John Rawn, Prominent Citizen

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.

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 awtomobeel 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 awtomobeel, '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 awtamobeels. 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.