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.

(Halsey and Rawn)
(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!"

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