

"It shall never be said that I was unkind to you, Laura.  Indeed, I
shall always feel kindly to you--always remember what you have done."

"But you don't, you _don't_, John!"

"I don't?  What do you mean by that, Laura?  Isn't there the proof?
Isn't there a _million dollars_ lying right in front of you on that
table?  And you say this to me, who have just given you a cold
_million_!"

"That's it, it's a _cold_ million, John," said she bitterly.  "It's
_cold_!"

"Good God!  The unreasonableness of woman!" said John Rawn, upturning
his eyes.  "Now I've thought all this out as carefully as a man can.
I've denied myself, to take this much capital out of my investments and
set it aside for you.  I can make five millions out of that money in
the next five years.  But no, I reserve it, and I give it to you
without stint.  I give it to you for your estate, so that you shall
never know want--more money than you ever had a right to dream of
having.  You do that for a woman, and what does she say?  Why, she
doesn't _want_ it!  Good God!"



IV

"John," she said, struggling for her self-control, "you might at least
tell the truth."

"What do you mean--the truth?"

"It's some other woman, of course!"

"I swear to you, Laura, it's nothing of the sort.  I've been guilty of
no act with any one--"  But she shook her head.

"Don't I know?" she said.  "It's always another woman.  She's a young
woman, whoever she is.  Why don't you come out and tell me the truth,
John?  How long before you're going to be married?"  The tears were
welling steadily from her eyes, under the last of the many and bitter
torments which are so often a woman's lot.

"I say to you again, Laura, there are no plans of that sort in my mind!"

"Then how long will it be before our--our--"  She could not say the
word "divorce."  She had been an old-fashioned wife.

"I've no plans as to that.  I was only wanting to discuss the matter
quietly to-night, without any disturbance."

"No," she said, "I must not break down!  Tell me, when does it come,
John?"  But still the tears came, steadily, and she made no effort to
stop them.

"When you like.  I would suggest that you quietly go to some other
place, Laura.  That will be best for me.  Why--" he added this in a
burst of confidence, "--there wouldn't be twenty people around town
would know you'd gone!  I can keep a close tongue, and so can you."

"But, John, why should we?  I've never crossed you in any way.  I've
always tried to do what you liked.  Why should we part?  I'll be
willing just to live along here quietly.  I can't bear to think of
going away.  I like my things.  John," she said suddenly, and seemingly
irrelevantly, "who told you about all these things, these collectors'
pieces that you've been getting for so long?"

He winced with sudden self-revelation, astonished at this intuition on
her part.  He had been sincere in his statement that there was no other
woman in his affections.  He had only forgotten that he had no
affections.  He flushed now, but tried to pull together.

"Very well, Laura," said he; "you only prove to me what I've felt for
some time.  You can't understand me, you simply are not up to my
requirements.  I'm willing to say _you'd_ be content to live along
here, just as we did at Kelly Row.  _I_ am not content to do anything
of the sort.  I've been thinking over this, studying over it for some
time.  There's the answer."  He nodded toward the bundle which lay upon
the table.



V

"It's no use trying to make the world all over again, Laura," he said
after a time.  "We've both done our best, but our best didn't tally.
We've hung together.  What's right is right.  Is it right for me to be
dragged down by your own limitations--ought I to stop in my own career
to conform to that?  Would that be right, now, Laura, for a man like
me?--Is it right for any man?  If you can't go forward, ought I to go
back?  If we can't both travel the same gait, whose gait ought to
govern?  Whatever you do, don't blame me, that's all.  But you _did_
blame me--you do now."  A grave look sat upon his face.  He felt
himself an injured man.

"Yes, John," she said.  "I do."

"Of course, of course!  That's the reward a man gets for loving his
wife, treating you as I have.  Well, we're not the first to face a
situation of just this kind.  Things travel swifter now than they did
when we were children, or when we were married.  What did then will not
do to-day.  Why blame ourselves for that?--blame the time, the way of
the world, the way things go to-day.  This country has changed--it goes
faster every year.  We've got to keep the pace, I tell you, when we get
into it.  Those who can't must drop out, and that's all there is about
it.  I was born for the front, and that's all about that.  Don't blame
me.  I've never blamed you!"

"Then, what _do_ you blame, John?"

"Nothing, I say.  It's the way life runs.  We're married, why?  Because
we thought we were to have some property to protect.  There is much to
be said in favor of the marriage institution.  It holds property safe
under its contract.  _Property_--that's the sign of power!  _Property_
is the only reason for marriage; or for government, when it comes to
that.  _Property_ is the token of power.  I've got that!  But something
else goes with it!  Why, Laura, when I look at us both I wonder that
I've been patient so long, held back as I have been by your own narrow
ideas.  If you'd had your way, you'd have set up Kelly Row right where
we are now!"



VI

"I'm old-fashioned, John," said she, her head high, though her tears
fell free, "I'm just an old-fashioned, worn-out wife, that's all.  I'm
not so very much, John, and I never thought I was very much.  I just
did the best I could, all the time.  I couldn't seem to do any more,
John.  I don't know how.  I did my best!"

"We all do!" said John Rawn philosophically.  "We all do our best.  But
when our best isn't good enough to keep us up, we go down!"

He spoke generously, gravely, judicially.  He was arbiter, in his own
belief, not husband.  The country had changed since they two had
married.

"Yes, there's much to be said for the institution of marriage, Laura,"
he repeated after a time.  "In fact, it is a necessity, as society is
organized.  But divorce is a natural corollary of marriage.  There are
contracts, and broken contracts.  That's all!"

"What is a--a corollary, John?" she asked.

"It's a consequence; it is something that follows.  I meant to say,
that if it is right for two people to be married, it is right for them
to be divorced when the time comes.  It's _property_, and the
consequences to property, which sometimes determine that!"

"But we said, John, when we were married--I swore it with all my
heart--'Till death do us part!'  It isn't death.  I wish it were!"

"No, it's property," said John Rawn.



VII

"But all this serves no purpose," he continued.  "I don't want to have
you make this hard for me!"

"Ah, God!  How you've changed, John, since the old times!  How you've
changed!"

"So that's it, is it?" he rejoined bitterly, "I've only changed, and
you're sorry that I changed.  Well, suppose we agree to that.  I _have_
changed!"

"What do you want me to do, John?" she asked after a time, her breath
still, in spite of herself, coming in sobs.  "When do you want me to
go?"

"To-morrow, Laura.  There's no use waiting."

"Very well; where shall I go?"

"Why, I don't dictate to you, Laura--I leave that all for you to
determine.  You can be happy as you like, and where you please.  I
would only suggest, if you ask me, that you take up a residence in some
quiet community, a sort of place that seems to suit you."

"Very well, John; I've not many friends here to leave, that's true.
I've not been happy here; I never would be.  I'll agree to that much.
I believe I'll go back to our old town--I'd feel better there!"

"You've good judgment, Laura," he noted with approbation.  "What you
say has good sense about it.  Very likely you'd be more happy there
than here.  But wherever you go, don't forget your old husband, John.
Deep in my work as I shall be, I will always think of you, Laura, with
nothing but kindness.  I want you to think that way of me--to remember
that I've been kind to you, always.  You will, won't you, dear?"

She did not seem to hear.  Her face was bowed down upon her arms, flung
out across the table.  She was an old-fashioned woman, and still silly
enough to pray to the God who had placed her in this world of puzzles.



END OF BOOK TWO



BOOK THREE



CHAPTER I

THE EXTREME MONOGAMY OF MR. RAWN

I

It is always more or less annoying to put away a wife.  Even if the
expense of the process be little, as in these modern days it has come
to be, and even if consent thereto be mutual, as is so often the case,
there are in practically all cases so many unpleasant attendant
features as almost to dispose one to favor the abolishment of the
marriage idea, and to condemn it as one not destined to survive in
these days of modern competition.  This, the more especially as regards
that monogamic idea of marriage which the government at Washington
harshly seeks to extend over our entire domain.  As to the idea of
polygamy, much may be said in its favor.  Thus, if one be tired of one
wife, or bored by another, in polygamy it is easy to shift the domestic
scene to a third, and that in wholly good-humored fashion.  The idea of
divorce has about it something almost personal, as though one were
displeased over some matter, as though one held in one's heart
something actually of criticism, or dissatisfaction, or mayhap
condemnation of one's own earlier judgment in the selection of a
helpmeet.

Again, even after divorce has been consummated, there are so many small
habits to be broken, heritage and hold-over of relations but recently
sundered.  For instance, if one has been accustomed every Friday
evening to have shoulder of pork and boiled cabbage at table, and if
only one woman has evinced ability to prepare shoulder of pork and
cabbage in the proper manner, and if that woman has chanced to be one's
lately current wife, it is, let us repeat, an annoying thing to find
that that particular woman, after deliberately forming and fostering in
one a craving for shoulder of pork and cabbage--after having
established an addiction, as it were, in one's soul for that viand--has
with shameless disregard of wifely duty and domestic decency obliged
one to divorce her, perhaps _ex vinculo_, or at least _ab mensa et
thoro_.

And again there may be yet other habits upon the one hand or the other
which must be broken or readjusted.  If one's wife--or one of one's
wives--has been in the habit of leaving her tatting each afternoon on
the top of the table near the best view out of the bow window, and if
one sees continually this abandoned tatting permanently left there in
the confusion of her permanent departure--it is annoying, let us
repeat, to be reminded of a habit to whose creator we have said
farewell.  It causes a mental ennui constantly to be removing tatting
or embroidery.

Or, if one's current wife has had the old-fashioned and not wholly
well-bred habit of meeting one at the door of an evening, at the close
of the day's labors--just as in the evening the cave woman greeted her
man at the mouth of the cave to ask him what had been the fortune of
the day's hunt--and if now that footfall, ill-bred, yet after all
habitual--and was it wholly unwelcome, after all?--shall have ceased
for ever, with what equanimity, let us ask, can we regard the memory of
the woman who formed that habit and handed down an annoying expectation
to her husband, impossible of fulfillment after her departure?

It is, as John Rawn wisely has said, true that much may be said in
favor of the idea of marriage; yet upon the other hand, how very much
there is that could be said against it, or at least against it as
implying an unrestricted continuance, offering no change in
association.  The which is by way of saying something to prove John
Rawn's excellently philosophical course in life to have been quite
correct.  There could have been no doubt as to the wisdom of his
marrying Laura, his wife, in the first place, no doubt as to the wisdom
of continuing the marriage relation with her for many years; but, upon
the other hand, it is obvious that his idea of the timeliness of the
divorce in due season was equally wise.  Indeed, the only reservation
in his mind in regard to this latter matter was one of censure for a
woman who, having entered into the holy state of matrimony with a
gentleman of his parts, had had the temerity to create in his soul an
addiction for shoulder of pork and cabbage; who had left her tatting
upon the table; and who, departing, had given no future address whither
her tatting might be sent!  Yes, Laura Rawn had been, without doubt or
question, an unreasonable and unkind wife.

Above all it was wrong for a woman to go away and leave her late
husband feeling so much alone.  Why should he, John Rawn, be allowed to
become conscious of a feeling of lonesomeness?  Why should he be left
to dread the drawing of the curtains at night, when there remained only
the pound of the surf along the wall, the wail of the wind in the
cornice?  One chloroforms a formerly prized dog, but misses it.  It is
much the same way with the divorced wife.  Too many unpleasant features
attend the process of such separation.  Any civilization worth the name
ought to devise some method less annoying for this which Mr. Rawn has
so fittingly described as the corollary of the marriage rite.  Surely
our boasted age has its drawbacks, its shortcomings!



II

Some men in such circumstances brood; some drink; others search out the
other woman or women.  John Rawn was cast in different mold.  He had,
in short, spoken truth when he told his wife that he had no new
matrimonial plans.  Situated thus, yet handicapped thus in his
new-found solitude, but a few days had passed before he sent over for
his daughter, Grace, and her husband, Charles Halsey; there being in
his mind a plan to mitigate certain unpleasant features of his life as
he now found it ordered.

He greeted Halsey and Grace at the door gravely, with dignity, when
they came one evening in response to his invitation.  They entered,
just a trifle awed, as they always were, by the august surroundings of
Graystone Hall, so different from their own cottage near the factory.
The owner of the place looked well the part of owner here.  John Rawn
still was large and strong, the city had not yet much softened his
lines.  His hair now was whiter about the temples, but its whiteness
left his appearance only the more distinguished.  You scarce could have
found in all the haunts of prominent citizens a better example of
prominent citizen than himself, John Rawn.

The major domo took the wraps of the young people and vanished
silently.  Rawn, waiting for them in the drawing-room--not in the hall,
as once he would have done--with dignity motioned them to places in his
presence, even brought a low chair himself for the sad-faced,
hunchbacked child which represented the Rawn succession in the third
generation.

"Go kiss grandpa, Lola!" said Grace to her daughter; and went to show
her the way.  But the child, turning suddenly, only hid her face in her
mother's skirt.

"Laura's timid," apologized the mother.  The disapproval on her
father's face was obvious enough.  He had passed bitter hours alone,
pondering over this child, hesitating whether to love it or to hate it,
whether to accept it or to regard it as a blot upon his life.  He had
hoped a grandson, since he no longer might hope a son of his own.  This
crippled child was the sole Rawn succession.  His pendulous lower lip
trembled for a time in the self-pity which now and again came to John
Rawn.  It seemed hard enough that he, John Rawn, president of the
International Power Company, should have no better evidence of
gratitude on the part of fortune.  He hated Halsey all the more.



III

But now he did not lack directness.  "Grace," he said, "I've called you
over to-night because to-morrow, as you know, is Friday."

"Yes, Pa."

"And as you know, Grace, your mother--that is to say, the late Mrs.
Rawn, always had the way--in short, I may say that she induced me to
depend upon--I mean to say that always she had shoulder of pork and
cabbage for Friday evening.  Now, I am left alone, helpless--it is too
much!"

Mr. Rawn made no attempt wholly to conceal his just emotion.  "Now look
at me," he resumed.  "Your mother went away, and selfishly neglected to
take into consideration this habit, or to provide any means for meeting
it.  My chef has tried often to prepare this dish.  I must say he
always has failed."

"Why don't you write to Mrs. Rawn and ask her for the recipe?" asked
young Halsey soberly.

"That is not practical," rejoined Mr. Rawn icily, "even did I know that
lady's present address; as I do not."

His daughter sat gazing straight at him, under her heavy brows, but
made no comment.  Grace had not improved with years.  Her face was
heavy, pasty, her expression morose.  The corners of her mouth turned
down, and deep vertical frown-wrinkles sat between her dark eyebrows.

"But I do not wish that name mentioned again," said John Rawn raising a
hand.  "I dismissed that thought of asking her aid as something
unworthy of me.  Let Friday come.  I shall seek no aid outside of those
from whom it may fitly be expected."  Ah, hero!



IV

"Now, Grace," he continued later, turning toward her, "I know very well
you're a good housekeeper."

"She is that!" Halsey nodded.  Continually he forced himself into such
approval of his wife as he could compass.  Continually he refused
comparisons.

"Precisely, and skilled in all the dishes which the late Mrs. Rawn had
as specialties.  You do not know how things are running here, Grace.  I
can't get anything done on time, I'm at untold expense all the time,
and am deprived of what I really want.  Grace, I need a housekeeper!"

"Surely, Pa.  Why don't you hire one?"

"How much better off would I be in that case?  None in the least.  No,
I want you.  You'll have to come over here to live!"

The young couple sat gazing at him for a time before making reply.

"That's impossible, Pa," said Grace.  "I have a home of my own, and
it's more than twenty miles from here."

John Rawn raised a hand.  "I have thought all that out.  You reason
now, as so many do, when any distinct change of life is proposed to
them.  You let the little things outweigh the larger ones.  It was a
fault your mother had.  Now the large matter, the really important
thing, is this--that I can not be allowed to live on here in this way
with all these annoyances.  Too much depends upon me, in business, for
me to have the quiet and peace of my life interfered with.  I've got to
have a clear head--especially on Saturday.  Now, then, if you can step
in here, my daughter, and establish in some measure the sort of life I
have always been used to, evidently that is your duty, and you ought
not to balance against it the small inconveniences which that course
would cause you and your husband.  I'm quite sure you can teach that
chef--"

"But, Mr. Rawn, I've got to be at the factory almost day and night!"
broke in Halsey.

"Precisely.  I do not mean for you to make your home here, only Grace.
You'll have to stay on where you are.  Of course, you can come here at
times to report, at least once or twice a week--say Friday night.  Very
much depends on you, Charles.  You know how much I value you, how much
I rely on your services.  Really, it all depends on you, our success as
a company.  We've been very patient, although I must say--"



V

Halsey muttered something under his breath and turned away.  His
attitude angered Rawn to the point of forgetting himself.

"Never mind what you think about it, young man!  It's what _I_ think
about it that counts.  Grace belongs here, anyhow.  She will have a
wider life with me.  It's time she had some things which she has never
known.  It may be necessary for us to travel, to see something of this
country and Europe.  Besides, this child needs care.  All these things
cost more money than you can afford, young man.  Don't try to balk me
in what I suggest.  It is obviously the right thing to do."

"But how long--"

"Indefinitely!"

"And you want me to break up my home 'indefinitely'?  Well, I must
confess I don't in the least see it that way, Mr. Rawn."

"You're selfish, and that's why you can't see it, Charles.  Above all
things you ought to avoid the vice of selfishness.  You are not parting
from your wife, but only helping her to a better grade of living.
Meantime, of course, your duty to her and to the company is to make a
success of your work.  Think of your business, my son.  There is no
good comes of selfishness.  Try to be just.  And for God's sake, also,
try to get one of those machines done!"

Halsey only sat and looked at him darkly for a time, making no reply.

"It seems to me that I can never get you to understand, Charles,"
resumed Rawn, "that things are not the way they used to be before we
came here to Chicago.  I'm a bigger man now than I was then.  I've
grown these last two or three years, my boy.  I should not be surprised
if eventually I were obliged to make my residence in New York, if
indeed not abroad.  We are rising in the world, rising very fast,
Charles.  Do you want to go up with the Rawns, or stay down with the
Halseys of this world?  Besides, in this case you ought to respect the
wishes of your own wife.  You want to remember, my dear boy, that my
daughter, Grace, is half Rawn as well as half Johnson.  The only
trouble with her is, the Rawn half has not yet had its innings."



VI

Halsey turned and stared at his wife.  He found her sitting with her
dark eyes fixed, now on her father, now wandering hither and yon over
the rich surroundings in her father's home.  To his intense surprise,
she had as yet issued no veto to this calm proposal to which they all
had listened.  In his surprise he forgot comment of his own.  What
caused him greatest surprise of all was his secret feeling that he was
not so reluctant to this arrangement as he ought to be!  He pondered
Grace, her sour visage, her morose air.  He recalled countless angry,
irritated, irritating words.  He looked, and saw no longer any feminine
charm.  It took all his resolution not to question why he had ever made
this choice.  Almost he began a certain comparison.

"Now let this end it," resumed John Rawn.  "Let comforts, and let
luxuries, come where they have been earned.  It's the Rawn half of
Grace that has earned the luxuries, Charles, if I am willing to give
them to her.  Take what you can get, my son, of comfort and luxury in
this life--after you've earned them.  But earn them first.  Your place
is over there at the works.  This is your opportunity.  Fall in with my
plans and I'll carry you along.  Don't try to hold Grace over there
when she belongs here.  Don't be selfish, Charles."

He relented just a trifle.  "I don't say this is going to last for
ever.  Pull off success over there for us.  I'll tell you what I'll
do--the day you can charge a storage battery car from one of our second
current receivers--finished and in place there in the factory--and run
it from the factory up here, I'll make you a present of fifty thousand
dollars."



VII

"And about Grace--?"  Ah! that comparison--

"She'll be a good deal closer to you then than she is now.  She's half
_Rawn_, I tell you, Charles; and love in a cottage does not suit the
Rawn blood to-day!

"But I'll tell you--" his face lightened a bit at the jest--"you can go
on with your brotherhood of man ideas over there at the factory.  I
hope you love them--those brothers who are trying to ruin me and this
company!  Try them out--associate with them--love them all you can.
Compare that life with this, my boy; and when you've done your work,
for which you are paid--when you can charge one car at one receiver,
and come from that life to this, on the strength of your brains and
your own ability, as I have come here myself--why, I say I'll give you
a slice of a million dollars!  Then you can compare that life with
this, and see how you like the two.  I've made up my mind already about
that!  So has Grace."

Halsey turned once more to his wife.  She had changed in the last few
minutes.  Her eye was brighter, her color higher.  She was gazing not
at her husband nor at her child, but at these rich surroundings.

"I wonder if I could play one of my old pieces on the piano any more
now?" she said gaily, rising and walking to the seat of the grand piano
which stood across the room from them.  "I've been so _busy_--"



CHAPTER II

ASPARAGUS, ALSO POTATOES

I

What is written is written.  Grace moved to Graystone Hall and Halsey
remained at the factory cottage; nor did the separation, which was
regarded by both as merely temporary after all, afflict either to the
extent that both had supposed it would.  Grace now became acting
mistress of a large and elaborate _ménage_.  As to her husband, his
domestic affairs fell into the hands of Mrs. Ann Sullivan, wife of Jim
Sullivan, Halsey's most trusted foreman in the factory.

Mrs. Sullivan, blessed with six children of her own, alleged that it
would be no trouble whatever to her to take on the sweeping, mending,
and all else for an additional household, and to furnish meals for the
solitary head thereof; and such was her ability to make proof of all
these statements that she in part was to blame for the sad truth that
Halsey was not as unhappy as he ought to have been.

The chief reason for Halsey's easy readjustment, however, lay somewhere
in his comparison of the Halsey blood with blood half Rawn.  Grace had
been cold, after all.  She had openly been discontented, and especially
unhappy since the birth of the deformed child.  She had left him and
gone to her father with no great protest; nor did she, at the occasions
of their rare and lessening visits, display more than lukewarm interest
in her husband and her former home.  Within six months she was
beginning to blossom out in raiment, in demeanor.  She spoke of things
not in his knowledge though in hers.  She was changing.  She was going
up in the world.  He, for the time at least, was doing no better than
to stand still; as the factory now was doing, and International Power,
also--marking time, waiting for something.



II

Ann Sullivan was not a bad philosopher, besides being a good cook, and
at times she did not hesitate to engage Mr. Halsey in conversation when
they met at this or that time of the day; as when by chance, one
noontide when he came home for lunch, he found her sweeping down the
front stair.

"You're lookin' lonesome to-day, Mr. Halsey," she remarked without much
preliminary.  "You're fair grievin' for your wife, I suppose?  But why
should you expict anny woman to stay here whin she has such a Pa, with
such a house as her Pa has?"

"Would you have gone over there, Mrs. Sullivan?" asked Halsey, stopping
and feeling in his pocket for a pipe of tobacco.  It was a question
they often had discussed.

"Would I?  In a minnit!  I'd lave Jim Sullivan for iver if I'd one
chanct such as your wife had."

She grinned, but her look belied her speech.

"What I'm wantin', Mr. Halsey," she went on, "is what anny woman wants.
I want a di'mond star to wear on me head whin I'm sweeping flures.  I
need di'mond earrings and bracelets to wear whin I'm makin' your beds,
you mind; and a silk dress that hollers 'I'm a-comin'!' whin I start
out to scrub the steps.  Ain't it the truth, Mr. Halsey?  Ain't that
what ivery woman in the wurrld, at laste in America, is wantin'?"

"Sure," nodded Halsey.  "Don't forget the automobile while you're
wishing."

"True it is!  Whut woman of anny social position has not got her
awtomo_beel_ to-day?  Luk at me.  If I had me rights, I'd have me
electric bro'om brought to the coorb ivery mornin' for me to go to
market; and ivery evenin', after I'd got me sweepin' done, I'd have me
long gray torpedy corm around to take me and Jim out fer a fast spin up
the bullyvard.  Me with di'monds on my hair, with rings on me fingers
an' bells on me toes, a-settin' there an' lukkin' scornful.  Oh, I was
born in Ireland, but I'm American now.  The day Jim Sullivan gives me
what is me due, and I git me first awtomo_beel_, 'twill be the proud
day fer me--the day whin I'm first fined fer vi'latin' the speed law of
the city.  'Tis a great counthry this!"



III

Mrs. Sullivan grinned happily at her romancing; but presently set her
broom against the door-jamb and turned to speak more in her real mind.

"Anny woman wants to blackguard a little once in a while, Mr. Halsey,
sir, and all women like to lie twice in a while.  I'm just lyin' to you
now, because the birds is singin' and the weather is so fine.

"Listen!  Anny woman that's goin' to be happy is goin' to be happy
because of the stomach she has for eatin', and the joy she has for
dancin', and the heart she has for love of her man and her childern.
And anny woman that has her heart in the right place is goin' to stand
by them and not by herself; and not by anny one ilse.  Try me and see
if I'm lyin' now!  You're the boss.  Fire Jim Sullivan to-day, and see
do I stick with him, or do I go with some man that gives me di'monds,
and awtamo_beels_.  I'd stick--and so'd anny other woman that loved her
man and her childern."

"I'm glad you think so, Mrs. Sullivan."

"You know I think so!  Oh, maybe it's because I wasn't born in this
country.  Over there, 'tis the woman helps to make the stake.  Here,
she helps to spend it.  'Tis a fine counthry this--fer policemin.  So
far as bein' happy in it's concerned, I dunno!  Maybe it's the Irish in
me that's happy, and not the American.  I dunno again.  'Tis all a
question which you want to be, rich or happy!"

"Or useful!" ventured Halsey.

"They're the same.  Bein' useful is bein' happy.  Ain't it the truth?"

Halsey nodded again and Mrs. Sullivan reached once more for her
implement of industry.

"Jim Sullivan fits in his job," said she.  "He's strong and can hold
his job all right.  I'm strong, and I can hold mine here, just the
same.  We've only six childern, and I wish 'twas a dozen.  No, it's no
trouble to take care of this house, too.  I'm only thinkin' of that
little lamb of yours she tuk away with her.  'Tis a mother she nades."

"Please don't, Mrs. Sullivan," said Halsey quietly.

"I mane no harm, and I'm feelin' fer you, me boy, you havin' a crippled
child to face the world where even the strong has hard enough times
ahead.  Still, she'll have money, maylike!"

"Well, Mrs. Sullivan, I'm not sure of that--"

"Of course it's none of me business--of course not.  But only look at
the sky and only hear the birds this mornin'!  You're young, and God
may give you two yet the dozen that I have longed for, denied as I do
be with only six.  You'll be goin' up yerself some day, with all thim
rich folks, Mr. Halsey, boy.  I'm stayin' here with Jim Sullivan.  Whin
we can't afford sparrowgrass we eats potaties."



IV

"But tell me, Mr. Halsey," she went on shrewdly, "how long will we be
havin' even potaties to eat?  Ye don't keep min there in the factory
long--there's not many at wurrk now.  Besides, there's no smoke in thim
chimbleys!  And 'tis time.  _What's the mystery there, boy?_"

"A good deal of labor troubles," commented Halsey non-committally.

"More than _that_!" she insisted, drawing close to him.  "Listen!  I
mean well to you, boy, and so does Jim.  He'll stick.  But Jim told me
the night that he could walk out, and pick up a clean tin thousand
dollars fer the walkin'!"

Halsey controlled himself.  This was news of staggering sort.  "Why
doesn't he, then, Mrs. Sullivan?  That's a good deal of money," he said
quietly.

"Yes, why doesn't he?--with me half American and gettin' more so aich
year,--me a-needin' di'monds and awtomo_beels_!  The fool Irish!  'Tis
maybe his ijiotic idea he ought to stick."

Halsey made no answer except to look over at the gaunt factory
buildings.  A blue-coated figure was pacing back and forth before the
door.

"There's Jim Sullivan workin' inside, and there's Tim Carney walkin'
beat outside," she resumed; "and the pickets tryin' to break in, and
some one _else_ tryin' to break in.  What's it about, Mr. Halsey?  For
the company?  _What's_ the company?"

"It furnishes asparagus for some, and potatoes for others, Mrs.
Sullivan."

"Oh, does it, thin?  Does it mind that potaties costs more than they
did, and so pay us better, or worse, for what we do?  If what we eat
goes up, we can't live; and if we can't live, them that can has got to
support us somehow.  Ain't it the truth?  What's the ind of it, me boy?

"I'm not askin' about the justice of it, but about the business of it.
If our men starve, what'll we do?  Mr. Halsey, sir, we'll raise hell!
That's what we'll do!  Too much asparagus in this country, and too few
potaties, and thim of a bad class, is goin' to raise hell in this
counthry.  Ain't it the truth?

"Luk at Jim workin' there.  And luk at Tim protectin' of him.  'Tis
fine, isn't it?  I'm thankin' God, meself, there's birds and sunshine
in the world.  If it wasn't for thim and the priest, I'm wonderin'
sometimes what us poor folks would do."



V

"The theory is that some men are born stronger than others, Mrs.
Sullivan, and so entitled to the asparagus," smiled Halsey.

"Is it so?  Jim Sullivan yonder is strong in what makes a man.  In what
makes a woman I'm strong.  Hasn't God got a place fer us, as well as
Mr. Rawn?  And if God don't give it, haven't such as us just got to
_take_ it?--I don't mean the asparagus, but just the potaties?"

"But I've said enough," she went on, turning suddenly.  "'Tis only
because I'm fond of you, me boy, that I've said so much.  There's
devilment and mystery goin' on here.  I don't ask you what your mystery
is, so don't ask me what is mine.  Jim's likely to stick, and so am I.
'Tis likely we can be useful in the world, and as for bein' strong,
we're strong enough to have each other.  And as I was sayin', we've the
birds and the sunshine--and the priest!  So take your mystery you've
got in there, and match it up with mine.  L'ave Jim Sullivan alone, and
when these two mysteries git together, yours and ours, why, maybe
there'll be _hell_!"

Halsey did some thinking when he was alone.  He knew now, and had
known, that something, somebody besides the pickets of the labor
unions, had an eye on this mysterious factory of theirs.  He had felt
for a long time that there was an enemy working somewhere, that a spy
was making definite attempts to get secret information.  Now, this
unknown enemy was able to offer ten thousand dollars bribe money.  The
case was serious enough.

It was worse than serious.  He had been sufficiently warned.  Why,
then, his pipe cold in his teeth, did he sit staring now and think of
things altogether apart from the factory?  Why did he dream of the
birds and the sunshine?  Why did comparisons still force themselves
into his mind, and why did he long for something life had not yet
brought to him--something that Ann Sullivan and her man owned, though
they had so little else?



CHAPTER III

THE SILENT PARTNER

I

There are men who make a living, sometimes a very good one, through the
process of teaching others to do what they themselves can not do.  You
can purchase for a price in any of many quarters printed maxims
embodying full formula covering the secret of success; in each case
from one who has not succeeded.  Nothing is cheaper than maxims, in
type, in worsted, or in transparencies.  To be in the fashion you
should have certain of these above your desk, and should incline your
ear to those who profess to teach what can not be taught even by those
most nearly fitted to teach.

John Rawn cared little for maxims, being above them, in his own belief,
at least.  In all likelihood he had never read the advice of the
philosopher, to wit: that each man should hitch his wagon to a star.
No, he knew something better.  He hitched his to a river.

Very naturally, John Rawn selected the largest river that he could
find.  His silent partner was none less than the Father of the Waters!

There is this to be said about a river, that it is wholly tireless and
immeasurably powerful; that it enters into no combinations against
capital, and does its work without unseemly disturbances.  Rawn was
wise enough to know these things, nor asked any maxims to advise him
therein.  In his belief it was better to allow this sort of silent
partner to furnish the industry and the economy.



II

Who shall measure the power of a river, for ever falling to the sea?
How many millions of horses and men has it equalled in its wasted power
in each generation, in each decade, in each year?  Certainly sufficient
to lift the entire burden of labor from the shoulders of the world.

What mind can measure the extent of such a force, or dream the
possibilities of its application, if it could be set to work?  What
equivalent of human brain and brawn could be valued against this
careless, ceaseless power, derived endlessly from the air and the
earth--power given to the peoples of the earth before the arrival of
our present political and industrial masters; given them in the time
when the earth was the Lord's and the fullness thereof.  The minerals
under the earth, the food produced in the soil, the waters offering
paths and power--before the earth and its fullness passed from the
hands of the Lord into those of our present masters, these, it may be
conceived, were intended as the Lord's gift to the peoples of the
earth.  That, however, was quite before the advent of John Rawn.

Toil has always been the human lot.  We have carried the mechanical
burdens as well as the mental burdens of life on our own human bodies
and souls; although all the time thousands of patient giants were
waiting, willing to serve us.  John Rawn could see them waiting.  He
knew to whom one day would be due the power, and the kingdom, and the
glory.  He could look toward the white-topped mountains, foreseeing the
day when they would be put under tribute, because they breed tumbling
waters of immeasurable strength and utility.  Their heritage of beauty
and majesty is naught to minds such as that of John Rawn's.  Utility is
the one word in the maxims of such as these, men beloved of the
immortal gods.

We speak of kings, of emperors, but what emperor in all the history of
the world had servants such as these, submissive giants such as these,
to work for him?  We speak of miracles of old.  What miracles ever
equaled the business wonders, the money-piling miracles, of the last
twenty years in America?



III

Where gat this silent partner of John Rawn's its own tremendous power?
Out of the sun and the earth, the parents of humanity.  The raindrop on
the leaf, shot through with the shaft of the sun, fell to some near-by
rill and, joined by other rills, marched on, alive, tireless,
tremendous, toward the sea.  Even far up toward their source, had your
little boat lodged, counter to the current, on some rock or snag, and
had you attempted to push it back against the thrust of the downcoming
waters, you might have got some knowledge of the power of even a little
stream.  Ten feet below you, that power again would have been quite as
great; and ten feet below that again as great; and so on, to the sea.
It required the advice of no professional maxim makers to teach a few
of our great men, our specially endowed superiors, John Rawn first
among them, that this power one day must be used.  In accordance as it
shall be used, the burden of humanity may be lifted from human
shoulders, or thrust crushingly down upon them until indeed humanity
shall cease to hope.  The earth and its fullness are no more the Lord's
to-day.  They are John Rawn's.

The simple plan of the International Power Company, was to make some
strong obstruction inviting the enormous resistance of the Father of
the Waters, tantalizing that power into being.  Thus, in a manner
perfectly simply, this force, once evoked and utilized, would turn
numberless wheels endlessly, tirelessly.  So much for the material side
of manifested power.  The essence, the soul, the intangible spirit of
that material power was, in the plans of International, to be
transmitted by wire at first, and later through the free air.  Its sale
in definite and merchantable quantities would come as near to the
solution of the problem of perpetual motion and perpetual profit as may
be arrived at in this world of limitations.



IV

Rawn asked nothing better than this idea.  It was beautiful, and he
valued it over all his many and various other ventures.  He could let
his silent partner put other men out of work; and so these could be
rehired at such price as he himself cared to set.  He saw the time
approach when he would be able to retail at a price, remote from his
silent, tireless partner's labors, merchantable packages of power, to
feed a cart, a plow, a wheel of any sort; power to lift and labor, to
toil ceaselessly _without remonstrance_.  It was and is a splendid
dream.  Its bearing is as you be Rawn or Halsey.  That power shall
labor for or against mankind as ourselves shall say.

Shall we blame ourselves, or John Rawn, in this republic, that he saw
on ahead only limitless personal power, limitless gold, jewels, wine,
women, personal indulgence of any sort that appealed to him?  Shall we
blame Halsey for dreading the issue of these plans, delaying them all
he could; clinging to the belief that the earth was the Lord's and the
fullness thereof; and that the Lord gave it to all mankind?  And shall
we blame the stock-holders for being impatient at renewed delays?  The
wire transmission was installed, making every man in the International
rich.  Yet every man in the secret of the real ambition of this company
burned inwardly at this enforced secrecy and this unseemly delay.  The
mysterious factory at the edge of the great inland city still was
silent.  The directors raged.  They wanted to drain to the last drop
the strength even of this tireless giant.  They wanted to begin to
bottle, measure and sell, sell for ever, the very force which holds the
spheres in their places!  In time we shall perhaps see completed what
these men planned.  There is no logical reason why, if one planet can
be owned by a John Rawn or so, yet others should not!



V

For a long time Jim Sullivan, foreman at the factory of the
International, wondered and pondered as to the real intent of these
strange machines which he saw little by little growing up under the
uncommunicative direction of the superintendent, Halsey.  He had never
seen anything like them, with their vast coils of insulation, their
intricate cogs and wheels, their centrally-hidden huge glass jars, and
the long, toothed ridge, like a delicate metal comb, which surmounted
the top of each.  There was something mysterious about it all.  He was
sure that Halsey did something with these machines when the men were
not about.  The very air seemed throbbing with some tense quality of
mystery.  The men themselves were suspicious, irritable.  Never was the
air in any factory more surcharged alike with ignorance and with
anxiety.  Man after man, good mechanic though he was, quit the place
simply because he did not know what he was doing.  The feeling of
mystery was tense, oppressive.

On one certain Sunday morning Jim Sullivan strolled over to the vacant
factory.  He knew that the superintendent had spent almost the entire
night there working alone on one of these mysterious machines.  It
stood there now.  And--yes! it was different from what it had been when
Sullivan last saw it!  It was now apparently complete, so far as he
could tell.  There was no one near it.  Halsey had gone home, to bed.
Of late he had been very tired, pale, haggard; and he always was at his
work in the factory, when good men slept, and knew light-winged dreams.



VI

Jim Sullivan, stood now looking at the grim, uncanny machine, hands in
his pockets, wondering.  He looked about him, superstitiously.  There
seemed to be something in the air, he could not explain what.  He
turned, looking behind him, and tiptoed to the front door, where Tim
Carney, the blue-coated guardian, stood leaning against the wall.

"Tim!" he whispered, although there was none to hear.  "Come on in
here!"

"What is it, Jim?" asked the watchman.

"I dunno; that's why I'm callin' you."

"Has anny wan broke into th' place?"

"Not as I know, but somethin's happened here.  I'm figurin' 'twas the
boss done it.  Come in and have a luk, now.  He's gone home."

They stepped gingerly on across the floor, along the row of unfinished
machines, and paused at the one farthest from the door, which had
excited Jim's curiosity.

"Here's where the boss worked all last night!" whispered the foreman
hoarsely.  "'Twas daybreak when he come home, an' he was all in.  He's
been workin' on her before now, I know that.  I'm thinkin' she's about
done, belike!"

"Whatever kind of a spook joint is this, anyhow, Jim?" demanded the
watchman.  "What's she for, do ye think now?"  They two, bullet-headed,
hairy, heavy and powerful, stood looking at this contrivance, whose
growth through many months they had been watching.  The value of it
either could measure in comprehensible terms.  It was worth ten
thousand dollars to either of them who would--and could--tell a certain
man how it was made.

"I dunno what she's for," answered Jim slowly, "but I'm thinkin' it's
no good at all.  It's the devil, maylike.  Not that she's so big
neither.  I could almost turn her over with a pinch bar."  He pointed
to an arm, or lever, which stood at the side of the machine.  "She
looks somethin' like one o' them drills I used to run in th' tunnel,
time Hogan was mayor, do ye mind?  Whin we wanted to throw her in we
pushed down an arm, somethin' like this."

"Sure, Jim, 'tis you have the head fer machines.  I dunno about thim at
all," rejoined Tim, scratching his head.  "But 'tis a shame we can't
throw her in, now.  Manny a time I've wondered what 'twas all about in
here.  Why shud strangers be so anxious as to--"

"She luks like a patent gate in a fince, as much as annything else,"
commented Jim.  "But as fer throwin' her in, how cud we?  She's
attached to nothin' at all, so there's nothin' to throw her into.
She's got no wire or cord runnin' to her, unless belike it comes up
through the flure.  She looks like she was some sort of motor, but how
she's to run I dunno.  Now if she was geared to annything, you cud
throw her in, most-like, by this thing here.  It luks like she was
done, and if she is, I don't know why the boss wud go away and leave
the roof open over her."  He pointed to a sliding window in the roof
directly above the machine.  He then reached out and swung some of his
weight upon the end of the engaged arm or lever.  Then, to the joint
surprise of the two observers, a very singular thing forthwith occurred.



VII

What happened, as nearly as either of them later could describe it,
might have been called a duplication in large of the phenomena of
Halsey's original motor, with which he burst the fan in the railway
office at St. Louis.  There was a low crackling in the air, a dancing
series of blue flame points along the toothed ridge.  Then began a low
purr, as of a motor in full operation.  They could see sparks emitted,
somewhere at the interior of the intricate machinery.  A living,
splitting, crackling roar filled the air about them--the roar of the
shackled river, far away, raging at the violence done it!  A projecting
shaft, fitted with a pulley head, began to revolve, faster and faster,
until its speed left it apparently motionless.

Something had happened, they knew not what.  The machine was alive!
Some force seemed to come down out of the air, to locate itself
somewhere within this intricate mechanism.  They stood, two
bullet-headed, hairy, powerful men, looking at what they had done.

"Do ye mind _that_ now?" gasped Jim Sullivan, and wrenched at the
lever, restoring it to its original position.  The purring of the motor
ceased, the blue sparks disappeared, the roar subsided growlingly.



VIII

"What was it?" demanded Tim Carney.  "Throw her in again, Jim!"

"Not on yer life!" gasped Jim Sullivan.  "I dunno what 'tis, but I'll
take no chances with the divil an' his works, on a Sunday leastways.
There's somethin' _wrong_ in here, I'm tellin' you, Tim.  What made her
go, I dunno.  She's under power, same like a compressed air drill--but
where'd she _git_ her power?--the divil's in it, that's all, Tim.  I'm
thinkin' the best we can, do is to git away from here.  Come, shut the
dure--an' watch it.  Me, I'm goin' to the praste ag'in this very day!
I see now what that felly wanted!"

Jim Sullivan locked the door and left his friend guarding it; then
hurried across the street to the superintendent's cottage.  Mrs.
Sullivan, busy there about her morning duties, would have stopped him,
but Jim would have no denial, and hastening up the stairs to Halsey's
bedroom, impetuously demanded entrance.  Halsey, drawn, haggard,
unshorn, greeted him, half sitting up in bed.

"What's wrong, Jim?" he demanded.  "Has anybody got into the works?"

"Hush, boy!" said Jim, his finger on his lips.  "You need tell me
nothin'.  But I know what it's all about."

Halsey sat looking at him dumbly.

"Fire me if you like, my son," went on Jim Sullivan.  "'Tis true I've
done what I had no right to do.  Mr. Halsey, sir, _I throwed her in_!"

"You did _what_?"

"I throwed her in.  An' she worked--she worked like a bird!  Then I
throwed her out ag'in an' come away an' locked the door.  Tim was
there, too.  'Tis none of my business.  But I've come to tell you the
truth, an' you can fire me if you like!  But it's hell, it's harnessed
hell ye've got in there.  An' others want to stale it."

By this time Halsey was getting into his clothing and only half
listening to what his foreman said.

"What kills _me_ is, I can't see _how_ she works!  She runs by herself
all the time, chuggin' like a fire ingin.  But where does she _git_ it?"

[Illustration: (Rawn and Virginia)]

Halsey made no answer.  He was pale as a dead man.  A few moments later
they were hurrying down the stair, across the street, and through the
long, deserted room with its rows of gaunt enginery.  They stood before
the completed receiver, whose motor so perfectly had caught the power
of the free second current from the air--John Rawn's costless, stolen
Power.

"What makes her go?" demanded Jim Sullivan.  "Fer what is the hole in
the roof yon?"

Halsey turned to him.  "It's the Mississippi River makes it go, Jim.
If we didn't leave a hole in the roof how could the river get through?
Now do you understand?"

"My boy," said Jim kindly, laying a large hand on his shoulder, "you're
off your nut, of course.  I don't blame ye, workin' so long as ye have,
an' worryin'.  'Tis a rest ye must be takin' now, or they'll be puttin'
ye in the bughouse fer fair!"

"You're right!" said Halsey.  "I think I'll just take a little ride
this afternoon.  Jim, come here and help me.  I want to see if we can
charge up this electric car.  If I can do that, Jim, my boy, I'll be
richer by six o'clock than either of us ever dreamed of being!"

Shaking his head dubiously, the big foreman lent a hand, and between
them they managed to roll the car into place.

"Want to throw her down again, Jim?" demanded Halsey, motioning to the
lever and grinning.  That worthy shook his head.

"I'm scared of her, Mr. Halsey, that I am!"

"And well you may be!" was Halsey's comment.  He himself threw down an
arm on the opposite side of the receiver.  This time the motor did not
resume its purring, the shaft did not revolve.

"She's bruk!" said Jim.  Halsey only pointed to the blue tips of
toothed ridge.  "No," said he, "she's only doing another part of her
work.  The power is going into the auto's motor instead of this.  Two
forms, you see, Jim."

A faint spark showed at the transmitter connection.  "Come!" said
Halsey.  "Let her work!  We don't need to now."



IX

That afternoon, Charles Halsey took his seat at the steering wheel of
an electric car which had been charged with power taken from the air
without wire transmission.  His task was done.  He had accomplished
what he had started out to do.  Throbbing beneath him was Power, the
power of yonder distant silent partner, power taken from the earth, and
the air, and the water; power of the elements; and power now definite,
segregant, merchantable!

Halsey kicked in the gear and rolled out into the street.  Pale,
preoccupied, he hardly noted where he was going; but found himself half
automatically directing the car through a maze of ill-paved, crowded
thoroughfares; until at length he reached the West-Side boulevard
system.  Thence he crossed the river to the East, and headed north.
Strong and true, under a limit charge, the motor purred beneath him.
The mechanism of the car operated without defect.  Nothing in the least
seemed wrong at any particular, nor did the car in any particular
differ in appearance from others of its humble and inconspicuous class.



X

None the less, midway of one of the large parks along the lake shore,
young Halsey suddenly disengaged the gear, cut off his power, and
applied the brakes.  He was perhaps half way from his home on the
journey to Graystone Hall....  For a little time he sat in the car,
pale, almost motionless, deep in thought; careless of the passing
throng of other vehicles, the occupants of which regarded him
curiously.  Then, suddenly, he threw in the gear again, turned on the
current; and, quickly turning about, retraced his course.  He had been
gone less than an hour when he stood once more at the curb of his
cottage near the factory in the western suburb of the city.

"So you're back again, sir!" commented Jim Sullivan.  "An' did ye get
all that sudden wealth ye was tellin' me about, at all?"

Halsey sat staring at him for a time.  "No," said he, "I've changed my
mind.  I'm going to wait a while."

The foreman turned and tiptoed off to find his wife.  "Annie," said he,
his voice low and anxious, "try if ye can get the boss to bed, an' make
him sleep as long as ever he can.  He's goin' off his head, an' talkin'
like a fool.  Somethin's wrong here, that's sure!  Hell's goin' to
break loose, in yon facth'ry some day.  But whativer comes, the boss is
crazy!"



CHAPTER IV

THE BAKER'S DAUGHTER

I

A large part of our ambitious American population is prone boastfully
to ascribe its origin to one or other of those highly respectable, if
really little known monarchs to whom is commonly accorded the
foundation of Old World nobilities.  We have built up a pretty fiction
regarding so-called blue blood, on the flattering, but wholly
unsupported supposition that royal qualities are transmissible to the
thirtieth and fortieth generation; so that 'tis a poor American family
indeed can not boast its coat of arms, harking back to royal days of
Charlemagne or William the Conqueror.  It may be.  Their Majesties were
active, morganatically at least no doubt, much-married men!

But continually there arise disturbing instances to upset us in our
beliefs regarding aristocracy.  There are so very many worthless
aristocrats, in whom the theory of descent did not work out according
to accepted schedule; and there are so very many worthy but wholly
disconcerting men who are not aristocrats--so continually do Lincolns
arise who, claiming nothing of birth or breeding, show themselves to be
possessed of manhood, show themselves, moreover, masters of those
instincts and practices which go with the much-abused title of
gentleman; a matter in which not all descendants of Charles or William
join them.



II

It is well known among theatrical managers that no real lady can
imitate a real lady.  The highest salaries in ladies' theatrical rôles
are paid to ladies who are not ladies, but who play the parts of ladies
as they think ladies really would act in actual life.  If you seek a
woman to carry off a gown, one to assume such really regal air as shall
bring the name of William or Charlemagne impulsive to your lips, find
one still owning not more than one of the requisite three generations
which are set as the lowest limit for the production of a gentleman or
a lady.

Continually in our American aristocracy--and in that, _par
consequence_, of Europe--we find ladies whose fathers were laborers,
shop-keepers, soap-makers, butchers, this or that, anything you like.
So only they had money, they did as well as any to wear European
coronets, to assist at royal coronations.  And, having proved their
powers in swift forgetfulness, they offer as good proof as any, of the
scientific fact that gentleness of heart and soul and conduct are not
things transmissible even to the third or fourth generation, either in
America or Europe.  Your real aristocrat perhaps after all, is made,
not born.

As to Virginia Delaware, daughter of the baker, John Dahlen, in St.
Louis, she started out in life with the deliberate intent of being a
lady, knowing very well that this is America, where all things come to
him or her who does not wait.  In some way, as has been said, she had
achieved graduation at a famous school where the art of being a lady is
dispensed.  She had, indeed, even now and then seen a lady in real
life; not to mention many supposed ladies in theatrical life, playing
the part as to them seemed fit, and far better than any lady could.



III

The soul finds its outward expression in the body.  The ambition shapes
the soul.  It was wholly logical and natural that, having her
particular ambition--that of many American girls--Virginia Delaware
should grow up tall, dignified, beautiful, composed, self-restraining,
kindly, gracious; these being qualities which in her training were
accepted as properly pertaining and belonging to all aristocrats.  We
have already seen that, put to the test, in the midst of our best
aristocrats--those who frequent the most highly gilded and glazed
hotels in New York--she was accepted unhesitatingly as of the charmed
circle, even by the head waiters.  Had you yourself seen her upon the
Chicago streets, passing to her daily occupation, you also in all
likelihood would have commented upon her as a rich young woman, and one
of birth, breeding and beauty.  We have spoken somewhat regarding the
futility of mottoes and maxims in the case of an ambitious man.  As
much might be said regarding their lack of applicability to the needs
of an ambitious woman.  Virginia Delaware would have made her own
maxims, had she needed any; and had she been obliged to choose a coat
of arms, she surely would have selected the Christian motto of "Onward
and Upward."



IV

The best aid in any ambition lies in the intensity of that ambition.
We all are what we really desire to be, each can have what he really
covets, if he will pay the price for it.  In her gentleness with her
associates, in her dignity and composure with her employer, in her
conduct upon the street and in the crowded car, in all situations and
conditions arising in her life, Virginia Delaware diligently played the
part of lady as best she comprehended that; because she had the intense
ambition to be a lady.  She continually was in training.  Moreover, she
had that self-restraint which has been owned by every woman who ever
reached any high place in history.  She kept herself in hand, and she
held herself not cheap.  Likewise, after the fashion of all successful
politicians, she cast aside acquaintances who might be pleasant but who
probably would be of little use, and pinned her faith to those who
promised to be of future value.  Such a woman as that can not be
stopped--unless she shall, unfortunately, fall in love.

If there was calumny, Virginia Delaware heeded it not.  She accosted
all graciously and with dignity, as a lady should.  And all this time
her great personal beauty increased to such point as to drive most of
her fair associates about the headquarters' offices to the verge of
rage.  To be beautiful and aristocratic both assuredly is to invite
hatred!  It is almost as bad as to be rich.  Miss Delaware allowed
hatred to run its course unnoted.  She needed no maxims over her desk,
required no ancestral coat of arms.  She was an aristocrat, and meant
to be accepted as such.  In all likelihood--though simple folk may not
read a woman's mind--she saw further into the future than did John Rawn
himself.

There remained, then, as against the ambition of Virginia Delaware, the
one pitfall of love, and even this she easily avoided.  Beautiful as
she unquestionably was, admired as she certainly was, if there had been
fire in this girl's heart for any man, she kept it either extinguished
or well banked for a later time.  She had gently declined the heart and
hand of every male clerk in the office.  She had chosen her own ways,
and was not to be diverted.  Cool, ambitious, perfectly in hand, she
went her way, and bided her time.

Cool, ambitious, perfectly in hand, John Rawn also went his way in
life.  Two more ambitious souls than these, or two more alike, you
scarcely could have found in all the descendants of the two
bucaneer-monarchs we have named.



V

And Rawn continually found something responsive in the soul of this
young woman, something that never found its way into speech on either
side.  She was the type of devotion and of efficiency.  Gently, without
any ostentation, she took upon herself a vast burden of detail; and she
added thereto an unobtrusive personal service upon which Rawn
unconsciously came more and more to depend.  Did he lack any little
accustomed implement or appliance, she found it for him forthwith.  Did
he forget a name, a date, a filing record, it was she who supplied it
out of a memory infallible as a fine machine.  From this, it was but an
easy step to the point where the young woman's unobtrusive aid became
useful even beyond business hours.  John Rawn had never studied to play
in any social rôle.  Did he need counsel in any social situation, she,
tactfully hesitant and modest, always was ready to tell him what he
should do, what others should do.  Had he an appointment, it was she
who reminded him of it, and it was she who had made it.  Were there
personal bills to pay, it was she who paid them.  She presided over his
personal bank account, and there was no hour when she could not have
named the dollars and cents in his balance.  Did he wish to avoid an
unwelcome visitor, it was arranged for him delicately and without
offense.  Little by little, she had become indispensable, both in a
business and a social way--a fact which John Rawn did not fully
realize, but which she knew perfectly well.  It had never been within
her plan to be anything less than that.  She knew, although he did not,
that John Rawn also was indispensable to her.

Rawn came from no social station himself, and as we have seen, had
grown up ignorant of conventional life, so that now he remained
careless of it, as had he originally.  He made it matter of routine now
that this young woman should attend in all his visits to the East in
business matters--where, in short, he could not have got along without
her.  There was talk over this--unjust talk--and much amused comment on
the fact that the two seemed so inseparable.  Rawn did not know or note
it.  They literally were running together, hunting in couple in the
great chase of ambition.  Few knew now what the salary of the
president's private secretary represented in round figures.  Certainly
she dressed as a lady.  Certainly also she comported herself as one.
It was, in the opinion of John Rawn, no one's business that he
registered himself at the New York hotels, and either did not register
his companion at all, or else contented himself with the wholly
descriptive word "Lady" opposite the number of the room whose bills he
told the clerk to charge to his account.



VI

Never was there the slightest ground for suspicion of actual
impropriety between John Rawn and Miss Delaware.  Abundance of bad
taste there certainly was, for Rawn, without explanation or apology to
any, always ate in company of his assistant, was constantly seen with
her on the streets, at the opera, the play.  He showed, in short, that
he found her society wholly agreeable upon every possible occasion.  If
this was in bad taste, if many or most, in the usual guess, put it at
the point of impropriety, John Rawn gave himself no concern.  The Rawn
aristocracy began in him.  He founded it, was its Charlemagne, its
William the Conqueror, as ruthless, as regardless of others, as
selfish, as megalomaniac as the best of kings.  Here, therefore, were
two aristocrats!  They ran well in couple.

It is not to be supposed that a girl so shrewd as Virginia Delaware
could fail to realize the full import of all this.  She let the slings
and arrows fall upon the buckler of her perfect dignity and her perfect
beauty, but she felt their impact.  She was perfectly in hand, knew
perfectly well her mind, knew perfectly well the price she must pay.
She let matters take their course, knowing that they were advancing
safely and surely in one direction, that which she desired.  She was
more skilled in human nature than her employer, saw deeper into a man's
heart than he had ever looked into a woman's!

And then, at last, the life schedule of Virginia Delaware was verified.
At last, the inevitable happened.



VII

On one of these many trips to New York, Miss Delaware had been alone in
her apartments at the hotel for most of the afternoon.  In the evening,
before the dinner hour, she was summoned to meet Mr. Rawn in one of the
hotel parlors.  At once she noted his suppressed excitement.  He scarce
could wait until they were alone, in a far corner of the room, before
explaining to her the cause.

"I don't like to say this, Miss Delaware," he began, "but I've got to
do it!"

"What do you mean, Mr. Rawn?" she replied in her usual low and clear
tones.

"There's been talk!"

"Talk?  About what?"

"Us!"

"About us?  What can you mean, Mr. Rawn?" she asked.

"The world is so confoundedly small, my dear girl, that it seems
everything you do is known by everybody else.  Of course, a man like
myself is in the public eye; but we've always minded our business, and
it ought not to have been anybody else's business beyond that."

"You disturb me, Mr. Rawn!  What has happened?"

"--But now, to-night, now--just a little while ago--I met this fellow
Ackerman--you know him--big man in the company--used to be general
traffic manager down in St. Louis, on the old railroad where I
began--well, he was drunk, and he talked."

"What could he say?"

"He got me by the coat collar and proceeded to tell me how much--how
much--well, to tell the truth, he connected your name and mine.  If he
wasn't drunk--and a director--I'd go down there yet and smash his face
for him!  What business was it of his?  Of course, men don't mind such
things so much.  But when it comes to you--why, my dear girl!"



VIII

The truth has already been stated regarding John Rawn; that,
batrachian, half-dormant for almost half a century, and then putting
into business what energy most men put into love and sex, he had passed
a life of singular innocence, or ignorance, as to womankind.  He had
never countenanced much gossip about women, because he had little
interest in the topic.  The _grande passion_ marks most of us for its
own now and again, or is to be feared now and again; but the _grande
passion_ had passed by John Rawn.  He was now approaching fifty years
of age.  Married he had been, and divorced; but he had not yet been in
love.

He now spoke to his like, his mate in the hunt, of the opposite sex, a
young woman who at that very moment was as beautiful a creature as
might have been found on all Manhattan, a woman known in all Manhattan
now as the mysterious "Lady of the Lightnings," the goddess of the
stock certificates of one of the most mammoth American corporations, a
creature over whom Manhattan's most critical libertines were
crazed--and helpless; moreover, a woman who, out of all those in the
great _caravanserai_ at that moment, might as well as any have been
chosen as the very type of gentle breeding and of gentle womanhood
alike.  But she had not yet been in love.



IX

"I don't understand, Mr. Rawn," repeated she slowly.  "What possible
ground could Mr. Ackerman have had?  You surely don't think he could
have spoken to any one else?"

"I wouldn't put that past Ackerman when he's drunk.  If he'd talk to
me, he would to others.  And you know perfectly well that when talk
begins about a woman, it never stops!"

"No, that is the cruel part of it."

Her voice trembled just enough, her eyes became just sufficiently and
discreetly moist; she choked a little, just sufficiently.

"It is cruel," she said, with a pathetic little sigh, "but the hand of
every man seems to be against a woman.  Did you ever stop to think, Mr.
Rawn, how helpless, how hopeless, we really are, we women?"

He flung himself closer upon the couch beside her, his face troubled,
as she went on with her gentle protest.

"All my life I've done right as nearly as I knew, Mr. Rawn.  Perhaps I
was wrong in coming to trust so much to you--to depend on you so much.
It all seemed so natural, that I've just let matters go on, almost
without any thought.  I've only been anxious to do my work--that was
all.  But this cruel talk about us--well--it can have but one end.  I
must go."

"Go?  Leave _me_?  You'll do nothing of the sort!  I'll take care of
this thing myself, I say--I'll stand between you and all that sort of
talk."

"Mr. Rawn, I don't understand you."



X

They sat close together on this brocaded couch among many other
brocaded couches.  Crystal and color and gilt and ivory were all about
them; pictures, works of art in bronze and marble and costly
porcelains.  The air was heavy with fragrance, dripping with soft
melody of distant music.  She was beautiful, a beautiful _young_ woman.
He caught one glance into her wide, pathetic eyes ere she turned and
bent her head.  He caught the fragrance of her hair--that strange
fragrance of a woman's hair.  Dejected, drooping as she sat, her hands
clasped loosely in her lap, he could see the bent column of her
beautiful white neck, the curve of her beautiful shoulders, white,
flawless.

The flower on her bosom rose and fell in her emotion.  She was a woman.
She was beautiful.  She was young.  Something subtle, powerful,
mysterious, stole into the air.

She was a woman!

Suddenly this thought came to John Rawn like a sudden blow in the face.
It came in a sense hitherto unknown to him in all his life.  Now he
understood what life might be, saw what delight might be!  He saw now
that all along he had admired this girl and only been unconscious of
his admiration.  God! what had he lost, all these years!  He, John
Rawn, had lived all these years, and _had not loved_!

He reached out timidly and touched her round white arm, to attract her
attention.  She flinched from him a trifle, and he also from her.  Fire
ran through his veins as from a cup of wine, heady and strong.  He was
a boy, a young man discovering life.  The glory of life, the reason,
had been here all this time, and he had not suspected it.  What deed
for pity had been wrought!  He, John Rawn, never before had known what
love might be!  He was the last man on Manhattan to go mad over
Virginia Delaware.

She drew back from, him, seeing the flush upon his face, color rising
to her own.  Indeed, the power of the man, his sudden vast passion,
were not lost upon her, different as he was from the idol of a young
girl's dreams.  But Virginia Delaware saw more than the physical image
of this man beside her.  She knew what he had to share, what power,
what wealth, what station.  She knew well enough what John Rawn could
do; and she gaged her own value to him by the flush on his face, the
glitter in his eye.

For one moment she paused.  For one moment heredity, the way of her own
people, had its way.  For one moment she saw another face, different
from this flushed and corded one bent near.  It was for but a moment;
then ambition once more took charge of her soul and her body alike.



XI

The net was thrown.  Silently, gently, she tightened its edges with the
silken cords.  He loved her.  The rest was simple.  She saw the world
unrolling before her like a scroll.  All else was but matter of detail.
Above all, she exulted in her strength at this crucial moment.  She
knew that love is dangerous for a woman, always had feared, as any
woman may, that love might sweep her away from her own safe moorings.
She rejoiced now to see this danger past, rejoiced to find her pulses
cool and even, her voice under control, herself mistress of herself.
She did not love him.

But she drew back now apparently startled, apprehensive.  "We must go,
Mr. Rawn," she said; and would have risen.

He put out a hand, almost rude in its vehemence.  "You shall not go!
I've got to tell you.  Sit down!  Listen!  We'll separate in one way,
yes.  You're done now with your clerking days for ever.  But you're
going to be my wife.  I want you; and, by God, I love you!"

His voice rose until she was almost alarmed.  She looked about in real
apprehension.  She turned, to see John Rawn's face convulsed, suffused,
his protruding lower lip trembling, his eyes almost ready to burst into
tears.  She might almost have smiled, so easily was it all done for
her.  Yet this baker's daughter dared to make no mistake in a situation
such as this!

"Mr. Rawn," she began, casting down her eyes, although she allowed him
to retain her hand, "what can you mean?  Surely you must be in jest.
Have you no regard for a poor girl who is trying to make her way in the
world?  I've done my best--and now--"

"Make your way in the world!  What do you mean?  It's made _now_!  Look
down the list as far as you like.  Is there anywhere you want to go?
Is there anything you want to do?  Can you think of anything I'll not
get for you?  Look at your neck, your hands--you've worn those jewels
almost ever since you selected them, and no one else has, though I told
you once there was a string to them.  There's no string to them now.
The first time you wore them, down there in the dining-room, below, I
told you they were not yours, that they were only loaned to you for one
night, that we were only both of us masquerading, trying ourselves out!
I told you then you'd do; but I didn't know what I meant.  I don't
believe I loved you then, although now it seems I always have.  I know
I always will.  Those things are nothing--you shall have everything you
want--handfuls of jewels.  There's nothing you want to do that you
shall not do.  You can't dream of anything that I'll not get for you!
You were made for me in every way in the world--every little way, as
I've come to know, little by little, all this time.  But now, to-night,
it's all come over me at once.  I don't know that I planned, when I
came here, to do more than to stand between you and talk!
But--this--caught me all at once, I don't know how.  It's the truth
before God!  I never loved a woman before now--I didn't know what it
was.  Virginia--Jennie--girl--I love you!  We're going to be married
to-morrow!"

"Mr. Rawn," she said, her voice trembling, "I must ask you to consider
well before you make any mistake--a mistake which would mean everything
for--for me.  You have no right to jest."

"I'll show you who's in earnest!" he retorted, his hand cruelly hard on
her wrist as he forced her back into the seat.  "We'll go home from
here as man and wife, that's what we'll do.  We'll go from the train,
not to the office, but to Graystone Hall.  I'll find a preacher in the
morning here.  It's wonderful!  I love you!  If they want to talk,
we'll give them something to talk _about_!  Let them come to the Little
Church Around the Corner--to-morrow--and see _us_, you and me!"

He had both her hands in his large ones now, and was looking into her
eyes, intoxicated, mad.  She leaned just gently toward him.  Forgetful
of their situation, he caught her in his arms, and kissed her full.



XII

"Mr. Rawn, how could you!" she said at last, softly, seeking to
disengage her hand.  "It's like a dream!  I have worked so hard, so
long.  Life has had so little for me!"

"But you love me--you can?" he demanded.

"Oh, Mr. Rawn!" she said, lifting her eyes to his face, then gently
turning them aside.

"You do--you have--tell me!  Confess it!"

She laughed now, ripplingly, her color rising, and at least was spared
that instance of her perjury.  John Rawn accepted it as her oath.

They parted after a time, she scarce remembered how, he to a couch
which knew no sleep, she to one that long remained untouched.

In her own room Virginia Delaware stood for a long time before her
mirror, in silent questioning of herself, her brows just drawn into a
faint vertical frown.  At last she nodded approvingly, satisfied that
she would do.  A wave of sensuousness, of delight in her own triumph,
swept across her.  She stood straight, swung back her shoulders, gazed
at the superb image in the glass through half-shut eyes.  There was no
question of it!  She was a very beautiful woman, stately, gracious--and
aristocratic.  So.  It was done.  She had won.  She caught glimpses of
the jewels blazing at her throat.  She removed them and tossed them
lightly on the dresser top as she turned to call for her maid.

"Madam is very beautiful to-night," ventured that tactful creature when
at last she had performed her closing duties for the day.

Virginia Delaware looked down upon her with the amused tolerance of the
superior classes.

"You may perhaps find a little silver on the dresser, maid," said she
graciously.



END OF BOOK THREE



BOOK FOUR



CHAPTER I

THE ROYAL PROGRESS OF MR. AND MRS. RAWN

I

So they were married.  Graystone Hall at last had a mistress worthy of
its architect and decorator when--love and affection and other good
considerations moving thereto, as the law hath it--the new Mrs. Rawn
moved into the place of the old Mrs. Rawn.  Thereafter matters went at
least as merry as most marriage bells celebrating the nuptials of
middle age and youth, of wealth and beauty.

As Mr. Rawn had spent a million dollars to free himself from one wife,
he seemed willing to spend much more in the process of taking on
another.  It became current rumor that the one great diamond show of
the western city was Virginia Rawn.  The sobriquet, "The Lady of the
Lightnings," passed from New York to Chicago and became permanent
there.  Not that that lady delighted in display; but there were
occasional operatic or theatrical events which demanded compliance with
her husband's wishes, in which event she blazed almost better than the
best.

But, gradually, she showed the tastes of the aristocrat, as alien to
vulgar display as to crude manners.  Gradually the tone, color,
atmosphere, of Graystone Hall began to change.  The porcelains which
Virginia Rawn purchased were not large and gorgeous, but a connoisseur
would have called them worthy.  The vast and brilliantly framed
paintings came down one by one, and one by one masterpieces went up,
selected by one who knew.  The walks, the grounds, took on simpler and
cleaner lines.  Rawn of the International got a new credit as a person
of taste.  He was accepted as a collector, a patron of the arts, a
connoisseur, in fact, yet more a worthy and a rising citizen.

The hospitality of Mr. Rawn's mansion house also now increased
perceptibly, and, delighted that at last numbers came to see him, Mr.
Rawn at first did not analyze those numbers very closely.  Even the
fastidious, many of whom came to be amused, were unanimous in the
feeling that Mr. Rawn's house, its furnishings, its decorations, its
pictures, its works of art, its hospitality also, were beyond reproach.
The trace of _gaucherie_ was gone.  The spirit of the place was
delicately reserved, dignified, yet well assured.  The seal of approval
was placed upon Graystone Hall.  Who, indeed, should smile at the man
who had made so meteoric a rise, who had by a few years of labor become
master of this mansion, its furnishings and its mistress?  Who, upon
the other hand, might smile at that mistress, whose appearance upon the
front page of the leading journals of the city became now a matter of
course--a lady of such reserved tastes as led her to forsake the larger
marts, and to set the seal of fashionable approval upon a little
florist, a little modiste, a little milliner all her own--even a little
surgeon hither-to unknown, who honored a little hospital and made it
fashionable, by taking there this distinguished patient for a little
operation?



II

Rawn himself expanded in all this social success.  He saw doors
hitherto closed, opening before him, saw his future unrolling before
him also like a scroll.  A hundred times a week he walked to his young
wife, caught her in his arms, uxoriously infatuated with her youth, her
beauty, her aplomb, her fitness for this life which he had chosen.  For
once he almost forgot to regard himself as a collector of beautiful
objects, although the truth was that his wife, Virginia, became more
beautiful each day, more superb of line, more calmly easy in air, more
nearly faultless of garb and demeanor.  She took her place easily and
surely among the young matrons of the wealthier circles of the western
city.  Whereas thousands of auto-cars had passed by Graystone Hall and
only a dozen stopped, scores now, of the largest, drove up its winding
walks and halted at its doors.  The dearest dream of both seemed
realized.  The hunt in couple had won!  They had gained what they
desired; that is to say, self-indulgence, ease, idleness, adulation,
freedom from care.  What more is there to seek?  And is not this
America?

Gradually John Rawn had been losing the rusticity which had accompanied
him well up to middle age.  The city now began to leave its imprint.
The waistcoat of Mr. Rawn gradually attained a curve unknown to it in
earlier years, so that his watch fob now hung in free air when he stood
erect.  His face was perhaps more florid, his hair certainly more gray.
His skin remained fresh and clean, and always he was well-groomed,
having the able assistance of his wife now in the selection of his
tailoring, as well as her coaching in social usage.  They always looked
their part.  At morning, at noon, or at dewy eve, in any assemblage or
any chance situation, they both played in the rôle assigned to them in
their own ambitions.  Born of environment wholly unconventional, they
now took on that of conventionality as though born to that instead.
You could not have found a more perfect type of respectability than
John Rawn, a more absolutely valid exemplar of good social form than
his wife, Virginia.  All things prospered under their magic touch, the
genii of the lamp seemed theirs.  No problems remained for them to
solve.  They had in their own belief attained what may be attained in
American life, and they were happy.  Or, that is to say, they should at
least have been happy, if their theory of life and success, and of
those like to theirs, be correct.  At least they were what they
were--products of a wonderful country which makes millionaires
overnight and produces out of bakeries women of one generation fit to
be the wives of princes born of forty kings.



III

We are, some of us at least, accustomed to worship such as these as
they ride by upon the high car of success, accustomed to envy and to
emulate them.  If that vehicle be the car of Juggernaut, crushing under
its wheels multitudes of those who worship, it is no concern of those
who sit aloft.  For a long time Mr. Rawn and his wife remained ignorant
of the fact that one victim under the wheels of their success was none
other than Mr. Rawn's daughter, Grace.

Alas! for that young lady.  She unfortunately had been now for almost a
year an aspirant in her own right to a seat upon the car of ease and
luxury; yet here she saw herself swiftly supplanted, and worse than
that, swiftly forgotten!  Her year of quasi-place and power had left
her unwilling to return to her own humble home.  She remained on at
Graystone Hall, now rarely visited by her husband.  She found herself
calmly accepted, yet calmly neglected as well.  Very naturally she
hated the new Mrs. Rawn with all her soul; a hatred which that lady
repaid with nothing better than a straight look into Grace's dark eyes,
a look innocent, calm, and wholly fearless.  Grace must now see the
very jewels her own mother should have worn, blazing at the neck and
hands of her stepmother; must see that lady taking assuredly and as of
right, what Grace could now never ask or expect for herself.  With an
unapproachable and wholly hateful air of distinction and good breeding
which rankled most of all in crude Mrs. Halsey's heart, Virginia Rawn
sat high on the car of Juggernaut; and the car of Juggernaut passed on.
In pride and delight over his young wife, John Rawn really forgot his
daughter.  The young new wife did the same, or appeared to do so.



IV

John Rawn had told the truth to his wife when first he had declared his
sentiments toward her--he never before that time really had known love,
or at least had not known infatuated love such as that he felt for her.
He exulted in the vistas of delight which he saw before them, fancying
them endless.  The very sight of his wife, cool, faultless,
self-possessed, haughty, filled him with a sense of his own importance,
making him feel that he was one of God's chosen.  She was his, he had
found her, discovered her, collected her.  She was his to put upon a
pedestal, to admire, to display, to worship, to load down with jewels.
He had something now which other men coveted and envied.  He flaunted
his ownership of such a woman in their faces.  What more can a rich man
do than that same?  Is that not the dream and test of power--to secure
what others may not have, to secure special privileges in this life?
And is not the quest of beauty the first business of him who has
attained power?  Of all these special privileges which had come to John
Rawn so swiftly in these late rapid years, none so delicately and
warmly filled his heart as that of being able to call Virginia Rawn his
own.  Why blame him?  The sultans of thirty or forty generations have
devised nothing better than this test of power.

John Rawn, with all properly aristocratic leanings toward sultanry,
lacked certain elements of sultanhood in strength, but had others in
weakness.  He did not know that in reality he was in the hands of a
stronger nature than his own.  "She's got him jumping through hoops,"
was the comment of one young man.  "He'll sit up and bark whenever she
gives the word!"  But Rawn did not know that he was barking and
jumping, his tongue hanging out excitedly.  In all his mental pictures
of himself he fancied himself to be a figure of dignity, of strength,
indeed of majesty.



CHAPTER II

FOUR BEING NO COMPANY

I

Happy in his newly-found domestic delights, Mr. Rawn was perhaps more
careless than otherwise he would have been regarding business affairs,
and that at a time when they needed care.  The truth was that matters
still lagged at the factory, as Rawn ought to have known.  Indeed, he
did know; but always his curious helplessness in regard to Halsey--who
alone knew the last secrets of the most intricate devices of the
company's property--continued to oppress him.  And always here was his
wife to console him and to interest him.

The distance between Graystone Hall and the factory apparently was
becoming greater from month to month.  Sometimes Halsey came to visit
his wife, but these visits of late became fewer and fewer, as that lady
became more and more discontented, less and less eager to receive the
attentions of him who had so signally failed to place her where
Virginia sat in power.  This alone left Halsey none too happy himself
at the prospect of any of his perfunctory calls; and moreover, he found
himself expected now to be more careful in his attire, in his conduct
about Graystone Hall, where full evening dress tacitly was desired at
dinner, and where an aristocratic chill was habitual at any hour;
things not customary in Ann Sullivan's household on the factory side of
the city.  Not that Halsey needed to excite social misgivings.  He was
a clean-faced, manly chap, lean, sinewy and strong, and might, save for
his rather toil-marked hands, have passed for any of the throng of
young men who at times came under one pretense or other to visit
Mr.--and Mrs.--Rawn.



II

These, in company with Grace, he one evening found alone, seated on the
wide gallery that overlooked the lake front.  He did notice then, as he
never before at any time had noticed, a singular truth--Virginia Rawn's
eyes seemed almost reluctant to leave him.  He was half her husband's
age.  Moreover, there was something in the somber glow of his eye, in
the occasional look of his face--rapt, absorbed, remote, pondering on
things not made patent to all about him--which held for her ever a
stronger fascination.  She wondered if things were known in his
philosophy no longer reckoned in her own; but which once might have
been germane to her as well.  She often looked at him.

The evening was clear and cool, the lake stirred with no more than a
gentle breeze.  The silver ladder of the moon's light was flung down
across the gently moving waters.  The breath of flowers was all about.
Calm, ease, assuredness were here.  The voice of the hostess was
delightfully low and sweet.  All things seemed in keeping.

Rawn welcomed his son-in-law with his customary largeness of air.
"Come on out, Charles," said he, "join us; the evening is pleasant.
Won't you have a cigar?"  He fetched with his own hands the box of
weeds--"Take several, my boy, take as many as you like.  I give two
dollars apiece for these by the box at my club, and you can't beat them
in the city or anywhere else."

Halsey listened almost absent-mindedly, and Rawn returned to his seat
near his wife, a little apart on the gallery.  The master of Graystone
Hall was intoxicated more than usually this evening with her.  She sat
now in the dim light, a cool, dainty and beautiful picture, in blue and
ivory Duchesse satin and filmy laces, gowned fit for a wedding or a
ball, as she always was of an evening at home, with just a gem gleaming
here and there in the occasional glimpse of light which broke through
the windows at the back of the gallery as their curtains shifted in the
breeze.  At that moment John Rawn would have been glad to have the
entire world share boxes of cigars with him.  John Rawn,
collector--what man on all the North Shore Drive at that moment could
claim such surroundings as these?

"I thank you, Mr. Rawn," said Halsey, taking a single cigar from the
box which his host had placed upon the near-by tabouret.  "I think I'll
be content with one.  I mustn't get into bad habits; I'm afraid Jim
Sullivan and I can't afford them at two dollars apiece just yet!"



III

He moved now quietly and dutifully apart toward the end of the gallery
where sat a less resplendent figure, that of his wife, Grace.  She had
not risen to meet him.

"Well," said he, as he sank into a seat beside her.

"Well, then?" she answered, and turned upon him a face dour,
inexpressive, pasty, almost frowning.

"Is that all you have to say to me?" she began later, as he sat smoking.

"I haven't had much chance yet," he commented.

"No, I should say not!  This is the first time you've been here for
four weeks!  Have you stopped to think of that?  You seem to care
little enough how I get on!"

Halsey paused for a moment before replying.  "That hardly seems fair to
me."

"Why isn't it fair?  It's the truth."

"Well, I've been busy all the time, as you know.  Besides again, when
it comes to that, it doesn't seem to me that you've been altogether
anxious to have me come."

"You talk as though you worked day and night and had nothing else to
do."

"Well, I suppose I could come over--every night after dinner--wash the
soot and the cinders from me, get out my four-hundred-dollar go-cart,
and come over here to call on my wife in my thirty-dollar evening togs,
couldn't I?  She lives in Graystone Hall.  Where do I live?  What do I
get out of life, when it comes to that, Grace?  When I do come here,
you begin to nag me before I get settled down.  I always used to say
when I was a young man, that if I ever found myself married to a
nagging woman, I'd just quit her!"

"What do you mean by that?" she demanded imperiously.



IV

Again Halsey was deliberate, although he half sighed as he replied:
"Pretty much what I say, Mrs. Halsey, since you ask me.  The truth is,
you quit me when I needed you.  I have had worry enough from this
business at the factory.  I don't particularly care to have all other
kinds of worry on top of that.  You had all this place to fall back on.
Your father's taken care of you.  But he hasn't taken care of me very
well.  The fact is, I've been scapegoat about long enough!"

"You seem to have learned the factory ways of talking!"

"Yes, I don't know but I am getting rather plain, and common, and
vulgar.  It's a little different here--even from Kelly Row, let alone
our place on the West Side.  I fancy you're getting the North Shore
accent, along with other things.--It all only means that we're that
much further apart, Grace.  Did you ever stop to think of that?"

"I've had time to think of plenty of things," she answered bitterly.

"You had plenty of time to think of some of them before you came over
here," he rejoined.  "You didn't like what your husband could offer
you, and you chose something better which your father did offer you.
You've quit me, practically.  You've not been in our home twice since
you came to live here.  I've seen that poor baby of ours only once in a
while since you left our home for this.  You've not been a wife to me.
That's the truth about it--I might as well not be married!  That comes
mighty near being the situation, since you put it up to me to answer."

"Then what do you mean?"

"The courts would make it a case of desertion, if you force me to say
that," answered Halsey.  "Now, I don't want to live on this way for
ever!  I'm a young man, and my career's ahead of me!  I've got to
choose regarding my life before long!  And I'm going to choose.  I'm
not going to let things run on in this way any further."

"That's what my father always said!  Your career; your life!  Where
does your wife come in?"

"You come in precisely where you say you want to come in, Grace.  We
get what we earn in this world.  If you leave me and take up a life
which I can't share, if you leave my house and don't care for what I
can give you--why there's not much left to talk about as to where you
come in.  You come in _here_.  I belong over there."

"You're selfish!  All men are, I think."

"I'm not going to argue about that in the least, Grace, except to say
that it's the Rawn half of you that said that.  The Rawn half of you
can't see anything but its own part of the world.  It wasn't the Rawn
half of you that I married.  You were different, then.  You're not much
like your mother, Grace!  And I married the part of you that was like
your mother.  She was a good woman, and a good wife."

"You must not speak of her!"

"Oh, yes, I must, and I shall when I like.  It's all in evidence.
There's the record."  He nodded toward the two dim figures at the other
end of the gallery.  "She's very beautiful, yes, very beautiful!"  His
eyes lingered on the figure of Virginia Rawn, faintly outlined, cool in
satin and laces.

"She'd like to hear you say that!" sneered his wife.

"I perceive, my dear, that you two love each other very much.  But as I
was saying, you don't seem to me, Grace, to be much like your own
mother--you're more like your stepmother, over there, in some ways.
Your mother didn't change.  She made good--if you'll let me use some
more factory slang--on the old ways, on her own old lines.  That's what
I call class, breeding, blood, if you like--just plain North American
sincerity and simplicity.  She didn't pretend, she didn't try to climb
where she knew she couldn't go.  That's what _I_ call blood!"

"Thank you!  You're sincere also, at least."



V

He seemed not to hear her.  He went on.  "But you've changed.  You
dropped me.  Your head was turned with all this sort of thing....
Since these things are true, are you coming back to me?"  He found
himself wrenching his eyes away from the cool dim figure far down the
long gallery.

She straightened up suddenly, pale.  "Back!--to that?  To live in that
hole--?"

"Yes, just back to _that_, Grace.  It's all I have to offer you.  Just
that hole."

"I'm not happy here."

"Then why do you stay here?  Why don't you come back to me?"

"Because I couldn't be happy over there any more, either!  I know it.
I admit it.  It's got me--I couldn't go back to the old ways, the ways
we'd have to live.  Why can't you come here--why doesn't Pa give us
money enough--"

He turned to her now gravely.  "I suppose it's the pace--yes, it's got
you, and a lot of others.  But I'm not taking that sort of money just
yet.  And that doesn't answer my question.  I've come over to-night to
arrive at some understanding about us two.  I want to know where I am.
There are going to be changes, one way or another."

She turned to him suddenly again.  "What's wrong over at that factory,
Charley?" she asked.  "Why haven't you made good before this?  My
father has been on the point of tearing up things a dozen times!  He's
sore at you--awfully sore."

"Yes?  How do you know I haven't made good?"

"Then why has Pa talked so?"

"For the very good reason that he doesn't know any better than to talk
that way.  He hasn't got any more sense.  He didn't talk that way to
me."

"Then you have got it--you've made the discovery--it'll work?"

"Our machines not only will work, but have been working," said he
calmly.  "I haven't seen fit to tell your father.  I'm going to tell
you, however, that all this was _my_ idea from the first.  If I haven't
been a competent manager, let him get some one more competent.  I'll
take what I know with me in my own head.  I'm saying to you, his
daughter, that _I_ worked out this idea, myself, and all he did was to
get the money in the first place for it.  For that reason I call this
discovery mine, to do with as I like.  I haven't been bought and paid
for, myself.  I don't want money when it costs too much.  I've just
begun to understand things lately."

"Yes, I've worked it out into practical form," he concluded, as she sat
silent.  "Your father never did and never can.  He's got to come to
_me_, to _me_, right here.  Since you drive me to it, I'll just tell
you one thing.  I've had this whole thing in my own hands for more than
eight months!  The company doesn't know it, he doesn't know it, no one
knows it.  I've been just waiting--to see whether I had a wife or not."

"You never told?  Then you've been disloyal, you've been a coward!  You
took his money--"

"All right," said Halsey suddenly, grimly, "that's all I need.  I see,
now.  I know what to do now."

"But you _didn't_ tell father!" she went on fiercely.  "And we all knew
how much has been depending on that factory.  Weren't we all in
that--didn't we all help, from the very first?  Didn't I?"

"Yes, you did, you and your mother," said Halsey.  "You've had or will
have all you earned.  She got divorced from her husband, you may get
divorced from me!  It's a fine world, isn't it?  We've all been chasing
for more money.  Well, here we are!  There's a couple over there,
here's another one here.  Fine, isn't it?"



VI

"But, Charles!"  She moved toward him and laid a hand on his arm.  "You
don't stop to reflect on what you are saying!  If you have that secret
in your hands, why, don't you see--don't you _see_--"

"What do you mean?"

"Why, even Pa _will_ have to come to you!  You won't be poor then."

"I should say he _would_ have to come to me!" said Charles Halsey
slowly.  "Yes, I dare say.  I dare say, also, I could make a lot of
money whether he did or didn't."

"Listen, Charley.  He's got everything, and he wants everything.  He's
my father, but he doesn't care.  He--he sold me out.  What do we owe to
him and _her_?  What did he do to my mother?  I tell you, he thinks of
no one but _himself_.  Yet you and I--we who found that idea and worked
it out, who have it in our own hands now, as you say--you and I have
got the whip in our own hands now, it seems to me."

"You talk excellent business sense, Mrs. Halsey.  I compliment you.  It
seems that you begin to discover something in your husband and his
possibilities.  It's a trifle late, but you delight me!"

"Well, I didn't _know_, you see," she murmured, pawing at him vaguely,
in a fitful and inefficient essay at some coquettish art, grotesque in
these conditions.

She was a woman of small feminine charm at best.  She sat there now,
angular, stiff, unbeautiful, the sort of woman no clothes can make
well-dressed.  Already she had disclosed somewhat of her soul.  What
appeal, then, physical, emotional, moral, could she make to him--a
student, a visionary, an idealist--at such a moment?  And did there not
remain that same cool distant figure from whom he had so constantly to
wrench his eyes--and his heart?  Yes; and his heart!  Halsey's face was
dull red.  He was unhappy.  The world seemed to him only a hideous
nightmare, full of disappointments, injustices, of wrongs that cried
aloud for righting.  Ah, the comparison now was here, fair and full and
unavoidable!



VII

"No, you didn't know," said he slowly.  "A lot of people don't.  Now
let me tell you a few things more.  You didn't know that something like
a year ago your father told me that he'd make me a present of
fifty-thousand dollars the day I could run a car from the factory to
this place on a charge taken from our own overhead receiver-motors."

"A start for a million dollars!" she murmured.  "You get _that_--when
you succeed?"

"Yes, that is to say, I could have had that any day in the week these
past eight months--if he really has got that much left where he can
realize on it.  He's pretty well spread out."

"Then you have had it--what have you done with the money?"

"I presume I look as though I'd spent or could spend a mere fifty
thousand dollars or so, don't I?" was his quiet answer.  "No, I didn't
have it, and I haven't got it.  I'll say this much to you, however,
that I ran my little old car over here _to-night_ on a charge taken out
of one of the overhead receiver-motors of the International Power
Company--a motor completed on my own ideas, and by my own hands.  It's
mine, I tell you--_mine_!"

"Charley!"  She caught him by the wrists, with both hands, eagerly.
"You can give me the things I've got used to having!  I'll go back--oh!
I'll go back--we'll go on together!  I hate her so--you don't know!"

"That's nice of you, Grace; but you've guessed wrong.  I've not got
that fifty thousand yet."

"But you _can_ have."

"Yes, I can.  What could I buy with it?  For one thing, I could buy
back my wife?"

"But Charley!  We're rich!  You've succeeded!"

"No, I am poor, I've failed.  I'm just beginning to see how _much_ I've
failed!"

"If you don't tell me the truth about this I'll do it myself!" she
exclaimed fiercely.  "You've not been loyal--you've taken pay!"

"Your father took his pay from me," was his half-savage answer.  "He's
been paid enough!  As for me, I don't want any more of this sort of
pay."

"What are you going to do--you're not going to sell out to some one
else?"

"No, my dear, I'm not going to do precisely what you suggested I
_should_ do just a moment ago.  I'm not going to sell out.  I could do
that, too, and make more than any fifty thousand.  The foreman in our
factory, who knows very little, can sell out to-morrow morning for ten
thousand dollars, maybe double or treble that now.  The watchman on our
door can sell out when he likes.  We can all sell out, any of us sell
out.  But we haven't!  If there has been any selling out it has been
done by those who built this place here--the place which you found
better than the best home I could offer you."

She sat back stiff, silent, somber.  "You--you never mean that you are
going to throw this away, then!" she asked at length.  "What earthly
good will that do?  Pa'll have it out of you somehow!  I'll--I'm going
to tell him!"

"Try it," said Charles Halsey easily.

She had courage.  "Father," she called out.  "Pa!  Come here--at once!"



VIII

Rawn rose suddenly up from his chair at the startling quality in her
voice.  "What's that, Grace?" he called across the long gallery.

"Come here, I want you!  We've got something to say to you."

Halsey sat motionless.

Rawn approached slowly, obviously annoyed.  "If it's important--" he
began.  He had found love-making to his young wife especially delicious
this evening, although he mistook her strange silence and preoccupation
merely for wifely coyness.

"It is important!" Grace exclaimed; and rising, clutched at his arm.

"Well, then, what's it all about, what's it about?  Come, come!"

"Charley's _done_ it, he's _got_ it--he's got the machines
_finished_--over there--!"  Her voice was almost a scream, hoarse,
croaking.  She stood bent, tense.

"What's that?" demanded Rawn.  "What do you mean?  Is that the truth,
boy?"

"He came over in his own car, under International overhead--he told me
so, right now," she went on, half hysterically.  "You owe him money--a
lot, a pile of money--he told me so right now--it's worth more than any
fifty thousand.  Oh, we're going to have money too.  You see!"

Rawn shook off her arm and half flung her back in her chair.  "What's
this about, Halsey?" he said.  "Is it true?"

Halsey nodded calmly, but said nothing.

Rawn half-assailed him, his large hand on his shoulder.  "_Did you get
the current?_" he demanded.  "Did you really come over under power out
of one of our overheads?"

"Yes, to-night," said Halsey calmly.  "Often before."



IX

"Why, my boy, my boy!" began John Rawn.  At once he stood back, large,
complaisant, jubilant.  "My boy!" was all he could say.  Not even his
soul could at once figure out in full acceptance all the future which
these quiet words implied.

"Come!" he explained after a moment, excitedly.  "Let's get to the
telephone!  I want the wires right away!  I'll make a million out of
this before morning!"

"And write me a check for my fifty thousand to-night?" smiled Halsey.

"Surely I will--I've told you I would--I'll do more than that--I'll
make it a twenty-five thousand extra for good measure.  I'll have the
check taken care of to-morrow at my bank, as soon as I can get
down-town!  Oh, things'll begin to _happen_ now, I promise you!"

"I wouldn't be in too big a hurry to use the wire, Mr. Rawn," said
Charles Halsey quietly.  "And never mind about your check."

"What do you mean?  You're going to try to hold me up?"

"No, I'm not going to try to hold you up at all.  If there's any
question about that possibility, I can get a million to-morrow as
easily as I can any fraction of a million to-night, Mr. Rawn, and it's
just as well you should know that, perhaps."

"A million?" croaked John Rawn.  "You'd sell us out?"

"_No_, I said.  I'm not going to sell you out, Mr. Rawn.  And you're
not going to buy me out."

"Of course not, of course not," laughed Rawn hoarsely.  "You didn't
understand me."

"You haven't understood me either, Mr. Rawn.  Now, what would you do if
I told you that after taking my charge for the little car yonder I
turned about and dismantled every motor in the shop--destroyed them
all--locked up the secret, ended the whole game now--to-night?  What
would you say to that?"

"By God!  I'd kill you!" said John Rawn.



CHAPTER III

THE STEP-MOTHER-IN-LAW

I

On this very beautiful evening, in this very beautiful scene--as
beautiful as any to be found in all that luxurious portion of a great
city representing the flower of a great country's
civilization--Graystone Hall was a double stage.  At the back of the
tall mansion house countless auto-cars passed in brilliant procession,
carrying countless men and women, personal evidences of all the ease
and luxury that wealth can bring; and of these who passed, the most
part looked in with envy at the tall mansion house beyond the curving
lines of shrubbery, brilliantly illuminated now, the picture of beauty
and ease, of peace and content.  More than one soft-voiced woman
murmured, "Beautiful!" as she passed.  More than one man, more than one
woman, envied the owners of this palace.

"He's awfully gone on his wife, they say," commented one young matron,
much as many did.  "Not that I see much in her myself--although she
seems to have a sort of way about her, after all."

"Lucky beggar!" growled her husband.

"Yes, they're both lucky."

That both Mr. and Mrs. Rawn were lucky seemed to be the consensus of
opinion of the procession of those passing at this moment along the
great driveway, and hence looking upon the rear stage of the drama then
in progress.  But they saw no drama.  The evening was beautiful.  The
spot was one of great beauty.  Apparently all was peace and content.
There was no drama visible, only a stage set for a scene of happiness.
Yet, two hundred yards from the point of this belief, on the stage of
the dimly-lighted gallery facing the lake, the comedy of life and
ambition, of success and sorrow, moved on briskly; moved, indeed, to
its appointed and inevitable end.



II

Rawn's voice, harsh, half animal in its savagery, wakened some sudden
kindred savagery in young Halsey's soul.  In a flash the spark rose
between steel and flint.  The accumulated resentment of many days made
tinder enough for Halsey now.

"All right, Mr. Rawn," said he, his head dropping, his chin extended.
"Go on with the killing now, if you like.  I'm going to tell you right
here, that sort of talk will do you no good.  If you kill me you kill
my secret.  It isn't yours, and neither you nor any other man is apt to
set it going again."

"You hound, you cur!" half sobbed Rawn.  His daughter stood, tense,
silent, unnoticed at his elbow.

"Thank you!  Now, I'll tell you.  I dismantled every motor, and I'm
never going to build them again for you.  I meant every word of what I
said.  Also I mean this!"

As he spoke he rose and struck Rawn full in the face with his
half-clenched hand.  The sound of the blow could have been heard the
whole length of the gallery--was so heard.  An instant later, half
roaring, John Rawn closed with the younger man....

The women, plucking at their arms, could do nothing to separate the
two, indeed were not noticed in the struggle.  As to that, the whole
matter was over in an instant.  Halsey was far the stronger of the two.
He caught the right wrist of Rawn as he smote down clumsily, caught his
other wrist in the next instant, and then slowly, by sheer strength,
forced him back and down until at last he crowded him into the chair
which Grace a moment earlier had vacated.  The bony fingers of his hand
worked havoc on John Rawn's wrist, on his twisted arm.  Halsey was not
so long from his college athletics, where he had been welcome on
several teams.  He was younger than Rawn, his body was harder from hard
work and abstemiousness.  He was the older man's master.

"Sit down!" he panted.  "I don't think you'll do this killing very
soon!"



III

Rawn, for the first time in his life, faced a situation which he could
not dominate by arrogance and bluster.  For the first time in his life
he had met another man, body to body, in actual physical encounter; and
that man was his master!  All at once the consciousness of this flashed
through every fiber of him, bodily and mental.  He had met a man
stronger than himself--yes, stronger both in body and in mind.  The
consciousness of that latter truth also sank deep into his heart.  It
was a moment of horror for him.  He, John Rawn, master of this place,
rich, happy, prosperous--he, John Rawn, beaten--subdued--it could not
be!  Heaven never would permit that!

They all remained tense, silent, motionless, for just half an instant;
it seemed to them a long time.  Halsey at length straightened and
turned toward the door.

"I'm going," said he dully.  "Good by, Grace."

Rawn turned, confused, distracted.  He cared for no more of the
physical testing of this difference.  But he saw Success passing in the
reviled figure of his son-in-law.  "No, no!" he cried--"Jennie--he
fouled me--but don't let him go--he'll ruin us, do you hear?"

Halsey was within the tall glass doors and passing toward the front
entry.  He heard the rustle of skirts back of him and felt a light hand
upon his shoulder.

"Well," he began; and turning, faced young Mrs. Rawn!



IV

"I'm sorry," he stammered, "it's disgraceful.  I beg your pardon with
all my heart.  But I couldn't help it.  He struck me first with what he
said.  He threatened me.  Let me go.  I'll never come back here again.
I'm sorry--on your account--"

"Charles," she said softly, "Charley, wait.  Where are you going?"

"To the divorce courts, and then to hell."

"But you mustn't go away like this.  I'm sorry, too.  Wait!"

Suddenly moved by some swift, irresistible impulse, perhaps born of
this unregulated scene where all seemly control seemed set aside, she
put both her white bare arms about his neck and looked full into his
eyes, her own eyes bright.  He caught her white wrists in his hands;
but did not put away her arms.  He stood looking at her, frowning,
uncertain.  His blood flamed.

"It's disgrace," he said, "I admit it.  I can't square it any way in
the world.  I'm sorry on your account--awfully sorry!"  His blood
flamed, flamed.

"Listen!" she said, panting, eager, her voice with some strange, new,
compelling quality in it, foreign to her as to himself.  "You mustn't
go.  You mustn't ruin the future of us all in just a minute of temper.
Yen mustn't ruin yourself, or--_me_.  Besides, there's Grace!"

"Oh, Grace!"

"But she's your wife."

"Not any longer.  She's chosen for herself.  She left me and would not
come back.  I'm going now.  I'm on my own from this time."

"Why not?" she asked coolly.  "But why wreak ruin on us all?  You don't
stop to think!"

"Yes, it will set him back pretty badly--"  Halsey nodded toward the
bowed frame of Rawn, dimly visible, in the gallery's shade, through the
tall glass doors.

"Yes," she said slowly, "he's my husband, surely."

--"Who has given you everything."

She nodded, her arms still about his neck.  "Let me think this out for
all of us, Charley.  Keep matters as they are until I have time to
think--won't you do that much--just that little--for me?"

His hands were still upon her wrists as he looked down upon her from
his height, his eyes angry, his face frowning, disturbed.  Worn almost
to gauntness, tall, sinewy, of a certain distinction in look, as he
stood there before her now an ignorant observer might have thought the
two lovers, he her lover, not her stepson, she at the least his younger
sister, surely not his mother by mixed marriage.



V

As they stood thus, Rawn turning, saw them through the tall glass door.
His face grew eager.  "He's _not_ gone," he whispered hoarsely to his
daughter, who stood rigid, close at his arm.  "She's got him!  By Jove!
She's a wonder--my wife, my wife--she'll land him yet--she will!"

"Do you see that?" hissed Grace at last, pointing at the door.

"Do I see it--didn't you hear me?  Yes, of course I see it!"

"And you'll allow _that_, between your wife and my husband?"

"Allow it--wife!--why! damn you, girl, what are you _talking_
about--wives and husbands?--what's that to do with this?  There's many
a million dollars up now, I tell you, on those two standing there.  You
make a move now--say a word--and I'll wring your neck, do you hear?"
He caught her by the wrist.  She sank into a chair, sobbing bleakly.

A moment later the two figures beyond the door stood a trifle apart.
The arms of Virginia Rawn dropped from Halsey's neck.  She laid a hand
upon his arm and, side by side, neither looking out toward the gallery,
they drew deeper into the room, behind the shelter of a heavy silken
curtain which shut off the view.

It was a beautiful night.  The long ladder of the moon still lay across
the gently rippling lake, which murmured at the foot of Graystone
Hall's retaining sea-wall.  The scent of flowers was about.  It was a
scene of peace and beauty and content.  John Rawn and his daughter
remained upon the gallery for a time.



CHAPTER IV

THE SECOND CURRENT

I

"Charles," said Virginia Rawn, "Charley--"  And always her white hand
touched his shoulder, his arm, his hand--"You really mustn't go.
Believe me, you'll both be sorry to-morrow.  You don't know what you're
doing!  You're only angry now.  You'll both be sorry."  Her eyes
glowed, evaded.

Halsey shook his head.  "It's all over, so far as I'm concerned."  His
eyes, glowing, sought hers.

"Why, Charley, boy, that's all foolishness.  Don't you know how wrong
it is to talk in that way?  What hasn't Mr. Rawn done for you?  And
she's your wife!"

"He has done little for me and much for himself," he answered hotly.
"As for her, his daughter, she left me for him and what he could give
her.  She liked this sort of thing rather better than what I could do
for her.  She weighed it up, one side against the other, and she chose
this.  Most women would, I suppose."

"Charley, how you talk!"  Her voice, reproving, none the less was very
gentle, very soft.  "One would think you were a regular misanthrope.
The next thing, you'll be saying that I was that sort of a woman
because _I_ live here.  Of course, other things being equal, any woman
likes comfort.  But you seem to think that we all would choose luxury
to love."

"_Don't_ you--don't you all?" demanded the unhappy youth.  "Some do, of
course.  Would you?  Haven't you?"  He was reckless, brutal, now.  The
young woman before him started, shivered.  She passed a hand gropingly
across her bosom, across her brow.



II

There was a strained, very strong quality in the air of Graystone Hall
that evening.  Thought seemed to leap to thought, mind to mind,
swiftly, without trouble for many words.  These two at last looked at
each other face to face, deliberately, she gazing beneath heavy,
half-closed lids, a superb, a beautiful woman, a creature for any man's
admiration.  He was a manly young chap.  He stood a victor, as she had
seen but now.  He gazed at her out of eyes open and direct.  Reckless,
brutal in his despair, he now allowed--for the first time in all their
many meetings--his heart to show through his eyes.  For the first time,
their eyes met full.

"You must not ask that," said she quickly.  "I wouldn't want to tell
you anything but the truth about it."  She was breathing faster now.

"What is the truth about it?  I want to know if any woman is worth
while.  I'm down and out myself, and it doesn't matter for me.  I just
wondered."

"I used to see you often about the office," said she irrelevantly,
"when you came in to see Mr. Rawn.  I rather thought Grace was lucky,
then!  I was just a girl then, you know, Charley."

"What do you mean, Mrs. Rawn?"

"Nothing.  What did you think I meant?"

"I didn't know.  I've never dared think much.  I supposed everything
was going to come out right somehow.  Now it's come out wrong.  I don't
know just where it began.  Don't you see, Mrs. Rawn, it's all like a
faulty conclusion in logic?  It builds up fine for a long time.  Then
all at once things go wrong--it's absurd, and you wonder why.  Well,
it's because there's what you call a faulty premise somewhere down
close to the start.  If that's the case, there isn't anything in all
the world is ever going to make a conclusion come out right.  I reckon
there's a wrong premise somewhere down in my life, or ours, or in
this!"--He swept an arm, indicating Mr. Rawn's opulent surroundings.

"I'm only a woman, Charley.  Maybe I don't understand you."

"Well, I'll tell you.  There's wealth, luxury, everything here.  Where
did they get it?  They took more than their share."

"Now you're talking like a Socialist.  Mr. Rawn tells me you are a
Socialist, Charley."

"I don't believe I am.  But I believe a good many would be if they'd
gone through what I have.  Now, what those two took, they took from
me--what you've got here you got from me.  I don't mind that.  The big
trouble is--the wrong premise about it is--that what they took they
took from this people, this country.  And there are so many who even
are hungry."

"Oh, we'd never get done if we began that way!  All success does that
way, you know that.  Not all can be rich."  Her eyes still came about
to him.

"Yes, all success succeeds--until that wrong premise comes out.  Then
there's trouble!"



III

"Are you going to sell us out, Charley?" she demanded suddenly.

"I never sold out anybody.  I'm the one that's been sold out."

"Aren't we your real friends?"

"No.  You ought to be, but you aren't.  The only friends I've got are
over there in the factory--Jim and Ann Sullivan, Tim Carney--a few of
the working-men that stuck it through.  They've killed five men for us
over there.  Their sluggers are out all the time.  As for me, I don't
fit in, either there or here.  Look here, Mrs. Rawn," he went on,
turning upon her suddenly and placing his hand impulsively on hers.
"Let me tell you something.  I haven't sold out--I'm not going to.
Where do you stand yourself?"

Her eyelids fluttered.  "Charley," said she, "you know better than to
ask me that."

"Yes, I suppose I do," he answered slowly and bitterly.  "You stand for
this place, for everything that money can buy.  Have they made you
happy?  I often wonder--does money really make people happy?  Are you
happy?"  His eyes were very somber, very direct.

"I wonder if I am," said she suddenly; "and I wonder how you dare ask
me.  Oh, I'll admit to you I've been ambitious, and always will be.
But do you know, some time I'd like to talk with your friend--with Ann
Sullivan!"

"_Then_ you'd begin to get at life.  You'd be getting down to premises,
then, that aren't wrong--with Ann Sullivan and her sort!"

"What do you mean?"

"Oh, well, I reckon you'd only find a little sincerity and honesty,
and, well--maybe--love, that's all.  Just the things I didn't get
myself.  Have you?"

"Why didn't you?"  She ignored his brutal query.

"Because I'm a theorist.  Because I'm a visionary and a fool, I reckon.
Because I like to see fair play even in a dog fight, and the people of
this country aren't getting fair play.  Because I'm the sort of fool
that Mr. Rawn isn't.  There's the difference!

"Are you happy, Mrs. Rawn?" again he demanded suddenly, since she still
was silent.  "Tell me the truth.  I think you know I'm not going to
talk.  I'm going away somewhere--anyhow for the summer.  I suppose,
maybe, this is the last time I'll ever see you--in all my life."

She felt the candor of his speech and replied in like kind, smiling
slowly.  "No use my lying," she said.  "You know I'm not happy.  And,
yes, I know you'll not talk.  Who _is_ happy?  We all just get on just
the best we can.  I can take my joy in making other women envy me.
Isn't that about what all women want?  Isn't that the height and limit
of their ambition?  Isn't that success, so far as a woman is concerned?
Don't they cling to it, all of them--till they get old?  I suppose so,
but I know it isn't happiness.  Yes, I'll admit to you I do miss
something."  His eyes rested upon her, searching.

Unconsciously she looked down at her wrists.  The red mark of his
fingers still lingered there.  "I'll have to ask Ann Sullivan some
time," she laughed.

"One thing," answered Halsey.  "She'd tell you that she isn't trying to
get the envy of her neighbors.  I don't believe she'd be happy in that!"

"Oh, but she's fresh over--she's not American yet, don't you see?  She
hasn't had a chance--you can't tell what she would do if she were rich."



IV

"There are two ways of looking at it," said Halsey musingly, his anger
passing, now leaving him meditative, relaxed.  They were talking now as
though there were not two others, unhappy, waiting on the gallery near
by.  "I'll tell you something, if you'll let me talk about myself, Mrs.
Rawn."

"Go on; I'm glad!"

"I don't suppose you care for things that interest me.  You called me a
Socialist.  I'll admit that I studied a lot about that, attended their
meetings, all that sort of thing.  Maybe that made me think.  It seems
to me that money is rolling up too fast in this country now--we're all
mad about money.  It's like the big apple with no taste to it.  I had
it offered me to choose between those two, and I took the little apple
that to me seemed sweeter.

"Now, I've perfected that invention.  It'll make somebody rich any time
I say the word--any time I like that big apple and not the little
one--any time I like that success which comes from outside and not from
inside.  But I've figured that that doesn't mean happiness.  Maybe I'm
wrong.  I don't know.  Somehow I believe that Abraham Lincoln, or John
Ruskin, or Jim Sullivan, or Tim, or Ann, or Sir Isaac Newton--any
thinking person--any philosopher--would come in with me about this.  I
broke up the machines."

"Why--where it meant ruin?"

"Because they'd tighten up the grip of a few men on the neck of the
people!  I don't know whether you call that being a Socialist or not,
and I don't care.  Change is coming.  It's not the fault of the poor
that it's coming.  It's the fault of the rich.  I broke them
up--because things can't go on this way, money rolling Up all the time
for a few, and life getting harder all the time for so many.  God
didn't make the rivers and the mountains and the forests for that
purpose--to give them to a few.  We've got to make changes, and big
ones, in this government, or we're gone.  I'm no Socialist at all.  I
don't want what some one else has won--if he's won it _fair_.  But the
wrong is in our government--the very one of all on earth that meant
fair play.  We don't get it--now.  Some day we must.  I don't see what
difference it makes what name you give the new form of government.
There must be _change_, that's all; or else we're gone!

"Well now, what they wanted me to do was to give that all to a few.  I
couldn't do it!  By God!  Mrs. Rawn, I faced it and I tried, and I
_couldn't_ do it!  Maybe I was wrong.  Anyhow, here I stand."

[Illustration: (Rawn and Virginia)]



V

"Do you know," she said at length, slowly, "these are things that never
came to my mind in all my life?  I never in all my life thought of any
of these things.  I only wanted--"

"You wanted to win.  You wanted what most American women
do--money--station--power--to be envied; that's what you played for.
Well, you've won!  Look at all this about you.  I don't suppose there's
a woman in this town more admired by men or more envied by women than
you.  You've got what you craved, I reckon."

"I thought I had.  But now, to-night, I'm not so sure!"

"You couldn't give it up," he sneered, "any more than Grace could, and
she couldn't any more than a leopard could change its spots.  It goes
too deep.  You couldn't expect anything different.

"I told you I was a student, Mrs. Rawn," he went on after a time.  "I
haven't got much mind.  But somehow, while I don't suppose religion can
change business very much, I think of those twelve disciples and their
Master, trying to lift the load off of human beings, trying to lift the
people of the world up above the day of tooth and claw.  I don't reckon
they can do it.  But you see, each fellow has to choose for himself.
I've had this put before me.  I could have thrown in with Rawn---I can
do so yet, right here, now, as you know.  I can hold him up, as he
would hold me up, or any one else--I can take his
money--fifty-thousand, a million--I don't think he's really got as much
money as most people think.  He's in debt, deep.  That's all right so
long as your credit is good.  He has had all sorts of credit--and it
depended on _me_--on my invention.  It wasn't his.  It isn't going to
be.  I've told you why.--But you see, I could make him divide even with
me--make him take a third, a fourth, of what I'd won.  He'd have to
come to terms.  He knows that.  All right, I'm not going to do it!
Failure as I am, I've got a few ideas which I think are right.  Maybe I
got them from Ann Sullivan--I don't know!  Go ask her about things."

"And you won't put back the machines?  Not even for me?"

"Not even for you," he smiled.  "Not that I know what you mean by
that."  He looked at her keenly.  His toil-stained hands twitched
uneasily in his lap.



VI

"You're talking about things that never came into my thoughts in all my
life," said she, with the same strange deliberation, the same strange
direct look at him.  "But you couldn't expect an ignorant woman to
learn it all in one night, could you?"

"I'm not trying to convert you, Mrs. Rawn.  I'm going to leave this
place.  You'll not see me again.  But I'm not trying to change _you_.
I wouldn't--"

"Listen!" she broke out sharply.  "I'm set to do that for you--I'm
expected by him, out there, to change you.  Isn't that the truth?
Didn't you see?"

"Yes, it's easy to see," he answered grimly.  "It's up to you."

"It's up to you and me, Charley, yes.  You can ruin me and all of us by
walking out that door.  You can break the lives of those two people out
there, and mine, yes, of course you can, and your own.--You can do all
that.  You can make me come down from this place where you say
everybody envies me, and you can have everybody laughing at me and
forgetting me in less than six months' time.  You can get me snubbed,
if you like; you can make me wretched and miserable, if you like.  Of
course you can.  Do you want to do that?"

"It isn't fair to put it before me in that way."

"I do put it before you in that way.  But that isn't the worst of what
you could do--you'd leave me unsettled and unhappy for ever if you went
away to-night that way--Charley!--"

"What can you mean--?"

"Things are moving fast to-night, Charley, and we're discussing matters
pretty openly--"

"Yes," he nodded.  "I don't want to set a wife against her husband.
Neither must you.  But the truth is, Mr. Rawn is not what a good many
think he is--"



VII

"Do you think that's news to me?" she asked of him, and looked full
into his eyes.

"Good God, Mrs. Rawn!  What do you mean?"

"Much what you do!"

"But you loved him--you married him!"

"Oh, yes, surely.  That was some months ago.  But you see, there's a
distinction between master and superior."

"I'm very miserable," was his simple answer.  "Things are getting too
much confused for me.  And now you say you'd never be happy if I left
you now, to-night--"

"Then why go, so long as we are so confused?  Why don't you wait?  I've
asked you to!  Do you expect to settle all this in a half-hour's time,
in a passion of anger?  Now listen.  Although he's my husband, and
she's your wife, I don't blame you.  I'm only asking you to wait a
little.  I'm making it personal, Charley!"

"How dare you do that, Mrs. Rawn?"

"Because I have the right to do it!  I don't intend to have you make me
more unhappy than I am.  I've just told you I'm not happy.  I don't
know--" she laughed a little amused ripple of laughter--"but I'd have
been happier if he had handled you as you did him!  I'm not talking
just the way I meant to when I came through those doors to stop you.
I'm like you--it's all confusing--_I'll_ have to wait, the same as you.
There's a lot of things to be figured out!  I'm covetous of
_everything_ in the world--that _any_ woman ever had--from the Queen of
England to Ann Sullivan!  Yes, I'm ambitious, I'll admit that.  And
you've set me thinking--I'm wondering--wondering what really _is_ the
best a woman can get out of life."

"Mrs. Rawn, you've got success as you understand it, by marrying a
middle-aged man.  You're young."

She shook her head.  "It isn't possible," said she frankly, catching
his thought.  "I'm far enough along to see that!"

"You know what Mr. Rawn did when _he_ wished to change--he put away
what he had, and reached out for that which he had not.  For my own
part, I don't see how any woman could be happy with him.  He ruined the
life of one woman, his wife; of another, his daughter.  Now, you tell
me he hasn't made an absolutely happy life for yet another
woman--yourself.  Oh, it's brutal for me to say it, but it's true, and
you've just said it's true."

"If only it could come to the question of what a woman really wanted--"
she resumed, pondering.

"That's for each woman to figure out for herself, Mrs. Rawn.  I've only
said what most American women want.  We're living in a wholesome and
beautiful age, Mrs. Rawn!"

"I thought I was right!" said she suddenly, looking up.  "Now I believe
I was wrong.  Charley!--"



VIII

"It's in the air," she said, as though to herself, after a time,
finding him silent, troubled, pale.  "Don't you know, Charley--"  She
turned to him.

He leaned toward her now, his lined young face illuminated with sudden
emotion.  "I wish I could explain that to you, Mrs. Rawn," said he.  "I
feel it, too!  Now maybe we _can_ understand!  How did I drive my car
over here, charged from one of our overhead motors?  Ah, that's my
secret.  But I took it out of the air!  That motor of ours was in
_tune_ with it--the great power that's in the air, everywhere.  Mrs.
Rawn, it's getting in _tune with the world_ that makes you happy.
Nothing else is going to do it!  Get in tune with the _plan_!  All I've
ever done in my receiving-motor has been to get in tune with the hills
and the rivers and the forests--with _life_."



IX

She leaned toward him now, that on her face which he had never seen
there before.  He looked her fair in the eyes and went on, firmly,
strongly.

"I've done that; and I've said to myself that I wasn't going to throw
that away and give it to a few, when it belonged to everybody.  I am
unhappy as you are; more so.  _I'm_ not in tune with life as we live
it.  No, I certainly am not.  But I know that to be perfectly happy
we've got to get in tune with the purpose of the world.  What is it?
What _is_ that second current?  I don't know.  What is it?  You tell
me--"

"I'll tell you what I believe," said Virginia Rawn slowly, her hands
dropping in her lap, her face pale.  "I shouldn't wonder if it
was--love!"

"And _that_ belongs to everybody, not just a few--to every one--not
just to the rich men, with money to buy what they want?"  He was
looking at her keenly now.

"To everybody?" She shook her head.  "Not always, Charley."

"Why not--Virginia?"



CHAPTER V

MEANS TO AN END

I

"Well, he's gone, then?"

Rawn turned toward his wife a face years older than it had been an hour
ago, a face haggard and lined, pasty in color.  His bitter agitation
was evident in his voice, in his expression, in the stoop of his
shoulders--in a score of signs not usual with him.  Virginia was even
more noncommittal than her wont as she faced him.  Grace had
disappeared.

"What did you do--how did you handle him, Jennie?" he began--"you were
talking for over an hour there!  Did you manage to hold things
together--will he let up?"

She faced him full now, as he stood in the blaze of the electric lights
in the interior of the house, where Halsey had left her, in the chair
from which she had not moved since his departure.  Every delicate,
clear-cut feature was fully visible now.  Her lips just parted to show
the double row of her white teeth in a faint smile.  Her chin was a
trifle up, her head high.

"He will wait a little while," she answered quietly.  "At least, I
think so."

"Good!  Fine!  I knew you'd do it, Jennie!  You're a wonder!--I don't
think there's a woman in all the world like you!"  He advanced toward
her.

"Don't paw me over!" she exclaimed, drawing back.

"Well, now, then--I only meant--"

"I don't want to talk," she said.  "He's gone, yes, and he'll not do
anything for a little while, I think.  It's enough for to-night--I'm
tired.  This has been a horrible evening for me.  I never thought to
see a time like this!"

"Horrible for all of us!" exclaimed John Rawn.  "That man took
advantage of me out there--I ought to have wrung his neck for him, and
I would have done it if it hadn't been for you two women.  Of course,
we don't want scenes if they can be avoided, for there's no telling
what talk might run into if it got out.  But just the same, Jennie,
don't you see--" and his face assumed a still more anxious look--"he
can ruin us all whenever he gets ready, and he's wise enough to know
that.  I can't do anything with him now.  Something's gone wrong with
him, and I don't know what!"



II

"No, you don't know what," she said slowly.  "I don't think you in the
least imagine what!"

"Do you, then?" he demanded.  "If you do, why don't you tell?  Do you
know that everything we've got in the world is up at stake on this?  He
can kill my credit, he can split this company wide open, he can break
me in spite of all.  See what he's done in return for what I've done
for him!  Sometimes I wonder if there's such a thing as honor left in
the world!"

"So!  Do you?"  She rose now, and would have left him.

"Well, I want to talk this over with you.  Please, Jennie.  Sit down,"
he said.  "Tell me what you said.  I want to know where things are, so
I can act to-morrow--or maybe even before to-morrow.  You don't realize
what a hole I'm in."

"What did I say to him?" she repeated, looking down at her wrists.
"Nothing very much.  I told him if he went on he'd ruin us all; that it
wasn't right for him to do it.  I told him we wanted him--I wanted
him--to wait--for my sake."

"For your sake?"

"Yes, I did," she answered calmly.  "I said that."

"It was best!" he cried, rising and walking up and down excitedly.
"What a mind you have, Jennie--what a woman you are!  Where'd I be
without you, I wonder now?  Why, of course, that was the way!  Any man
will do anything that _you_ tell him to, especially a young man--of
course, of course!"

"Thank you," she commented coldly; "thank you very much."



III

He sought to put a consoling or an explanatory hand on her shoulder,
but she shook him off, shivering.

"I don't mean anything," he began confusedly.  "Get me straight, now.
I only wanted to say that when you work for me in this you are working
for your own sake also.  It's all up to you, Jennie, right now.  If you
can't land him, we're gone--it's no use my trying to do anything with
him.  Do you know, I'm _going to send you out after him_."

"Send me out?"

"Yes; things have to be done the best way they can be done.  That
fellow can say one word which'll ruin us in one day's time.  He can
break the values in International more than we can mend in months.  Our
men would begin to cover as soon as they caught a hint that anything
was really wrong.  As for me, I'm spread out for millions in the
general market.  If they began to hammer me I couldn't come through--I
wouldn't last a week.  The thing to do is to keep this news safe until
I can protect myself--until I can protect us all.  Now it's you,
Jennie, that's got to do that--it's you!  I'm sending you out after
him."

"I always thought, Mr. Rawn," said she, "that you played a dangerous
game, so long as you simply trusted that he'd do anything you told him."

"Yes, I see it now.  But he always was odd--he always held something
back.  I tell you, he's crazy!  Now, he's either just crazy over his
fool Socialist ideas, or else he's going to hold out for a squeeze.  In
the first case you can handle him.  In the second, I can.

"You see--I couldn't tell our directorate," he went on; "but there was
always something lacking which I couldn't handle myself.  _We_ need
him, and we've got to have him!  You can get him, I know you can.  You
can do anything you like.  You're wonderful!"

She sat and looked at him, her lips still parted in the same enigmatic
smile which he did not like to see; but she made no answer.

"What's wrong with him?" he went on immediately.  "What does he _say_
is the trouble, anyway?  And is it the truth that he's got the overhead
current?"

She nodded.  "Of course, I know something about it from my work in the
office.  Yes, he told me that he had done what you have all been trying
to do so long.  He said he came over under power from the
overhead--just as he told you."

"He may be lying, for all we know.  You can't look at a car and tell
where its charge came from.  Electricity is electricity, to all intents
and purposes.  What I want to know is, what he's got against us,
anyhow, Jennie?"

"Well, for one thing, he seemed troubled because Grace would not go
back with him.  He seemed to think that you and the life you could give
her had been the reason for her abandoning him."

"Why, what nonsense!  Grace hasn't abandoned him!  And I only got her
over here because I needed her myself--before--well, before we were
married.  Who was to take care of _me_, I'd like to know?  And you say
he complains of _that_!"

"That was one of the things."

"But Grace would go back!  She's none too well pleased now, since you
and I have taken charge here.  She'd go back to Charley to-morrow if he
asked her--why, I'd _make_ him take care of her, of course.  The
trouble with him is, he values his own personal affairs too much.
That's no way to begin in the business world.  A man has to bend
everything to the one purpose of _success_.  Look at me, for instance."



IV

She did look at him, calmly, coldly, without the tremor of an eyelid,
without raising a hand to touch him as he stood close by, without
indeed making any verbal answer.  A slight shudder passed over her,
visible in the twitch of her shoulders.

"It's getting cooler!" he exclaimed.  "I'll fetch a wrap for you."  And
so hastened away, obsequious, uxorious, as he always was with her.

"But Charley never would take any counsel from anybody," resumed he
presently.  "He's always been tractable enough, that's true; never
raised much of a disturbance until to-night--I don't see why he cut up
so ugly now.  He's not crazy over Grace, and if the truth be told,
Grace isn't the sort of girl that a man _would_ get crazy over.  You're
that sort."

"Perhaps not," she smiled faintly.  "Just the same, Grace's attitude
may have started him to thinking.  When he began thinking he seemed to
conclude that all the world was wrong."

"And he's starting in to set it right!  He's going in for the uplift
stunt, eh?  That's the way with a lot of these reformers!  They want to
set the world right according to their own ideas.  They don't pay any
attention to the men who keep them from starving.  I _made_ that
boy--what he's got he owes to me."

"Indeed!  How singular!  He says that it's just the other way about;
that what you have you took from him!  He says you want to take
more--more than your share--from things that belong to everybody."

"What's that!  What's that!  Well, now, of all the insane idiocy I ever
heard!  Good God, what next!  Him, Charles Halsey, the man I brought up
with me!  Jennie, I never heard the like of that in all my time."

"But if that's the way he feels, now's not the time to argue that with
him!"

"But, good God, the effrontery--"

"All the world is full of effrontery, Mr. Rawn," she said--continuing
to address him formally, as she always did.  "It's buy and sell.
Everything we get we pay for in one way or another.  Even if we took
power out of the air by our overhead motors, we'd pay for that, one way
or another--nothing comes from nothing--we pay, we pay all the time,
Mr. Rawn!"

"_You_ don't need to go into theories and generalizations," said he
testily.  "We've had enough of that from him.  We are both practical.
You simply get that man and bring him back into the fold, that's all!
Do your share."



V

"My share?  It's easy, isn't it?"  She smiled at him again annoyingly.

"But you can do it?"

"Yes, I can do it.  But I can't evade the truth I just told you.  I'd
have to pay.  You'd have to pay."

"We're beggars, and can't choose," said John Rawn savagely.  "Besides,
there's no harm done--I'm not asking you to do anything improper,
anything to compromise yourself--but _get_ him, that's all!  And when
we've got him in hand--when I know what I want to know--I'll wring him
dry and throw him on the scrap heap.  That's what I'll do with him!"

"Yes, I think you would," she said.

"It's the only right thing to do," Rawn fumed.  "He'll get what's
coming to him.  He's been throwing down his one best friend."

"Are there any best friends in business, Mr. Rawn?" she asked.

"Of course there are.  Haven't I been a friend to him; haven't I got a
lot of friends of my own?"

"What would they do for you to-morrow, Mr. Rawn?"

"Well, that's a different matter; they might take care of themselves--I
would take care of myself.  But this fool here that I'm asking you to
handle isn't taking care of himself or any one else.  He's crazy,
that's all about him!  Did he hand you out any of this talk about the
rights of man?  I more than half suspect him of sympathizing with these
labor unions.  He's a Socialist at heart, that's what he is!"

She nodded her head a little.  "Names don't make much difference in
such matters."



VI

"Isn't it a funny thing," he rejoined, turning to her in his walk,
"that the very men who have failed, the very ones who most need help
themselves, are the ones who are out to help everybody else!  The blind
always want to lead the blind!  These labor unions depend on us for
their daily bread and butter, yet they want to fight us all the time.
There's no trust in this country so big as the labor trust, and there's
no ingratitude in the world like that of the laboring man's.

"Why, look at me, Jennie--you know something of my plans.  This very
month I was going to put fifty thousand dollars more into my
cooperative farm in the South, a thing I have been working out for the
benefit of my laboring people.  I'm going to do more than old Carnegie
has done!  You and I ought to have set up some kind of prizes,
medals--start some sort of hero competition.  Helping colleges is old,
and so are libraries old.  I don't place myself any station back of
Rockefeller himself.  The Rockefeller Foundation was a great idea.
Just wait!  I'll raise him out of the game!  When I get all my plans
made, they'll speak of John _Rawn_ when they mention philanthropy!

"And just to think, Jennie," he went on excitedly, "that all such big
plans as that, plans for the good of humanity, should come to nothing!
To be held up and handicapped by the folly of a man who has never been
able to do anything for himself or any one else!  It makes me sick to
think of it.  He claims to be a friend of the laboring people, and here
he's tying the hands of the greatest friend of the laboring men in this
town to-day--myself, _John Rawn_, standing here!  Why, if I'd hand this
country the John Rawn Foundation for industrial assistance, all thought
out, all financed, all ready to go to work to-morrow, that crazy fool
there, with his Socialist ideas, would block it all.  He's _going_ to
block it all.

"Now, it's up to you.  You're the only one that can keep him from doing
that very thing.  Don't you see, it isn't just you and me he's ruining.
It isn't himself he's ruining.  He's going to hurt the whole _country_.
Jennie, there's a considerable responsibility on you to-night.  Where
he is wrong is in thinking that the weak can help the weak.  It's the
other way about--it's the strong that can help--Power!--that's what
counts!  It's for you to show him that.  Jennie, girl--it's not so much
myself.  But think of your country."

"Yes," she nodded, "that's precisely it!"

"But he didn't affect you in the least, Jennie--he didn't get _you_
going with that kind of foolishness."

"I never heard any one talk just as he did, before," said she slowly.
"You see, I hadn't thought of these things myself, for I'm only a
woman.  He said that all this power, taken from the hills and the
forests and the air and the rivers, belongs to _everybody_--to all the
world--"

"But he didn't impress _you_ with that nonsense, Jennie?"

"He said things--I told him that I'd never thought of life just that
way.  And I haven't, Mr. Rawn.  I told him, as I admit to you, that I
hadn't thought of anybody much but myself--I just tried to climb.  I
think all women do."

"It's right they should, it's the only way.  Selfishness is the one
great cause of the world's progress, my dear."

"Well, I told him that his way of thinking was so new to me, that I
needed time to think it over."

"But you didn't believe a word he said--you never would!"



VII

"Mr. Rawn," said she, looking him full in the face, "we've both of us
climbed pretty fast.  I always put my family out of memory all I could.
But somehow I seem to recollect that my father used to talk of things a
good deal as Mr. Halsey does.  I begin to realize what I told you a
while ago--no matter how or where we climb, we pay for what we get,
sometime, somewhere, somehow!

"But listen," she leaned toward him with some sudden access of emotion.
"I can do this much!  I'll agree to bring in Charley Halsey, bound hand
and foot!  You can throw him and me, too, on the scrap heap when the
time comes!  It's a game.  I'll play it.  I'll take my chance."  She
half rose, thrilling, vibrant.

"I knew you would, Jennie."

"Yes, but you'll have to pay."

"Have I ever said I wouldn't?  Didn't I just get done telling him I'd
make him rich the minute he said the word?"

"It doesn't seem to be money he wants.  I--don't--believe--that's what
the pay would have to be."

"What do you mean?  You're getting too deep for me now.  I'm only a
plain man, my girl!"

She smiled at him, still enigmatic, still cool and calm, still almost
insolent, as she often was with him.  "He's been talking all sorts of
folly about getting things in tune--getting gravitation in tune with
labor--all sorts of abstractions.  Well, don't you see, if I got in
tune with his notions, I might be able to influence him!"

Rawn grew cold and hard.  "There's one thing we can't do, Jennie," said
he.  "We can't side in with any of his socialistic talk.  What _he_
wants to do is to give to the people of this country for nothing what
this International Power Company is planning to _sell_ them for ever.
What _we_ want is monopoly!  I've been gambling everything I've got on
the certainty of that monopoly.  I'm in soak, in hock, up to my eyes on
the market, this minute.  I'm margined to the full extent of my credit.
The biggest men of America are back of me.  I'll be rich if this thing
goes through--one of the richest men in America.  But I'd almost rather
lose it all than to see you side in with him, or listen for five
minutes to his rotten talk about the 'rights of man.'  There _are_ no
rights of man except what each man can take for himself!  As for him,
I'd kill him, or get him killed, if I knew first how he got that
current through the receivers.  Give me that, and I'll let the rights
of man wait a while.  I'll show them a thing or two!

"But of course," he added, frowning again in helpless perturbation,
"we've got to get him in hand.  Grace couldn't do it."

"No; on the contrary.  I can--if I pay!"

"_Then pay!_" he snarled suddenly, his voice harsh, half choking.
"What's the price--nothing worth mentioning.  But it's got to be paid,
no matter what it is.  We're caught, and we're squeezed!  We've got to
pay, _no matter what it is_, Jennie!"

"Is it no matter to you, Mr. Rawn?"

"How can it be?  I'm almost crazy to-night!  Do it, that's all, and
draw on me to the limit!"

"To the limit, Mr. Rawn?"

"_To the limit!_"  He looked her straight in the eye, and she met his
gaze fully.  She shivered slightly again, but her delicately clean-cut
face showed no further sign.  Only she shivered, and pulled her wrap a
trifle closer about her shoulders.

"Very well," she said.  "I may have to draw on you--and myself, too."

"It's all in the game, Jennie--we've got to play it together--we're two
of the same sort--we've got to climb, to succeed.  We run well
together.  One must help the other's hand."

"Yes, it's a game," she answered; and so rose, and left him without
further word.



VIII

John Rawn followed her up the stair, mumbling some sort of conjugal
affection, but she left him at the landing and passed toward her own
apartments down the hall, giving him hardly even a look of farewell.
He followed her with his eyes, standing a little time, his hand resting
on the lintel of his own door.

Alone, Rawn seated himself in the Elizabethan armchair devised by his
most favored decorator as fitting for this Elizabethan room.  A vast
oak bed, heavily carved, with deep and heavy curtains, represented the
decorator's idea of what the Virgin Queen preferred.  The walls were
deeply carved in wainscot and cornice.  A rude attempt was made at
strength and simplicity in this, the sanctum of the master of Graystone
Hall.  Granted the aid of a lively imagination, this might have been
the apartment of some feudal lord of another day; as the designer and
architect had not failed delicately to suggest to Mr. Rawn.

It is possible that in the time of Elizabeth pier glasses with heavily
carved frames were not common in the size affected by Mr. Rawn in his
private apartment.  He stood before the great glass now and gazed at
what he saw; a face haggard and lined, shoulders stooping a little
forward, body a little stooped, a little heavy, a little soft; the
watch charm hanging in free air--the figure of a man no longer
athletic, if ever so.

Rawn stood engaged in his regular nightly devotions--he made no prayers
of eventide beyond that to his mirror.  But now something he saw caused
him to fling himself into a seat at a smaller glass, where the light
was better.  He gazed into this also, intently.  Something seemed
strange about his eyes, about his mouth.  He turned his face slightly
sidewise and studied the deep triangular lines at the corner of the
chin.  He saw a roll of fat at the back of his neck, and observed a
certain throatiness, a voluminousness of flesh below the chin.  The
latter stood out distinct, pushing forward;--the rich man's chin, the
old man's chin.  He lifted a finger and touched the arteries on his
temples.  They were firmer to the touch than once they had been.  He
looked at the veins on his hands, and realized that they stood fuller
than was once the case.  His nose, large, just a trifle bulbous, seemed
to him to have gained somewhat in color in late years.  He looked at
his eyes in eager questioning.  Yes, they belonged to him!  But for
some reason they lacked brilliance and fire.  They were colder, less
impressive, less responsive;--the rich man's eyes, the old man's eyes.
He looked at his hair, now almost white at the temples.  He hesitated
for a moment, then picked up a hand glass and deliberately turned his
back to the mirror.  Yes, it was there, a shiny spot of naked
epidermis.  He knew that, but always he shunned the knowledge and the
proof.  For many years his thick mane of wiry hair had been his pride.

John Rawn turned and put the hand mirror on the dresser top again.  He
looked full into the glass at his image once more.  His pendulous lower
lip drooped, tremulously.  He saw his eyes winking.  He saw something
else.  Yes, to his wonder, to his gasping horror, he saw something
strange and revolutionary!  A tear was standing in the corner of his
eye!  It dropped, it trickled down his cheek.

John Rawn for the first time in his life was learning what the one game
is--and learning that time is the one winner in that one game!  He was
old.



CHAPTER VI

AN INFORMAL MEETING

I

It must surprise those simple folk, Messieurs Washington, Jefferson,
and their like, were they to return to life at this advanced day and
gaze upon the admirable republic which they fancied to be founded on
immutable principles.  As in politics to-day those principles would
seem proved to have been not quite immutable, so, in commerce, men and
methods would appear wholly different from those known in that earlier
day.  For instance, in commercial matters, the men of that day would
now find in daily application a fourth dimension of affairs once wholly
unknown; the sixth sense of the modern business man, a delicately
differentiated faculty evolved in the holy of holies where events cast
their financial shadows far in advance of themselves.  John Jay, or any
financier of Revolutionary time, very likely lacked in that regard, and
had but his five senses.

This keen sense of prophecy, property of modern leaders in finance, was
not lacking in the case of the directors of the International Power
Company, all and several; and more especially several.  Capitalists
hunt in packs--but only up to a certain point.  The _sauve qui peut_
has small chivalry about it even in the holy of holies.

Within a few days after the turbulent scenes which took place in the
quiet surroundings of Graystone Hall, there was held, quite informally,
indeed on a wholly impromptu basis, a meeting of the greater portion of
the directors of the International Power Company.  It was a meeting not
called by the president, and the president knew nothing of it.  It was
not set for the usual headquarters in the East; on the contrary, by
merest chance, these keen-witted men met by accident in the western
city where were located the works and central operating offices of the
International Power Company.  They made their stopping place, as usual,
at the National Union Club, where they were less certain to become the
prey of prying reporters--a breed detested above all things by these
and their like.



II

There was, this afternoon, casually present, a certain gray-haired,
full-bodied man, of full beard and rather portly body.  He was speaking
with President Standley, of St. Louis, who also by merest chance
happened to be in town.  To them presently came the former general
traffic manager of Mr. Standley's road, Ackerman, also present by
merest accident.  Two or three others, moreover, by mere accident,
joined them, figures which were familiar at the long table in the New
York headquarters.  They looked at one another frankly, and laughed
without much reservation.

"Well," said Ackerman, after a time, "let's sit down and have a little
powwow--informally, you know."

The gray-haired man grinned pleasantly again and said nothing, but drew
up a chair.

"Of course, you know," said Standley, as he seated himself, "that our
dissatisfied friend, Van, is here in town to-day?"

The full-bearded man nodded, and an instant later jerked his head
toward the door.  "He's here in the club, too," said he, and smiled.
"Just happened in, I suppose."  Indeed, as they turned to look they saw
advancing, talking animatedly, a rather slender, youngish man of brown
eyes and pointed beard; none less than the disgruntled director who had
long ago been so summarily handled by John Rawn, president of the
International Power Company.

"Hasn't he got the nose for news, though?" commented Standley
admiringly.  "Now, who told him there was anything doing!"

"He didn't need to have anybody tell him," growled Ackerman.  "He can
take care of himself.  And by Jove!  I'm half inclined to think that he
was the lucky one--to get out the way he did, and when he did."

"Yes, he's lucky," said Standley gravely.  He turned to see the vast
round belly of the gray-bearded man heaving in silent mirth.  The
railway magnate obviously was amused.

"I don't know!" remarked Ackerman suddenly.  "_Others_, eh?"



III

"Well, boys, why not admit it?" rejoined the older man.  "We all know
the facts.  We all know why we're here.  As you said, Ack, let's hold a
little informal meeting, and talk over what we had better do!"

"How much did you sell!" demanded Standley casually.

"Twenty thousand last week.  You sold about double that."

"Yes, it's leaking out, no use denying that!  You don't need to list
this thing--it leaks!"

"Of course, Van's buying it," said Standley, nodding toward the slender
figure of the ex-director.  "First time I ever knew him to go out for
revenge.  It doesn't very often pay."

"Well, I can't figure it out," ventured Ackerman.  "The stock won't do
him any more good than it does us.  He can't get the control over that
old bonehead Rawn--I mean our respected president--anyhow, any more
than we can.  He's sitting tight, with the papers in his box.  I admit
that I let go a little, because I figured it was time we were doing
something better than six per cent. with that stock, and all Rawn has
done is to make one explanation on top of another.  He can't keep on
putting that across with me, anyhow.  But he can sit there, as I say,
with the control in his hands, looking at those nice pictures of the
Lady of the Lightnings, which he had engraved as our trademark."

"He's awfully gone on her," spoke up one.  "Not that I blame him,
either.  I hate to sell my stock, because I like the looks of our
engraved goddess so much!"

"There's most always a lady standing around somewhere, with the
lightning in her hands," ventured the gray-bearded man solemnly.  They
looked at one another again suggestively, but no one spoke more
definite words than that.



IV

"Well, we've had high-sounding talk put up to us about long enough,"
commented Ackerman, at length.  "I was one of the first to go in for
this, and I believe in it yet, but I don't want this thing with Rawn in
control.  Why, look at him,--he was just a clerk when he came to us,
and here he's putting on more side than any other man in the town.
He's taken advantage of his situation to play the market in and out,
all the time, which he couldn't have done if it hadn't been for friends
like us.  He squeezed us into backing him--after we gave him that first
little flyer in Rubber, and some Oil--that hadn't cost us anything and
didn't look worth anything.  In return he's handed us promises and
explanations and hot air, and nothing else.  I've just got an idea that
there's a man-sized nigger somewhere around this woodpile.  For me, I
prefer being hung as a little lamb rather than as a full-sized goat.
Yes, I let go a little International--to Van--I'll admit.  Time enough
to get back into the game when we've put Rawn out!"

Standley nodded slowly.  "That's a good deal the way I felt about it,"
he said.  "It riles me to see the airs that fellow puts on.  I remember
him when he didn't have two suits of hand-me-down clothes to his name,
and now he seems to have a hundred, all done by the best tailors in New
York.  He used to tie his drawers with white tape strings, and now he
wears specially shaped silks.  Where'd he get it?  You talk about the
Keeley motor--this thing has got it beat a mile for mystery.  And we
fellows have been standing for that!  That is, unless we can stand from
under, somehow."

"Yes, seemingly," ventured the last speaker.  "But how is that somehow?
There isn't any market for International."

The gray-bearded man laughed jubilantly at this.  "Have you found that
out?"

"Yes, I certainly have found it out.  Of course, the market has been
Van yonder.  But he won't take on over a certain amount.  He wants to
break the control, of course.  But he's going to wait until he gets up
to the point and then do something quick.  He's not going to hold our
bag for us--oh, no!  Not him!"

"Well, I've a suspicion," said the older man finally, "that that secret
we've been after has been in the hands of our superintendent for a long
time."

"Why didn't Rawn tell us, then?" demanded one of his companions.  "Has
he sold us out?"

"No, Rawn hasn't sold us out.  At least I don't think so."

"Who has, then?"

"I don't know.  The young man who made the wheels go for us whenever
Rawn wanted him to--he's the real key to this situation, if I'm a good
guesser.  There's your contraband, and you can locate him somewhere in
this particular woodpile, or I'm no judge."

"Rawn's pretty well spread out in the general market," quite
irrelevantly suggested Standley.

"I should say he was!" growled Ackerman.  "He's been in on all the good
things in the last two or three years.  He must have made millions--I
don't know how much."

"In the general market--not International, of course.  He's got all his
holdings in that.  He has been spending money, though!"  Standley
wagged his head.

"For instance, on the Lady of the Lightnings?" suggested Ackerman,
grinning amiably.

"Yes, on his young wife, and his new house, and his boats, and his
automobiles, and all the regular things.  He can't have done it out of
International dividends, that's sure!"

"All the better that he hasn't," ventured Standley.  The old man nodded.

"Go over there and call Van," he said simply.



V

The slender man with pointed beard came up pleasantly, his eyes
twinkling.  "Well, my fellow sports and department heads!" he said.
"What's the good word this morning?"

"Sit down," said the gray-bearded man.  "We know why you're here, and
why you've been hanging around here for the last six months.  It's
foolish of you, son, to be out for revenge--nothing in that!"

"I'm not after revenge," smiled the other, his eyes still twinkling.
"I've made my peace!"

"Yes," commented Ackerman.  "The friendship of some of you gladiators
is surely a wonderful thing!  Rawn hates you, and you hate Rawn.  Don't
your ears burn?"

"No, my heart!"  He laid a hand on that organ with mock gravity.

"What could you do with the Lady of the Lightnings, Van?" asked
Standley discreetly.

"Nothing, absolutely nothing."

"Hasn't she any social instincts?"

"Plenty, but all gratified; that's the trouble.  There isn't anything
those people want that they haven't got.  No, I must say his position
is pretty strong."

"But it's not impregnable, Standley," cut in the gray-bearded man,
stopping the twiddling of his fingers above his round-paunched body.
"Now, look here, we're all friends together, when it comes to that.
You belong with us a lot more than you do with that Jasper from the
country.  Of course, you split with us, got mad, took your dolls and
all that sort of thing--we're all used to that--and we all sat tight
because it looked good.  It looked better than it does now.  So, we're
friends again."

"Of course," nodded the slight man.  "I understand that."

"Sure you do!  Now, it's plain that when it comes to being on the
inside, you're there as an ex-director just as much as we are as real
directors--maybe more so, for all I know."

"Maybe more, yes, that's so," smiled the slender man, his brown eyes
twinkling yet more.

"How much more, then?"

"Why, a whole lot more!"

"What do you know?"

"I know what I've learned for myself and by myself.  Gentlemen, it's on
the table!  Play the game!  I did.  I've had some of those college
professors at work for me--they're the people that first got us locoed,
anyhow.  Rawn, or rather his son-in-law, got his first notion from his
own professor in his college."



VI

"The real trouble with business to-day," interrupted the gray-bearded
man, reverting to his universal and invariable grievance, "is that
things are all going wrong with the American people.  These
Progressives down there at Washington have set this whole country by
the ears--not even the Supreme Court can square things any more.  The
suspiciousness of the average man is getting to be almost criminal,
that's what it is.  The public thinks every man with money is a rascal.
The public is damnably ungrateful.  Look what we have done for this
country, this little set of men sitting right here--what we've built
for them, what we've paid out to them for wages!  What are we getting
in return?  They envy us our daily bread, and by the Eternal! they'll
come near putting us where we can't get that much longer!  Look at the
railway rate cases--it's robbery of the railways.  Capital hasn't any
chance any more!  The public seems to be getting ready for anarchy;
that's all."

"Isn't it the truth?" remarked the slender man sympathetically.
"Still, we have to handle men as we find them, my friends.  In my own
case, I've been fighting the devil with a little of his own fire."

"How's that?"

"Well, for instance, I went out to see if I couldn't land that little
secret of the receiving motor myself, as I just told you.  If
International doesn't want to take me in, or if I can't break in, maybe
there can be another company formed--there's considerable corporation
room left in New Jersey.  You folks on the International have been
having your own troubles with labor, haven't you?"

"Well, rather!" growled Ackerman.  "We put that up to old Colonel J. R.
Bonehead, our president!  He seems to have got in about as nearly wrong
as any one could with our esteemed friends of the labor unions!"

"Naturally; well, I'll make a confession, since we're all friends
together--I've had men conferring with your horny-handed citizens and
suggesting that the International Power Company was 'unfair,' and a bad
outfit to work for!"

"That was nice of you!" growled Ackerman, getting red in the face.
"_Fine_ business, for you to come snooping around our works."

The slender man smiled at him pleasantly.  "How else could I get
information?" he inquired.  "You must remember that I'm no longer on
the board!  But you must remember, also, that of late I have picked up
an occasional dollar's worth of International.  I wanted to know how
about certain things!"

"Well, how about them, then?" demanded Standley fiercely.  "Where do we
stand?"

"You want me to incriminate myself!"

"Oh, fiddlesticks about incrimination!  Cut out that part of it!"

"All right, I will," said the other grimly.  "Well, then, I've tried my
best to bribe your people, and I've got little out of it.  I've tried
the foreman, the night watchman, and everybody else.  I've had a dozen
of your workmen slugged for scabbing, and four or five of them shot,
one or two at least, for a good, permanent funeral.  And I paid the
funeral expenses!  You didn't know that?  Well, that's the truth of it!"

"Well, _what_ do you know about that!" gasped Standley, aghast.

"I know a good deal about it, my Christian friend," said the slender
man relentlessly.  "I can tell you what you already know, that your
motors are dismantled to-day.  I can tell you also that there's a very
good chance that the secret we've been after is in the hands of one
man, and he's holding it up for some reason best known to himself.
We've got nothing on him!  I can also tell you that if he won't give
up--though _why_ he won't, I can't imagine--it's possible we can work
out a receiver of our own elsewhere, without him."



VII

"Well, what does he want?"  This from the old man.

"That's the everlasting mystery and puzzle of it.  He doesn't want
anything, so far as I can learn.  There's some factor in him that I
can't get my hands on, try the best that I can.  Not that I don't
expect to break you wide open eventually, my friends."

"Now why do you want to do that?" asked the older financier.  "Why not
join in with us and break the bonehead?"

"Fine!  But how can we do that?  He's sitting pretty tight.  The man's
played in fine luck.  I admit I rather admire him."

"Bah, that's the way with all the new ones; they all play in luck for a
time.  Each Napoleon has his boom, but after a time boom values
shrink--they always do.  This chap'll find his level when we get ready
to tell him."

"For instance?"

"Well, for instance, then!  He's sitting there with a small margin of
control in the International.  That gave him his start, and he's wise
enough to hang on to that.  But it didn't give him his money--he's only
made dividend money out of that; and who cares for dividend money?  He
doesn't own control in the Guatemala Oil Company, does he?  He's made a
lot out of Arizona and Utah coppers, but he doesn't own control in a
single company there, does he?  He's in with the L.P., but he borrowed
to get in.  He's made a big killing in Rubber, but he doesn't own any
Rubber control of his own, does he?  Now, you follow him out in every
deal he's made---iron, copper, steel, oil, rails, timber, irrigation,
utilities, industrials--and you'll find he's simply been banking on his
inside information and his outside credit.  Who gave him both of those
things?--Why, we did, didn't we?  All right!  Suppose we withdraw our
credit.  What happens?"



VIII

They went silent now, and grouped a little closer about the tabouret
which stood between them.  The old man's voice went on evenly, with no
excitement.  Their conversation attracted the attention of none in the
wide lounging room, where large affairs more than once had been
discussed--even the making of Senators to order.

"I'll tell you what happens," the old man resumed.  "He quits using us
for a stalking horse, and he comes down to his own system.  He's spread
out.  Banks are all polite, but--well, he has to put up collateral; and
then some more.  If he doesn't want to put up International, he's apt
to find that a bunch of automobiles is poor property when sold at
twenty per cent. their cost.  He turns off two or three butlers, but
still that doesn't serve for margins.  The market doesn't suit his book
any more.

"He's discovering now the great truth of something any old friend Emory
Storrs used to say--Emory always was in debt, or wanted to be, and says
he: 'There's no trouble about prosperity in this country; there's
plenty of money--the only trouble is in the confounded scarcity in
_collateral_.'  Well, he goes over to this young man, who is standing
out for some reason best known to himself, and he tries to get him to
come through, and he doesn't come through.  What's left?  Why, the
diamond lightnings of the Lady of the Lightnings--and his International
Power stock.

"Meantime, all this thing can't be kept entirely secret; that is to
say, the market part of it can't be.  But we sit tight, all of us.  We
hold our regular directors' meetings of the International board, and we
smile, and look pleasant.  We don't know a thing about his hot water
experiences in the open market.  He explains to us why this and that
happens, or doesn't happen, in International; and we smile and look
pleasant, and we don't know a thing.  After a time it's up to him and
the Lady of the Lightnings.  Something pops!  He's up against it, all
except his International Power.  Then Van, and you, Standley, and you,
Ack, and you, and you and I, and all of us--why we're still pleasant as
pie to him and we say, 'Well, Mr. John Rawn, if you'd only sell us two
or three shares of International, we'd pay you twenty times what it's
worth--but it's very much cheaper now--by reason of Van's competing
company!'

"That's about all, I think!"

The others nodded silently.  The game was not new to them, and even in
its most complicated features might have been called simple, with
resources such as theirs.  If these resources had made Rawn, they could
unmake him.  It was all in the day's work for them.

"So I'll tell you what we'll do," concluded the old financier after a
time.  "We'll just let you and Van look around here a little bit and
see what more you can learn.  You're one of the real directors of
International Power to-day, Van.  Mr. Rawn is on the minority and the
toboggan list, or is going to be there.  We'll take the first steps
when we see the boys down East.  The country's getting right now for a
little speculation--things have been dead long enough.  There'll be a
market.  When the market starts, I think you know which way it will go
for a certain person I needn't name."



IX

They rose, stood about loungingly for a time, and at length slowly
separated, the older man and the ex-director with the pointed beard
falling back of the others for just an instant.

"What's the truth about the row, Van?" demanded the old man, laying a
large, pudgy hand on the other's shoulder.

"I don't know, honestly, what it is.  I can tell you this much--your
factory is closed.  Your superintendent, Halsey, has quit his work and
left his old residence.  Didn't Rawn tell you _that_?"

"No!  What's up now--some trouble with a woman?  Wasn't he married to
Rawn's daughter?"

"Yes, and she went to live with Papa.  Papa had the coin."

"And the superintendent is going the chorus girl route here or in New
York?"

"No, sir, not in the least,--nothing of the sort.  You can't guess
where he's gone."

The other shook his head.

"Well, I'll tell you then, since you are one of the directors of the
International and I'm not!  He's gone and taken his other pair of pants
and his celluloid collar, and moved over to the North Shore!  He's
living in the same house with Papa J. Rawn right now;--that is to say,
he has been for two or three weeks."

"Well, what do you know about that, too!" commented his friend.

"I don't know much about it.  As I told you, there's something in here
I don't understand.  I can't for the life of me figure out that chap
Halsey's motives or his moves.  But I don't care about him.  It's Rawn
I'm after--and I'm going to get him!"



CHAPTER VII

THEY WHO SOW THE WIND

I

The information given by the ex-director in regard to the whereabouts
of Charles Halsey was substantially, if not circumstantially, correct.
He had, indeed, done the most unlikely thing.  He had taken up his
abode, for the time at least, at the very place to which he might have
seemed least apt to return; that is to say, the home of his
father-in-law, John Rawn.

Many things moved Halsey to this action.  In the first place, having
ended his labors, he found no reason for any pretense of continuing
them.  Again, although he fully intended to bring divorce proceedings,
and fully intended to leave the city, he was unwilling to depart
without seeing once more his wife and their child, because news came to
him of the little cripple's serious and continued illness.  In point of
fact, Grace Halsey, unhappy, morose, and now jealously suspicious, had
brooded over her unfortunate situation in life until she also really
was ill.  Halsey grieved over this, in spite of all.  As to the little
hunchback, Laura, she had known only illness all her life; and Halsey,
father after all, felt some foreboding which made him unready to leave
for yet a time.

Halsey, in spite of his own bitterness of soul, realized that Rawn
himself was well-nigh crazed by the business situation, and his
conscience misgave him when he reflected upon the sudden consequences
of his own acts.  His sense of business honor and of personal justice
told him he owed even so unreasonable a man as Rawn some sort of
definite accounting for his own stewardship, unwelcome as another
meeting between them must be to both.

Lastly, it may be added, Virginia Rawn had sent for him.

When he received her message he spent a night resolving that he would
not go, that he would never again see either her or Grace; never again
would set foot on ground belonging to John Rawn, come what could, let
be lost what any of them all might lose.  In the morning he changed his
resolution.  By evening of the next day he was at Graystone Hall.

To his surprise, he found it not immediately necessary to patch a peace
with the master of Graystone Hall, for Rawn was absent.  The great
mansion seemed strangely and suddenly changed.  An air of anxiety hung
over all, the place was oddly silent.  The servants went slipshod about
their duties, and their mistress did not chide them.  Swift
disintegration of the domestic machine seemed to threaten; mysterious
danger seemed to menace the very structure itself, long of so bold and
indomitable front.  Halsey still hesitated--and still remained.



II

Rawn customarily divided his time between the operating headquarters in
the western city and the general offices in the eastern capital, but
now he had found it needful immediately to transfer all his activities
to the latter scene.  He did not know of his wife's invitation to
Halsey, for he had started from his office, without even advising her
of his intention, and even without conversation with her by telephone.
He telegraphed from the train, stating that he had been called East on
urgent matters.  After that, no word at all came from him.  It was not
known when he would return.  Halsey could only wait.  In truth, he was
little better than a man gone mad himself, and Rawn was worse than such.

Gradually, day by day, hour by hour, the terrible strain of this
suddenly developed situation began to show its effects upon Rawn.  He
slept but little after his arrival in the East, showed himself more and
more untidy in personal habits; and lastly, began to seek the false
strength of intoxicating drink.  His demeanor in his relations with his
urbane associates daily lost its usual arrogance.  John Rawn, late
dictator, became explanatory, conciliatory--a change of mind which had
visible physical tokens.  His eye became weaker and more watery, his
shoulders more drooped, his voice more quavering, his address less
abrupt and domineering.

John Rawn was a broken man, and began to show it.  Wherefore his late
friends exulted.  The wolves, ranged in circle, lick their chops when
the wounded bull totters upon his uncertain legs.  Certain large
financial figures in the eastern city licked their chops, and smiled
grimly, wolfishly, in contemplation of John Rawn as he tottered.



III

Yet Rawn himself could get no direct proof of the identity of those now
secretly assailing him.  At the directors' meetings of the
International he was received politely and respectfully--with too much
politeness and respect, as he felt, although himself unlike the man
once wont to rule there with an iron hand.  He did not dare tell them
of Halsey's defection, could not doubt that they already knew of it;
but he met no queries regarding that or anything else in the conduct of
the western factory's business.  No one seemed to know that the most
important of all their factories was closed, after a tedious term spent
in incompletion.  His associates all were as polite as himself, indeed,
more so; as ready as himself to discuss gravely and earnestly any
detail of the business which now, as all politely agreed, seemed
"somewhat involved," or "somewhat delayed."  No one offered any
criticism of the executive.

But, what was far more deadly to him, the market seemed most onerously
and cruelly oppressive upon the outside investments of John Rawn.
International Power was not hammered, for the reason that there was
little of it out to hammer.  The Rawn stock in International, of
course, did not come upon the market.  Rawn intended to hold on to that
grimly, fighting for it to the last gasp, trusting to chance to mend
matters for him at the eleventh hour.  But ruin in the general market
faced him; and he knew that, with credit gone, the courts would take
for his former creditors whatever property he could be shown to have.
He saw the shadowy circle of the wolves of high finance.  Almost he
felt their fangs snapping at his hamstrings.



IV

In these savage hours the mind of John Rawn cast about for rescue, for
hope.  No rescue, no hope, appeared except one last desperate
alternative, purchasable not now with cash or power or influence--since
these were gone--but with what other and dearer things remain to a
man--things some men, not rotted with the love of self, keep through
any or all disaster, prize, even above life and all a life's business
success.  Halsey!  Ah!  Halsey was the savior of Rawn--Halsey, the man
who had humiliated him in his own home.  How could Halsey be secured?
There might be brought to bear upon him one influence--that of a
beautiful and fascinating woman!  What matter if the one woman, was his
wife, Virginia Rawn?  He had already hinted to her of her duty.  He
wondered now continually whether she had really and fully understood.
He wondered what she was doing with Halsey.

As to Halsey, who knew little or nothing of all these turbulent
emotions, all these crowding incidents, he found his situation in the
great house of John Rawn one wholly to his dislike.  He saw little of
his wife Grace after the first conventional greeting on his arrival,
and as to the young mistress of Graystone Hall, she seemed so regularly
to have matters demanding her own presence elsewhere, was so busy with
other matters, as to have small time for him.  The disturbed condition
of the stock market was creating a furor in the business world,
reflected, of course, in the daily markets of the western city; but
Halsey had never had many investments, had watched the markets little;
and now, isolated at Graystone Hall almost as much as though upon a
desert island, and too much disturbed and distracted in his own mind to
find any definite interest in business matters, was hardly conscious of
the storm that raged.  He simply waited on, unhappily.  It seemed to
him there was no place for him in all the world.  Why did Virginia
remain aloof?

Rawn, absent in New York, imagined his wife engaged continuously in the
struggle of persuading Charles Halsey to see the light of reason,
although he did not know Halsey was living under the same roof with
her.  As a matter of fact, Halsey and she met but rarely.  Virginia
breakfasted for the most part in her own rooms, and found, or pretended
to find, something to occupy her for the most part of the day.  Not
once did she ask his attendance, not once did she speak with him, when
by chance she saw him, upon any but casual or conventional matters.
She seemed always to evade him; and because she did this, he,
rebelling, sought her out all the more, even while continually
resolving to take his departure, and never again to see this place, or
her, again.  He wondered at her reticence, her avoidance of him.  He
wondered why she was so pale.  He loitered about, unhappily, in this or
that common meeting ground of the great mansion house, waiting to hear
the rustle of a gown upon the stair, the sound of a light foot on a
floor, the touch of a white hand, the sound of a voice--all things
belonging, not to his wife, but to his young stepmother by law.



V

Yes.  Without his wish, in spite of her wish, these had become things
desired, the only things desirable any more in his distracted life.  He
lived under the same roof with two women, saw either rarely, and rarely
thought of but one--the wrong one.  To atone, Halsey lavished all his
time and care on his little hunchback daughter, and had her with him as
much as the nurse and doctor would allow.  The child, undersized, pale,
deformed, silent and wistful, and pathetic always, now was listless and
weak, obviously very seriously ill.  It wrung her father's heart to see
her.  But Charles Halsey wanted it wrung.  He wanted to do bitterest
penance for what he now knew was his secret sin.  So the ways of
inordinate power, the consequences, for this one or that one, which
follow on inordinate greed, worked themselves on out toward their sure
and logical ending, the mill of fate grinding those primarily,
secondarily, even incidentally guilty.

At this time, had Virginia Rawn asked of him to recant, to relent, to
change, there is likelihood he would have done so.  John Rawn, cuckold,
was right in his despicable reasoning.  There are many prices which
purchase principles.  The weakness which had prompted Halsey to remain
at Graystone Hall on such a tenure--which held him there now, waiting
for a voice, listening for a footfall--was the ancient weakness of
youth before youth, of strength before beauty, of the empty heart
before one offering love, of the mind finding perfect echo in another
mind.

With all his starved heart, all his repressed soul, all his mutinous
body, Charles Halsey loved Virginia Rawn.



CHAPTER VIII

THEY WHO WATER WITH TEARS

I

As at last the news of John Rawn's collapse broke full and
fair--disastrous enough to please even his late warmest friends.  The
stock markets, East and West, became scenes of riot.  The truth, of
course, had leaked out regarding Rawn's fight in the last ditch.  The
newspapers swarmed upon Graystone Hall, besieging any who could be
found.  Halsey refused to talk, and moreover, Rawn could not be found.
This threw them upon their own resources, and what they did not know
they imagined.  Even thus, the wildest of them all could not imagine
half; the shrewdest of the journalists could not get their hands on the
"inside story" here.  No one in or around or back of the stock
exchanges could be found possessed of secret information which he was
willing to impart.  Throughout wild hours of hurrying, telegraphing,
investigating, the papers kept up their frenzied search for the truth,
and found it not, and knew they had not found it.

Halsey, one morning after a sleepless night, more than a week after
Rawn's departure to New York, secured copies of each of the morning
papers.  He stood uncertain, in the great central room of Graystone
Hall, with these black and frowning messengers of fate in his hands,
scarce daring to look at them.  He felt some sense of definite disaster
at hand.  He glanced at last at one, and started as though struck.
Calling a servant, he sent word to Mrs. Rawn inquiring if he might meet
her at once.

She joined him presently, smiling faintly, giving him her hand, then
leading him to a breakfast table on the long gallery facing the lake
front, a favorite spot with her.  She gave the butler orders to serve
them breakfast here at once; for she now learned Halsey had neither
slept nor eaten.  Halsey did not learn that the same also was true of
her.



II

They seated themselves and for the time said nothing, each gazing out
over the lake.  The morning was calm and beautiful.  The blue lake,
just dotted with little whitecap rolling waves, seemed in amiable mood,
and purred gently along the sea-wall, below the green and curving
terrace which ran down from the gallery front.  A bird chirped here and
there.

Little enough the peaceful scene reflected the feelings of these, its
only human figures.  Virginia Rawn was pale.  Dark rings showed below
her eyes.  Her mouth drooped just a trifle, plaintively, in a way not
usual with her.  She was pale, paler than her usual clean and clear
ivory.  Yet she was coolly beautiful in her morning gown of light
figured lawn, with its wide, flowing sleeves, showing her round white
arms.  Halsey, frowningly serious, felt the charm of her rise about
him, overwhelm him.  He knew that the hour had come for him in more
ways than one; that hers, for ever, was the one face and figure and
voice and presence for him, hopeless and unhappy, and doomed for ever
so to remain.  She was not his wife.  She was the wife of another
man--of his enemy; the man in all the world least like himself; the man
who, by virtue of that unlikeness, had won this woman for his own.
What hope for him, Charles Halsey, for whom was no place in the world?



III

Without much comment he placed before her the morning papers, with
their glaring head-lines.

"Well," said he, "it is the end."

"Yes?" said she, smiling; "I suppose now we can learn all about our
earlier life and career?"

"Quite so.  Here is the entire history of Mr. Rawn's career--what he
did when he was a young man, where he came from, how he rose to power,
how he failed and fell--it's all here.  Here's the story of the
International Power Company--they claim it was intended as a merger of
all the traction companies of the eight leading cities of the country!
Bond issue one to eight billion dollars, capitalization one to two
hundred billion in stocks--you can take your choice in crazed figures.
Here are biographical histories of all the known and unknown
stock-holders.  Here, Mrs. Rawn, is a picture of yourself, as well as
one of Mr. Rawn and one more of the house here--a new view, I think.
The photographer must have made a flashlight of the grounds."

She smiled as he tried to jest, following his pointing finger along the
blurred, brutal head-lines, shrieking their discordant, impossible and
inconsistent tales.  The first paper, the _Forum_, declared the ruin of
John Rawn's fortune to be now beyond all hope of repair.  Rawn
himself--really at that time often in a helpless stupor in a New York
hotel room--was reported to have fled the country.  Halsey, his
son-in-law, and Halsey's wife, who really had only denied themselves to
visitors and reporters--were declared to be in hiding in some secret
apartments of the great castle on the North Shore, a place actually but
little known to any member of the select North Side society in which
Rawn had been, more or less on sufferance, received.  Rawn's wife was
also located here, in a condition verging on insanity; according to the
imagination of the writers, which, after all, was fatefully near to the
truth.

Virginia Rawn smiled, and turned the pages.  The next journal had
little else but detailed discussion of the Rawn collapse.  It also
asserted the scheme of the International Power Company was the most
bold and rapacious fraud of the day.  With journalistic vaticination it
insouciantly declared that the intention of the company was to
establish central distributing points for power stolen from the
public's great water powers, and the retail of what the journal in the
argot of the day called canned power, in cheap and portable small
motors applicable to countless semi-mechanical uses, all with an end of
abolishing the need for horse power and for man power alike.  The
result, it pointed out, would be the throwing out of work of countless
thousands of laboring men by the use of electricity stolen from the
people themselves.  The gigantic combination already was covering the
main water powers.  The people's present openly had been disregarded,
the people's future openly and patently had been put in the gravest of
peril.  The entire system of government had been laid by the heels.
The name of the republic had been made a mockery.  Above all, it was
asserted, the most intimate intent of the International Power Company
had been the throttling of the labor unions--against which John Rawn
was known to be personally bitterly opposed--the very essence and soul
of the conspiracy having been this device whose aim was to wipe out the
need of unskilled labor, and to make useless and unpaid the power of
human brawn.



IV

Following these assertions--which after all were not in the least bad
journalism, however good or bad had been the design of International
Power--the same journal exultantly declared that labor need not yet
despair, for that the gigantic conspiracy now had fallen in ruins; its
leader had abdicated and fled, and his ill-gotten gains had been
dissipated in his last desperate attempt to save his holdings in other
stocks.  In his ultimate fight he had surrendered the control of the
International, so long and desperately held in his ownership, and now
was ousted from the presidency, other managers being left in charge of
the wreck of a desperate marauder's attempt to throttle a republic and
to rule a country.  And so forth, to many extra pages, all deliciously
explicit, and wondrous welcome alike to those who purchase and those
who purvey the news.

The chronicle of all this was accompanied in this journal not only with
pictures of Graystone Hall, but of the abandoned factory of the
International Power Company; also with portraits of Rawn and his wife
and of Charles Halsey, late superintendent of the company; as well as
those of Jim Sullivan, the foreman, Ann Sullivan, his wife, and other
labor leaders sometimes concerned about the mysterious factory which
had housed the desperate secret of International Power.  As it chanced,
the portraits of Ann Sullivan and Virginia Rawn had been exchanged, so
that the beautiful Mrs. Rawn appeared as a hard-featured Irish woman of
more than middle age; whereas Mrs. Sullivan, wife of the well-known
labor leader, presented a somewhat distinguished figure in her
eminently handsome gown and obviously valuable jewels.



V

Virginia Rawn looked calmly, smilingly, over these and many other
varying details of these closing scenes in her career.  "Very well,"
said she, pointing to the likeness accredited to her name, "this is the
last time my portrait will appear in print, I suppose.  What difference
does it make?  The older and uglier I am, the better the story!
Perhaps for once Mrs. Sullivan, when she sees her picture--young, rich,
with plenty of jewels--will think her dreams have come true!  Maybe
she's dreamed--I know I did; and I know what I am.  The names and
pictures are right, just as they are.  She wins, not I.

"But yes, I suppose this is the end of it all, as you say," she added
wearily, almost indifferently.  "Of course, we've known it was coming.
I suppose there was nothing else _could_ come of it all."

Halsey at first could make no answer except to drop his face in his
hands.  A half groan escaped him, in spite of his attempt to rival her
courage or her indifference, whichever it might be.

"_I've_ done this," he said at last; "_I've_ brought all this on you.
It's all my fault, and it's too late now for me to help it.  We
couldn't straighten out things in the business now, even if I went back
to work.  It's too late.  I've ruined you, Mrs. Rawn."

"Yes, that's plain," she answered quietly.  "But isn't this just what
you wanted?  Haven't you always resented the success of others,
deprecated the wish of some men to get money at any cost?  Aren't you a
Socialist at heart?  Didn't you want this--just this?"

"Want it?  No!  How could I want anything which meant harm for _you_?
If only you had come to me and asked me to go back--asked me to get
into line!"

"You'd have done it, wouldn't you, Charley--for me?"  She smiled at
him, her small, white teeth showing.  But back of her smile he felt the
pulse of a mind.

"I don't know--how could I have helped it?"

"Then you'd have forgotten all your loyalty to those people over there?
You'd have forgotten all about the rights of man of which you told me,
and your devotion to the principles of this republic of which you
talked--is that true?  You'd have forgotten all, everything, for _me_?"



VI

"Yes, I would!"  He looked her fair in the eye, truthfully.  "I know
that, now--I didn't know it then, but I do now.  Yes, I would.  Just as
I told him--Mr. Rawn."

"You told him, what?"

"Why, that we all have our price.  I suppose I had mine."

"So you'd have done that if I had asked you?"

"Then in God's name why did you not ask me?  At least, I'd have saved
you _this_!"  He smote on the paper with his clenched fist.  "Why
didn't you ask me to save you this humiliation?"

"I did not, because I knew all along what you'd do if I did ask you."

Silence fell between them now.  "Why didn't you?" he once more
demanded, half-whispering.  "You'd already won.  You'd have won me--my
principles--my honor."

"Because I did not _want to win_!" she answered sharply.

"Win what?"

"I was sent to bring you into camp, to 'get' you, Charley.  I did not
want to--I did not!  I was afraid I _would_!"

"I don't think I quite understand."

His face was white, his voice low and clear, his eye full on hers.

"I was sent out for you, Charley--by my own husband!  You know it, we
both knew it.  I suppose he's been waiting somewhere for me to get word
to him that I had done what I was told to do--that I had got you in
hand, willing to renounce everything that you held good in your own
life.  Well, it's too late, now!  I'm glad!"

"He sent you out after me!--With what restrictions--?"

"None.  He didn't care how.  He told me he didn't.  That's why I've
been keeping away from you.  I was afraid I'd win--I was afraid I'd
save all this."

She nodded her head, including the splendors of the mansion house, its
view of the lake, all the gracious, delicate ministries of Wealth.



VII

"Good God!" Halsey broke out.  "The man who would do that is not worth
a woman's second thought."

"Of course not.  And the woman who would do that--?"

"Don't ask me about that; I can't think.  All I know is that if you had
asked me to do anything in the world, I think I'd have said yes."

"For me?"

"Yes, for you.  It's the truth.  It's all out, at last!  There's the
whole story now of John Rawn--all of it, in black and white!  Here's
all _my_ story--to you.  You must have known--"

"Yes," she nodded; "of course.  That was why, I said, that I've evaded
you so long.  It was very hard to do, Charley; a hundred times I've
been on the point of sending for you.  But I didn't."

"I'm glad, too," he said simply, seeing it was to be soul facing soul,
between them now.  "I've missed you.  I've never passed such days in my
life as I have here.  There's Grace hating me, you ought to hate me--I
ought to hate you!  Oh, Rawn, man!  Where would you have stopped, to
get money, to get power?  Oh, excellent!--to set your wife as a trap
for another man!  But it worked!  It could have been done!"  He looked
her frankly in the face as he finished.  "I love you, Virginia," he
said simply.  "I suppose I have all along.  It's cheap, after all--at
this price.  But for all this, I never could have told you.

"But one thing I will say,"--the unhappy young man added, after a long
time; "it's the one thing I can claim for an excuse.  _My_ price was
love for you, and _good_ love.  It was the whole love of man for
woman--I never knew before what that meant!  It wasn't for money, but
for you.  That great, mysterious second current--what you yourself said
was the one vast power of all the universe--that belonged to
_everybody_--love--love--I thought _that_ belonged to me, too.  I can't
see even now where that is wrong.  I can't think, I don't know.  If it
is wrong, then I've been wrong.  We're down in the mire together!  I
dragged you there.  And once I dreamed of doing something to lift
people up--that was why I mutinied and tore up the motors.  And I had
my own selfish price....  I can never lift up my head again.  But I
love you!"



VIII

She looked at him, her lips parted, her bosom agitated now, her eyes
large, her color slowly increasing.  "You must not!--Stop, we must
think!  Charley--"

"But why didn't you?" he demanded fiercely.  "Why didn't you finish
your work as you promised?"

"I never promised.  I didn't finish it--because I knew I _could_.  I
told you--it was--Charley--yes--it was--love!"

"For me?"

He half started up now, but she raised a hand to restrain him.

"The servants!" she whispered.  Indeed, even as she spoke she saw the
livery of the butler disappearing at the tall glass doors letting out
to the gallery.  She did not know that the butler had seen much and
heard somewhat; that being a butler he was wise.

"But it's got to be--we've got to go through now!" he went on savagely.
"Why did you start this, then?  Why did you let me know?"

"It was he who started it in me--ambition!  No, I always had it.  From
the day I was born I wanted to climb, to win, to be rich, to have
things in my hands.  All girls want that, I suppose, till they know how
little it is.  So I married him--I tried to, and I did.  I knew he had
money....  But then there was more I wanted, after all.  I only wanted
that something _else_, too, that any woman wants--what she's got to
have, once in her life, rich or poor, because she's a woman--some one
who truly loves her for herself as she is, because she is what she
is--because she's a woman!

"Oh, I looked all around me here, a long time after I came here, for
what I'd missed.  I've never been happy here.  I didn't have it.  I
wanted it.  At last I saw it.  I wanted it.  Its price is ruin--for
two, you and me.  I'm like you.  If it's wrong, I don't know where the
wrong began!  I didn't mind, so far as I was concerned.  Let a woman
love you, and she'll do anything, no matter how it hurts--herself.  But
not _you_--not the man she loves and wants to respect, Charley."

"But--me?  I am not good enough for you!"

"Oh, boy!  How sweet that sounds to me!  Say it over again to me!  You
make me think I might some day be worth a man's love.  It's got away
from us now.  It's all too late.  Everything's too late.  When he--Mr.
Rawn--comes back, we've got to tell him.  I've done what I was set to
do--but not the way he thought, not the way any of us thought!"



IX

"Yes, he must know!"  Halsey nodded.  He held her hand now in his own.
They swept on, as upon some vast wave, helpless, clinging to each
other, he doing what he could to save her.

"I don't know how to tell him," she wailed.  "There was something Pagan
in me and I didn't know it.  I thought I was in hand, but I wasn't!  I
started low, and I wanted to climb up--and up--and up!  Oh, Charley,
look!"  She leaned toward him across the table, pleading.  "I was just
ambitions, just like any American girl--like every woman in the world,
I suppose.  If I sold out, I didn't know it.  I didn't _want_ you to
care for me.  But you did, you do!  I kept away from you, so that you
wouldn't, so that we _couldn't_--so that I'd always feel that _you_, at
least--"

"Where can it end?" he asked quietly.

"I don't care where it ends, that's the worst of it; I don't care!  One
thing only is to my credit.  I've kept my bargain--with him.  I've paid
the price I agreed to give.  There is no scandal about me--yet.  And
there might have been!"

"Yes."

"But some way, when he sent me out for you, talked to me as he did,
treated me like a piece of merchandise as he did--for once I wavered.
For once, Charley, it seemed to me that I was released from all
obligations to him, that I was where I ought to have a chance for my
own hand, to see life as life could be for itself, to have the love
that's life for a woman.  I wanted to be wooed and won by some one who
loved me, just as any woman wants to be, Charley, some time!  And I
wasn't--I wasn't....  It was horrible....  It was horrible....  I
wanted to give love for love.  I wanted what I couldn't get, and saw it
was too late to get it fair.  And when I saw that you--that even you'd
sell out for _me_--why, where was the good, clean thing left in all the
world?  I couldn't tell.  I didn't know what to do.  I don't know now.
But you put these papers before me now, and you expect me to shed tears
over them.  I can't.  I don't care.  The worst was over for me before
now.  It came when I knew you'd love me if I'd raise a finger to you.
Why didn't you make me love you first--long ago?  _Then_ all would have
come right.  Back there--at first--"

"They'll say that when your husband lost his fortune he lost his wife.
Yes--" he nodded.  "They'll say that and believe it!  That isn't true!"

"No, that isn't true.  I was done with him the moment he set this
errand for me.  No woman can love a man who will do that.  But I was
done with him--from the first I never loved him, I never did--I only
married him!  I sold out--what I had to sell, myself, my fitness for a
place like this.  That was what I called success!  I wanted to be some
one in the world!  Look at me now--"



X

They sat, two figures in an inexorable drama that swept relentlessly
forward; tasting of a part of ambition's ripened fruit; yet hungering
with the vast, pitiful, merciless human hunger for that other fruit
that hung in a garden once not lost.

"If it costs my soul, I'll stand by you," he said at last; and he
reached out a hand to her suddenly.

"No, no!" she cried.  "Wait!  Wait!  I want to think!"

A discreet cough sounded.  The butler approached bearing coffee.  He
wore a half sneer on his face now, the sneer of the unpaid mercenary.
He doubted, and had cause to doubt, whether the last month's salary
would be forthcoming; for butlers read morning papers.  "Ah, er, Mrs.
Rawn--" he began.

"What do you want?  How dare you speak to me!" she rejoined.  "I do not
care to be disturbed!  You may go!"

He did go; and this was on an errand of his own, an errand which ended
in Grace Halsey's chambers.  For butlers sometimes take ingenious
revenge.



XI

Halsey and Virginia Rawn sat on for a time at the table, the almost
untasted breakfast before them.  The sun grew warmer.  After a time she
rose, and they passed from the gallery toward the interior of the
house.  The tray upon the hall table held a scanty morning load for
it--one letter and a telegram; the former addressed to Mrs. Charles
Halsey, the latter to herself.

"Shall I?" she asked, and tore the envelope across.

"It must be from him," he said.  She tossed it to him.

"Home to-night.  JOHN RAWN."



CHAPTER IX

WHAT CHEER OF THE HARVEST?

I

The blood of youth is hot.  He followed her, in spite of all,
forgetting all.  They had advanced across the hall toward the gold
room, or library.

"Oh, Charley, Charley!  Don't begin, wait a little," she wailed.  "At
least till to-night, till afternoon.  I don't know what to say yet.  I
don't know what to do!  Let us see him first, and tell him."

"Look about you," he commented grimly.  "You're going to lose all
this--all these splendid, beautiful things."

"I don't mind losing them.  I want to be poor.  Oh, my God!  Just to be
loved, and clean!  Charley, can we?"

"But why choose me?  There are so many others!"

"All like Mr. Rawn himself--men crazed of money, power, selfishness.  I
wanted something different.  Do you think it could have been my
father's old ideas coming out in me, so late?  He came of a family of
revolutionists--independents; 'Progressives,' they call them now.
Something of his beliefs--I don't know what it was--"

"But you'll have to leave him in any case.  Divorce is simple enough.
You know what I would have done, and done, also, in any case.  Grace
and I--"

"Yes, I know all about everything.  Everything's past," she said
despairingly.  "We're dead.  It's all over!"

"I ought to go?" he asked vaguely.

"Yes, pretty soon.  But I suppose you'll have to see Grace,
and--to-night I'll have to see--"

He bowed his head.  "Yes, we've got to pay that part first.  The best
we can do and all we can give ought to be enough for him."



II

She turned, left him, passing through the great doors to the central
rooms within.  Following her still, he found her at the stair and
joined her.  There approached them now, with hasty tread and face
somewhat excited, the medical man who had been for so many days now in
attendance upon Grace Rawn and her child.  He had come on his morning
visit unnoticed by them.

"Ah," he began, "I'm glad to find you, Mrs. Rawn--and you, Mr.
Halsey--I've been looking for you--Come!  Come quickly!"  His face
showed plainly his agitation.

"Is there anything wrong?" demanded Halsey sharply.  "What's the
trouble?"

"It is my duty to tell you the truth," began the doctor.  "Your wife is
a very sick woman, indeed."

"I know that, yes."

"But not the worst until this morning, until just now.  Something--"

[Illustration: (Virginia and Halsey)]

"I've been here in the house waiting--why did you not call me?" began
Halsey clumsily.

"You must not _wait_!" the doctor interrupted him, taking him by the
arm and hastening toward the stairway.

They followed him up the stair, down the upper hall, to the rooms which
had been set apart of late days for Grace and her child, quarters all
too unfamiliar to Halsey himself.

They found Grace Halsey, faint and gasping, half sitting in her bed,
clasping the child in her arms, herself too weak now longer to hold it
up.  Halsey, stricken with sudden horror, ran to take the child in his
own arms.

The truth was obvious.  Even as he lifted the poor crippled form in his
arms, the head fell back, helpless.  The eyes glazed, turned back
uncovered.  Halsey cried out aloud.  He turned about, dazed; horror and
helplessness were on his face.  It was to Virginia Rawn he turned, as
to the other part of himself.

It was Virginia Rawn who took from him the feeble, misshapen body,
gathering it into her own arms.  She gazed intently, frowning, grieving
a woman's grief over suffering, bending over its face; her own face
held back over it when she saw the truth.  Then she passed him and
placed the body of the child upon its cot near-by, covering it gently.



III

"Grace, Grace!" sobbed Halsey.  He fell upon his knees at his wife's
bedside.  She did not see him, did not recognize him, although she
turned a questioning face toward him.  "Me, too!" he cried.  "I want to
go!  I want to die and end it!  Everything's wrong..."

"Come," said the doctor presently; "it's too late now.  I'll call for
you after a time."  He took Halsey by the arm and led him from the
room.  Returning, he signed for Virginia Rawn also to leave the sick
chamber.  Left alone, the medical man turned to the professional nurse
in attendance.  "Keep it quiet," he said.  "It would hurt my
practice--do you hear?"

He kicked beneath the bed a small broken vial, and wiped away the stain
from the lips of the dying woman.

The doctor, of course, had his guess, the public its guess, the daily
papers theirs.  The truth was, Grace Halsey, by butler route, had
learned of the _tête-à-tête_ of her husband and her stepmother a half
hour before this time.



CHAPTER X

THOSE WHO REAP THE WHIRLWIND

I

Grace Halsey, dead, her crippled child dead beside her, never knew the
contents of the letter which had been received for her that morning.
It still laid on the hall table unnoticed.  There was almost none to
pay attention to the many duties of the household.  The last servants
had begun to pass, scenting disaster even as had others.  The magic
which had builded this mansion house now lacked strength to hold its
tenantry.  There remained now only one man--the butler, lingering for
his pay.  Only two persons might still be said to be actuated by any
sense of loyalty or duty to Graystone Hall and its owner--Halsey and
Virginia Rawn.

Of duty--to what and to whom?  They dared not ask, dared not think.
They waited, they knew not for what.  The master of this mansion house
was forth upon his business.  Somewhere, he was hastening toward his
home.  When he might be expected they did not know.  Nor did the master
know what news awaited him upon his coming.



II

The evening dailies came out upon the streets, reeling and reeking with
the last accumulating sensations of the Rawn disasters.  The business
world continued to rub its eyes, the social world continued to exult.
Many and many a woman smiled that evening as she contemplated proofs of
the downfall of one whom once she had envied.  The Rawns, it now
seemed, had all along been known, by everybody who was anybody, to have
been nobody at all.  They who had sown the wind, had the whirlwind for
their reaping.  This was the general day of harvest for Graystone Hall.

But the day passed on.  Shadows lengthened beyond the tall towers and
softened as they fell toward the east.  The soft airs of evening,
turning, came in across the open gallery front.  Night came, night
unbroken by more than a few lights in all the myriad windows of this
stately monument which John Rawn had builded as proof of his personal
success.  Vehicles, passing slowly, held occupants staring in curiosity
at this vast, vacant pile.  Human sympathy lacked, human aid there was
not.



III

Thus it chanced easily that there passed up the long driveway of
Graystone Hall, almost unnoticed, a vehicle carrying one who seemed a
stranger there; an elderly, rather tall woman of gray hair and
unfashionable garb, who made such insistence with the servant at the
door that at length she won her way through.

Her errand seemed not one of curiosity, nor did she lack in decision.
She left upon the table an old-fashioned reticule, and following the
advice given her, in reply to her question, passed up the stair and
down the upper hall, to the room where lay Grace Halsey and her child.
There, unknown by any of the household and accepted by those whose
professional duties took them thither, she remained for many hours.
Halsey and Virginia Rawn did not know of her coming.

It was a cold home-coming, also, which awaited John Rawn.  But he came
at last, to meet that which was for him to encounter.  It was night.
The lights were few and dim.  None greeted him at his own gate, none
even at his own door, which was left unguarded.  At length he found the
solitary footman-butler, asleep in a chair, the worse for wine.

"Where is she?" he demanded.  "Where is Mrs. Rawn?"

He turned before he could be coherently answered, and passed down the
hall toward the library, through whose closed doors he saw a faint
light gleaming.



IV

Something impelled John Rawn to hesitate.  He stood, himself the very
picture of despair, his face drawn, haggard, unshaven, his hair
disordered, his hands twitching.  He must find his wife, he said to
himself; he must ask her what success she had had with their last hope.
Yes, yes, it must be true!  With Halsey's aid he would yet win!  If she
had won--Halsey would yet be on his side--Halsey would tell him--Halsey
would go back to the factory--

But John Rawn hesitated at this door.  He felt, rather than knew,
believed rather than was advised, that his wife was beyond that door.
He waited, apprehensive, but kept up with himself the pitiful pretense
of self-deception.  Ah, power, control, command!--those were the great
things of the world, he reasoned.  True, he knew his daughter lay dead
in her room on the floor above--the paper he held in his hand told him
that; for at last the doctor had prepared his statement regarding Mrs.
Halsey's death by "heart failure"--the rich and all akin to them always
die respectably, in a house so large as Graystone Hall.  But it was too
late to save her, Rawn reasoned.  Let the dead bury the dead.  The
larger things must outweigh the small.  He first must know what his
wife had done with Halsey.

To the tense, strained nerves of John Rawn the truth was now as
apparent as it had been to the sensibilities of all these others, late
friends, servants, sycophants.  Ruin was here, in his citadel, his
castle of pride.  Only one thing could save him....  He hesitated at
the door, held back from that which he knew he was about to face....
But no, he reasoned, she was there alone, he _must_ see her!

He flung open the folding doors and stood holding them apart.



V

Yes, she was there!  John Rawn's face drew into a ghastly smile.  Yes,
she had won!  She, the wonderful woman, had triumphed as he had planned
for her to triumph.  She had won! ...

They stood before him, those two, silent, face to face, embraced; their
arms about each other even as he flung wide the door.  They turned to
him now, stupefied, so weary, so overstrained, that their arms still
hung, embraced.  The face of each was white, desolate, unhappy; more
hopeless and desperate than terrified, but horrible.  They were lovers.
They loved, but what could love do for them, so late?  They had
paid--but what right had they to love, so late?

John Rawn, the man who had wrought all this, stood and gazed, ghastly,
smiling distortedly, at his wife's face.  Why, then, should she be
unhappy?  What was to be lost save that which he, John Rawn, was
losing--or had been about to lose?

But he was startled, stupefied, himself, for one moment.  He turned
back, hesitating; and so tiptoed away, leaving them, although the joint
knowledge of all was obvious.  They had not spoken a word, had not
started apart, had only gazed at him like dead persons, white, silent,
motionless--not lovers; no, not lovers.

For one-half instant, alone in the wide and darkened hall, Rawn
straightened himself up, threw his chest out.  Yes, she had won--she
had done her task!  She held Charles Halsey fast--there--in her
embrace.  He, John Rawn, multimillionaire, collector of rare objects,
one of God's anointed rich, had the shrewdest wife the world had ever
seen, the most beautiful, the most successful!

Had he not seen--was it not there before his eyes?  She had his one
enemy netted, in her power--there--had he not seen?  She brought him,
bound hand and foot, to him, John Rawn!  Could a man doubt his eyes?
They had hunted well in couple, he and his wife, and now she had pulled
down their latest victim! ...

What mattered the means?--there was but one great thing.  And the great
things must outweigh the small.  He was a man of power.  He had been
born for success.  He was--



VI

He stood, half in the shadow, hesitant.  Then he heard other feet
approaching him slowly.  His wife, Virginia, came and took him by the
arm and had him within the door; closed it back of him; and, leaving
him, advanced to where Halsey stood.  She took Halsey by the hand....
It seemed a singular thing to Rawn, this performance; in fact, almost
improper, if the truth were known....  So it seemed to John Rawn's
mind, a trifle clouded with distress and drink.

"Well," said she apathetically; and held her peace as he frowned and
looked at her dumbly.

"Well!" he broke out at last; "I'm back again!--  You're _here_, I
see."  This last to Halsey.

They two stood and regarded him without comment.  Halsey kept his eye
on Rawn's hand, expecting some sudden movement for a weapon.  He was
incredulous that any man could sustain Rawn's attitude toward him.
War, and nothing but war, seemed inevitable between himself and Rawn,
the man whom he had wronged, the man who had wronged him.

"I suppose--I see--" began Rawn clumsily, after a while.  "Of course,
you have probably been here all the time, Charley.  I came back as soon
as I could.  I've been having all kinds of trouble in St. Louis and New
York.  Everything's all gone to pieces."

They did not answer him, and he shuffled.

"Have you anything to say?" he demanded of his wife; "Has Mr.
Halsey--Charley--agreed?--Have you persuaded him to--"

"You wish to know, whether I have done what I was told to do--is that
it?" she demanded of him coldly.

"Yes; have you?"

"I have.  Here is Mr. Halsey.  I have kept my word.  You have seen.  I
told you I could bring him in, bound hand and foot.  Kiss me, Charley,"
she cried.  "Oh! kiss me!"  And he did kiss her.  Cold, white, hand in
hand, dead, they then faced him again.



VII

"Is it true?" began Rawn.  His eyes lighted up suddenly.  "He has
agreed?"

Halsey broke in now.  "It is true, Mr. Rawn," said he.  "I love her.  I
love your wife; I can't help it.  I have told her so.  You see."

"You love her!"  John Rawn burst out into a great, croaking-laugh.
"You _love_ her?  I say, that's good!  That's good news to tell me,
isn't it?  Why--I sent her--I used her, to _make_ you love her!  You
see reason now at last, do you?--every man does at last--every man has
his price.  You'll go back to work to-morrow?  There's a lot to do, but
we can save it all yet.  We can whip them, I tell you--we'll get
everything back in our own hands before to-morrow night!"

"--But, Mr. Rawn!  Listen!  You do not know!  Surely you do not
understand--"

"Understand?  What is there left to understand?  Didn't I see you both
just now?  Didn't you--right now--haven't you _got_ to come across now?
Hasn't she done what I told her to do; what she said she'd do?  I told
her to bring you back to us again, and she's done it, hasn't she?

"But come on, now," he resumed, as though reluctantly--"I suppose we've
got to go up there--Grace--?  Too bad....  But I wanted to see Jennie
first."

"My God!" whispered Virginia Rawn, shuddering.  "Oh, my God!"



VIII

"Rawn," said Halsey directly, abandoning even any pretense at courtesy;
"the end of the world has come for you, for us all.  My wife is
dead--she's lucky!  My child is dead, too, and that's lucky.  It had no
life to live, crippled as it was.  She killed herself and the baby.  I
don't seem to care as I ought to care.  And now your wife has told me
that she loves me.  It's true!  She doesn't love _you_; she never has.
She has not taken me a prisoner any more than I have her.  We're both
in this to-night.  We're both to blame.  But, at the bottom, you are to
blame--for _all_ of this."

"Of course!  Of course!" smiled John Rawn sardonically.  "What would
you expect?  I am sorry.  But I'll never tell any one about it, you can
depend on that!"

"You'll never tell!" went on Charles Halsey slowly.  "You'll never
_need_ to tell.  But here's what I want to tell _you_, once more.
Whatever this is--and it's about bad enough--it's come because of
_you_.  You--you were the cause of this!"

"_You blame me_--why, what do you mean!" burst out John Rawn.  "Where
have _I_ been to blame, I'd like to know!  What do you mean, young man?"

"Every word I have told you, and more than I can tell you.  You'll not
think--you don't dare to face the truth; but there's the real truth.
If you can't understand that, take what you can understand.  Your wife
isn't to blame--I'm to blame.  Love is to blame.  I love her.  I've
done this."

"You have done--what?"

"I've taken your wife away from you, can't you understand, you fool?
She's going to marry me as soon--"

"_Jennie_!--what's this fellow talking about?"  The veins on John
Rawn's forehead stood high and full.



IX

"He is only telling you the truth," she said calmly, wearily.  "I don't
care one picayune whether or not you know it, whether or not the world
knows it!  I'm tired!  I'm done with all this sort of thing!  Yes, I'm
going to marry him as soon as we can get away.  As soon as it's decent,
if anything's decent any more!"

"And you love him, you'll rob _me_, you'll leave _me_--you'll--why, are
you all crazy?  What are you talking about?  When I've given you
everything you've got--when you were so much to me!  _Jennie!_"

"No, no!" she raised a hand.  "Don't talk about that!  It's all over
now."

She tore at her throat, at her fingers, heaped up in his hands the gems
she wore even then, the gems she had put upon her person to protect
them from uncertain servants, gems which left her blazing like some
waxen queen in her tomb--white, dead, enjeweled.

"Take them!" she cried.  "I don't want them."  She went on, piling his
hands full of glittering, flashing things.  He stood gazing at her,
stupefied.  Then, slowly, the burden of years, the burden of business
failure, and lastly this--the burden of the worst of man's
discomfiture, the worst of a man's possible losses--began to weigh down
upon him.  He shortened visibly; shriveled; drooped.



X

They had no pity for him.  Youth has no pity for age, love no pity for
a mate's inefficiency; but after all some sort of contempt, at least,
seemed due him.

"Rawn," said Halsey, "it's pretty hard.  We're all of us paying a hard,
heavy price for what we thought we had.  But we can't evade it, any
part of it.  It was your fault that Grace left me.  We were going to
part.  You sent your wife after me, as you call it.  I suppose Grace
found that out.  You know what she did then.  I said I blame you, and
so I do.  But I was going to get a divorce--"

"Divorce!--you divorce my daughter!  John Rawn's daughter!"

"Did you not divorce her mother--you, yourself?"

"But I loved--my wife--I mean, this woman--Jennie, here!"

"So do _I_ love her; more than you do or ever will know how to do!
What you have done we'll do.  Is it worse for us than it was for you?
What's the difference?"

"But she's my _wife_!  Why, _Jennie_!"  He held out a hand to her.

"So was Laura Rawn your wife, my wife's mother," went on Halsey.
"What's the difference?"

Virginia Rawn stepped between the two.  "I'm as much to blame as any
one of us all," she said quietly.  "I sold out to you, didn't I, Mr.
Rawn--down there in New York?  I married you, didn't I?  Very well,
what you did, I have done.  No more, and not without equal cause.  I
love him.  I'm going to marry him.  You and I are going to be
divorced--if we were not I'd go to him anyhow.  I hate you, I loathe
you!  My God! how I detest and loathe the sight of you!  Go away--go
away from us!  You're not any part of a man!"



XI

"It's true!" gasped John Rawn to himself; "My God, it's true!  She said
that--I heard her--to me?  What have I done to deserve this? ... I
ought to kill you," said he to Halsey slowly.

"Of course you ought," said Halsey.  "If you were any portion of a man
you would.  But you've tried that, and you know where you ended."

"But Halsey--Charley!--you don't stop to think!" began Rawn pitifully.
"You will go back--you will go back to the factory, in the morning?
You will help me pull it together, won't you?"

"No, not one step back to the factory--never in the world!  I'm done
with that.  I'm going away somewhere, and she's going with me, I don't
know where.  Let some one else work out what you thought we could do,
and let some one else take the consequences--it's not for me.  You've
got what you earned--I suppose I'll get what I've earned, too.  I don't
care about that any more."

Rawn could not answer the young man as he went on, slowly, dully,
bitterly.  "If I've been traitor to any of my own creed I reckon God'll
punish me.  Very well; I will take my punishment on my shoulders.  I've
no apologies to make in a place like this.

"Haven't you gone up--oughtn't we to go up now--up-stairs?" he added at
last.  He put down Virginia's arms from his shoulders; for once more
she had come to him.

Rawn sighed.  "I suppose I must go up there," he said vaguely.

He turned and walked away, heavy, stumbling.



CHAPTER XI

THE MEANS--AND THE END

I

Halsey turned toward Virginia.  They did not again embrace, but stood
silent, almost apathetic now.  Passion was far away from them, indeed
had never fully seized them.  The despair in human love was theirs; and
love is half despair.  She might have been some beautiful statue in
white marble, so cold was she; and as for the man who faced her, his
anger gone, he himself might have been the image of hopelessness.
Central figures of an irreparable ruin, and seeing no avenue to
happiness, for the time neither had word for the other.

At last Halsey raised his head, as some sound caught his ear.  "What's
that?" he said.

"I heard it," said she.  "I think it's some one coming up the walk."

"Yes," he answered.  "Listen!  Why, it sounds like a crowd.  What can
that mean, now?  Wait."

He left her and hastened out to the front door.  He stood there,
outlined fully by the hall lights behind him.  Those who approached
recognized him.  He was greeted by a derisive shout, half-maudlin,
scarce human in its quality.  The solitary servant rushed up, excited.
"What is it, Mr. Halsey?" he quavered.  "Is there going to be any
trouble?  Oh, I ought to have gone away with the others!"

"Get out of the way," replied Halsey calmly.  "Get back behind the
door.  I'll go out and meet them."

"Here, you men!" he called out in sudden anger to the visitors.  "What
do you mean, coming here this way?"  He was advancing toward them now,
down the steps, into the curving walk, almost to the rim of the circle
of light cast by the house lights.

"Don't you know any better than to come here at this time, you people?
There's trouble in this house.  There's death in here.  Go on away, at
once!"



II

The leader of the scattered group of ill-dressed men stepped forward.
"No, we'll not go on away at once.  We know who you are, all right, Mr.
Halsey.  Trouble!  We're in trouble, too!  We're lookin' for some more
trouble, now."

"Well, I'm not to blame for that.  What do you mean?  Who are you,
anyway?"

"You ought to know us!  We've done up some of your damned sneaks.  You
cut your workmen down to the last copper in wages, and you didn't pay
them that.  Then when the pinch came, you shut the doors and slunk off,
like the coward you was!  Then they came over to us, at last!  Your
scabs is in the unions now."

"I haven't done anything of the kind!" retorted Halsey hotly.  "I
haven't been to the factory for days.  When I left there, every cent
was paid up.  That wasn't any of my business anyhow--I was not cashier,
but factory superintendent."

"It's a lie, you know it's a lie!  We've come to show you up.  We've
come to take old man Rawn and you out of this place.  We ought to ride
him on a rail, and you with him!  That's what we ought to do!  We want
that money."  The leader advanced toward him menacingly.

"Why, men, I have not got your money--" expostulated Halsey.  "If I
had, this isn't the way to get it from me!  I've always used you
fellows square!  You've got to act that way with me.  I'm in trouble
now, I tell you.  My wife's dead, and my baby--to-day--in here.  You
are accusing the best friend you have got!  Where's Jim Sullivan?
Where's Tim Carney?  Where's any of you men that used to work with me
there in the factory?  Any one of you ought to know better."

"They ain't here; but don't talk that to us!  We know what you was
doing with them machines.  We know what you was up to.  You wanted to
take the bread out of our mouths!  We seen it all in the papers, the
whole thing, plain enough.  No wonder you kept it all blind as you
could--you wanted to put us off the earth."

"It's a lie!" cried Halsey sternly.  "I broke them up.  I threw up my
job.  I quit because I didn't want to see the bread taken out of your
mouths.  I stood between the company and just what you say.  I wouldn't
allow them to make it harder for you than it was.  I never lost you a
cent of wages--I stood for you all the time, I'm with you now.  Why,
men, I've been at your meetings, I'm one of you!  Don't you know?
Don't you remember?  You've never asked a thing of me I haven't tried
to do, that was in reason.  You know me!  What difference about the
union if I'm your sort?"

"Yes, ve _do_ know you!" broke in a squat and pallid Jew, forcing
himself through the thick to the front, and usurping the place of the
wavering leader.  "By Gott, ve do know you, Mister Halsey!  You'fe lied
to us, that's vat you'fe done!  You'fe been to our meetings, yess, but
you'fe betrayed us!  I seen you there, yess!"

"That's not true!" answered Halsey hotly.  "There isn't a word of truth
in it!  I've lost everything in the world I've got just _because_ that
isn't true.  My wife's lying dead in that house back there--just
because of that!  My child's dead there too--just _because_ of
that--I've lost everything in the world I have got--just _because_ that
isn't true!"



III

The Jew shrieked aloud, half-insane.  "To hell vith this country!" he
said.  "To hell vith the rich that rob us.  If your vife's dead, it iss
vat's right.  My vife, she'll die too, she's starring.  To hell vith
Rawn and all like him!"

"Look here, my men, that's about enough of that!" rejoined Halsey.
"You're drunk or crazy, and we're not going to stand for that here.
It's no place for this kind of talk.  I tell you, I've done all I could
for you.  I haven't sided with Rawn.  If I had, I could be rich to-day."

"You are rich!" cried the Jew; "and ve are poor.  You eat fat, you
sleep soft.  You _are_ rich!  But vat do ve get?  I'm hungry!  My
folks--they are starfing!  Ve haf no money.  Ve get no money for vork
ve did so long.  It buys us nothing now.  Meat is no more for us;
breat, hardly.  This _iss_ no country for the people.  This _iss_ no
land vere laws are just.  This _iss_ no republic of man.  Jehovah, send
Thy power!  Smite and spare not, this so wrong a land!"

"You damned fanatic, shut up!" began Halsey savagely.  "Get on out of
here.  You don't know your own friends!  Who's to blame for your
troubles?  Haven't you got heads of your own?  Haven't you got votes of
your own?  Can't you right your _own_ wrongs, the first minute you get
ready to do it, I'd like to know?  I'm _for_ you, do you understand;
but you make it hard for any one to help you.  You've had sluggers
after our men all the time over there, and now you come and want us to
pay you for that.  You're over here to make trouble to-night, maybe
slug me--perhaps that's what you are trying to do to me--and you want
us to pay you for _that_.  You talk about monopolies and trusts--what
you're trying to do is to make the worst trust in the country--a
monopoly in ignorance and savagery.  Go on home and let me alone!  I
tell you, my wife is dead.  I am going back to her!"

"He's lying to us!" cried out a voice in the crowd.  "He's trying to
get us sorry for him!"

"That's it!" screamed the Jew, who had edged to the front and who now
stood crouched, menacing, not far from Halsey's erect and irate frame.
"That's vhat he iss.  He'ss only trying to fool us.  Kill him!  Ve've
vaited long enough!  Gif it to him!"  He sprang to one side, crouching.



IV

Those back of them, at the gallery, in the rear of the entry, heard
some sort of scuffle, a snarling of voices, curses.  There were sounds
of blows.  Then came a flash, a shocking report; after that, a
half-instant of silence, and the sound of scattering and departing
footsteps.

There remained only one figure, lying outstretched on the gravel.  To
render succor to this, to offer aid, there was now only one human being
left in all that place--she who now came hurrying forward.

Virginia Rawn half raised Halsey as he lay.  "Charley!" she said
quietly.  "Can you talk?"

He gasped and nodded.  "Through here!" He touched his chest.  "I guess
I'll not--be able--"

She called out, to any back of her, for aid.  The frightened servant
came, and between them they got him somehow into the house, dragging
him to the gold-room library which they had but lately left.  They
placed him there upon a couch.  Virginia Rawn rose and waved the man
away.  He hurried after help.

"Charley!" she said, turning to him; "can you talk?"

"A little.  What is it, Jennie?"

"You're hurt bad--very bad."

"Through here," he said again, and touched his chest.  His breath was
hard.  His garments were soaked with blood.  His face was bluish-gray.



V

She looked into his soul the query of her own.  Perhaps there was
something not wholly unworthy in the bond between them, since now it
enabled them to talk, one soul with the other, almost without words....
The great, secret, all-powerful, world current, interstellar, not
international, the one great power--of love, as she once said--was
theirs....  Yes, it was theirs, if only for a little while.

"They've killed me," he began after a time--"I tried to do something
for them.  He--Rawn--would have used it for himself.  I didn't want
to....

"Jennie," he said, after a time; "I beg pardon, Mrs. Rawn--I
forgot--would you take the doll, the little rubber one on the table
there, up to the baby?  Poor little thing!  Oh, well! ..."

He sighed.  She quietly laid him back upon the couch.  She heard the
blood drip, drip, through and across the brocaded couch, falling at the
edge of the silken rug, on the polished floor, eddying there;
thickening there.



CHAPTER XII

THE GREAT JOHN RAWN

I

Far off, deep in the underground regions of the city at the focus of
the republic's vast industrialism, the presses were reeling and
clanging again, heavy with their story of disaster.  The civilization
of the day went on.

Somewhere out upon the mountain tops, somewhere in the forests, the
forces of nature gathered, marched on toward the sea.  Somewhere
dumbly, mutely, uncomplaining, the great river and its mate the great
power, inter-stellar, not international--they two, as he but now
vauntingly had dreamed, erstwhile silent partners of John Rawn--did
their work....  For whom?  For what?  Answer that, my brothers.  The
answer is your own.  As you and I shall speak in that answer, so shall
our children eat well sleep well, in days yet to come, in this country
which we still call our own, now all too little ours.



II

It was far past midnight when John Rawn again came down the stair,
sobered and whitened by what he had seen in the death chamber.  He
tiptoed now back to the library door, through which and beneath whose
silken curtains still there pierced a little shaft of light.  He opened
the door, peered in.

He saw Virginia sitting there silent, white, unagitated, her features
cameo-sharp, her skin waxen, indeed marble white, a woman as
motionless, as silent, apparently as little animate as the one he had
left behind him in the death chamber beyond the stair.  She turned her
eyes, not her face, toward him, but did not speak.  The edge of her
gown was moist, stained.

John Rawn looked in turn at the long figure upon the couch, motionless,
silent, its hands folded.  Neither did it speak to him.  Suddenly
oppressed, suddenly afraid, he turned once more away.  Irresolution was
in his soul, uncertainty.

Rawn was hardly sure that he still lived, that he still was the same
John Rawn he once had known.  It seemed impossible that all these
things could have fallen upon him, who had not deserved them!  He
pitied himself with a vast pity, revolting at the many injustices of
fortune now crowding upon him, a wholly blameless man.  Why, a day
before, he had held in his hand power such as few men could equal; had
had, presently before him, power none other ever could hope to equal.
That opportunity still existed.  But how now could he avail himself of
that opportunity, how could he go on to be the great John Rawn, if this
figure on the couch could not arise, could not speak to him, could not
perform the obvious duty of rendering needful assistance to him, John
Rawn?  The cruelty of it all rankled in the great and justice-loving
soul of Mr. Rawn.  Why, he was penniless--he--John Rawn!  He was not
even sure about his wife, yonder.  She had said things to him he could
not understand, could not believe.

He left the room, and walked still farther down the hall, his head
sagging, his lower lip pendulous, his face warped into a pucker of
self-pity--so absorbed, that at first he did not heed an approaching
footfall.  He paused almost in touch of some one who approached him in
the half-lighted hall; some one who was coming down the stair and along
the hall with steady tread.



III

There stood before him now the same tall, gray-haired, unfashionably
dressed woman whom so recently he vaguely had noted at a distance in
the hall above; some woman apparently busy with duties connected with
the death chamber, as he had reflected when he saw her; some neighbor,
he presumed, and certainly useful!  It was kind of her to come at this
time.  He could not, at the time, recollect that he had seen her
before.  Yes, he would reward her--he would express his thanks.

He looked up at her now sharply, and gasped.

"_Laura!_" he exclaimed.  "Is it you?"

"Why, yes, John," answered the tall, gaunt woman gently.  "Didn't you
see me, up there?  I suppose you were too much troubled to notice me,
John.  Yes, I'm here.  I thought maybe I ought to come.

"But you see--this--" she held out to him the letter she had picked up
from the hall table.  "This didn't get to her--Grace--not in time.  She
died this morning, before noon, they tell me.  She never knew her
mother was coming to her when she was in trouble.  She hadn't seen my
letter to her, telling I was coming.  I knew she was in trouble--and I
saw all the stories in the papers.  I thought I'd tell her I was coming
to her--and you, John.  She was my girl, after all!  I knew she was in
trouble."

"How did you know?"

"Why, she wrote to me, of course.  A girl always writes to her mother
when she's in trouble.  She wrote to me right often.  She wasn't--well,
she wasn't happy, John, and she often told me that.  Something wrong
was going on between her and Charley, I don't know what."

He stood looking at her, stupefied, as she went on, simply.



IV

"John, married folks oughtn't to be apart too much.  They sort of get
weaned from each other.  Grace was too ambitious.  She'd got, here,
what she thought her husband couldn't get, what she'd come to think she
had to have.  I might have told her better, but I wasn't here.  Not
that I'm reproving you, John, not at all.  Besides, we have all got to
go, some day.  But I loved her....  And the baby."

"So did I love her, and the baby," he began.  Tears were in his eyes.
"Laura, I have had nothing but trouble.  And now you have come here--"

"Yes, I know; it must seem a little queer to you, John; so I'm going
right away again, to-night--before morning, if there's any way I can
get down-town."

"Yes, yes!"

"--Because, I know if I was seen around here, and people found out who
I am, who I--was--there might be some sort of talk which would be hard
for you, John.  I reckon you have trouble enough without that.  I
didn't want to bother you.  I came mostly because of Grace.  But--John,
I always did like to tell the truth, and I have got to tell it now--I
came a little, too, because of you!"

"Of me?  Why Laura!"

"Yes, I did.  I read the papers, of course, all the time.  I have known
about you, although you haven't heard of me.  You have moved up in the
world, John, and as for me--well, I have just gone back to Kelly Row,
where we used to live.  Of course, I'm glad you have been lucky.  But
then, lately, the papers all began to say you were in trouble.  I've
read all kinds of things about you.  I heard you were ruined--that you
hadn't a dollar left in all the world!"

"It's true," he growled; "as near as I know, it's true.  There is no
hope for me now.  It's all up!"

"But, John, you had so _much_ money!"

"Yes, but it's gone now.  It doesn't take it long to go when it starts
the other way.  The market makes a man, and it breaks him just as
quick, and a lot quicker.  It's done me, Laura.  I'm ruined.  I haven't
a thing left in the world; not even my wife.  Have you come here to
twit me with it?  What do I owe _you_, that I have to listen to you?"

"Why, nothing, John, that's true; nothing at all, not in the least.  I
have no right here at all, I know that.  I understood _that_, when
I--when--I went away from here.  But that wasn't why I came back
to-night."

"Then why _did_ you come?  You always had the faculty, Laura, of doing
the wrong thing.  You've been a curse to me all my life!"

"Some of that's true, John," she answered simply, "and a good deal of
it isn't.  Maybe I said the wrong thing sometimes, or did the wrong
thing.  I never had much training.  I was meant for Kelly Row, I
reckon--I'd never have fitted in here.  We tried it!  But I didn't come
to glorify myself because you've lost this place, and everything you
had.  I just thought--"

"Well, Laura, what was it that you just thought?  I can't stand here
talking all the time.  It isn't right, it isn't proper.  I'm worn out!"

"Of course it isn't, John.  I'm going right away.  But you see, when I
came away I just thought this way--here am I, an old woman that don't
need much money any more.  And there's Grace;--and maybe now John has
need for money when everybody's turned against him.  And if he does
need money, why--"



V

"What do you mean, Laura?" gasped John Rawn.  "What's that you said
about _money_?"

"How much would do you any good, John?" she asked, fumbling in her
bulging hand-bag.

"I might as well wish for the moon as for a dollar," he said bitterly.
"If I had a million, or a half million, to-morrow, I'd pull it all
together, even yet."

"A half million, John?" she said, taking out of her bag a little,
wrinkled, flat _porte-monnaie_ such as women sometimes use for carrying
change in their marketing; but still continuing her fumbling at the
portly bag.

"Yes, if I had a half million I could put this company on its feet,
even yet--the secret's out that Halsey had,--but I'd get it somewhere.
I more than half believe those fellows _have_ got it, somewhere else,
somehow--that fellow Van's deep.  You see, they've been fighting me,
Laura--made up a gang against me!  I know who it was.  If I had a half
million I'd throw in with Van--he's got this secret somehow--he knows
something about it.  I'd throw in with him, and we'd whip the others,
even yet!  I'd get it all back in my hands even yet, I tell you!

"But my God!  Why do I stand talking about such things?  What's the
use?  I'm down and out!  I'd just as well be dead!"

"Well, John, what I always said of you was, that you seemed to know how
to get things around the way you wanted them.  I said to myself, what a
shame it was he should have no money, when he needed it, and I should
have so much when I didn't need it.  I've got enough set aside to keep
me, I reckon, for my few years.  And here's what you gave
me;--although, Grace--of course, John, I want enough used to put Grace
and the baby away.  The rest is yours."

He stood looking at her dumbly, as at last she extricated from the bag
a thick bundle of folded papers, green, brown, pale pink.

"I got the bank to keep them for me," she said simply.  "It is what you
gave me--when--when I left here--"

He still stood looking at her, choking.

"Laura!" said he.  "Has God come to my aid?  This--I can't believe it!
It's a million dollars!  _It's a million dollars!_"  His voice rose,
breaking almost to a shriek.  "It's a--  It's--a--million--_dollars_!"

"Well, take it, John, it's yours; you're welcome to it.  I don't want
it.  It's done me no good.  It's done none of us any good.  All I want
is, that you should take care of Grace's funeral, for that's only
right, John.  She was my girl, my baby, my baby!  Take care of her.
John, I have got to go back--home!"



VI

In the next ensuing moment or so, what swift changes now were wrought
in the late despair of our friend and hero, Mr. John Rawn, master of
the International Power Company, already in imagination controlling in
good part the destinies of a people--the great John Rawn,
philanthropist, kindly employer, wise friend of the less favored ones
of earth; the beneficent, kindly, omnipotent John Rawn?  Why had he
despaired, why had he ever doubted, why had he ever set himself even
momentarily apart from that original destiny which always he had
accorded to him-self?  Was he not a leader--had he not been devised to
be so in the plans of the immortal gods, ages ago?  Was he not one of
the few select ones assigned to rule his fellow-men?

John Rawn stood before the old, gray woman, and scarcely heard her last
words.  He sighed deeply.  His self-respect was coming back to him in
waves, great, recurrent waves.  At last a smile crossed his face.  The
imperious glance of the born ruler, of one better than his fellow-men,
the look of the man set apart and licensed to rob and rule--returned
once more to his eye.



VII

"_It's a million dollars!_" he cried aloud, exultantly, once more.
"It's God has sent it to me!  I'll take it as a sign.  Watch me in the
morning!  I'll make them hunt their holes yet.  By God!  I will!"

"John, John, you mustn't swear, it isn't right!  John!"

"I beg your pardon--er--er--Laura," he rejoined, with fine
condescension, every instant now becoming more himself.  "In fact, I
want to thank you--it's clever of you, I must say.  It isn't every
woman who'd have done what you have done, I'm sure."

"Why wouldn't they, John?  It isn't money a woman wants to make her
happy.  I've tried that.  Grace tried it.  It doesn't work.  It takes
something else besides money, I reckon.  We're lucky when we find that,
any of us, I reckon.  If we don't, we've got to take just what God
gives us.  But money doesn't buy everything in the world.  John,
sometimes I think it buys about as little as anything you can think
of!"  She gulped just a little in her thin throat.

"All the same," said he firmly and generously, by this time almost
fully the great John Rawn once more, "it was very decent of you, Laura."

"Well, never mind about that, John.  It was you who made it.  I never
did understand how you earned it so fast.  I'm glad if it will do you
any good--if you're sure it will do you any good.  And see, John," she
added shyly, fumbling again in her bag, "I brought you a little
present, John.  I've been doing these, you see.  I make quite a lot out
of it.  I never used any of that money you gave me, at all--I did these
things--the way I did before, when we were getting our start together,
John, you know.  I thought--maybe--you'd like a pair."



VIII

She held out to him a pair of braces, embroidered carefully in silks.
He took them in his hand.  She also looked at them closely, in
professional scrutiny, her steel bowed spectacles on nose.  She
pronounced them good.

"But, John," she added curiously--"you know, while I was up there,
doing what I could for Grace and the baby--it seemed to me like as if I
heard some funny sort of noise down here--something like a shot.  What
was it?"

"It was some of those confounded laboring people," said John Rawn,
frowning.  "Yes--they came here after Halsey."

"Yes?  But was anybody hurt?"

"Well," said John Rawn, "Halsey--Charley Halsey--you remember him, I
believe?  Well, they shot him.

--"Good-night, Laura," he added suddenly, and held out his hand to her,
generously, nobly.  "I'm very sleepy.  I've been up so long--and I've a
lot to do to-morrow.  After all, there's no use in _our_ having hard
feelings.  Good-by."



THE END



[Transcriber's note:

The source book's illustrations had no captions.  The in brackets were
added by the transcriber.  Some of them were my best guess as to the
persons in them.]





*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "John Rawn - Prominent Citizen" ***

Copyright 2023 LibraryBlog. All rights reserved.